2014 what are you reading thread

It's an enduring tragedy that it's never been reprinted and given its proper due. It's part of the canon, AFAIC.

Otm

jon, i have the amazing fantasy marvel omnibus; is that nnot the vast majority of kirby's giant monster material?

Not even close, he did loads of that monster stuff. Even the less prolific Ditko has loads more.

I think the vast majority of the Kirby monsters for Marvel are on the Unlimited app.

The last issue of Saga was amazing!

― Frederik B, Friday, October 31, 2014 5:50 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wowwwwww yes

Just finished Drawn And Dangerous: Italian Comics Of The 1970s & 1980s by Simone Castaldi.

He makes an argument that this era of Italian adult comics is a unique thing that embodied that time like no other cultural artefacts. Similar to american underground comix but way more political and more extensive cultural crossover.
It packs a lot into just 150 pages. It establishes all the previous Italian comics movements and talks about the relationship between French and Italian scenes. There's a lot about the political movements, rock bands, writers and fine artists of Italy at the time and how they related to the comics.
What I know about Italian rock and horror movies also makes more sense now, about the climate they came from.

I'd highly recommend it even though I'm not really interested in buying the comics of the core artists he focuses on. I prefer the artists he devotes just a few paragraphs to like Mattotti, Battaglia and Buzzelli.

But I was skimming a lot of the more analytic and political parts because I just barely understand it. I'm not a very good noon-fiction reader and I need to stop overestimating my ability to read non-fiction unless it's something I'm crazy about.

Another interesting thing is how he talks about the intellectual justifications or condemnations some Italians made for Johnny Hart's BC and Gould's Dick Tracy. About self-censorship because of oppressive ideology.

Castaldi is a university professor and I think he writes for the more academic comic journals. The only other major comics-related credit I can find is that he is a translator on the new version of Corto Maltese.

I think this is him.
http://www.hofstra.edu/Faculty/fac_profiles.cfm?id=222

just read gil hernandez's "chance in hell" on the train this morning, seeing it billed everywhere as a "stand-alone graphic novel" and found it kinda abstract and weird and didn't really dig it.

read up afterwards to discover it's part of a meta-series of "Fritz B-movie" standalone graphic novels, which are comics adaptations of fictional movies starring or co-starring [love & rockets character] Fritz"; understanding its place in the L&R universe might have made it way more comprehensible to me, but maybe not, idk

understanding that never helped me!

the ones i read i thought were pretty decent in their own right

There's one coming soon (or maybe out now) that sounds like a telenovela adaptation of Poison River. I'm keen on checking that one out.

understanding its place in the L&R universe might have made it way more comprehensible to me

nope

several issues of HELP! magazine posted on archive.org
https://archive.org/search.php?query=collection%3Awarrenpublishing&sort=-publicdate

including this R Crumb sketchbook of Bulgaria
https://archive.org/details/Help_025_1966-07_Warren

i also got on a bit of a curious kick about Ballyhoo Magazine, a pre-Mad (1930's) cultural parody mag with fake advertising and celebrity lampooning. It was apparently spectacularly popular in its time; I have a random common issue from the late 40's reboot and it's a humdinger. Some kicking around online found this small cache of scanned issues:
http://www.sendspace.com/folder/ymmuim
highly recommended!

nope

― the incredible string gland (sic), Monday, November 10, 2014 10:17 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i just mean in the sense that knowing this was an "adaptation of a b-movie" would have helped me process the book like 'oh this is one of those bonkers exploito movies from the 70s full of lurching dream plot twists and wanton violence i get it' as opposed to 'beto wtf r u doin'

yep

Anyone know how far through the b-movie cycle he is? I think some of them were short pieces in Love And Rockets.

cycle?

Sorry, I mean the line-up of Fritz films that are being made into books and short stories.

yes, but... how long is a piece of string?

Isn't there a finite number of them planned? Pretty sure there was.

http://loveandmaggie.blogspot.ie/2009/08/gilbert-hernandez-and-fritz-film-novels.html

I heard Loverboys is supposed to be part of the series but I can't see it on the list. Probably changing titles or adding new films to the list.

"abstract and weird" describes pretty much everything gilbert does these days. that, combined with the rushed art on some of his recent stuff, makes for books i couldn't recommend to new readers. a while back he said how he was putting out all these books because he needed the income. it's unfortunate as the work is suffering with the rough art. "maria m." was a big disappointment for this reason compared to the prior fritz books.

i dunno if "loverboys" is intended as part of that series though it does contain an older fritz-like character. it was published by dark horse whereas the fritz series up till now have all been fantagraphic books.

*"putting out all these books" being gilbert's recent several books a year schedule.

fritz series up till now have all been fantagraphic books.

Speak Of The Devil was Dark Horse.

(Fatima: The Blood Spinners and, way back, Girl Crazy are both as full of big thighs, sci-fi twists, and bloody violence as many of the B-movie books - I was surprised that Fatima appeared to be stand-alone.)

I'm a huge fan of Los Bros, but outside of L&R proper, I've probably only read 5-10% of Gilbert's output from the past ten years. I can't even keep track anymore.

ah, i wasn't aware "speak of the devil" was even a fritz book... (looks at pages robert adam gilmour linked)... and there the details are.

I was wondering if the art was rushed or he's drawing differently now. Whatever the case I don't think his lines have the same oomph they did when he was finishing up the Luba titles.

None of it's rushed. I put the same care into it that I put into everything. But I can imagine a day when I go, "Hey, I can't put out two new graphic novels a year anymore."

sez Beto

I'm trying to find oblique ways into L&R because I have Locas, but all the dialogue is weirdly off putting? So little room for anything.

there's so much room! Jaime's storytelling is all about moments, fragments, slivers of people's days and years. there's space to imagine and infer entire lives between lines spoken.

i mean physically in the frame tho, half the box taken up with winding dialogue just makes my eyes glaze over

I know for a fact I've said some variation of this at least two dozen times on ILX, but reading the material collected in Locas from the beginning does a massive disservice to the brilliance of what comes after. Skip ahead to a point that looks more appealing, start from there, return and re-read the early stuff once you're properly in love with Jaime's work.

yeah, 100% otm. i struggled with the early part of locas but it's utterly wonderful a little further down the line.

oh yeah, if you're stuck on his early, italicised lettering, skip ahead to where his letterforms look pretty. I find his early balloons exhausting too

if there's a trend i don't miss from the 80s it's the walls of exposition text

That latest issue of Multiversity... That was quite something. I could not make sense of that much of it, but what I got out of it was pretty much as fun and weird and clever as people always say Grant Morrison is.

Is this the Watchmen one? I've fallen a couple of issues behind. All the parts being #1s is confusing my senile brain.

The latest Multiversity is, uh, quite a step up from the previous issues.

I'm still getting my mind around it. And yeah, it's about Charlton heroes, all acting like their Watchmen counterparts. And the importance of the number 8. And something about colours. And... Yeah, I need to reread it once again, I think.

i'm gonna wait until Multiversity is done to read it, probably a year or two from now, but these descriptions are making me salivate

Curious if this is the end of his DC superhero run.

Maybe all this big crossover events were him earning the permission for Seaguy finale.

I reread Final Crisis after liking Multiversity so much, btw, and that was probably a bad idea. Got the first half of it, I think, even the Beyond issues, I think, and then it just degenerated, and seemed to be only about meta-commentary on comics. But, well, even if Multiversity goes the same way, we'll always have Justice Society and Pax Americana.

Since Savage Dragon is reaching 200 I'm kinda tempted to pick it up again but there are so many other things more important to read but if I ever catch up on lots of other priorities, I'd like to start reading it again. There was so many "Holy Shit!" moments on the last few collections I read.

Heard there might be a movie series. I'd be really happy for Larsen if it was a success but I could imagine so many ways it could go wrong. It would maybe require a terrible amount of cgi, to the point where it may as well be fully animated.
I'd happily avoid superhero films forever but I'd really love this to work. A lot of things could be refined but it's hard to imagine keeping the insane brutality which the plot often revolved around.
It might be hard to make the tonal shifts work (I'm not sure they always worked in the comic) and they should keep some of the funniest bits. Would love to see Powerhouse, Abner Cadaver, Neutron Bob and Dung in a film.
I doubt they'd keep Braniape (a gorilla with Hitler's brain), giant mutant Bin Laden or all the presidential campaign stuff.

I just seen scans of a Savage Dragon Japanese fan guide on the Larsen forum.

It's interesting that there was a whole book of modern alternative comics guys doing Savage Dragon stories. Some of it looked pretty crazy.

Druillet's 6 Voyages comes out in March and Delirious in June. But Titan's site doesn't list any of it. I hate it when official sites of publishers don't display all their catalogue.
They're very slim books. I wish they'd put out a big compilation of his classic era in one book because it wouldn't even be that big.
A couple of the old Druillet English editions had two books in them.

I'm quite happy today because Yoe Books are doing a Tom Sutton book dedicated to his 70s Charlton horror comics with extra unseen art. It's called Tom Sutton's Creepy Things. I really love this stuff, I think it was generally his best work. I hope it's fairly comprehensive of his cover art.

Yoe Books are also doing a Howard Nostrand horror collection, I might get that too. I just wish the Yoe horror collections were a bit thicker because that Bob Powell book could have had a few more stories and it would have been perfect. I think there was mentioned a possibility that there might be more books for each artist. LB Cole and Rudy Palais seem like natural next choices to me.