Rolling SERIOUS GRAPHIC LITERATURE Thread for Comics in 2016

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.