Rolling SERIOUS GRAPHIC LITERATURE Thread for Comics in 2016

Post your dissertations here.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/d0/44/82/d044820214e1c1c1289d54053c4abecd.jpg

I've barely been in comic shops recently and I only look at the Comics Journal site's weekly releases column. Any recent interesting developments?

um so this is the early comic work of Andy Weir, author of 'The Martian'
http://www.cheshirecrossing.net

Really wish that kickstarter Art Of Ploog book was available in shops. I've always wanted a book of his fantasy paintings.

Laura Knetzger, grim but affecting, on suicidal ideation: http://lauraknetzger.com/I-Lose-My-Way

here's some notes on some stuff i bought a year ago at MOCCA that i found tucked into an old email:

Summer Pierre - “Paper Pencil Life”
Engaging and well-considered autobio diary comics about an upstate NY mom/writer/cartoonist making life work. Scritchy drawing style that’s evocative and versatile and immediate. Occasionally poignant, sometimes ephemeral,very enjoyable. Weekly updates on her blog.
http://summerpierre.com/
https://summerpierre.wordpress.com/

Max Clotfelter - “Snake Meat”
Overstuffed mega-grossout stream of consciousness grotesqueries with heavy Johnny Ryan and Roy Tompkins influence. Packed with loads of chicken fat and scribbly details oozing from the corners. Very much the sort of thing where you’ll be able to assess if it’s to your taste on first contact.
http://maxclotfelter.blogspot.com/

Molly Brooks — “Post”
Well done dystopian future stuff with complicated characters and intelligent interactions. Solid art, good ear for dialogue. Full comic available online.
http://www.mollybrooks.com/gals/comics/054_post/

Jonathan Baylis - “So Buttons”
The issue I got featured art from Jay Lynch (cover), Fred Hembeck (meeting Joe Simon) and Josh Bayer (the tribulations of Herb Trimpe). Would like to get more of this.
http://sobuttons.com/

idk if I would consider this stuff "SERIOUS" but watching my daughter voraciously devour various graphic novel series (Zita the Space Girl, Amulet, Greek Mythology, etc.) I am struck by just *how much* of this stuff there is now, it's kind of a mindblowing generational shift in publications and marketing, none of this kind of thing was available when I was a kid. If you read comics when I was growing up it was either the monthly superhero stuff + maybe graphic novel sorts of stuff from other countries (Asterix, Tintin, etc.), and it was far and away a male pursuit. Now there's like a million different graphic novel things aimed at kids, including girls, while monthly superhero comics are largely the province of old men.

I'm not sure what the exact timeline documenting this shift would look like, but it's clear that at some point the debates that used to rage about why comics were consigned to a ghetto of adolescent males got resolved, and America got over its weird prejudices about the format and realized there was money to be made by expanding comics' basic readership/targeting different demographics

Aren't Marvel increasingly selling to young girls? DC to a lesser extent with Batgirl and Harley Quinn?
I haven't been paying much attention.

I think Marvel wants to sell to everyone at this point

dunno tbh - my daughter's only 8 and doesn't really give a fuck about Marvel

but yes, marvel is (was? dunno what the hell is happening post secret wars) clearly aiming at expanding their audience with female-centric titles with a sense of humor and i really like them.

that being said the superhero market seems like an increasingly small part of the overall actual comics/graphic novels market, including the younger/kids market

xp

like, my daughter doesn't have to look very far or try very hard - at all - to find non-superhero graphic novel stuff to read. they're all over the place.

Shakey, getcher daughter some Ms. Marvel and Squirrel Girl and see what she thinks.

i would add the recent run of she hulk and lumberjanes and howard the duck to that.

I just found Morning Glories and Black Science both of which are sorta meh in small doses but addictive as BKV/Morrison-esque dark soap opera in large doses.

Speaking of BKV Papergirls is good but i just don't dig reading stories in 25 page batches anymore. I'll wait for a trade.

I never really got into superhero-type comics until middle school. I actually kind of liked Archie and the like when I was younger. Also Mad Magazine, although half the jokes flew over my head.

And the Scrooge McDuck/Donald Duck stuff! So great.

yeah the Scrooge/Donald collections are a big hit at my house

but tbh I don't recall *ever* seeing that stuff in comics shops growing up. I remember very clearly the first time I read an issue-length Donald/Scrooge story, and it was a Don Rosa one where they go to South America (the name Manco Capac has stuck in my memory) that it was in my orthodontist's office, I was around 12 or 13.

that was before I ever went to comic shops! grocery store newsstand for sure

also fwiw it's not like my daughter doesn't like superheroes (we just started watching the Batman Animated Series and she's seen/read tons of DC stuff) just that Marvel hasn't really piqued her interest. I will keep an eye out for Squirrel Girl at the comics shop though.

xp

yeah that makes sense mh. grocery newsstands, such an anachronism now - although I guess I still see Archie digests at the checkout counter.

Has female Thor and black Captain America stuck?

I wonder if any kids read Venus/Measles or if it's just Love And Rockets fans.

I haven't read it yet but Moon Girl & Devil Dinosaur looks like another new Marvel title that would appeal to the younger girl set.

i had a letter published in the Gladstone Mickey Mouse when i was thirteen. The bigfoot disney stuff is very much at the core of who i am.

i bought my comics at a local drugstore off the spinner. still have quite a few of those!

I have one, Invaders #21. It is the most tattered thing

I never ever saw a duck comic before the Gladstone license took effect. I had heard barks name but had no clue what the stuff looked like

i think my first exposure to those were old dells culled from my dad's underground comic collection. i started buying disney in those polybagged, three to a purchase gold key grab bags at dollar stores where they were 99 cents. Barks stuff was so obviously a cut above everything else, even at seven i could tell there was something special there.

I think I checked out some of the older stuff at the library, but the first Gladstone publishing period started up in '86 when I was five, so most everything was through them.

Not to bring this conversation down even further, but I'm really enjoying BMB's current run on Iron Man - lovely glossy-but-cartoony art, and Bendis doing his Bendis thing but with more charm than usual. It'll probably be a terrible mess of unresolved plots and bad fill-in art this time next year, but right now it's pretty breezy.

Outside of Thor (always good) and Al E's New Avengers (his best of three titles right now) not much in the ANAD Marvel has really grabbed me - too much New 52 "talent" hogging the good titles.

I did get the first Corto Maltese for Christmas though - worried it wouldn't live up to the hype, but it's fucking great (he stated obviously)

well this is certainly a list
http://loser-city.com/features/the-100-best-comics-of-the-first-half-of-the-2010s-part-1-100-80

I was considering getting Jaybird by the Ahonens, it looked really fresh.

I probably need to take a better look at the comic shops soon. I'm at least glancingly familiar with most on that list but there's got to be some stuff emerged recently that I'd like.

Seems to always be old reprinted stuff that catches my interest, like those non-Pogo Walt Kelly comics and Garrett Price’s White Boy (too expensive for me though).

Seems like western English language comics are going in a great direction and getting back to the variety they used to have a long time ago. I was reading about the comics code recently and there is speculation that it reduced the variety of subjects drastically but I think censorship was pretty much inevitable and television is often mentioned in reducing the readership for certain genres.
I always like to imagine the different ways comics history could have went (we clearly live in a shitstained alternate universe) and I'm curious why more people didn't jump of the magazine bandwagon to get away from the comics code.

I hear DC Comics are doing really badly right now. Really interested to see how much more the industry changes in even 5 years.

White Boy looks grrrrrreeat but i can't really get more coffee table books before i get a coffee table.
specialty forums and torrents and marvel unlimited and small press cons and the complete mainstreaming of comics as both junk food and academic text have opened up the modern comics world to me enough that i feel like we must be in the middle of a golden age of sorts but it's so sprawling and all at once it's hard to quantify it properly.
DC has gone through several years of death throes it feels like; if the movies don't work out, who knows what's gonna happen. maybe time/warner sells all the intellectual rights to disney for ten billion dollars? it's weird that the future of cable monopolies may influence whether we see a JLA/Avengers xover film in ten years.

I've heard that in the early 80s, there was talks of DC merging with Marvel because they were doing so poorly. Their behaviour since the 60s has been due in large part to rivalry. I wonder what they'd do without that competition?
If they did merge, I'm sure fans (who'd be cumming gallons) would want a shared universe, and since their histories aren't compatible, they'd have to reboot everything again and probably not be able to split again, regardless of how many universe reboots they do.

is wildstorm or w/e still merged in, how is that going?

Don't know but I don't think the characters were ever that popular, it was probably more the artists. The Charlton, Quality and Fawcett characters worked out quite well for DC.

Fantastic list upthread, thanks for posting. I'm exclusively reading female-authored GNs at the moment after I realised my shelf was disappointingly lacking. Recently bought Through The Woods, so I'm excited to see it placing so high!

I've just finished reading (amongst others) The House That Groaned by Karrie Fransman, Marbles (Ellen Forney), and One Hundred Demons (Lynda Barry), all of which I unreservedly recommend. Incidentally, if anyone has any unusual graphic pathographies to recommend (doesn't have to be female actually), I'd love to hear about them. It seems to me that the utility of internal/external, symbolic, parallel worlds in GNs in relation to experiences with various sicknesses is nonpareil in its access to meaningful and relatable expression. Would love to write something on it at some point if I can get enough material together.

Oh wow, also Becoming Unbecoming by Una, about her experiences growing up at the time of the Yorkshire Ripper murders and how it fed into her understanding of female identity. Its use of space was explosively creative.

lol, the bolding is hopping threads!
I love Ellen Forney, Marbles is mannered but funny and sexy and well told and well cartooned imo. Lynda Barry is the Funk Lord of The USA and 100 Demons is as good as anything she does which is to say it will save your soul. If you're not reading her teaching blog, you should be:
http://thenearsightedmonkey.tumblr.com/

Other graphic pathologies that come to mind
Our Cancer Year by Harvey Pekar and Joyce Brabner
http://www.momscancer.com/
Can't we Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast
Special Exits by Joyce Farmer
With the Light by Keiko Tobe <-Autism manga

More here:
http://www.graphicmedicine.org

Lol I figured that because you were here I would demonstrate my seriousness about bold highlights. (Still managed to miss one...)

YES thank you so much for these! I've read and loved the Harvey Pekar and Joyce Farmer, but I'll definitely check out the others when my supply runs out. And that blog. Will forward my impressions as they arrive...

Other graphic pathologies that come to mind

Julia Wertz' "The Infinite Wait"

Oh and for anyone in London, I just found out about this taking place between February and May, which is very exciting: http://www.houseofillustration.org.uk/whats-on/current-future-events/comix-creatrix-100-women-making-comics

xp

This looks fantastic, thank you.

Wertz is great, I love her. and it's been awesome to see her grow from someone who barely draws stick figures into an artist with an accomplished, refined style.

Psychiatric Tales by Darryl Cunningham, "My Mother, The Schizophrenic" by Chester Brown.

tangentangent, you should read David B.'s Epileptic if you haven't already.

Psychiatric Tales was great, though I wanted it to be about 400 pages longer. I'll add the Chester Brown one to my list, for sure.

Epileptic is an absolute triumph of the form imo. Its unforgiving frankness brings to mind Bukowski at his most incisive. And all that abstracted visualisation of despair... Amazing.

http://i.imgur.com/2XfFC1C.jpg

There is just so much going on here... Felt it necessary to post.

For graphopathographies, see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stitches_%28book%29 about the author's childhood cancer and awful parents

Love Ellen Forney, especially Monkey Food.

Ellen Forney is the only famous person I've ever approached in "public" and asked if I can send a photo to a friend (back in Australia, who reads her)

Some other comic pathologies:

Raina Telgemeier - Smile (orthodontal issues, haven't read this one but it's gotten some good reviews)
Marian Churchland - Beast (depression, or at least I think it's about that, it's heavily symbolic)
Brian Fries - Mom's Cancer (the title says it all; this is done in a super simplistic style, but it's really moving)
Sophie Campbell (this published as Ross Campbell before she changed her name) - Water Baby (amputation)

Cosign the praise for Marbles, but I gotta admit I didn't quite get The House That Groaned, I think I'm just too dense for comics like that.

Also, that top 100 looks pretty comprehensive, but I thinks it's weird they completely ignored the comics of Julia Wertz (Drinking at the Movies, Infinite Wait) and Faith Erin Hicks (Superhero Girl, Friends with Boys, Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong), I thought they were fairly acclaimed?

No Alex + Ada either, but maybe that's because it was finished in 2015, so it was partially outside the scope of the list?

John Porcellino - Hospital Suite

Almost too relatable for me to bear tbh but superb

Weird to realize how many of these I've read, guess I am attracted to these kinds of stories
Support the recs on Stiches, Porcellino, Epileptic

Our Cancer Year, Psychiatric Tales also good

hideo azuma's 'Disappearance Diary' is one of the best books that i never hear anyone talk about. it's about the author's alcoholism.
http://www.amazon.com/Disappearance-Diary-Hideo-Azuma/dp/8496427420
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/69/Disappearance_Diary_by_Hideo_Azuma.png

I am literally going to buy all of these tomorrow. If I can find them.

one more for you regarding PTSD and life and grandiosity
http://www.fantagraphics.com/soldiersheart/
highly highly recommended; carol tyler is one of the greats

http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/cr_holiday_interview_10_carol_tyler/
http://www.tcj.com/reviews/soldiers-heart-the-campaign-to-understand-my-wwii-veteran-father-a-daughters-memoir/

put in for You'll Never Know vol. 1 at my local library, i gather that book is the collected trilogy

btw love that cover for Disappearance Diary, sold

yes, 'soldier's heart' is the collected three volume set of Tyler's masterwork.

disappearance diary is an autobiographical story of a man who becomes a popular manga artist, cracks under the pressure of the work and alcoholism, then drops out entirely and opts into homelessness. Following an interim period of physical labor, he cleaned up and created a cartoony silly story of his deep depression. it's pretty special.

http://gwillowwilson.com/post/138315140383/art-and-money

Maybe should have gone in a marvel thread but I don't follow those, so here it sits.

New 3-D Frank book is out (my copy is on the way, will report back). It sounds like the 3-D has been very meticulously finessed to suit Woodring's art. So psyched.

did everyone hear about the latest angouleme shitshow?
http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2016/01/angouleme-organizers-criticized-for-presenting-fake-awards/

Saw the 3D Frank book screened as a "movie" at Short Run last year. Unsurprisingly, the Unifactor and Woodring's linework are both excellently suited to 3D.

Alvin Buenaventura has passed away. I'm shocked by this.

That's sad; he was a powerful voice and young.

Oh good, Chester Brown is doing ANOTHER graphic novel about how waaaaay cool prostitution is, this time all about how the Bible is actually all pro-prostitute and every woman in it was actually a prostitute if you just read it right

He really is a creepy little shit

You've read it?

Toronto (or at least parts of it) has a pretty respectful culture towards sex work and the rights of sex workers. That's a good thing and I don't think Brown is creepy for putting together two books about it. He is plenty odd for other reason though.

I've never really delved into Brown's work but this single line from his wiki bio kind of made me put my head in my hands

Brown began to question traditional male–female relations after he had read Cerebus #186, which contained an essay attacking the modern state of such relations.

ed the happy clown is like next level genius, all of which said genius was completely flushed down the toilet when he became obsessed with sex workers and started making comics about it.

Toronto (or at least parts of it) has a pretty respectful culture towards sex work and the rights of sex workers.

I have no problem with that, and I do a fair bit of work with sex workers and their advocates myself, it's just the sleazy men who use them and then try to justify it all at great length with reddit-style logic that shits me

I own "Paying For It" and think it's a pretty great piece of work - very odd, occasionally funny, def unusual. The art is great. The more polemical appendices (which clearly owe a debt to Sim on some level) v much less so. Apart from Seth's riposte, which is (as usual) hilarious.

That being said, if this "graphic novel about how waaaaay cool prostitution is, this time all about how the Bible is actually all pro-prostitute and every woman in it was actually a prostitute if you just read it right" description is at all accurate I don't think I'm going to be much interested in reading it, it just sounds gross. Chester seems to have fallen into this weird developmental predicament where he figured out he couldn't function within society's traditional framework, found a way out of that, and now is on a mission to prove that his solution is actually a solution for everybody, if only we all weren't such sheeple. He resents his initial alienation, and wants to connect with others by making them go through the same process he went through - locate their unhappiness within failed sexual relations, discover how awesome prostitution is, attempt to reshape society accordingly. And you can see him grappling, in his own sort of intellectually honest way, with countervailing points of view but at bottom he seems to not grasp that there's *not* a single path to happiness for everyone, there are such things as successful non-transactional monogamous sexual relationships, people's unhappiness/loneliness is not going to be magically washed away by everyone engaging in prostitution. I don't really give a fuck what he does, I'm fine with legalizing sex work and affording legal and financial protection to prostitutes, but the proselitizing about it as some sort of social panacea is just presumptuous and creepy.

Also Ed the Happy Clown is a masterpiece, everyone knows that right? cool

of seth, chester brown, and joe matt, i wouldn't have predicted chester brown ending up the "sleazy one"

ha I am v curious to read Joe's next book whenever it finally comes out

his whole porn obsession/guilt trip seems so pre-internet/90s these days

I'm a little disappointed with the 3-D Frank book inasmuch as I thought it was an actual new story instead of just isolated images, but Woodring is one of the few comics artists whose art books I buy so I'm not actually disappointed. And the 3-D is without a doubt the best anaglyph 3-D I've ever seen. The paper stock is thick enough that you can tap the back of a page and watch all of the individual elements in the image wobble briefly. It's pretty impressive.

Booming post shakey. It's deeply depressing to me that I can barely muster up the will to read someone who was once so incredibly electrifying to me. Also, this here is a v particular pitfall for independent cartoonists, with our decades of self enforced alone time and delight in total control of our built worlds:

Chester seems to have fallen into this weird developmental predicament where he figured out he couldn't function within society's traditional framework, found a way out of that, and now is on a mission to prove that his solution is actually a solution for everybody, if only we all weren't such sheeple.

applies to Sim, Ditko, probably a bunch of others

Great post upthread Shakey.

I'm not sure about the whole "sex work is fine but speaking about it is gross" idea. Why not? There's no pressure to agree.

I think Brown has a long, long way to go before he hits Sim/Ditko levels of oddballery.

Great post upthread Shakey.

OTM

Why not? There's no pressure to agree.

it's p clear Chet wants to convert readers to his POV. "Paying For It" succeeds in spite of that polemical undertone. idk if this next book will pull off the same trick.

I'd say it succeeds *because* of the awkward polemical tone - I mean, I didn't like it either, but it took me to a weird emotional space as a reader, which felt like it was more interesting than if he'd made a better effort to be even-handed.

Obviously at the extreme end of that, my argument is nonsense, because you end up with something like Reads in Cerebus, where my weird emotional space was "Please shut the fuck up, Dave."

Paying For It is trying to convince, but not convert, imo.

ha I am v curious to read Joe's next book whenever it finally comes out

This is never happening, the 13 sort-of-finished pages in D&Q25 are all he's done in a decade.

oh you cynic

I liked those 13 pages

I should hit you guys up to determine a couple must-buys when I stop by the D&Q store in a few months

post a list of everything they have in stock?

maybe I should restrict it to "things released on D&Q or within the last two years"

it's a pretty well-stocked store

but yeah, I will see if I can get one of everything

I'm not sure about the whole "sex work is fine but speaking about it is gross" idea. Why not? There's no pressure to agree.

no one said this.

chester is gross because he sees these women in a robotic inhuman sort of way. they are just there for him to fulfill his biological need, down to him not even drawing faces on them. how is that not gross?

down to him not even drawing faces on them

the rationale he provides for this (primarily wanting to protect their identities iirc) makes sense on the surface but is also kind of laughable. Like, he thinks portraying them as faceless automatons is preferable/more respectful/more honest or "accurate" than just drawing them with fictionalized features. I'm sure Chet would argue against their depiction as being "inhuman" but then (as Seth notes) we're dealing with someone who does not really seem entirely human himself.

Among D&Q books from the last few years, Michael DeForge's "Ant Colony," Jillian Tamaki's "Supermutant Magic Academy," Kerascoet and Fabien Vehlmann's "Beautiful Darkness," and John Porcellino's "Hospital Suite" stand out.
xxp

but yeah, I will see if I can get one of everything

this was my point, it's a bookshop! if you're only looking for D&Q-published stuff that's much easier to recommend on. But also, you could buy these at bookshops in your own country?

Chester sees everybody as weird automatons because he himself is a weird automaton - this is what makes the book so compelling. Hiding the women's faces out of safety concerns is one of the factors that gives the work its distinct tone - it tells us something about the author's processing of ideas, it's unsettling but oughtn't be read as hateful or wilfully reductive.

The book would be enormously worse if not for the developments near the end, and for Brown's seeking Seth's rebuttal. But both of those are part of the work, and provide essential context.

imo the idea of Chester being creepy or just a dude who seems automaton-like is a matter of how much social deviance you accept in your peers and in society at large. There are a large number of social roles where acting that way reads as quirky to others but not threatening, but also a number of spaces where people acting in that way are threatening due to the inability to tell the difference, in the viewer, between someone who has different boundaries and someone who does not respect boundaries.

my offhand travel purchases are usually a couple books that I can toss in my smaller bag that I carry around when traveling, and honestly I almost grabbed Paying for It the last time I was at D&Q! if it hasn't been read by then, it might make it in the bag.

you should read it!

Hiding the women's faces out of safety concerns is one of the factors that gives the work its distinct tone - it tells us something about the author's processing of ideas, it's unsettling but oughtn't be read as hateful or wilfully reductive.

Totally.

Sounds interesting, you guys have convinced me to give that book a try

it's def worth reading

i'll cosign the recommendation. it is strange + bizarre but also compelling (partially bc of how bizarre the author is).

Yeah, another recommendation here.

I wonder if it actually changed any ILX readers' minds in regards to sex work

just curious

idk if it changed my mind - i went in feeling pretty neutral on the topic but thinking that legalizing it would probably lead to better outcomes and came out the same way, just a bit more certain that legalization is the right decision. i think he does make some compelling arguments - but how many ilxors really believe that we should be legislating morality?

My reaction was p much the same as yours. But I was unconvinced by a lot of his ruminations on, say, the fallacy of romantic love, or how prostitution should be totally unregulated, untaxed etc.

He certainly made me think more about it than I ever had before. I mean generally it's just not something I think about or am all that concerned about.

Congrats to Vic Fluro for making a Ken Reid joke in the latest New Avengers.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/f2/48/30/f24830b5c40773a4e446be710c6398c8.jpg

Zackly.

Has everybody read Rosalie Lightning?

no

Just the excerpt in Best American Comics, but it looked devastating.

it hasn't been published here

Guys go see the Gary PAnter zines show at Printed Matter if you are in the NYC area. It's wonderful and some/most of the editions on exhbit are for sale. Very reasonable ,too, for such rare stuff. i walked away with three beautiful old books -- and I met Charles Burns as well as GP!

rosalie lightning's excerpts ARE devastating

http://www.darkhorse.com/Books/28-756/Giganto-Maxia-TPB

There's a preview. Hope this is self contained.

I realize it is not from 2016 but "Weapons of Mass Diplomacy" is great stuff.

yeah, definitely a big fan of Blain's

the subject material hit close to home for about 200 reasons but most of all it was very nice to know that bureaucratic boiler rooms are basically the same everywhere

I felt really bad for the lady in charge of the MENA desk - whatever the french is for thrown under the bus, yeesh, and then (as is true IMLE) that character just kind of goes POOF

picked up a copy of beverly by nick drnaso yesterday after reading this endorsement by chris ware

Nick Drnaso’s Beverly captures such a recognizable, raw feeling of the “now” that if it was a film Drnaso would be heralded as a “stunning new directorial voice.” If it was a novel, he would be a “literary sensation.” But Beverly’s chilled windowpane views into the fogged American psyche are not cartoon copies of film or literature. They’re something completely new.

read a few pages this afternoon, pretty standard d&q style but quite good

http://56.media.tumblr.com/befa9a1439ab41c10c7c00dc9824f043/tumblr_o19dxap4NG1rpjckro4_1280.jpg

wow, i'm old enough now to see a generation influenced by ware, kinda scary.
i will wanna read that though.

I like some of their books and respect that they're one of the best publishers for creators but I've never liked the style of most of Drawn And Quarterly's stuff.

Re: that music thread about music you admire but don't love. There's hundreds of comic artists like that for me. Melinda Gebbie, Sue Coe, S Clay Wilson, Robert Crumb.

Really like some of Frank Quitely's work, but I wish the faces were a lot more expressive.

Used to be a big John Romita fan but now I just find his work quite pleasant. Romita Jr is quite solid too but never loved him.
My appreciation of Gil Kane's art has diminished too.

Makoto Kobayashi (What's Michael?, Club 9 has a really charming style but I've never given it a proper go.
Nell Brinkley has serious skills, really lovely stuff but I'm still a bit hesitant about something.
Toying with getting their books someday.

you can't love everything!

I've also never responded super strongly to the DQ 'house style'

The D&Q house style of Joe Matt, Julie Doucet, Tom Gauld, Rutu Modan, Michael DeForge, Lynda Barry and Lisa Hanawalt

wow, i'm old enough now to see a generation influenced by ware, kinda scary

Top Notch came out 18 years ago!

julie was always an exception

and in tom devlin era their aesthetic opened up a lot more, v true

(early '90s Seth and any period Maurice Vellekoop is the one case you can make for a house style, and Chet & Joe were influencing each other at that time - but the latter two had established voices already, and Julie's always in there rattying it up - and still, that's a quarter of a century ago)

xpost

actually '90s Oliveros does look like a mix of Chet, Joe, Seth, Maurice AND Julie!

it's taken me a while but I'm reading sic's response posts with a touch of humor instead of the pedantry I was attributing to them and it's much better

sorry for the long-term misreading of affect, sic!

D&Q is great, everything i've read that they've published was great and everything i haven't read seemed great. btw is there anywhere reliable to t0rr3nt alt-comix stuff? or am i just a horrible person for even asking that. i know there is a huge machine for superhero comics. i live around the corner from D+Q store and buy stuff p frequently but sometimes i wanna take stuff for a spin on my ipad first u know

They've definitely become more varied but in the decade that I bought Previews (about 98-08) there seemed a clear preference for simple clean flat stillness, which is fine because if I could publish anything I wanted it would definitely be narrow compared to Fantagraphics (most publishers are though).

I'm glad I don't like everything, I have incredibly narrow taste in comics these days but I'm not really bothered about it.

just stand in the store and read things until they kick you out xp

I generally appreciate Sic's pedantry, I like to think of him as Pedantus The Korrector!

how can an ilxor named sic not be correct-y? Cmon now.

a spoonful of humour makes the pedantry go down

obviously good, but i'll mention it anyway - really, really dug those MARCH books about John Lewis

Elsewhere in the jo(h)n lewis nomensphere-- if you are in the sea-tac (or hell even the bain-belle-poulsb-rent-issq) area come say hi to me tomorrow at this!

http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlearts/2016/03/01/in-the-story-room-5-seattle-cartoonists-opening-march-10-at-dendroica-gallery/

Tbh I have no idea which ilxors are seattleites... But I'll be in town til Sunday night so feel free to shout.

Reading "Invisible Republic" from Image, which is an attempt to do a Eurocomix-style epic science fiction story, a bit more adult and much less reliant on pop culture tropes than the usual Image stuff. Surprised there's so little other stuff like this - i.e. adult(ish) novelistic narratives. The art is *really* great, kinda Michael Lark-ish, wish the main characters were slightly less boring, but think I'll stick with it - supposed to be 30 issues or so.

I liked the premise of that one, but will probably wait until it's finished

book six of antares is out and all i can find is the preview...

It's available on Amazon UK and Cinebook's own site, at least. Thanks for reminding me that it's out, I ordered it immediately! Leo's comics have been pretty much the best sci-fi comic released in English in recent years, they have a such a lovely, old-school approach to science fiction, with heavy doses of sense of wonder and freakiness.

Oh, glad to hear they're worth reading, my local library has the set.

yeah, definitely get those! they're awesome!

I'm pathetic, I've got like six Dungeon books in the house I haven't read, but I can't bring myself to do it because I don't want to finish them.

In other news I read The Sculptor and it is *terrible*. I don't know what I was expecting. I like seeing McCloud speak and the Comics books are good fun. But this was Bad, and it made me feel guilty because it's clearly a labour of love. I should know by now to avoid books that come with Neil Gaiman quotes on the back cover.

Read Ales Kot's series Zero. Pretty interesting, maybe more thoughts later

McCloud has not drawn an even "okay" comic since 1992

mmmmaybe that infinite-scroll format Zot revival reached "okay," but has anyone ever re-read it?

come to think of it, i don't think i've read any McCloud since Making Comics. my library does have The Sculptor, i may give it a shot

there's a new Dungeon out now I think!
and chuck, you should finish Dungeon. The ending is lackluster but the path there is special.

come to think of it, i don't think i've read any McCloud since Making Comics.

the only other thing he's done since then was the Chrome instruction booklet afaik

Yeah someone wrote a Dungeon reading order a while back on ILC which was totally invaluable. I will finish it! Have also been saving Simonson's Thor and Miller's Daredevil runs.

I fell off on buying Dungeon, and I know that some of the ones I do own are fetching exorbitant amounts so I'm wary about seeking out the ones that I don't own.

Are you in the UK, Old Lunch? I could always send 'em to you when I'm done. Or, alternately, Gosh occasionally get them in and sells them at cover price, and they do fluctuate back to actual affordable prices on Amazon eventually.

didn't even know Dungeon ended. let's get an omnibus

Wonder how many pages that would be? Could it fit in one book.

i have all of them and it's sixteen books with two roughly fifty page stories apiece... plus the seventeenth book which this thread just made me buy on amazon. There's three stories not yet translated to English and, according to wikipedia, "Trondheim said that new stories were "very improbable" due to Sfar's schedule; Sfar left the door open for more stories to be told."
so that's just under 2000 pages of story. I don't think you'd want it in one book. I'd like it in a larger format than the goddamn NBM chapbooks tho'.

so it'll be three or four omnibuses, i can live with that

they're selling Twilight, Early Years and Zenith as bulk buys on NBM's website if that's what you want
http://www.nbmpub.com/humor/trondheim/dungeon/dungeonhome.html

Yeah I'd love to read it in the large French BD format.

Just thinking though - the translations are *very* good - unusual compared to the recent Spirou, Cortese, Lucky Luke, Incal etc. translations, which are awl pretty awks

i basically read one or two of the books and liked them - realized just how much more there was and have been scared off almost completely. but someday!

I have likely said it a dozen times but dungeon is ultimately probably in my top three favorite comix. It is a barks-ian sword and sorcery universe larded with noodly graphic chicken fat, boasting complex world building, unsequenced deep dive character building, genuinely funny moments, complex but sensible plots and consistent mastery of form. It moves me man.

And yes, the translations are superb.

just got up to date on warren ellis' run on James Bond (i like it better than the most recent movies) and ULTRA HEAVEN, Koike Keiichi's mega trippy psychedelic sci-fi masterpiece. All the detail of Darrow without the fetishism; highly recommended for the art but also a fun read!
http://mymangaonline.us/read-online/Ultra-Heaven-Vol-001-Ch-1-Read-Online.html
http://40.media.tumblr.com/5fa78766b5a821195e7db95b2eaec878/tumblr_myaa7olKVD1sj9p1jo4_1280.jpg
http://a.mhcdn.net/store/manga/7771/001.0/compressed/b047.jpg%3Fv%3D1404121081

lotta moebius in there too...

and plenty of morrison. it's pretty great.

I haven't read the new Michael Deforge book yet, but Annie Mok's interview with him this week seems thorough and candid: http://www.tcj.com/comics-was-the-reliable-thing-an-interview-with-michael-deforge/

xp damn this is pretty amazing

All the detail of Darrow without the fetishism

well sure. different kind tho'.

I'm reading and sort-of enjoying the Ellis Bond, but the gore seems... out of place -
and maybe without the gore, there's not much story there.

Holy shit Oprah book club just picked Rosalie Lightning

that's the best news i've heard all day

Oh wait. No it's the first book on a list of must read memoirs on the Oprah site. I spoke too soon. Still a nice coup though.

The newest version of Creepy is getting cancelled after 24 issues (I presume Eerie is finished too). I'm surprised they weren't able to muster something better and get a greater number of appropriate creators. Anthologies are tough but I'm sure there was plenty of good people who would have done it.

I thought it was a bad idea to have Eerie too, spreading themselves too thin. Doing a fantasy/SF horror version seemed more like keeping the tradition going, even in the Warren days I thought it was jarring having Cousin Eerie hosting a lot of those stories.

I presume the reprints were an effort to sell the Warren collections rather than filling up space?

Read Beautiful Darkness based on a recommendation here, damn that was incredibly disturbing

I think I might have been one of the recommenders.... Sorry, I think I should have added some kind of disclaimer: I think that book does really interesting things with scale, change and decay, and the ethical ambiguity of the protagonist, but it's an extremely dark work.

Read the first four trades of Rucka and Lark's Lazarus.... aces stuff, highly recommended. Good world building!
Reread Mike Grell's run on Green Arrow. Does not hold up, really a bummer to come back to comics I loved as a kid and find them so corny and lame.
big A+ to Assassination Classroom; outrageous concept, remarkably well executed.

I read Green River Killer, a black-and-white true crime book by Jeff Jensen, who presumably has good contacts, because the back cover has quotes from Stephen King, Damon Lindelof and Gillian Flynn.

It's actually okay! The investigation procedural stuff is interesting, and the dialogue mostly resists the easy temptations of noir cliche.

The art is super boring though - to be honest the book is more-or-less the definition of "slightly boring black and white comic book that no one ever loans from the library", to sit with all the Ho Che Andersons and Logicomix. But it's pretty good for a first effort.

c'mon, surely at least I Want To Be Your Dog is getting some loans

That looks good! We didn't have that one.

lol hey i took out Logicomix

Young hoods in love was good

Stray Bullets' big paperback omnibus has been one I have been going through an issue or two a week for a while. It's a unique comic book, Crime at the rote loser level with a changing timeline with a kinda weird fantasy sitcom element. I read the first 18 issues a few years back, so I am really just almost back through where I read it the first time and curious to see where it goes.

Stray Bullets is one of those books I would read random issues of be really impressed; I should pick up the omnibus.

Just read through Girls by the Luna Brothers. Pretty indicative of modern times indie horror comics in terms of the ridiculously excessive gore. Interesting premise, though by the end of the book I hated pretty almost every character that managed to survive. It seemed for a while like it was going to explore some issues about sexism but then just ended up saying nothing. Art was kind of bland, but the story was good enough to keep me interested for 24 issues, appropriate length. Surprised Showtime hasn't already adapted this into a TV series.

big A+ to Assassination Classroom; outrageous concept, remarkably well executed.

i loved the first volume! but i don't know if i want to read any more. but but i am willing to be swayed

it's very entertaining

it keeps moving the story forward and giving each character deeper motivations. often idiotic and silly motivations but you won't care!

i'm down, put it on reserve

how does it compare to (a series I also haven't read) Drifting Classroom? Or are they totally different

TOTALLY different. Assassination is a romp, Drifting Classroom is Lord of the Flies.

ahh ok

New installments of J Bearhat and Rory Frances's Little Teeth in Hazlitt (sad animals, radiqueer scene drama lovingly satirized): http://hazlitt.net/comics/little-teeth-returns-pt-1

(The earlier sections are available here: http://hazlitt.net/authors/j-bearhat.)

That's fun!

one of the T0rr3nt$!!?!?!? services i frequent just posted an 80 gig collection of more or less every Dell comic. 1300 issues of Four Color alone! I don't quite know what to make of it; I had no idea such a thing even existed.

Dell?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxTLgX4nS1g

basically (from the 40's until the 70's) ALL the walter lantz, disney, little lulu, merry melodies, hanna barbera, television and movie adaptation comics in existence
in their prime, more popular than marvel or dc ever were

they sold (second hand) a lot of IP to Valiant and then Dark Horse, so they're also the original home of Turok and Magnus Robot Fighter

i also just, er, ACQUIRED full publishing libraries for First and Milestone. Lots to explore!

I liked that Wendy thing from Hazlitt & Hairpin

http://wendycore.tumblr.com/

Just finished Brian K Vaughan's -collected _Private Eye_ series, which includes his original pitch emails to artist Marcos Martin. There's a weird tone in the pitch document where he's describing the future, non-Internet world he wants the book to inhabit. He's describing his problems with current society, as it were, being all digital and smartphoney and tablety, and tips his hand a little _too_ much in such a way that reads to me like "these are the complaints of a really privileged white dude in LA who's been balls-deep in too much media for too long".

The book itself is pretty good; the philosophy behind its world-building kinda off.

Weird, considering (iirc) that series was supposed to be an experiment in digital comics

Perhaps it's a requirement of his job to be into all this stuff and he feels trapped.

Anyone still reading the BPRD/Hellboy stuff in 2016? I feel like the really long game they're playing with dark forces taking over the planet is kind of dragging, but there are hints it's starting to move toward an end. The Abe Sapien title seems to be starting to loop back toward the center and I enjoyed the most recent issue

new chester is great, love that dude though maybe wouldn't want to hang out w him

Or shake his hand

lol

I haven't really been able to enjoy hellboy stuff not drawn by mignola. He is 10x more alive as a cartoonist than a writer to me.

i agree

I wanted to get a recent issue of Abe Sapien because it has Santiago Caruso, his first comic work. I think he's genuinely one of the greatest illustrators of all time.
I like Corben's Hellboy work too but I wish he didn't Mignolize the faces of Hellboy in the later stuff.

so, my completely non-serious graphic literature question

I've never been to a larger traveling fan exhibition thing. The... *cough* wizard world *cough* one is coming through my city. Is it.. bad? Kind of tempted to drop in to say hi to Colleen Doran and Peter David

hellboy stuff with normal-style mainstream comics art is the worst. there's one BRPD story written by GEOFF JOHNS and illustrated by SOME SCRUB that just lays bare the entire enterprise

please don't tell me that *sobs*

Yeah, a lot of the fill in artists on Hellboy don't work that well. That's probably why you never see most of them again. I wish Gene Colan did more for Hellboy.

If Wizard magazine from some years back is representative of the current convention, then it's probably not good. It epitomized a lot of what was wrong with mainstream comics. But it was funny on occasion.

Did not know Colan did some hellboy! Would read that!

It was only something like 7 pages though.

Wizard World hits Portland about once a year and always strikes me as being more a really expensive vendortainment sale and chance to pay celebrities a lot of money for a photo. You have plenty of this for any con nowadays, but this aspect seems the primary objective for the event.

Truth be told, I did consider going a few years back when they brought James Hong to town just for the chance to meet James Hong.

I should dress as the Maestro if I go meet Peter David, right

yes.

Those BPRD Plague of Frogs omnibuses are a great read. Guy Davis did most of the art on that mega arc. It is one of the best 'superhero' doomsday stories.

It is getting near the end of the next chapter, however there are other series fitting in other eras of the BPRD and Hellboy.

In general, I think the whole Mignolaverse is pretty high quality. I particularly like the Baltimore series myself.

You have plenty of this for any con nowadays

You're saying this in the city where Linework NW happens and a couple of hours from where Short Run happens (not to mention Jet City and ECCC)

Is there a good place to start for Mignola? Or, like, what's a career peak moment if I'm lazy and only want to read a six-issue story to get the idea?

I would say the first arc he did without Byrne's help but I can't remember the title rn someone help me out.

The Amazing Screw-On Head is a wonderful standalone piece, too.

but it only had one print run, smaller than his Hellboy books of the time

I've still never seen a copy

the hellboy arc or screw-on head?

screw-on

so he never collected it in an odds and sods? Wow.

*clutches copy of amazing screw-on head to breast*

http://www.darkhorse.com/Books/16-870/The-Amazing-Screw-On-Head-and-Other-Curious-Objects-hardcover-collection

I was going to say, I've seen that collection and got the digital version during a sale. It's in stock on amazon.

expensive for what it is though.

didn't think much to ASOH tbh unless i'm mis-remembering it.

i think any of the dozen or so hellboy trades would suit. get the one with the nazis and the zombies in it (jokes!)

I just wanted to go to the shop and buy a comic book

not wait eight years and then pay $40 to have a hardcover with some extra crap mailed from America

the trades should be widely available. i've even seen them in libraries.

that still doesn't help the eight year gap at first*, nor the interest in going and buying a single self-contained comic that received such glowing reaction. and Dark Horse's site doesn't seen to indicate there has been a trade, six years after the HC that you note as being poor value anyway

*seven years after it won the Eisner. Four years after the TV adaptation!

dark horse making suspect release decisions? well, I never!

Oh, the trade recommendation was for chuck, who wanted 6 issues mobile fix. That got confused with your screw on head comment somewhere along the way.

Mignola, not mobile

Thanks! Can you recommend a Hellboy/BRPD too? Have tried the first vol a few times bit find it a bit boring.

Plague of Frogs is a decent place to jump in -- it's where they started a main storyline rather than just the monster of the week stories. There are still the one-offs, but it's where some of the doomsday predictions that were whispered in other stories start to play out

conqueror worm is very good. i prefer the fragmented semicontinuity of the early miniseries to the later more traditional approach. plague of frogs is still awesome though

Yeah, the more cohesive Hellboy stories before the BPRD title launched are the best

Eventually the characterization of the different BPRD members starts to gel and I really like a few of them. I think they're finally getting around to really pulling back the covers on Abe Sapien's early relationship with the team, which should be good.

it's really for the Hellboy die-hards, but the stuff about his lineage and origin is super-nerdy and pretty wild

Thanks!

I'd just start with first Hellboy trade up to when he leaves the BPRD then read the war on frogs omnibus trades.

this looks incredible

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2016/04/paul-kirchner-on-murder-by-remote-control-the-lost.html

Annie Mok interviews Julie Doucet on her recent collage work: http://www.tcj.com/the-starting-point-an-interview-with-julie-doucet/

damn Murder by Remote Control looks awesome!

Yeah, the only thing I remember by Kirchner is The Bus. This looks great.

Trondheim meets Mickey Mouse!

Mickey Craziest Adventures Hc

Published by IDW PUBLISHING

(W) Lewis Trondheim & Various (A/CA) Nicolas Keramidas It's a 'lost' 1965 Disney epic, deemed too wild for publication and saved only in tantalizing fragments... or is it? When Pegleg Pete and the Beagle Boys shrink and steal Scrooge's Money Bin, Mickey and Donald must track them down-in what is really a brand-new album-length thriller by comics masters Lewis Trondheim and Nicolas Keramidas: told in an amazing indy style and presented like a treasure suspended in time! Bullet points: ' Advance solicited for September release! ' By popular demand IDW brings an outrageous new Disney graphic novel to America-featuring the work of Lewis Trondheim (A.L.I.E.E.E.N, Little Nothings), Inkpot Award winner and two-time Eisner Award nominee! ' Trondheim and Nicolas Keramidas match a cutting-edge psychedelic look with the traditions of their beloved Disney inspirations-Floyd Gottfredson and Carl Barks!

Wow, great great news!

Murder by Remote Control is indeed awesome

the art on that mickey book looks great; I hope to see it scanlated or for sale ASAP
http://www.bleedingcool.com/2016/01/08/cover-for-lewis-trondheims-mickey-mouse-released/

In the latest issue of Justice League, Superwoman from the Crime Syndicate finally gives birth to the baby teased at the end of Forever Evil. Why is this a big deal?

Because she gives birth in her costume. Which, in case you'd forgotten, looks like this:

http://logoonline.mtvnimages.com/uri/mgid:file:http:shared:newnownext.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/3380463-crime-syndicate-1459023879.jpg?quality=0.85&format=jpg&width=480

kids gonna have some issues

I just finished reading the first book of Nameless City by Faith Erin Hicks (of Superhero Girl and Friends with Boys fame), and it was excellent! Kinda reminded me of Avatar the Last Airbender (the animated series, not the awful movie adaptation), in that it takes place in an Eastern Asian influenced fantasy world, and deals with the effects of colonialism and war in a thoughtful and multi-faceted way, while still being appropriate for kids. It's more low fantasy though, with no magical/supernatural elements in the story, at least not yet. Can't wait for the next book in the series to come out.

Also, I really like Hicks' artwork, it's so clean and flows so effortlessly:

http://www.trbimg.com/img-56fc2f2a/turbine/07-namelesscity-faitherinhicks-jk-15things-0404-j-20160330

yeah, that looks godo.

good, even.

Tuomas, have you read Carla Speed McNeil's Finder? I have no idea why that description reminded me of Finder, but it did, and it's good.

only just investigated the, er, archives at libgen.io, and hooooooly shit

how would one join?

Tuomas, have you read Carla Speed McNeil's Finder? I have no idea why that description reminded me of Finder, but it did, and it's good.

I actually have the first few Finder books in my shelf, and I tried to read it from the beginning, but it felt so dense and kinda hard to follow that I didn't manage to finish the first book. I should try it again one of these days.

Tuomas, you should read the "Talisman" arc sometime (it's been printed as a separate volume): it ties into some of the series' ongoing narratives, but it's compelling and accessible on its own. ("Mystery Date" and "Dream Sequence" also work without requiring too much prior knowledge.) I love Finder, but the first arc (Sin Eater) is probably the least inviting part of the series.

Shittiness

http://www.newsarama.com/29274-creator-darwyn-cooke-receiving-palliative-care-for-aggressive-cancer.html

that sucks.

That's terrible. Palliative usually = the prognosis is terminal, iirc.

aw man. those animated shows were so good. :(

I hadn't put his name together with his work, but I grew up on Batman: TAS, and his animation work holds up so well. Very, very sad.

That's awful. He's such great artist with a clear vision and imaginative sense of design, as retro as it may be. DC New Frontier and those Donald Westlake adaptations were a joy to read.

Very sad, really liked his work

Rest in peace, Darwyn

??

Yeah, the announcement of palliative care was very much a last minute thing. RIP

Or not? Some real confusion.

He's still alive AFAICT.

Now confirmed to have passed on by Mike Allred (although the confusion is not helped by him deleting the confirmation by Darwyn's wife Marsha - she apparently wants time to come to terms with it before it's announced.)

Sad news. Cooke's work is wonderful.

I went to one of Darwyn's lectures at TCAF about a decade ago, he seemed like a swell guy, very supportive of other artists, whether they were DC or D&Q, he wasn't snobby. He spoke about being relieved to get away from superhero stuff, that he'd been preparing something autobiographical - I wonder what happened with that?

I also remember his storytelling advice: "There's no scene that couldn't be improved by being set in an abandoned fairground" - legit the best writing advice I've ever heard.

He spoke about being relieved to get away from superhero stuff, that he'd been preparing something autobiographical - I wonder what happened with that?

He was seduced back with The Spirit offer and couldn't resist, sadly.

been busy buying and reading a bunch of stuff written by Ales Kot

I often forget how many years I spent reading Beano, Dandy, Beezer and Topper when I was little. I might be remembering wrong but it seems like so many of the plots were about getting food. Not sure I was ever an actual fan of many of the stories apart from maybe a few characters like Korky The Cat but I did read hundreds of them.
I always fucking hated Dennis The Menace, why did anyone like that stupid looking asshole? I wanted the other characters to murder him.

Dairy Queen had Dennis the Menace characters on their cups for a number of years so I have a tolerance

Different Dennis. Those Brits have zero respect for US IP, I tells ya.

IIRC the two Dennises were created independently of each other, they both debuted in the same year?

Yes, I keed, I keed. And not just the same year but the same week.

Is good, on Darwyn Cooke:

http://thewalrus.ca/capes-and-tights/

I guess any of the special free comics from free comic book day will all be gone? I wanted that Mignola/Corben short so I guess I'll have to wait til it's collected into a book?

not sure if anyone here works in your local comic shop

But generally in comic shops I'm guessing they give them all away pretty quickly

okay

If it's not some ridiculously limited edition thing, you should be able to find it for purchase online pretty easily and at a reasonable price.

I've come to accept that my expectation of free FCBD comics shouldn't extend past the actual date of FCBD.

Looks like Comixology/Amazon now has an unlimited subscription plan thing, with a handful of publishers contributing content.

The browsing is kind of half-assed on the web, which is true of most of the unlimited services (I've used Marvel Unlimited and some other service, maybe Scribd, for reading Valiant titles). It looks like some titles from Image/IDW/Valiant/Dark Horse/Fantagraphics (!)/Boom! Studios are on there now.

among other publishers, which I failed to notice on the first screen

on another note, going back to the conversation about the state of comic book retailers...

I had some errands to run near a comic/game store I don't usually frequent. Their comics section isn't bad these days! I have no idea why, but they decided to run with the business decision of stocking as many collections and graphic novels as possible, which is great. Unfortunately, when I got to the cash register, a gamer dude was breathlessly pontificating at the cashier about the balance of some game or another pending some new expansion. HE SMELLED SO BAD. Like, I usually brush off the stereotype of gamers as really awkward dudes who smell bad but GOOD GOD MAN

Probably v slow on the uptake here, but recently discovered the great comics of Kate Beaton, many of which are free to read here:

http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php

i am off to look into that comixology subscription, would love a better option than torrenting for casual reading

I've read many entertaining anecdotes about bad comic shop experiences. Often about shop workers insulting customers.

Here's a favourite I remember

Customer: Do you have any Creepy issues from Warren?
Comic Store Guy: Creepy is from Dark Horse, idiot!

Any of you guys have any memorably bad experiences?

While the range of titles is deep, however, the amount you can read from each title is relatively thin. Many comics are limited to just the first volume. Anything beyond that, well, you can pick up the collections from Comixology.

Apparently the service plans to cycle through the content being offered, much like Netflix does, with new and old series and issues being added but with no specific window announced yet.

Jesus christ, the idea of a digital comic service that's run like Netflix makes me want to die. Read issues 1-5, 7, 15, and 32 this month and then maybe two months from now they'll swap those out with like half the issues that were missing.

lol that's how i read elf quest as a kid - i went to the library and took out whichever of those oversized hard covers they had available. iirc i read the last volume first and had no idea who any of the characters were.

for $6 a month you can read the first twenty pages and then random chapters in all our novels! how can you lose!

honestly that's how pretty much all of the subscription ones are run right now afaik, with Marvel being the one that seems to delete few while continually adding more

I would love, and probably pay extra for, a service that was just "here's every available comic we're able to offer from this publisher" for a premium price, with the acknowledgement that people are going to subscribe for a couple months to binge everything from several series. But that doesn't keep people hanging on to their subscriptions. It looks like their compromise is a scattering of content for $6 per month. Which is a nice deal, but it's obviously meant as a taster to get you to buy more titles.

Marvel Unlimited seems to do pretty well with keeping the titles they have; never seen them remove much?

they usually only do it when they really screwed up their initial upload

like the ones where the exposition dialog boxes were in a different font and their digital comic creation process resulted in them just being ??? ????? ???

I have still seen a couple of those panels, though

oh yeah, i remember that being particularly bad with the avengers

I subscribed to Unlimited for about 18 months - it's terrific but the lo-res scan quality started to bug me, so I quit and I've mostly just been buying off the main app now, where everything's super high quality and (apologies) I genuinely enjoy reading via the panel-to-panel thing.

http://muthamagazine.com/2016/05/grief-struck-an-interview-with-tom-hart-on-rosalie-lightning/

MU is a fantastic value, had to drop it to cut stupid expenses. Might be best to subscribe once a year or something and catch up in a month on everything you missed.

Used it on desktop so I didn't really have the low-res scan problem, is that a mobile issue?

just read the 12 issue Omega Men series by Tom King; that's some great comics! I feel like it came up in the DC thread but highly recommended!

Tom King almost single-handedly keeping me reading the big two.

oh yeah; he's the vision guy too right? Both of those as good as any hero books I've read in a decade.
Anybody wanna rep Grayson?

not a clue. Concept sounded cheesy.

will report back.

i am just lovin the vision comic, didn't realise he had done so much else

Omega Men turned out great despite being cancelled (twice?) during its short tenure and the length changed at least once.

Grayson was never as good as it thought it was, however, if you stopped thinking of it as a spy book and more as a commentary on the male gaze and sexism in comics then it turns out just fine.

a bizarre recommendation! I am curious!

Been working my way through The Metabarons. Probably my favorite of the Jodorowsky collections so far. The story feels a lot more coherent and emotional than a lot of the others.

Basically where I'm coming with that comment on Grayson; the Spyral stuff is fine and functional, and it's actually a very good Huntress, but the fun comes from the fairly subtle homoeroticism between Dick and his partner(s) and the way that every time Dick does something athletic (particularly at the school) there are women staring at his butt and talking about what they'd do to it. Plus it was generally quite funny and for a DC book the art wasn't awful.

All of which made it a real counterpoint to the Women In Refrigerator and Brokeback stuff elsewhere.

Hey Ulysses, I finally got around to reading Leo's Aldebaran, as mentioned above, and you're correct, it's super good.

I especially like how the lead guy (I'm on book 2) keeps getting called out for his shitty attitude - refreshing.

Ulysess isn't the only one who likes those Leo books, I've repping them on ILC years! But obviously it doesn't matter who told you about Aldebaran, it's always nice when new people discover them. :)

I'd totally forgotten there even was a "lead guy" in those initial books... You'll eventually find out who the real protagonist of the entire series is.

"I've been repping"

Anyway, IMO the Aldebaran series is the best sci-fi comic to have come out in many, many years. (And probably the second best long-running Euro sci-fi series in general, with only Valerian & Laureline surpassing it.) The sense of wonder you get from Leo's depiction of all those weird fauna and flora of other planets is really unique! And I think it helps that he has a fairly stiff and realistic art style; that combined with the way he tries to make all those creatures feel at least somewhat plausible and functional makes the comic feel less like outlandish fiction and more like some kind of otherworldly illustrated biology textbook, or a bestiary.

Sorry Tuomas!

Yeah the art is great - kind of reminds me of a Steve Dillon who can draw more than one face. The stiffness suits the story - I can see a similar version of this with better, more psychedelic art, that would be less fun to read.

I'm not super familiar with sci fi comics or books but the narrative approach - sort of feminist, young adult take on a "boy's own" narrative - and the episodic/unpredictable storyline all seem quite refreshing and original. It's so rare to pick something up and think "I haven't read a comic like this before".

I've read a bunch of (European and American) sci-if comics, and I still feel Aldebaran is fairly unique. It's kinda weird, considering that comics are a visual medium that allows you imagine other worlds any way you want to, without being limited by budget and commerciality the way movie and TV sci-fi is, there are suprisingly few comics that would try to imagine non-Earth planets in a way that is totally weird and alien to us, but still logical and functional within its own context. Valerian & Laureline is the obvious predecessor here, but that comic is much more cartoony than Aldebaran, so it doesn't really have the same uncanny valley/alienation effect Leo's art has.

And yeah, the feminist approach is surprisingly fresh, especially considering that Leo is a guy born in 1944.

Ok, must seek out aldebaran. Almost every scifi comic, especially if superhero, has staggeringly banal ideas about alien life and environments.

IMO (though Ulysess and Chuck might disagree?) that really is the strongest part of the series, and what makes it so compelling. Some other elements in it, particularly the dialogue, are kinda weak, but those freaky biologicial visions make up for such flaws.

Also, do note that the actual series called Aldebran is just the first of a larger, multi-series work called "Worlds of Aldebaran". My favourite one of those is the second series, Betelgeuse.

Almost every scifi comic, especially if superhero, has staggeringly banal ideas about alien life and environments.

You probably already know, but Brandon Graham's Prophet is really really great for this.

*waits for sic to show up and post "Rob Liefeld's Prophet" as a corrective

I strongly doubt that Rob Liefeld's Prophet did the interesting things with alien lifecycles and cultures that Graham's does

oh you

otm though

Clearly, all of Liefeld's aliens would be variations on marsupials.

Think about it.

https://img1.etsystatic.com/029/1/7211752/il_340x270.586998129_gb5u.jpg

Leo's book are excellent, glad you found them! I think a comparison to Graham's Prophet isn't completely off the mark.

Grayson was decent post-Ellis cloak and dagger stuff; the male gaze being flipped is a nice touch. The standout was an issue where each page is it's own miniature story with the page after taking place in the past and furthering the story... going back to the moment when The Flying Graysons death is being plotted. Bravura work there.

Better yet is 'Sheriff of Babylon' currently running with Image. It's great and dense and barely begun.

http://comicsalliance.com/tom-king-mitch-gerads-sheriff-of-babylon/

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/may/30/mike-mignola-final-hellboy-comic-paint-watercolors

Didn't realise Hellboy was ending. Seems like a recent choice.

Probably statng the obvious here but WicDiv is on a bloody roll at the moment.

Also, just finished BETELGEUSE. So much fun. Even my partner, not a regular comic reader, binged the whole series with me.

Hah, this was the first WicDiv that had me rolling my eyes.

I haven't gotten into that series yet, I guess maybe I should?

I've been reading Saga and Lazarus in trades. Both seem a little meandery at the moment but I'm still in.

As far as serious comics lit goes, I browsed for a loooong time at the Drawn & Quarterly store and have a lot of ideas of stuff to pick up, but bought precious little since I'm traveling light and some of the books I wanted were quite large

Why the eye-roll, AF? Too plot-twisty?

[v mild / oblique spoilers ahead]

FWIW I think that it was a high point in WicDiv smartassery (of the "oh you thought you knew THIS because I gave you all that evidence but in fact (fumble fumble) THIS!!" variety, but I am signed up for a fair quantity of such smartassery from this lot, and I'm nowhere near capacity for that yet. I anticipate more of this kind of twistery in the future. I am happy with the fact that they're using some of the few sure things you can hang on to, like the circular schedule of living / dead gods on the graphic as part of that misdirection.

I am someone who regularly shouts "JUST GO TO THE POLICE!" at the telly while watching crime dramas; I thought it rather amusing to have a character say that and for me to react "oh that wouldn't work! how unrealistic..."

I think it makes one of the interesting characters (and their position in the story) a lot less interesting - he writes good villains, having one heroically go "No I didn't do that, but the world must never know!" annoys me.

It does deepen my realisation of how weird April 21st must have been for Gillen, of course.

I think "must never know" is putting it a bit strongly, and I wasn't as sold on him as a villain anyway, he seemed too much of a whiner. I suspect we will have multiple shifts of who's apparently a villain and who a hero over the next thirty issues - I'm buckling in to enjoy that process.

Reminds me of Grant Morrison's last Doom Patrol storyline - characters changing sides, revealing themselves to be SECRETLY EVIL, or secretly not evil, or returning from the dead, or returning from the dead to die *again*, etc. Anyway - fun.

Any sort of postponing righteousness doesn't strike me as likely - as you say, dude is whiny.

I keep reading WicDiv when the trades come out, hoping there'll be something to make me like this series the way everyone else seems to. I don't think I'm compatible with it, though: I don't feel like I've been given any reasons why I should care about the characters and I still haven't bought into the premise/execution. Want to enjoy it but can't!

I've been keeping up with WicDiv and Saga on a monthly basis. Saga continues to be very strong. I started to like WicDiv a bit less when they did all of the origin side stories and then when it switched into full on mystery mode, but it's still pretty good.

Just read the first 6 issues of Paper Girls, it's absolutely bonkers, though not quite as lovable as Saga.

also struggling to get through the first trade of Phonogram, doesn't really make much sense to me, probably because I don't particularly care that much about Brit Pop. Do the later ones get better?

A more useful lens is maybe "Do you care that much about people who care too much about music?"

Yeah was a little turned off by Phonogram also. If I was into Britpop in the 90s I'd probably have a different opinion

And I'm a fan of Gillen so was disappointed that I couldn't really get into it

Sex Criminals vol 3 is out in the next month or so. Was recommended it on the basis of Matt Fraction (who I've never read). Really took to it and it's moved above WicDiv in terms of my interest. It's weird, but it's funny about it.

WicDiv I loved at first, got a bit meandery/off the point, loved the Tara issue (a lot). The art is nice but a friend of mine pointed out the faces look a lot like airline safety illustrations and now I can't stop thinking that.

Saga is my favourite by a mile. I only buy trades so I'm not up to date, but it's been so good so long I get that perpetual "don't fuck it up" thing everytime I read the next part.

Also, I got Nameless (Grant Morrison) as a birthday present, haven't read it yet, but the premise seems intriguing and I haven't read anything of his for a while. I'm pretty fond of his brand of mindfuck nonsense.

Do new issues of Saga have more of that little seal dude? Love that guy.

they sure do!

gave up on saga sometime last year, wicdiv same... both just stopped moving my care-o-meter. little seal dude is legit tho.

So I read and enjoyed, with some reservations, the 500+ pages of 'Lucille' by Ludovic Debeurme, and I get to the last page and it says 'End of Part 1'. You couldn't fucking mention that anywhere on the front or back cover, Top Shelf? It's like the bullshit with the last Charles Burns ("his new graphic novel!" "actually, this is only issue 1 of a series!").

Loved the second Phonogram collection, The Singles Club, particularly the "Wolf Like Me" story. Got me to revisit that TV on the Radio album. First trade was good, though not as engaging since not a huge Britpop fan. Thanks, also, as I checked Amazon to see if 3rd trade was out, and it is. [As is the first Master of Kung Fu omnibus. Yahoo! Biggest regret of high school collection dump is selling the entire MoKF series. Figure the $4-500 to buy the omnibus series is cheaper than rebuying the singles.]

been reading stuff on comixology unlimited, really enjoyed Chew and Fuse!

Forgot about Uber, too - just put vols. 3 - 5 on library hold.

Chew's a fun book. Going through library trades on that. Would've loved to see that TV series adaptation happen starring Miles from Lost

http://www.tcj.com/interview-with-jason-shiga/

While I’m in Angoulême I’m going to work on my most ambitious project to date. It will be another choose-your-own-adventure comic, like Meanwhile, except that Meanwhile was only seventy pages, whereas this one is going to be five hundred pages. It’s going to be split into two books, and the two books will be joined together along a third spine. The pages of the book will be facing each other so that you can essentially open the book from the middle. It’ll use the same tab system that Meanwhile uses, except that in addition to tubes taking you to different pages, that is, different tabbed pages within one book, tubes will also cross the middle spine into the second book. The most exciting part is that when you’re reading one book, the pages in the book that you’re not reading can basically store states, meaning you could be reading the same panel in one book, but depending on the page that the other book is flipped to in the book that you’re not reading, the next panel in the sequence could be totally different. The long and short of it is the book you’re not reading will be able to store memory, almost like a computer. The story that you are reading will be able to access the memory in the other book and feed you sequences of panels depending on what’s in the memory.

That's nuts, would love to see how it all works

he admits it might be unpublishable at the end of the interview

liked the shiga interview

second issue of coates' black panther is pretty dire.

Agreed. It's a bit boring, isn't it? There's potential though.

the dialogue is clunky, the pacing is bad. it's just not good comics; there's a connection lacking between story and image.
http://i.imgur.com/4g70hi6.png
http://i.imgur.com/6kObvOW.png
http://i.imgur.com/ZXs4ilh.png
i said it already: it's a fool's game to try to judge a story by the first two paragraphs. but this is not encouraging.

lol at how reflective everything is

It reads like the comic book adaptation of a novelisation of a TV show. There's too much plot, too early - only two issues and it already feels portentous and grand statement-y, without a single non-cipher character. Perhaps he would have been better of starting with a rinkydink 4-parter. Perhaps he should've been paired with a reliable old hack like Priest or DeMatteis or Simone to make it more "comic-y". But (on Twitter at least) he claims to be getting better, and it's stil curious enough to that I'd give him 2-3 more issues. It's not Kevin Smith.

i'll certainly give him room to figure it out; he's a bright guy and a comic nerd so there's that
but yeah, he seems unclear about how the medium works.

Smith's first two or three comics were good, though you could see a huge disparity between the first being drawn by a great, multidisciplined cartoonist, and the next couple by a ...less-skilled self-promoter.

The Jay & Silent Bob mini was really good, and a strong case for Fegredo working in b&w more often. But then he just started writing bad superhero comics with hundreds of word balloons.

he's a bright guy and a comic nerd so there's that

I think the problem with him vs how the medium works is that he isn't a comic nerd; he's someone who read superheroes as a kid and has never thought about the medium per se

maybe. he's written a few pieces ABOUT comics but they're mostly about story and not medium.
http://www.vulture.com/2015/04/ta-nehisi-coates-superhero-comics.html
^ this suggests he reads adults as an adult btw

That explicitly says that he thinks of comics as only being superheroes, and only from Marvel & DC.

"Adults as an adult" = "Comics as an adult" natch

I got that; but he literally only reads the kind of comics he read as a kid, and mostly in search of the same experience he got as a kid.

Because you’re somebody who publicly talks about how much you love comics, people come to you and say, “Where should I start?” What do you usually tell them?

Lately, I’ve been telling people that Iron Man run during “Dark Reign.” [Iron Man] has to slowly erase his brain. That’s such a mind-fuck. It’s great for anybody. “Kraven’s Last Hunt,”  if [the reader is] old enough. These are just really good, well-told stories.

There are only two good places to start reading comics, but you have to be old enough to handle the Spider-Man one.

I do kind of genuinely love when some well-respected, prominent thinker is asked about, say, their favorite music and it's just some total junk that clearly indicates the minimal role that music plays in their life and their thinking. Except that that isn't usually followed up by the person in question recording an album.

Dunno, though, I still haven't read the Coates Panther so I can't make an assessment myself.

I hate people conflating "comics" with "superhero comics" as much as any lover of the medium, but Coates isn't wrong in that the Dark Reign Iron Man run and Kraven's Last Hunt are both excellent comics within the superhero genre. Whether they're good starting points is another question, IMO both of those stories depend way to much on earlier stories to make sense. Fraction's run is essentially a corrective to how Civil War ruined Iron Man, and it doesn't make much sense if you haven't read Civil War before it... And KLH requires you to know who Kraven is and where Peter and Mary Jane's relationship is at that point for its punches to really hit, though I guess most of that can be deduced from the story itself.

Yeah, I didn't mean to indicate that those particular stories were junk. Although they are peculiar choices as entry-level suggestions.

Ehh, I think both are pretty simple for new readers. With Iron Man it's just, "The Government is bad now and it's after me!" and with Spider-Man it's "Didya know I wear black now?"

I remember looking at a friend's Kraven's Last Hunt issues at school (I was probably 9?) and thinking it looked so fucking cool compared to the TV cartoons.

I don't think there's any doubt from reading TNC's Twitter/Blogs that he isn't a supreme Marvel nerd. Seem to remember him praising some dubiously "edgy" stuff like Azzarello (or someone like that), but, hey, taste is taste.

Ehh, I think both are pretty simple for new readers. With Iron Man it's just, "The Government is bad now and it's after me!" and with Spider-Man it's "Didya know I wear black now?"

These are being suggested for people who have never read a comic before, regardless of their taste. Not for "an introduction to the Marvel universe."

But be careful: once you've read Iron Man Deletes His Brain, then gone on to Rory Hayes and Josh Simmons and From Hell and Epileptic and Diary Of A Teenage Girl and Uncle Bob's Midlife Crisis and Bottomless Bellybutton and Weasel and Psychiatric Tales and Druuna and Kampung Boy and Nicky Minus, you've gotta be careful that you're old enough to read Spider-Man Fistfights A Guy In Leopardskin Underpants!

Kraven The Punter

Kraven is bascially a 1980s action movie. If you're an adult, you'd probably think "eh, this isn't for kids". If you're ten years old, you'd probably think "This was made FOR ME". Both opinions are correct!

We know a 12-yr-old who loves Ms Marvel and From Hell (!) - she is super discerning but the high/low divide between the two isn't a concern for her.

I mean, From Hell is a high-minded historical extrapolation of a real slasher mystery. Looking down on people who love slasher films and clutching your thick black and white comic with copious footnotes is a bad look imo.

We know a 12-yr-old who loves Ms Marvel and From Hell (!) - she is super discerning but the high/low divide between the two isn't a concern for her.

― Chuck_Tatum, Monday, June 27, 2016 9:34 AM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Twelve-year-olds done right! High/low divide is a mirage and a distraction.

On a related note, I read a couple Ed Brubaker series over the weekend that were on that comixology unlimited business. No batpeople, but pretty similar in tone!

I nearly forgot to post about this: A couple weeks ago when I was in Toronto, I overheard a couple guys talking about comics. One was telling his friend, "Yeah, before he wrote those comics for Marvel, he used to do these super-gritty underground crime comics!"

It took me a minute and a couple more details to realize they were talking about Bendis. I giggled.

I posted it in the horror comics thread that hasn't seen a new post in three years, but there's a complete collection of the Pat Mills Misty stories solicited for September. Also the first of the Dark Horse Moebius collections is coming in August, I believe.

Dark Horse Moebius collections

!

those are straight reprints of the Epic editions or...?

Oh, speaking of fancy Euro scifi comics, I finished ANTARES, the third of the Worlds of Aldebaraan series - loved the first two, this one was kind of a drag.

yeah, it sorta spun out to nowhere but a good lead in for NEXT TIME IN SEXY FEMINIST FIRST CONTACT FUTURE STORIES

Dark Horse is proud to announce that the library of Mœbius, one of the most influential and respected artists in the history of comics and cartooning, will arrive on store shelves in a gorgeous series of hardcover volumes available for the first time in nearly 20 years.

With a vast array of work showcasing his mastery of realist drawing, Jean Giraud—better known as Mœbius—is one of the most influential bandes dessinées cartoonists in history, with work that helped to define the landscape of science fiction and fantasy comics. His expertise was also showcased on work in film, with credits including Alien, Tron, The Fifth Element and more.

“As a true visionary in the comics medium, it is a pleasure to once again publish collections of Mœbius’ work,” said Dark Horse president and publisher Mike Richardson. “His influence on contemporary comics is undeniable, and it’s a true honor to be working with Isabelle Giraud, his wife and partner, to help ensure that his legacy will continue to live on for a new generation of readers.”

More information on The Mœbius Library will be available soon.

First volume, World of Edena, available in (sorry) November:

Working closely with Moebius Productions in France, Dark Horse is putting the work of a master storyteller back in print--with some material in English for the first time!

Stel and Atan are interstellar investigators trying to find a lost space station and its crew. When they discover the mythical paradise planet Edena, their lives are changed forever. The long out-of-print Edena Cycle from Moebius gets a deluxe hardcover treatment! Moebius's World of Edena story arc is comprised of five chapters--Upon a Star, Gardens of Edena, The Goddess, Stel, and Sra--which are all collected here.

if they reprint the Airtight Garage stuff that I somehow have still never set my hands on, I'm going to be happy

NEXT TIME IN SEXY FEMINIST FIRST CONTACT FUTURE STORIES

All the sexy boob stuff kind of made me wince, but my partner, who has a doctorate in feminist history, said she found it fun and super sex-positive, so I guess it's fine!

https://www.gofundme.com/2azb8mk

A “comixcast” is a live feed of political comics and YouTube videos, in this case live from the Republican National Convention here in Cleveland by people who detest everything Donald Trump stands for. Yup, activists with pens and brushes mightier than his decayed sound bites.
I’m Joyce Brabner. I am Harvey Pekar's widow (American Splendor), but also someone who pioneered the whole comics as journalism thing. My first comic book was hauled into Federal Court in Atlanta because the Dept. of Defense thought it was a threat to national security. We won then and we’ll win here.
For this project, I work like Harvey did, and my own illustrator is a Muslim woman living in Albania named Gerta Oparaku, who would like to come live here with her sister, who is a citizen. Confirmed as I post now are Jennifer Camper, Junco Canche, Tim Fielder, Ted Rall, Paul Mavrides, Tony Puryear, Vishavjit Singh, Seth Tobacman and Mark Zingarelli-- with other names to be announced in the next few days.

https://www.comicblitz.com/
^ another all you can eat streaming comics service. $10 a month is reasonable if you got something decent attached but sadly they're limited by the participating publishers. Dynamite and Valiant are about as prominent as it gets.

apart from that being less prominent than Dynamite or Valiant doesn't mean you're unworthy of reading, as those two are turd factories, I'd say Abrams is more prominent

https://m.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10155068960767178&set=a.54015427177.78958.539812177&type=3

Al Davison's recent encounter with bigots after the referendum. He did The Spiral Cage but I'm not otherwise familiar.

He has spina bifida. People are horrifying and vile.

I learned about him in Talbot's Naked Comic Book Artist and I read Spiral Cage after that.

xp Abrams is a red herring; their selection is limited to 11 books and only five of those are actually comics!
several of valiant's current relaunch series aren't half bad for capes and tights books and dynamite has a (very) few things to recommend it: the new Ellis Bond book, Bob's Burgers, Kirby Genesis (kinda?)... but yeah, as I was implying, this does not a usable service make

I think I've threatened to make a Valiant thread, but I have no impulse to read the 90s stuff and have fallen behind on the newer ones

Following this 4001AD crossover thing, though

I got my new Saga tpb in the mail the other day. It's as if Brian K. Vaughan heard all my particular concerns and moved the story in that direction! Still loving that little seal dude.

Create a Marc Bell mural in the Macdonell St Parking Lot

I would like a Marc Bell mural in my neighborhood, too, please.

read Bill Griffith's "Invisible Ink" over the weekend, v good and full of stuff I had no idea about, like this Ed Emshwiller painted cover for which lil Bill was the model:
https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.zippythepinhead.com%2Fmedia%2Fscificover.jpg&f=1

It really does look like him.

is he supposed to be watching some futuristic version of Sgt. Bilko?

lol

Just read Lucky Penny by Ananth Hirsh and Yuko Ota, makers of autobio webcomic Johnny Wander. Fun and sweet romantic comedy.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/culture/2016-07/08/content_26019430.htm

http://nobrow.net/shop/geis/

i had heard good things. you read it?

it just occurred to me that at some point sergio aragonez and stan sakai are going to stop making comics and i don't know if that's going to be okay

I haven't read the Alexis Deacon book but I've been familiar with his illustrations for a few years.

I didn't even know Sergio Aragones was still doing comics! Isn't he like in 80s now?

He's still doing Groo comics, even!

Coming out this month even! And not appreciably different from any of his work from the 80's...maybe even a little tighter!
http://www.darkhorse.com/Comics/Previews/3000-066?page=1

His 'marginals' are still in every issue of Mad magazine too, afaik

Anyone know why Groo hasn't been properly collected yet? That and Flaming Carrot are the most puzzling omissions from the recent reprint renaissance.

tbh, who could possibly need (or read?) a complete Groo? It's like one story retold hundreds of times.
that said, i do have the complete (cbr) Groo.

Flaming Carrot had much of the classic run collected in the late '90s, and really does not work in compendium form

There've been a few goes at collecting Groo, but they seem to founder on an insistence, whether Evanier's or an absence of negs requiring pre-press expenditure, on collecting a 120+ issue run in four-issue chunks, instead of pounding out 480pp phone books.

Doesn't work in that it's meant to be read sporadically in individual slices?

Yeah. And the weird grubbiness of it falters in a polite spine, too.

sic, we've met and i've still never asked: what do you do that keeps you so plugged into the business side of comix? i seem to remember you did publishing for awhile?

iirc he's a globehopping aficionado who has fancy drinks with people in the know about comics and takes pictures of cats while doing it

see that's what i got from the context clues but i can't help but feel i'm missing something

maybe the street cats have some comics gossip too

iirc he's a globehopping aficionado who has fancy drinks with people in the know about comics and takes pictures of cats while doing it

people who have worked out how to live

He's actually a Watcher.

tbh, who could possibly need (or read?) a complete Groo? It's like one story retold hundreds of times.

Well, I'd buy it! Of course, the perfect version of a Groo collection is twelve random Groo comics bought at a charity shop for two quid.

But something like the Jack Kirby collections - big paperbacks with newsprinty paper - would probably be the best toilet book ever.

Yes, IIRC I remember Evanier saying something to the effect that because Groo has had so many different publishers (including defunct imprints like Pacific, Eclipse, Epic), some of the film negatives have gone missing, and that it would be costly to create new ones.

Also think that Groo's peak period was round about issues 30 to 60 of the Epic comic, so would disagree that every issue is the same.

Would almost rather have a DC archive collection of Plop, complete with the Aragones/Skeates strip that gave the comic its name.

Groo was my favorite thing in the universe when I was in junior high and those PC issues started coming out. Will gladly read any issue from any era. Aragones is a public utility.

Anyone read Nijigahara Holograph? Very intriguing horror.

Carlos Nine died recently. Can't find any proper obituaries for him, which is a shame because he had some of the most incredible drawing ability of artists from recent comics past. Dungeon was possibly the only English translation of his work.

Well here's one from good old Paul Gravett
https://m.facebook.com/paulgravett/posts/10153604904586176

Reading Rosalie Lightning right now, so devastating
Ilxor aero blurb on the cover

It is :(

http://www.tcj.com/comics-criticism-seven-hot-takes-for-summer-2016/
Found some of this funny. I definitely hate relevancy critics.

This man needs an editor

Art Of Ploog book finally became available on amazon. I might regret it because it was £40 and probably too much text (as much as I love them, I don't think most of these type of comic artists are interesting to read about and they rarely open up much in interviews). But I find Ploog's art kind of refreshing and nice.
Also bought Crumb's Art And Beauty box on amazon.

This week at the book shop I got Alexis Deacon's Geis. I didn't realise it's the first in a trilogy.

Ploog sequence from Heavy Metal is pretty much all you need to see from that movie.

Also, Ploog is one of those guys who is waaaay better than he was when he was better known. If only Shrek looked as good as his concept art.

Guys, that Trondheim Mickey Mouse book was apparently just the first in a series of Eurocartoonist Disney books IDW is putting out. Just saw this one by Bernard Cosey in this month's solicitations.

Recently read Carol Tyler's Late Bloomer (I couldn't find Soldier's Heart), which was so razor-sharp about everything and generally completely amazing, Rachael Ball's The Inflatable Woman (stunning and dissociative madness), and all of Ariel Schrag's High School Chronicles (just about the most enjoyable thing I've ever read, all the more impressive for having been completed by the age of 19).

In the process of starting a webcomic, but I have zero experience and really, artistic aptitude. I'm hoping it's something that just gathers speed the more you work at it... Are there any ILXors with comics or graphic novels in evidence? I'm sure there must be, but wouldn't know where to look.

Mike Ploog's art book has far too much of his 70s Marvel art* and not enough of his fantasy card art. Lots of film concept art and storyboards, it's always surprised me the films he's worked on, it even has storyboards for Polanski's aborted Master And The Margarita. The cover recreations are kind of nice sometimes but again, it didnt deserve that amount of space.
The people who made this clearly love Ploog's work but it seems like they're favouring big franchises over what is actually his better work.

* I don't get this fashion for huge books reproducing original comic art that doesn't really benefit from that format. The original pages for Stardust Kid were far more beautiful and there's some good ones that should have been in there.

Crumb's Art And Beauty book is very nice but the commentary and the fact that a lot of these drawings are from candid photographs makes it creepy at times. Like his claim that the Apache dance reaffirms that it doesn't pay for men to be too nice because women like dangerous men.

The Swords of Glass collection by Corgiat & Zuccheri - beautiful looking Euro fantasy

I gave a try to some of the DC rebirth comics but they even seem so much more sad when I compare it to some of the Image books I'm reading in trade and issues.

Black Monday Murders was a good and dense comic read. Hickman needs to pocket that Marvel money and get down to real business as this and East of West is better than any of his super hero stuff. East of West is starting to turn the corner into the last half of the story and all the world building over a couple years is starting to pay off.

I've got just the last issue in Prophet Vol. 4 left to read. That is some totally madcap science fiction comic fare. It definitely shows it's influences, but at the end of the fourth trade all the threads are really coming together and I am really curious to see how it's all going to end in Vol. 5. This series is probably going to get a complete re-read after I finish Vol. 5 which comes out in a few weeks.

Southern Bastards Vol. 3 seems to be introducing the rest of the cast for the series after the events of the first two. Jason Latour seems to be starting to stretch as an artist and push what he can do. I almost pickup a bit of Jack Davis and Eric Powell creeping into the artwork and it works with the over the top southern gothic plots that Aaron has going on.

Make sure to read the Prophet Strikefiles, too. They do a good job of fleshing out the grander universe, and make explicit some of the stuff that was just hinted at or left for the reader to infer from the main narrative.

Recently tried reading Moore's Courtyard/Neonomicon/Providence after seeing people discuss it somewhere on ILX (thought it was this thread?), but it's so fucking boring and stupid and awful I can't stand it! I'm done with Alan Moore--why does he even bother to write comics when he would obviously rather just provide an annotated bibliography of the books he's been reading recently? I can't imagine his recent stuff provoking any reaction other than http://i.imgur.com/XS5LK.gif

That came off as more impassioned than intended.

London people, this is happening at the Barbican in November. Sounds... interesting?

"In his Pulitzer prize-winning masterpiece Maus ... Art Spiegelman changed the definition of comics. Here he collaborates with Jazz composer Phillip Johnston on a show that expands the possibilities of the medium. Wordless! transforms the intimate act of reading comics into a group experience. Spiegelman leads you on a tour of the first graphic novels - silent picture stories made by early 20th-century masters like Frans Masereel, Lynd Ward, and Milt Gross - alongside a new work of his own drawn specifically for this show, Shaping Thought. Both the images on screen, and Spiegelman’s own infectious enthusiasm for the graphic novel are enhanced by Johnston’s swinging score, performed by his Jazz sextet The Silent Six."

https://www.barbican.org.uk/music/event-detail.asp?ID=19901

BTW, going to this tomorrow if anyone else is into it.
https://nycomicssymposium.wordpress.com/2016/08/31/cj-suzuki-sept-6-2016-at-7pm/

CJ Suzuki on Pushing the Boundary of Manga: Gekiga and Japanese Counterculture
In present Japan, gekiga loosely refers to a body of Japanese comics (manga) with a long narrative (story manga) that is oriented toward teen and older male readers, typically with little or no humor. In manga criticism, gekigahas been defined in contrast to mainstream manga in terms of visual style and content. Whereas postwar mainstream manga was formed around Osamu Tezuka’s (quasi-Disneyesque) cartoony style, gekigais frequently associated with more “realistic” drawing style with serious or darker themes. Though fully integrated into present Japanese manga culture, gekiga, from its nascent state, assumed a distinct characteristic of being (arguably) alternative to the mainstream manga.
This talk explores the socio-historical and cultural context of the development of gekiga by examining the shifting media ecology of Japanese comics industry, important comics artists and their works, and the impact of gekiga on other artistic and cultural practices. The focus will be on two major “alternative” magazines: Garo (1964 – 2002) and COM (1967-1972), both of which offered an outlet for innovative, unorthodox, and transgressive artists. Both comics magazines not only expanded comics expressions but also pushed the conceptual horizon of manga, attempting to legitimize the artistic value of comics while maintaining a sense of unruly proclivity by being “alternative.” Gekiga rose in tandem with the counterculture of Japan in the 1960s when Japan witnessed the rise of student revolt, civic and intellectual participation in politics, and artistic experimentalism–all of which synchronically shared the global cultural and political climate of the time. This talk traces the emergence and development of gekiga in the context of postwar Japanese visual culture, mainly from mid-1950s to early 1970s, illustrating how both these comics magazines played a role in shaping the visual culture of Japanese counterculture.

Sounds good. I don't look at as much comics coverage these days but seems like people have stopped talking about that stuff and weird manga in general. There used to be a few blogs.

Leiji Matsumoto has some English books coming out now but I haven't seen many surprise translations of classics recently.

xxp That sounds mad! And, I hope, good. Will definitely go to it, thank you.

Currently reading Allie Brosh's Hyperbole and a Half, which needs to be read sparingly in public through its ability to produce tears of laughter. It's a collection of work from http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.co.uk/ plus some new stuff. I think she's working on a second book, but has suffered a number of setbacks in the interim.

After some looking around, the guy(s?) who did the Tokyo Scum Brigade blog are doing a tumblr and a new blog

http://tokyoscum.tumblr.com/archive
http://www.ceiling-gallery.com/

Lots of oddities. Never understood why there isn't way more English speaking bloggers in foreign countries showing you stuff you'd probably never see otherwise.

xp Aw, I'm sorry to hear that - I am sure she is sick of people describing it as "the best description of depression I've ever read", but it is that, as well as incredibly funny.

My gf (only a very casual reader of comics) loves that book so much and has given it as a gift to a number of people who also love it very much. It's good.

I've only read that famous one that every one shared from a while back, but I'll dig deeper. Her MS Paint skills have gotten a lot more expressive, it looks like!

Dover have reissued my friend's incredible, meticulous Worry Doll.
http://store.doverpublications.com/0486806162.html
A few small panels are on his site here:
http://www.mattcoyle.net/worrydoll/
It's pretty amazing, but I am biased.

I got it in 2007, I liked it.

xp on tokyo scum: i was a big fan of SAME HAT!, shame they've gone fallow.

I don't know what he's doing now, I assumed he was moving into more publishing. Blog Of The Northstar was good too but that stopped too. I think some of those folks are still on Twitter but it's a shitty platform for such things.

hyperbole and a half was great, a rare standout from the web's flood of glurge and unfunny MS Paint webcomix.
sorry to see her followup is now scheduled for 2030
https://www.amazon.com/Solutions-Other-Problems-Allie-Brosh-ebook/dp/B00VNXKF3U
hope she's in the right direction

lol I would imagine 2030 is a publisher's way of assigning an arbitary far-off future date to indicate it's expected but to not expect it at a particular time

I prefer that approach to the ones that have a date set eighteen months out that keeps getting pushed back every two months. So frustrating to get "the new date is... even further out!" email messages from amazon.

oh sure! but i think the follow up was prior scheduled for 2017 so that's a not-so-good sign.

I'm totally projecting here, but I can imagine that the surprise popularity of a work that vulnerable might hobble an author's ability to follow it up.

there's lots of online speculation about her depression impacting her work but it's been mostly radio silence from her for the past few years best as i can see. Anything's possible i suppose... Achewood came back!

she's no longer depressed after making major bank on that first book and can't come up with new material about depression

(hah, I wish)

I believe her follow-up is entitled More Humble Than You Would Understand.

Er, the dates on that page say 2017.

No, wait - Amazon is being 'smart' and redirecting me to amazon.co.uk

Anybody been reading Mizuki's Kitaro stuff? Is it worth it?

From An interview with Kentaro Miura. He's talking about being inspired by his gang of friends and putting aspects of them into Berserk.

Miura: The yellow ranger, basically. I’m pretty sure that was the role I played. On the inside, though — and maybe manga artists tend to idealize themselves, but — I would have Guts-like thoughts, or Griffith-like thoughts. Manga is a funny thing: rather than taking base models and inserting them into your manga unchanged, you can do things like break the models up and rearrange their different parts into all sorts of strange things.

–What exactly do you mean when you say you thought like Guts or Griffith?

Miura: So, for example, in terms of manga, I was head and shoulders above everyone in terms of drawing, but at the same time, I looked up to the guy who used to act as the leader. He was very much like Griffith in terms of ability: he was the type who put his money where his mouth was, and he even had a bit of that touch-of-the-divine feel to him. In terms of violence, though, I’d say he was very much like Guts.

He would go out and get into fights every day and then come to my house afterwards and say, “Alright, let’s draw some manga,” and then he’d go to his part-time job the next day, sleep deprived. He was a wonder. So in order to keep up with him I felt like I needed some sort of trick of my own, and I decided to work hard on drawing manga. Later on, though, I would find out that he apparently used to act violently the way he did because he was amazed by my ability at manga.

So then in university he gave up becoming a manga artist, and he decides he’ll do things that the rest of us will be jealous of — sleep with a hundred girls, get hired into a first-rate company, that sort of thing. And he manages to pull it off. Then he becomes an illustrator, and starts pulling in tens of millions of yen a year while he’s still in his twenties. But it’s still manga that he wants to do, so in the end he throws it all away and starts from square one in the manga industry.

–Wow, that’s an amazing story.

Miura: See, so up until that point, he’s Griffith. But then from there he falls and re-examines what it is he really wants to do, and so in that sense, that makes him Guts, right? Maybe Griffith and Guts are symptoms that affect boys. When a boy seriously tries to do something, he could become either one.

https://mangabrog.wordpress.com/

This blog is full of good translated interviews. I think mainstream Japanese comic artists and games developers generally come across as far more philosophical than their American counterparts. Even for the crassly commercial manga there's sometimes interesting thought behind it. Which makes it all the more sad that there's so much pandering and strict formula in mainstream manga. Which are problems in Berserk but it amazes me how much he improvised the plot because you wouldn't know it and it's really brilliantly done.

There's an interview mostly concerning Otomo and different eras of manga, and there's funny talk of how jealous Tezuka was of Otomo and how being a manga powerhouse can shorten your life. Shigeru Mizuki saying he lived longer because he got proper sleep and wasn't overproducing.

Interesting comics article from one of the sites I linked earlier

http://www.ceiling-gallery.com/blog/2015/4/4/morohoshidaijiro

both bookmarked thanks

went to Lynda Barry's gallery show and was really wigged by the comics glitterati who were about: Spiegelman, Gloeckner, Chip Kidd... had a nice friendly upbeat with conversation with Chester Brown. Barry was spectacular (i gave her pottery) and made me feel special. Pretty great time.

her panels are selling for 3 grand now! I'm happy for her.

wow, sounds like a fun event

her work deserves frames, everybody was giggling in the gallery

There are probably a lot of ppl in town for Brooklyn book festival this weekend.

Tom Hart is at bbf today by the way, forx.

yeah, that's what Chester said! I am going for a walk in the cemetery tonight but would love to let Hart know how much Rosalie Lightning moved me. I do the "yes/thank you" breathing mantra daily these days.

http://blog.comichron.com/2016/09/more-than-10-million-comics-ordered-in.html

how did the adult coloring books become a thing?

Adults read Twilight, adults read Harry Potter, adults buy colouring books, adults buy superhero comics, adults are infantile

I'm not judging - I genuinely wonder how this trend came about

I thought it was a quasi-therapeutic trend, but I don't know quite what incited it.

Yeah, I hear they're recommended for therapy. Wasn't Ozzy Osbourne always using them?

there was a piece on CBS Sunday morning this week iirc
http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/adults-rediscover-joy-of-coloring-books/