Rolling SERIOUS GRAPHIC LITERATURE Thread for Comics in 2016

Sorry Tuomas!

Yeah the art is great - kind of reminds me of a Steve Dillon who can draw more than one face. The stiffness suits the story - I can see a similar version of this with better, more psychedelic art, that would be less fun to read.

I'm not super familiar with sci fi comics or books but the narrative approach - sort of feminist, young adult take on a "boy's own" narrative - and the episodic/unpredictable storyline all seem quite refreshing and original. It's so rare to pick something up and think "I haven't read a comic like this before".

I've read a bunch of (European and American) sci-if comics, and I still feel Aldebaran is fairly unique. It's kinda weird, considering that comics are a visual medium that allows you imagine other worlds any way you want to, without being limited by budget and commerciality the way movie and TV sci-fi is, there are suprisingly few comics that would try to imagine non-Earth planets in a way that is totally weird and alien to us, but still logical and functional within its own context. Valerian & Laureline is the obvious predecessor here, but that comic is much more cartoony than Aldebaran, so it doesn't really have the same uncanny valley/alienation effect Leo's art has.

And yeah, the feminist approach is surprisingly fresh, especially considering that Leo is a guy born in 1944.

Ok, must seek out aldebaran. Almost every scifi comic, especially if superhero, has staggeringly banal ideas about alien life and environments.

IMO (though Ulysess and Chuck might disagree?) that really is the strongest part of the series, and what makes it so compelling. Some other elements in it, particularly the dialogue, are kinda weak, but those freaky biologicial visions make up for such flaws.

Also, do note that the actual series called Aldebran is just the first of a larger, multi-series work called "Worlds of Aldebaran". My favourite one of those is the second series, Betelgeuse.

Almost every scifi comic, especially if superhero, has staggeringly banal ideas about alien life and environments.

You probably already know, but Brandon Graham's Prophet is really really great for this.

*waits for sic to show up and post "Rob Liefeld's Prophet" as a corrective

I strongly doubt that Rob Liefeld's Prophet did the interesting things with alien lifecycles and cultures that Graham's does

oh you

otm though

Clearly, all of Liefeld's aliens would be variations on marsupials.

Think about it.

https://img1.etsystatic.com/029/1/7211752/il_340x270.586998129_gb5u.jpg

Leo's book are excellent, glad you found them! I think a comparison to Graham's Prophet isn't completely off the mark.

Grayson was decent post-Ellis cloak and dagger stuff; the male gaze being flipped is a nice touch. The standout was an issue where each page is it's own miniature story with the page after taking place in the past and furthering the story... going back to the moment when The Flying Graysons death is being plotted. Bravura work there.

Better yet is 'Sheriff of Babylon' currently running with Image. It's great and dense and barely begun.

http://comicsalliance.com/tom-king-mitch-gerads-sheriff-of-babylon/

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/may/30/mike-mignola-final-hellboy-comic-paint-watercolors

Didn't realise Hellboy was ending. Seems like a recent choice.

Probably statng the obvious here but WicDiv is on a bloody roll at the moment.

Also, just finished BETELGEUSE. So much fun. Even my partner, not a regular comic reader, binged the whole series with me.

Hah, this was the first WicDiv that had me rolling my eyes.

I haven't gotten into that series yet, I guess maybe I should?

I've been reading Saga and Lazarus in trades. Both seem a little meandery at the moment but I'm still in.

As far as serious comics lit goes, I browsed for a loooong time at the Drawn & Quarterly store and have a lot of ideas of stuff to pick up, but bought precious little since I'm traveling light and some of the books I wanted were quite large

Why the eye-roll, AF? Too plot-twisty?

[v mild / oblique spoilers ahead]

FWIW I think that it was a high point in WicDiv smartassery (of the "oh you thought you knew THIS because I gave you all that evidence but in fact (fumble fumble) THIS!!" variety, but I am signed up for a fair quantity of such smartassery from this lot, and I'm nowhere near capacity for that yet. I anticipate more of this kind of twistery in the future. I am happy with the fact that they're using some of the few sure things you can hang on to, like the circular schedule of living / dead gods on the graphic as part of that misdirection.

I am someone who regularly shouts "JUST GO TO THE POLICE!" at the telly while watching crime dramas; I thought it rather amusing to have a character say that and for me to react "oh that wouldn't work! how unrealistic..."

I think it makes one of the interesting characters (and their position in the story) a lot less interesting - he writes good villains, having one heroically go "No I didn't do that, but the world must never know!" annoys me.

It does deepen my realisation of how weird April 21st must have been for Gillen, of course.

I think "must never know" is putting it a bit strongly, and I wasn't as sold on him as a villain anyway, he seemed too much of a whiner. I suspect we will have multiple shifts of who's apparently a villain and who a hero over the next thirty issues - I'm buckling in to enjoy that process.

Reminds me of Grant Morrison's last Doom Patrol storyline - characters changing sides, revealing themselves to be SECRETLY EVIL, or secretly not evil, or returning from the dead, or returning from the dead to die *again*, etc. Anyway - fun.

Any sort of postponing righteousness doesn't strike me as likely - as you say, dude is whiny.

I keep reading WicDiv when the trades come out, hoping there'll be something to make me like this series the way everyone else seems to. I don't think I'm compatible with it, though: I don't feel like I've been given any reasons why I should care about the characters and I still haven't bought into the premise/execution. Want to enjoy it but can't!

I've been keeping up with WicDiv and Saga on a monthly basis. Saga continues to be very strong. I started to like WicDiv a bit less when they did all of the origin side stories and then when it switched into full on mystery mode, but it's still pretty good.

Just read the first 6 issues of Paper Girls, it's absolutely bonkers, though not quite as lovable as Saga.

also struggling to get through the first trade of Phonogram, doesn't really make much sense to me, probably because I don't particularly care that much about Brit Pop. Do the later ones get better?

A more useful lens is maybe "Do you care that much about people who care too much about music?"

Yeah was a little turned off by Phonogram also. If I was into Britpop in the 90s I'd probably have a different opinion

And I'm a fan of Gillen so was disappointed that I couldn't really get into it

Sex Criminals vol 3 is out in the next month or so. Was recommended it on the basis of Matt Fraction (who I've never read). Really took to it and it's moved above WicDiv in terms of my interest. It's weird, but it's funny about it.

WicDiv I loved at first, got a bit meandery/off the point, loved the Tara issue (a lot). The art is nice but a friend of mine pointed out the faces look a lot like airline safety illustrations and now I can't stop thinking that.

Saga is my favourite by a mile. I only buy trades so I'm not up to date, but it's been so good so long I get that perpetual "don't fuck it up" thing everytime I read the next part.

Also, I got Nameless (Grant Morrison) as a birthday present, haven't read it yet, but the premise seems intriguing and I haven't read anything of his for a while. I'm pretty fond of his brand of mindfuck nonsense.

Do new issues of Saga have more of that little seal dude? Love that guy.

they sure do!

gave up on saga sometime last year, wicdiv same... both just stopped moving my care-o-meter. little seal dude is legit tho.

So I read and enjoyed, with some reservations, the 500+ pages of 'Lucille' by Ludovic Debeurme, and I get to the last page and it says 'End of Part 1'. You couldn't fucking mention that anywhere on the front or back cover, Top Shelf? It's like the bullshit with the last Charles Burns ("his new graphic novel!" "actually, this is only issue 1 of a series!").

Loved the second Phonogram collection, The Singles Club, particularly the "Wolf Like Me" story. Got me to revisit that TV on the Radio album. First trade was good, though not as engaging since not a huge Britpop fan. Thanks, also, as I checked Amazon to see if 3rd trade was out, and it is. [As is the first Master of Kung Fu omnibus. Yahoo! Biggest regret of high school collection dump is selling the entire MoKF series. Figure the $4-500 to buy the omnibus series is cheaper than rebuying the singles.]

been reading stuff on comixology unlimited, really enjoyed Chew and Fuse!

Forgot about Uber, too - just put vols. 3 - 5 on library hold.

Chew's a fun book. Going through library trades on that. Would've loved to see that TV series adaptation happen starring Miles from Lost

http://www.tcj.com/interview-with-jason-shiga/

While I’m in Angoulême I’m going to work on my most ambitious project to date. It will be another choose-your-own-adventure comic, like Meanwhile, except that Meanwhile was only seventy pages, whereas this one is going to be five hundred pages. It’s going to be split into two books, and the two books will be joined together along a third spine. The pages of the book will be facing each other so that you can essentially open the book from the middle. It’ll use the same tab system that Meanwhile uses, except that in addition to tubes taking you to different pages, that is, different tabbed pages within one book, tubes will also cross the middle spine into the second book. The most exciting part is that when you’re reading one book, the pages in the book that you’re not reading can basically store states, meaning you could be reading the same panel in one book, but depending on the page that the other book is flipped to in the book that you’re not reading, the next panel in the sequence could be totally different. The long and short of it is the book you’re not reading will be able to store memory, almost like a computer. The story that you are reading will be able to access the memory in the other book and feed you sequences of panels depending on what’s in the memory.

That's nuts, would love to see how it all works

he admits it might be unpublishable at the end of the interview

liked the shiga interview

second issue of coates' black panther is pretty dire.

Agreed. It's a bit boring, isn't it? There's potential though.

the dialogue is clunky, the pacing is bad. it's just not good comics; there's a connection lacking between story and image.
http://i.imgur.com/4g70hi6.png
http://i.imgur.com/6kObvOW.png
http://i.imgur.com/ZXs4ilh.png
i said it already: it's a fool's game to try to judge a story by the first two paragraphs. but this is not encouraging.

lol at how reflective everything is

It reads like the comic book adaptation of a novelisation of a TV show. There's too much plot, too early - only two issues and it already feels portentous and grand statement-y, without a single non-cipher character. Perhaps he would have been better of starting with a rinkydink 4-parter. Perhaps he should've been paired with a reliable old hack like Priest or DeMatteis or Simone to make it more "comic-y". But (on Twitter at least) he claims to be getting better, and it's stil curious enough to that I'd give him 2-3 more issues. It's not Kevin Smith.

i'll certainly give him room to figure it out; he's a bright guy and a comic nerd so there's that
but yeah, he seems unclear about how the medium works.