2012 what are you reading thread

likin' the look of it! and hey, that Supreme run was pretty nice.

I'd rather read more KING CITY or the second MULTIPLE WARHEADS volume (which I think is largely done, or was at Stumptown last year).

Just finished JOE THE BARBARIAN and am torn. On one hand, it's a fairly slight adventure yarn with very nice art. On the other hand, does it really need to be anything more than that?

I was kinda disappointed with Joe the Barbarian... Yeah, it was okay as an adventure yarn, but the main novelty (that the rooms in the house provided the settings for the fantasy world) didn't really work; the connection between the fantasy kingdom and the real world was mostly arbitrary. Also, some of the more dramatic moments came were also kinda random (why the heck did those kids set the dog to Joe's house?), and the final revelation (relating to the dead father) came totally out of blue, plus it had nothing to do with Joe's adventure, so it felt like the happy ending wasn't earned.

It's the first GM book I haven't INSTANTLY read. Was waiting for the paperback trade. Art is lovely though.

Yeah, the sam

Yeah, the same for me. Was really excited about it first, since the premise seemed like a surefire road to Morrison goodness, but in the end he didn't really get anything new out of a story that's been told a million times. Basically it felt like Morrison didn't have the time/inspiration/whatever to do this properly, so he just produced a half-assed script because he wanted to showcase Sean Murphy's art anyway. And the art is gorgeous, of course, but this could've sooo much better with better writing. Hopefully Morrison and Murphy will collaborate on something else in the future.

<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/King-City-TP-Brandon-Graham/dp/160706510X/";>More (okay, not more) King City!</a>

Catching up on Morrison's ACTION and am now convinced that it could be a good comic if it were all actually on the page. I'm getting the exact same feeling reading that that I got when reading FINAL CRISIS, like I was reading every other panel of something that could be great.

BULLETPROOF COFFIN #2 was all kinds of crazy skull-munching action and dread. Last couple of THUNDERBOLTS have been good too. Hoping the book will continue to be good when it gets turned into DARK AVENGERS later this year.

Catching up on Morrison's ACTION and am now convinced that it could be a good comic if it were all actually on the page. I'm getting the exact same feeling reading that that I got when reading FINAL CRISIS, like I was reading every other panel of something that could be great.

yeah, this. at least in FC the time compression and fragmentation made sense. here it reduces a promising story to total rubbish. no character development, no sense of narrative flow, just this rush of half-developed happenings. especially disappointing after a very promising start.

also agree abt joe the barbarian being a minor disappointment. great set-up and wonderful art, but the real-world story wasn't anywhere near as well developed as its fantasy counterpart, so the whole thing kind of fell apart as it moved into the final act. also, it seems like grant set up a story wherein joe basically had to die, couldn't accept that, and lazily DEMed his way out. still nice to look at.

the plotting, monster designs and world-building on prophet have been fun, but i wish the art were more refined. or expressive or personal or just just something, anything but this formless, scrawly mess.

Farel Dalrymple's drawing the next two, then Graham the one after.

^JOY^

would love to see a dave cooper issue. also, they need to get him to do a backup story for adventure time. brandon graham too.

p.s. hey, are you reading adventure time?

nah but I'd never heard of the cartoon before ads for the comic turned up on the back of Snarked.

Cooper would be great, but he quit comics cold turkey a good nine or so years ago (apart from a dope Pip & Norton reunion with McInnes c. 2010)

Infinite Horizon a retelling of the Iliad set in the near future with Ulysses represented as a U.s. marine captain. Only just started it so can't really say much more. Looks ok so far.

Read #0 of Hoax Hunters last night which seems fun .

also Fables #115 which I guess I'm still interested in. seems to be more child centric than it was when I started. Or is it. does have several plots running at the same time still.

Cooper would be great, but he quit comics cold turkey a good nine or so years ago

Jesus, has it been that long? That dude was a titan. And if I'm recalling his TCJ interview correctly, he was (amazingly) self-taught. I just found a bunch of his stuff in my storage. It's on the docket.

Also found in storage and am currently reading The Infinity Gauntlet. Still holds up decently, but it's largely a nostalgia trip back to that summer when I first started collecting Marvel comics and, between buying that stuff and a ton of Marvel trading cards, slowly learned who that slew of mysterious characters were. What a fun and exciting time.

wow, i don't really follow comics culture too closely, never been a TCJ reader, so i didn't know that cooper had "officially" quit doing comics. just knew that weasel was the last comix-type thing i'd seen by him, and that was quite a while back. sad :(

I was a little wary when Weasel switched from a regular comic series to hardcover books of his illustration work, but I'm glad I kept buying it. That stuff was amazing.

I wish I could remember where I read about/saw this, but he basically lies face-down in this harness thing and does all of his work facing the ground. Which is apparently pretty great from an ergonomic standpoint. Always wanted to try that.

interview w/ macinnes someplace? i've read that, too, but like you, i can't remember where. it's an interesting idea and speaks of a fanatic's dedication.

He doesn't really, but he wants to. Drawing table visible in expanded photo here.

Likin' Prophet. Diggin' Roy. Dalrymple will be fun to see.

Wolverine and the X-Men also.

Bulletproof Coffin: Disinterred is three issues in and can't be touched.

NO SPOILERS I HAVEN'T BEEN TO THE SHOP YET. #bulletproofcoffin

THE GRAND COSMIC JOKE GETS MORE TWISTED. ALL I'LL SAY. #bulletproofcoffin

(plus the double splash pages are awesome)

r baez. sadly, it's one of very few titles i'm happy to be reading at the moment, along w prophet, skeleton key and adventure time.

r baez otm, i mean. bulletproof coffin really is great.

Bulletproof Coffin is great, but Image's distribution in Ireland is shite (largely because no one here wants to read weirdo comics, I suspect), so nothing has appeared here since #1 of the new series. This is not unlike the first series, where the penultimate issue seemed to never arrive. Curse you, fickle fate.

I was thinking, though, that on the basis of the first issue the new BC is not unlike the promised prequels to Watchmen.

Image have the same distribution in Ireland as they do in the rest of the planet, if the issues aren't turned up it's probably because the shops just aren't ordering them (and possibly that Diamond are slacking)

Alison Bechdel's 'Are You My Mother?' is really quite dull. I loved 'Fun Home', but this is, though done with technical excellence, a glorified version of the art you see in community health organisations and psychiatric hospitals--therapeutic for the artist, and of little value for anyone else.

the new yorker excerpt kinda looked that way tbh
and all the people i know who think bechdel is a great comic artist tend not to be comic nerds
i liked fun home just fine, but i think stuck rubber baby and the photographer are about a dozen times better, just to pick two

The GREEN RIVER KILLER book from Dark Horse with art by Jonathan Case. Very good. As was the MY FRIEND DAHMER book by Derf. Read issue one of RESET by Peter Bagge which was meaty and rubbery and priced right. Issue #1 of THE SHADOW was bloody but felt more set-up than actual issue. Oh, and the new Ben Marra comics which are infuckingsane.

love Dykes, barely like Fun Home. though the stiff computer lettering and stiff, unopenable pages were the main thing that stopped me buying my own copy.

(also I prob haven't read any Dykes from the last 20 years.)

interview I read with Bechdel said the entire point of the new book was trying to make her mother say she loved her.

Yikes

Yeah, I don't even have a funny response to that. Horrifying.

"glorified version of the art you see in community health organisations and psychiatric hospitals"

That is super mean (and also hilarious). Shame, though -- I loved Fun Home.

it's a weirdly candid thing to say in an interview but to be fair a substantial proportion of all the art ever made by anyone is motivated by 'wanting to make x say that x loved me', maybe a fifth or so

actually I got it the wrong way round. ish:

AB: I feel like this book is at its core just a simple and quite pathetic effort to get my mother to hear me tell her that I love her. I could not possibly do that in person, I mean I've tried that. I've done that. It goes okay, but it's never what I want. And even having done this, I don't…you know, I'm still waiting for some kind of response from her that I'm sure I will never get. She really feels like the book is -- she sees the hostility, she doesn't see the love. And that is distressing to me.

BNR: It's so clearly drenched in love and in longing for that kind of response from her. But part of the tragedy of the book is that she doesn't feel like -- well, like the kind of character who's going to be able to give that sort of response.

AB: Something that really captures her sort of split response to the book is that I got a pre-pub review that talked about my "substantive yet essentially distant" relationship with my mother, and I showed her that review and she was really psyched about it. She thought it was good. It was a starred review, and she was happy about that. She did not seem the least bit fazed to hear our relationship described as "substantive yet essentially distant." I think she would agree that's accurate.

BULLETPROOFFFFFF COFFFFFFFIN. Yowza. Not so much a story as a machine for breeding and mutating images. Amazing.

i was also (very) underwhelmed by fun home, didn't like the art or lettering and, a bit like harvey pekar w/ maus, i even started to feel sorry for the father... forks comment that her work appeals more to non-nerds seems otm to me - its a (rather precious)literary memoir masquerarding as comics (i don't remember a single sequence that could've only been achieved w/ panel-to-panel continuity). it mystifies me why debbie dreschler's slightly similar - but far superior - Daddy's Girl gn didn't get anywhere near the same amount of attention/acclaim.

or (moreso in my mind) carol tyler's far better "you'll never know"

i even started to feel sorry for the father

you're meant to feel sorry for Vladek in Maus! Artie is a total dick

i feel like 'this is a bad comic because it appeals to people who don't read a lot of comics' is kind of a bad look

nobody is saying that

and all the people i know who think bechdel is a great comic artist tend not to be comic nerds

forks comment that her work appeals more to non-nerds seems otm to me

those things are true, but it isn't what makes her work bad (imho)

to invoke maus again, its p obvious why it might appeal to ppl not marinated in comic bk lore - 'big' subject, provocative metaphor, simple drawing/storytelling etc - but maus is a great work of art, and fun home ain't

a lot of the work is being done in the relation between the always-reflecting narration and the always-dramatising images.

http://ed-rex.com/sites/default/files/2010_09/fun_home_page_93.jpg

there's also the insistence on the form of the fun. home itself, that it is visibly there all the damn time is important.

http://hoodedutilitarian.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Fun-Home-09.jpg

sure, it's a cartoonist's comic, it's not formally innovative, and there are ways the same point could be put across in other media. but to claim it's 'masquerading as comics' seems a stretch.

also, maus is fn awful

also, sic - yeah, but vladek is a dick too!

lol thomp i will leave you with yr horticultural virtuosity and i will stick w/ my maus, ty

not sure what you mean by 'cartoonist's comic', and the relation/disjuncture between narration and image is obv a p common feature of films etc w/ voiceovers, tho yes, it's interesting to see it tried in comics i guess. maybe i just find bechdel v v boring, i dunno

I thought Fun Home was likable, but Dykes to Watch Out For is Bechdel's magnum opus. Everyone should check that one out, even if you didn't like FH... It's less lit crit friendly (more like a political lesbian sitcom), and more "comicky", if that's what you prefer. A reasonably prized "Essential" collection that collects about two thirds of all the strips came out a couple of years ago, though personally I'd recommend acquiring the softcover collections which have all the strips plus some extra material.