2012 what are you reading thread

Dquest #2 quickly confronted me with the least funny page of "ur a faggot" I think I've ever read? I've been called a faggot on the street and it's been funnier and more tasteful and more meaningful.

Not that that was the only thing, but some of my best friends like Tim + Eric and that's OK!

I've been so out of the game in expressing negativity, I'm out of practice, I'm sure these Dungeon Quest comics will find a good home somewhere and I'm looking forward to gifting them

well if it's any sort of a mediating factor, the third book has more assplay and forest gnome masturbation than the average issue of x-men
i don't know what to make of this dude's attitudes toward homosexuality. he clearly is into drawing anuses and penises because those are a major part of the plot!
it's somehow not offensive to me but maybe that's because i was raised on a steady diet of Spain Rodriguez and Jack Jaxon and S. Clay Wilson and the like and this seems more of that lineage than anything else

the faggot stuff made me feel uncomfortable too

and yeah, that too

also that nerdgirl is this silent female character who remains sexless and without personality right up until the moment she is captured as a treasure.
TBH i am honestly chalking both of those up as teenage male power fantasies; I see the narrative as being spoken from the mind of a few fourteen year old boys playing tabletop games and the weird obsession with "winkys" and not being "faggots" and the abstraction of women into inscrutable tagalongs all plays into that

i was bothered by the 'faggot' stuff, and i think i chatted w/ forks a bit about the silent female character, but at this point i'm willing to believe that the author is trying to develop something and not just being a shithead. particularly because he has such mastery over his content that it doesn't seem like his Id escaping, and also bc like forks mentioned the homoerotic stuff keeps getting ramped up more and more. i guess it could turn out that he's a brilliant Sim-like creator whose interesting stuff + style is always pushing against the grain of his crazy. but i suspect that he's more interested in cultural ideas of masculinity, hetero + homosexuality. SPOILER like when the one character passes out and they insert the suppository capsule in his ass and first, the loving visual detail showing the suppository slowly being inserted, and then the whole discussion of whether the anus pulled it in, or if the suppository pushed itself in, etc. i mean, weird as fuck and totally bizarre, but hard to believe he's just being a homophobic jerk.

nb, if it bothers u, i don't have any problem with that and i think DQ probably isn't for most ppl, let alone everyone. but i also think it's incredibly compelling and i'd love to read some serious crit breaking down what daly is doing. maybe we should start a DQ thread tbh.

go for it

"Faggot" don't bother me itself, but that was really the moment when I realized I'd paid $40 just to watch the author jerk off. Bumping around in the darkness of one's own id is one thing, and like I said, I love a Marc Bell and he's got as many buttplay detours and cockring subquests as anybody.

Oh, I didn't want to present "the other thing" b/c I don't like getting neg on internet. "It's not for me thanks tho" - official quote

ha, you don't have to like everything Owen!

I got in trouble with a long time reader from France (with whom I had exchanged letters and music tapes back in the 90s) over an incidental character derisively saying 'bunch o' queers' in this strip:

http://trueswamp.wordpress.com/2011/04/27/thirty-seven/

I felt horrible about offending him but still felt like 'well, the character is a douchebag, so it's apt' but maybe I don't have the right to make that judgment...

Meanwhile I have another character, a central one going back to the beginning, whose verbal signature is to swear in just about every sentence; 'cocksucker' is a constant favorite with him but it's value-neutral the way he uses it, just another word for 'person' or 'thing'. I suppose that's why no one has ever objected to him in the same way, I dunno...

woo, my Mourning Star comix came in

So Wow Cool came thru for you, excellent.

oookay maybe Dungeon Quest doesn't sound like my bag

I'm a) massively lazy and b) of poor moral character, so I'm only now sitting down to make my way through around 8 months of backlog of cbrs/cbzs. So far the surprise standouts have been a) Journey Into Mystery, Kieron Gillen's Kid Loki comic, which is a liiittle like a semi-twee version of Lucifer and b) Avengers Academy, which is proper superpowered teen soap.

They also demonstrate the idea that crossovers are best with teams that don't already have books. Avengers Academy has a visit from the homeless Runaways, which is basically the platonic model of a crossover - everyone's motivations are clear, everyone gets a little time in the light, everyone gets to bounce of a new character in an interesting way. JIM's crossover with New Mutants is an abomination - gimmicky alternative universe, starts with a #1 issue separate from either of the books, doesn't have a wrap-up issue.

I should note that I am intending to buy a bunch of stuff after my cbr shame!

heard some intriguing things about Journey Into Mystery alright. Haven't read much Gillen but i HATED that britpop thing he did

The JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY I've read has been solid (not caught up at all though), as was his THOR that preceded it. THOR and related SIEGE issues were probably the highlight of that stupid event. I wasn't a big fan of the much vaunted PHONOGRAM either, but Britpop wasn't my bag in the first place.

Journey into Mystery is a pretty fun comic, although coming to an end soon I gather. There are definitely some good issues in the run, especially anything to do with Loki's 'dog' and the 'Mephisto walks into a bar issue'.

Skipping back a bit. Comics with a gaming inspiration: please check out Levon Jihanian's work. He is serializing his work currently on the Study Group site. His project is called Danger Country. I bought a Danger Country mini from him at Stumptown last year which was super great.

His work is like a deranged ADVENTURE TIME rendered in the spare early DnD guidebook style. I felt the mini was light for the price, but that's a pretty common feeling with minis (for me.) Still interesting, though.

why can't I get ADVENTURE TIME dvds in UK gaaaaah

Got most of my big orders yesterday --
Complete Captain Easy Sundays Vol. 1 (1933-1935)
The Art of Jaime Hernandez
Casanova Vol. 1 - Luxuria
Krazy & Ignatz - Complete Sundays Vol. 3 (1935-1944)

Hope to get the K&I Vol. 1 today -- was a little surprised that Fanta shipped them separately.

Guys guys
http://www.comicstripnation.com/broom-hilda/broom-hilda-20120725.html

wow

to be fair, unlike america's editorial cartoonists (who should be fkin ashamed of themselves), the dude who draws Broom Hilda files his shit way ahead of time. But yeah wow.

Yeah, I was gonna say, newspaper strip artists have to work weeks in advance. I remember one interviewee (Trudeau?) saying he'd gotten down to 2-3 weeks out from publication and his syndicate was shitting bricks.

didn't even get it at first and then

In other news, Desert Island will have a copy of Essential Hulk Vol. 3 by Friday...

my fantagraphics lost in the andes turned up today woot

that council of owls batman storyline is surprisingly enjoyable!

Anyone read/seen this? http://www.thezoom.co.uk/ Quite wonderful, and actually funny homemade comic by a British 11-year-old. It's very Oink.

good find!

Yeah, that's a lot of fun.

The Parkinson's Disease is getting too much to handle with a daily deadline; Richard Thompson is ending Cul de Sac next month.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/comic-riffs/post/richard-thompson-ends-cul-de-sac-comic/2012/08/17/06a7fda6-e819-11e1-a3d2-2a05679928ef_blog.html

This is killing me.

still never seen it. there's no US compilation?
Finder is amazing btw

Lots of collections!
http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&field-keywords=cul%20de%20sac%20richard%20thompson&index=blended&link_code=qs&sourceid=Mozilla-search&tag=mozilla-20

http://www.gocomics.com/culdesac

http://assets.amuniversal.com/821fa8304dbf102dbf94001438c0f03b

cool, i will buy one.

Some reader-selected favourites.

those are great! which collection should i get?

I've always read it online and it's been great from the earliest days, so I can't recommend one over the other. Looks like Golden Treasury has the most.

yeah, Thompson had been a pro cartoonist for yeeaars before launching even the Sunday-only Cul De Sac (he also has a second weekly strip, Richard's Poor Almanac, that's been going a decade longer than the syndicated daily CDS), so by the time the syndicated version happened he was well on top of his game.

Chris Mautner's six favourite Cul De Sac characters

Nice. Just ordered the treasury from Amazon. Thanks for the rec!

anyone read Trollope? Can You Forgive Her? is a fabulous 830-page yarn.

i've only read Crisis on Infinite Parish Churches, tho i hear Secret Wardens is p gd too

Trollope, very prolific, kind of the John Byrne of his era, no?