2012 what are you reading thread

Also, I just bought the first Carl Barks Fantagraphics book, which I'm curious/stoked to read, as I've never (knowingly) read any before

oh wow dude that's heavy

like seriously, i don't know if i'd rate anyone as a storyteller higher than barks. I'd put him ahead of the hernandii, eisner, tezuka, herge...

whaaaaat omg want did not even know those were out

they're supposed to be releasing the complete barks over time
the paper quality is AWESOME, it feels like reading a gold key issue.

Yeah, it's a beautiful book. There's some dorky essays at the back for the ahem, "serious fans," but it still looks like a proper kids' book. My partner went from "that's seriously the dorkiest thing you've ever bought" to "that's niiiiiiice" in like two seconds.

I've been catching up on the Kirby/Lee Captain America series from the mid-to-late 60s and absolutely loving it. I've read a lot of Kirby's return to Marvel Cap run from the late 70s, but never had a chance to read the Tales To Astonish/Captain America stories. There is something special about Cap in Jack's hands at his peak; never before or after has the visceral kineticism of Cap in action felt so muscular and punishing.

This Marvel online subscription this is blowing my mind. I wish DC would do the same.

convince me it's worth it? What are the particulars? Logistics/programs/cost/renewal options/what it gets you/media format/etc?

It's $60/year (though there is a code on their Facebook page for some % off through the end of the month that made it roughly $42). It allows you to go to their website and read flash converted scans of thousands of their comics, from the 40s through some time in the recent past (seems to vary by title, but looks to be around 12-24 months for most current runs). There are huge gaps and titles completely missing (like Power Man & Iron Fist from the 80s), but they are adding stuff every week, both new and old.

It all depends on how much you like reading comics on your computer. I wish I had a working laptop or that they'd make an ipod compatible version (it'd get me to finally pick one up), but for that price I feel like I'm getting a decent deal.

you can browse the collection and find FAQs and such here:

http://marvel.com/digital_comics/unlimited

okay, so they don't actually publish new comics online? that seems weird.

they do - you just have to buy them individually. Not part of the giant back catalog thing.

ahhhhhh. hm. seems like a "close the barndoor after the cow left" strategy on their part, especially without ipad support. It's still easier to pirate than to buy and far more convenient.

I think they sell new stuff through Comixology and other comic apps for ipad and the like. It's incredibly easy to buy digital comics if you want to do so. Services like the one I signed up for will keep me from scouring for downloads of old comics if they keep adding things.

What I don't think they've figured out is a pricing structure that works for new stuff because they don't want to kill brick and mortar comic book stores, even if they'd be better off doing so in the long run. I can't remember the last time I bought comics that weren't trades or hardcovers.

This MDCU thing is like netflix streaming for their comics; a great idea that will only get better as it grows. Really needs an iOS interface though.

yeah, i hear you. if they had an ipad interface i would buy literally right now and keep a sub going until i died.
i remember talking to an erstwhile ilxor and comic journalist about a year ago who had just written a piece about marvel's online plans and when i asked him what the hell they were thinking he said "they aren't"

I think that sums it up quite well. None of these publishers seem to know what to do with online besides go after the pirates, which is like killing an ant hive with your finger tip. You might get an impressive pile of dead ants but you ain't done shit.

Someone has to say, "Our periodicals are now digital. Print is for collections. Our periodicals are cheaper because we've eliminated a huge cost and discount structure. Our print editions will be nicer and with value added material. We will offer a discount on the collection if you have bought all the periodicals included and you purchase directly from us."

But they are deathly afraid of fucking over the retailers that kept them going the last 25 years so won't take that big a step. Instead they lurch around blindly hoping for something to magically work like the direct market did when the newsstands started to fade.

hear hear
marvel or dc needs to make scott mccloud their head of digital distribution or something and just fix the problem. make a partnership with google or something and set up a business plan for the ongoing stories as opposed to letting them turn into a festering cesspoool to fish ideas for movies out of.

I think it's not hard to fix the business model, but that won't help the content of most of these shit giant crossover merchandising monstrosities. There needs to be a Head Slapper In Chief who just walks around the table at these company creative retreats smacking editors and writers when something horrible comes out of their mouths. They better be working out because that's a prescription for Tommy John's surgery.

hear hear

nonsense, the fact that DC haven't boasted about the actual numbers for the switch to day-and-date for nu-52 digital plainly indicates that it's not sustainable in any way. and if they do choke off the comics shops, in a year that over 30% of the bookstore market in the US has collapsed, where are they going to sell these print collections?

(not to mention that DC's production department has lost the ability to actually make books where you can read the pages. I'm not giving them another $40 for a JH Williams book with an inch of art and random word balloons lost in the gutter.)

"not sustainable in any way"
you mean not sustainable in the way that their current infrastructure is organized? of course not.

i'm sure i've said something like this before on ilc, but i STILL can't buy into the kult of barks (tho' i'm looking forward to the fanta editions, to help change my mind) - like, at their v v best his duck comics strike me, the ones i've read, as entertaining morality cum adventure stories w an increasingly pessimistic/reactionary/misanthropic etc p.o.v - nicely crafted and allbut, visually, entirely faithful, and totally derived from, a global brand, all soft lines and no rough edges, not actually that funny, or even very INTERESTING, most of the time, especially when put aside the far more quirky, personal, inspired, unique children's comics by ppl like herge, goscinny/underzo, franquin, leo baxendale etc etc.

forks, the word 'storytelling' has to be the most baggy, useless term in the comics critical lexicon - are you saying that you prefer the actual STORIES in donald duck comics compared to love and rockets etc etc, or do you mean that at the level of panel-to-panel continuity, barks is superior to tesuka or whoever, or what? (sorry, i just REALLY hate the word, want to stamp it out of the discourse. i mean you could say that, say, Druillet disregards all the accepted rules of 'good storytelling' - clarity, structure, formal symmetry, coherence and so on - but, as Jack Kirby said when he saw some of Druillet's work, "now THAT'S comics!")

the latter: that he's able to panel by panel connect images in such a way that no one else can touch. I like the hernandez bros STORIES better but i like Barks' storytelling.
i say, i say STORYTELLING son

Ward is 100% correct from my PoV.

And I've spent more money than I care to imagine (and definitely more than any of you should remind me of) on Don Lawrence reprints. Seriously. All of Trigan Empire and all of Storm from the Don Lawrence Collection. It makes my head hurt.

I have very fond memories of the Trigan Empire from reprints in Vulcan when I was small, but the crazy price of the modern reprints puts me off going near them. It is a shame that no one has put them together in a more affordable format. I know they are painted full colour and all that, but does each book really need to cost 70 quid (or whatevr it is - it's certainly more than the 5p each issue of Vulcan was)?

Oh, I also bought (and haven't yet read) L'Incal.

I've been catching up on the Kirby/Lee Captain America series from the mid-to-late 60s and absolutely loving it

is this collected somewhere now...?

Essential Captain America vol. 1 (or, uh, the internet)

The Trigan Empire and Storm sets are cheaper if you agree to buy the lot but... erm... not much. You get one book free.

black-and-white? fuck that shit

that's why I went with "uh, the internet" for mine

get the MDCU subscription! Worth the money. Now reading the Nick Fury stories from Strange Tales. Astoundingly creative and fun.

I dunno, feel like I spend enough time in front of a computer screen, and I don't have an ipad or anything like that (can't say I really want one either)

Yeah, I'm sure if I lived in your neck of the woods I'd find more out-of-the-house sources of entertainment, but whaddayagonnado.

Just read this issue of Strange Tales:

http://imgc.allpostersimages.com/images/P-473-488-90/62/6204/P7V1100Z/posters/dan-adkins-strange-tales-162-cover-dr-strange-and-nebulos-flying.jpg

And I have to say, Nebulos the prow-headed goofball is one of the worst Marvel villains I've ever come across. And I've bought multiple issues with Madcap, so I'm pretty familiar with crappy Marvel bad guys.

Just read the first three collections The Bellybuttons, and I really love this series! It's like a crueler version of Clueless or something! Basically it's a story of three high school girls that consists of 1–4 page strips which end on an gag, but there are also running plots which are usually more serious, and even some of the gags are pretty sad if you think about them (for example, several of them are based on a geeky teen boy who always threatens to commit suicide if he doesn't get his way). The dynamics of the comic are are really well thought out: two of the three protagonists are very superficial and mean towards the third one (who's almost the only decent person in the whole series), but the writer occasionally shows that these two also have pretty fucked-up backgrounds, yet the series never goes into some Freudian psychodrama that would explain away their awful behaviour. I can't think of too many comics that would manage to balance comedy and tragedy as well as this one does... And thank good Cinebook has decided to release this series in the original European comic books size instead of 50% size they've use with many other series they translate. The art is really fluid yet detailed, it wouldn't have worked quite as well in diminished size.

Honest question for those of you versed in Marvel 60s lore: when did Avengers get good? I have slogged through the first three years worth and it is almost universally horrible. Some fun characters in the early Kirby involved issues (I love Kang), but then it is dreck for years. Stan seems to be phoning it in, and I can't say Don Heck isn't too (though I'm inclined to think that's just Heck being Heck).

I'm thinking I should have started with the Thomas/Buscema issues.

Englehart era imho

Yeah, I was going to say the same thing. Actually, start with the Kree-Skrull War -- #89 starts sowing the seeds, Neal Adams art starts #93. The M.U. starts getting more interesting when the Avengers mix it up with its more cosmic aspects, even though it's still Roy Thomas writing. (His dialogue and soap operatic subplots are nails-on-chalkboard for me.) The Englehart run is really good stuff.

Avengers is just weak conceptually imho, which is a hard thing to overcome. Basically it's the JLA with an endlessly rotating cast of lesser characters, it's not like there's a lot to work with. Agree about the cosmic stuff being a saving grace as far as plot devices go.

I've read most of the Englehart run before, but had never gone back beyond the odd issue here and there (like the Vision debut, for example). It's pretty dire.

I wish they had more 70s/80s stuff scanned already. I'd love to reread the Yellowjacket wife-beater run.

They have 12 Englehart comics, most being either the first batch of The Defenders or Avengers/Squadron Supreme Serpent Crown stuff. All of which I've read in recent memory. Urgh.

Worth reading the Busiek-penned Avengers relaunch? I'm not a big fan of his but they have that whole series.

If not, I think I'll revisit Excalibur for the first time in 20-odd years. Still a sucker for Alan Davis art.

Why did nobody tell me that the Kirby Black Panther of the 70s started with a story called "King Solomon's Frog"? I'll be reading this run ASAP.

man I am dying to get around to Kirby's Black Panther and 70s Cap America runs

the thomas-buscema-palmer- adams avengers are all-time great superhero comics, and superior to the englehart issues, imho (better artwork, for a start - too many of the englehart issues are drawn by bob brown, ugh). personally, i prefer the more 'mundane' storylines, like the introduction of the vision or the first yellowjacket, to the cosmic shit that roy got into later in the run, but there's very little of his overwriting or continuity-obesessing here, just really solid, colourful, inventive and involving marvel comics - don't sleep on em!

i mean, what other superhero comic in 1968 had stuff like this?

http://www.littlestuffedbull.com/images/comics/locs/avengerspoetry/avengers57.jpg

profound, too

http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/10/Avengers(1000)_058_20_001.jpg

seems like a manufacturing fault

Worth reading the Busiek-penned Avengers relaunch? I'm not a big fan of his but they have that whole series.

It's worth a read, yes. Busiek is never mind-blowing, but he's always solid, and he obviously loves The Avengers and their history; references to various Avengers stories published throughout the decades keep popping up, though you don't need to be familiar with those stories in order to get these ones. Busiek's writing is decidedly old school (was this the last time third person narration was used extensively in a major Marvel comic?), but if you like that kind of stuff, it's very entertaining. I'd say the biggest flaw in Busiek's run was his attempt to incorporate racial politics and an affirmative action plot to The Avengers; I respect him for trying to do that, but it just doesn't mix well with cosmic shenanigans his run is mostly about.

i'm sure i've said something like this before on ilc, but i STILL can't buy into the kult of barks (tho' i'm looking forward to the fanta editions, to help change my mind) - like, at their v v best his duck comics strike me, the ones i've read, as entertaining morality cum adventure stories w an increasingly pessimistic/reactionary/misanthropic etc p.o.v - nicely crafted and allbut, visually, entirely faithful, and totally derived from, a global brand, all soft lines and no rough edges

i have to object to the idea that barks's comics are 'totally derived from' the disney brand -- the style and tone of barks's comics are NOTHING like any disney cartoon, donald duck himself is a completely different character (it's impossible to read one of those comics and imagine donald speaking in that voice he has in the cartoons -- at least, i can't), and barks invented most of the characters other than donald so he was the originator of the 'brand' if anyone was. (and it seems unfair to complain that he has 'no rough edges' after complaining about his pessimistic misanthropy!)

but if it doesn't hit ya, it doesn't hit ya. i used to have a hard time explaining to ppl why i liked 'peanuts' before the fanta reprints started coming out...