Rolling comic books 2021

Lol @ this Steve Ditko quote on the back of this Star Wars card. pic.twitter.com/PcjVSlZd5n

— The Mole Man (@KingMoleMan) December 19, 2020

It already came out in 2019, but I only recently found about Liz Suburbia's Egg Cream, bought it and read it. Most of it consists of the first part of the sequel to her Sacred Heart book. It's really more of an epilogue, exploring what the plot twist in the very last panel of SH really meant. As such it's kinda superfluous, but it's also intriguing because it illuminates many of the cryptic background references in SH, which you could never get without reading this sequel. So apparently she put a lot of effort into creating a whole backstory of SH even though almost none of it was revealed there, which I think is cool.

Going through a Crepax volume. Insane that he sent Louise Brooks some of his porn Valentina books with the info that she was the inspiration for them and instead of going "wtf gross" she was befuddled but flattered and they started corresponding on the regular.

I dunno, the woman who said of Pabst's Pandora's Box “the movie should have ended with the knife in the vagina" could probably handle Crepax's softcore psych.

https://www.factualopinion.com/the_factual_opinion/2021/01/the-richard-corben-cast.html
Found this podcast enjoyable, haven't listened to it in ages. And I didn't know this Slow Death revival was a thing
https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/45689/last-gasp-plans-50th-anniversary-slow-death

Laughed a bit at Tucker talking about Peter David coming back to Hulk after Bruce Jones.

Corben did so much and so much of it is impossible to find. The guy had a truly amazing imagination. I was re-reading the Dark Horse Conan run and Corben did a flashback sequence in a Tim Truman story about Conan's grandfather Connacht. It's really good.

One of my plague of 2020 things has been reading the Hulk and Daredevil from the start. I'm up to the early 70s in both series. I kinda think the Hulk is one of the better reads of the early Marvel series, I love that pretty much EVERY issue is a big cliffhanger (AKA to be HULKTINUED).

I think I probably got into Corben at a good time, I was able to get most of his books online in mid to late 00s. The guys in that podcast enthuse about the few I didn't bother with (Punisher: The End, Hellblazer: Hard Time and Cage Max), I read a bit of the Conan stuff but there just weren't enough of his pages, I did love that line "come closer so I can kill you".
There's so many bits and bobs never collected. Would like the full version of Bloodstar too because it apparently never came out in intended book form. Sad to hear that Creepy Presents Corben never stayed in print, I assumed it would have.

I liked the original Hulk miniseries well enough but the early Tales To Astonish era was unreadable for me.

reading the Hulk and Daredevil from the start

I think I've read all of Daredevil from the early 00s Bendis stuff onwards and imo it's one of the most consistently good long-running comics. I am curious to know if the rest of it stands up as well. I should probably make time for the Frank Miller run, right?

yeah. it's dated in a lot of ways, but some really classic moments throughout. make sure you remember to get to the Elektra minis too

Nocenti run is fun and weird

Worst Ann Nocenti Asides/Monologues/Dialogue

the Elektra minis

You know, I absolutely love Elektra: Assassin, but I never bothered to see if there were more things like it. It's Bill Sienkiewicz that makes it though imo. I forgot about the Nocenti stuff, I had been meaning to get around to that too. Thanks!

euro album format Love & War by Miller and Billy is the other Sienkiewicz thing u need

Aw, bummer - with Disney closing Blue Sky Studios, the Nimona movie in production got cancelled.
https://deadline.com/2021/02/blue-sky-studios-closing-disney-ice-age-franchise-animation-1234690310/

aw that's bullshit. Maybe she can take it to netflix?

Wow, I had no idea there even was a Nimona movie in production! Though I can't imagine Disney could even do faithful adaptation with all the violence and queer stuff in it... I guess Netflix could, they did let Stevenson make She-Ra into the queerest American kids' cartoon ever.

David Britton died recently. I think he mostly wrote novels but probably more people have seen his comics. Savoy co-founder, Lord Horror, Reverbstorm.

Read House Of X for a comic discussion group, that was quite bonkers and fun! Artwise I enjoyed the Lisa Frank vibes in the background. Also struck me this stuff would be unreadable on an issue-by-issue basis, which has been my eXperience with Hickman - cancelled my subscription to East Of West after many a month of reading an issue and realising I had no idea what happened in the last one.

True - thankfully House/Powers of X was published weekly. Reading his monthly X-Men has been plodding by comparison.
I'm still on board with his titles and Marauders, dropped all the remaining X books though, of which there seems to be a new series almost every month.

I was a bit underwhelmed by HoX/PoX. I appreciate the gargantuan effort of it all (as I wrote in a separate comics forum, the fact that someone like Goldballs has a purpose in this universe is testament to the consideration Hickman has given to how this new mutant society is supposed to work) but I like X-Men best when it focuses more on smaller teams, which as a more expository/setup piece Hoxpox doesn't do as much. Maybe some of the many offshoot series will deliver eventually; I read a few issues and wasn't compelled, but I'm willing to try again when this whole iteration of X-Men wraps up and it's clearer which series/arcs are worthwhile.

Side note, someone in that comics forum shared this article, which I found interesting: From Jerusalem To Krakoa: House Of X & The State Of Israel

Gold... Balls...?

GOLDBALLS, baby. Love it or leave it!

I loved hoxpox but the regular series’s pandemic release schedule/crossovers/confusing reading orders/crappy side titles, mixed with having a toddler, have somewhat stalled my interest. Marauders seems ok though.

Enjoying Zdarsky’s Stillwater, which is basically “The Walking Alive”, but like a lot of his comics, it’s missing a bit of personality (his)

Al Ewing’s new Boom series is not for me, sadly - nice art and story concept, but it’s impossible to follow what’s going on, which I guess is part of the point, but it’s taking too long to coalesce for me

I immediatley thought of the Israel paralell re: HoX and think Hickman explicitly introduces an Israeli character early on to avoid that reading - it would be a terrible metaphor because, y'know, no Palestinians.

xp Tuomas: your mention of Sacred Heart got me to check it out. Pretty good stuff, like a punk rock cousin of Black Hole. Still trying to piece together what it was all about, exactly, besides the plot. Def interested in a followup, but knowing that Egg Cream is only part 1 makes me want to wait for a full sequel.

Billionaire Island by Russell and Pugh - funny, not angry enough, but a good effort.

Def interested in a followup, but knowing that Egg Cream is only part 1 makes me want to wait for a full sequel.

It's technically part 1 of a sequel, but really it's more of an epilogue taking place years after the events of Sacred Heart, explaining most of the odd stuff that happened in the first story. There's some hints of where the story might go in future installments, but if you liked Sacred Heart I think you can easily read it now, cos it's not like it even starts a proper new plot.

Always loved this cover.
https://www.comics.org/issue/5609/cover/4/

Fiction House is the fucking best imo

I'm not sure if I've read much of their stuff. Thought of getting the big compilation.

a lot is available for free i think.
hang on.

https://digitalcomicmuseum.com/index.php?cid=16
^requires a login but worth it

*cough* librarygenesis

yow that's a find

giving credit to ilxor dean intercom

Just discovered 2020 documentary "For Madmen Only: The Stories of Del Close" on Kanopy (movie streaming service free for library card holders in US and .au and elsewhere) - I would have been happy if it mentioned Wasteland at all, but it leans HEAVILY on it in the early parts, including recreated scenes of writing sessions with James Urbaniak as Close, Matt Walsh as Mike Gold, and Josh Fadem (Twin Peaks / Better Call Saul) as John Ostrander.

Had no idea he wrote comics, is it any good/worth looking for?

Wasteland is pretty classic as i remember it, Bill Loebs / David Lloyd / Dandy Don Simpson on the art for the most part
https://readcomiconline.to/Comic/Wasteland-1987

Thanks! I remember the cover design so vividly but never read it

Just looking at Lovern Kindzierski's garish-but-amazing colouring is instantly transporting

For some reason I only just realised he was a guy

Feels like this thread is slower than usual. Because of covid? Do you buy less comics when you can't browse around shops? For years I haven't been reading much comics other than little online quickies. I seen that Barry Windsor Smith's Monsters (35 years in the making) is coming very soon and I just want to flip through it quickly, I truly respect the dedication but I don't think it's something I want to read much, will be interested to hear reactions.

i'm reading a lot of digital comics and could talk about them but they're really all over the place.

I've actually gotten more into comics during the pandemic, especially once my LCS opened back up (although they were doing curbside pickup almost immediately and actually implemented a delivery van as well!). I used to just wait until tpbs came out of the stuff I was interested in, but now I'm subscribed to a bunch of comics. I just don't participate because I feel like I don't have the depth of knowledge about comics shit that most everybody else on here has. Shit I've read lately:

True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys: National Anthem (great series; wasn't thrilled by the ending)
You Look Like Death
We Only Find Them When They're Dead (have all the issues, but I'm not fully caught up on reading)
Something Is Killing the Children (and lots of other James Tynion-involved stuff: Razorblades, Department of Truth...)
Redfork (by Alex Paknadel on TKO, whose Giga I'm also following, although I'm not totally into it yet)
All the little TKO Shorts books
Bitter Root, which is really beautifully colored
Just got the first issues of both Nocterra and Stray Dogs, which are both promising in very different ways.

I bought four paper comics last year (one miniseries) and read the last two of them this week

Am enjoying Something is Killing the Children. Reading that via Hoopla from library, which has the first two graphic novels (1-5, 6-10) and single issues of 11-15. Waiting for the next collection to finish it in one borrow.

Red Mother looked interesting - any opinions?

I think it's in the current Boom Humble Bundle - might grab that, lots of new stuff in there
https://www.humblebundle.com/books/best-year-of-boom-studios-books

^^ I came here to post this! I've been off comics since around September in favour of other hobbies and because libraries (where I get a lot of my books) are closed, but this bundle looks like some fun weekend reading

Physical comics stuff I have bought this year, mostly from online sources

Morbius Epic Collection 1 by Gerber, Moench, Gulacy et al
Crashpad by Gary Panter
New Yorker cartoons issue
Trigan Empire Vol 2 by Butterworth and Lawrence
The Steel Claw: Invisible Man by Bulmer, Tully and Blasco
A 'facsimile edition' of Black Knight 1 (1955) by Lee and Maneely

I've been bulk reading piles of manga and had to stop reading Berserk because it was starting to giving me nightmares
http://i.imgur.com/Nzcp13Q.png

http://i.redd.it/qypeyxt0lot41.jpg

http://pm1.narvii.com/6748/694570930e51e1292942b5410ac79eb11868329bv2_hq.jpg

my understanding is that this is where Dark Souls got its look and that seems about right
http://i.pinimg.com/736x/91/1a/34/911a3450962f40438a4bf9d0d6a923e9.jpg

just thousands and thousands of pages of this stuff, it's really astonishing
http://www.bogleech.com/manga/berserk-cave.jpg

Where did you get to? I still haven't read the last few.

Book 19? I was knocking out three a night before bed and had to stop.

Wow, that looks bonkers.

I forgot that I tried reading some manga earlier this year - Junji Ito's Remina. The concept - sci-fi horror about a planet-eating planet - really appealed to me but the story wasn't all that compelling and the ending was just plain stupid. Couple that with the learning curve of reading right-to-left and it will probably be a while before I dip back into manga again. After reading it, I went and checked some reviews and apparently other people feel the same way.

i have definitely completed the rewiring necessary for right to left reading. i am occasionally accidentally reading american comics the wrong way!

Important warning for anyone trying to read Berserk: it uses rape as a major plot point for its major characters (male and female) and it is brutal about it.
https://www.jacksonpbrown.com/anime-and-manga/2018/10/12/thoughts-on-casca-and-some-uncomfortable-truths-in-berserk

Oh? You don't say!

I've been bulk reading piles of manga and had to stop reading Berserk because it was starting to giving me nightmares
http://i.imgur.com/Nzcp13Q.png

― G.A.G.S. (Gophers Against Getting Stuffed) (forksclovetofu), Saturday, March 27, 2021 2:34 PM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

http://i.redd.it/qypeyxt0lot41.jpg

― G.A.G.S. (Gophers Against Getting Stuffed) (forksclovetofu), Saturday, March 27, 2021 2:35 PM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

http://pm1.narvii.com/6748/694570930e51e1292942b5410ac79eb11868329bv2_hq.jpg

― G.A.G.S. (Gophers Against Getting Stuffed) (forksclovetofu), Saturday, March 27, 2021 2:36 PM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

my understanding is that this is where Dark Souls got its look and that seems about right
http://i.pinimg.com/736x/91/1a/34/911a3450962f40438a4bf9d0d6a923e9.jpg

― G.A.G.S. (Gophers Against Getting Stuffed) (forksclovetofu), Saturday, March 27, 2021 2:40 PM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

just thousands and thousands of pages of this stuff, it's really astonishing
http://www.bogleech.com/manga/berserk-cave.jpg

― G.A.G.S. (Gophers Against Getting Stuffed) (forksclovetofu), Saturday, March 27, 2021 2:42 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah, though. When I bought that Junji Ito book, I was worried that getting into manga would eventually end up with me buying something like that and that I would be harshly judged by the nice women behind the counter at my shop.

I think about sometimes picking up some of those books by Shintaro Kago with similar feelings. Not being judged so much as just acclimating myself to excessive nightmare gore. Like the Berzerk stuff up there, still pretty astonishing to look at.

I love Kago's work but some of it is deeply nauseating.

As a corrective, I've been plowing through Space Brothers instead. Which is fun! But occasionally inconsequential.

I don't think Berserk is especially gory given it's a dark fantasy, it's about what I'd expect.

This publisher is new to me but the magazine they publish is something I mentioned here once.
https://hollow-press.net/

i LOVE those guys, went to their table at Comic Arts Brooklyn a few years ago and basically bought everything they had.

okay yeah I just finished vol 1 of Something is Killing the Children and it's the highlight of the humblebundle so far. think I'm going to regret having read it right before bed though

the berserker art is interesting - that sort of busy/dense B&W style tends to put me off bc it takes me so long to parse what's going on. but in the context of berserker, does that 'slow parse' -- i.e. having to take time to read the art/having it reveal itself more slowly -- do a better job of building up the unsettling/horror vibes than art styles where you can understand the scene with a glance?

berserk? berserker? the thing forks posted above, obv.

Berzerker is the brand new comic that starts with the Sad Keanu meme, Berzerk the ultra-gory '90s medieval horror fantasy

I went back to Berserk again last night. Jesus it is relentless.
You can certainly take your time with each page for sure but it's... well, it's a lot.

Here's five sample pages from the first quarter of book 20 that i saw last night while trying to fall asleep.
http://i.imgur.com/MQ9ctVI.png
http://i.imgur.com/gh0yopo.png
http://i.imgur.com/KWAGVc5.png
http://i.imgur.com/pWUGorY.png
http://i.imgur.com/0SMn8kz.png

The epidemic did make me purchase stuff much more often, in order to support my local shop (Gosh in London). Reading them is another matter - previously my non-comic prose reading was done almost entirely on public transport, and this having vanished it now encroaches on my funnybook reading time.

That being said, I've recently gotten back into a groove. Read Crepax's American Stories; I was skeptical that I could draw something from what are clearly comics to masturbate to w/o sharing the author's fetishes, but actually once I started paying close attention to the actual drawing style it was a pretty wild ride. Helps that I have a soft spot for the kind of mid-century European culture that Crepax belongs to - radical leftist politics, fascination with American jazz and cinema. Pretentious as fuck, too - there's a really long story concerning Valentina's lover trying to make his way back to her from the US in a very obvious retelling of the Odyssey, with captions saying CIRCE or ITHACA in case you didn't get it. Except, of course, instead of defeating the Cyclops or whatever dude just keeps getting abducted by women who want to fuck his brains out. Fair play to the one who did taxidermy sculptures and wanted to turn his corpse into an alligator statue tho. Wild stuff, as I said. There's also a noir story with a black protagonist that has little masturbatory content and is a lot less cringy than you'd expect from a white Italian boomer writing about a black guy (onetime ILXor Nate Patrin contributes an essay about it).

I then moved on to Les Grands Espaces, Catherine Meurisse. She was one of the Charlie Hebdo ppl and apparently wrote a v good graphic novel about the attacks. Anyway this has no culture war talking points, it's just about growing up in the countryside as the child of ex-city dweller ecologists/intellectuals. That's my background, too, and it was really interesting to see which bits resonated, and which were very different - Portuguese villages in the 90's weren't yet experiecing the fever for cultural events and rural tourism that Meurisse depicts invading her hamlet in 80's France, though I understand they're at that stage now. Anyway, lovely stuff.

Currently I'm halfway through Mujirushi by Naoki Urasawa, a magna made with the official collaboration of the Louvre. Strong bonkers start: Trump is about to get elected, except in this reality it's a woman, and her opponent gets metooed shortly before the election so she wins. Problem is the protagonist's father invested in novelty masks of her and now that she's actually won she turns out to be a very vannila politician and no one cares anymore. This was all written in 2016, not quite how it panned out! Anyway after that strong start it all feels a bit half baked, meandering plot with French art thieves and such. Still the Japanese fixation with France is always fun - magna Mitterand! Manga Sylvie Vartan!

I have also suscribed to 2000AD. You'll all be pleased to know the reader's mailbag section currently includes ppl whining because the magazine made fun of Trump and Keep The Politics Out Of My Judge Dread, Godamnit. What planet these people live on even Tharg can't say. I might also fuck around and get a Spirou subscription.

It's funny, in most comics those Berserk pages just posted might seem memorable but I don't really remember the context for that part.

I was laughing at Savage Dragon fans who objected to the Trump skewering but I remembered that however much I might respect the writers doing what they want, I really don't like seeing real horrible politicians in cool comics either. It feels sort of yucky to me. Part of the fun of supervillains is that they're cool and often have a kind of dignity. Robert Crumb said he just couldn't stand drawing people he hated that much and that political cartooning was "a dirty job but somebody's got to do it".

It's a bit different when political satire is at the heart of your most iconic character though.

The idea of someone reading Judge Dread "without the politics" is...scary.

True but I also sympathize with people who just really didn't want to see Tony Blair's face in 2000AD regularly. The documentary regarded the Blair comic as a failure but I don't know why.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/02/nigel-farage-morphs-into-2000-ad-cartoon-villain-bilious-barrage
Farage is a perfect target but again, yuck, I don't want to see his face. But I've never really been a 2000AD guy.

Not keen on political caricature either, always seemed to me like it's feeding into the problem of politicians images being more important than what they do and say. All those politicians who got ridiculed for years for being fat or ginger.
I think my "yuck" is both about the caricature and the horrible banality of the actual politicians.

Also in Savage Dragon was Hitler in the form of BraniApe, it was kind of weird seeing him kill a huge crowd of people. And wasn't there an acclaimed comic where a superpowered Hitler actually kills some DC heroes?

Or did he just beat them up?

Farage is a particular case because, while that cartoon would never be mistaken for an actual human, it's not too far from how he actually looks.

While I think it's valid not to want to see their faces all the time, I also think we can't have this convo w/o acknowledging that 90% of the time "keep politics out of it" is code for "I'm angry because your politics differ from mine". And yeah, I think if you'd rather just not have that shit in yr comics 2000AD is not the place for you.

What you say about political caricature is true but you can easily take the next logical step and say that villains being portrayed as ugly and grotesque is messed up in the first place, reinforcing prejudices even without a real world target. We live in a fallen world and so on.

The new IDW Usagi Yojimbo Origins color collections - do they effectively replace the material that was originally collected in the Fantagraphics Special Edition? Or should I still read that (digitally) before grabbing Origins v.1?

I'm decades behind on Usagi but I'd read the B&W material in B&W rather than digitally colourised: he did draw differently for each mode.

Finished the first Megahex collection, or as I like to think of it, Noise Board: The Comic.

Also watched the 2000AD documentary, which was good as far as these things go. Pat Mills is quite the character! Alan Moore conspicous by his absence.

Portishead's David Cameron "obey" concert graphics must have turned up in the trenchant social commentary thread. Documentary was pretty good though.

The black and white Usagis are immeasurably better, imo. Bone, on the other hand, I liked better in colour.

i think i agree with that

hmm. ok you've all convinced me to not buy the new color editions

Portishead's David Cameron "obey" concert graphics must have turned up in the trenchant social commentary thread.

I like that judging by this doc 2000AD's influence on music consisted of 1)Portishead and 2)Anthrax.

After the Judge Dredd soundtrack I am stumped to think of more examples. I think Robert Smith did say he was a genuine fan of The Crow and 2000AD.

Madness' record label Zarjazz, which also released the Chas Smash and Suggs side-project Mutants In Mega-City One by The Fink Brothers, might have taken some influence, or it could just be a coincidence.

There's also Geoff Barrow's DROKK album, if that's not a cheat.

Did we mention this?

DC’s new Rorschach comic just took a turn from “unnecessary and sort of dumb” to “impossibly stupid” and I for one couldn’t be happier. pic.twitter.com/31r9bvuNqx

— K. Thor Jensen (@kthorjensen) April 13, 2021

Who written that?

ILX-beloved Tom King.

Coop in the replies:

Gotta respect DC's dedication to using Watchmen to wipe their asshole until it bleeds

— Art Of Coop (@ARTofCOOP) April 13, 2021

I dearly hope king has Miller take up the mask and fight for the forces of fascism

I wish he'd shown Miller wetting himself after saying "Are you going to kill me?"

Gorillaz surely counts in the 2000AD/music crossover world.

hahahah. i love it.

Gorillaz surely counts in the 2000AD/music crossover world.

One strip running for two months in 1991 likely outweighed by eight years of being the star and frequent cover artist of a comics/music crossover magazine, painting a dozen Senseless Things sleeves, doing the Common People comic book and selling a million t-shirts of band illustrations imo

Brian Bolland album covers

https://img.discogs.com/I-jANLciTUvoV7xGTMxtEZrrn7c=/fit-in/300x300/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/R-914396-1172326094.jpeg.jpg

https://img.discogs.com/SjXZqK9gKRvjus2QnAH6aelhbZo=/fit-in/600x615/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-748151-1154959819.jpeg.jpg

(xp: also he was an associate of Blur early enough that he's in the Starshaped VHS)

nish nish

I too know how to google CVs but that wasn't the point of what we were talking about.

Portishead's career also mainly consisted of non 2000AD work.

was sic's statement that Tom King is an ILX fave tongue in cheek? If not, what's wrong with you all?

King has lots of good comic work before he became DCs workhorse. It has been a little while though.

Tbf I only read his Mr.Miracle and thought it was frankly embarassing.

But also, former members of terrorist organizations - the KKK, the crips, the bloods and the CIA - should pay their debt towards society before being allowed to write comics.

I'll cop to still being a big King fan. The only thing I've really disliked of his recent work was Heroes in Crisis, never got around to Mr. Miracle yet. Strange Adventures is really good, though I don't understand what he's doing with the meta angle at all (quoting comic book writers at the end of every issue). Of course, it helps greatly that he's teamed with really great artists on all of these series.

I like Rorschach so far too, but I don't really have strong feelings about artists "ruining" Moore's work or whatever - same deal with like half of that Before Watchmen initiative.

Try his Omega Men and Vision series if you're totally new to him, though as forks mentioned those have been from some time ago.

https://hyperallergic.com/637691/jordan-eagles-save-superman-abroms-engel

I too know how to google CVs but that wasn't the point of what we were talking about.

I also know how to remember reading most of Haircut in a rush from issues in a newsagent at Erina Fair on school holidays, and to remember buying the die-cut-cover collection from the basement location of Kings Comics that you'd throw your bag in between the escalators up top and grab it from a pile at the bottom, and buying the Penguin collection of Tank Girl - still, three decades later, the only one printed in the correct "aspect ratio"! - at a midnight clearance sale at Dymocks on George Street, having traveled in with two friends from the same suburb and knowing we had 50 minutes to scour the store and get a pile sorted and bought before the last train home, and buying the gold-stamped Starshaped VHS from notorious industry promo sell-off haunt Lawsons, and buying the first blue-and-silhouettes-cover Gorillaz EP only to find by the time I got home that the edge of the 12" was so sharp that it had scored through the side of the sleeve. I got the Senseless Things album at another of the dusty health-hazard 2nd-hand record shops on the same block as Lawsons, but I admit I cannot recall the name of which.

But if Hewlett wasn't the connection, my apologies! I didn't detect a 2000AD influence on the concept of the band or the music at the time either.

Bisley was doing heavy metal paintings before he got recruited to Tooth - though it's probably where Scott Ian saw him - but the back cover illo for Overlord X's Weapon Is My Lyric was clearly a commission based on ABC Warriors.

https://i.imgur.com/J7CQFom.jpg

Cool concept on forks' exhibition link, and the virtual exhibition is done well, but it's extremely shitty, fifty years after Lichtenstein, to still not even annotate in the notes that human beings made this work. Michael Stipe and David Wojnarowicz get cited, though!

The University Of Alabama at least explains on a clickthrough how the Hulk and New Guardians comics relate to AIDS, though it doesn't mention David or Frank or Englehart or Staton.

Agreed that it’s weak that fine art continues to consider comic books as raw natural material to be mined

The work is good! But it’s actively about a context that the recontextualising artist doesn’t provide to his viewers

Yes and it's not like "Hemogoblin" is super well known by comic book nerds even

why did sic bury an actual amazing personal anecdote under the snitch tag

I don’t post on the interwebs not to relate to other humans and that was amazing

which one? I really badly doxxed myself in there to any time travellers who want to go back and kill me before my rise to power

The great and reclusive Barry Windsor-Smith was interviewed yesterday. This is a gem if you're a fan like myself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY6HwW1bQYE

Daijiro Morohoshi and Soji Yamakawa
http://www.ceiling-gallery.com/blog/2015/4/4/morohoshidaijiro
https://adamukun.tumblr.com/post/68059849566/error888-%E5%B1%B1%E5%B7%9D%E6%83%A3%E6%B2%BB%E3%83%AF%E3%82%A4%E3%83%AB%E3%83%89
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLW55D-2ibU

Mohoroshi's cover arts are worth an image search, he was really good at odd covers.

Feeling this article hardcore: https://bleedingcool.com/comics/when-graphic-novel-volumes-just-dont-stack-up-on-the-bookshelf/

What are some relatively recent trades of mini-series that stick the landing?
There seems to be no end of new comic series with promising starts but right around the last quarter of a book, there's that super-rushed, cobbled-together feeling...

OMG OL i HAAAAAAATE THAT SHIT and it has helped force me to make the transition to e-comics

It seems to usually be DC pulling these shenanigans, IME. Just looking at the shelf next to me, there's one volume each of the LOSH Showcase collections, the Kirby Fourth World Omnibi, and the Batman Adventures trades which feature that shit-ass peeling DC logo. They somehow managed consistent trade dress across all of the other volumes in each of these series.

It's a major, major problem. Major.

past time we were demanding infrastructure money to be allocated, call your senator now

I think if it as more of a Marvel problem, but I probably haven't bought a DC book since Morrison finished on Batman - Marvel did a switch from red logo in white on the spines to vice versa that fucked up three separate books I was getting.

Fix the abysmal recoloring of comics reprints before anything else.

Don't know why I never gave a second thought to Stan Lee nicknaming himself "The Man". Quite funny, I wonder if he was at all joking about the negative meaning it could have?

Blue Giant, Vol.1.&2 - Bought on a whim manga about a high schooler who, like many a manga protagonist, wants to become the best there is at something - here it's jazz, and the scenes with him playing are a delight, dramatic lines everywhere, pained facial expressions, every other character stunned into submission commenting on how his kung-fu sax playing is the most powerful they've ever seen. Hilarious scenes of Japanese yoofs discussing jazz, including someone telling the protagonist that jazz is so "hip - it's sophisticated and they stock it next to classical music in the record stores". Rockist a f, especially in its treatment of dumb GIRLS who don't get serious serious jazz music. But kinda too goofy to get angry at. I had a good time.

Pulp - Serviceable Brubaker. Subplot about dude not getting authorial rights interesting in view of Brub's current resentment over not getting to see much of that MCU $$$.

First Knife - Grody post-climate apocalypse Mad Maxish thing with different tribes (whose characteristics are all mixed elements of different existing cultures - climate refugees having migrated) fighting it out, including a slave owning peoples who worship space aliens and a latinoish population that mistakes an awoken NATO mecha for "Hesuscrixto" or something of the sort. No side is particularly "good", it's a nasty world and while the world building is quite elaborate, it's also mostly there to lead you to the murder and mayhem. Nice grody art, very maximalist and at the same time quite detailed as well. tiyl James Stokoe.

Ah I said grody twice. Well, it is.

What is Mark Millar’s rep in the biz / among fans? I don’t really have a sense of it.

i've always thought of him as the poor man's garth ennis? I like the jupiter books well enough i suppose. a lot of his work is brutality as character development and is relentlessly mean spirited and juvenile.

Agreed, more or less. It's a shame his shitty books can overshadow the decent ones

moore > morrison > ennis > millar > late era f miller is how i break it down to an extent

I enjoy his work on Swamp Thing (partially co-written by Morrison, who has long been suspected of ghost writing more than the four issues he was credited on) and Superman Adventures (the tie-in comic related to Superman: the Animated Series). Maybe a couple other random things from early in his career.

It's frustrating because, like Ennis, he isn't untalented but he's way too eager to let his inner tween edgelord overshadow what talent he possesses.

I like his SA comics, his Flash run w/Morrison, prefer his Authority run to Ellis's, and the first two Ultimates series were a genuine breath of fresh air when they came out. In retrospect the Ultimates looks majorly edgelordy, but at the time, reading it month-to-month, felt pretty exciting.

Everything else seems obnoxious/overly tropey/sub-Ennis/Ellis. I enjoyed how Hickman built his incredible Fantastic Four run on the back of Millar's terrible run.

He appears to have better business acumen than 99% of all comics creators, and that's okay.

It's weird how all the second wave British Invasion have turned out to be wankers who had one or two pretty good ideas/writing gigs then descended into self-parody and circle jerks with acolytes (allow yourself to decide the literalness of that).

Millar's true nature probably got exposed by Trouble and it was all downhill from there although, as you say, he's monetised the model WE was using badly, quite successfully.

lol i totally forgot about Trouble! tbh i was fine with that level of silliness. it's not quite pointing at the reader and joyfully singing "you're garbage for loving comics" and the cheesy drama of it kinda fit the classic Marvel romance comics it was parodying/replicating

RIP John Paul Leon

https://www.cbr.com/john-paul-leon-dies-static-earth-x/

IMO Millar has some good ideas for stories, but his at his best when his writing stuff where the nature of the project and/or the editorial policy limits his edgelordy tendencies, which is why the best things his done are traditional superhero comics; Superman: Red Son and 1985 are both excellent "what if" type of superhero stories (even though the events of the latter apparently became canon with Marvels's 616 universe). But most of his indie comics, where there's no genre conventions or editors to rein him in, might have an interesting premise but end up being transgressive carbage. And yeah, he definitely feels like sub-Ennis in the sense that even Ennis's edgiest comics still have moments where his basic humanism shines through, whereas with Millar there's nothing but dumb nihilism.

xp Shame; I liked his work on Creature of the Night.

Genuinely wonder if Saga is ever coming back. It's always a puzzle when people have a hit series on their hands and they just abandon it. A much lower quality level applies to this example but that Riverdale zombie thing was the same.

I'm nearing the end of Steve Gerber's run on Daredevil. He definitely was a step ahead for early 70s comics in style. You got to know if Grant Morrison ever did a run of Daredevil, he would definitely have to use a couple of Gerber's psychedelic villains like Angar the Screamer and the Dark Messiah.

Angar the Screamer is awesome. I love how he looks like he could be a member of Grand Funk Railroad.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Lt7UvMOveug/SI97jpYf9-I/AAAAAAAADmA/gnsZHj6rQ7k/s320/Daredevil+100+-+20.jpg

BKV in January: "And just to head off the comments, yes, Fiona and I are still hard at work on Saga, and we remain hugely appreciative of the four of you left who haven't completely lost patience with our extended intermission. Hard to believe as it may seem, I promise these new issues will be worth the wait."

"I think you'll be surprised at the new characters we've found for you to love, and us to kill

Vaughan does that pretty much in all of his comics, though, so I think people should be used to it by now.

I've not read Ex Machina and Pride of Baghdad, but it's not something I associate with Paper Girls, Runaways and Y: The Last Man? I'm aware I've already wandered into a spoiler minefield.

Ex Machina is by some measure the worst thing he's done, not counting Under the Dome, so lucky escape.

There's a random death at the end of Y The Last Man that's always struck me as a little dumb; killing Alex so quickly in Runaways seems like something he wouldn't get away (or choose to do) now

Anyway Saga's been fine and as long as he doesn't kill the adorable little seal who's obviously marked for death, I'm ok

Hard disagree on Ex Machina! Besides that I actually like it, you're ignoring all his (mostly passable) Marvel hack work.

That's true, I haven't read that stuff!

Ex Machina always felt a bit un-BKV-ish to me, like it's a weird Sorkin/Bendis mashup that happens to have BKV's name on. It's a bit too "I'm the dialogue guy!" for me

Yeah, Y: the Last Man is a prime example of him building up an interesting character throughout series, then killing them at the most tragic point imaginable, not because it fits the theme of the story or anything, but because he seems to think a story isn't good if a main character doesn't die.

prayers up for the little seal person

Vaughn's 'Logan' mini series with Russo was pretty cool. I've heard that Dr. Strange mini-series is a pretty good read too.

I read and liked Y the Last Man but I sold my issues of Saga cause they got going for stupid money and I never went back.

I'd pretty much read anything by Eduardo Risso. He's done some pretty weird stuff and I like some of those minis he has done like Spaceman (w/100 Bullets dude) & that bizarro Cain/exit of Eden comic he did with Jason Aaron. I think they got in that one and realized it was too crazy to go there for the cash payoff. I still haven't read that Lono mini-series yet, but 100 Bullets was one of those series I got hooked on trades. It was so long between issues!

I loved Risso's Batman. Love to see him do something with Ed Brubaker. That Werewolf/whiskey comic Moonshine I also really like. Azzarello has some stuff I did not get with...I read that western one but it was pretty forgettable.

After the Hellblazer issues where John Constantine talks like a Cheeky Cockney, I gave myself permission to never read him again. But I guess I could be missing something. David Lapham's patchy enough for me to want to read the Guy Who's Not Quite as Good as David Lapham.

Having never seen a photo of him, I was excited to discover Azzarello looks maybe 100% like I expected him to look

lol! that's totally the stereotypical '00s comics writer look

I went to a comic shop a number of years ago without realizing Jill Thompson was doing an in-store appearance and it took me way too long to realize that the sullen-looking dude sitting by himself off to the side was Azzarello. Didn't realize 'til just now that they've since divorced.

Oh, tangentially speaking of Jill Thompson, that reminds me that the new Beasts of Burden series is starting off really good, although she isn't involved with it this time around.

You know, I reacted badly after Jill [Thompson, co-creator of Beasts of Burden] left the book, and I still feel bad about taking that situation public. Jill and I are in touch now. We talk. I blew a gasket about the schedule of the book publicly, twice. At one point, I shot the book down. I was walking away from it. Things are okay now. Jill is doing a variant cover for us. I would like Jill to come back, but I understand if she might not want to. Maybe that experience is just not something she'd want to deal with again. But we co-own the series and we’re in touch when anything affects the series.

Misread that as "“I Consider Myself Very Lucky That I Don’t Really Have To Listen To A Conversation with Evan Dorkin".

His gasket-blowing was pretty fair at the time - she'd ghosted the book in the middle of an issue, and wasn't even replying to the editor as an intermediary anymore. By the time she agreed to let the replacement artist take over, the third issue of that miniseries came out over five years after the first, and they'd missed four Christmasses of hardcover collection sales = shoes and food for Evan and Sarah's kid.

Thanks for clarifying, sic!

Just read Sloane Leong's A Map to the Sun. Heavy adolescent drama. Extremely good and well-crafted.

On a whim, or compelled by Fantagraphics' Facebook ads, I bought Barry Windsor-Smith's Monsters. Looks fantastic, plenty of virtuosity on display, but he needed firmer editors than Gary Groth, Conrad Groth, and Mike Catron when it came to writing dialogue.

Oh man.
https://comicbook.com/anime/news/berserk-kentaro-miura-creator-dies-54/

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck
Beyond him just being too young, it leaves this mammoth unfinished work behind. Heartbreaking

Yeah, that's a heavy one. I'll need to read those remaining ones and Giganto Maxia.

I've been mostly lurking on and off here since the 2000s, aside from a few comments about Love & Rockets and Hellblazer. I've been feeling less blown away by comics lately, most likely from my becoming older and a parent and various larger factors (the mainstreaming of comics into YA/childrens lit, aging of the British invasion writers, not being that into most varieties of highly acclaimed comics of the present). So I thought I'd post, try to stir up some conversation and see if anyone else had read anything lately that seemed particularly stunning. Here are some recent picks from the library.

YELLOW NEGROES AND OTHER IMAGINARY CREATURES by Yvan Alagbé (NYRB) - This is probably the best comic I've read in the last year or two, a translation of short narratives by a Black French artist. There was a level of realism and social reality that I felt like put American comics to shame (something I weirdly felt also reading the much more picaresque Corto Maltese, a scene where he inquires about a character's illegitimate child). The book often touches on social issues without feeling self-conscious or discursive, (e.g., there's one a great page of a character jumping a turnstyle in a moment when NYC was criminalizing that).

KILLING AND DYING by Adrian Tomine (D&Q) - It's hard to imagine a more "well-crafted" version of what this is, but I was left wondering why the world needed another melancholic narrative about misanthropic middle aged dudes. This left me depressed about the imaginative narrowness of this generation of indie cartoonists.

AAMA by Frederik Peeters (Self Made Hero) - This is a four-part sci-fi series with a tinge of Fantastic Planet meets the trippy eco-horror Jeffrey Van Der Meer with a little bit Inkal messianism. The artwork has that hyperrealistic objective draftmanship that I've come to associate with French SF comics. Pretty enjoyable! I've started Lupus also by Peeters, a sort of stoner Y Tu Mama Tambien in space, but I'm finding the expressive brushwork difficult to get into.

ABBOTT by Saladin Ahmed - This is a urban horror comic set in 1970s Detroit that reminded me a lot of an early Vertigo comic, but I felt like the writer could have done more research on the period as the setting didn't feel very realized.

I liked Yellow Negroes too! Agreed on Abbott underachieving; there's a sequel that continues the Life on Mars vibe.

I feel that Adrian Tomine is actually a little younger than what I'd automatically consider that generation - he's only ("only") 47!

I missed that it was your first-ish post - it's a good one!

Not passing a judgment on Tomine, but he started publishing comics as a teen in the '90s, so he basically is part of that same generation you're referring to (with all the melancolic narratives about middle aged dudes) imo

The other titles sound interesting, thank you for the notes

Hey all, thanks for the kind words! Okay, so re Tomine: I think you're both right, as his precociousness makes him feel more like a peer to the Clowes/Ware types, which makes the book slightly more disappointing, since he was always more like the cool younger brother, doing cartoons about punk scenes, etc., rather than writing stories that might star Paul Giamatti.

Have any of you been reading anything mind-blowing lately? I feel like once Grant Morrison stopped producing work regularly, my comics purchases declined a lot. Okay, here are a few more things I've gotten from the library in an attempt to check that. My latest process has been looking at the Comics Journal link blog and seeing what's getting reviewed.

THE HOUSE by PACO ROCA (Fantagraphics) - This is a semi-autobiographical, humanistic story by a Spanish artist about adult siblings who go to rebuild their father's home after he's passed away. It's a little slow to start and then the details accrete on you and it ends up being fairly moving and absorbing without being very sentimental. Not an enormous fan of the artwork, which can be stilted like a cartoony film (same camera angle for several panels in a row), but unlike many comics, the pages sometimes detailed backgrounds and feel like lived spaces; also the coloring can subtle and sophisticated.

THE BOOK TOUR by ANDI WATSON (Top Shelf) - A dark comedy story about a midlist author who gradually becomes suspected of being a serial killer--sort of an English bookish humor meets Kafka or Aki Kaurismäki. The drawing style is all antique crosshatching and can go from being cartoony like Tom Gauld to more ominously shaded like From Hell. Slight but enjoyable?

BAD WEEKEND by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips (Image) - I've enjoyed their moody noir comics like Criminal and Sleeper. This comic has a similarly consistent quality, though never ends up being as provocative or good as those, maybe bc its focus on a comics artist means it can't deploy the old noir tropes. It's about a standard Brubaker/Philips stubbly brown-haired guy helping an over-the-top alcoholic comics veteran. The depiction here is a little more interesting and less hagiographic than the Seth/Clowes comics-about-comics in that it feels less nostalgic for the dirtbag old days and more willing to juxtapose that era with the contemporary world of cosplay and conventions.

Bad Weekend is just a mini-collection of a two-parter Criminals story iirc - I've enjoyed nearly everything they've growled out (though I'd give Fatale a miss)

cool younger brother, doing cartoons about punk scenes

I do not recall this being a feature of his work!

Maybe my own wishful revisionist thinking!

Have any of you been reading anything mind-blowing lately?

Read Barry Winsdor Smith's Monsters for my comic book reading group, and though it's not gonna be one of my all-time faves or anything it does feel very much a Major Work, just in terms of art if nothing else (like many comics nerds, the side of comics that I'm worst at talking about). Very dark, upsetting book.

I also read the new Matthew DeForge which I think would've blown my mind if I hadn't already read Ant Colony. Dude certainly has a style.

In general I think the Comics Journal is good for staying up to date on what's cool, also editor Stone's podcast Comic Books Are Burning In Hell.

Anyone read Nathan Cowdry's book, Crash Site? I gotta try to pick that up this summer. His "Sea-Diver" story on Instagram (@stinkstagram) has been great.

THE BOOK TOUR by ANDI WATSON -- just read this too, felt similarly

Finally got around to The Lie and How We Told It by Tommi Parrish, which was excellent, but at only just over 100p seemed way to short. Would have loved it to be a proper novel-length novel.

I'm up to about '74/75 in my continuing Hulk, Daredevil & now Defenders reading. Hulk is one of the most consistently bonkers and fun Marvel series of the old stuff. Herb Trimpe definitely is a child of King Kirby and he comes up with some bonkers looking stuff.

The scenes when T-Bolt tells Betty that Talbot is dead (presumably) and she freaks the f'k out is amazing. Then the Hulk tries to bring her flowers to like him again and fights Modok in a giant robot outside her hospital window. Then the next issue Modok turns Betty into the Harpy.

Marv Wolfman is not nearly as good as he later got in his DD run and it is a bit all over the places, but it's ok. The manipulation of photos by a computer and people being duped by conspiracy (based on the 73/74 version) looks a bit prescient in a 2021 lens though.

Okay, some new library reads:

GIFT FOR A GHOST by Borja Gonzalez (Abrams) - This is a beautiful nocturnal story by a Mexican artist that weaves between a contemporary girl indie band and a late 1800s debutante world, which may or may not be real. Not a lot of plot, but there is an interesting dream logic layered throughout the book and a lot of negative space and emptiness. The art is really immaculate: sort of like Mike Mignola (blacks and reds, ornate backgrounds) and Nick Drnaso (no one has facial features!).

ART OF CHARLIE CHAN HOCK CHYE by Sonny Liew (Pantheon) - A big book I meant to read when it came out. This is a super ambitious book that presents itself as a coffee table art book, a retrospective of a Singaporean comic artist (Charlie Chan Hock Chye), but this is a framing device. Chan is an invented protagonist and the book uses this form as a way to tell the story of his life and the history of 20th century Singapore/Malaya via his comic books, which are done in this amazing pastiche of global comics styles (Dan Dare, Pogo, Astro Boy, Harvey Kurtzman war, Ditko, Mad magazine, even Dark Knight Returns). This makes the book initially a bit staccato and hard to get into, but it comes together in the end and the framing device allows Liew to constantly translate out of the Singapore context to create a story that feels both personal and a history of the 20th century anti-colonial left. Here's an essay about it w/ some images: https://aaww.org/rewriting-singapore-story/

Oooh that last one sounds up my alley, thanks!

I just learned about the Warren Ellis metoo situation from last year (https://www.somanyofus.com/ if you somehow missed this like I did). The story resurfaced because Image is publishing a new comic from him. I'm not an enormous fan of his; just was a big fan of transmet back in the early 2000s. But the plethora of stories that these women put forward have me aghast. Why are people shit?

I had forgotten about the Warren Ellis story--terrible!

I really want to check out Barry Windsor Smith's MONSTERS. I remember loving his Archer & Armstrong run...

The art for The Lie and How We Told It by Tommi Parrish looks cool. I'll try to check it out.

Here are some more library reads:

THE ARAB OF THE FUTURE: A CHILDHOOD IN THE MIDDLE EAST (1978-1984) by Riad Sattouf -- This is a graphic novel I've seen on the bookshelves of a lot of non-comics readers and it also has the combination of being by both an Arab artist and a Charlie Hebdo guy, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect. The comic has a weird combination of objectivity and puerility, retelling the author's childhood experiences in Libya, France, and Syria with extensive detail but then (being from a boy's POV) often swerving a bit to focus on something juvenile (e.g., torturing animals, seeing a nude woman in the window). Almost every Arab character and especially every Arab man is depicted as a grotesque. There is a lot here that would delight a French Islamophobe in the depiction of Syria and Libya as (impoverished) dictatorships, though life in either country is surely worse now after Western intervention than it was in the early '80s. Other than that, the book is well-constructed, entertaining, humorous, etc., particularly scenes where the main character's dad negotiates humiliation or the main character imagines god as the french pop singer George Brassens. The art is "cartoony," but there is a strong sense of perspective, volume, and one-tone color, so the world feels real.

I REMEMBER BEIRUT by Zeina Abirached - A very abbreviated recollection of Lebanon's civil war (really a proxy war by other countries). Not really a comic or even a diary, but some memories with very graphic design-style images, seemingly influenced by David B and Marjane Satrapi. Her other book was supposed to be better, will check that out.

THE CONTRADICTIONS by Sophie Yanow - I'd heard about Yanow from the mailing list of Copacetic Comics, which seems to stock great art comics. This comic is about a queer American college student studying abroad in France and her adventures hitchhiking and crushing on a surly/depressed anarchist. (Possibly a spoiler: but lefty anarchism is revealed at the end as adolescent selfishness and the narrator returns to her previous bourgeois lifestyle!) The story is more developed and scene-based than most first person comics, but the ligne claire-style of the drawing makes the art feel like a summary of itself, so the comic feels less memorable.

RUNAWAY PRINCESS Johan Troïanowski - This is actually a comic I borrowed for my kid, but it was really fun. Not necessarily mind-blowingly original and definitely a kid's comic, ((translted from French and published by Random House 'ss raphic novel series for kids) bbut reminded me of Pippi Longstocking, Nausicaa, Valerian, etc., in its sense of playfulness and adventure! I

Almost every Arab character and especially every Arab man is depicted as a grotesque.

God Brassens aside (this is a consensus in France, I guess - Joann Sfar wrote illustrations for an exhibition on the man, in which he said "the Japanese have Totoro, we have Georges Brassens", surely on a level with comparing him to God), are there non-Arab characters and if so are they portrayed non-grotesquely?

I read Abandon The Old In Tokyo by Yoshihiro Tatsumi. The stuff I read by him before was very typical angry Japanese post-war stuff about those left behind as economic recovery took hold, but I don't remember it being as much about the grotesque as these are. He draws this one face that's sort of a blank friendly dumb guy, keeps showing up in different roles in different stories; Tatsumi says it represents himself. I dug it, tho predictably it's not great on women. Might have gotten my interest up to finally tackle his autobiography comic, which always looked like a chore to me.

Now I'm reading the Drawn & Quarterly anniversary book. I know that when I got into indie comics in the 00's I was always struck by how much talent was coming out of Canada specifically, but don't think I'd ever realised how much this was down to one specific publisher.

Oliveros' dedication is massively admirable, but before then you had Vortex, Aardvark-Vanaheim and Renegade, Tragedy Strikes and Black Eye, Strawberry Jam, even Matrix and Aircel, setting the stage for Canadian indie publishers. Plus people like Bernie Mireault and Dave Cooper who quickly hopped to US publishers soon after their earliest work, or never notably published in Canada, like Collier, Cherkas, Ho Che Anderson... Bryan Lee O'Malley, by the time you're reading.


(of D&Q's core 4 artists, only Julie was essentially an Oliveros discovery: Vortex had been publishing Chet and Seth for years, and Joe was on Kitchen Sink before moving to Canada. Rabagliati is probably 5th in the ranking, and aiui his audience in translation on D&Q was negligible compared to his Québécois readership?)

Advance solicitations corner: Wolk's Marvel book is finally dropping in October, and reprints of the Dungeon collections are coming(!) in anticipation of new Dungeon material(!!)

Fuck! That's major news for me on both points.

The new Trondheim with Bonhomme "Omnivisibilis" is great btw
https://www.europecomics.com/album/omni-visibilis/

Having suscribed to 2000AD for enough months now, I gotta say: I lack the historical knowledge to know whether the phase it's currently in is good or bad by the mag's standards, but I am falling in love w/ the weekly comics anthology format. I love the variety and the certainty that if something's not up to snuff, well, something else will come along in a couple of pages, and the thing itself will be replaced by something else in a month or two.

BWS's Monsters was pretty intense. Weird structure, but I dug it. Reminded me a little of Powell's Two Dead that I also read recently, as a black-and-white historical fiction/spooky epic mystery.

https://www.instagram.com/alfredcolumbia/

Apropos of completely nothing, I found these sketches in my parents loft during a clearup, and thought I’d share:

https://i.imgur.com/YF6pSXF.jpg

the holy trinity

who's the one on the left?

Nice!

Yea, those are awesome.

Where's Tuomas to say he doesn't recognise any of these?

https://www.jmkeworld.com/
https://www.instagram.com/j.m.k.e/

Watched a bit of the Cartoonist Kayfabe on DC: The New Frontier and they kept referring to Cooke in the present tense. Had a moment of "wait, am I wrong that he's passed?", googled, and got bummed out all over again.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/28/arts/france-culture-pass.html

Really hate the framing of that title - France officially made 2020 "the year of the comic" and included comics in that discount for a reason. Don't project your cultural biases onto it, NYT.

Agreed

such a dick move, NYT editors.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sloanesloane/death-in-the-mouth-original-horror-by-people-of-color

Kids reading books, society will crumble

Oh wait it did

they ended up changing the headline and more aggressively changing it in print, but it's stupidly clickbaity and willfully ignorant

But rather than discovering highbrow arts, many are choosing mass media they already love.

"highbrow" derives from phrenology, right?

sighted on tabs: confused guy buys a pile of manga, mistaken believes it is worth the price shown on ebay when it is actually worth more or less what he paid for it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdZd6z9BmL4

context: https://onposting.substack.com/p/me-and-gary-vee-down-by-the-schoolyard

can't believe i watched all of that. weirdly compelling because I know a few guys like this, classic east coast affable/sleazy hustler/grifter, though this guy seems even heavier on the sleazy side than normal

(of course, I'm a little jealous that he did get all those books. i would've happily paid that to read and collect them! where does it say he didn't turn a profit, though?)

though fuck this guy for the bootstraps-positivity / "people spend their money from the govt on nikes" comment and that he is performing this clown show with a personal net worth of $200 MILLION, jesus fuck what is wrong with this world

I’m just opining that there is no fucking way he made even a thousand bucks on that haul on eBay, no one is buying manga at those prices and I speak from experience

He got 1,001 books! Supposedly sold at $6,396.12 (let's say $7K before fees) It's slightly possible he could get $7 a book over enough time, especially if many of those were runs were OOP as it looked...and he had some luck. I paused the video and the sell dates listed are in May and June of this year. Think he definitely made a profit - one worth traveling to 32 garage sales (if that's even true)... well, I don't know.

Saying as someone who unfortunately recently returned to collecting manga again, it is often bad. (Do you know much a full run of Goodnight PunPun costs now? oof..)

But yeah, it could be an exaggeration or lie. Still, buying that big a haul for only $270 is unbelievable or heinous. Like did the owner believe these books were worth only 27 cents each? Maybe bitter revenge from an empty nest?

He's making money on chumps like us keep streaming the video and arguing over how much of a chump this dude seems to be too.

Some days I just look at the world and say, bring on the sun going nova and wipe this grease stain of a planet out of the heavens.

http://cdn.quotesgram.com/small/47/54/1466503358-tumblr_me2piotOhX1rur0aro1_1280.jpg

Ha! Exactly. I have definitely thought in the last few years that I would love to be a super-villain.

Still the underwritten message of all the good comics where the bad guy finally wins is in the end, it all still kinda sucks.

https://gizmodo.com/batman-writer-james-tynion-iv-is-moving-from-dc-to-subs-1847449770

Surprised by this. He seemed to have strong support from DC the past couple of years, they put him on Batman after Tom King's run. Question is, is he popular enough to make money on... Substack? Or maybe Substack gave him some kind of incredible deal.

I think he's an average DC house writer (his Batman/Detective work was decent), but he's churning out so much stuff, possible I just haven't read his best material

Substack is just giving massive deals to (esp right-wing) comics writers (in line with them giving good-to-massive deals to rightish-or-openly-transphobic essay writers)

writer/artists or artists get jack doodley

https://aiptcomics.com/2021/08/12/chip-zdarsky-substack/

none of the comics writers I'm seeing in the list are particularly right wing, unless we're doing the Nick Spencer political dissection thing again

Yeah, pls flesh out your thoughts on this one a lil, sic. I want to understand.

I may have just logged that opinion when Spencer was announced as being in charge of the whole thing, and not bothered to follow up tbh - I thought there was at least one more but dnrc who

At the very least, a cursory glance suggests that this may be a deal of the 'too good to be true'/'...with the devil' variety, particularly given the unsavory right-wing associations.

i think it's just a decision made upstairs to break off a mill or two and corner the market for comic nerds

Hiring Spencer to head it at the same time as yr paying (and otherwise platforming) a solid grip of anti-trans ranters might be a total coincidence but it says SOMEthing about the decision-making process

maybe they're trying to cover more bases, like a "neutral" book publisher would

I did hear similar rumblings to sic's initial post amongst some comics ppl but can't find the tweets anymore

maybe they're trying to cover more bases, like a "neutral" book publisher would

“we hired middle-aged male superhero writers from DC and Marvel!”

They're giving Molly Ostertag money, an unequivocal good imo

yeah, forever happy to see her succeed

Having suscribed to 2000AD for enough months now, I gotta say: I lack the historical knowledge to know whether the phase it's currently in is good or bad by the mag's standards, but I am falling in love w/ the weekly comics anthology format. I love the variety and the certainty that if something's not up to snuff, well, something else will come along in a couple of pages, and the thing itself will be replaced by something else in a month or two.

― Daniel_Rf, Friday, July 9, 2021 3:43 PM (one month ago) bookmarkflaglink

It has its peaks and troughs certainly, but generally speaking Matt Smith's 20+ years run as editor has been amazingly consistent (especially considering he handles the monthly title as well). All the more remarkable when compared to the doldrums of the early nineties, when it was obvious the editorial didn't give a shit and the quality went down the toilet as a result. Spot on that the anthology format is a huge strength, the possibility of something amazing and unexpected turning up is always around the corner. Except for Pat Mills' interminable decades-long sagas that never seemed to get anywhere, but he seems to've got his coat and left recently, so...

Speaking of 2000ad - just been re-reading all the extant chapters of The Order and it really is wonderful stuff, a complex and intricate narrative on a vast scale which also has ton of great action whilst managing to be humane and moving at the same time, what more could you ask from a comic.

I assume the substack deal is going to flop, people who give enough of a shit about comics to follow certain writers really seem invested in having them in print.

Really depends how much these subs will cost imo. If it's $20-30 a month as one of them hinted at (from their Patreon dues) forget it. If it's like $5-10 a month I might even bite.

Substack has such a strong “failure waiting to happen” vibe

Like, it’s hard to see it not going the way of medium, I think? I.e. paying big money to, then stiffing, creators when the returns are only moderate or non-existent

https://www.naokiurasawa.com/season-0/

Documentary series, lots of famous artists. Some of the episodes have abridged "highlights" versions.

Whoa, great find!

The one with Daijiro Morohoshi was a little disappointing, he seemed really shy and didn't talk much. Ryoichi Ikegami is so embarrassed about being old he has his drawings covering his face

Takes a bit of clicking around (each cover is a series) but Morohoshi has some really great cover art
https://www.manga-news.com/index.php/auteur/oeuvres-vo/MOROHOSHI-Daijiro

Agreed, amazing discovery!

Well it's not a secret, all of it has been very carefully subtitled so I think Urasawa was probably aiming at a big audience for this. I mentioned the Archipel youtube channel before and that has some great interviews with manga authors and other japanese artists.

Just read Under-Earth by Chris Gooch. Fantastic work, gritty sci-fi noir adventure.

Old news but still hilarious
https://superdickery.com/lois-and-luthor-off-superman/
http://platypuscomix.com/otherpeople/perilsoflois.html
Last link is 3 pages

Coming in November...

https://images.booksense.com/images/823/122/9781681122823.jpg

Wondering if the new reissues are being published at the original size... doubt it, but it would be nice

Hopefully this means we'll be past the days of Amazon listing the out-of-print books for £736 or whatever

Huh, I assumed they would be but I guess they aren't. Dimensions on this and the recently solicited Zenith 1+2 bundle are bigger than standard comic book size. Well, that's annoying, as I already have the original smaller Zenith volumes.

The second Superman link badly needs a browser extension to turn images on, but text off.

fucking YEAH on new dungeon; it's one of the few books I will continue to buy paper copies of as long as they make them. Complete collection ovah heah

https://www.gamesradar.com/horror-manga-icon-kazuo-umezu-comes-out-of-retirement-after-26-years/

Pleased about Orochi Blood but Fourteen and that one with God and Devil in the title are my biggest hopes. I hope his hands coped well. I seen him do a drawing showdown with Hideshi Hino a few years ago on television, or a screenshot.

Can anyone tell me much about about the color designs of old superheroes? I'd generally think that the penciller decides the colors but I'm not sure I've ever seen color notes on any such design sheet. I heard there was some editorial advice/wisdom to sometimes color villains green and/or purple at Marvel when Stan Goldberg was coloring.
Seen a Tor article about X-Men a while ago and it talked about the appeal of the color designs and I do think more and more these days that sometimes the color combinations had more appeal than the cut of the costumes.

There seem to be various, slightly conflicting anecdotes regarding Martin Goodman and Stan Lee's preference for or aversion to certain colours, particularly on covers (in the latter half of the 60s, both DC and Marvel began to pay particular attention to their covers in terms of subject matter, layout, design as well as colour, with even Kirby cover images fairly frequently rejected, or substantially redrawn). There are exceptions - the colourblind Alex Toth springs to mind - but I've rarely seen original art containing colour notes or indications from the penciller as to the colour of costumes etc.

I remember that Ditko was unhappy with how purple the blue parts of Spiderman's costume were beginning to look later on.

I've rarely seen original art containing colour notes or indications from the penciller as to the colour of costumes etc.

I've seen this in a few Marvel retrospective books.

Title and cover reveal!
Dear mother and other stories will be out soon by @strangers_zine . More updates very soon! pic.twitter.com/JkYTOxrvCg

— Bhanu Pratap (@Bhanu_pootrap) September 20, 2021

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nD4q_p0mDk
Really enjoyed this interview

I was trying to remember what this was called for a long time. Very Kirby derivative but I still liked the look of it when I picked it up years ago.
https://comicvine.gamespot.com/nightworld/4050-76269/

on libgen:
http://libgen.li/series.php?id=122433

Is that all legal? I'll probably get the paper version some day, which has extra art but thanks.

Nice thread. Always wanted a Miyanishi collection

Keizo Miyanishi is a manga artist born in 1956. He is known mainly for his euro-guro and sexual manga, all carrying extremely detail drawings.

Following pics contain images of sex and nudity. R18, NSFW. 🔞#宮西計三 pic.twitter.com/iFwnUDCJvH

— choolete_manga (@ChooleteManga) July 6, 2021

"One of the biggest gekiga artists to me whose name is Keizo Miyanishi [...] If you have a sense of drawings, you can easily find that Maruo borrowed Miyanishi's style in his lines and the most 'delicious' point of Maruo's drawings is originally from Miyanishi style." pic.twitter.com/sQ4Ec9gKoc

— choolete_manga (@ChooleteManga) September 28, 2021

Good luck to the Ditko family on the copyright battle

Recent raves:

Djeliya, Juni Ba - Senegalese comic. Author says he's influenced by 2000's Cartoon Network, and indeed Samurai Jack might be the closest reference point I can think of, though it's much more baroque and colourful. The story's fine - protagonists learn to emancipate themselves from negative circumstances and overcome oppressive traditions, "fantasy" setting but it's obviously a metaphor for Africa - but the art is totally mind blowing, had to stop at times because it's so maximalist and you're so likely to miss things. Really dope.

The Children Of Mu Town, Jushichi Masumura - Indie manga from new publisher Glacier Bay Books, which are doing alternative Japanese stuff. Downbeat story about a low level yakuza guy trying to help out a high rise community whose population is basically dying out, all old salarymen. Lot of political context involving immigration and demographics. Interesting how even though the characters are drawn in a very deliberately rough style, some mainstream manga tropes still shine through - like say, the main character, who is obviously Japanese, is portrayed as blonde.

And Now Sir? Is THIS Your Missing Gonad?, Jim Woodring - First Frank comic I've encountered that has text...kinda. It's in that old timey gag cartoon format where you have an image and then a slice of dialogue underneath it. As can be expected, the text only has very vague relation to the images, which are textbook Frank stuff. Some juxtapositions made me laugh.

Djeliya is absolutely gorgeous. Read it this summer.

I'm quite surprised just how much the Ditko family have opened up their archives, all these photos and videos. There's a biography, a letters book, an essays book and Mr A book in the works and they want a documentary too. I've only seen one new-to-me piece of art so far (a Konga drawing for his nephew) but there are woodcuts that were at the first DitkoCon and presumably his studio has unpublished things. Really hoping those pieces only seen in old photos still exist (Melting faced woman, lizard man and bug monster).

Hope you single issue Marvel collectors don't care about condition, the new distributor packing is embarrassingly bad.

Superman is queer now btw

'now'

it's clark and lois' son so Superman III? IV? I've lost track.

Jay Nakamura, Superman's new boyfriend, has powers of his own -- and they'll play a key role in the pair's relationship.https://t.co/so6alRFPJH pic.twitter.com/BOrSrOu6lG

— Comic Book Resources (@CBR) October 11, 2021

^ aw, two people without mouths who found each other <3

Bastien Vives doing the new Corto Maltese book and I didn't realize fantagraphics were putting out some of his stuff

I didn't know Corto Maltese was still going! Tbf so is Asterix, but I'd have thought Corto would be seen as such an auteurist work...

I think Vives is getting another movie adaptation too

http://chromefetus.thecomicseries.com/
I havent seen Hans Rickheit's stuff in 12 years or so

Snagged copies of some of the Dark Horse softcover EC reprints, still love this shit like I'm 11. Never understood why there have only been reprints and no one has tried making new Tales From The Crypt/etc. comics.

Papercutz (?) made a new series several years ago and it didn't seem very good but it ran a few years. Of course lots of other people have done their own thing in a similar style but the problem always becomes clear that it's really difficult to write lots of punchy horror stories issue after issue.

https://www.comics.org/series/25315/covers/
https://www.comics.org/series/46996/covers/
https://www.comics.org/series/109885/covers/

Rolling comic books 2022, but Juni Ba has a new series coming out in January through Image. As mentioned above, his Djeliya was very impressive and gorgeous.

In January your local comic shop could get you the first of five issues of my mini series MONKEY MEAT, a fun action packed dystopia with magic and monsters, on an island owned by a corporation that sells cans of monkey meat. Join the safari by preordering at your LCS https://t.co/BJgjJHU33n pic.twitter.com/NWeI0VJQfy

— Juni Ba (@juni_ba) November 12, 2021

Oooh that's cool. Hope it'll get put in a trade afterwards.

40% off sale at Fantagraphics today, free US shipping for orders over $75

Any recommendations? Looking at Dementia 21. Wanted to fill in some L&R but the ones I want are out of stock, as was some of the 2021 stuff I was interested in (Crisis Zone, Crash Site).

A lot of stuff was showing out of stock because of selling heavily during the weekend's 30% off sale, but may be coming back, if you drop them a line to ask 'em if they can add to your order at sale price. Crisis Zone's second printing will be out by the end of the year! (and three or four other Hanselmanuals are also reprinting imminently.)

Guessing that you might also like Stone Fruit and No One Else from the 2021 lineup? maybe The Hand Of Black and Young Shadow, and whichever issues of the NOW anthology are in print.

Also, folks might not know about this deluxe reissue of a classic 80s story by a writer who doesn't like their name to appear on reissues these days. Or in reverse effect, Gary Panter's latest oversized $40 hardcover is now available as a floppy.

Ah, good notes! I will look at those.
Totally forgot about In Pictopia existing - what does Moore have against putting his name on that?

Moore has beef with Fantagraphics due to some old Comics Journal interview, is how I've heard it.

You astonish me.

Is there anyone in the comics industry he's still on speaking terms with?

Out of the many feuds I've seen him involved in this feels like the only one where I think he's just being silly tbh

Do any of y'all fuck with Ed Piskor's The Red Room? I only ask because when it was first announced, it looked extremely NOT up my alley, but people I respect keep praising and promoting it on the socials. So last week I bought issue 1 and it was pretty much what I expected it to be (i.e. not my thing). But I keep seeing people talking about it. Is it safe to assume if I didn't like issue 1, then I would expect more of the same in the other issues?

Ed Piskor has a lot of good will from his previous works. From the cover alone though I had a similar feeling that it wasn't for me. Maybe if my library gets a copy...

i have some love and patience for piskor but red room is terrible based on one issue

Yeah, I tried to read the first issue. It was bad.

I enjoy his Cartoonist Kayfabe channel for all the formalist analysis of comics but his vocal affectations remind me of like 50's white authors trying to show they're hip by talking jive. Not a comment on his work ofc.

Tried the first volume of Sophie Campbell's TMNT run. The concept is cool: a mutagen bomb goes off in a neighbourhood and now everyone's a mutant; the area gets cordoned off but instead of things devolving into gang wars as such a development usually would in a superhero comic the emphasis is on mutual aid, the turtles trying to build up structures to help the neighbourhood out. The art is very not for me tho.

Also tracked down the first volume of D&Q's Kitaro, after having gone through that Arrow yokai box set. Cool episodic stuff, v cartoonish figures contrasted with ultra realistic backgrounds.

Anyone recall the writer who explained Superman keeping his identity secret by vibrating his face when he is getting his photo taken/filmed? That's one of the funniest old DC things ever

Supergirl has also done that in her CW show. It's just as ridiculous as you'd expect.

Like this Teen Titans piece
https://joshbayer.storenvy.com/products/13642836-characters-watercolor-commission

I was just checking out when the remainder of Berserk is coming out (I was up to volume 37) and Miura has another one book series coming out
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duranki_(manga)
I still haven't read Giganto Maxia either (that's one book)

Never seeing the real end of Berserk is going to be a lifelong regret for me

Has anyone read Blutch graphic novels or Don Simpson's Border Worlds? I'm thinking of getting them

Here's a review I wrote of Blutch's Total Jazz album:

https://theslingsandarrows.com/total-jazz/

Thanks

both worth a read imo

I remember Border Worlds was excellent back in the 80s, but I was out of comics when he later finished the story. Same thing with Puma Blues, which I think they later finished off at some point.

Indie comics is always a sad dead letter office of series that never finished.

i am rummaging through a digital stash of image comics of the 90's and wow are there ever a lot of unfinished and abbreviated series.

The factors that ended 1990s Image series are very different to the ones that ended Puma Blues.

not unrelated tho

Steve Geppi bought TOO many copies of Wetworks?

I think Dover put out a complete Puma Blues a few years ago.

That’s what earl’s referring to.

Yeah, I always intend to find a copy of that one but never have.

Don Simpson was from Michigan was was at a bunch of cons I went to as a teen back in the late 80s like in places like South Bend and Grand Rapids. He was a funny dude.

Jim Starlin was also a regular another Michigander that would show up at those cons too. I used to have a boodle of stuff signed by him. Loved some Dreadstar!

he dated an aunt of mine and my family name showed up on the nametag of a murdered soldier in Breed

Fuuck that is kinda weird, but it's comic dudes they are a strange lot.

i think it was friendly!

lol at “too many copies of Wetworks”

I think it was the Wizard/Image thing of the time but it was like.. this is… the series

and it never happened, then a pretty well-illustrated issue came out, and I think between corporate and personal issues, it was clear this was never going to happen in any conceivable way, and the speculators were trying to sell issues everyone had five copies of for a premium

Whilce Portacio is a pretty ok ilustrator but hey

(the story of image)

You never know though with comic dudes, it's not unusual for an artist in a dead body scene to draw their friends into a scene as a joke but from the line you stated about your aunt's dating him, it could be in fun or a creepy way. We are talking about comic artists, not exactly the most emotionally mature/stable group of humans on the planet.

I was hoping it was he was not a freak as Starlin was pretty cool when I met him as a teenager.

Then again, the only time I met Harlan Ellison he was amazingly nice and cool and seemed to really enjoy talking to me. But hey I was also running a booth at a comic con and was had a copy of the Deathbird stories with me.

Same con, I pissed off Julius Schwartz asking a question about him being a literary agent for HP Lovecraft (and got death glares galore from comic nurds of a couple generations at the 50th anniversary Superman con).

My recollection is Julie saying "I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT THAT DRUG FIEND!".

Schwartz known to be a serial sexual harasser, so bit rich of him to take the moral high ground:

https://www.comicsbeat.com/how-a-toxic-history-of-harassment-has-damaged-the-comics-industry/

Oh yeah, I don't doubt it as I said on some comic people kinda in general and not that HP Lovecraft was a nice person or anything.

At that point being like 18, I don't know that I had been in that situation of pissing off that many people at once. I usually reserve that for a one on one situation. I just thought it was a more curious thing to me in his career than the same question on the Legion or some Superman question.

I should have asked him why the Superman comics mostly sucked for the last 25 years of his career and went from a top seller to who cares, it make more money in t-shirts and lunch boxes.

Alan Moore asked him all about his Lovecraft connection but he was a star writer at the time

I read a bit about FJ Ackerman sexually harrassing someone who worked with him and it was horrible

I ran across this video of Ann Nocenti talking about Steve Ditko and found it entertaining, so I thought I’d share
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvQtwceDILI

pretty sure the comment on the video mentioning that she’s probably thinking of a Daredevil issue he illustrated is correct

I seen Ditko's nephew say something about his uncle being disappointed that comics hadn't become more educational. Maybe that sums up what I don't like about the direction he taken for what ended up being the majority of his career. And maybe that's why despite loving fancy costumes, super powers and fights, I don't care for the amount of superhero stories that are about right and wrong, good and evil, heroism etc. It's a problem with martial arts films too.

pretty sure the comment on the video mentioning that she’s probably thinking of a Daredevil issue he illustrated is correct

Yep, when Ditko returned to Marvel he was adamant he wouldn't draw Spider-Man or Dr Strange ever again, not even in cameo appearances etc.

I recently read through most of Nocenti’s run on Daredevil. The “babies in bags” thing she mentions made it in, but if it was a metaphor for socialism (lol) she omitted that part or Ditko did not exactly explain how to convey that bit

The idea of Steve Ditko wandering into your office and rambling about his philosophy is pretty funny.

A friend of mine, who organised comic conventions in the UK, met Ditko up at the American Marvel offices in the early 1980s. Rather cheekily, my pal asked Ditko if he would like to come over to the UK as a comic con guest. Ditko just said, "No, I did one of those in 1964".

All Time Comics vol 1

This seems is mostly modelled on 80s and 90s superhero comics but I thought there was a lot of golden age in there too. I didn't like the stories much, it felt something like a reverential parody, embracing the clichés too much. It improves a little bit after the first couple of issues but never stopped feeling a bit restrained to me despite the outlaw attitude. There are some funny bits, but overall it's pretty staid. I know some artists find collaboration fun but as with the mainstream comics they're paying tribute, the pencillers and inkers rarely shine brightest when working together.

I mostly bought this because I wanted to see Josh Bayer's drawing and he doesn't have that many pages but writes most of it. He has a wonderfully sludgy drawing style so the writing kind of perplexes me because it's so straight forward. I quite like the stiff tensity of Benjamin Marra's best drawing and the work by the 4 colorists is really nice and warm, the most consistently good thing here. Herb Trimpe doing some of his last work. There's a ton of pinups and covers by a lot of artists and the several Das Pastoras pictures are why I'm keeping this book.

I have the second volume and it looks more energetic so I'm still looking forward to it.

"No, I did one of those in 1964".

👑

George Pérez is leaving us.

To all my fans, friends and extended family,

It’s rather hard to believe that it’s been almost three years since I formally announced my retirement from producing comics due to my failing vision and other infirmities brought on primarily by my diabetes. At the time I was flattered and humbled by the number of tributes and testimonials given me by my fans and peers. The kind words spoken on those occasions were so heartwarming that I used to quip that “the only thing missing from those events was me lying in a box.”

It was amusing at the time, I thought.

Now, not so much. On November 29th I received confirmation that, after undergoing surgery for a blockage in my liver, I have Stage 3 Pancreatic Cancer. It is surgically inoperable and my estimated life expectancy is between 6 months to a year. I have been given the option of chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy, but after weighing all the variables and assessing just how much of my remaining days would be eaten up by doctor visits, treatments, hospital stays and dealing with the often stressful and frustrating bureaucracy of the medical system, I’ve opted to just let nature take its course and I will enjoy whatever time I have left as fully as possible with my beautiful wife of over 40 years, my family, friends and my fans.

Since I received my diagnosis and prognosis, those in my inner circle have given me so much love, support and help, both practical and emotional. They’ve given me peace.

There will be some business matters to take care of before I go. I am already arranging with my art agent to refund the money paid for sketches that I can no longer finish. And, since, despite only having one working eye, I can still sign my name, I hope to coordinate one last mass book signing to help make my passing a bit easier. I also hope that I will be able to make one last public appearance wherein I can be photographed with as many of my fans as possible, with the proviso that I get to hug each and every one of them. I just want to be able to say goodbye with smiles as well as tears.

I know that many of you will have questions to ask or comments to make, and rather than fueling the fires of speculation and well-meaning but potentially harmful miscommunication, I will be returning to the arena of social media by starting a new Facebook account where fans and friends can communicate with me or my designated rep directly for updates and clarification.

Please search for @TheGeorgePerez on Facebook if you’d like to join the page to receive updates. For media and press inquiries, please use the contact information on the page as well. Please respect the privacy of my wife and family at this time and use the Facebook page rather than reaching out through other channels.
I may not be able to respond as quickly as I would like since I will be endeavoring to get as much outside pleasure as I can in the time allotted me, but I will do my best. Kind words would also be greatly appreciated. More details to follow once it’s up and running.

Well, that’s it for now. This is not a message I enjoyed writing, especially during the Holiday Season, but, oddly enough, I’m feeling the Christmas spirit more now than I have in many years. Maybe it’s because it will likely be my last. Or maybe because I am enveloped in the loving arms of so many who love me as much as I love them. It’s quite uplifting to be told that you’ve led a good life, that you’ve brought joy to so many lives and that you’ll be leaving this world a better place because you were part of it. To paraphrase Lou Gehrig: “Some people may think I got a bad break, but today, I feel like the luckiest man on the face of the Earth.”

Take care of yourselves—and thank you.

George Pérez
December 7th, 2021

I hope George has a great Christmas.

A real legend.

Eloquently written. Thanks for posting that.

https://www.ign.com/articles/huge-games-company-embracer-group-buys-dark-horse-comics

I was like, who the heck is Embracer Group? They're a renamed conglomerate pka Nordic Games that also owns Gearbox, Deep Silver, and dozens of other studios and media companies.

bbbut Mike Richardson said last Friday that reports they were looking to be acquired were untrue

we need a new thread but till then, i wanna recommend this guy:
https://www.instagram.com/derekmballard

I hit him up on IG and bought some originals. His shit is so good!

I saw that Zdarsky's DD run described as critically acclaimed and apparently Elektra is taking on the mantle and having gone through 4 trades I feel confident in saying this is low brow trying to pass itself off as mid brow.

that's zdarsky's specialty but I don't mind it

Zdarsky's DD run is one of the weaker ones imo - it's not bad! it's just DD is probably the most consistently good mainstream superhero comic (tends to get good writers on long runs) so there's a lot to live up to and I wasn't sure this one did. I thought it had too much repetition over the whole DD manslaughtering a guy thing. Or idk maybe I was just a bit fatigued bc I caned all of Soule + Zdarsky over Xmas break.

i'm curious too, but never started the run. one day i'll catch up with the last 20 years of Daredevil. someday...

https://treasuryofbritishcomics.com/between-the-historical-and-the-fantastical-on-don-lawrences-karl-the-viking/
Never seen this stuff before

rebellion is constantly pumping out old boy's comic collections that confound me.

Who knew about Marney the Fox for instance?
http://doomrocket.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/marneyTF_01.jpg

Didn't know about the Karl The Viking release so it is now on my buy list

Good artwork on both

we're not even gonna try for a 2022 thread?

Agreed that Rebellion are finally doing justice to the IPC library that they inherited, though there is still so much that has never been reprinted.

The Book Palace company have also been reprinting classic Brit comics for a number of years now. They're a small publisher, so their prices are not cheap, but I would especially recommend the Larrigan collection in their Fleetway Picture Library series, with great illustrative artwork by Arturo del Castillo:

https://bookpalace.com/bpb/Larriganpeek/26/index.html

Of course, the cream of Leo Baxendale, Ken Reid, Davey Law's etc work for DC Thomson's humour comics has never been reprinted in any kind of coherent fashion. Which makes this two-volume set of Reid's non-Thomson stuff especially essential:

https://www.brokenfrontier.com/frankie-stein-ken-reid-power-pack-jasper-grasper/

Rolling Comic Books 2022

I like how Marney the Fox thinks: "'Tis the stumbling approach of hated man!"

I do too!

the reference point is at least partially the original Bambi book