2014 what are you reading thread

Also, I really don't get why people took such offense at Fantagraphics using Kickstarter. My understanding is that they were in trouble, and if that's what they needed to do to survive then fine. I'd be sad to see them go, they're the best American comics publisher of the last 20 years.

But I've always wondered why they never published more current artists who straddle mainstream and alternative fanbases. My assumption is that they can't afford those artists.

fukitor looks like a blast

Karns is awesome! This is good news

'the 42nd parallel' which is really good

I could swear somebody pointed me in the direction of The Undertaking of Lily Chen here, not bad.

anybody reading 'pretty deadly'? i hear good things

i bought a bunch of fukitors from the artist; they're fun and stupid and well drawn.

why they never published more current artists who straddle mainstream and alternative fanbases.

such as?

Richard Corben springs to mind first. I heard Fantagraphics offered to reprint all his underground era work but he said he already had plans for it (presumably Dark Horse or his own Fantagor).

They did publish some Barry Windsor Smith, Tom Sutton, Steve Ditko and Frank Thorne books.

I think they wanted to give Gil Kane something when he was alive but he couldn't find a passion project and it was unlikely they could compete with Marvel and DCs pay.

Guys like Mike Kaluta, Mike Ploog, Bernie Wrightson and Alex Nino are probably doing fine on a mixture of illustration, concept art, commissions and a few comics here and there. I doubt that most of them have a burning desire to tell their own stories but just enjoy drawing.
In a fantasy world I'd love to see what they'd do if they were paid a comfortable salary to just draw whatever they like, even if it was splash page books (which is what an increasing amount of small press artists are doing). But I'm sure Kaluta does take Starstruck seriously.

The new Barry Windsor Smith and Ditko (one issue of Strange Avenging Tales) books were very brief but Sutton (going under the Dementia name) and Thorne were getting a few years work from Fantagraphics.

The Witzend collection that they published recently obv collects work by Wood, Ditko etc, but ppl like Wrightson and Nino are a more comfortable fit for Dark Horse imho (especially as DH have the reprint rights to the Warren stuff.)

At one point, back in the 80s, Fantagraphics were gonna publish a Shadow graphic novel written by Harlan Ellison and drawn by Kaluta but obv nothing came of it.

Must admit, when I saw the URL for that 'goes underground' story, I was hoping it meant that Fanta were finally going to start reprinting classic Underground comix - prob the American comics form most in need of proper archival presentation (beyond their prohibitively expensive complete Zap box, that is)

Well, Nino did Dead Ahead for Image maybe 4 years ago and most of his recent comics work has been for the tiny publisher Bliss On Tap scattered over a period of years(and his recent Molly Doves comic looked really really rushed out) and Wrightson has mostly been drawing for IDW.

Fantagraphics have done a fair number of Underground collections, but mostly single creator collections. Crumb, S Clay Wilson, Spain Rodriguez, Greg Irons, Rory Hayes, Rand Holmes and probably a lot more.
Complete collections of an anthology is tricky because it's all creator owned and you have many more people to consult for clearance. I vastly prefer single creator collections.

I should have mentioned the Fantagraphics Monster Comics imprint which was made around the time of Eros imprint when they were really trying to make money. There was an acclaimed Caligari comic by Mike Hoffman but looking back at most of the line, it's amazing how much of it looks like the sort of crap that the company hated. I'm assuming they couldn't get many good creators and were discouraged from doing things like this again.

It also seems like translating niche manga or European comics is very difficult because the owners often want a deal that isn't viable for an alternative publisher. I'm sure there's probably a good reason why more Alberto Breccia hasn't been done (they tried Perramus but it bombed after a few issues) because he is a revered, important artist.
I've always wanted to know why certain comics never got translated when there is a lot of fans praying for it. I should get back to writing my wishlist because there are so many and I have a hard time believing all of them aren't viable. I'd like to see Image comics get in on translated books.

I think there was an interview a couple of years ago where Hernandez brothers say they just barely make a living from comics and I think the commenters were a bit chilled by this because Gilbert and Jaime have about 30 years of backlog which has been reprinted a few times in different forms (along with a bit of work from Dark Horse and DC). There was also a Village Voice article once talking about how only a tiny group of alternative creators could make a living at what they do.

It never ceases to amaze me how difficult it is for most good comics to sell to a semi-reliable audience. It's all the more frustrating because despite all the effort it may take they are extremely easy to make when you compare it to films, videogames and music.

Nino is a bit too noodly-prog at the expense of clarity, for my tastes - I'm more of an Enric Sio stan:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RQVV4RuuYVg/UJFniqe57fI/AAAAAAAAMjs/6FwD8y20PPM/s1600/enric_sio.jpg

Congrats to Alison Bechdel, btw:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/17/alison-bechdel-wins-macarthur-foundation-grant

Nino is indeed not good at clarity (which he admits) but his best art makes that tolerable. I think he and a few of the artists I mentioned just above aren't comic artists at heart but just really love drawing certain things, and comics were the most available vehicle for them when they were growing up.

Is that Sio page from "My Fears"? Is that something you own?

No, that's a page from the UK Dracula magazine, which printed work by ppl like Sio and Esteban Maroto in the early 1970s

I got some of the original Spanish language Dracula magazines but they were all Maroto and very thin. Ramon Torrents is my favourite of that crew.

Or Luis Garcia Mozos, probably the best hyper-realist I've ever seen in comics.

is bechdel the first comic artist to get a macarthur grant?

Katchor got one.

wow, that would explain the series he's running at the new school
nice guy

I think he won in 2000?

In that way that you always expect to happen, but never actually does, I popped into my local charity shop this afternoon and found a complete set of Flex Mentallo and 1963 in floppies. Two quid each. Not bad!

Nicely done. I've clung tenaciously to my copies of 1963, but Flex unfortunately happened during the six months of poverty which marked one of the only times since the early '90s that I wasn't buying all of Morrison's output. I hoped the back issue prices would start coming down now that it's been collected (not crazy about the reprint coloring) but that doesn't seem to be happening, puzzlingly enough.

I lol'd at this blurb on the new Julia Wertz collection:

As far as I’m concerned, Julia Wertz has accomplished the impossible—straight out of the gate, she joined a small handful of cartoonists whose work I must own in its entirety and for which I’m willing to pay FULL RETAIL. *Joe Matt

*he did not, I gave him a free book

wasn't flex mentallo stupidly rare and expensive for a while?

is 1963 the same way? (aka is my spare set worth $$$?)

http://www.comicpriceguide.co.uk/us_comic.php?tc=flemen

um, £52 for the set depending on condition.

hadn't occurred to me that 1963 would be worth money - I have all those

not that I would sell them

iirc 1963 was printed during the time when shops ordered hundreds of copies of Image titles

the last time I went to a comic show (which, admittedly, was years ago) you could still find bins of copies

looks like you can get the full run of 1963 on ebay for less than the cost of shipping

1963 kept chester brown solvent for years just off of inking one issue

a shame it was never finished, the issues that were published were good

Oh, I assume 1963 is worth zilch but I've never seen a floppy copy, it was a nice surprise amongst the Valiants and Zero Hours.

The Flex comics have a ton of loose pages, I'm just happy 'cause I'm a saddo Morrison completist.

1963 kept chester brown solvent for years just off of inking one issue

sadly, this immediately made me think of how many prostitutes this paid for

guilty lol

My order from the Top Shelf insanely-cheap clearance sale arrived today, so that's what I'll be reading for a while. My wife could barely pick up the box from our front porch.

Chester wasn't whoring in the early '90s APART FROM INKING THAT HALF AN ISSUE amirite, oh man it looked so good

and i think joe matt lived for like a decade (?) off coloring that one Grendel thing. These wily canucks know how to stretch a dollah!

^ also looked so good, one of the best colour jobs on a DC comic ever, and a huge leap foward for him. if it hadn't been delayed so many years before it came out, he could have had a happy and fulfilling career, or at least rented a place with its own bathroom.

yeah it was gorgeous.

veering afield here but did Bernie Mireault used to color his own stuff? I used to love the palette on his covers and that color special

he never did much in colour iirc, apart from the recoloured Jam for Tundra (can't remember if that was him), the Jam colour special for Comico (which was him), the Gaiman Riddler story (which was Joe) and three Grendels (Joe iirc?)

oh wait The Everyman by Allred and BEM, that was coloured by him. I'll assume he did the Tundra reprints too then, that was around the same period

hey look, he's colourising old stories on tumblr: http://berniemireaultcomicart.tumblr.com/

(or don't look, it's pretty :( )

Forest's Barbarella getting reprints. I'm fairly interested.

Any fans here?

Started reading the Multiversity title from a couple of weeks ago (Society of Superheroes), it's a lot of fun and in many ways better than the extant pulp universes from other publishers.

The thing I like best by Forest is his collaboration w/ Tardi, You Are There:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdnBrIGgcbI

http://vimeo.com/106526309

god hates astronauts is the best

It seems like there are two Gilbert Hernandez graphic novels in the last two weeks.

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Been thinking about Will Eisner lately. It seems that The Spirit reprints have become scarce and his status isn't as high as it was (it seems only 7 or 8 years ago when I would hear people debate whether Kirby or Eisner was the top comics god).
The Spirit Archives was handled very well compared to similar hardcover collections but they probably should have had more pages per volume.
The Best Of The Spirit is a good selection but it's way too small and the followup Femme Fatale collection had lots of overlapping content, which was really ridiculous. They should put out another Spirit Best Of but much bigger this time.

I think the visual compositions, beautiful cityscapes, slapstick and physical humour is what makes early Eisner so good; he did some really impressive short works here and there that really should be collected. I haven't read any of his graphic novels but the modern response seems to be that he couldn't do realistic drama well enough and they didn't have the same visual flair as his earlier work.
His guides also have some very old fashioned attitudes too.

My main reservation about The Spirit is that the plots were never memorable, just very well told. I once totally forgotten that I had already read a pile of Spirit comics and I pretty much never forget the comics I've read.

Does anyone have any Eisner favourites?

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Re: Underground Comix. It seems fairly clear that a large amount of alternative comic fans today also don't think as highly of these as they previously did. Nobody can deny their importance though.

The view seems to be that quite a few underground guys portrayed disadvantaged groups of people in a provocative way for shock value. "Sticking It To The Man" is harder to get a real subversive charge from because it was usually so rote and commonplace, it's more difficult to do intelligently and it probably wont be seen by the targets of the satire; so it seems making fun of disadvantaged social groups was an easy shortcut to shock.

I haven't read a huge amount of underground comix but I think that view is probably closer to accurate than seeing them as politically subversive heroes.