2014 what are you reading thread

Pax Romana #1 - I doubt this is going to wind up being good but I'm going to grab the rest of the series; time-travelling Catholic crusaders who apparently turn Earth into Dune? Aight.

Twilight Zone #1 - good-looking art but not distinctive, was hoping each issue would be a story but it looks like there will be multi-issue arcs

Baltimore: Chapel of Bones #1 - I guess there's supposed to be some backstory I already know from the Hellboy/Mignolaverse? Books like this are frustrating, some spooky setting and a reveal but nothing much to care about in the single issue itself.

I just read Simon Hanselmann's "Life Zone" and Michael DeForge's "The Boy In Question" from Space Face. The DeForge is typical (ie excellent), but Hanselmann was a huge surprise for me. I've enjoyed the Megg, Mogg & Owl stuff I've seen before (I tried going through the archives online but reading sequential posts on Tumblr is a giant pain in the ass), but now I think I'm more excited for the Fantagraphics release than anything except Charles Burns's Sugar Skull.

The Nightly News #1 - maybe it gets better than sub-Fight Club posturing but I'm unlikely to find out.

Got the first two Y The Last Man collections next.

Got an unexpected Kindle for X-Mas so I'm aimlessly digging into the digital collection. Reading OG Thunderbolts from the beginning, to be followed up by the post-Heroes Reborn reboots of the Avengers titles. Still waiting to see if I eventually understand why Busiek is rated so highly.

David Finch's Batman: Golden Dawn. Pretty much as bad as I'd heard. (The girl/MacGuffin is actually named Dawn Golden...) Especially compared to the Morrison-written Batman: The Return story at the end of the trade that set up Batman Inc.

BERSERK by KENTARO MIURA

I was curious about Berserk 8 years ago and I was put off by the number of volumes and had reservations about the art style but last year I found out what I was missing out on.
I was a bit nostalgic for some of the animation I used to watch and I had heard good things about the 90s animated series and thought that might be a good way to spend time and find out if I wanted to commit to the comic series.
Although the animated series looked like it was done on a tiny budget and tight deadline (lots of shortcuts taken), considering that, it did an admirable job of telling the story (I think the recent animated films were too much like a summary and didn’t get the power of the gradual changes in story) and the soundtrack by Susumu Hirasawa was very powerful and evocative. It hooked me and I really needed to find out what happened later in the story (the 90s animated series largely ignores the first few volumes of the comic and ends at some point in volume 13).

This review was written after reading volumes 1-37, which is all that is currently available. I’ve done my best to avoid spoilers, because they really do matter in this story and I think fans are generally conscious of that.

I’ll use pros and cons...

The Good: I’m rarely interested enough to try long running comic serials but I’d say Berserk is one of my top contenders for that form. It has a really brilliant dark fantasy plot that unfolds in a really satisfying way and introduces several fascinating mysteries every now and then. The way the early characters change and grow together is really well done and although there are lots of tangents that bother me from the latter half of volume 14 and onward, the main story thread stays tantalising and well composed.

One of the early pleasures is seeing the world slowly letting in more and more fantasy; the initial disbelief and terror felt by the characters.
The events of volumes 12-13-14 makes one of the most incredible turning points I’ve ever seen in a story.
The story can be surprisingly emotional. In the first 14 volumes there were three different points that nearly had me crying.

The fantasy is visualised at a standard far above what most comic artists and companies are willing to attempt. The landscapes, scenery, architecture, castles, armour, boats, corpses and monsters all look excellent; there are lots of really brilliant images that succeed mightily in grandeur, awe, nasty brutality and grotesque.
The large scale battles that go through various stages are often amazing. I think the battle in volumes 33-34 must be the most impressive one I’ve ever in seen in a visual narrative medium and it’s unlikely for a film or a videogame to reach that kind of power and assurance.

I think it is interesting that a couple of the main characters have done truly terrible things but they are still more or less heroes. The position of some of the monsters is understandable and fairly sympathetic.
It is often a criticism of popular Japanese comics that they contrive a group of friends supporting a hero in a quest, but Guts benefits from friendship in way that doesn’t seem forced or unconvincing. In a way, he never really stops being a loner; you see him come out and retreat back in his shell to varying degrees depending on who is around him.

It isn’t really a good or a bad thing but there are several visible inspirations from films like Hellraiser, Phantom Of Paradise and Pet Semetery. Miura claims the similarity between Guts and Ash from Evil Dead was a coincidence but later on there is an Evil Dead reference.
Some character names are based on science fiction titles.

The Bad: I think most of the complaints I have about Berserk are about clichés. Sometimes I’m tempted to blame it all on overwhelming genre expectations influenced by fan demographics and powerful editors, also keeping in mind the serial is originally shown in a magazine for young men.

The very first scene in the first volume feels so out of place in the story that it feels like it never happened.
It bothers me that all of the female rape victims always look relatively glamorous.
There is a scene in which an ape-like monster tries to rape one of the main female characters and it is played way too humorously; the monster looked a bit goofy, the scene looked a lot like something from monster rape porn. When the creature’s genitals get severed, I think the cartoony humour undermines respect for the nearly victimised character.
A few characters prominently suffer from rape trauma and it is an important thing for the story to present better.

That scene was wisely left out the 90s animated series. Not only benefitting for the reasons above, but also because monsters are very slowly and gradually placed into the world of humans and the ape monster being seen by humans lessens the shock of what follows after. There are other monsters seen early, but so few people see them that there is a bigger doubt cast on the reality of those events.

The most persistent problem in Berserk is the comic relief, sometimes it goes away for a couple of chapters but it always comes back, and to makes things worse, it is very rarely funny. People often say how difficult Japanese humour is to translate but I strongly doubt the jokes work very well over there either.
It breaks the fourth wall regularly and there is even a joke that the story would be too dark without the humorous characters but I don’t see how being too dark could ever be a problem. Were the creators and editors ever honestly worried that people might stop reading if it were “too dark”?
These lazy jokes are pointlessly crammed in to excessive degree and the cartoony antics don’t sit comfortably with everything else. In those chapters crammed with the bickering of Puck, Isidro, Ivalera and Schierke (who are some of the weakest characters in the story, but sometimes other characters are guilty of it too), it is easy to forget how brilliant the comic can be and there were several times it was so overwhelming I considered giving up on Berserk, but in the last two volumes I ended up skimming these scenes.

The other big problem is that some of the tangential battles and adventures go on for far too long. I mean the Elves of the Misty Valley part with the two girls’ friendship; the trolls invading the village, the floods and the swampy forest caves where the trolls live; the pirates, sea monsters and merrows part.
There are other parts that went on far too long but those were easily the worst offenders, for various reasons. Those chapters have the most ill advised comic relief; they keep the books running far longer than they need to (more on that later) and keeping you from the most exciting main plotlines.

There are recurring irritants in the action scenes. Sometimes the pacing does this thing that I see all the time in lots of comics and films when some imminent danger is coming, yet lots of things manage to happen in that supposedly tiny space of time, including lots of dialogue. Sometimes it looks as if monsters are politely waiting for everyone to finish their speeches before attacking (a privilege that anonymous crowds never get). This gives the action an artificial feeling, as if the main characters are being protected.
There is a young boy character called Rickert who is somehow one of the leaders of an army, seeing him hold his own in a battlefield looks completely false.
Methods of creating tension like prolonged fights, anxious tactical planning and long explanations of how magic works aren’t really effective when Guts improbably survives extreme violence on a routine basis; even in a fantasy world with healing faeries (always called “elves” for some reason) it isn’t at all convincing . What was all that detailed suspense for when Guts always ends up winning, as if the story is saying “he survives because we say so”? All those efforts at creating suspense feel like wasted time when he survives any extremity of violence thrown at him.

I thought one of the later fights with Serpico and Guts was a really silly idea, they are prepared to kill each other, when they stand to gain very little from that and both of them could have suffered serious consequences for killing the other. “Good guys” fighting in comics has always been a major turnoff to me, it always makes the heroes look like fools who don’t realise there are more important things going on. The reasons are rarely compelling and it always seems like fans wanting to see a certain matchup is the motivating factor.

Berserk suffers from an excess of the “show, don’t tell” philosophy. Many of the less important events would be better if they were summarised in captions or made into quick montages. Miura understandably wants to show lots of places and monsters, but seeing lengthy fights with detailed tactical dilemmas for every encounter is not exciting. He probably could have shown a lot more cool monsters and places if he didn’t feel the need to show everything that happened at each time.

Although the art is great in general, there are problems here too.
All of the young characters and many of the female characters don’t have their own faces; they have uniform faces to suggest cuteness, so I can’t help but feel cheated when many of the faces in the crowds are more distinct than some of the main characters. It feels stylistically jarring to have cartoony characters next to far more realistic ones. Sometimes too many shorthand facial expressions are used and that lessens the drama.
I’ve heard Miura uses assistants (like many popular Japanese series) and the cartoony characters look like they were done by a different artist; those characters are not flattered next to the more beautifully rendered elements.

For a character as restless, world weary and boldly independent as Guts, he often looks far too self-conscious. He sometimes poses as if he is trying very hard to look cool and his hair looks way too neatly styled for a guy with his lifestyle (you never see him with facial hair no matter how rough his days have been).

Sometimes some of the panels are a bit cluttered and lack clarity, this is worse when there is lots of dialogue and sound effects but I wouldn’t say it was a big problem.

Many of the problems I’ve listed above pad out the books far longer than they needed to be; the story probably could have been finished by now if it didn’t do all those things I complained about. I think creators should take into consideration how much time and money a potential reader will need to put into a series like this. I’ve tried to persuade some people to buy the series and I don’t blame them for being so reluctant. It cost me well over 200 pounds for those 37 volumes and I didn’t even pay full price for most of the books; add to all this that many people are reluctant to read it because there were long periods of it being out of print (the Darkhorse English version at least), so difficult to complete the series.
You could stick to the first 14 volumes because that does constitute a great story but it would be an infuriatingly open ended one.

In a dream world where Berserk is shorter and sweeter and didn’t have all the aforementioned annoyances, it would be a far bigger phenomenon than it is and it would be one of the greatest fantasy stories ever made. But as it really is, I still love enough things about it and I’m still desperate to find out how the story finishes. I might have spent longer listing the flaws, but the good qualities are very powerful at times.

Started Harvest by Jim Crace. The opening does not bode well for me -- really heavy on "voice" and labored "beautiful" prose imo. The narrator does not sound like a person. Opening to a random page:

"Still, there was essential work to finish yesterday, whatever our distractions. If we hoped for sufficient grain to last the year, we'd have to deserve it with some sweat. This summer's yield was not yet good enough. Plenty, here, has wed itself to Leanness. At the lower, shaded limits by the dell and on the more neglected stony slopes our plants have proven miserly." It's fine writing, and yet it's so fucking CRAFTED that I almost can't take it.

BAAHHHH goddamnit, wrong reading thread

I'm mostly reading the old Marvel comics.

Marvel Masterworks Fantastic Four vol.6 (up to #56 - beginning of Dr. Doom/Inhumans/Silver Surfer epic, which I think is where Doom steals the power cosmic. Never read this one.)
Essential Amazing Spider-man Vol. 9 (up to #191 in Marv Wolfman's run which is Jonah going after Spider-man again after thinking he killed John and hooking up w/ Smythe and the Spider-slayers again who is out to kill them both as the radiology from the slayers has given him cancer. I read this as a teenager and it's a pretty decent run of Spidey.)
Essential Marvel Team Up Vol. 4 (up to #81 which is a Spidey/Dr. Strange/Clea & Satana storyline during Chris Claremont's run as writer. His run is really good and a few of the issues with John Byrne in vol.3 are ace.)
Essential Peter Parker Vol. 2 (starting this one. This is in Bill Mantlo's run on the comic and just finished his tie to the original clone saga, which had good guest appearance with Daredevil including art by Frank Miller on 2 issues. Solid.)
Essential Hulk Vol. 2- (I'm up to #115 which has the Leader show up again for the first time in a while.)
Marvel Masterworks Warlock Vol. 2- (I'm up to Strange Tales #180. I read these a long time ago and have read the later Thanos arc, but this is the first time reading these classic Starlin issues since I was a kid. It's some of my favorite Marvel comics.)

My monthly pull list is mostly Image comics - East of West, Black Science, Lazarus & Five Ghosts. I've got a couple of the Avengers titles on mail subscription and also get Daredevil and Hulk via my pull list.

hey robert, i meant to reply earlier but thanks for your take on Berzerk. it's a series i was always kind of interested in, but i'm always intimidated by the length

Óscar Martínez - The Beast: Riding the Rails and Dodging Narcos on the Migrant Trail. Just heartbreaking. And admirable in scope and execution.

Oops. Wrong thread. Apologies.

Nhex- thanks. It is kind of a tough one to decide on for all the reasons I listed above. But it sure is by far preferable to most comics.

I've been less engaged by comics recently.
I liked some things in Mould Map 3 but I didnt understand all the hype. Been buying the Corben/Poe stuff and it is so-so/nice enough but I wish Corben would do something more ambitious. That recent Alex Nino book Molly Doves was disappointing and I wont bother with further issues.

On a more positive note, I'm very intrigued by Kerascoet, Maester and the recent Foligatto book.
Looking forward to the Fantagraphics Graham Ingels book even though I'm sure I have most of that stuff.

It bewilders and depresses me that everyone I see who reads Marvel and DC comics treats it like a dirty habit that they cant give up. There are plenty of other comics and things that desarve your time more.

I just read volume 1 of Ed Piskor's Hip Hop Family Tree and thoroughly enjoyed it.

I read and enjoy Marvel stuff. DC not at all, and I don't imagine buying (or even t0rrenting) anything by them until the next Grant Morrison whatever-it-is comes out.

reading Batman Inc Demon Star - pretty good, usually GMoz silliness

Finally decide to tackle Tezuka's Buddha. Read the first couple of volumes and I'm hooked.

oh yeah, it's all time

I read the first volume when the reprints started but never followed through on the rest. A friend found a cheap used set so he's passing them along as he reads them.

concur wrt Buddha, good shit

i'd seriously be interested in a retelling of The Bible with that kind of fun/pizazz

crumb's genesis has its own appeal but hoping for another tezuka is a long shot

Just finished Binet's 'HHhH'

Townscapes by Christin and Bilal
Crossing the Empty Quarter and other stories by Carol Swain
Complete Eddy Current by Ted McKeever

all very cheap in forbidden planet glasgow

Was in Forbidden Planet Glasgow today, bought the Ingels EC compilation Sucker Bait. Also the Beautiful Darkness Kerascoet book, I just flipped through it an hour ago and one page really fucked me up like nothing in Berserk ever did, really not a kids book unless films like Watership Down and Plague Dogs dont bother your kids.

There is Wolverton's Bible but I didnt think it was anything special aside from the revelation images at the end.

What the hell

http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20140220/PC1603/140229919

There is a lot of comics collections I resisted for a long time because of the good art/poor writing thing and also that I'm familiar with a lot of the stuff already but the temptation is rising again. I try to resist them unless they look amazing but just the quality of the drawing/linework has drawn me back to the idea of getting this stuff again, even if the individual images arent as powerful as I would often want.
All this stuff is going to cost about 250 pounds if I really want it all. Ditko, Mort Meskin, Simon+Kirby, Joe Kubert, Nicolas De Crecy and Bastien Vives.

I cut and paste my response to this topic...
www.hoodedutilitarian.com/2014/02/most-overratedmost-underrated-comic-strip/

The appeal of newspaper strips and webcomics in this style has always mystified me. I dont count Eisner’s The Spirit and similar comics because it feels just like a regular comic book.

It is a total mystery to me why so many people prize this form for creativity. Monthly comics is a bad idea for a very large percentage of creators, but weeklies and dailies sounds insane. It’s like standup comedy in that there are so many factors against you that you have to be a truly special type of freak to make it work.
It makes me think of crazy ideas for professions; like a chef who wants to have rocks thrown at him and a bull chasing him around a kitchen while he tries to work.
Deadlines aside, creating humor or any other type of amusement in the form time after time seems extremely tough to me too.

I think the only comic strips I’m a proper fan of are Gustave Verbeek’s visual trickery.

Even if I like the drawings in some strips, I never feel drawn or compelled by the content of 99% of them. I’ve been tempted to buy a Krazy Kat (because it is often called the best comic ever) or Thimble Theatre (because Domingos liked something that had a pop culture phenomenon in it) book before but there is just isnt enough allure in what I have seen. When I was a teen I assumed someday I would read Terry And The Pirates, Steve Canyon, Prince Valiant, Tarzan, Flash Gordon and Peanuts but I have pretty much no interest now. When I’m tempted I think the desire is to be totally enveloped in a world that you get to spend a very long time in.

From what little I seen of CC Beck’s critical writing, I always found it a bit unconvincing but it was kind of weird and funny. I always remember him saying “newspaper strips are boring because people who read newspapers are boring”; I found that funny in how sweeping a statement he made.
A lot of the strips in newspapers I’m familiar with seem almost invisible, because it taken me years to consciously notice/think about them, even though I’d seen them for so long. They seem like sleepwalking cartoons; you wonder who reads them. Some were unbelievably banal.

The only collections I’ve had are Windsor Mccay ones. Nemo is amazing in terms of the visual trickery but in general I found it a real heavy chore to read. At first it has quite a lot of unnecessary text but even when it cuts down there is still too much and the formula gets really stale even if the images and ideas are still excellent.
I just couldnt read a strip collection daily or weekly. I cant think of many things I’d want to read that regularly over one year let alone many years (decades in some cases).

Just looked at Nicolas De Crecy's blog, that guy draws like a motherfucker.

just read black hole for the first time and liked it enough to check out x'ed - which i much preferred! fantastic stuff.

I loved Black Hole; X'd has great work too, but I'm kind of hoping it all ends somewhere well, it was starting to feel like super-indulgent Clowes stuff where I left off.

My newspaper strip love honestly largely comes from having read them every week as a kid, so I'm very familiar with the form, gobbling up collected editions from my libraries and bookstores throughout my life. This extended to daily webcomics as well by the end of the '90s. But I have a harder time getting into the old 30s/40s/50s material.

Monthly comics is a bad idea for a very large percentage of creators, but weeklies and dailies sounds insane. It’s like standup comedy in that there are so many factors against you that you have to be a truly special type of freak to make it work.

For anyone interested in this I highly recommend R.C. Harvey's biography of Milton Caniff. That guy was superhuman.

I heard the acclaim for that. Wasnt there two books?

Even reading about people who couldnt do it is interesting. I think it was Frank Thorne(?) who basically had no life doing his strip and drew on public transport and had his wife drive him to deliver the work while he slept in the car from exhaustion.

The lives of many japanese comic artists sound terrifying; although I dont know what is the general standard of living/creating. Why would anyone want a bestseller series when your trade your entire life for it and dont have the time to make it of any real quality? No wonder there is so much cliched crap with no signs of new elements when you have zombies who basically do nothing but create comics.

I think it was Frank Thorne(?) who basically had no life doing his strip and drew on public transport and had his wife drive him to deliver the work while he slept in the car from exhaustion.

Thorne never had a newspaper strip of his own, only drew them briefly when he was young.

newspaper strip similar to a sonnet - a minature mode of expression with tightly bounded formal rules/properties. it is a quite different experience from the novelistic comic book/graphic novel, but imho no less pleasurable once you accept the limitations of the form.

The great newspaper strip creators worked worked long and hard over many years, but the most successful of them could afford to hire assistants to do quite a lot of the heavy lifting (eg Dick Rockwell pencilling and Shel Dorf lettering Steve Canyon for something like 30 years).

Just finished Buddha. I'm a little dumbstruck. What an amazing work.

Just starting "Ubik"

Also reading "The Fighting Temeraire"

Then on to "Unfinished Tales" from Tolkien, Hamiltons "Reality Dysfunction"
Whilst dipping into from time to tome, lovecraft collection and the science fiction megapacks

argh, wrong board

As for comics, just got hold of "The Art of Denis McLoughlin"

heh - for 2015 make sure to put COMICS in the thread topic

Was reading one of the latest House of 1000 Manga posts by Jason Thompson. A manga was mentioned called Tuna Empire with a woman trying to spread peace in afghanistan using a mass orgy. Bush jr and Hussein end up having sex and Bin Laden makes an appearance too. Sounds funny.

oh jeez i remember that one

it's very silly

I walked around my nearest comic shop picking up things in a dilemma of buying them or resisting them. Mostly 40s-50s Simon/Kirby, Mort Meskin and Ditko. I spent about an hour and a half changing my mind because it was all going to cost so much money. In the end I just bought Polina by Bastien Vives (his linework is gorgeous).

Even after leaving the shop I was still extremely conflicted over getting them someday. Part of the dilemma is that I'm already very familiar with that era of Simon/Kirby, Meskin and Ditko. I feel like I've been there and done it when I had a big phase in my late teens/early 20s. So it's hard to pull out my money so fast when the excitement is mostly gone. I envy people who are just getting into this stuff right now, with all these comprehensive collections coming out finally. If all this was out a decade ago I would have attempted to get all the PS Publishing 50s horror reprints, Warren reprints, Fantagraphics EC reprints; the Kirby, Ditko, Meskin, Everett, Krigstein, Kubert, Bob Powell, Jack Cole and Toth collections. Too bad most of the scripts aren't too good.

But the compositions of Ditko are often really impressive even when the drawings are a bit lacking (he was churning out a lot at that time) and there are so many beautiful touches.

I love the chunky, rubbery, doughy look of old Kirby art, especially the faces he draws on thugs and kids, they look like you could knead their faces; the panel/page compositions also look great (even if they aren't always smooth to read).

I don't think the Meskin compilation has the best selection sadly.

A couple of days ago I ordered the Ditko books and Kirby's Sandman.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that someday Marvel and DC will offer Meskin, Kirby, Ditko, Heath and Everett collections with decent scans. It's horrible how much they put into those expensive Masterworks and Archives collections and the art reproduction is terrible.

Can someone tell me which Tezuka books are unflipped? I read one volume of Phoenix and it was great but the flipped aspect bothered me (they are becoming very expensive too. I think that eventually (presuming the planet is in decent shape) all manga will be unflipped and I'm willing to wait a few decades to read Otomo's Akira and a lot of Tezuka.

black jack and dororo are unflipped.

Thanks.

Creature Commandos is batshit and poignant. Fred Carrillo very underrated imo.

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2014/02/28/star-wars-comics-will-never-be-the-real-thing-eric-stephenson-publisher-of-image-comics-talks-to-comicspro/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

It's very nice to hear a big guy in the industry clearly state so many of the problems of the industry. Quite a few things I always feel like saying, especially about nostalgia for old IPs.

I have never read an Image comic but that's a great speech

also kind of self-serving on his part

"SEX CRIMINALS, LAZARUS, VELVET, PRETTY DEADLY, ROCKET GIRL, and RAT QUEENS"
all of those titles added up, were they to magically release in the same month, would equal one low middle-tier DC title (Catwoman or Green Arrow, maybe) in sales at my shops.

The graphic novel format and the tendency for indie titles to seem like they're just being produced for the inevitable trade paper collection is actually not very good for comic shops, IMO - I sell a lot of Saga TPBs, sure (though roughly half as many as an event DC release like Joker: Death of the Family), but not that many single issues and I make more money on single issues than I do on trades. Batman readers come in multiple times per month (because they know their titles will be released in a timely manner, unlike a lot of Image titles that can go months between releases), meaning they see the superhero merch and GNs I've gotten in from week to week, they buy a vinyl Batman figure or a poster.

Saga readers don't have any of those ancillary benefits and often can't be seen other than to pick up the latest collection - which also makes them far more likely to ditch me for Amazon.

Also, this is some catty shit, because IDW (who produce the Transformers/GI Joe/My Little Pony/etc.) recently passed Image in dollar market share and are right on their heels in simple comics sold.

Because they want the real thing.

TRANSFORMERS comics will never be the real thing.

GI JOE comics will never be the real thing.

If he wants to prop up Saga as a model for new comic books I can't complain about that at all. And honestly he's right; the women's audience always feels under-served.

The question that comes up every few years, is that hardcore Batman audience that comes into the shop every month always going to be around? It has for the last twenty years or so for the direct market, but as he alludes to, there's a lot of people like me, with the disposable income to buy comics, older, who has no interest in going to these shops every week. What keeps me coming back is this stuff. Build that larger audience that might only buy a few books a year.

You're right though - it's tough to resist the siren call of Amazon when it's so much cheaper than retail.

(And come on, Transformers and GI Joe comics are generally awful.)

The IDW titles aren't great, IMO, but it's not like every Image title is Saga, either. There's no shortage of women in refrigerators, ultra-violence and craptastic spinoffs (this week's Tales of Honor looks like videogame art) in the Image catalogue.

"SEX CRIMINALS, LAZARUS, VELVET, PRETTY DEADLY, ROCKET GIRL, and RAT QUEENS"
all of those titles added up, were they to magically release in the same month, would equal one low middle-tier DC title (Catwoman or Green Arrow, maybe) in sales at my shops.

Sex Criminals #1 is into its fifth printing. Pretty Deadly had a first-issue run of 57,000 and sold out before release.

Milo, your comments here suggest that a Beto or Seth or Kelly reader would not feel welcome in your store, and thus they have no impetus to come in, rather than going to Amazon.

Howso? The stuff I personally read, aside from a couple of Marvel titles I'm trying to get into, is in the vein of Saga/Pretty Deadly/Deadly Class/Hellboy/etc.. I didn't read superhero comics as a kid and still really don't.
I don't let that color my ordering or displaying, because I'd rapidly go broke if I catered to my tastes instead of what sells. I carry 99% of titles from the big 5 and many from the next 5.

Pretty Deadly was a returnable title. I ordered as many of that one as a Justice League title and sent back 60%. It was also a hyped number one and sold about as well as a decent DC title does mid-run.

Image is a good company, I enjoy many of their books - but the speech does little to convince me that they're the One True Path of comics. The successful titles they've got right now have a lot of precedence in Vertigo from 10-15 years ago... owned, of course, by DC.

In that you specifically value someone who is going to impulse-purchase a Batman statue more than someone who buys Palookaville.

It's not startling that the publisher of a company would say good things about his company at a trade meeting, surely? And Vertigo aren't doing what they did fifteen years ago now, and obviously never will under Nelson.

I've been reading some of the Bleeding Cool forum comments and I found it quite funny that one of the first comments was by someone with a GI Joe avatar saying "what an asshole".

Some were making the points that Transformers and GI Joe had more in-depth storylines than the cartoons or films ever did. Also That the Star Wars universe was explored in a way that the films could ever manage. Some people are saying these are notable exceptions but dont reflect what most cross media tie-in comics are like.

Some people were saying that Stephenson underestimates how many readers come in due to cross media tie-ins.

I think what is most important that Stephenson talks about is building a future which supports new ideas and bringing in more different types of readers. It doesnt really matter whether you like Image (they have changed a lot and might be taking on titles in the future that they dont right now; they surprised me by taking on Bob Fingerman) or that most of their titles dont sell as well as the big franchise ones. I think comics have been going in the right direction for a long time but it has been going at such a horrifically slow pace that many current creators and readers are suffering for it. It's just downright morbid to imagine in decades later Marvel and DC still being the backbone of comic shops and the only places creators are likely to make a living.

I think it is interesting that this is about supporting the direct market in particular. About maybe 8 years ago I started seeing comic fans who didnt care if the direct market survived and I felt that way for a while but now I think if it changed enough it could make great things happen.
I recently started hearing about Homestuck being wildly popular and stuff aimed directly at school children like Amulet doing extremely well. So comics are growing in ways that might change it a lot regardless of what direct market people are doing and they might have to take advantage of these developments.

For many years I bought Previews every month and eventually there was just too little that interested me and the stuff that filled the catalogue was too depressing. Like seeing how well a Star Trek pizza cutter sold. Probably the most horrible thing I ever saw was a vinyl bear with the Watchmen logo on it, going for an obscene price. The idea that this was seen as more saleable than a lot of comics that couldnt get on to Previews.
I started seeing so many comics creators coming out who were only found in the most extremely specialised stores. Occasionally I buy Previews again and it depresses me so much that I swear off it every time but I buy it again a roughly a year later. I try and roughly gauge the percentage of creator owned comics (maybe including art books) versus everything else and I think it's only something like a quarter or a fifth.

I have to go now but I've got more to say later.

In that you specifically value someone who is going to impulse-purchase a Batman statue more than someone who buys Palookaville.

(Note: this is an oversimplification as there's massive overlap between superheroes and Saga and Star Wars - but it's the monthly superhero and Star Wars comics that keep people coming in.)

It's not startling that the publisher of a company would say good things about his company at a trade meeting, surely?

It's also worth noting that Ms. Marvel and the new Serenity series (Big 2 superhero and spinoff) are bringing more young women in to the stores than any Image title of late.

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2014/03/03/dark-horses-mike-richardson-and-idws-ted-adams-respond-to-eric-stephensons-comicspro-speech/

Response from guys at Dark Horse and IDW.

My local shop is really great on breaking that cave stereotype and getting out of just superhero comics. They are also good selling titles through trades more than the monthly book and have displays in their store to appeal to different types of readers including a children's section. I know the owner has said that the Walking Dead trade when it comes out is the best selling comic in the shop. Robert Kirkman's a local here, so his comics were really, really popular before the whole TV show happened.

They also are really involved in the local comic scene doing events for 24 hour comic day and having meetings for local creators etc.

yeah my local shop is like that - kids' section, foreign language section, LGBT section, crime section, local/zines section. art gallery in the back. couches, coffee table, loads of trades. taking my daughter there is great.

My kids sections have been colonized by Bronies.

put in smaller chairs

i'm surprised that these retailers and publishers still see some kind of future - or market - in the physical comic book. now that 'the graphic novel' has to be ppl's preferred way of consuming 'real' comics, i'm still waiting for the mainstream american publishers/retailers to convert to the more european-style album format of all original material.

if these publishers were really serious abt supporting comic book stores, wldn't they make more exclusive product (ie not available from amazon)?

I don't think Amazon sells many individual issues, so I think they are almost near enough exclusive. Recently I've started to see Amazon not selling some graphic novels until a few weeks (maybe a month) after it comes out in comic shops. Is this is new policy or something?

Those Richardson and Adams responses were good. Thanks for posting that Milo.

I don't think Stephenson meant that Image was the one solution to the problems of the industry, I think he was saying he wanted all publishers to focus on creator-owned work but obviously wants Image to be at the forefront of that.

I read Beano and Dandy every week for quite a number of years, then got Beetlejuice, Mighty Max and Monster In My Pocket comics all at the newsagents. It was only when I was 9 years old and got a Spiderman comic (because of the cartoon) that I became serious about comics and for some reason I didn't consider those previous comics "real"; 2000AD never really appealed to me and I used to turn my nose up at that too.
I guess time will tell if those current tie-in comics bring in readers that feed into the industry in general. I tend to think that an original story being a first comic for someone (if they enjoy it) probably makes a stronger impression about the medium and its possibilities than a tie-in.

I bought Previews again out of curiosity about this debate. Dark Horse has way more tie-in comics than I remember. Those Aliens, Predator, Terminator and Robocop comics used to put me off DH as a company. I think more often than not tie-ins for creators are jobs done for the money more than the pleasure; they generally look half assed as comics. When I see my favourite creators doing this stuff it tends to feel like a waste. Sad that they had to take that work.

I wonder if Darkhorse and IDW need these titles to stay afloat?

Looking at Image's current output I noticed the variant covers (Richardson was really right about that; but I don't think they do the incentive thing which really is rotten). I think too many of the comics look visually similar, you might have a varied subject matter, but if all your artists look like they learned to draw from copying superheroes and mainstream manganime, that is going to put off a lot of people.

I'm curious about why Image and IDW don't publish translated Japanese and European comics.

I saw two things that interested me: IDW publishing a Russ Heath art book and Darkhorse doing a Katsuya Terada one.

The high price of comics is easily the most common remark I hear in comic shops (I guess you could argue back that prices are complained about regularly in all kinds of shops), it might be obvious and I don't think they price these things high for greed but I think it should always be kept in mind. I don't know why there needs to be all those Humanoids special editions; other publishers doing slipcases for single books (why?!!); hardcovers and ultra thick glossy paper for comics that don't really need it.
I have to confess that I've chosen amazon a few times recently because some books are so expensive I don't think I'd buy them at all at regular price (38 pounds each for Simon/Kirby's Sandman and Newsboy Legion books, does it really have to be that expensive?). But I still made sure to buy a few things at the store. This time I bought Simon/Kirby's Horror and Creepy Comics volume 3.

A few more disordered tangents...

- I've been wondering a lot recently what a lot of creators do between comics jobs. There are a lot of times when many of my favourite creators don't seem to be doing any comic related work or commissions or anything that you can find out about on the internet. If I ever go to conventions I'd like to ask this. I could probably name 50 people I wish were regularly putting out comics work. Probably a lot of them cant find comics work that pays well enough.

- I remember an interview with Arthur Adams in which he said he wasn't really in a hurry to do creator owned work and I guess from reading Monkeyman and O'Brian that he maybe isn't great for plot ideas. But he is good with visual designs.
Even though people generally have a low opinion of pinup/gallery comics, I think there should be more stuff like that. Some artists have great visual ideas and clumsily shoehorn them into a boring story. Why not have more books of pictures?

- How many mediums could you say were close to how they should be. I'm glad I'm not someone who closely follows all the developments in films/cinema because that would really get me down. People always talk about poetry being in the worst rut in terms of sales and popularity but I have no idea about the vitality of what is coming out right now. Maybe radio drama creators and fans have more to despair over.
I think comics almost need to be better than other things to really grab and hold newcomers. Substandard films can be experienced by several people sitting together, possibly "free" on your tv, maybe with actors you already know that maybe get written about in gossip columns. Substandard music can be heard on tv, radio, shops, nightclubs, transport and can easily be experienced socially. Comics don't have enough of these advantages.
These pictures of loads of kids reading comics look surreal now...
http://beautiful-grotesque.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/cool-kids-read-comics-various.html

- Most countries don't seem to have much in the way of a comics scene. As much as I hate to say it, maybe franchises have kept the American scene alive. British comics seem to be coming back to life, with these new graphic novel publishers but it is amazing that we used to have so many comics up to the 70s and majorly tapering off in the 80s-90s (left with much fewer kids humour titles, kids franchise tie-ins, 2000AD and Commando).
I heard that the French/Belgian scene stays alive by the backbone support of translated Japanese stuff.

...more tomorrow.

The old way with single issues and some graphic novels was that non-direct market sources got them 2 weeks to a month later. The way the comics market works is insane - one distributor (Diamond) gained a monopoly in the early '80s when other distros went under, Marvel tried to branch out solo in the early '90s and that was a disaster so it went back to all the major comic companies selling to one source, who then distribute nationwide.

It's a collusion that has worked reasonably well for all parties - comic shops saved the comics industry, Diamond plays enforcer on behalf of comic shops while also providing shitty service and not so great discounts until you start buying a sizable amount - a shop still doing the 1980s cave thing probably only gets a 42-45% discount from Diamond. Diamond has a close relationship with DC (DC has an option to buy Diamond at any time, acquired when Marvel tried to break away) and the direct market, Marvel has been less friendly with both since Disney money started rolling in.

I wonder if Darkhorse and IDW need these titles to stay afloat?

i'm surprised that these retailers and publishers still see some kind of future - or market - in the physical comic book.

The way the comics market works is insane - one distributor (Diamond) gained a monopoly in the early '80s when other distros went under, Marvel tried to branch out solo in the early '90s and that was a disaster so it went back to all the major comic companies selling to one source, who then distribute nationwide.

no.

you're gonna have to expand on that opinion

I'd be sad to see Dark Horse go, I hope it doesn't happen. I imagine Hellboy would be picked up by somebody else if that were to happen. DH has also been a pretty good home for Richard Corben and it has been rumoured that his underground comics are going to be reprinted by them.

After Picturebox stopping and Fantagraphics needing a kickstarter to keep going, it is scary to think how those type of comics might struggle to stay in shops. Especially since Fantagraphics has lots of long running ambitious reprint series.

Don't most Mignola books stand alone? Isn't it just BPRD that is more continuity based? And all the stuff that is there isn't really that hard to collect compared to other superhero stuff.

I just realised there that Batman compared to a lot of superheroes (X-Men in particular) probably has more standalone books and maybe sells better for that?

- It confuses me why so many fans get antsy about comics not coming out monthly or being delayed a bit. I could imagine why if you only followed a couple of titles but some comic nuts get livid about delays despite there being so much else to occupy them.
If there was only graphic novels (or "big thick comics" as my preferred term, although some are only 40 pages) I wonder if that would turn some people away. Maybe some people who cant afford many comics per month (especially younger readers) wouldn't like it.

Personally I'd like it a lot. About 85% of monthly comics look unfinished to me; I see a lot of collected editions where the first issue looks great and the rest look hurried. I think this would be less frequent if only GNs were made.
Even if there was regular series of GNs, they would probably have a much better overall quality. I think some creators like Steve Niles makes comics that seem too brief individually and are obviously created with graphic novel posterity in mind.

One of the things that bothers me most about individual issues is that they seem like a waste of precious paper to me. I hate seeing stacks of issues nobody bought because they were waiting for the collected edition. It seems that collected editions are more often pre-decided now, when they used to depend on strong sales of individual issues.

I cant remember if there is a returns policy for direct market comics. I recall complaints about there not being a returns option or there only being limited options. It would explain all the stacks of unsold issues that nobody wants anymore.

- I used to hear the words "flood the market" quite a lot but that term doesn't seem to pop up as often. The biggest publishers being accused of creating more titles just to keep smaller publishers off the stands. I don't know if Diamond has encouraged this but I've heard some people partly blaming them for it. That most shops are obliged to sell all DC and Marvel titles before they think about stocking anyone else's titles.
I heard one comic shop employee bitterly grumbling that diamond stopped offering titles that did well (better selling than the minor DC and Marvel stuff) to make more room for comics, toys/merchandise from the bigger companies. That's really shitty.

- I used to see a lot of discussion about it being difficult to know what really sells well and about the numbers possibly being guarded (but why would anyone?). Between direct market, book stores, online shops and digital sales it's really difficult to accurately tell what is truly the most popular. I don't know how much library loaning enters the picture but illegal scan blogs, forums and file sharing are extremely popular. Some people just want to keep up with the latest storylines more than enjoying the comics as whole.

- To illustrate my discontent with the American/British/Canadian (anyone else share roughly the same direct market?) comics shops, I say imagine music shops overwhelmingly stocked tribute bands and covers bands (some people would says this is already true, but I'd say that is excessively reductive even though there are grains of truth in it) all based on the songs of a relative minority or bands. A large part of the store selling toys and merchandise of the most popular musicians. Toys of George Martin, Tony Visconti and famous groupies are more important than stocking cult bands.
Or imagine book shops sold mostly sequels/remakes of Charles Dickens, Tolkien and a few other writers and a large amount of the shop was James Bond, Tolstoy and Conan toys.

These kind of comparisons never work entirely but I think it still makes my point.

- Part of the frustrating thing about comics for me is that compared to other things they are extremely easy to make. People often say that any film being completed is a miracle because it's such a complicated process with so many people involved. With the internet it's easier than ever and I'm surprised that I don't see more interesting stuff. There is thousands of bad/mediocre webcomics and thousands of great artists/illustrators but very few notable online comics. Since it is so easy, why aren't there hundreds of great comics on blogs and tumblrs?

Speaking of Mould Map 3 above, even though I really admire the drawings of a lot of new alternative comics artists, I find most of them don't really communicate that much. I'm fine with vague obscurity but they don't often draw me in or seem potent enough. I'm sure none of these guys make a living from their work and I see a lot of promise in their way of doing things but I want a lot more from them in terms of power.

I cant remember if there is a returns policy for direct market comics.

That most shops are obliged to sell all DC and Marvel titles before they think about stocking anyone else's titles.

Thanks.

I got Verbeek's Upsidedowns collection (Sunday Press) in the mail today and it is amazing. Collects Quite a lot of his other strips but probably none of them to completion. I'd love a complete Terror Of The Tiny Tads collection but I'm sure I saved them all as jpegs years ago from some comic strip archive. There's something amazing about the morphing uncertainty (for lack of a better word) in his linework that is wonderful. I was dissing newspaper strips a little bit above but seeing these surrealist comics from this era makes me wonder how much more of this stuff there might be. Sunday Press actually doesn't publish much but they are pretty ambitious books.

Diamond didn't gain a monopoly until the mid 90s; when I started self publishing True Swamp in 94 it was still Diamond and Capitol City as the two big distributors with iirc three smaller but not negligible other companies (like if diamond and Capitol ordered 800 each the littler ones were ordering 100).

No publisher was exclusive with any of these distros; you got orders from all of them.

Then this stupid, stupid mania happened where all the publishers started going exclusive with one or the other of Diamond and Capitol, with much trumpeting for each signing. Everyone had to take sides all of a sudden. This resulted in the failure of Capitol City and the smaller distros. I still shake my head over this, it really really sucked and was unnecessary and ended up making things permanently worse for everybody except Diamond.

Denis Kitchen and James Owen were admirable, demented, quixotic heroes

Lol

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/spiderman-only-on-the-web-if-the-superheros-adventures-go-digital-will-they-have-the-same-magic-as-the-original-comics-9179098.html?origin=internalSearch

This would be a pretty extreme step if they weren't going to even stick with printed collections. I've heard talk of digital single issues for quite a few years and think it would be a good idea.
Some businesses can afford to act as if everyone on the planet has a great internet connection but I don't think they are one of them or that they'd totally abandon it, I don't see how sales could rise. Maybe avoiding the cost of printing would benefit them enough to do something this drastic?

I haven't bought any of these digital comics. Is anyone offering digital copies of Marvel's 30s-60s output without all that Masterworks remastering ruining the art?

I hope digital comics makes more translated and obscure work possible to own.

http://appadvice.com/appnn/2014/03/marvel-unlimited-update-introduces-native-marvel-comics-reading-experience
testing this out now.
went by a shop for the first time in forever, bought book 2 of adventure time, trondheims approximate continuum comics and vance and burr's on the ropes

The Marvel Unlimited app is finally fullscreen on iPads, which is nice.

xps Diamond gained their monopoly in the 90s exactly because Marvel tried and failed at going it alone.

Marvel bought Heroes World to distribute themselves exclusively -> the other distributers scramble to get exclusive deals with other publishers -> smaller distros fail without full roster of publishers -> Marvel's efforts failed -> Diamond left as the only distro standing.

Also, Marvel's attempt at going it alone and the subsequent exclusive deals meant retailers had to order from distributers. Splitting their orders meant losing out on their previous deals for amount of stock ordered, increasing the cost for the same comics they'd always ordered. Marvel's move put literally thousands of shops out of business.

order from *multiple* distributers

Thanks for sorting those memories out for me. Prior to the Marvel buy, Heroes was one of those second tier but substantial players.

It's funny what a microcosm of nineties capital idiocy the whole thing was.

Yeah iirc it's because of Heroes World being a second-tier player with limited coverage that doomed Marvel's endeavor. (I'm remembering all this stuff from reading the Untold Story book a few months ago.)

it was doomed for more reasons than that, all around Marvel's blind overconfidence in itself.

It is a total mystery to me why so many people prize this form for creativity. Monthly comics is a bad idea for a very large percentage of creators, but weeklies and dailies sounds insane. It’s like standup comedy in that there are so many factors against you that you have to be a truly special type of freak to make it work. ... I’ve been tempted to buy a Krazy Kat (because it is often called the best comic ever) or Thimble Theatre (because Domingos liked something that had a pop culture phenomenon in it) book before but there is just isnt enough allure in what I have seen. When I was a teen I assumed someday I would read Terry And The Pirates, Steve Canyon, Prince Valiant, Tarzan, Flash Gordon and Peanuts but I have pretty much no interest now.

i don't have much interest in the adventure comics (though i should check out terry one of these days), but it's important to remember that with very few exceptions the best strips either are relatively short-lived (barnaby, C&H, segar's popeye) or have a definite 'peak' period; it's very rare that a strip's creator manages to keep up quality for longer than about 10 years. krazy kat is the one exception i can think of, where you've got about three decades' worth of work and it's basically all great. but imo the best strips more than hold their own against anything else in the field.

terry and steve canyon are fun reads even now

Terry: Skip the first (IDW) book, where Caniff is still developing the premise and his art. Books two thru four are solid adventure yarns, the best of their kind but samey after a while. Towards the end of book four is where it starts to get really interesting, with the war taking over the story. The last two books, with Terry in the Air Force, are the essential stuff.

backed up, going to read a bunch when I fly on Monday:
Rover Red Charlie 2,3
Deadly Class 1,2
Night of the Living Deadpool 1-4
Royals Masters of War 1,2
Lobster Johnson, Get the Lobster 1,2
Empire of the Dead
Twilight Zone 2
Baltimore Chapel of Bones 2
new Dark Horse Presents

i dl'd the first six books of this, it's very good and easy enough to find cbrs if you wanna
http://www.amazon.com/The-Vanishing-Alone-Volume-1/dp/1849181969

That looks good! Always up for weirdo Spirou stuff.

http://www.kaskus.co.id/thread/000000000000000003870846/scanlations/126
found this and kinda went nuts. worth exploring.

Some increasing interest about little known comic artist Ryuichiro Kutsuzawa, really really impressive stuff...
http://www.cheshirecatart.com/blog/?p=1482

Interesting, like if Masamune Shirow did work that wasn't sci-fi/porn

some good looking stuff there forks

Yeah i uh "got" about a hundred books and am reading them now.

http://theappendix.net/issues/2014/1/hark-a-vagrants-kate-beaton-on-comics-history-and-drawing-admiral-nelson

interview is great but i was curious -- "She is perhaps the only cartoonist ever to be published by both Marvel Comics and The New Yorker." Is this true? I tried to think of other "cartoonists" who might've been published in both. I thought surely Stan Lee must've done something for New Yorker once? I couldn't find any online evidence if he had. Anyone else who might fulfill this criteria?

Jaime Hernandez did a cover and story for the indie version of Strange Tales and has had a number of illos in the New Yorker. Seems like he's done a cover or two as well?

she's probably the only "she" who published in marvel and the new yorker but i'm not sure i even believe that. marie severin?

Ivan Brunetti was also in that Strange Tales and has done at least one New Yorker cover.

Jillian Tamaki is a Canadian illustrator known for her work in The New York Times and The New Yorker and for the graphic novel Skim, written by her cousin Mariko Tamaki.[1]

Comix Book reprinted Maus, and Spiegelman has been in the New Yorker approx 972,034 times

Indie comickers : Strange Tales :: Heavy metal dudes : Testament ?

If Testament was formed with the intention of getting guys to play heavy metal in it, then yes

kinda sorta

Francoise Mouly, the art editor at the New Yorker, coloured some Marvel Comics

r crumb had a strip in a Kurtzman book published by Marvel, and has appeared in the New Yorker

^ covers and reportage multi-page colour strips

kinda think infinity would have been a lot better if roz chast had been the continuity editor

Mazzuchelli?

I've been getting into some of the 2000 AD series trades, since so many are now not hard to find in the US. I'm reading the first Slaine TPB, Judge Dredd Mega City Masters 1 and the first Dredd Case File right now. I got the first Nemesis the Warlock and Strontium Dog Agency File in my stack to start next.

first nemesis volume is awesome, mills and o'neil at the top of their game

and halo jones is in the v top tier of alan moore comics

http://brokentractorparts.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/scan.jpg

Got to say that Zombo "Can I Eat You Please?" was a really, really fun read. I know Al posts around here and all I can say is thumbs up. I'm definitely going to rep. Zombo to my local shop, as knowing the guys that work there and how many zombie comics they sell there are people that would love it if they read it. I've got the second Zombo trade on order. There are bunches of really funny lines of dialog in the comic and Henry Flint's artwork is really sharp.

Foligatto. If it didn't look as great as it does I'd feel ripped off by 15 pounds for 64 pages.

I saw a huge stack, maybe 20 copies of Fashion Beast reduced in the comic shop. I woulda thought 80s Moore would have sold better.

It's not 80s Moore though, it's '10s Johnston

oh hi dere every volume of blueberry scanlated into english

better link

The translation was decent and the lettering so good in the Epic editions, I don't think I could bear to look at it with amateur translation and computer letters

Are rhose avail to buy in us anywhere?

the paperbacks have been out of print for two decades, obviously, because Marvel; a lot of the hardcovers are still available direct from the publisher

Read the first Rat Queens TPB on the plane today. EXCELLENT book. Great story for $10. Heavily recommended.

Anyone know any sites for good coverage of lesser known comics? It pisses me off to no end seeing endless coverage of the usual suspects. When I want to read about comics, I always want to discover new things.

Domingos has probably the most unusual taste of any comic fan or critic I've ever seen, I disagree with him on quite a bit, but he is immensely refreshing.

http://thecribsheet-isabelinho.blogspot.com/
http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/author/oubapo/

Joe McCulloch has written for a few sites but he writes weekly on Comics Journal and he digs up interesting things now and then.

http://www.tcj.com/author/jog/

This site has been really good for seeing new artists...

http://www.comicsandcola.com/

Forks, thanks for the Blueberry link, will check it out. I thought that the Epic/Moebius stuff had never been reprinted because of a dispute over ownership of the translations, but the may be to underestimate Marvel's haphazard approach to keeping stuff in print.

I have just got my first Ipad Air, and would welcome advice on good comics apps, etc.

Oh, and I mostly been reading a couple of those lovely Trigan Empire reprint volumes, by Butterworth and Lawrence.

The Trigan Empire reprints are one of my most favourite possessions. They really are beautiful.

some good links, robert, thanks

How do you guys rate the comics output of Jodorowsky? I've been curious about his stuff but the artists he works with never grab me-"BUT MOEBIUS!" you say? I really like a lot of his individual drawings but most of his comics I've seen are only intermittently as impressive.

The Incal is amazing

one of my favorite comics ever. don't really bother with the non-Moebius stuff but mostly cuz poor

Just bought Incal collection (are Before and Final totally different books? so many editions of his books it's confusing) and 3 of his films I haven't seen. I imagine his work is a total bitch to collect.

Isn't some of his graphic novels coming out for the first time? I better decide whether I like him soon because every reissue shoots up in price quickly.

the Incal's been collected and reprinted in weird ways so I'm not sure... I have the recent Humanoids hardcover reprint, a gorgeous thing

Just looked up a list of his output and most of his comics have been translated or will be soon. But none of his fiction novels, short stories or poetry has been translated, of which there is quite a lot. I'd like to see his vision when he doesn't rely on anyone else.

http://comicbook.com/blog/2014/04/27/gerry-conway-the-comixology-outrage/

re-reading my old issues of Frank Miller's Ronin. this is actually better than I remembered it, such a weird synthesis of Japanese and European comics

ie primarily Lone Wolf and Cub and Moebius

New Dungeon in English in November
Preorder
very stoked

!!!

Thanks for that link, two new Kerascoet books!

Just bought the Jodorowsky/Moebius Madwoman book. Like, the last reasonably priced copy on amazon, I can't believe comics still get rare and expensive like that so fast. Until recently I never had to worry about things becoming rare within months.

Humanoids print less than a thousand copies of some of those big hardcovers

Ronin also hangs in pretty well along side the whole 80s cyberpunk fiction too. Back in the 80s there was just boodles of those things except the last issue or so in quarter boxes as it was kind of a sales bust. I think in hindsight, it's one of the best things Frank Miller ever did.

"I thought that the Epic/Moebius stuff had never been reprinted because of a dispute over ownership of the translations, but the may be to underestimate Marvel's haphazard approach to keeping stuff in print."

I would have figured that was a straight licensing job, which Marvel used to do left and right back in the old days.

You add it up, Archie Goodwin did quite a few pretty cool things at Marvel back in those days as an editor. It's pretty sad that the company pretty much gave up on doing anything interesting like that anymore.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA NEW DUNGEON FINALLY AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

aaaaaaaaaaa it's in november fuck that shit aaaaaaaaaaaaaa

new sfar tho!
http://www.uncivilizedbooks.com/comics/pascin.html

Gy

making up for a ho hum reg season
--kidd-gilchrist-douglas-roberts- (Spottie)

Terry: Skip the first (IDW) book, where Caniff is still developing the premise and his art. Books two thru four are solid adventure yarns, the best of their kind but samey after a while. Towards the end of book four is where it starts to get really interesting, with the war taking over the story. The last two books, with Terry in the Air Force, are the essential stuff.
--sleepingsignal

I see that Kerascoet's Beauty is the full collection. I really hope it includes the cover art for the original books and the deluxe version. Editors who don't include all cover art in collected editions are pure evil.

I mean just get a load of the deluxe cover art...

http://www.bdfugue.com/beaute-coffret-beaute
http://www.kerascoet.fr/index.php?2013/11/25/332-les-trois-tomes-de-beaute-reunis-dans-un-coffret-avec-un-poster

I think in hindsight, it's one of the best things Frank Miller ever did.

I'd go as far as to say it IS the best thing he ever did, certainly my favorite.

Thanks for hipping me to the Kerascoet, had never heard of - preordering the NBM now

miss don't touch me is A+ stuff

I'll snag that too when NBM represses it (they say they are) - vol. 1 is in $$ ebay hell right now

Kerascoet's Beautiful Darkness came out a while ago and it is gorgeous.

More people should check out Cecil's Quest by Skala, as you can see I hipped McCulloch to it...
http://www.tcj.com/this-week-in-comics-8713-real-dolls/

Hi all. A friend of mine just launched a kickstarter surrounding the second issue of his self-published comic book Bright Spiral. I haven't read the first issue yet, but have been checking in occasionally on his tumblr (http://brightspiral.tumblr.com) and have always loved his art. I'll probably back this too so I'm just throwing this out at y'all in case it piques your interest.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1094383965/bright-spiral-issue-1-and-issue-2-printing

Just found out Al Feldstein died recently. I'm quite a fan of his art, in fact I think it's a shame he didn't produce more horror and crime stories throughout his life, there was something compelling about that stiff style, a cold stillness or something. There was a book dedicated to him not long ago.

http://imgur.com/a/EeNpT

^def one of the greatest comic strips ever

whoah!

Reading quite a few of the Feldstein articles on Comics Journal site, a bit of talk about trends that come and go, how teen humour was not a safe bet for very long sales wise. Then it struck me: how has Archie survived to this day?
I occasionally see a few copies in the comics shops, I once saw two teen girls asking a shop keeper for Archie comics a few years ago but I never knew anyone who ever read them. I guess in America the franchise seems like a bigger phenomenon (still sold in newsagents?), but how has it stayed alive? It doesn't seem like something that would appeal to most young people and it doesn't seem like it has the sort of geeky canonical worship that supports Superman. I've never seen it in Diamond's top 100 sales.
I'm sure there is a logical explanation but right now I'm enjoying the idea that some supernatural power has kept something alive that seems like it should have ended in the early fifties.

I actually never knew that Feldstein worked an important role at Mad for so long. Mad is another thing that seems to be a way bigger phenomenon in America than it is with the worldwide fandom of American comics. I think I've read maybe one or two issues of it.

Archie doesn't sell much through Diamond. MAD was huge in many other countries.

3/4 of the way through the flamethrowers. i don't know if i like it or not yet. i think the stuff about the italian futurist motorcycle gang and The Motherfuckers are great but reno is just such a cipher. i can't help but feeling i'd rather read a book narrated by ronnie.

I should maybe point out that I didn't intend to compare Mad to Archie in terms of its success being a mystery. That sort of parody has never died down in fashion (understandably), the constant new parodies keep it connected to the wider culture. Mad has had loads of great artists, many of the early ones worked in all sorts of genres and are considered giants of the medium.

Yeah, Feldstein was justifiably irked that Kurtzman gets the credit for Mad, when the magazine as it's best known was all Feldstein's doing. It's pretty clear that without Feldstein's work as both writer and editor EC would not have thrived as it did, nor would Mad had survived, Kurtzman or not.

I've been thinking about Wally Wood recently because of that recent Cannon reprint. I quite like Wood, but like most people I find his early work way better. I heard good things about his work like Wizard King but as with a lot of his later work, I found it kind of lifeless looking. If only he had done fantasy epics in the more lavish manner of his fifties work.

http://wallywood.tumblr.com/post/51656754836

This looks like a parody.

afaict Archie sort of sits apart from the rest of the comics industry in terms of distro/audience

Archie's one of those comics I read hungrily as a child, but am amazed that kids still read it these days

well there's been some developments
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=52012

my daughter's been interested enough to buy a few issues

ugh guys the new bendis miles morales spiderman #1 is so lovely

For a few seconds I thought that was a joke article, then I saw the artwork. With all those superhero artists doing covers it looks like a typical example of making a cartoon character way more serious than they probably should.

Another thing about Archie comics that interests me is the number of titles and number of pages for much cheaper than most thick comics.

Archie has gone super mainstream lately and gotten great press for it. I certainly can't imagine reading the comics but they're not aiming at me anyway.
http://popwatch.ew.com/2014/03/04/lena-dunham-archie-comics/
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/archies-afterlife-ties-up-emotional-701717
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/03/business/media/archie-comic-picks-film-and-tv-writer-for-top-creative-post.html
http://www.vulture.com/2013/10/afterlife-with-archie-comic-Roberto-Aguirre-Sacasa-interview.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpz8KWpbEA0

xp some of the archie titles are digest sized and it's in that form that you'll see them in non-comics stores. more pages but less content per page. also, they have much lower quality paper than regular comics these days.

it's kind of amazing that archie have been publishing a sonic the hedgehog comic (and spinoffs) regularly since 1992.

i won't rep for archie these days but at its best it produced some of the best kids' comics ever -- the '60s era jughead comics in particular are great.

At CBBD the other week they had an "autopsy" of Canicule by Baru. Effectively a 'making of' deconstruction over the whole mezzanine floor, I couldn't help buying it despite not having that much French. But DAMN is it good.

xp i wish that stuff was getting reprinted in "essentials" style books... the collections archie puts out are crappy and scattershot and at the other extreme dark horse are publishing $50 glossy archive collections.

Finished Richard Reeves' good 2007 bio of John Stuart Mill and am almost finished w/Thurston Clarke's JFK's Last Hundred Days.

yes but how is the artwork

an archie dbl digest, w/ plenty of Dan DeCarlo a/work, is always a v relaxing and pleasurable reading experience imho

when i was in florida five or six years ago i was impressed by the way that i would often see archie comics racked next to the check-outs in big chain supermarkets - much better distribution than marvel or dc

yeah you still see it in big chain supermarkets out here - are they distributed by the same folks that distribute People and Weekly World News or something?

ugh guys the new bendis miles morales spiderman #1 is so lovely

― purposely lend impetus to my HOOS (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver),

So OTM! I was thinking about this a bit today -- David Marquez and Sara Pichelli have been essential to Ultimate Spidey's excellence because they're so good at facial expressions and body language. Bendis' books are so conversation-heavy, a lot rests on that.

I'm kicking myself because I forgotten the artist who claimed he gave W Gaines the basic ideas to do horror comics. It was this site that had a bio + interview of the artist, he said Gaines taken the ideas without paying him and told the artist he had no proof to tell anyone this really happened. I think it was one of the guys who worked on Avon's Eerie (first horror anthology comic ever), maybe Fred Kida, but I can't find anything from search engine.

Thread regulars, there has been discussion regarding this thread's title going on over here:

Request thread title change

lol
fault lies on both the threadstarter and the non-topic reading posters
too lazy to care about the thread as it already exists though

http://www.jimzub.com/creator-owned-sales-over-the-long-haul/

so this fascinates the fuck out of me

ha, I remember The Makeshift Miracle! cool to see that guy went full pro

http://www.filmlinc.com/films/on-sale/aya-of-yop-city

i didn't even know this got made! Looks great!

apology for thread title change

I've been continuity to read 2000 AD related series including both some classic series and newer stories.

Strontium Dog Agency Files Vol. 1 - I'm a couple progs past the time travel story where Johnny, Wulf and Gronk capture Hitler.
Judge Dredd Case Files Vol. 3 - I'm about 1/2 way through this collection.
Slaine "Time Killer" - This was a delightfully weird and lunacy filled comic. Sections of it reminds me of the Archon parts of the Invisibles at the end of Vol. 3. I'm not sure the story really made a whole lot of sense, but it looked cool and was really fun.

Shakara "The Avenger" - I've read the first story now twice. Henry Flint's artwork is really great.
Judge Dredd "America", "Origins", "Mutants in Mega City One" & "Tour of Duty: Mega City Justice" - I've been on a run trying to catch up with more current Judge Dredd titles, so I started with these collections as while a couple of them are older stories, they do tie in with what has developed over the past couple years. I thought they were all really good. I'm going to follow through on the Tour of Duty, Day of Chaos and Trifecta collections next.

Other than that I am up to date on East of West, Lazarus and Black Science from Image.

I'd also like to try some of those Alejandro Jodorowsky/Moebius comics but am unsure really where to start, especially since The Incal looks to be out of print

What would be a reading order for The Incal, Metabarons & Techopriests? I've been trying to figure out some kind of reading order without having the stories ruined, but from what I understand they are all inter-related correct?

Incal is first

I haven't read them yet but I guess reading them in published order shouldn't spoil anything.

The UK version of Incal published by Self Made Hero is still readily available and just as good as any other version (although it is regular comic sized pages and the Humanoids version is probably magazine sized). I even saw it at Waterstones book shop last week.
Imported copies may be more expensive but just checking on the American version of Amazon, it is still far cheaper than the Humanoids version. I'd say it was a better cover too.

Humanoids put out the Incal series in a couple of different sizes. The regular hard cover is pretty much the same at least size and page count as the UK version.

Before the Incal is pretty cheap if you get the Wildstorm issues, which are like a buck each used at mycomicshop.

Received my copy of Madwoman Of The Sacred Heart and it is also not the Humanoids version, but another UK publisher, Sloth.

For those of you reading comix on tablets, here's something I didn't know:

https://archive.org/search.php?query=astro%20boy%20AND%20collection%3Aadditional_collections
https://archive.org/search.php?query=alita%20AND%20collection%3Aadditional_collections
https://archive.org/search.php?query=royale%20AND%20collection%3Aadditional_collections
https://archive.org/search.php?query=%28collection%3Amanga_library%20OR%20mediatype%3Amanga_library%29%20AND%20-mediatype%3Acollection%20AND%20title%3A%22%20century%20boys%22
https://archive.org/search.php?query=%28collection%3Amanga_library%20OR%20mediatype%3Amanga_library%29%20AND%20-mediatype%3Acollection%20AND%20title%3A%22adolf%22

and lots more but none of it really organized

something tells me this stuff shouldn't actually be on archive.org

the dark horse copyright was my tip off

Robert Stanley Martin has been doing extensively researched articles mainly about 70s-80s Marvel and trying to be more impartial about the people involved. Some people have been annoyed at him because they think he's anti-creator but I'd say whether he is right or wrong, I don't think he wants to flatter anyone.

I had never heard anything good about Jim Shooter for years and R S Martin managed an incredibly impressive defence of him that seems to have impressed even a lot people who were previously content to view him as a bad guy.
http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/2013/01/jim-shooter-a-second-opinion-part-one-the-best-job-he-can/
http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/2013/10/jim-shooter-a-second-opinion-part-two-romper-room-on-crystal-meth-installment-1/

His piece on Steve Gerber and the Howard The Duck controversies, second link is all the official documents.
http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/2014/05/all-quacked-up-steve-gerber-marvel-comics-and-howard-the-duck/
http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/2014/05/the-howard-the-duck-documents/

Another thing from the same site.
http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/2014/05/wonder-woman-bondage-feminism-all-for-20-off/

Noah Berlatsky finally got his Wonder Woman book published. He started writing about the original Wonder Woman a couple of years ago, he believes that she is one of those idiosyncratic creations (from idiosyncratic creators) that don't make much sense or hold much value when authored by anyone else. I remember being curious why more stuff like this about Wonder Woman hadn't been written a decade earlier because it seemed odd that Batman and Superman and even Green Lantern had more discussion when Wonder Woman seemed more interesting in so many ways.

I have to confess that even though I like Noah and think this book is worthwhile, I'm not interested enough in superheroes anymore to read this but for anyone who is, go for it.

"here" (mentioned upthread) gets expanded to 320 pages:

http://www.randomhouse.com/book/111690/here-by-richard-mcguire

From one of the great comic innovators, the long-awaited fulfillment of his pioneering comic vision.

Richard McGuire’s Here is the story of a corner of a room and the events that happened in that space while moving forward and backward in time. The book experiments with formal properties of comics, using multiple panels to convey the different moments in time. Hundreds of thousands of years become interwoven. A dinosaur from 100,000,000 BCE lumbers by, while a child is playing with a plastic toy that resembles the same dinosaur in the year 1999. Conversations appear to be happening between two people who are centuries apart. Someone asking, “Anyone seen my car keys?” can be “answered” by someone at a future archaeology dig. Cycles of glaciers transform into marshes, then into forests, then into farmland. A city develops and grows into a suburban sprawl. Future climate changes cause the land to submerge, if only temporarily, for the long view reveals the transient nature of all things. Meanwhile, the attention is focused on the most ordinary moments and appreciating them as the most transcendent.

(With full-color illustrations throughout.)

wow.... so is that a comic... or?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57hR44mB5u0

it's a comic:

http://imgur.com/a/EeNpT

― Mordy, Tuesday, May 6, 2014 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^def one of the greatest comic strips ever

― Ward Fowler, Tuesday, May 6, 2014 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Is McGuire's comic a comic or an adaptation someone made as a student film 23 years ago?

er xpost

fawa - i'm familiar with the original but that expanded book says "illustrations throughout" which doesn't sound like a comic

ok wasn't sure... yeah that press release is vague.

Pantheon has it listed as a graphic novel.

that isn't Here "in full" btw - the 1989 version has been under expansion over the last decade or so, for eventual book-length publication by Pantheon

(McGuire has also done lots of other graphic design and 3D design and toys and illustration and film, and two other comics, btw)

― (D1CK$) (sic), Saturday, February 1, 2014 11:13 PM

he's also shown sections of the work in progress as an installation a couple of times IIRC

cool, i'm excited

Robert Adam Gilmour, thank you for posting those Robert Stanley Martin links, which were of course very interesting. I don't know about him being 'anti-creator' so much as him being on the side of efficiency, capital, common-sense. That's probably the right way to run a business in America, but it makes for poor artistic-critical judgment, imho. Like, right at the start of that Shooter piece he flatly states, "From an aesthetic standpoint, the Shooter era at Marvel is easily the most vibrant time in the company’s history apart from the heyday of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko back in the 1960s" which is, to say the least, up for debate, but presented here as a simple statement of fact. And then: "The writer-editor position had always been a bad idea" - well, tell that to Harvey Kurtzman. I could go on.

I also applaud him for doing some basic journalistic digging around the Howard the Duck case which yes, should have been done years ago, but his recourse to contracts, legal obligations and court rulings does seem to blind him to the fact that Gerber's artistic achievement trumps all the cards in Marvel's portfolio of 'own-it-all grab-it-all' work-for-hire properties. Compelling as all this history and gossip is, it's no substitute for watchful appreciation and illumination of works of art, like issue three of Howard the Duck, say.

I admire a lot of his approach but in terms of taste I don't think I'd agree with much, but I guess I don't see eye to eye with many comic fans taste wise.
For my favourite 80s Marvel stuff more of the credit probably goes to Goodwin.

Looks like more Sergio Toppi is getting translated.

A collection of all Corben's Poe work for Dark Horse called Spirits Of The Dead is coming in October.

Thanks for the Martin links - I find his bias (and his perception that he lacks bias) irritating, but they're all really interesting pieces. I did go on to read his blog about Locas, though, which is such an incredibly closed-minded reading, it kind of makes me distrust anything he might say.

he is a terrible thinker and a total asshole (as a writer/on the internet). that Gerber piece is notable for largely suppressing his weird pro-mgt anti-creative tendencies, and doing lots of good research that he mostly just reports on (rather than having 1.5 facts that he extrapolates from heavy-handedly while ignoring other sources)

it's p good, is what I'm saying

weird? America was built by psychopaths with bottomless greed, my friend

http://www.raggedclaws.com/home/2011/02/05/look-here-read-just-passing-by-by-alex-nino/
Probably one of the best things Alex Nino ever did.

sic is otm re: martin, and berlatsky is even worse.

Yeah, I'd not looked at the Hooded U before because of a deep aversion to Berlatsky's thought and writings. I can't help feel that he's using things like the Shooter piece primarily to wind Gary Groth up.

I like Berlatsky. He can be painfully contrarian and provocative for its own sake (I think Martin does this sometimes too) but he's good at writing about issue driven things he really cares about. He used to be quite rude but that died down and he's very welcoming, nice and encourages all sorts of views to come in for discussion.

My problem with Hooded U is that he is constantly dismissing superheroes as irrelevant but mostly features writing about them. Rather than writing feminist critiques of X-Men, I think more writing about explicitly feminist comics by writers who could defend themselves would be better (there has been some, such as the Tits & Clits anthology). I kept suggesting Sam Kieth because he is a weird combination of things whose work always has some level of feminist consciousness (My Inner Bimbo was very strange), but he didn't sound interested.

I appreciate Zainab Akhtar, Domingos, Joe McCulloch and Sarah Horrocks because they cover stuff that nobody else ever talks about. I think this is REALLY IMPORTANT in comics. Considering the amount of people writing online about comics, the lack of variety is astonishing and depressing.

Writing outraged feminist thinkpieces about the latest superhero blunder is just pointless after a certain point, they just keep coming (I think some of those offenses are intended to anger bloggers to create more publicity). Bad comics should be marginalized rather than spotlighted.
Shifting the focus to genuinely good comic creators is way more important than trying to reform some hopeless cause. It really infuriates me when people want to correct DC and Marvel to be a certain way when there are already comics that fulfil that criteria. I think comics journalists should try to consciously keep contributing something positive, it's way easier for fans and critics to change the comics industry than something like the film industry.

I find it amazing that Zainab manages to keep talking about interesting comics I've never heard of. That's a valuable contribution to comics.

More about Hooded Utilitarian.

Ng Suat Tong writes some good criticism, unlike most critics he is properly demanding of comics and I appreciate that.
http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/author/ng-suat-tong/

Comic artist Mahendra Singh rarely writes there but I enjoy his opinions a lot.
http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/author/mahendra-singh/

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/gallery/2014/jun/06/jesse-jacobs-safari-parasites-in-eden/

http://assets.nybooks.com/media/img/blogimages/SF_35_jpg_600x950_q85.jpg

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2014/06/08/magazine/world-cup-curse-of-maracana-1402024157285/world-cup-curse-of-maracana-1402024157285-largeHorizontal375-v3.gif

what do ilc'rs think of some kind of rolling notable comic, cartoon, editorial images thread?

golf, amirite? ilx's comic strip voting thread is now open

just picked up the new Mighty Avengers and the recap page made me do a double-take for its use of TRUTH BOMB

http://therumpus.net/2014/02/the-new-york-comics-picture-story-symposium-keren-katz-on-the-history-of-israeli-comics/

Keren Katz is insanely talented, buy her minis if you get the opportunity

i'm generally skeptical of buzzfeed but this seemed like a good roundup-
http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewziegler/indie-comics-that-you-need-to-be-reading

counterpoint: most of those look terrible

Hey, at least they seem to have some good art in there. I just ordered The Last of Us: American Dreams, coincidentally.

yeah! i thought some looked great. i checked out kinski, strange nation, + deadly class. i already like saga

I can always use more library recommendations, will definitely both these on reserve if I can find them

Whoa, I had no idea Faith Erin Hicks is doing The Last of Us, her previous comics (Superhero Girl, Friends with Boys, Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong) have all been really good. I'm generally wary of comics based on video games though, have there ever been any good ones?

Pretty Deadly has absolutely gorgeous art by Emma Rios, but the plot is hard to follow. It's more of a mood piece than a plot-driven comic anyway, but I found it to be more admirable than likable. Minimum Wage is definitely worth reading if you like stuff like Hate: it's all about these slacker types inhabiting the border zone of geek and alternative cultures. I haven't read it since the original run in the 90s though, I have no idea how dated it might feel in the 2010s.

Sorry to say I read the first third of The Incal and gave up, then just looked across the rest of the pages. Nothing about it really grabbed me much; although there are some good designs and images, overall it's not really impressive for Moebius standards.
I also have a problem with pages densely packed with lots of busy panels and loads of text boxes/bubbles.

It seems like Refn is making a film of it but I don't know why Jodorowsky would allow that. I hate that I'll probably see the film and like it better (I'm not really a fan of the idea of adaptations).

Often I think being a comic, film or book reviewer sounds like a nightmare, trying to get through something you're not enjoying is gotta be worse than shifts at a lot of boring jobs.

...no.

Different strokes. The idea of having to complete loads of videogames I didn't like to give a proper review is especially miserable. Not wanting to write a shitty review everyone is going to rightfully criticize, wanting to be fair, but putting lots of effort into something that bores you to tears.
I care about comics but I've given up on loads of them in the last few years.

picked up:

- Black Science, not really in love with it yet. i get that it's going for 'pulpy' with the writing, but there's a fine line between willfully pulpy and overwrought+purple.

- new Minimum Wage reboot, funny but I feel like the dude has no idea how to draw non-white-non-bros? all his jewish & POC characters are these like borderline crass visual caricatures, not sure if i want to keep reading.

- sex criminals (nobody here likes this or what? love it)

- the wicked & the divine #1, not sure why everybody's pissing their pants over it--cool art, but i found all the res we're in the media of to be pretty disorienting

Also signed up for a longbox. God forgive me.

I read the first couple volumes of Saga over my weekend vacation and enjoyed them more than I expected

Sex Criminals is kind of entertaining but it's mostly leaning on its premise for novelty factor? I guess if you have an endless love for goofy sex jokes the entertainment keeps rolling.

Anyone reading the Satellite Sam book that Fraction's doing with Chaykin on art, though? The first issue or two were interesting but I didn't follow up.

do you mean a pull box or something, HOOS? a longbox is like... a cardboard box you put comics in

I've pretty much given up on Fraction. Tried the first few Satellite Sam and Sex Criminals books and found both annoying.

do you mean a pull box or something, HOOS? a longbox is like... a cardboard box you put comics in

― mh, Monday, June 23, 2014 7:47 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha i mean i'm assuming that my pull box takes physical form as a long box, yes

but its probably just a bag

*sigh*

Sex Criminals is kind of entertaining but it's mostly leaning on its premise for novelty factor?

yeah i mean i'm reading it for the dialogue basically, makes me laugh & i like the characters and their relationship--the 'criminal' side of the story & even the art aren't really that interesting to me

don't feel bad, HOOS, it's probably a little section in a longbox with dividers on either side so your books don't dirty up someone else's

is anyone checking out COWL? curious

sex criminals is okay but the whole SECRET SOCIETY WATCHING YOU schtick felt sub-orphan black and The Fermata is more interesting.

I've been reading whatever shit marvel puts up on the unlimited tablet thing every week, quay d'Orsay (which is spectacular), prophet in trades and going back to the obscure cities again.

going back to the obscure cities

this should be a euphemism

might be!

I'm plowing through silver age Marvel from day one. I'm up to about '64 right now. There's been plenty of dire crap thus far, but Stan's dialogue is starting to pop and Jack's art is starting to get wonderfully weird and abstract, so the good stuff is right around the corner. I have Essential trades for everything through about 1970, so we'll see how ambitious I ultimately am.

Also just learned that Lapham is finally putting out Stray Bullets again, so I ordered the complete Uber Alles trade and will be taking a brief Marvel hiatus for that once it arrives.

I read the first couple volumes of Saga over my weekend vacation and enjoyed them more than I expected

― mh, Monday, June 23, 2014 7:44 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

3 is great too! 1 my favorite so far tho

yeah, I was wrong, I read all three!

just picked up the start of the new arc over the weekend, its a gutpuncher

I'm plowing through silver age Marvel from day one. I'm up to about '64 right now

Did you find some sort of chronological month by month list for this? I've always wanted to do something similar.

Yeah, in typical fashion for undertakings of this nature, I'm being pretty anal about it. I find The Unofficial Handbook of Marvel Comics Creators to be an utterly invaluable resource for lots of Marvel stuff, including publication dates. There's also a really detailed site with an issue-by-issue timeline that I can dig up if you want to go all the way down the rabbit hole.

In mainstream comics am currently enjoying:

Saga
She-Hulk
Miss Marvel
Letter 44 - this is good, could be a lot better, but has me hooked enough for now
Wonder Woman (the only DC book I bother with now, and I always used to be a DC>Marvel person)
And, bizarrely enough, the two IDW Transformers series, which have become (for the most part) often very funny behind-the-scenes political stories (along with lots of big robots hitting each other)

I wanna rescind my opinion on Black Science btw, now that I've finished the trade I'm suuuuuuuper into it--really, uh, rockets upward after the first issue-and-a-half

Letter 44 - this is good, could be a lot better, but has me hooked enough for now

this looks interesting how deep is it so far

does a hoos read manhattan projects?

not yet, been considering it

Letter 44 is only 7 issues in: The first trade is out or about to be out, collecting the first 6 issues.

Also, I forgot that I'm also really digging Superior Foes of Spider-Man

Feeling like there are a ton of indies right now (Letter 44, God is Dead, Manhattan Projects, Black Science, Mind MGMT, etc etc) that are getting really good writeups, and have great art, but just doing absolutely nothing for me whatsoever.

I'm also reading the first-half of the Sean Howe book (which I skipped first time) and checking lots of 60s-80s Marvel on Marvel Unlimited. It's *really* hard to pick up any Steve Gerber that's not Howard the Duck - any recommendations how to do that?

Otherwise nothing out of the ordinary for me - I've gotten back into Avengers/New Avengers since Infinity ended (thankfully) and they are both SUPER fun right now. That plus something called, er, Albert the Alien on Thrillbent, whcih is really cute.

The Hickman Avengers stuff where they're trying to figure out exactly how far they're willing to go to protect their earth is getting intense

It's *really* hard to pick up any Steve Gerber that's not Howard the Duck - any recommendations how to do that?

Idk how in print the essentials volumes are but you need Essential Marvel Horror (the one that focuses on Man Thing and the one that focuses on Son of Satan) and Essential Defenders vol 2 and 3.

xxpost A lot of Gerber's '70s work (Defenders, Omega the Unknown, OG Guardians of the Galaxy, Man Thing) has been reprinted in recent years. Whether those reprints are currently in print is a whole other question.

Where did they reprint og guardians?

They've put out two trades that I think cover all of their pre-Valentino appearances. Guardians of the Galaxy: Tomorrow's Avengers, I believe they're called.

In sort of similar news, they just solicited a complete '70s Deathlok the Demolisher trade for September.

these are in color i suppose? (aka I can't afford them)

Yeah, they are. And I guess Marvel has unofficially (but basically officially, since they haven't issued any since early last year) nixed the Essentials in favor of the color Epic Collections, so all of the old reprints are going to be unaffordable from here on out. The realization of which having kicked my Essentials collecting/hoarding into overdrive.

oh fuck that's bad news but thanks for telling me

are a lot of them already pricey?

Some of them are ridiculous {like Black Panther, which was released <2 years ago and is currently selling for >$50, and the fourth Thor volume, which I just paid more for than I care to disclose) but a lot of them are available really cheap used. I'd like to think that the prices will drop as the Epic Collections replace them but I'm not taking any chances.

I never even saw the black panther one :(

Didn't know that about the Essentials ending, wot a pisser. Think I've got most of the ones I actually want, but there's a few I'd hope would continue on a bit further (eg the FF volumes reaching the Byrne issues). This is a pretty useful list:

http://collectededitions.com/storefront/buy_essentials.html

I don't know about current in-print status, but most of Gerber's major work has been reprinted in some form or other over the last ten years (aside from the things Jon mentions, there's also a good Omega the Unknown colour collection from Marvel).

If you don't mind the overpriced color editions, they've been doing a decent job of bridging the post-Essential gaps. F'rinstance, I think there's only six-ish issues uncollected between the end of the Essential Avengers run and the more recent color trades they've done which collect everything through the late '80s. I'll give Marvel credit for effort and chutzpah (although we'll see what the final result is) inasmuch as these Epic Collections, much like Fantagraphics' Barks collections, have been released out of sequence but numbered with the apparent intention of being complete collections of a given title. Remains to be seen what "complete" really means in this context, and it's sure to be a frustrating endeavor for collectors, given Marvel's complete disinterest towards keeping stuff in print.

Guardians of the Galaxy: Tomorrow's Avengers, I believe they're called.

fuck yah

Not to derail too far towards making this an "old-school Marvel"-centric thread, but I just read yesteday that Dan Abnett is going to be writing an OG Guardians series starting this fall. I'll be reading that.

oh cool

damn man i think min wage might come off my pull list, i'm so bummed at the way fingerman only includes POC as cab drivers and barely-drawn shadowy beggars. i like rob, i like the writing, but i can't deal with the consistent gross stereotyping.

Ian McEwan - Sweet Tooth. What he's lost in verve he's compensated with (minor) ambition

Who drew that one?

i was about to say that i found sweet tooth to be really mediocre, but i now realize that's not the sweet tooth under discussion

oh hey issue one of Letter 44 is up free in this old i09 post:

http://io9.com/read-the-first-issue-of-letter-44-the-comic-everyones-1472795323

lol mordy

i'm surprised u like letter 44, h00s - seems pretty idk, jingoistic?

I've been thinking of giving Minimum Wage and other Fingerman stuff a go. I listened to an interview with him a couple of years ago and he was pretty funny.

I'm curious to see what the color is like in these new Marvel collections, because it tends to look bad in their reprint titles.
I honestly think those Essential collections are the best thing Marvel have done since the 90s, but I see them piling up in shops as if they aren't selling and they do take up lots of space.
Gene Colan's work in particular looks way better that way. I've been considering looking for other Essential books by him.

It's a shame with all their resources they've still never done a lot of the material justice for fans of the artists. Everything seems to be sold as continuity history. There has been some artist focused collections but they were done with the bad Masterworks reproduction.
With half decent scans, large collections of Ditko, Gene Colan, Basil Wolverton, Russ Heath, Joe Maneely, Bill Everett would be sweet as fuck. But it probably would make an incoherent reading experience.
Maybe best-ofs might be better because frankly, some of Everett's work was very poor. In the unlikely situation there is a Tom Sutton collection, I'd rather his superhero hackwork wasn't there because it really shows that he didn't enjoy doing it (some of the genres he did enjoy had lots of his hackwork too).

I read an interview with Mike Mignola recently where he said the Colan/Wolfman collection of Night Force was cancelled due to low orders. Out of all the crap sold in comic shops!?
There is copies listed with insane prices but I've seen that several times for books that seem to have never came out. I kinda wanted that Krenkel-Women book but I doubt it came out, I think the sellers are lying.

Yeah the tomb of Dracula essentials are probably my favorites, visually, of the ones I have. The buscema-Palmer avengers stuff looks awesome in essentials too.

Have they gotten round to collecting the power man & iron fist stuff yet? I've been hankering to read those for awhile. I love that faux-streetwise 70s marvel stuff.

they did an Essentials - maybe 2? - of the Power Man and Iron Fist series.

Ok I gotta get those asap

30 bucks good grief

Current stuff I'm enjoying at Marvel:
the various Avengers (not counting Rememder's mess or the Assemble title)
All-New Ghost Rider
Black Widow
Superior Foes of Spider-Man (the best of the lot by far)

At DC it's just All-Star Western and Wonder Woman (the latter because it feels the long story might be wrapping soon - it lost a lot of momentum). I expect to be reading zero DC books soon, which feels wrong.

Other stuff:
Archer & Armstrong
East of West
Flash Gordon (might be the most fun of them all)
Magnus Robot-Fighter
Southern Bastards
The Manhattan Projects
Turok Dinosaur Hunter

I'm really enjoying the Ghost Rider too, and the Doop mini has been a blast. Vic Fluro is knocking it out of the park on all his books at the moment too. One of the books published last week had the return to Marvel continuity (although not named, and in a clunky way which made it look deliberate) of The Fury, from the Moore/Davis Captain Britain.

You're not wrong about DC, and ASW is cancelled in 2 (?) issues. WW May well not be worth reading once Azzarello is gone which is only a couple of issues away.

I'm reading the usual suspects at the big indies, probably the only one nobody else has mentioned yet is Brain Boy printed by Dark Horse; this month it introduced a villain who is a direct rip-off of Herbie the Fat Fury.

i'm looking to that grant morrison wonder woman thing is that still happening?

ORCS TREASURE by Kevin J Anderson and Alex Nino.

An army of orcs raid and take over a humans' castle in search of treasure but don't have the same idea of what constitutes treasure. It's kind of a short simple fairy tale about culture.

Alex Nino has done a fair number of book length comics that rarely get mentioned. Adaptations of Moby Dick, Call Of The Wild, More Than Human and Tales From The One Eyed Crow; I think there are some more too.

The art in this is slightly uneven, some images are very impressively designed but others have parts that look too slapdash, you can even see quite a few pencil lines that haven't been erased. The orcs (which come in a large variety that don't look anything like most orcs in fantasy art) are sometimes very imaginative, others are scribbled without care.
Nino often does a very strange thing in merging a lot of background elements with things in the foreground. Objects often pierce and move through each other inexplicably. My favourite of this tendency is the orcs with the most demented teeth pierce their own rubbery lips and even cut through other teeth.
Another violation more familiar in fantasy art is the floating parts of the castle and parts of the forests. I really liked the blocks of the castle that are arranged like steps.

http://the9thblog.blogspot.co.uk/

Another interesting comics blog.

http://comicsalliance.com/ask-chris-best-compiliation-list/

Been looking for 90s-tastic images and there are some here but Bouncer is the real highlight here, he looks hilarious.
http://www.ugo.com/the-goods/boom-boom

http://www.tawmis.com/xtreme/

I once saw an image of a guy looking like Cable but more like an old man with one of the biggest guns I've ever seen. Can't find it.

waitaminute, i never realized Cable's shoulder pads go WAY over his shoulders! i just thought it was ridiculous power-suit padding

Cable's calves are bigger than his thighs in that pose sheet.

I feel really bad for knowing that thing in Boom Boom's mouth is some sort of brace for a broken jaw

http://www.tawmis.com/xtreme/adamxtreme.jpg

the braid clips with the x-men logo are what really sell this one imo

I can't agree with Dazzler and George Perez Nightwing on that list, I love all those disco style costumes from the late 70s/early 80s, I would be delighted if Marvel or DC did a 70s set superhero comic where the characters all have Perez style costumes and hang around with Bianca Jagger and Andy Warhol at Studio 54

Including the 1960s Havok costume is MADNESS

i'm surprised u like letter 44, h00s - seems pretty idk, jingoistic?

― Mordy, Saturday, June 28, 2014 3:27 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i haven't actually read it yet!!

my Beg The Question (the not awesome one-paperback reprint of 90s Minimum Wage) just came in, so i'm gonna give it a go and see if the writing doesn't redeem the new stuff for me

i think that's the only Fingerman I read, wasn't enthused

Yeah, I dig Fingerman's illustration waaaaaaaaay more than his writing.

his porn comics are his best work.

^same is true of dave cooper (at least, Cynthia Petal is my favorite thing of his)

well tied with Dan and Larry (which is the opposite of porn)

Cynthia Petal's Really Fantastic Alien Sex Frenzy >>>>>> anything Fingerman ever did for Eros. but I think Ripple and, yeah, Dan & Larry are far better comics

although both are about sexuality I guess

in older stuff, reading: dark horse's conan, kirby's superman's pal, kamandi + omac, otto binder's action comics

Fingerman said in an interview that he despised his old porn comics, he thinks they are total garbage and doesn't want them reprinted again. I don't think this has anything to do with the subject matter, just the execution.

Two or three weeks ago in a comic shop there was a guy who said to his friend "why are you buying this stuff? you can get it all for free on the internet" as if paying was a really stupid error. He said it loudly within earshot of the shop employees, I can't work out if that was intentional.

Yeah, I dig Fingerman's illustration waaaaaaaaay more than his writing.

― Love Theme From Meatballs 2 (Old Lunch), Sunday, June 29, 2014 10:32 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i really like the dialogue in the new MW run but the opening pages of Beg the Question are oof-worthy

He said it loudly within earshot of the shop employees, I can't work out if that was intentional.

did you punch him in the mouth y/n

No but I would have liked if the shop people confronted him.

Lots of those Marvel Essentials can be found pretty cheap. My local store has gotten in quite a few of them and selling them $5 bucks each new as I think they are moving them out. I found some of them like that over the past few years like that.

I don't have the Essential Thor #4 and fxxk paying $50 bucks for one, you can about get the comics for that much. There seems to be allot of collector speculation work going on with reprints these days, especially some of the odd hard covers out there that didn't get ordered much in first print.

I'm kind of surprised that print to order hasn't really come to some of this stuff, especially since the tech is there to really be able to do it pretty well.

I have a lot of good memories of back issue hunting but I really don't miss the price watching. Occasionally something I want becomes rare and expensive but there isn't as much bullshit as there used to be. Berserk and some other Japanese stuff is the most recent trouble I've had with inflated prices.

I do feel a bit sad that those days of treasure hunting in musty old comic stores are probably gone forever. Maybe if I go to another country I'll get that excitement again.
If I went to Japan I'd worry about customs being dicks about the content in the comic stacks.
Anyone ever shop in many foreign shops just to see what you could find?

To this day I still get recurring dreams about amazing comic shops, or new toys that resemble Monster In My Pocket, Mighty Max and Boglins.

fucking loved boglins

Yup I have recurring dreams about amazing shops too, usually used paperbacks.

new morales spidey out today!

In particular I remember these dreams of weird people selling ultra obscure freaky horror comics at night in the remote countryside.

OK, having said how much I am enjoying Letter 44, issue 7 was a blatant case of pointless flashback padding, or How to Kill Your Story's Momentum in One Issue

i really like deadly class, and i just read the fantastic four + x-men limited for the first time - it's fantastic

http://the9thblog.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Starstruck

Been reading more of this blog, it's convinced me to get Starstruck, which I'd been considering on and off for a few years because I like Kaluta.
This guy thinks it's the best comic ever made. How do you guys rate it?

I've always found it fetching to look at but almost entirely unreadable.

As I've said before, dense page layouts really put me off reading comics. I couldn't read Promethea despite wanting to. I hope Starstruck won't be too hard.

It's not the density but the prose itself that puts me off.

What's wrong with the prose?

I think it's plain old bad writing. Granted, I haven't tried to read it in about a decade, so I can't remember if it's florid, lifeless, flat or whatever. I only remember it being horrible.

I concur with EZS on all points. Pretty sure I have starstruck on my shelf somewhere; may go looking.

I've been thinking of getting Drawn and Dangerous: Italian Comics of the 1970s and 1980s. I can only find a review (which is short but positive) on amazon but there's been virtually no response to the book. I've seen the book in shops, sadly it barely has any pictures.

I finally found my copy of Fatale #20 and read 20-23 in prep for the last issue which is coming out soon. I'm also working through the Uber Alles version of Stray Bullets re-reading the early issues which I read a few years ago and re-reading The Sixth Gun to get caught up to present on both titles.

I also read the last two issues of Lazarus to take it up to #9. While interesting, it's a pretty depressing read and kinda slow. I never finished DMZ, which covers similar ground, but that comic had a lot more thrust out of the gate till it got bogged down about half way through the series. I'm probably going to drop Lazarus off the pull list and maybe check it out again down the line as I think it would most likely be better read as an immersion read instead of month to month.

they dont have deadly class at my shop--when i asked about it the dude pointed me at something which was not at all deadly class saying "yeah its kind of hard to recognize" so

re: Starstruck - I never got into it particularly, but its predecessor Ike Garuda elicited a similar response to EZ Snappin from me (ie, it is gorgeous and there are fantastic ideas in it but at a certain point I am completely lost by the text)

I somehow have made the transition from being All About The X-Men to being All About The Avengers and it's kind of weird, particularly since the Avengers characters I care the most about are like the least important/central Avengers characters (basically the Avengers Arena/Underground kids, The Mighty Avengers, Cannonball, Sunspot, Nightmask, Starbrand, Smasher)

Hawkeye continues to rule tho

You fell for the AvX trap

http://www.tcj.com/this-week-in-comics-7914-hell-eternal/

I didn't know Lord Horror: Reverbstorm was collected last year.

re: Starstruck - I never got into it particularly, but its predecessor Ike Garuda elicited a similar response to EZ Snappin from me (ie, it is gorgeous and there are fantastic ideas in it but at a certain point I am completely lost by the text)

Ike Garuda is from ten years after most of Starstruck (and by a different artist) btw

haha wow I had no idea they were that far apart

Read most of the first volume of Tezuka's Buddha. It had good stuff going on but I just wasn't interested enough. Hope I like the Dororo omnibus better. I loved the second book of Phoenix.

I need to reign in my compulsive buying, I've been giving up on most comics before I finish them; even though I'm very discriminating I still overestimate my interest in so many things. Probably won't get Starstruck then.

There is a big Kaluta art book coming in a few months but I'm pretty sure it was announced more than 5 years ago, so I almost expect more delays.

Another 80s comic deeply beloved by some: Moonshadow by DeMatteis and Muth. Anyone a fan?

Moonshadow looks pretty and Muth's art clearly set an example for a lot of Vertigo style painted comics, but the story is overtly hokey and new agey and narration-heavy, as is the case with most of DeMatteis' non-superhero work. I can understand why some people who read it in the 80s love it, as there probably was nothing like it in American mainstream comics back then... But I read it over 10 years after it was first published, and wasn't particularly impressed. Even the art, undebiably impressive as it is, made me think why overtly artistic painted art so rarely works in comics: it calls too much attention to the single images themselves, which hinders the flow of the narrative, and in this case it's hindered even more by DeMatteis' wordy purple prose.

i like moonshadow pretty well. i think i'm missing one random issue. :/

I've been considering Moonshadow because I've heard some people who are very difficult to please praise it. Many sky high praises.
I loved some of Muth's surrealist work for Epic Illustrated. His Dracula and M work was very impressive. I think he is mostly a book illustrator now.

The images that draw too much attention problem is a tough one sometimes. I think it's a case of how many different types of info you have to juggle on each page, how easy each element is to comprehend.
I've very much started to favour comics that are more like children's books with very few images per page and minimal text. If the images don't draw any attention, it's difficult to justify doing a comic at all unless there really needs to be a visual display; if it weren't for extravagant pictures I'd never had read a comic past childhood.

A lot of people do each comic story because that's just the way they tend to tell stories but I think a lot of comics don't really make real use of the visual aspect. Writers in the comic business will often put the story straight to comics form because a more appropriate medium might not be commercially viable for them.

I think there are damn good reasons realistic character dramas are less popular than high powered fancy fighting in comics.
Realistic character dramas are difficult because few comic artists are skilled enough (or have the time) to convincingly measure up to real actors or detailed prose in a book.
I've never read a martial arts epic or superhero books in prose form but I could see fights getting boring and there being a difficulty in conveying all sorts of fancy fight moves. Super powered fights in movies might make money but they tend to look unconvincing/bad compared with comics and videogames.

I think all genres should be welcome but there are challenges for some genres that need to be taken more seriously.

Hip Hop Family Tree vol 1 - Ed Piskor

Moonshadow is definitely a borrow, not a buy

If the images don't draw any attention, it's difficult to justify doing a comic at all unless there really needs to be a visual display; if it weren't for extravagant pictures I'd never had read a comic past childhood.

I wasn't saying that the images shouldn't draw any attention, but that in many painted comics like Moonshadow individual images become the focal point instead of the flow of images, and it's the good flow that keeps up a fluid narrative. Painted art usually tends to be stiffer than pencil/ink art, and the images become like mini-paintings instead of something that follows the previous panel and leads you to the next. (Splash pages tend to have a similar effect in pencil & ink comics too, that's why the overuse of splash pages can be pretty distracting too.)

I don't feel comics like these really play to the strenghts of comics as medium; they borrow their tricks from fine arts, where everything is about a single image, but doing that weakens what's the unique in comics when compared to fine arts, the narrative flow of a series of images.

Again, I'm not saying comics shouldn't have a striking splash page or some other kind of "still" image here and there, they can be very effective when used sparingly, but if every panel in a comic is all about "look at me", it usually doesn't work. (Or, as you mention, it may turn a comic into something that's more like an illustrated book, but that's a different medium with different rules.)

I didn't mean to say any of that as a retort to you specifically. Your criticism of Moonshadow (which I could see myself agreeing with, but since I haven't read it, I don't know) just put me in mind of how awkwardly so many things don't quite work in comics. This is why I'm hesitant to read Starstruck and Moonshadow.
CC Beck had sometimes said that readers shouldn't linger at all on the images. I used to hate him for that but I think there are grains of truth in what he said. Different styles of art require different flows, different quantities of panels and different usages of text.
There are quite a few virtuoso illustrators who got their name in comics but drifted away but occasionally came back; I think these guys would benefit from more of a children's book storytelling approach. Someone who draws like Alcala shouldn't do panel arrangements like Ware or Trondheim.

I think the splash page style comic can work. Druillet, Alex Nino (who I don't think works at all when he overlaps panels), Muth, Ian Miller, Matt Coyle (Worry Doll), Gene Colan, Martin Vaughn-James (The Cage) and some others did it on some occasions pretty well. If people want to call it an illustrated book, fine, but I still think of it as sequential art storytelling (so basically comics in my mind). Children's picture books have been increasingly crossing over with comics and I think comics people ought to study these sorts of books more. A lot of people who were creating comics for small electronic devices use one panel at a time and I think that works fine too. Each image doesn't have to fill the whole page.

I think having fewer images per page and less text is why so many people find manga more accessible. Even though Gil Kane's Black Mark was horribly overwritten and not a good story, in his basic approach, I think he was REALLY on to something for more illustrative storytelling.

Some of Brian Selznick's work too. Lots of Minicomix used a similar approach to the things I'm talking about.

just read hickman's "nightly news" and found it pretty turgid

reminded me a lot of "wanted" (and "fight club" for that matter) in its aggro condescending indictment of the reader, kept waiting for hickman to draw himself into the book in a fedora.

could very easily have seen myself loving this at 15, but outside of the cool design elements i didn't think it was all that redeeming and don't get the hype at all.

Here is a big preview of Lord Horror Reverbstorm. Quite a few of these images were in his Haunter From The Dark book. TOTALLY NSFW!
http://www.johncoulthart.com/retinacula/reverbstorm.html

there was some nice deal on comixology where three or four of hickman's image series were bundled together

pax romana probably best

yeah my cousin was telling me about pax romana it does sound p awesome

re: Moonshadow

I actually just re-read the entire thing a couple months ago when I dug out my old issues of it from me and my brother's collection. It is p good, albeit repetitive and sort of overly pleased with itself, the art is good but the text does most of the heavy lifting imo. The characterizations in it though - of Ira, of the Unkshusses, and Moonshadow - are all top notch.

it calls too much attention to the single images themselves, which hinders the flow of the narrative, and in this case it's hindered even more by DeMatteis' wordy purple prose.

kinda agree w tuomas about this; it flows in a weird way as a comic, the images are all very static (albeit often v pretty). It's more like a prose book with illustrations than it is a comic.

didn't moonshadow get cancelled and/or truncated?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonshadow_(comics)
http://www.amazon.com/Compleat-Moonshadow-John-Marc-DeMatteis/dp/1563893436
http://www.blackgate.com/2012/12/10/dematteis-and-muths-moonshadow/

I don't think so...? There's 12 issues. The ending is a bit of a cop-out but it doesn't feel forced or rushed.

grabbed the bendis guardians reboot to read over lunch, pleasant surprise to run into iron man a few pages in

I'm sort of enjoying that, but get the feeling that it exists mainly as exposition and scene-setting for other titles and a way to familiarize people with the general outlines of the characters and milieu in advance of the movie.

xp, those links address that: the moonshadow ending was rewritten for the rerelease.

You fell for the AvX trap

Yes. Yes I did. (I also fell for the "let's put two of the original New Mutants on the main Avengers roster and then never do anything interesting with them" trap)

lol

has anybody read the 'just fights' AvX issues cuz idk......if they're just gonzo ridic consequenceless fights without any real dialogue that kind of sounds fun to look at

i "read" them on marvel unlimited, you more or less nailed the description there. i don't even remember who won.

there’s that one extended vision near the end, in the last issue, which in the new version has captions added to it in which Moonshadow tells us what he’s thinking and feeling

honestly this sounds even stupider than the original ending

moonshadow is some weak piss

Yeah, I read the Vertigo reprints as they were coming out and I was really not into it. And at that time, I was a) in high school, b) voraciously reading anything Vertigo, and c) a fairly big DeMatteis fan, which I think should've made me the perfect audience.

i liked it a lot in high school but that was my dematteis period

In an amazon review some guy said the couple of rewritten pages really spoiled one of the best parts of the book.

I think I realized fairly quickly back then (although not as quickly as I would've liked) that non-superhero DeMatteis was decidedly Not For Me. This, Brooklyn Dreams, Mercy, and especially Seekers: Into The Mystery (ugh...) were pretty heavy duds IMO. His hippified mysticism DO YOU SEE-ness only worked for me when it wasn't so front and center.

i associate Del Close's Wasteland with that stuff but man, Wasteland was much better... and maybe still good? I need to dig up old issues.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasteland_(DC_Comics)

xpost See I DO want that kind of thing in my Defenders issues but not in the center ring of the show.

Yeah, totally still dig most of his Marvel work and the mainstream DC stuff that I've read. Dr. Fate and his Spectacular Spider-Man run with Sal Buscema were particular favorites.

i was very very much 'bout his work on justice league

could've sworn there was something odd about moonshadow, like the followup was shortened or something, down from 3 to 1. could be thinking of something else though, or that it was a vertigo reprint. wonder if i can find my copy... wikipedia also reminded me that Blood exists, which i should re-read. M also.

and this thread has also prompted me to search ebay for Promethea #31 which i missed at the time. £4.99 later and i'll finally be able to read all that, after 10 years. (i haven't read #19 onwards)

Promethea is weird in that I really enjoyed it at the time - each new issue done in some wacky different style! - but going back and trying to read it all in one sitting is such a slog; the formula becomes apparent and repetitive once she's on her journey up the tree of life

still pretty gorgeous though. the most fun is really all the stuff going on in the background,

Blood any good?

I've read quite a bit of DeMatteis but I don't remember any specific style. He was collaborating with Giffen on Justice League stuff so I didn't know which writer was doing what.
I've read lots of his Spiderman but even as someone who has read more Spiderman than any other superhero, not one writer's run really stands out to me. I still have love for Peter Parker but almost everything was a big repetitive waste of time.
Stardust Kid was a perfectly okay comic for kids but Mike Ploog was the real attraction.

He was collaborating with Giffen on Justice League stuff so I didn't know which writer was doing what.

ugh I tried reading that recently and was really put off by all the smirky in-jokey self-referential bullshit. otoh Giffen's Ambush Bug stuff are some of my favorite 80s comics.

I'd quite like to reread DeMatteis's Dr Fate run, I've always thought it was underrated, but it's possible my taste in high school just wasn't very good.

I've read quite a few people saying a lot of Vertigo stuff looks worse in retrospect. Because they were taken aback by things they'd never seen in comics at the time. But now the novelty has worn off.

i associate Del Close's Wasteland with that stuff but man, Wasteland was much better... and maybe still good? I need to dig up old issues.

Wasteland was great, one of the high points of DC’s excellent late-80s period of genre experimentation

could've sworn there was something odd about moonshadow, like the followup was shortened or something, down from 3 to 1. could be thinking of something else though, or that it was a vertigo reprint. wonder if i can find my copy...

The Vertigo reprint was 12 issues, as with the Epic version, and the changed pages in #12. Farewell Moonshadow, the Vertigo followup that was then included in their TPB, was only ever solicited as a 56pp prestige format thing AFAIR.

I've read quite a bit of DeMatteis but I don't remember any specific style. He was collaborating with Giffen on Justice League stuff so I didn't know which writer was doing what.

You would if you read the credits!

(Long-range planning was done by Giffen with DeMatteis & Helfer; Giffen plotted actual stories, down to drawing the panel breakdowns for every issue, and sometimes wrote rough dialogue; DeMatteis wrote the words that actually got lettered onto the page.)

(In the behind-the-scenes story written by Kyle Baker for JLI #50, JMDM’s contribution to plotting is made fun of as being repeatedly suggesting “what if the JLI find a giant alien but it turns out the alien is God and then they realise God was inside them all along” and being told to stfu)

I thought that Justice League stuff was okay, very much like a sitcom. I used to hate how they made Blue Beetle look like such an ordinary dork. Because I thought Ditko's Blue Beetle was really cool; actually quite a lot like Batman.

Something positive I can say about 90s Spectacular Spiderman: Sal Buscema with Sienkiewicz inking looked great.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Piranha_Press
http://www.supermanartists.comics.org/dchistory/piranhapress.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paradox_Press

Been trying to remember 80s/90s cult comics and found these imprints. I have no memory of Piranha. Amazing that DC used to do stuff like this. I think Vertigo and these imprints really gave DC an edge over the competition. I've heard that in the Nelson era, DC has wanted to rid itself of anything creator owned.

Since you guys have been quite responsive about Starstruck and Moonshadow, how about this stuff? Beautiful Stories For Ugly Children in particular.

Why I Hate Saturn obv the standout

I like BS4US as an exercise but it never really engaged too much

Gregory, Epicurus, Saturn are all must reads

Sienkiewicz inking is so good

That one issue of Beautiful Stories about the dog was fantastic. Often they were fairly empty or uninspired or pretentious. Sometimes they were good. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The Drowned Girl was one of my favourite comics of the early 90s, and I used to buy extra copies and give them away, but the same author's Nation Of Snitches was terrible, so I could be wrong about it.

A Glass Of Water, in FF>>, is the best ~comics~ McKean and Morrison have ever done.

the clown issue of BS4UC is the only one i remember.

Disney almost had its own edgy comics imprint, Touchmark, which was aborted at the eleventh hour, and many of those aborted books showed up in Vertigo's first wave: http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2011/07/01/comic-book-legends-revealed-321/

did any not?

there are a few names in the list that i don't recognise as vertigo artists.

http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/touchmark1.jpg

There's so much impressive cover art for Vertigo titles. I've been looking through databases to see titles I'm not familiar with.
I love this Kaluta stuff...
http://www.comics.org/series/4980/covers/
He did loads of great covers for Lucifer too, hope it will all be in the upcoming Kaluta art book.

This cover used to creep me out big time...
http://www.comics.org/issue/65925/cover/4/

I'm fairly sure there is a book all about Vertigo but it would be great if someone read all the titles, plus the Piranha and Paradox stuff and gave it all a intelligent write-up. It always amazes me how much stuff never gets written about.

It would have been nice if there was more separation between DC's characters and those titles. A lot of them are such radical reinventions that they could have been something totally separate, but most of them never would have existed had DC not had the characters to reinvent in the first place.

How did DC come to own V For Vendetta?

same way as Watchmen, iirc: by keeping it in print to dodge a reversion clause

there are a few names in the list that i don't recognise as vertigo artists.

I don't think any of those were attached to actual projects though. (a Wagner/Grant/Rayner teamup seems likely, but idr hearing of a title, let alone anything beyond that. p much everyone else is just someone whose number Young had?)

it would be great if someone read all the titles, plus the Piranha and Paradox stuff and gave it all a intelligent write-up. It always amazes me how much stuff never gets written about.

I'm biased because I was one of the contributors, but the Slings and Arrows guide reviews pretty much every American comic released in the last 50 years or so:

http://www.unleashthefanboy.com/editorial/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-comics-5-essential-books-about-comics/56853

I'm fairly sure there is a book all about Vertigo but it would be great if someone read all the titles, plus the Piranha and Paradox stuff and gave it all a intelligent write-up.

I've read probably 95% of everything Vertigo through roughly the turn of the century. I don't know how much insight I have, but I'm somewhat conversant if you have particular questions. I'm an unabashed superfan of the shared universe titles in particular (e.g. Swamp Thing, Sandman, Books of Magic, Hellblazer, et al) and I reread all of that stuff every couple of years. Even moreso than Marvel's (which I didn't get heavily into until my later teen years), that was the formative fire upon which my love of intertwined comic universes was forged.

Even though the majority of the first wave Vertigo books technically took place in the main DC universe, definitely felt like there was an attempt to create a separate Vertigo universe. Mainstream DC characters rarely appeared in those books (not counting the pre-Vertigo era Sandman, Swamp Thing, Animal Man, Hellblazer, and Doom Patrol stories), but the Vertigo characters kept on visiting each others books, and there was even a crossover of some sort called Children's Crusade (I never read that one). In the mid-90s, I think only The Invisibles and Preacher were the only ongoing Vertigo series not set in this universe?

They seem to have gradually dropped this idea as those 90s titles folded in, though... I think Lucifer (which debuted in 1999) was the last new ongoing series to be set in the Vertigo universe. Though recently there was a crossover between Fables and The Unwritten, so it seems they haven't completely buried the idea of a shared universe.

I think the success of Sandman made them realize urban fantasy/horror was really their thing, so if they were gonna start new ongoing series, why not have them be spinoffs of Sandman, or at least set in the same universe? Back in the 90s Vertigo even had it's own short-lived sub-imprint devoted to sci-fi, apparenly because they felt sci-fi didn't fit into the "main" Vertigo books.

They did a near-complete purge of the shared Vertigo universe with the New 52 shitstorm (wherein Swamp Thing, Animal Man, Shade, John Constantine, etc. were reincorporated into the DCU proper) and the cancellation of Hellblazer (the last of the hangers-on), but new Vertigo-specific projects have popped up here and there (e.g. Gaiman's current Sandman miniseries and the Dead Boy Detectives ongoing).

They got a lot of mileage with that expansion. Books of Magic (not technically a Sandman spin-off, I know) and Lucifer were great, and I really dug the homestretch of The Dreaming once they figured out what they wanted that series to be.

Also, since Vertigo had a different reader demographic than the main DC books (older folks, more female readers), I'm sure they didn't want to do too many crossovers with the main universe, so the readers wouldn't be reminded too much that these books had their origin in superhero comics (whose main target group was still seen to be preteen boys). So the crossovers were mostly limited to one-panel gags (like Superman, Batman, and Martian Manhunter appearing in Morpheus's wake), and to occasional appearances by "Vertigo friendly" DC universe characters (like Zatanna, Etrigan, or The Phantom Stranger).

(xxpost)

Books of Magic I felt was the strongest of the Sandman spinoffs (I think you can call it that, since Dream and Destiny appeared in the original mini); it felt like John Ney Rieber had a unique vision for his version of urban fantasy, one that wasn't derivative the Moore/Gaiman template. But sadly it felt like his long-term plans for the series eventually petered out, since his run ended with several plot arcs left unresolved. Apparently Peter Ross, the artist of the series, then started writing the book too, but AFAIK his run has never been collected, so I've never read it.

As much affection as I have for John Ney Reiber's run, I think I almost prefer Peter Gross's solo run. It's a real shame that DC never collected it. It's totally worth seeking out, though. The Dylan Horrocks follow-up mini and ongoing are also decent (and largely uncollected) if not quite as high in my esteem.

Ward- I had seen that book loads of times but never knew it was any different from a lot of other general surveys. Thanks, I'll definitely be getting this.

I thought 1001 Comics To Read Before You Die was an impressive effort but it was marred by a few things: I think it should have been a bit more critical and not included so many comics for their iconic status or historical value (Death Of Gwen Stacy? Really?).
The other thing is that there wasn't nearly enough art examples, which I don't think are a necessity but lots of comics in short synopsis sound too samey (particularly humour and satire) and make no impression without any real criticism to make it interesting. I don't know if they had to go through rights clearances for every image (which would be a nightmare).
It did get me off the fence about buying a few things but best of all it introduced me to Frantisek Skala.

I've been thinking about getting some more books about manga but knowing that the majority are drawn in the same flat style is offputting despite the wide array of subjects. I read Jason Thompson's House Of 1000 Manga now and then but if the art examples aren't interesting it's hard to imagine the stories coming to life.

the majority of the first wave Vertigo books technically took place in the main DC universe

it is nuts that i didn't know this

Yeah, many of the core characters around whom Vertigo was initially established were "dark" reimaginings of older DC characters (WWII-era Sandman and Jack Kirby's '70s Sandman, DC's variety of horror comics hosts which comprised a lot of Sandman's cast, Steve Ditko's '70s Shade, the costumed crimefighter version of Black Orchid, etc). I think the first original main characters were John Constantine and Tim Hunter (who both originated in pre-Vertigo DC books).

There were lots of references to the various Sandmen of DC's past in Gaiman's run! It gives me a headache even thinking about it. Very significant to the eventual fate of Dream on it by the end of the series.

that WAS the vertigo brand for the first several years. this is not your older brother's [semi-forgotten DCU character]! holy crap someone's shooting heroin on page 3!

Yeah, I thought it was cool that, by the end of Sandman...

(SPOILERS!)

...Gaiman kinda acknowledged the nature of Sandman as a legacy character, when the son of the Hector Hall Sandman became the new Dream (though obviously Gaiman's Sandman had little to do with the previous characters of that name). I think Hippolyta and Hector Hall have also appeared in some post-Sandman main universe DC comics, since they were DC superheroes before Gaiman snatched them for his book.

But yeah, I too wasn't particularly well versed in DC comics when I started reading Sandman, so I was bit surprised to learn years later that "Dr. Destiny" was actually an old JLA villain who looked like Skeletor. And he was also related to the Garret Sandford Sandman (the guy who preceded Hector Hall), as Sandford and the Justice League fought against him in a JLA annual. A lot of the first Sandman arc is actually Gaiman actually trying to fit his series into the previous DC chronology (pretty much every major character who appeared in that arc was an established DC character), but most of that was lost on me when I first read it.

(xpost)

xpost The Vertigo Voices one-shots stretched that conceit to its near-breaking point. The totally grungified son of Prez in search of the dark, twisted heart of America! AKA the first Brubaker I ever read, and not exactly his high water mark.

i was roommates with Ed when he started pitching that one-shot; it was intended to stretch the Vertigo brand conceit to its breaking point and the ridiculousness of its elevator pitch was not lost on him.

I'm still picking up new references in Sandman (like the barely-mentioned Fashion Thing character, who, as the Mad Mod Witch, had her own stint as a horror host).

Re: crossovers in Vertigo. I thought it was an uncomfortable mixture to have superheroes in some of those titles. Moore's Swamp Thing is the only Vertigo run I ever read the whole of and I think the guest stars rarely strengthened it, Etrigan's riddles were fun, some of the Spectre stuff was cool but most of it didn't help the story of the plant guy.
Crossovers only really work for me when the shared universe element was a major feature to start with, otherwise I feel it's a rude interruption. Lots of writers used to complain that they wanted to tell a story of a character and then got big crossovers forced on them.

I think if Moore could do it all over again he'd not work for DC but have a comic called Plant God. But again, it's difficult to imagine these things happening without DC having a stable of artists and characters to reinvent. I just wish the whole British invasion could have just stayed in Britain with creator owned books that Americans could read. DC was attracted by what was happening in Britain, so if everyone stayed I think the attention would have kept gathering. The rates would be lower but the fruits would be better.

I'm curious about Caitlin R Kiernan's Vertigo work.

Old Lunch and anyone else- just asking what runs you liked the best and what it was they did well.

(there's a vertigo thread. might be a better place for this)

/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=57&threadid=210

Lots of writers used to complain that they wanted to tell a story of a character and then got big crossovers forced on them.

*raises hand*

the second issue of my run writing Robin (#101) was a mandated, inescapable crossover event with Young Justice (of all things), and I was informed of this fact AFTER my script for the first issue of my run was already locked in. Meaning any tension generated by the end of my first issue had to be punted offstage for this interdimensional something or other garbage event where I had to hit notes D, E and F. Then find a way to get back to stage position where I'd left off. Had irl panic attacks over this.

Did not realize you'd written any mainstream stuff! Yes, I can imagine being thrust into a crossover with no lead time would be incredibly frustrating. Although...is that when Peter David was writing Young Justice? Because I thought I remembered him being pretty vocal about his lack of appreciation for having crossovers thrust upon him.

(I moved the Vertigo-specific conversation over to the Vertigo thread, btw.)

I don't know why I said "used to complain" because these huge multi-title crossovers are worse than ever now. Maybe writers of superheroes today fully expect to deal with this. There was a period in the late 90s/early 00s when Marvel said they were trying to avoid this but that didn't last long.

I feel like Marvel is doing a much more elegant job of it nowadays, at least inasmuch as the elements of a given crossover don't usually feel quite as forced or perfunctory as they used to. I think there's a lot more pre-planning and I'm sure the writers involved have plenty of heads-up. Although there's certainly an argument to be made that a lot of individual flavor is lost when everything is just a discrete component of a larger, neverending tapestry.

xpost the writer of YJ at the time was Todd somebody. My editor owed his editor a favor or some shit like that. The plotting/concept of the crossover was godawful. I mean, it would have been fine if I'd known in advance about it.

I managed to stay on the title for 21 issues, by the end of which DiDio had taken a dislike to my work. Until the last few issues I loved doing it, tbrr. Pete Woods was the artist on almost every ish which was a lucky stroke on my part. Dylan Horrocks, who was writing Birds of Prey at the same time as my Robin run, put it perfectly after we both got canned when he described it as "the best job I never felt I had".

Oh, yeah, that was that weird period when Horrocks did Batgirl and Gilbert Hernandez also did a stretch on Birds of Prey, yeah? I would've loved to see DC go more in that direction, but I figured even at the time that editorial interference would wind up deep sixing anything really interesting.

fuck i'm an idiot. yes, dylan on Batgirl. Beto very very briefly on BoP.

i wanted to write the book as 'teen investigator in funny outfit confronts weird paranormal shit' which in hindsight was a stupid angle to try on that particular property.

these things all happened in the bat group when bob schreck was the group editor; I think that goes a long way to explain that little burst.

xpost You'd like to think there's room for that, but, yeah, I can imagine trying to do anything really different with the deeply entrenched Big Two properties is like hitting your head against a wall.

it wasn't anything all that different, I mean it would have totally flown on a different title, maybe even a different title in the bat group. Just wasn't a good tack to take for that particular book.

~lyfe~

~regretz~

yeah but that doesn't even seem to make business sense! look at the archie editorial policy and how well they're doing just trying off the wall shit to see how it impacts. You can keep canon for movies and "mainstream universe" titles but i imagine a creator driven beto wonder woman book would probably at least double in circulation and get a shit ton of press so why aren't DC aggressively fighting that direction rather than trying to reboot the reboot of their reboot? It's just dumb.

like, fuck, give this guy above me Swamp Thing for fucks sake! See what happens!

R.A.G, again, I also contributed to 1001 Comics To Read Before You Die so caveat emptor, but that book's coverage of 'foreign' comics is the best of any English language survey, imho. Funnily enough, some of the American comics choices in the UK/American edition were dropped from some of the European editions (so, surprise, the French version of 1001 Comics... has a lot more French comics to read before you die.)

I distinctly remember finding out that Beto was writing Birds of Prey when I saw his name on one of the covers, several issues into his run, and thinking, "surely, it isn't the Gilbert Hernandez I'm thinking of or I would've heard something about this."

Ward- That's odd. Another thing I though was a mistake was the UK edition having Dredd on the cover, I think it should have tried to attract a wider variety of people with a less genre-specific cover.

I heard Beto got shit from a lot of people for doing a DC title.

yeah but that doesn't even seem to make business sense! look at the archie editorial policy and how well they're doing just trying off the wall shit to see how it impacts. You can keep canon for movies and "mainstream universe" titles but i imagine a creator driven beto wonder woman book would probably at least double in circulation and get a shit ton of press so why aren't DC aggressively fighting that direction rather than trying to reboot the reboot of their reboot? It's just dumb.

― Look at this joke I've recognised, do you recognise it as well? (forksclovetofu), Tuesday, July 15, 2014 2:24 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It COULD have made good business sense if they'd played the angle up from their PR dept (whoa shit indie cartoonists writing bat books hey look entertainment weekly) but I don't think I appreciated at the time that titles didn't really get promoted unless they were already a hit; just like with the indie auteur things I did it would have been up to me to go line up interviews and stir up enthusiasm. Like, they did make a press release when me, Dylan, Beto, Anderson Gabrych were put on the titles but that was it, they then just waited for us to dry up and expire.

And if such a comic was a roaring success, they'd base a movie on it and all sorts of merchandise but not pay the creators properly (if at all).

Yeah, but I think most creators acknowledge that going into the deal these days.

yeah I wasn't worried abt that. Page rate was ok and they paid fast once you turned the work in. And there would be royalties if things went to trade (LOL they are never gonna collect these robins in a million years).

What about royalties from digital versions?

I didn't realise Gilbert Hernandez actually was doing a little Wonder Woman thing.

he's not that i'm aware of? i was just using that as an example. i wish he would.

http://comicsalliance.com/gilbert-hernandez-sensation-comics-featuring-wonder-woman-dc-digital-first/

Finger on the pulse, there, forks.

huh. well it makes sense.

kinda but still weird

Another DC imprint called Helix focused on science fiction, including a Lucius Shepard series called Vermillion (wonder if there is a prose version?), Some titles got carried over to Vertigo.

What about royalties from digital versions?

If Jon's issues were available digitally, DC would start paying out at 60,000 sales.

lol Transmetropolitan started on helix

yeah, i have those somewhere. with the exception of that and matt howarth's book i think i hated every helix comic i read

which reminds me, 2020 Visions was an awesome comic that was never collected by Vertigo, but has a b&w collection. I would almost recommend finding the original though.

Been looking at loads of Dave McKean covers, never released how much he resembled Vaughn Oliver and Quay Brothers.

Yeah he is almost a quay biter tbh

they're quay better

Dockwood - Jon McNaught - just caught up w/ this guy, gorgeous illustrative cartooning set in a small English town, equal parts Chris Ware and Phillip Larkin

So I just got in that mood, and re-read The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck for the umpteenth time. It really is one of the great novels of the nineties. Every time it returns to Scotland, it just gets me.

preach

I really should pick up that book

i probably already said this but ms. marvel and the wicked + the divine are both killing the shit out of everything rn and you should be reading them

adorable guest appearance (arc??) with wolverine in ms marvel this month

Journey Into Mystery aside, there's a combination of smugness and emo and try-hardiness about Gillen's comics that I find completely toxic. I totally get his appeal. But his characters are spanners.

I love Ms Marvel though!

i don't disagree with you about the tone but they do generally make for good readin' nonetheless

So guys, what was the last comic that really knocked your fucking socks off?

For me the best parts of Miura's Berserk did that. The second volume of Phoenix by Tezuka was close to that. Sadly both of them were last year I think.

last one that comes to mind was this:
http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2014/01/exclusive-preview-what-we-need-to-know-by-willy-linthout/

i don't want to encourage that

?

lettering in those samples was unbearable

i like that lettering! and i like linthout's previous book a lot as well:
http://www.amazon.com/Years-Elephant-Willy-Linthout/dp/8492444304

smugness and emo and try-hardiness about Gillen's comics

haha i totally sense this arrogance/smugness in the writing but i'm sorta taking it as part of the conceit of having so many deity characters

Yeah, that's why he's great at writing Loki! But I find it tiring when every character is a variation on that theme.

The smugness is part of his trademark style tbh, going back to his game reviewing days

Game reviewing! I get it now. I don't like it. But I get it.

btw I don't mean that as a slam, I was very fond of his games journo work

should i read phonogram if enjoying w+d btw y/n

Yes! I didn't like it either so you probably will. The first series is better though than "Singles Club".

haha ok

just bought the whole young avengers run and am pretty gobsmacked at how great it is

a lot of it reminds me of buffy at its best

gieron & mckelvie's run, that is

Emily Carroll's first collection Through The Woods out this week. I Might get it.

Some of you might be interested in Ragnarok, Walter Simonson's creator owned Norse mythology thing.
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=preview&id=22670

Mulling over getting the Boody Rogers collection that came out a few years ago. I read a few reprints in an issue of Comics Journal once. Crazy stuff, particularly how the main character grew really big feet in one story and seemed to keep them in later stories.

btw i read through the whole kieron young avengers last night, up til 4 in the morning

hot diggity

lol i typed 'kieron' thinking i was on twitter and it would autocomplete