recommend me some essential graphic novels to acquire

Did Chester Brown ever publish a bound collection of his adaptations of the Gospels? I know he didn't finish all of them, but whatever he did finish?

Didn't Morrison get his start on 2000 AD? xxpost

I would actually highly recommend Flight (there are four volumes so far) to people trying to get into non-superhero comics. They're anthologies of stories from different artists loosely based around flight (very loosely), which gives a lot of different choices, the art is for the most part gorgeous, the stories are charming, and they aren't the "precious coming-of-age" tales that make me want to burn all of that crap. Same goes for Daisy Kutter -- just a fantastic story, and the author is a master of using space to both convey movement and mood. I can't recommend either highly enough.

Walking Dead loses a little steam when they first find the prison, but only wallows in soap opera territory briefly.

I welcomed the (short) change of pace at this point! And it didn't last too long, either, which was good.

I should also mention Vic & Blood, one of my most favourite one-off books in recent memory.

Also second Batman: The Long Hallowe'en (I was completely unfamiliar with Batman lore, hadn't even seen the movies, when I read this. It was awesome, and the "plot twist" that everyone ACTUALLY knows because they've read/seen enough Batman stuff to know? Was ACTUALLY a plot twist to me. I was thrilled!)

Loeb and Sale are like the anti-Moore/Gibbons. Not that either one is necessarily better than the other (I enjoy both quite a bit), but they have nice, big panels with plenty of breathing room, and concentrate on telling the story as opposed to trying to make some sort of big intellectual statement.

I agree that Jeff Loeb is the anti-Alan Moore, in as much as Moore is an excellent writer whose future work I look forward to reading.

Didn't Morrison get his start on 2000 AD? xxpost

similar to Moore getting his start at Warrior (I think?) - but that stuff was more of a springboard to working with DC in both cases. British comics are kind of persona non grata in the US.

Also, uh, Douglas's new book to thread.

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/417is2I3IOL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_OU01_AA240_SH20_.jpg

Did Chester Brown ever publish a bound collection of his adaptations of the Gospels? I know he didn't finish all of them, but whatever he did finish?

OH MY I certainly wish, but it hasn't happened. D&Q's been saying for like 4 years they're gonna put Ed the Happy Clown back in print. You'd think with the success of Louis Riel they'd be inspired to revive his older stuff.

I've never bothered with the Louis Riel thing... but I still have my original pressing of Ed the Happy Clown - unfortunately the one with the "revised" ending that deleted a bunch of stuff that appeared in the comics (luckily I have a few of those too).

I thought the only gospel he finished was the Gospel of Mark...? I really liked that - ANGRY JESUS!

I'm not sure where to go with that. Too many primary colors?

Most superhero comic art seems busy (as in "not clean"), loud, brash, and uh anatomically hyperarticulated, all of which are turnoffs for me (and I believe for jaymc).

Though it's not just superhero stuff -- I find, like, Peter Bagge nearly unreadable because his art is so busy and brash (in a somewhat different way than superhero stuff, sure).

Aw, I thing Peter Bagge's art is k-great and fun, but it keeps the man from reading it too.

!!! Bagge's art is great! Oh the many times I patiently copied Buddy Bradley's hideous mug

(I am also a sucker for any artist that uses "BARGE!" as a sound effect)

they reprinted all the ed the happy clowns earlier this year

I'm not saying Bagge's artwork is bad, I'm trying to describe why it prevents me from being able to read his comics.

(I am also a sucker for any artist that uses "BARGE!" as a sound effect)

hahaha, my faves are Matt Feazell's "BRUM" and "ERT" car sfx.

Matt Feazell!! Wow I haven't thought about him in a long time. I always loved his backup strips in Zot.

I love all the Matts. Matt Feazell, Matt Howarth, Matt Wagner, Joe Matt...

Didn't Morrison get his start on 2000 AD?

yes, he wrote "Zenith" for 2000AD, a completely brilliant conjuring into being of a non-existant British superhero mythos. "Zenith" is surely ripe for reprinting in one of those Marvel Essentials knock-offs that 2000AD have been doing lately.

Matt Feazell! I loved "Cynicalman"- 'another day, another .23'

Thx for the tip chaki! About a year ago I got tired of checking the D&Q website for non-lying updates on this.

THE MAN WHO COULDN'T STOP page is like my most favoritiest funniest thing.

dude they are awesome and have about 5 pages of commentary by Brown at the end that shed tons of light on the material and is a v v fun read

I know a special nine-issue treat I'm buying myself.

jaymc, if you think Alan Moore wouldn't be your cup of tea, try A Small Killing. If you think Frank Miller wouldn't be your cup of tea, try Batman: Year One or Give Me Liberty. Ditto ditto Neil Gaiman and/or Dave McKean, try Violent Cases (Gaiman/McKean) or Cages (McKean). If you're wary of Grant Morrison, definitely read WE3.

Why hasn't this thread mentioned Queen & Country?

why hasn't this thread mentioned The Salon, only the single greatest comic book of the year so far???

Yeah, Q&C is really good. I haven't ready any of Rucka's Q&C non-comics novels, though -- are they any good?

Mr Hardy, I am still not convinced by this boosting of "Give Me Liberty", but then I have not read it in years so what would I know.

is that the one illustrated by Dave Gibbons...? Gibbons is great but ugh Miller's pseudo-ironic political posturing stuff is always so annoying to me.

Rucka is the mother@!#$ing man when it comes to crime comics right now, with his only real competition in former collaborator Ed Brubaker. I buy anything I see with either name on it.

Q&C is mostly great, but there are a couple of arcs with art that I can't stand in 'em.

It's probably the weak link in that list, but if you don't go past the first series, it's pretty good. Come to think of it, as crosses of Tony Scott movies and Roadrunner cartoons go, Elektra: Assassin is better. (xpost to DV)

Dude, we need to find out if Amsterdam has any good comic shops.

Elektra: Assassin is funny. But again, would be relatively lame without the fantastic artwork. Man, whatever happened to Sienkewicz?

he was like this great cross between Ralph Steadman and Dave McKean

http://lambiek.net/

Amsterdam have any good comic shops?

YES. Or so the website leads me to believe. I haven't actually been, but I use their comiclopedia all the time.

> Man, whatever happened to Sienkewicz?

Big Numbers #3 broke his mind.

His early "I'm channelling Neal Adams" stuff is as weird to look back at as Barry Smith's early "I'm channelling Jack Kirby" stuff. Boy, did I just date myself.

I need to dredge out my first two issues of Big Numbers one of these days and take another look - see if it's really as great as I remember.

Sienkewicz last seen:
http://www.moonrover.com/mt-static/images/bob_digi.jpg

haha

I've read the Queen and Country novels, but not the graphic novels (although I do have the first volume on my shelf, just haven't gotten to it yet). They're definitely page turners, like pretty much all of his prose novels. What I really like about them is that they aren't adaptations of the comics, or a totally separate series. They're total canon, with big things happening in them that affect the comic series.

> Man, whatever happened to Sienkewicz?

Big Numbers #3 broke his mind.

Big Numbers broke Al Columbia's mind, too (one of my favorite comics stories...):

EASTMAN: ... So we paid Alan to start working on the scripts again, and Bill agreed to do issue #3, and I really hope this is correct because
this one is kinda “gray” for me, but I believe Bill did issue #3, and was doing the covers for #3, #4, and #5. So the ball started rolling
again. Bill was turning in the work. But he stated, and all agreed, he wasn’t going to continue on with the series after that. So we found
Al Columbia, who was Bill’s assistant, and could draw Bill like Bill and would keep the look consistent. We started talking with Al
about stepping in and completing the project. We flew Al to meet Alan. And we got Alan’s approval. We got Bill’s approval, and it
wasn’t an easy thing, Bill was really uncomfortable with it. Understandably so, it’s like having someone else raise your child, but at
the same time, he wasn’t going to do it, and he said, “All right. You know what? Out of respect for Alan, I’ll let Al step in and do this.”
GROTH: Al was Bill’s assistant.
EASTMAN: Al was Bill’s assistant for a period of time. I’m not sure exactly how long. But he had a very similar style to Bill’s.
So we started working with Al on issue #4. By this time Alan was up onto issue #5, script-wise, and Bill had completed the
covers for issues #3, #4, and #5, and Al’s working away on issue #4. To make a long, boring story short, Al took a couple months or so
extra to finish the work, which was okay until he got up to speed.
GROTH: On #4.
EASTMAN: On #4, and the more it went along, Al became more aggravated and started saying that we didn’t really want Al,
we just wanted a Bill clone. Which is the whole point of the whole thing, and I thought was clearly understood. (Groth laughs) It went
all down hill from there, and he kind of got more bizarre towards the end. About the time he turned in all the pages for the work, he
was sitting in Paul’s office. Paul Jenkins was the straw boss on it, and (Columbia) said, “I want to take all the art work home and give
it the final once-over before we send it off to pre-press.” And then we never saw Al again. I had heard through Marc Arsenault, who
was an assistant under Mark Martin in the art department, that he saw Al Columbia tear it up! Then we heard from someone else that
Al said he never tore it up, he’s got it somewhere. And I’m like, “Well, fuck it. I want it.”
GROTH: You paid for it.
EASTMAN: (laughs) I paid for it. I paid not only to have him do the work, but I also paid to buy the original art. I had already
bought a bunch of original art from Al, the same as I was doing with other creators, like Simon Bisley. I was on the one hand, paying
them to create stuff for Tundra to publish, and on the other hand, I was buying the artwork from people that I respected to exhibit in
the Museum. So I lost on both, page rate and page purchase on that one. (Groth laughs) I know I told you this story when we were at
lunch, but I found one tiny little drawing in the studio we provided Al, above Tundra. For the twenty thousand dollars or more I paid
out to Al Columbia on this Big Numbers project, I found one little cut-out drawing of a character that I later glued onto a cover of a
twisted little book I did called Infectious. It’s my twenty thousand dollars worth of Big Numbers, tribute!
GROTH: A twenty thousand dollar Al Columbia drawing?
EASTMAN: My twenty thousand dollar Al Columbia drawing!
GROTH: I think Al told me that Paul Jenkins threatened him with a baseball bat at one point.
EASTMAN: Really? That’s interesting… but, I guess I’m not surprised.
GROTH: Do you know anything about that? (laughs)
EASTMAN: Well, if Paul didn’t, I would have. (Groth laughs) And I better not have a bat close by the next time I see Al, either.
No, only kidding I’ve forgiven him… mostly…
GROTH: So Al just literally vanished with the pages?
EASTMAN: He turned up like three months later working as a hostess —
GROTH: A hostess?
EASTMAN: A host. (laughter)
GROTH: That’s a revelation. He went to Sweden, and then he came back a hostess…
EASTMAN: What do you call somebody that…
GROTH: Maitre’d?
EASTMAN: Maitre’d. Thank you. He used to seat people in a Northampton restaurant called the Brewery. I understand Paul
went into it because he heard that Al was working there. He went in and was like, “Where’s the fucking artwork?” I’m sure Paul
wanted to kill him. Because Paul really worked very, very hard to make that project work, because he loved Alan as a writer, and he
really respected Bill, and Paul is the one that really smoothed everything out and got everybody going on it again.
GROTH: And you never learned, really, why Al did this?
EASTMAN: No. All I can say, towards the end he just used to say, “You want a fucking Sienkiewicz clone, you don’t want
Columbia.” And it’s like “Al, this is why you were fucking brought in, and this is why you agreed to the project. Because you could do
it like Bill. That you could keep it consistent with the first three issues. You were totally into it. It’s not a fantasy we had here. It was
you! (Groth laughs) We paid you, and you accepted the money, and blew it on lingerie to be a hostess.” (laughter) No, no, no… I’m
really kidding this time.
GROTH: Let me get this straight: Bill finished the third issue, and that was never published.
EASTMAN: Yes, I believe that’s correct. I still have all the originals.
GROTH: So why wasn’t that published?
EASTMAN: Why? Because. That’s not fair.

From here.

(have read that before i think, or alan moore's version of it, somewhere. it doesn't actually say why bill stopped though. i went to the signing in a bookshop in northampton. i was 3rd in a queue of three...)

yes, bill's elektra assassin is good. and i always lump it together with ted mckeever's plastic forks (because i was buying them around the same time?). both suffer slightly from the writer = artist thing though (i find that if the writer is also the artist then it doesn't go through that extra level of explanation that is required if writer and artist are different people and which clarifies things for the reader)

http://cgi.ebay.com/AL-COLUMBIA-1992-BIG-NUMBERS-RARE-ART-PRINT-SIENKIEWICZ_W0QQitemZ250156612117QQihZ015QQcategoryZ972QQcmdZViewItem

wikipedia has some 'where are they now' information for bill including

"Sienkiewicz was nominated for an Emmy Award twice, in 1995 and 1996, for his production and character design on Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?."

!

Rock Hardy, if you like I can email my Dutch cartoonist friend to check if there are any good comic stores. He *might* be able to help you out. Does it have to be in Amsterdam? email me at stevienixed at gmail.com if you need me to contact him and ask about it.

bill's elektra assassin is good. and i always lump it together with ted mckeever's plastic forks (because i was buying them around the same time?). both suffer slightly from the writer = artist thing though (i find that if the writer is also the artist then it doesn't go through that extra level of explanation that is required if writer and artist are different people and which clarifies things for the reader)

Frank Miller wrote Elektra Assassin. (You might be thinking of Stray Toasters.)

I can't make myself unaware of them, so I'm not sure how I could verify that... on one level I think Watchmen's inferiority to From Hell is specifically due to all its superhero-comic-book baggage: on the one hand its amazing to see such a humanistic deconstruction of the genre, but on the other its impact is limited because the story is constrained within those reference points to a large degree. From Hell, by contrast, is just a great story, well-written and painstakingly executed, about much larger and more universal themes and issues and goes DEEP into human culture and the psychology of evil in a way that just isn't possible within the confines of a conventional superhero story (however meta that story is).

I totally disagree with this. Like I said before, Watchmen isn't only about the deconstruction of the superheroes, I think the main thing it does is to use superheroes as symbols and vehicles to explore large, universal themes: politics, war, vigilantism, ethics ("peace at any cost", aka the Veidt solution), the American Dream and what happened to it, even quantum physics (though this last one is done in a rather banal way). Compared to that, what are the "more universal themes" in From Hell? "Psychology of evil"? Well, when you really look at it, FH is about a serial killer who had an unhappy childhood, and who's into occultism and also has visions and is a bit mad. Not a particularly original or deep analysis of "evil". Also, I've always thought these sort of looks into the minds of serial killers aren't particularly universal, because most of us don't have to deal with serial killers.

Now don't get me wrong, I think From Hell is a great comic, but that's exactly because it is more about little details than about the sort of grandiose universal themes Moore had in Watchmen and V for Vendetta. However, I think both Watchmen and From Hell suffer from Moore's tendency to do pompous, over-the-top endings. FH actually suffers more from this, because the ending, with Gull's visions of future and him becoming a "ghost", strays from the general realism of the comic, and actually has little to do with the rest of the story. I think it would've been much better for Moore to let the reader decide how mad Gull was instead of providind the supernatural ending we have now.