Rolling Comic Books 2024

Sorry to keep going on about the same artists again and again but I'm surprised of the all the volume and confusing arrangements of reprints that Robin Snyder has published, I'm surprised he never compiled Ditko's essays on his 60s creations, because they're probably the most interesting essays he wrote and they would sell better than most of the other stuff Snyder publishes.
Ditko Unleashed uses quite a lot of quotations from them and you see all these possibilities of how things could have gone differently. Stan Lee suggesting early on that there could be a Spiderwoman but Ditko didn't like it. And funny stuff like readers being uncomfortable about Peter Parker being underage while he dates Betty Brant (presuming she must be an adult to have a secretary job), this never occured to me when I read the series and I'm kind of shocked it bothered readers so much that Lee and Ditko had to discuss changing things. He considered killing Betty but didn't want Spiderman to a be a crybaby "like Captain America"!

I'm really bummed by Loic Locatelli drawing in a more mainstream cartoon fashion than he used to, I wonder why this happened?

Are some Fantagraphics books on really short print runs? Because I was looking for one of their EC books and there wasn't a single copy available, except on the Fantagraphics site

There is a whole reddit group dedicated to Neal Adam's growing earth theory

Some Pat Boyette I like
https://www.comics.org/issue/30263/cover/4/
https://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryPiece.asp?Piece=708392

There's so much from this era of Charlton I love

was looking for one of their EC books and there wasn't a single copy available, except

If they’re not in your local shops, but they are on the Fanta site, then by definition they are still in print

I couldn't see it on any of the online sellers I know for any price at all, I haven't seen that often for their books. Happy to buy it from them of course.

I first saw Atlas comics reprinted, in murky black and white, in those pretty much bootleg UK Alan Class anthology comics, mixed in with strips from ACG, Charlton, Marvel, whatever Class could get his mitts on. As a kid, I was fascinated by these obviously old strips, so creaky but sometimes eerie as fuck, especially when they were drawn by a name I recognised from 'proper' Marvel comics, like Don Heck (who did his best work for Atlas in the 50s). So yes, while

Terror is nigh-unreadable, storywise

these reprint volumes still give me that pleasing eerie feeling of reading a 'shadow world' of comics, a totally different flavour/sensibility from EC, DC, Charlton etc. The trick, as with all these things, is not to read too many in one go.

I haven't read an exhaustive amount of that Atlas stuff but I recall it being easier reading than the EC stuff of the time and 60s Marvel, seemed like a lot less text.

Can anyone find this story? Never seen all 3 pages
https://ditko.blogspot.com/2010/12/mad-monsters-1-1961.html

https://nick-caputo.blogspot.com/2017/04/steve-ditko-at-charlton-1969-1971.html
https://nick-caputo.blogspot.com/2017/04/ditko-at-charlton-part-2-1972-1974.html
There's some recent and fairly expensive Robin Snyder print-on-demand compilations of some of these years, I'm preparing to be disappointed but these are some of my favorite comics. Would very much appreciate a complete Ditko and Tom Sutton compilations of this era, and maybe highlights from miscellaneous artists, because I can't image someone doing the entire run of these titles and it probably wouldn't be a good idea anyway.

https://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=95_137&products_id=1711
I totally missed this, had no idea

Was wondering if anyone is ever been cool enough to cosplay as Winnie The Witch and yes, there was someone
https://ripjaggerdojo.blogspot.com/2010/06/winnie-witch.html

Didn't know this Charlton revival was a thing
https://morttodd.com/charlton.html

https://steveditkostuff.blogspot.com/2024/07/routine-many-ghosts-of-doctor-graves-7.html

Just finished Sususmu Higa's Okinawa. Mix of stories from WWII and ones from modern Okinawa. Really hits home how much the local population has a collective industry distinct from the mainland Japanese one. Also features an interview with the artist from the Mangasplaining crew.

It taken me a while to discover Alan Class comics(though I guess I may have been 15, so it wasn't a long time) because hardly anyone sold them, it was like opening up a weird hidden history. There's an article somewhere about all the art variations in them because they had wider covers that showed extra stuff that wasn't on the american covers, or drawings that were covered up by lettering on the american versions, or things that didn't pass the comics code but somehow made it to britain. There was an extensive article about the variations but I can't find it.

I'm guessing the comics code rejected this cover because they didn't want children looking so directly at Spiderman's butt, but it was okay for Italy
https://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/kirby/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2006/04/AmazingSpiderMan35_190a.jpg

🚨New License🚨

Suburban Hell by Taro Kanafuro

192 Pages. 1 Volume. Extremely violent and gory.

We have acquired WORLDWIDE English rights.

A collection of seven short stories focused on human decay and corruption in everyday suburban settings.

Coming Summer 2024 pic.twitter.com/teJL8CIRrA

— Star Fruit Books (@starfruitbooks) February 16, 2024

Looked at this guy's twitter account and some of it's pretty unsettling, gives Suehiro Maruo a run for his money

I've had fun looking around the trading card database because I know who a lot of these painters are now, like fantasy artists who never drew comics interiors or comic artists drawing characters they normally wouldn't. There's Spiderman characters by Ian Miller and Bob Eggleton.

I got the Steve Ditko reprints published by Robin Snyder (I can't see a consistent publisher name listed) called Touch Of Genius, This Is How It Is and Tonight I'll Dream Of You, these collect all his Charlton work from 1971-73, and it seems like the next book (Introducing Captain Atom) is going back to 1960. I really don't understand this publishing order but I would prefer it went back to 1966-70 and 74 to the late 70s. I don't think most would be happy paying these prices for paperbacks (two of them were significantly cheaper on Awesomebooks) but I think these look really great, I'm impressed, it's pretty nice colour scans.
I also got a newer edition of Sweeter Gwen that he did with Eric Stanton. I love this stuff and I'll have to see if there is a more comprehensive list of his Stanton collaborations because for years it was only Kinky Hook and Sweeter Gwen that were noted but I'm sure there's more with his very distinctive early 60s inking style.

Been ordering back issues for the first time in years. I kind of hate getting 30 page comics for anthology stories that are just a third or fourth of the length. It reminded me of when I was more of an obsessive collector of lots of comic artists and I would have lots of comics for just their cover, or one page, or some other small fraction of a full comic. It meant that a huge chunk of my comic collection was just pages of stuff I tolerated because it was sharing space with the thing I really wanted. One time I got annoyed enough with this that I considered cutting out the pages I wanted and throwing out the rest but I didn't feel great about that. I asked on the old Comics Journal forum and some people were horrified but Eddie Campbell was very encouraging and said he was very comfortable cutting out one image from a nice hardcover book. So I cut out loads of pages and it's one of those things that really made me rethink the value of it all and I was glad I did it, but now I feel more conflicted about it because there are probably people who would have liked those comics whole and maybe I should have made harder choices about what to put in the charity shops. I haven't clipped out pages in over a decade and I don't think I'll do it again.

The idea of buying anthologies is still irritating because of all the pages I don't want. But comics that first appeared in anthologies are much of my favorite comics and I used to agree with people that there should be much more of them. I remember one really evangelical anthology fan saying that they pushed the medium forward more than any other type of comic. Now I really begrudge buying all the unwanted pages, I much prefer the idea of comic artists doing more solo short story collections because getting an anthology full of artists you really like is a freakishly unlikely thing now. However, it would take a long time to make a book full of short stories and I think many artists would find it frustrating to have finished stories waiting until they had a book length of them.

I have stacks on prose anthologies and magazines now and I haven't yet got to the point where I'm struggling to make tough choices with them. Luckily short prose fiction collections by one author are a common thing (despite not selling especially well).

How do you feel about your own anthology collecting? Do you wish there were more comics anthologies? Or solo collections?

Do none of the EC artist collections by Fantagraphics have cover art inside? Seems like an odd choice not to have the covers

“the covers” …of what?

The cover art of the EC Comics titles, they only have the stories, as far as I've seen

what covers would you put in each book though

According to the artist who did them: Johnny Craig covers in the Johnny Craig books, Al Feldstein covers in the Al Feldstein books, etc...

in greyscale?

I don't know, I guess regular black and white would be fitting? Not sure why the big Russ Cochran library editions did the covers in colour

...so where would they get the cover art in B&W?

I only have the Krigstein volume in that Fanta series - no covers, but then he didn't draw many, and this all-time banger wouldn't work in black and white anyway:

https://storage.googleapis.com/hipcomic/p/ab05abcae0c873b1b9cfb4ce5cbd659f.jpg

There's an 'artisan' edition of the EC covers collection from IDW that's pretty affordable.

Fanta used the main image from that Piracy cover on their paperback Krigstein best-of 20-odd years ago

Yeah, Messages in a Bottle, I have that. And the two biography/anthology hardcovers that Fanta issued prior to Messages. All good stuff (not sure about some of the Marie Sev recolouring).

Will lay off the Krig after posting this, one of the greatest fanzine covers of all time:

https://www.budsartbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/SQ06.jpg

https://heroinesinfiction.blogspot.com/search/label/Agar-Agar

Would love a collection of this, Alberto Solsona's Agar-Agar

Nice! Very strong Enric Sió vibe. And Trade Moore's recentish Doctor Strange comics carry on that technicolour dreamscape style.

A shame he didn't do a lot of comics and his fine art isn't doing much for me (looks nothing like his comics at all), he died young

Picked up a bunch of packs at WorldCon, so far I've only read two:

Batman/Dylan Dog - A lot of fun this! Dylan's helper gets to keep his Groucho moustache, unlike those Dark Horse reprints. Really gorgeous art throughout, and since it's an Italian project the issues themselves are longer than US style floppies. Brief moment of cringe when Constantine breaks into a reactionary speech and Dylan Dog goes "ok boomer", the dangers of someone with good intentions writing outside their experience I guess - the writer mixes up the usual claptrap about social media, virtue signalling, etc. with laments about Piccadilly Circus being "taken over by ethnic eateries owned by multinationals". Except the gentrification of central London is super real and has bollocks to do with "ethnic eateries", in fact if you're in Piccadilly it's just a few steps to an enormous concentration of family owned Chinese restaurants. Anyway it's just a dumb moment, clumsy attempt at putting the reactionary UK in its place, mostly this rocks, you should read it.

Cinder & Ashe - "Mature readers only" miniseries by Gerry Conway and the great José Luís García Lopez. Ads for Killing Joke and Animal Man, DC at its 80's peak. I guess this was Conway's attempt at swimming in that stream, and he turns out...a not particularly good Cannon film. Cajun Vietnam vet teams up with the daughter of a black GI and Vietnamese woman, who somehow still has red hair, and whom he adopted in a relationship that thanfkully does not turn sexual but still gives me the creeps. Lots of sexual assault. Just dumb as rocks, really, but elucidative as a time capsule I guess.

Thomas Woodruff - Francis Rothbart

Two parents get struck by lightning in the wilderness and their baby is brought up by animals, bizarre shenanigans and much elaborate decoration ensue. Most of this is drawings but there's occasional paintings.

I'm completely blown away by the art in this, it might be the most lavish comic I've ever seen, it taken 7 years to make and it shows. It's got heaps of personality and odd ideas, the lettering is so creative that it would be extremely difficult to translate faithfully. The only thing I didn't like is that the whimsical rhyming text is a lot to deal with and made it difficult to get through at times, I kind of wish he'd been more minimal with the text but it's also hard to imagine it being that different. That problem aside, I really love this book and it's a towering achievement.

If you're going to buy this fairly expensive book (the size of the thing, hardcovers and quality of the paper feel completely necessary) you need to be able to tolerate that the young boy main character Francis is naked for the whole book, he has a couple of troubling sexual experiences, there's some weirdly creative defecation and animals killed in brutal ways.

Thanks to Fantagraphics for publishing this, despite the extremely high quality of the work, hardly anyone else would have published this.

I had heard in an interview that Francis is modeled on Sabu but I seen a review that says the father is supposed to be the actual Sabu and the mother is Dorothy Lamour (who I know nothing about)

Not new news, but I just heard about this and am in disbelief that someone -- Tom Hanks and Robert Zemeckis, of all people! - decided to make this into a movie
https://www.firstshowing.net/2024/first-trailer-for-zemeckis-single-shot-here-movie-starring-tom-hanks/

I read Here as part of a comic book club recently. I loved it!

The movie looks lame-o.

RIP Bernie Mireault :(

Is it too late to talk about Daniel Clowes's MONICA? Bloody hell. Very curious how others found it. I loved it and was (naturally) also a bit creeped out.

Haven't read but heard nothing but great things.

Ex-ilxor Tom is reviewing all of 2000AD:

https://freakytrigger.co.uk/wedge/2024/08/lets-all-meet-up-in-the-year-2000-intro

Monica definitely among the best things Clowes has ever done but bleak as fuck even by his standards.

Monica was outstanding. The only Clowes I had previously read was Ghost World, which was a different sort of thing. Monica reminded me a lot of Twin Peaks s3, in the ways that it was disjointed in the best ways, like looking at a story reflected in a shattered mirror.

I recently read David Boring which was very good. Thinking about diving into the Complete Eight Ball set.

(“The Complete Eightball 1-18”)

Clowes is a fantastic stylist with the sensibility of a sociopathic robot. I don't know why I bother. He hasn't been funny or surprising in 30 years.

ok 20 years

Need to check out Monica. Remember really liking Patience of his more recent stuff

Monica out in a month. It might be Clowes’ best book, and definitely his best conceived-as-a-graphic-novel novel. (But would have been mindblowing if it first dropped as a run of revived Eightballs, and only revealed itself as one work upon reading the second issue or w/e.)

― vashti funyuns (sic), Thursday, 31 August 2023 22:59 (one year ago)

I foolishly expected a happy ending right until the final page - I had my hand covering the last panels but could see the page of red to the right and thought, "that doesn't look good." DON'T OPEN THE EGG MONICA!!!

Totally agree re: Twin Peaks Season 3 - I wonder if it was an influence, Clowes must have been starting Monica around the same time that it came out. And of course they're both absolutely creepy and weird, without ever being all "Hey, I'm creepy and weird!".

In other "noted indie comix guys of the 90s/00s" news, I also just finished Adrian Tomine's "The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist" and thought it was delightful, it's basically comics Curb Your Enthusiasm.

https://vimeo.com/744354825
Short documentary about golden age comic artist Lily Renee. There was news and a graphic novel about her in the last few years but I missed all that

Hobtown Mystery Stories, Vol.1: The Case Of The Missing Men - Nancy Drew meets Twin Peaks kind of caper about teens uncovering strange going ons in the Pacific Northwest. Think you'll know if it's your kinda thing from that description. The part that stuck with me most was one of them seeing, in the middle of a parade (itself resembling the one in Cutter's Way), some sort of evil gnome, who is never fully explained during the rest of the story. Dunno why that nasty little creep freaked me out so much but it did.

Iris: A Novel For Viewers - Classic Dutch comic inspired by the erotic French comics of its era. Story's very much of its time - young pop star caught in the clutches of a sinister record exec, also there's tons of nudity - but the psychedelic art is a delight.

Dynamite Diva - Fun collection of comic strips and pin ups, originally published on Instagram, featuring a one eyed female vigilante, drenched in 70's grindhouse aesthetics. Author talks a lot about his love of Chester Gould. Amazed he's in his early twenties, dunno why I assume these old styles would stop drawing interest, I sure as fuck was into a lot of them when I was a kid and they were already ancient history.

Iris was interesting and fun to look at, but yeah, story-wise very much of its time

Igaguri, Fukui Eiichi - Super influential judo manga from the 50's. Narratively this sets the pace for shonen, protagonist is ridiculously noble and the opponents he defeats tend to then become his new mates, inspired by his goodness. But while this is all very serious the art style is clearly influenced by American newspaper strips, and the comedic ones as opposed to adventure stories; some of the characters end up looking a bit like how Carl Barks draws those generic human-dogs, though they are not supposed to be animals at all. There's a lot of gag strip skills just in the movements and expressions. I'm guessing it ran in a paper or something too because the structure is very much Sunday strip. A really fascinating read.

https://www.tcj.com/the-best-comics-of-2024-as-chosen-by-tcj-contributors/

Think it was Tom who once said that individual lists are always fascinating, compiled lists always iron out any quirks and provide a bland consensus. I think that's true, but part of me does wish there was an "official" top5 or something to check for alongside these daunting individual lists.

the print Journal (separate editorship) does a critics poll with an “official” top ten and a full essay or feature on each

July's as good a time to catch up as December, I s'pose.

If you want to cover books that came out between July and December, yeah.

Quick eyeball has Blurry at #1 consensus, Sunday at #2 and Final Cut at #3.

Eight mentions for Sunday on the online list for 2024; the final chapters had five last year, which made it consensus #4, and it was ranked #3 in the print volume.