Rolling 2015 Reading Funnybooks Thread

I think you mean Spider-Uncle Ben

there's also Spider-Gwen Stacy!

No, he's just Uncle Ben Uncle Ben I think, he went into an underground bunker at some point before Doom blew something up.

I must have missed that, they found an Uncle Ben in a vault recently and uh any more would be spoilers for today's issue I guess

I might be projecting Doom, from overuse of the word doom.

It's that universe's Uncle Ben, in one of those Morlun-proof vaults

thing is that since getting a marvel unlimited subscription about two years ago, I've really re-engaged with all of the MU titles and this feels like it's gonna demolish my interest. maybe i'm wrong.

I don't think mainstream is inherently inferior, I think it's perfectly possible for it to produce some of the best work and I'd imagine there is plenty young adult books that are as good as anything else but I think those things are a totally different situation for creators than what DC and Marvel are today. The comics mainstream is getting better but I don't think that's got much to do with the big two right now.

Yeah, I'm exactly where forks is. The Marvel Now relaunch and the MU app suddenly becoming functional were both great slate-cleaners, and seems like it'll just muddy it up again.

Also, Robert, I think Marvel has produced some genuinely great stuff in the past couple years! DC not so much.

i deeply wish dc would do the tablet thing so i could re-engage; i just don't see having a go at any major capes and tights universe again on paper so it's gonna have to be a digital sub model

I think the last things I enjoyed to any notable degree by DC and Marvel were..

Haunt Of Horror (which was very uneven)
The Monolith (which lost me when it got into the more superheroey stuff, it's being reprinted by Image now)
Simon Dark (started intriguing but ended badly, Hampton recycled his art too much and it didn't work)
Howard The Duck (Gerber/Marvel Max, I think this is better than people say but it was a long while ago I read it)
Hulk by Bruce Jones (I read the first 6 or 7 issues and they were good, this had some real critical acclaim and I always meant to buy the collected series but I probably never will, I'd rather read his prose books)
Hard Time (like Oz tv show but not nearly as good)
Adventures Of Rifle Brigade (pretty funny in places)

All of these were quite a while ago. Even if the art is good (more of a rarity now) the color probably spoils it (I used to think people exaggerated about the colouring but I've came to agree it is really bad most of the time; Dark Horse, Image and IDW aren't innocent either).

Yeah, man, the majority of that stuff is from 10-15 years ago. They've done lots of good stuff since.

Well, it doesn't help that I only have the smallest affection left for superheroes regardless of who is creating them. But it's not like I'm loving much of what everyone else is publishing either.

I'll probably buy the collected Sandman Overture, but just for the pictures.

Did any of you read the whole of Hulk by Bruce Jones? I'm genuinely curious about verdicts on that.

The Incredible Hulk #34-76 (2002-2004)

Somebody with Marvel Unlimited: do their archives include any of the 70s B&W mags? Rampaging Hulk, Dracula Lives, Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, etc...

I'm pretty sure I read the whole Bruce Jones run on Hulk (I have it all but I don't know if I finished it). It started strong but lost a lot of steam as it went on. The art kinda followed suit. The two big hardcovers they put out probably collect the bulk of the best of it.

Yes, my perception of Bruce Jones is of an above average comic bk writer who starts well but fizzles out (most especially on Somerset Jones).I read at least one collection of the Jones Hulks and thought they were just OK - like a slightly below average TV movie, really. Personally I want my Hulk comics to have the Leader, Doc Samson, Jarella, the Abomination, all that jazz, and I missed those generic elements from the Jones issues I read. Also thought the writing was just a bit too on-the-nose 'modern' - terse, no captions/thought balloons, 'cinematic', pseudo-hardboiled.

Hard Time (like Oz tv show but not nearly as good)

Phantom Zone mini-series aside, I don't think Gerber ever wrote any really good comics for DC. It didn't feel like he belonged in that world.

Most of the Hulk supporting characters you mention eventually made an appearance in the Bruce Jones run after he got the more experimental 'Bruce Banner: Fugitive!' stuff out of his system.

Like quite a few guys trying to make a living in comics, I don't think superheroes were ever his first choice. Seems like one of those guys who has no real passion for the characters and sometimes does things that rubs hardcore fans the wrong way. I heard that Peter David retconned his whole run as "just a dream".
I think time travel, dinosaurs, horror and thrillers with a bit of romance were his thing.

http://corpsey.trubble.club/
Anyone ever follow this? The artist roster is huge.

Jones wasn't a bad artist either, in a pseudo-Al Williamson style

Yeah definitely. I think it's odd he didn't do more. That Arena short graphic novel he written and drew had some seriously scary hillbillies.

I think his reasoning was that he was dwarfed by all the artists he was working with (in the 70s and 80s he really was working with the best on a regular basis), but maybe his drawing skills have atrophied after so long.

Also thought the writing was just a bit too on-the-nose 'modern' - terse, no captions/thought balloons, 'cinematic', pseudo-hardboiled.

ugh DNW

Yeah I read a few of them in a ridiculously short time.

Somebody with Marvel Unlimited: do their archives include any of the 70s B&W mags? Rampaging Hulk, Dracula Lives, Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, etc...

i snagged a pile of torrent-y things including a pile of late 90's comics journals, the full gold key run of my favorite martian, the complete Zap comix, some obscure wordless Trondheim books not released in the US, v. 4 of The Imp and Jodorowsky's White Llama.

oh and a few volumes of the work of marc-antoine mathieu; kinda enjoying it.

and based solely on one recommendation on this thread (and my own curiosity), I think i'm gonna get the premium Archie Humble Bundle and report back as to what they've been doing with the character.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books

oh and a few volumes of the work of marc-antoine mathieu; kinda enjoying it.

If these include "Julius Corentin Acquefacques" books, they should not be read in digital format, because a large part of them is how Mathieu uses the physical format (a comic book made of paper) as part of the story. Like, the first book ("L'Origine") has a literal hole in it; one panel is missing and there's a hole in its place, and when you read the comic and you come to that page, at first through the hole you see a panel from two pages ahead, and that plays into the story, with the characters unexpectedly playing out future events and then commenting on that, and when you turn the page, now you can see a panel from two pages before, and again the characters react to this weird reoccurence of past events. This is one my very favourite meta tricks ever pulled in a comic, but sadly it cannot be replicated in digital format.

thanks for the background; this stuff isn't available in paper format in the US. If you'd like to mail me a copy, awesome; otherwise I'll puzzle it out in digital scanlation

> sadly it cannot be replicated in digital format.

can't they just copy the panels?

Well yeah, but if you read a scanned page you wouldn't know that the repetition of panels is because of a hole in the page, and the existence of the hole is actually an explicit part of the plot, it's all very meta and breaking-the-fourth-wall.

Forks, sorry, I don't have a copy ot the book, I've always just borrowed it from the library. But since you now know about the hole thing, just pay attention to the two consecutive pages where a panel seem to be weirdly out of order, and the characters react to that, that's where the whole is supposed to be. You should have no problem with the whole meta aspect once you know that.

In general, I think it's a shame that comic book artists don't take advantage of the format like that more often... I remember when I first read "L'Origine", at first I was like, wtf, someone's cut hole to this comic, and the feeling of surprise and joy I got when I realized the hole was a part of the story was just awesome! The only other comic I can think of that takes advantage of how paper comics are physically read is Jason Shiga's Elsewhere. (Don't want to say anything more not to spoil it, but all who like meta in their comics should check that one out... It's essentially an existential "Choose Your Own Adventure" story in a comic book form.)

probably the cost prohibitions, I would guess

Ware's Building Stories wouldn't really work in a non-physical format. Building Stories v similar to 'novel-in-a-box' The Unfortunates by B S Johnson, who also had holes cut into the pages of his second novel, Albert Angelo.

as much as i'm not stoked for the madness, i've been enjoying all the hints about universes colliding that bendis has been dropping in ultimate spider man

loonies being dragged through the background of police station dialogue like ITS COMING, ALL THE UNIVERSES ARE GONNA COLLAPSE INTO ONE

yeah, those were pretty amusing

Read #1 of Captain America, Fantastic Four and Incredible Hulk this week. FF was great, might post some longer thoughts on it this weekend.

Also making my way through Yoshiro Tatsumi's A Drifting Life, about a chapter a day. Sooo good, I love the long, slow burn of it.

loonies being dragged through the background of police station dialogue like ITS COMING, ALL THE UNIVERSES ARE GONNA COLLAPSE INTO ONE

https://kangaratmurdersoc.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/animal-man-10-psycho-pirate.jpg

^ a loony, yesterday*

*1990

I got the first issue of Jim Starlin's Thanos vs. Hulk a week or so back. After you read bunches of modern super hero comics, you read this Starlin issue and it's like 1982 again. Colors are a little bleh gray on the book, but it was pretty fun. The thing totally read like an old style Marvel comic, which was kind of novel.

Got Tom Sutton's Creepy Things today. Hope they do a second volume because there's quite a lot of good stuff not included. Love the way these Yoe Books are designed.

Finally read the much-ballyhhod Ros Chast memoir, which was actually pretty great in a depressing way

new bitch planet today

is that 2 or 3, i haven't been to the shop in a minute

2

Alfred Bester, Patricia Highsmith, Mickey Spillane and Manly Wade Wellman.

Are there any other writers who were better known for their prose who did comics in the golden and silver ages? And are any of these comics that notable for being good?