2012 what are you reading thread

honestly, i think JH is one of the finest american long-form comix artists & writers ever, period, with very little competition

Don't know if we have a Rolling General Comics Industry News thread, but Filipino artist Tony DeZuniga has died.

http://www.newsfromme.com/2012/05/10/tony-dezuniga-r-i-p/

reading Batman Inc. pretty fun.

aw, i liked dezuniga

No judgment on these particular designs, but another point for the "comics collections should have good graphic design" pile: http://blog.newsarama.com/2012/05/22/why-cant-more-comics-look-like-this/

I do wish more series had solid spine designs.

Read Joe the Barbarian. Artwork was phenomenal. I don't think I quite understood what Morrison was going for in this story, beyond the kind of stuff he's did in Flex Mentallo, Final Crisis, Batman RIP, etc.

Yeah - its... too ambitious? It hints at duelling realities, but just meanders about. It's a nifty six issue series that doesn't need the bloat.

Eh? I didn't notice anything ambitious about it, if anything the it felt there was too little ambition. The division between the real and fantasy world was straightforward right from the beginning, and (unlike in Flex Mentallo), there were no further twists or ambiguities that would've made it more interesting. Plus the ending (the way Joe manages to save the house) was a deus-ex-machina ass pull, nothing in the story even hinted at that direction.

it was kinda set up early that he would be rewarded by hearing his father somehow by saving the world, so it kinda made sense - the deeds being in the "tomb of the iron knight"/basement

Xaime's made a few huge jumps forward in excellence in his time - he was rly rly good by the mid-80s, but then Death Of Speedy is a quantum leap into greatest alive territory. and coming after the major misfire (for a bookstore-formatted reboot) of the Ti-Girls two parter, Love Bunglers / Browntown is like a hibernating god stretched, shook off his winter coat and went "oh what? yeah I guess I can still show up everyone in my own and all younger generations, nbd"

I did find it way easier to get into Beto as a teenager bcz his writing was stronger earlier. And the underlying drawing was there from the start, but the pen/feathering style (combined with italicised lettering) isn't as immediately welcoming as his later brus/spotted black work.

I liked that Joe The Barbarian didn't feel the need to throw in a twist, once the division between realms was set up, but that consistency would have felt more rewarding in a single graphic novel than over something like a year or more's serialisation

Re Hernandezes, I bought the first few books of the old collections, and couldn't get past the not very good sci-fi/cavewomen in space stuff the series begins with. I know it changes later on, but I lost my interest before getting there.

pen/feathering style (combined with italicised lettering) isn't as immediately welcoming as his later brush/spotted black work

yeah this was re Jaime's Rockets period btw

I love that "major misfire" story. Doesn't compare to what follows it, but still.

Re Hernandezes, I bought the first few books of the old collections, and couldn't get past the not very good sci-fi/cavewomen in space stuff the series begins with. I know it changes later on, but I lost my interest before getting there.

This is just hugely, hugely tragic and why I'd recommend newbies skip that stuff altogether on a first readthrough. I would strongly suggest that you do yourself a favor and try again at some point where the rocketships and dinosaurs stop showing up.

I love the early Xaime stories, but if that's what it takes to get to the masterpieces like Death of Speedy and beyond, then ^^^^ otm.

Yeah, y'know, come back to that early stuff when you wanna see the first appearances of characters and, like, figure out what the deal is with Rena Titañon or whatever, but don't let it be the impediment that keeps you from enjoying some of the finest comics ever.

Those early stories are especially great to go back to now that the characters have reached middle age. Knowing what's to come, the pathos is overwhelming.

deric and WMC otm

OK, so where _is_ a good starting point? Which book should I buy first?

The most economical method would probably be to get The Locas Collection directly from Fantagraphics -- 1320 pages in 5 volumes, all the Locas stories from vols. 1 and 2 for $65. But if you want to go one volume at a time, I'd say start with vol. 2, The Girl from H.O.P.P.E.R.S.

So, uh, I'm not hallucinating the extended Mountain Goats reference in the new Mighty Thor, am I?

Nope. Fraction said Marvel goofed and forgot to put in the title - "the best ever death metal band out of Broxton".

deets!

There's a Jeff, a mention of his buddy Cyrus and the band they were in, and a few "Hail Satans". How those are integrated to a larger story you have to read for yourself.

ok i'm never gonna understand it then

now reading: old Berni Wrightson horror comics

I just finished reading Dan Slott's run on She-Hulk. Surprisingly fun. Maybe I should read his Spider-Man stuff next.

She-Hulk went so off the boil by the end that I no longer felt like following Slott's work anywhere

His Spider-Man/Human Torch mini is terrific fun, though - drawn (and ghost-co-written) by Ty Templeton. The collection was a digest, so mildly annoyingly tiny and difficult to read, but appealingly only eight bucks or so.

The first 12 issue She-Hulk series was much better than the following run. It definitely ran down as it got caught up in continuity and had to be reined in by editorial. Of course, that was also when it sold the most. People are silly.

I'll look for the Spider-Man/Human Torch. Not sure if they have it in the digital reader thing.

They do have it on MDCU. That's my next read.

Thumbs-up on the SPIDEY/TORCH mini. Bonus Spidermobile.

Just reread the WARLOCK series from Marvel (pre INFINITY-EVERYTHING). It's still great. It's still terrible at the same time. Things were done with pages there that defy description.

There's finally an Essential Warlock coming later this year with all that early stuff in it.

Best news I've heard all month. But it'll be b/w won't it? I've got scans of the WARLOCK SPECIAL EDITION from 1984 or so (as well as paper originals). Might pass on that, but probably don't have the willpower.

AFAIK, all the original 70s Warlock comics have already been collected in Marvel Masteworks Warlock Vol. 1. (the pre-Starlin stuff), and Vol. 2 (the Starlin comics). They're kinda pricey, but both are hardcover and about 300 pages.

Eh, I always hate those B&W reprints. You can feel the missing color.

yup. They feel sort of pointless

I guess the point is paying 15 bucks for the B&W Essential edition, instead of 50 bucks for the coloured Marvel Masterworks one?

Pretty much. They're designed for us poors.

b&w = incredibly evocative of the way that certain britishes marvel comics fans hem hem first experienced these 'classic' stories - eg in cruddy black and white weekly reprint mags. but also, black and white sometimes lets you appreciate the line/artwork better eg i don't think colan and palmer's tomb of dracula issues have ever looked better than in the essential volumes, and also, lots of the colouring choices made on these super-deluxe 'archival' reprint problems are just as diminishing as stripping out the colour altogether - inappropriate (computer) re-colouring, muddy reproduction of original comic book colour, etc etc. as a big hunk of reading material, which wld often cost thousands to buy in the original editions, the essentials represent v v gd value for money, imho (generally, dc/national have always kept better quality stats of their titles, so the showcase series generally have nice clean pages that haven't been obviously re-drawn/'restored').

also, the early issues of warlock, pre-jim starlin, are p ho-hum and not especially deserving of hardbacked deluxoid reverence

tho i do concede that the magus shld always be in colour

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c6/Themagusoriginal.png/250px-Themagusoriginal.png

As long as the Masterworks volumes are still being issued, I think the Essentials are a wonderful idea. There's lots of stuff that I want to read but that a) I don't think really requires the deluxe treatment and b) that I don't want to pay a lot of money for. The Essentials are just so economical. I have pretty much everything up through 1970 and it only set me back, what, a couple hundred bucks? That's pretty rad. There's stuff like Kirby's Thor that I'll probably eventually shell out for the color reprints of, but I'm cool for now.

I imagine Colan's dynamism, the hites and dites and the sense that characters in motion were moving almost too fast to see, made coloring his work a little more difficult in those pre-digital days. I should have asked Carl Gafford about that back when I was in CAPA-Alpha, but never thought of it.

but also, black and white sometimes lets you appreciate the line/artwork better eg i don't think colan and palmer's tomb of dracula issues have ever looked better than in the essential volumes,

OTM. I don't even want to see Colan in color anymore, it just gets in the way of what's great about him.

Colan was so awesome; he was like a "third way" at Marvel. No Kirby in him at all, no Ditko either. Who the fuck followed him stylistically?

Ditko also looks fucking great in Essentials black and white. Kirby/Sinnott too. Kirby/Colletta though, NAGL in B&W. You need the colors to tell you where the boundaries of the figures and objects are.

Jonah Hex also looks awesome in its B&W phonebook.

Have to say that a lot of the old ghost story/haunted house/whatevers comics look fine in B/W. Superhero stuff often suffers but I can read it just fine and it's a hundred times cheaper than the hardcovers and a lot easier than bargain bins.

After getting to peruse a lot of Colan through the MDCU I have to say that, as much as I love him on the Tomb OF Dracula I pretty much hate him on superheroes. I find his Iron Man and Daredevil issues almost unreadable. Except for covers; the man was born to do covers.

I love the Essential Spider-Man Ditko volumes. To see his line work evolve is such a joy. Can't read his Strange stuff in black and white though. Not trippy enough.

hey so I'm feeling pretty good about going off Slott as mentioned:

http://toobusythinkingboutcomics.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/why-i-loathe-and-despise-spider-man.html

I read the Spidey/Torch team-up and I liked one out of the five issues. Tried to read the Spider-Man BIG TIME story and gave up two issues in. Slott lost the plot after that first She-Hulk series.