2014 what are you reading thread

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.

i forewent my usual book reading in september and had a month of reading comics. the result was a 10" pile of things, mostly re-reads.

Hellboy: Wolves of St August
Hellboy: The Corpse & The Iron Shoes
Vertigo Pop: London x4
Promethea x32
Dark Knight Returns x4
Plastic Forks x5
Red Son tpb
Batman Halloween 1, 2, 3
Cages x10
Batman: Long Halloween x13
Stray Toasters x4
Miracleman x24
Batman: Black & White (Vol1) x4
Courtyard

some old favourites. wasn't impressed by red son or long halloween tbh but everything else was fine.

my eisner favorite is contract w/ god

Robert you're probably right about Eisner - I get the feeling awareness of him rose greatly around the time of his death, the years before and after. That film version of The Spirit and as well Frank Miller's general decline in status has also probably hurt Eisner indirectly

re-reading Promethea... the art is uniformly great, and there are flashes of brilliance in the storytelling but it really gets bogged down with all the explication. Love this a little less than I did when it came out.

That film version of The Spirit and as well Frank Miller's general decline in status has also probably hurt Eisner indirectly

that film should never have been made, was worried about precisely this when it was released

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.

Spain and Crumb are gods, but I don't have much use for a lot of the others. Vaughn Bode I guess, but he seems of a different sort.

people like to say that adaptations don't hurt the source material because the original still exists, but...

god hates astronauts is the best

― Mordy, Wednesday, October 1, 2014 7:17 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i gotta get in on this huh

oh yo is anyone reading the phil noto black widow?

I actually hadn't considered the impact of the film much. I think that the film was maybe forgotten too quickly and stylistically so different from Eisner that it wouldn't have affected him.

Vaughn Bode deserves serious credit for how original he was. Even if I'm not a huge fan of the stories, I'm amazed how fully formed he came out.

I like some of Spain's art but his political sympathies are utterly loathsome and I'm amazed he didn't get more associated with Dave Sim, Ditko, Frank Miller and Jack Chick (all different views but all made black sheep for them).

I highly respect Crumb's drawings, love his heavily rendered drawings with heavy doses of realism but never interested to read his comics.
I respect peoples discomfort with the misogyny parts (I've never got how a guy into big robust women wants to dominate them so much, it tends to be the other way around) but I think it's really unfair to dismiss him on those grounds. He did often draw women lovingly and I cant think of another artist whose sexually idealised version of women was so totally different from the culture around them. I've heard people dismiss them as grotesques but I think they have a far more meaningful beauty than the majority of alternative comic artists' drawings of women.

http://markmcleod.org/wp_clevelandstateart/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/crumb-1.jpg

Xpost don't forget justin green, maybe not prolific but his UG shit ruled

Somehow I've never seen a Jaxon book before. Seems he is another who has been left behind.

I don't really know about Eisner's status or reputation today, although I would say his place amongst the very top tier of American comic strip creators - along with Barks, Kurtzman, Kirby, Crumb - is pretty secure, and likely to remain so. I mean, the Eisner Awards were inaugurated in 1988, seventeen years before his death, and even then, Eisner was considered pre-eminent in the field. If you were at all serious about comics, he was one of the first figures you had to reckon with, wrestle with.

It's a very crude division to say that critical discourse about pre-Underground American comics has traditionally been split between the Eisner and Kurtzman camps, but there's some truth to it, too (The Comics Journal was strongly pro-Kurtzman, and when Gary Groth offered (by his standards) a fairly mild critique of some of Eisner's post-Spirit work, it was considered pretty daring, against the grain.) Eisner is the first American cartoonist to show the assimilation of a culture outside comics - Damon Runyon, Orson Welles, Dali - and for that alone his influence is inescapable and enduring; and by retaining copyright of the Spirit, he set a different creative example to other cartoonists - take care of business.

I used to say that I preferred the late comics that Eisner produced after he returned to comics in the 1970s. I'm not sure that would be true if I went back to them today, but they are at least very personal, quite idiosyncratic comics, unlike anything else, if not always very visceral or compelling.

Both Eisner and Kurtzman were partly fascinated, partly repulsed, partly jealous of the American underground. To my mind, the best of the Underground cartoonists - Crumb, Shelton, Spiegelman, S. Clay Wilson, Spain, Bill Griffiths, Jay Lynch, Kim Deitch, the awesome Rory Hayes, Bode, Moscoso, Corben etc etc - represents the greatest cluster of cartooning talent in America since EC, and unmatched until Fantagraphics in its pomp. Iit's a collective kind of genius, best experienced in comic book form, rather than single artist anthologies, imho (which is why I'm really keen to gets my paws on that collected Zap set coming from Fanta). There are still many significant Comix that have never been reprinted in any form - yet deluxe hardcover volumes of Doctor Solar, Man of the Atom are available from Dark Horse. What a world.

his political sympathies are utterly loathsome

honestly never heard anybody complain about his politics - he's not associated with Dave Sim, Ditko, Frank Miller or Jack Chick because as an uber-Marxist/anarchist left-wing dude his politics are totally antithetical to theirs

ward you don't rate J Green?

yes! oh yes! the fact that he was included in my 'etc' points to the deep richness of American U/G comix between 1966-1976 (or, the end of Arcade).

I'm not blind to the very masculine and sexist (and frequently racist) culture that underpinned 60s U/G comix, either - but that was part of a larger countercultural problematic, and I would at least say that U/G Comix initiated auto-critque p early on (in the form of feminist UGs like Tits and Clits, or Aline Kominsky-Crumb's pioneering female autobiographical comics)

i guess you could say that Green's reputation rest largely on one landmark comic bk - but again, there must be a ton of Justin Green stuff still uncollected (and uncontextualised, which is what this stuff often needs, these days).

xpost yeah that's a hippie problem (the biggest hippie problem IMO) and yr right the comix self-critiqued a lot faster than say the rock scene did.

It's weird I almost want to file Starlin's first several years of 'auteur' superhero stuff in the US UG file. It looks like UG stuff to me in a lot of ways.

(which is why I'm really keen to gets my paws on that collected Zap set coming from Fanta)

This looks amazing and beautiful but saw the price tag for it this morning and ay yi yi.

lol yeah besides Binky Brown I have only read his rock and roll comics he did for Tower Pulse in the 90s. But man, Binky motherfucking Brown (Jim Woodring's favorite comic as is probably well known by now)

I don't know if Spain was in favour of violence in politics, ignores it or denies it but he portrayed Che Guevara as a hero and it seems he was a fan of the soviet union. Whether he was in denial about the violent realities, I don't know but I'd say his passionate belief in freedom of speech is completely at odds with the dictatorships he seems to like.
That sort of thing is what makes him similar to the other political black sheeps of comics.

I've never read any Justin Green cuz I have never actually seen a reprint of his supposedly classic work in a store

That sort of thing is what makes him similar to the other political black sheeps of comics

if you think portraying Che Guevara as a hero is akin to Miller's overt fascist/racist tendencies, or Sim's mysogyny-as-political-philosophy or Ditko's bizzare-o Objectivist nonsense I don't really know what to tell you.

haven't read any of Spain's apologias for Stalin or Mao plz enlighten me if these exist

but another reason he's unlike those other guys is as a leftist latino Spain was drawing on a long history of political activism from within his community - romanticizing the anarchists in the Spanish Civil War, or Che Guevara, or inventing Trashman - these were not unusual opinions or deviant points-of-view to espouse within his context of the times. Whereas Sim and Miller and Ditko are all to a man crackpot loners who burrowed deeper and deeper into their own hermetic insanity.

XPost to Jon

Yeah, there's def an Underground vibe to lots of 70s Marvels, but from what I know/have read, Marvel guys like Starlin, Gerber, Englehart weren't really into Underground Comix as such. Tho I know at least one of that Marvel crew retains a fondness for soft drugs. Plus, by the early '70s, ppl like Corben were clearly producing UG Comix that were partly influenced by dynamic Kirby/Marvel storytelling values as much as by say R. Crumb's Jizz Comix.

XPost to WMC

Yeah, it is even more crippingly expensive in the UK! I think it will be on my Amazon WishList for a while

these were not unusual opinions or deviant points-of-view to espouse within his context of the times. Whereas Sim and Miller and Ditko are all to a man crackpot loners who burrowed deeper and deeper into their own hermetic insanity.

― Οὖτις

I guess you're right about that. But my point is that it's weird that his positive portrayal of Guevara didn't invite more criticism and it was annoying that the generally progressive circle around him didn't bat an eyelid about it.
It's more understandable when there was less information decades ago that the counterculture would romanticize him but I have a hard time believing that Spain through those decades and research never knew about all the slaughter and nastiness. Aside from being a rebel Spain seems like the opposite of Guevara.

I've heard he was kind (or too soft) to Stalin but I honestly don't know anything about that.

Guevara was a huge leftist hero for the 60s counterculture, of course no one batted an eyelid about Spain's heroic portrayal of him. The Panthers, Weathermen, etc. all lionized Che. US left didn't sour on Cuban revolution for quite some time. Shit even into the 90s (Rage Against the Machine, anyone?) that Che portrait was all over lefty college campuses. It still is in some places (like my neighborhood for ex.) Che also had the good fortune to both die in action and be somewhat removed from Castro's larger crimes.

It's just quite unfortunate that it goes on so long among lefties.
For example, Art Spiegelman, a man generally keen to be opposite dodgy politics, who critiques superheroes as being fascists gives a cheery endorsement to the Che book. No, I'm not totally surprised but that's part of what is upsetting about it. Considering all the criticism of what other comic artists have done, including sexualised superheroines and Chester Brown's Paying For It.
I'd say the Che book should be considered way more offensive than anything by Crumb.

Inverna Lockpez written a pretty good graphic novel called Cuba: My Revolution which was a backlash against this in leftism. It doesn't involve Guevara much (she called him a stupid racist though). It's based on her life supporting the revolution but being disillusioned and chewed up by it.

I once looked around for all the Che Guevara graphic novels I could find and there was something like 7 of them! I'd imagine most were positive portrayals. There was a Castro one and I think it tried to be more critical.

I'm late to the game here but as the inheritor of a pile of undergrounds from my hippie dad, I am completely on board with the idea of the sixties underground comix revolution being epochal. I would also like to add to the necessary pantheon some names that Ctrl+F is not finding and that are more than just etc etc: Phoebe Gloeckner, Robert Williams, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Howard Cruse, Shary Flenniken, Jay Kinney, Dandy Dan O'Neill, Trina, Dori Seda, Snappy Skip Williamson, Joyce Farmer, Carol Tyler, Rand Holmes, Diane Noomin... and it's telling how many of those names are women and how many of those women are putting out still putting out strong work.

There are still many significant Comix that have never been reprinted in any form - yet deluxe hardcover volumes of Doctor Solar, Man of the Atom are available from Dark Horse. What a world.

but man is that EVER what torrenting was made for.

Some other random points:

The Spirit was among the first comix I ever read so yeah, I can think of dozens of individual great stories of the top of my head: various xmas spirits, sand saref on the pier, the little nerd who could fly (gerard schnobbel?), the parody feiffer recap of the year, carrion sand and denny marooned on the island, the kissing killer, the spirit as an outlaw, mayor dolan, sammy seduced, spirit on the el train tracks, the wood storylines... i could go on for awhile. I rate Eisner well above Kirby in terms of enjoyment and storytelling; probably a draw in terms of drawing ability. I've got about 22 of the 27 volumes of the complete spirit, really need to get around to ebaying the remainder. The Spirit doesn't translate well to movies or television; I saw the movie before Miller's and a bootleg of the tv movie. I will never ever see the miller one tho'.

Crumb is a god of course. I never "got" Binky Brown; I do have all the old Marvel COMIX BOOKS in which it was reprinted so maybe i should try again? I find Carol Tyler to be the more talented member of that family and chronically underappreciated as such.

Humble Bundle just did a big oni press collection that I bought for $15 bucks so I'll try those.

Been reading the Noto Black Widow on Marvel Unlimited; like it better than Hawkeye. Good take on the character.

Yeah, don't see the Miller movie unless you're really drunk or something. It is so bad as to be hilarious, but from a fan viewpoint sad

I haven't actually read Spain's Che GN, but flicking through my copy this morning, it doesn't look like any straight-forward hagiography to me (and in the back of the book there's a long essay that examines and punctures the whole myth of Guevara). Spiegelman's quote on the front simply says "Spain's take on Che is brilliant and radical" which doesn't seem very indicative of 'leftie' hypocrisy to me - more like, one old Underground Comix dude helping out another old Underground Comix dude.

Che's life, in all its contradictions, is extraordinary, and worth thinking and writing about - just as I'd happily read Steve Ditko's Stalin graphic novel.

Che is certainly worth writing about but it still seems that whatever balance Spain tried to bring (I'll admit I didn't do more than scan around it for Spain's views), like most of the other biography portrayals, avoided the really nasty things (like killing homosexuals).
I'm sure people would get upset if people downplayed the slavery in a Jefferson bio.

I think a realistic Ditko political bio would be a real slog. I think I mentioned above the Ditko comic about scientists in communist Russia being terrible.

I'm reading about the Italian underground comix now and it's pretty fascinating.

many of these are still in print but a great many are not so I'm not saying, I'm just saying