2014 what are you reading thread

A1! How dumb to forget, I used to think #3 was possibly the best single issue of an anthology ever. Also re Trident my brain obviously thought of it as being the only reason to have #s 5-8, once St Swithin's Day wrapped.

(Keen to hear Alfred's thoughts, once hl locks and deletes the other thread for him.)

hey sic thanks for pointing out that top shelf sale, i grabbed the whole Double Barrel which i guess means like 1200 pages of comics?? idk DOIN IT

Witzend definitely a thing of its time. Some of the portfolio stuff is just beautiful, especially Reed Crandall's Edgar Rice Burroughs collection and the Frazetta portrait of Buster Crabbe from the back cover of #1.

More... ahem... singular is Steve Ditko's Avenging World, which is really just a stream of consciousness Randian rant over some collage art. Clearly Wally Wood was beginning to tire of it, because in #7 he published a piece taking the piss out of Mr A.

I was very taken by Avenging World when I was 15 or 16, and that passage about righting your own wrongs made me go to a shop and confess that I had switched price tags on something to make it slightly cheaper (so basically stolen it). The shop keeper just seemed a bit surprised and said he didn't mind me shopping there.
I considered myself an objectivist at that time, not yet knowing how crazy, irrational, unreasonable, distorted, wishful, hypocritical many objectivists were. But I still think I taken away some good things from it.

Now that Ditko isn't my God anymore, it think it's tragic how much wasted potential he had. I thought Crackling Blazer, Missing Man, Mr Quiver and his last Creeper things were good, but from the mid-70s it really is mostly a terrible decline.

Will Eisner said Wood wanted to sue Warren for refusing to publish Witzend. Eisner had to tell him the law doesn't work like that.

The Creeper volume that DC put out a couple of years ago is pretty great, but yeah, it's slim pickings after that.

Bill Pearson says in the prologue that the reason he took it over, and only paid $1 for it, was that he believed in Wally but that somehow he'd spent the entire subscription money up to #8 getting as far as #4 (and even then paid for some of that out of his own pocket) and otherwise it was just going to fold. Bill put out the other ones at a loss (splitting the damage with other believers like Phil Seuling) with as much free work as he could get hold of - which explains why #9 is just photos and a couple of essays on WC Fields, or why #13 is proto-GGA, much of which are throwaway quality.

I picked up the 4th volume of the Captain Easy Sundays in Atlanta this weekend. I think I read somewhere that that's the last volume? If so, time to pick another great strip to collect -- I'm thinking Nancy, though another continuity/adventure strip is possible.

Taking into consideration what Ditko had achieved even by 1975, I think it's very harsh to talk about 'wasted potential'. I mean for the first twenty or so years of his career he was not only extremely productive, but almost everything he drew was of a very high standard, even on poorly paid filler stories for Charlton or whoever. And that's before we even start on things like Doctor Strange - which seems to me to be a whole new way of visualising the occult - and of course Spider-Man, indisputably Ditko's character design and arguably the most popular and original superhero character since Superman. Very few artists within comics have enjoyed such a sustained period of creativity.

In fact, taking into account Ditko's eccentricities/bloody-mindedness/justifiable contempt for Stan Lee - plus the absolute peanuts he was being paid for lots of this stuff - I would say there's great to enjoy from the 70s and on - Stalker (Wally Wood inks), The Mocker, the two Killjoy strips in Charlton's EMan (up there w/ Ditko's very best work), and even some of the hardcore collectivist stuff published by Fantagraphics and Robin Snyder. His Marvel 'comeback' stuff is mostly mediocre, I guess, tho I rather like those issues of Rom inked by P Craig Rusell, who supplies some of the detail and texture mostly missing from Ditko's later work.

Plus, Ditko was very ill at the end of the 1960s - part of the reason why he didn't draw the last issue of Creeper - and I'm not sure he ever had quite the same stamina again. But whatever the quality of the artwork - or the script - it's still recognisably Ditko, personally expressive, not streamlined or rote, unique. That's enough for me.

Those two Killjoy strips are indeed great, I think whenever his later work had crazy humour it regained some the energy I associate with his best work. That's why I think Mr Quiver, World's Finest era Creeper and Crackling Blazer (very possibly the oddest comic I've ever read, the main character fights a concrete highway and his catchphrase is "caboo!")is better than whatever else he was doing at the time.
Despite some appreciative articles and Yoe/IDW reprints, his Charlton 60s/70s ghost work still hasn't got the respect it deserves, some of it was him at his most inventive, beautiful and confident.

I don't think much of Stalker or Mocker. I find them very flat and a chore to read. Although Static was in some ways one of his most ambitious works and had some striking violence, it's painfully dull and totally lacks all the things I love about Ditko. There is a story he did about scientists in communist Russia that is possibly the dullest comic I have ever read despite him being my favourite comic creator.

I know that the life of a mainstream comic creator can ruin an aging artist, very few are able to grow, improve while keeping the same schedule, that's why a lot of the best guys leave or do less comics work (talking specifically about the american industry in the past or the insane conditions for most Japanese guys; it is slowly becoming more hospital creators these days).
Of course I can only speculate about his potential and his health but I think it's fairly clear that most of the time he distanced himself from all the things that made him great in favour of austere sterility. He has made some bizarre seemingly nonsensical justifications for no longer wanting to do supernatural or horror themed work but yet still does it on occasion in small doses.
I'm fairly sure his creator owned comics from 90s to present are not supposed to pay the bills, so it's harder to accept such bare bones work now that he has complete freedom.
Imagining an alternate universe Ditko who completely embraced supernatural flights of fantasy, darkness, strangeness, expanded his techniques and kept up his skill at realistic looking people, is as tantalizing a possibility as I can imagine.

WilliamC - I'm tempted to recommend Dick Tracy. I've thoroughly enjoyed it and am only just getting to the point where I think I don't need another volume (about 14 in).

It's a great adventure strip when it needs to be, and certainly thrilling - almost any time it involves a large body of water, or some snow, it turns into a real page-turner as you race along with the plot - although the comedy is certainly of the time and frequently falls kind of flat. Both Gravel Gertie and B.O. Plenty are kind of one-note jokes to start with although Chester Gould ultimately forgets most of it once he gets to the family stage.

http://bandedessinee.tumblr.com/

I'm having trouble finding review sites for European comics with lots of art examples. Considering the number of English speaking European comic fans all over the internet I don't know why I don't see more of their comics shown/discussed. I don't even really need the English talk, anything showing lots of pictures is good for me.

None of the current stuff from publishers like Cinebooks has really caught my eye (doesn't help that they censor their books for wider distribution), anyone reading that stuff? I was impressed by some of the art in Red Baron, super realistic.

Christophe Blain can draw amazing but I don't know if the subject matters would grab me.

xp - Dick Tracy is tempting. I bought a volume on vacation last year, thinking I'd give it to my mother for Christmas -- she had mentioned one day about how she was such a Tracy fan growing up. She surprised me by asking for something specific for Christmas, so I wound up keeping the Tracy volume -- v.5, 1938-39. So I can build around that one.

The Stud Bronzen and Karpse storylines from that volume are both really great, and if you like them then I'd suggest trying another volume at least. Also you get an attempt at light relief by Gould that really doesn't work, so if you can tolerate that then you're good for anything.

None of the current stuff from publishers like Cinebooks has really caught my eye (doesn't help that they censor their books for wider distribution), anyone reading that stuff?

The censorship thing is stupid, but AFAIK it only involves retouching some images so that they don't show nipples. And most of the stuff Cinebook publishes is either family friendly or at least doesn't have any explicity nudity, so the censorship only applies to a handful of books. My biggest complaint with Cinebook is that they shrink some of the books they publish to half of the original Euro size, which obviously makes the art suffer. But since a lot of the stuff they've put out hasn't been (easily) available for English-speakers, I guess it's cool you at least get to read many seminal European comics in some form.

Out of the titles Cinebook publishes, I'd whole-heartedly recommend these:

Iznougod and Lucky Luke - Two essential humour titles written by Coscinny, best known as the original Asterix writer. Lucky Luke is Western parody, Iznogoud is black comedy about a Grand Vizir who wants to murder his Caliph so he can replace him, but he never succeeds in this.

Spirou & Fantasio - A classic Franco-Belgian adventure comic, kinda like Tintin, but less realistic and more cartoonish.

Valerian & Laureline - Probably the most acclaimed European sci-fi comic, and rightfully so. The quality of the series drops in the later books, but the first 15 or so are imaginative, socially conscious sci-fi at its best.

Green Manor - Collections of short Victorian morality tales revolving around the fictional Green Manor gentlemen's club. Lots of cool "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" style twists in these.

Thorgal - Gorgeously drawn, long-running sword & sorcery series. Cinebook has also published XIII by the same writer, it's a spy thriller about an amnesiac who finds out he's been involved in some shady operations in his former life (kinda like the Bourne trilogy, but this one precedes it by years), well worth a read too.

The Bellybuttons - This is actually done by French-Canadian wife & husband team, but both the art and the writing has a definite Franco-Belgian sensibility. It's a teen comedy/drama, kinda like Clueless, but with a crueler and more adult viewpoint.

Aldebaran - A relative realistic sci-fi series by the Brazilian artist/writer Leo, has some gorgeous and creepy visions of alien planets and lifeforms. This one's been subjected to some minor censorship, but it doesn't really stop you from enjoying the comic.

Blake & Mortimer and Yoko Tsuno are also classic Franco-Belgian adventure comics, both have large doses of sci-fi in them. They're not among my personal favourites, but definitely worth checking out.

Oh, and Cristopher Blaine is a pretty good writer too, I'd recommend reading his "Isaac the Pirate" series, if it's available in English.

There was some Euro comic discussion in this thread too, I wouldn't mind reviving it:

slowly rolling euro comix thread 2006

Thanks Tuomas. Thorgal is probably the first one I'd try.

There are a few Blain books in English, Dungeon and some other stuff. Two volumes of Isaac The Pirate but I don't think it collects all the books.

Marcel Ruijters is really good (he's a member of a blog I'm on but I promise he is really good), some of his Troglodytes work got put out by Top Shelf and one of his newer books might be getting translated into English. Troglodytes was about an underground civilization but his work these days is all about medieval art, nuns, Bosch and demons. He also did a book about serial killers and their cars.

I have to wonder how well Cinebooks stuff is selling in each different territory, they are so thin next to everything else on the bookshelves it's easy to miss them.

Also wonder why they didn't go for thicker collected editions.

Spirou & Fantasio - A classic Franco-Belgian adventure comic, kinda like Tintin, but less realistic and more cartoonish.

So far Cinebooks have only printed one, early Franquin volume (with another early one due later this year.) The other volumes are more modern versions of the character.

The modern ones by Tome & Janry are pretty good too, I think those are the ones Cinebook's been publishing? It's weird that they started with them and not with Franquin though, since he's the one people most equate with Spirou (even though he didn't create the character).

Yeah, they did start with Tome & Janry and I'm sure those are fine, but yes, as a mono-lingual English reader, it's a source of great frustration to me that so little of Franquin's work has ever been translated. Mind you, Cinebooks have rather haphazardly alternated between Jacobs originals and the modern homages for their Blake & Mortimer reprints, so maybe they will get around to issuing most of the Franquin volumes over time. Be nice if they got around to Gaston, too.

Gaston is great too, though obviously quite different than Spirou despite the occasional crossover, hope they do translate it too.

I notice that Cinebook has now published the Spirou book by Franquin where the Marsupilami is introduced, right? If people dig that, they should also publish the Tome & Janry spinoff series of books that stars a Marsupilami family living in jungle, those ones are even better than their Spirou books, IMO. (I've always loved comics that are written from animals' point of view without antropomorphizing them too much, i.e. no talkin or stuff like that, and the Marsupilami series is pretty great at that.)

between my birthday and a strand run, i have about a yard of books to get through, to say nothing of the top shelf collection... which i should start posting mini-responses to here I suppose.

This has nothing to do with previous posts but I saw this Chaykin interview and had to highlight this quote.
"Diamond is a company whose owner is a guy who asked me — and I presume others — to pray for the election of John McCain in 2008. I can’t say I’m particularly shocked that Diamond mounted no protest when the UK and Canada opted to deny Black Kiss II entry into these respective countries."
http://www.printmag.com/comics-and-animation/howard-chaykin-black-kiss-ii/

Another Chaykin quote
"I'm 62 years old, celebrating 41 years in the comics business. And one of the reasons for that long-lived career is a capacity for growth, an ability to develop, an acceptance of the frequent need for reinvention, and an avoidance of dogmatic thinking.

I’ve changed my mind about a lot of shit in those more than 40 years. And I’d encourage my whinier colleagues to consider doing the same."

I haven't read Chaykin, though I've been curious about his work. Knowing nothing about him, he sounds old and cranky, like Frank Miller, but on the other political side. What's that quote even referring to?

Diamond is the comics distributor, Black Kiss is his infamous erotic series that is considered ground-breaking by some.

He recently said that Walter Simonson was one of the only comic artists of his generation that wasn't in self-parody mode now. So Chaykin is one of the few older artists outspoken about other older artists losing their touch.

I don't think anyone considers Black Kiss 2 groundbreaking.

kinda have always hated chaykin.

first 12 issues of American Flagg are all-time great, astonishing even. Chaykin's done other quality stuff but nothing really close to that. Someday I will get my hands on a copy of his graphic novel of the Stars My Destination.

Early American Flagg is good, but the recycled physical similarity of Cody Starbuck, Dominic Fortune, Reuben Flagg, Cass Pollock, Blackhawk, et al to Chaykin gives me a Walter Mitty vibe that irritates me. I should get Empire, his book with Samuel Delany, out again.

if I was in the mood I might maybe make an argument that this is the single greatest page of comics ever drawn:
http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/easteregg2-21-2a.jpg

agree he's pretty one-note with his protagonists

Chaykin has always had the reputation of being an outspoken guy - he's slagged off Alex Toth and Will Eisner in the past for their alleged personal failings - but you can't really argue w/ his design skills (tho' it's the lettering that makes a lot of those American Flagg pages really sing, imho.)

He also had harsh words for Grant Morrison.

i love the idea of a gun that yells MOW

You do get the "Surfin' Bird" ref, right?

man, i don't like american flagg as comics at all. always struck me as unreadable, excellent illustration.

You do get the "Surfin' Bird" ref, right?

Still love American Flagg (though I take the point about lettering and layouts being the high spots) but there are things to be enjoyed until comparatively recently - the American Century thing he did for Vertigo at the beginning of the century felt good at the time, though I haven't gone back to it.

I think the weird mid-80s Shadow he did is the last Chaykin I love. I find the style he developed into over the last couple of decades incredibly off-putting. Love almost all of his 70s and 80s stuff, especially Ironwolf.

That Shadow series is all up great (Chaykin did a mini, then the first 6 of the ongoing iirc) and the Helfer/Baker run is surely the next great 'missing' DC reprint after Doom Patrol and Flex Mentallo finally got collected?

I hope so. Well-deserving, but I wonder if they'd have to pay the current rights holders. DC sure can be cheap

Chaykin only did the Shadow mini-series. The ongoing series' early issues were by Helfer and Sienkiewicz.

Mea culpa.

http://www.forbiddenplanet.co.uk/blog/2014/at-last-helfer-and-bakers-shadow-returns/

i have the first six floppies; they're awful good

it gets ENORMOUSLY better under Baker, trust

Hang on, that was OVER A MONTH AGO. These are some of the best modern era comics of all, honestly. Hopefully the Justice Inc stuff gets collected with it.

you've lost me - what are we talkin' about?

Have Helfer or Baker ever talked about their (excellent) Shadow run and why it got cancelled? I can guess someone wasn't happy with what had transpired in the comic but iirc it just stopped without announcement (though it had reached the end of a storyline).