2014 what are you reading thread

from that TCJ piece linked:

“I think some people who are offended are reacting to their own reactions. The drawing they see is a key that goes to the eyeball keyhole. Click! A door flies open and stuff they’ve been suppressing flies out, right? It unlocks their own repressed bogeyman or skeletons in their mental closets and this is upsetting to them, because they’ve been repressing it and the drawings are a springboard for that chain reaction. Sidewalk psychology, but I think it’s true.”

In an application for a Guggenheim grant in 1999 he wrote “Throughout my career I have had to constantly defend my art work against critics who wish to censor it because of its depiction of aberrant imagery. My work, for example, was seized and burned in December 1991 by the Royal Mounted Canadian Police (This is Dynamite in Taboo #5) because its imagery was considered too obscene and violent for importation to Canada. It upsets me that some critics wish to censor and go so far as to destroy my artwork because of its subject matter. People are shocked that I, as an artist, would choose to depict the themes that I do. I am not the characters I draw, I am the artist that draws the characters or, in other words, just because I depict evil does not mean that I am evil.”

screwmagazinecoverart.blogspot.com

Danny Hellman started posting Screw covers a while ago and its amazing the range of artists who worked for the magazine, including the main underground guys, Tony Millionaire, Wally Wood and even Will Eisner doing tasteless rape jokes.

It's not updated often but it's really hard to find cover galleries, this is the best resource so far. I think Hellman said he hoped for a book of them but it's difficult to imagine over 1800 (can't find out how many issues there were) covers being shown, but I don't think they all had art covers.

I've never seen that Eisner piece; his attempts at being a cool underground artist have almost universally come off clueless

also his recommendations and blurbs for younger cartooonists through the 80s and 90s that were the vaguest encouragements, almost universally showing he hadn't even read the photocopy he was sent

http://www.rockshockpop.com/forums/showthread.php?3623-The-SCREW-Magazine-Cover-Art-Appreciation-Thread!
http://cvkustoms.com/transversealchemy/2013/12/art-of-screw-tribute-to-al-goldstein.html

also very NSFW

was just reading an interview with charles burns where he says he was a crumb fanatic and in high school (college?) someone tells him Crumb has a new book out called BIG ASS and Burns is all "well shit, i guess i have to go buy a book called BIG ASS now, goddammit

It looks like the 80s Michael Moorcock Elric adaptions are going to be coming back into print. I always thought these were pretty good comics, especially these early ones by Roy Thomas and P. Craig Russell. Going by page count, I think this one will have both the Marvel GN and the early Elric mini-series done for Pacific.

http://www.amazon.com/Michael-Moorcock-Library-Vol-1-Melnibone/dp/1782762884/ref=sr_1_16?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1412553718&sr=1-16

rad btw
http://media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/mm1.jpg

the new alex+ada & COWL are both fire--the COWL trade comes out i think this month, yall should pick it up if you haven't yet.

COWL?

i've been reading Zap - last night i read #4. also read feds 'n heads. fun! what other stuff should i read in this vein?

did you do that torrent?

nah

COWL?

― the other song about butts in the top 5 (forksclovetofu), Tuesday, October 7, 2014 5:37 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Chicago Organized Workers League--it's the story of the decline of a union of superheros in 60s Chicago, sort of Mad Men b/w Watchmen. the art is gorgeous and the story has really taken off by the fifth issue.

I read the first issue of COWL and it didn't grab me at all. Sounds like it's worth checking out in trades.

get the feeling this guy may have read one or two Sienkiewicz and Baker comics from the 80s

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/comic-riffs/wp/2014/05/29/image-comics-c-o-w-l-finds-heady-fun-on-the-big-shoulders-of-60s-chicago/

wow yeah this is SO Sienkiewicz:

http://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_606w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/05/27/Style/Images/COWL3.jpg

most def. looks interesting.

I read the first issue of COWL and it didn't grab me at all. Sounds like it's worth checking out in trades.

― EZ Snappin, Tuesday, October 7, 2014 5:58 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah honestly i wasn't quite sold on it even through 2 & 3 but had already decided i was chips-in for the first arc, then 4 & 5 really punched things up, really looking forward to where it goes next.

Read the Red Rover Charlie trade paperback (I've given up trying to pull issues for myself, new comic arrival on Tuesday sucks enough without figuring out what I want to read), it completely peters out - the characterization was great, the art good-to-great, but rushing it into six issues wasn't enough space.

From that Oni Press Humble Bundle:
Stumptown - Prime contemporary noir Rucka style, great read; good pseudo Lark art
Letter 44 is excellent; I only want more to keep up with the story
I Was the Cat is promising; curious to see a few more issues
Megagogo is kinda a kids book but it's not a bad read
Scott Pilgrim is Scott Pilgrim
Helheim is dopey escapist nonsense
Diesel Sweeties sucks
The Bunker was too convoluted to engage with
Down Set Fight is dumb as a box o rocks

Also copped the newest book of Antares; excellent as always. No idea why Leo doesn't have a bigger US following.

and my copy of Masterful Marks (alluded to in that Friedman Crumb piece upthread) just got here. It's great!
http://www.amazon.com/Masterful-Marks-Cartoonists-Changed-World/dp/1451649193

i have also now acquired seven books from this lineup:
http://www.fantagraphics.com/index.php?page=shop.browse&category_id=726&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=62
they're tough to read fun to back but great to read in quick grabs

http://wakanayamazaki.tumblr.com/
http://plurkerr.tumblr.com/

Quite liking these super wonky artists I found on Meathaus

Those of you who order comics by mail - is there a company/service that you swear by? I'm getting back into collecting and don't have a decent store within easy reach.

Spit And A Half, Wow Cool, Conundrum

I've had good luck with these guys for back issues. The site works well and they don't have the weirdo pricing like some other back issue sites.

http://www.mycomicshop.com/

Has anybody tried crunchyroll's manga subscription app?

$5 a month for all you can read from a fairly large back catalog.
http://www.crunchyroll.com/comics/manga/alpha?group=all

kind of considering going in for a few months to see what i think

NB: Attack on Titan back issues start around volume 11

punks is back and is great

http://i1.wp.com/comingupcomicsblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Punks-Pg.-2.png

holy shit, I love that, tell me more

yeah, that's good.

http://www.djfood.org/djfood/punks-the-comic

http://www.tcj.com/lianhuanhua-chinas-pulp-comics/

This is really good, I'm always hoping for big discoveries like this. Although it is possible there will be nothing much I'd like to read. But I really like the simple storytelling approach.

http://www.nickstember.com/chinese-star-wars-comic-part-1-6/
their design on star wars is better than lucas' tbrr

just ordered some more silver age superman - DC Archives Superman: The Man of Tomorrow vol. 2 (which is rumored to be the last of the Archives series? too bad if true)

Read the first two Stumptown collections and first issue of the new run, I dig it. Works better than I thought as a GN vs book.

Is anyone else reading Grant Morrison's Multiversity? It's good, obviously the best DC is doing these days (I guess, don't read anything else). Morrison is fantastic at sketching out worlds you'd wish had more than a one-shot to them. But it also feels as if he's done this exact plot way too many times before, which is boring, and I don't think I care enough about comics to care about meta-comics.

read the first five pp or so of the second issue last night and my eyes rolled out of my head in boredom, just panel after panel of superheroes introducing themselves to each other & winking to the audience

You mean the Chris Sprouse issue? I spent the whole time thinking it was some kind of overly complicated Tom Strong parody set on Earth-2.

The one that came out last week with the Ben Oliver art was very uninspiring; the "Neil Gaiman's Sandman" line had my eyes rolling so fast the Flash couldn't have caught up with them.

That said, I'm still excited to see Cameron Stewart do Captain Marvel.

But then I don't really want to see "Watchmen using the characters it should have been, updated so it's about terrorism".

But Frank Quitely, so...

woo my copy of fukitor came in

Best bag of comic I've taken home in a long time:

Hubert/Kerascoet - Beauty (but no cover gallery, as I feared)
Hubert/Kerascoet - Miss Don't Touch Me
Corben/Poe - Spirits Of The Dead

Couldn't find the new Sergio Toppi book or any Dungeon reissues.

Just saw that there's a new Corben series out next year called Rat God, based on native American mythology.

I looked at the Russ Heath book yesterday. Lots of unpublished art and what looks like reprints of some of his Warren stories, still impressive work but it doesn't quite hit me like it used to.

Keeping my fingers crossed that those long delayed Kaluta and Krenkel Women art books will finally surface in the next few months.

I really enjoyed the Sprouse issue of Multiversity. The next one, not so much, and then it just kind of ended when it ran out of pages. Generally the project seems entertaining but hasn't really persuaded me why it needs to exist yet.

Apart from that, I read Scott Snyder's The Deep, which is fun for the first nine issues, then has the worst ending since the end of Lost - actually, perhaps even worse.

Warren Ellis' Trees is looking to be a loooooong build, but i'm really enjoying the early developments

guys fukitor is really insane. recommended for sickos only.

Was looking at the Kelley Jones Batman collection. His art is often very uneven but some of his compositions and the shapes he makes characters into are incredible. Still thinking about buying it but I gave most of my Kelley Jones stuff to a friend and I feel reluctant to buy it all again.

Wonder what the books do when there are gaps between story that the artist didn't draw? Maybe they have a paragraph explaining what happened?
Some of those DC characters by specific artist collections seem to have stop and I wonder if Jones will get a second one. Gene Colan only got a first volume and I think Kirby's golden age DC books all stopped after first volume.