Rolling 2015 Reading Funnybooks Thread

Hitler on the toilet, how can you resist

like i picked up Ultra Comics because it said "#1" and "Multiversity" on it thinking "oh here's an on-ramp," not realizing i guess that they're *all* "#1"s? and i ~got~ it but also sensed i was missing most of what made it worthwhile for everyone peeing their pants about it.

each one is kind of a riff on a comic style

I still haven't read Ultra Comics but one of the underlying threads of the preceding (and ostensibly standalone) issues is a haunted comic book called Ultra Comics that keeps turning up and wreaking havoc in all of these disparate alternate universes. So, yeah, the impact is probably diluted somewhat without the build-up. But you unwittingly read a haunted comic book that's probably going to wind up destroying our world as a result of your having read it, so that's something.

one of the underlying threads of the preceding (and ostensibly standalone) issues is a haunted comic book called Ultra Comics that keeps turning up and wreaking havoc in all of these disparate alternate universes

yeah that's definitely a thing that is apparent in ultra comics

I think Old Lunch's point is that in all the other Multiversity #1s it's referred to explicitly, so actually having it in your hand makes it a cursed object that you know you're handling - so in effect reading it means you're responsible for all the previous #1s happening.

damn it, hoos

what made it worthwhile for everyone peeing their pants about it.

who's peeing their pants about it, apart from long-term Morristans* going "uh this wasn't worth the wait and is finally Morrison-by-numbers and really in so many ways a direct retread of FC"

*eg Uzumeri, Jog, the Mindless, Singer

I think Old Lunch's point is that in all the other Multiversity #1s it's referred to explicitly, so actually having it in your hand makes it a cursed object that you know you're handling - so in effect reading it means you're responsible for all the previous #1s happening.

― the bowels are not what they seem (aldo), Tuesday, March 31, 2015 8:11 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i follow! i'm just saying morrison makes this like the opposite of a secret

that's how Morrison works, he lets you know in issue #1 that the apocalypse is coming, and you can evaluate the plot

Friend convinced me to start reading Preacher - halfway through the first collection and I'm pretty much done between the sheriff's kid with the 'arseface,' the sheriff 'fucking himself,'and the start of the next story where a criminal has his jaw blown off in pretty much the same image as everyone else who's gotten shot.
Does it get better or is Garth Ennis just that awful 24/7?

at the time it was kinda innovative; don't really have a lot of excuses why i own it now

h8 that shit

and all the 'gonzo' tough guy culture-jamming scripters that tumbled along in its wake

otm, the worst is people who think they understand why something problematic is entertaining and then make their own work which is just 100% problematic and not at all entertaining

If you've just started reading Preacher or are considering doing so at some point in the future, the first question to ask yourseff is: Am I between the ages of 14 and 22? If the answer is no, please feel free to not read Preacher and know that you really aren't missing anything.

yeah i read preacher thinking "i wish i'd found this when i was 15"

Feel like the world need a reverse-recommendations engine - oh, you thought Preacher was awful and Transmetropolitan was cheesy and dumb? You should also avoid <x>.

I thought Transmetropolitan was pretty ok when I was in college. But the series was '97-'02 and I was in college '99-'03 so it worked out perfectly.

I was not 15 when I was in college, but really, I kind of was.

If my personal experience is anything to go by, I would guess that it was probably a mid-to-late '90s rite of passage to initially buy and enjoy titles such as Preacher and Transmetropolitan and Strangers In Paradise until you slowly came to realize that they were embarassing garbage aimed at an audience you no longer belonged to.

tbh I think 1/3 of Sandman falls into that

Read less Preacher, read more Shade the Changing Man.

otm

The impediment being, though, that DC ran out of steam less than halfway through collecting Shade in trades (as has been their super-fun tendency with most of the classic Vertigo series). Thankfully, the entirety of Preacher will be available in perpetuity.

I think I'm missing a little bit of Shade at the end, but I got a near-complete run off ebay years ago

Which reminds me, I need to troll ebay some more. I want to read more bad cyberpunkish titles of the 90s. Do you know how hard it is to track down a full run of Ghost Rider 2099?

Shade trades will get you up to #19. there were 70...

comixology has them.

(i hadn't realised there were so many. some classic bachalo / pennington art in them as well. must dig them out)

which shade are you guys talking about? i assume the vertigo + not the original ditko?

To be fair, the series slowly goes downhill after issue 50. I think I remember reading something about Milligan wanting to end it around then and DC wanting it to continue with a different writer, which prompted him to begrudgingly continue.

xpost We're talking about Vertigo. Same character, different take. Ditko Shade lasted < 10 issues, IIRC.

i've never read it but u've all inspired me

Ditko Shade is great too, but a totally different thing from the Vertigo series.

Milligan's Shade series is cool, but two of the miniseries he wrote for Vertigo around the same sort of time are even better (and reach fully satisfying conclusions) - The Extremist drawn by Ted Mckeever and Enigma drawn by Duncan Fegredo.

Milligan has some stuff that is more workmanlike but as far as writers go, I think he's generally underrated

Milligan has had a patchy career, but he's certainly underrated. Enigma was one of the best miniseries Vertigo ever put out. Skreemer (which probably would've been a Vertigo mini if it had been issued a year or two later) is another great early '90s Milligan project. And his one-shots like Face and Tainted were pretty good, too. Then he had those weird post-Vertigo wilderness years where he wrote awful stuff like Elektra before he came back in full force with X-Force/-Statix and the Human Target ongoing. Lots of stuff worth checking out.

There was a stretch of time when Shade was my favorite ongoing title, so I'd still highly recommend it despite its unevenness. I reread it two years ago or so and most of it still holds up.

I loved Milligan's run on Shade at the time. Would almost say its better than Sandman (certainly the art is better)

Too true. The early Bachalo stuff was a little muddy and not terribly special (which may have been due to the inking), but I became a huge fan once he hit his stride a year or so in. Even most of the guest artists during his tenure (like Glynn Dillon and Phillip Bond) were great.

I hadn't really thought about it until now but I probably learned a lot about drawing by heavily aping Shade-era Bachalo.

Saw something unexpected today: a complete(?) Marvel collection of Weirdworld. The title isn't very appropriate, it looks a lot like Elfquest and any number of Tolkien inspired 70s-80s stuff.
Some nice black and white Mike Ploog at the start but later on John Buscema with someone painting over him, it looks a bit cheesy but it's still impressive.

I didn't know about that collection. There weren't all that many Weirdworld installments (it just popped up now and again in anthology titles like Marvel Fanfare and Epic Illustrated), so I would assume it's complete. I wonder if it's been released to promote the (apparently) completely unrelated Weirdworld miniseries that's part of Secret Wars.

Yeah I just heard about that. Marvel pretty much never reprints anything for its own sake, it always has to tie into a larger plan.

There's a notorious early issue of The Comics Journal where they fawned over the full color Weirdworld strip, which first ran in a colour Marvel magazine. The airbrushy finishing (from memory, by Rudy Nebres?) was pretty 'advanced' for Marvel at that time, but nothing that wasn't being done better in Heavy Metal/Metal Hurlant, and of course the story was the usual sub-Tolkein bollox, cranked out by good old reliable Doug Moench.

I saw that new collection in the window of Forbidden Planet today - smaller than the original magazine printings, which can't help.

more gorgeous ogden whitney superhero stuff
http://fourcolorshadows.blogspot.com/2015/04/skyman-ogden-whitney-1940.html

Kodansha are translating Junji Ito's Cat Diary! Hooray hooray! Maybe we'll get Hellstar Remina soon.

http://oyster.ignimgs.com/wordpress/stg.ign.com/2015/04/STK668561-300x461.jpg

real or shopped?

out today

o brave new world

i flipped through the archie and predator book
there's a scene where the gang are on a tropical island and there's red rain coming down from a palm tree on a confused moose and its two flayed bodies hung by a predator.
this is played for laffs

http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2015/04/ty-templeton-in-critical-but-stable-condition-after-heart-attack/