What’s kicking your ass right now, ILC-er?

BAKUNE YOUNG VOL. 1 by Toyokazu Matsunaga
Judging by this, which I happened upon over the weekend at a Half Price Books for five bucks, this may be the most awesome thing that ever awesomed. A hulking man-child in his early twenties decides to take on the Yakuza, Johnny Law, and the entire world, basically, by holding the most powerful gangster in Japan (along with the National Treasures) hostage in return for a hundred trillion yen. From this premise builds crescendo after crescendo of game logic, giddy satire (with masculine self-regard a favored target), and glorious, relentless violence! Pretty much every page is intent upon leaving the reader breathless, but a hallucinogenic set piece involving countless thugs besieging a building guarded by a lone, quite unstable police commissioner seems particularly worthy of note. And there’s two more volumes out there, just waiting to reduce the world to cinders!

MISTER O and MISTER I by Lewis Trondheim
My nephews and I discovered these together. MISTER O concerns, solely, the eponymous little round man and his travails attempting to cross a chasm, each page a different iteration of this dilemma within the same silent sixty-panel layout - the “Roadrunner” cartoons are an oft-mentioned and wholly appropriate point of reference. MISTER I is equally entertaining but more varied in situation – it applies the same formal constraints and doodling art style to our I-shaped protagonist and his preoccupation with hunger, with each and every strip involving Mister I’s attempts, either by methods fair or foul, to feed himself. There’s a scenario of pie theft, repeated every four or five pages, which serves as a close approximation of Mister O and his damned need to close that gap, but otherwise, where there’s food to be had, Mister I will probably come to a blood-drenched end over it. COOLEST THING EVER: Seeing my nephews inspired to draw their own versions. Rock!

Trades are my saving grace at the moment. I've been buying a collection every week along with my weekly batch of disappointment. Mostly, it's just stuff that I already own in single-issue form and love (i.e. Delano's Hellblazer). I've been buying Seven Soldiers trades for the past couple of weeks, so that's all good. I'm also working on the second LOSH Showcase volume, too. Fun enough, but I imagine the truly classic stuff is still on the horizon.

Oh, I know something that kicked my ass fairly recently: Yuichi Yokoyama's New Engineering.

I skipped most of G-Mo's mainstream superhero stuff, so recently dled new x men and libraried JLA. The first is kicking my ass. The second, not so much. I think it has to do with the art being SO much better in NXM.

Baez, you owe it to yourself to go get Dungeon.

GMo's NXM is fucking choice.

Lately:
Marvel's omnibus hc of Kirby's Devil Dinosaur. A dinosaur stomps on things. I am a simple man, with simple tastes.
PulpHope, Paul Pope artbook- Pope is an annoyingly pretentious twat, college libertarian and can't spell for crap, but he's also very very good.
Maggie the Mechanic- first volume of Jaime's L&R stuff. Yes, I am way behind; yes, I know.
Swamp Thing: Dark Genesis- trade paperback of the original Len Wein Swamp Thing material. Incredibly fast-paced tour of every horror milieu the 70's could offer, with something awesome or completely fucking bizarre happening nearly every page. Highly recommended.

To add to TT's "Yes, I am way behind," I'm also really enjoying (for the first time ever), er, The Dark Phoenix Saga.

I love Mister O and Mister I.

I saw Mister O like, a year ago at the library and loved it. Better look for I.

I've been diving into Kamandi. After devouring the Fourth World omnibuses I was still craving more Kirby. Never having even dipped my toes into the world of the Last Boy on Earth, I'm reveling.

Mister O is amazing. I too must look for Mister I.

Been taking out stuff by Jason from the library - good work. When I first saw his style I thought it might overly ironic and bare, but then I enjoyed reading I killed Adolf Hitler.

Been in that mood, since I read some of Gilbert Hernandez's books a couple of months ago. Hey, Wait... reminded me of Sloth and No Chance in Hell - not as grisly, of course, but the same sense of inner disconnection exemplified by these enormous mid-story narrative changes.

Chiggers by Hope Larson: charming YA graphic novel
Various minis and others by Tom Gauld from Cabanon Press (see www.cabanonpress.com for heaps of his stuff free online)

have been increasing eyeing the Jason stuff--where to start???

Chronicles of Wormwood - I like Garth Ennis much more than some around the ILC site and this one does kind of reuse a couple of the same jokes from the Preacher series, but there is still some stuff that really made me laugh. It definitely is not a series for someone that is easily offended, especially from a religious standpoint. The talking rabbit really cracks me up.

Fell - I finally got and read this first trade by Warren Ellis and Ben Templesmith. It is a darkly comic book, but in a way the central character is a bit more optimistic than some of Ellis' other protagonists. Too bad the series has stopped at issue #9 and has not gone on. I also give some props to Ellis for like his Global Frequency book, these are some tightly put together single issue stories.

Sandman Mystery Theatre- I've read the first 32 issues and the one issue special done by Gaiman. This was a really good series and one of the most grounded 'mask' titles maybe ever done. It is also one of the best titles set in the age of pulp, as the book is set in the late 30s. I think it is really underrated.

Conan- I liked the first couple of issues of the new series, so I have gone back and started to get some of the first run of Conan on Dark Horse. At least through the first year of the series, it is a really great read. Kurt Busiek's stories are really solid and have a much different feel than the old Marvel books. Cary Nord's artwork is really great, they use just penciled artwork that is digitally colored. It works really well. My Conan kick started from working through the first collection of the old 70s black and white Savage Sword of Conan, which goes from good to fantastic.

I thought Mister O was one of the funniest things I'd ever read, but was kinda let down by Mister I.

The new issue of Tales Designed to Thrizzle is kicking my ass RIGHT NOW.

I've been reading one of the Fantagraphics Dennis the Menace collections. It's easy to see why the comic was once adored.

I just torrented the complete run of ACTION!, the notorious mid-70s UK weekly comic (forerunner of 2000AD) which was pulled off the shelves for being too violent after questions were asked in the House Of Commons. I have only read issue #1 so far but it is awesome two-fisted stuff. A full breakdown of its thrill-powered contents may appear on this site soon.

I always found ACTION! a bit too gruesome. I reckon I still would not be able to hack it.

As well as the Hookjaw style grue there are a number of stories in Action #1 which are a bit off-message, eg SPORT'S NOT FOR LOSERS where the cliffhanger is "Can Jack persuade his brother to give up smoking?"

The new issue of Tales Designed to Thrizzle is kicking my ass RIGHT NOW.

Wait, whuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut?!? When did that happen? Quimby's, here I come!

re: Sandman Mystery Theater, that's on my 'to buy' list. I dig the first trade and always wanted to read more. I kinda want to wait and see whether they're going to actually collect the whole thing before I get too gung-ho about it, though. You know how Vertigo can be.

SMT was a joy to read on a month by month basis. I loved that each storyline was the same length, and also that the motivation of the villains in each storyline was always related to a kind of bigotry, giving it an amazing thematic cohesiveness for a four-year long series with a dozen different 'episodes.' Also the way the introduction of golden age DC characters was handled, seeping into the jazz age milieu bit by bit ('The Hourman' was especially good in this respect.)

I don't think Tales Designed To Thrizzle #4 is actually out yet, right? I think it's at Comic-Con, but I don't think stores have it yet.

Yeah, Thrizzle is Comic-Con only for the moment...

That is unthrizzling.

I wish I could convince my local shop to actually sell Thrizzle.

Tell them that every hundredth issue has an Alex Ross zombie incentive cover.

PLANET HULK was a surprisingly cracking read. SQADRON SUPREME is oddly compelling reading as well. Latest AGE OF BRONZE is wonderful and makes me sad that another collection won't be out for awhile. The new Ditko retrospective is pretty keen too.

Another great thing about Sandman Mystery Theatre, is that the relationship between the characters Wesley Dodds (aka The Sandman) and Dian Belmont. It is really well done.

I think DC should really do a series about the Justice Society set in that time period and get someone like Matt Wagner or James Robinson to get it right.

Oh yeah, the Wesley/Dian romance was great. I can't believe I forgot that.

SQADRON SUPREME is oddly compelling reading as well.

Mind-boggling - subject for further research...

Which Squadron Supreme are we talking about here? The Gruenwald one (which is simultaneously dated and ahead of the curve) or the Straczynski one (which felt like Rising Stars but moving at 1/2 speed)?

"Which Squadron Supreme are we talking about here?"

There is also that Supreme Power series that was done for Marvel Max. I've never read that one, but I have been curious about it.

I think Supreme Power is the Stanislavski (or whatever) one.

Gruenwald's version is the one I'm reading currently. It's...mind-boggling.

Not kicking my ass, really, not even close- but Geoff Johns's run on the Flash. Reading it after enjoying Rogues' Revenge #1 a lot more than I expected to, and while it's just okay most of the time, and Johns has some really grating habits (like the "Rogue Profile" issues where every single goddamn thing in these characters' lives has inexorably pointed them toward their gimmick, really heinous in the Mirror Master issue; and Murmur, who just fucking sucks) there are surprisingly enjoyable bits throughout. Zoom, for instance- weird science powers, creepy gimmick, tons of potential as a character (even if Johns himself doesn't make the best of it) and the way he's defeated in his first arc is just nifty, the kind of too-clever-by-half sci-fi bullshit that drives all the best Flash stories.

Gruenwald's Squadron Supreme is very odd. I loved it as a kid for all the wrong reasons, but I reread it a couple years back. It's certainly ahead of its time thematically (it's actually not a bad refutation of the Millar-era Authority argument), but it's laden with awkward thought balloons and ham-handed character development.

Mind-boggling isn't really a bad word for it, now that I think of it.

I tried to read it recently. So very, very bad. Has not aged well.

At the time I am positive I remember people (OK maybe "someone in MARVEL AGE magazine" but I think it was in a fanzine) bracketing it with WATCHMEN as 'realistic approaches to superheroes'.

That was the accepted wisdom for a (brief) while more recently, too, tho that might be just folks parroting 9th-generation hearsay in their News@rama sigs or something.

My copy of the Squadron Supreme graphic novel has the following caveat - 'Fourth Printing. Contains No Ashes'

I would argue that, despite the really awful writing (and I can't stress that enough - it's painful to read), it's pretty openly dealing with the same issues that Millar and, to a lesser degree, Ellis were writing about fairly recently. It certainly wasn't the first (Moore had wrapped up his Miracleman run by 85, right?) to question why characters who are inclined to save the world would overlook underlying societal issues (aside from the editorial need to keep the world of the narrative recognizable to readers), but it's the first title I recall from the big two American publishers to deal with it. I don't really have any objections to it getting some credit for, if nothing else, being an early (if somewhat poorly thought-out) refutation of why superheroes don't just run the world.

Doesn't mean I'd actually recommend anyone read it, though...

I'd recommend it to superhero revisionist fetishists. It's interesting, but only to scholars. As a story, it's pretty flat and not all that well-written, and it's probably the most unusually-paced comic I've ever read. WATCHMEN is interesting and readable as a piece of fiction on its own. SQUADRON SUPREME doesn't enjoy that advantage.

Chewing through the Blake Bell book on Steve Ditko currently. I bet I won't like how it ends...

Strong recommendation for Bryan Talbot's 'Alice In Sunderland'. Astonishingly dense and complex, beautifully rendered and brilliant in its duplicity; helluva run down the rabbit hole!

Alice in Sunderland was fantastic. I'll second that one.

I'm currently working my way through the various Gilbert Hernandez Palomar trades. It's kicking my ass in a way that's probably not the way the thread intends (in that I periodically have to say "wait, she's whose daughter again?" and "wait, when did she lose an eye?"). I'm just about up to "Love and Rockets X," which, based on what I've heard, will cause me to give up altogether.

Alice is Sunderland is a very deliberate "Hey, Alan Moore can do this, so can I".

Which I enjoyed, on those grounds!

I KILLED ADOLF HITLER: Awesome. So much better than the Midnighter story with the same plot.

Alice In Sunderland was the worst comic I read last year, I had to keep getting up and walking around the room venting to $blokewhosecopyIwasreading. I probably went into it on another ILC thread but its biggest sins were a) pretending there was something SERIOUS AND LINKED about all this random shit instead of it being a tenuous connection to jump from one thing to another because Talbot liked it - mainly in This Is A Weighty Tome stylee rather than the tone taken in making each link, TBF, but it would have suited a 90s-style single-artist anthology floppy rather than a $50 hardcover, and b) the art and cartooning were BOTH really horrible - no cleverness in working disparate elements together, just blurring the edges of shit in photoshop and slapping them next to another blurred edge --- which led to pages not actually reading especially well.

Still got big love for Arkwright/HoE, Bad Rat, first vol of Teknophage etc, but for mine Sunderland is a huge triumph of Marketing The Artist's Intent rather than the actual work finding its level.

I KILLED ADOLF HITLER: Awesome

wld buy that if Giffen drew it, even knowing it would be horribly disappointing

ps R Baez OTM:

LOVE AND ROCKETS: NEW STORIES #4 - SERIOUS.

People are tripping on the new l and r, gotta get it

Jaime's stuff is all cont. from #3 (and from the entirety of his pre-New Stories work tbh)

L&R is something I always find on the web asap cause I'm jonesin' and ALWAYS buy a physical copy of to support the brothers. "Love Bunglers"/"Browntown" from 3&4 is just amazing, amazing work -- replaces "Death of Speedy" as the high-water mark of Jaime's career imo.

WOW the new Love and Rockets holy shit, so perfect

The past two Jaime issues were probably my favourite comic of ILC's lifetime -- apart from SEAGUY #1 of course.

i got a little **misty** for real though

Same! I am quite the bawler at cinema and TV but very rarely for books

It's getting Maus/Contract With God/This Man This Monster levels of adoration in the fan press afaict, and rightly so.

i would (and almost certainly will, as there's no chance they won't do this) buy a compilation of just jaime's stories from v. 3/4 to give to people

What’s kicking your ass right now, ILC-er?

Walt And Skeezix 23-24/25-26, these Rick Burchett pages in The Black Hood #2 which totally look like mid-eighties Mazzucchelli, Jaime, Bakuman, Yuichi Yokoyama's Travel. Other stuff.

That reminds me, I need to do an order with this year's Walt & Skeezix, Popeye, Dick Tracy and Prince Valiants.

Butcher #4 is quite something, although telegraphed in the actual comic, and could have been guessed by those sticking with The Boys (although if you weren't then why would you be reading it, I guess). Leading up to quite the conclusion.

doing that as a yearly thing is a sensible way to handle; I should do the same.

fyi, Wolverine and the X-Men is GREAT

yeah it is. was leery of jason aaron writing a team book or a book with women in it etc but he has the characters down pretty well, it's funny, the art is excellent. AND it took more than 6 minutes to read.

it's basically everything I loved about the original Generation X run without Lobdellisms popping up all over the place

My one quibble in looking at the student roster in the back is that it doesn't make sense to me that Armor would be back at the school given the prominent part she was playing in Astonishing X-Men, in fact, the only students who stayed on Utopia that come to mind immediately are Hope's lights (minus Oya), the Cuckoos, Surge, Prodigy and Pixie (which makes Julian's "we came back for the chicks" line really, really hilarious).

this article

good find

look at this, it's amazing

http://www.comicsbulletin.com/soapbox/images/111005/flash2.png

replace Dan Didio with Chiarello stat

Hey, I'd love for that happen, but never in a million years unless there's a spectacular and I mean ten-story-high-in-capital-leters SPECTACULAR flameout on the part of Mr. DiDio.

what if he fills 90% of all their books with gruesome on-panel gore for three years straight, completely fumbles the launch of digital serials, and proves unable to keep a creative team on any book for three issues running?

that would get him promoted to COO probably

Those aren't spectacular flameouts. Hell, we call that "Wednesday."

This Flash. It's good.

in case you were wondering, Wolverine and the X-Men > Uncanny X-Men

also, X-Men > Uncanny X-Men

X-Force > better than them all.

http://boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/someday-funnies-04.jpg

whaaaaaaat

holy shit, this finally went to print huh? there was a huge Comics Journal piece on this project about two years ago

this amazing splash

http://www.comicsreporter.com/images/uploads/03harrysahle.jpg

I don't know if I dare read the comic

There is no way the story will live up to the splash. No way.

oh... mur-DER

my brother sent me this this morning: prepare to be depressed

jesus christ. for those versed in ROM spaceknight lore this is the most fucked up thing ever.
http://media.lifehealthpro.com/lifehealthpro/article/2011/11/11/Mantlo%20Journal.jpg

reading that bill mantlo article. holy crap that page is so depressing now that i have the context

Some somewhat political article on a comics website had a commenter going on about how most people are insured. I held back, but I just wanted to post "Insured like Bill Mantlo was?"

I am getting excited about being able to buy and read a copy of DARKIE'S MOB, the classic war comic from Battle written by John Wagner. I look forward to being disappointed by one of little DV's faves.

I'm sorry, a copy of what

pip pip just a spot of racism let's be cool

DV I bought this when it came out and you are in for a treat. It is quite as brutal as I remembered. (Not so Johnny Red, that was slightly disappointing.)

http://fanboy.frothersunite.com/imag/darkiesmob/cover_080177.jpg

i will admit that looks fun

racism pffft what racism

http://fanboy.frothersunite.com/imag/darkiesmob/bullets%20for%20the%20japs.JPG

I said it last month, but Butcher is the best thing that's been published as part of The Boys saga. Not sure how much people who haven't been sticking with it would get out of it though.

I've been working through the whole run of Saga of the Swamp Thing for the first time since the '80s. (I probably read up into the Wheeler run when it was new.) I'm up to #41, a little bit into the Alan Moore run. He could pack quite a bit of story into an issue. The early Pasko run is decent for the time albeit with a plot that is about as straight as a backwoods country road and features some nice artwork by Tom Yeates, but it is a big change in tone and scripting quality even with Moore's tie up issue of #20.

Honest question for those of you versed in Marvel 60s lore: when did Avengers get good? I have slogged through the first three years worth and it is almost universally horrible. Some fun characters in the early Kirby involved issues (I love Kang), but then it is dreck for years. Stan seems to be phoning it in, and I can't say Don Heck isn't too (though I'm inclined to think that's just Heck being Heck).

I'm thinking I should have started with the Thomas/Buscema issues.

sorry, wrong thread!

Prophet, the book about John Prophet, generic religious robot hero from Image, has been written by Brandon "King City" Graham. It's a very odd story where he awakes in a pastoral alien future where there are no humans left on earth, with the mission to restart the G.O.D. satellite and restart the human empire. It's like Michael Moorcock and Paul Pope, and it is kicking my ass. His run starts from #21.

I think we talked a little bit about it upthread, looks pretty cool