Rolling Comic Books 2022

Does anybody even read these anymore?

I'm looking forward to issue #2 of Juni Ba's Monkey Meat this Wednesday.

I've been working my way through Swamp Thing and I've finally gotten to the more recent stuff. How long does it usually take for issues to be collected into a trade? The first half of the most recent run has been collected but not the second half. Trying to figure out if I should be patient or just find the individual issues. There's a new limited thing called Green Hell that I'll pick up at some point.

Apart from that I'm picking up random Alan Moore things. Got a Captain Britain omnibus that I'm pretty excited about. I've also been picking up the stray Hellblazer tpb.

Crisis Zone by Simon Hanselmann - Def the best thing done about the pandemic in any medium I've seen. Funny, disturbing and, in the end, quite touching.

Jim Starlin's Warlock - The page layouts in this are just off the charts. I've been watching a bunch of Cartoonist Kayfabe videos lately and I think they've helped me appreciate stuff that I might not vibe with 100% thematically more. Flipside is I've become much less indulgent of stuff where the craft's not there.

Currently reading Bobby London's 80's run on Popeye/Thimble Theater. Sometimes explicitly about capitalism and gentrification, sometimes loveably quaint with its 80's references, sometimes just kind of an unfunny legacy strip. Art always good tho. Also a reminder of all the weird characters in the Popeye universe, Alice the Goon and Eugene the Jeep!

also spinning off last year's thread I'm in the market for some essential Rebellion releases breakdowns

xxp

I thought the first issue of Green Hell was pretty fun! I haven't fully caught up with Ram V's Swamp Thing run - I get the issues in my pullbox but I've been too distracted by other things to read it. Will make a point to catch up before the series resumes in March (it was extended from a 10-issue run to 16).

In my experience, trades sometimes come out like 6 months after a comic comes out, although I feel like I've seen some shorter wait times recently.

I've been holed up inside at home during all my free time and reading as many comics as I've ever been tbh

Probably buying too much Marvel as usual

Is there a book of the Bobby London Popeye?

(I’ve not heard of one, but I just can’t read a chunk of comics on a screen these days)

Yes, on IDW. Dunno if it's in print tho, bought the first volume some years ago.

I wanna give the strongest possible recommendation (and equally strong trigger warning) for Glenn Head's memoir Chartwell Manor from Fanta. Astonishingly naked biography, amazingly raw and powerful.

Cliff Chiang's Catwoman series is pretty damn great

It is. I was impressed.

Am enjoying the new Walter Mosely Thing mini too - can anyone recommend any of his novels?

I've been liking it too - didn't know anything about him. My library has Maximum Fantastic Four, so I'll check that out.

"Devil in a Blue Dress" is a good starting point. The first Easy Rawlins book (and made into a movie with Denzel Washington), so if you like it, you have the rest of the series in order.

Fun rant on fascist supermen in GMo's Substack: https://grantmorrison.substack.com/p/162-superman-and-the-authority-annotations

I learned it from watching you dad

My library has Maximum Fantastic Four, so I'll check that out.

Not Mosely's fault particularly, but the repro/colouring on that really isn't very good at all. A more recent edition, shot directly from a pristine copy of FF1, is apparently the one to look out for:

https://www.abramsbooks.com/product/fantastic-four-no-1-panel-by-panel_9781419756153/

xp that rant was fun!

interesting that Chip Kidd did his own dissection of FF#1 too. i'm not sure i'm THAT into the issue to read both of them, but i guess we'll see

I'll have to check out that Thing series, looks good. I'm really enjoying Tom King's Human Target as well, though I'm a bit ambivalent, given the poor reception his other recent comics got (at least in places I've looked). Let's hope this doesn't go off the rails!

15/. For now, we’re retiring DRM-free downloads. Previous purchases with downloadable content will continue to be downloadable from https://t.co/09sMXawxXF, so no need to rush.

Your DRM-free downloads can now be found here: https://t.co/LZqT0VbDRT

— Comixology (@comiXology) February 11, 2022

so comixology have migrated everything to amazon and have stopped drm downloads (although that tweet seems to say two different things - "For now, we’re retiring DRM-free downloads" / "Your DRM-free downloads can now be found here:")

(all the links go to amazon.com and i was using comixology.co.uk so they are no use to me. and i don't think the uk is quite up to speed yet, even though the web link redirects to amazon)

so i'm sat here with a bunch of pre-christmas purchases that i can no longer download to my laptop / tablet.

amazon sales pages are terrible. the sandman sale for instance shows you about 10 titles at a time, mixed between sandman graphic novels, single issues, sandman mystery theatre, dead boy detective, petrifax, all jumble together.

xp Duane - Rorschach and Strange Adventures (especially) were great imo

turns out there are comixology download links on amazon.com and my amazon.co.uk login works on there too. will download everything over the weekend.

the new android app crashes within 5 seconds of opening a book, can't get past the cover. good job amazon. all you had to do was nothing.

A rundown of the Comixology complaints for those of you like me who didn't understand all the changes:
https://www.polygon.com/22938958/comixology-app-changes-amazon

Also lol'd at GM's (pretty good!) spin on Boo Radleys pop here: https://grantmorrison.substack.com/p/212-artboy. It's such a specific rhythm section sound you could literally date it by the year and month.

There's a line in The Worst Person in the World about living before the internet, spending all your time going to physical stores, collecting comics and books to try to reattain the feeling you got in 20s... and continuing to do that that rest of your life even though you never got that feeling again. Spoken by a character in his 40s.

It cut deep.

Reminds me of the Seinfeld about how men wait until they feel happy and independent for the first time in their twenties, then never ever change their dress sense again

ouch

Otoh it’s very ok to do silly things that make you happy or slightly happier

Like it’s possible to indulge in nostalgia without becoming a gamergater, a comic book guy, or Rob Lowe on the football pitch in St. Elmo’s fire

spending all your time going to physical stores, collecting comics and books to try to reattain the feeling you got in 20s... and continuing to do that that rest of your life even though you never got that feeling again. Spoken by a character in his 40s.

It cut deep.

― Nhex, Monday, February 21, 2022 8:48 PM (yesterday)

I got this feeling back by going to second hand book shops (usually charity shops like oxfam). I didn't think it would ever come back, but it's beautiful and I guess it might fade away in time too. I think part of the reason it went away is because comics that excite me are really hard to find and a lot of them are either on tiny print runs, not widely distributed or they don't actually make actual comic books, just comicky things on instagram, which I can barely look at now because my account has been broken for several months now (fuck you instagram).

My experience is you gotta go cold turkey for a while and then the enthusiasm resurfaces.

This does prevent me from being the Authorative Chronicler Of Culture During My Lifetime that 18 year old wanted me to be tho.

But what is this being compared to? Does everyone still get excited about other shopping? I still get as much excitement looking for music and books as I ever did, and charity shops are more exciting because they're unpredictable. With comic shops I feel a cynicism that I don't even get when looking at the film sections of shops, because I dislike a lot of the publishers, Diamond and so much of the readers; film business is also stupid, largely shaped by even more stupid tastes so I don't know why it never put a cloud over film buying.

Maybe it's because films are so ubiquitous, they never seemed that special. My first few visits to a comic shop were total ecstasy because newsagents only ever had a handful of them and book shops had a very small section at that time

the new comixology… everything.. sucks so incredibly bad

Breaking my nearly 100% lurker status to share some thoughts on comics I've read recently:

The Children of Mu-Town by Masumura Jushichi - a quiet tragedy about a gradually dying housing complex in Tokyo called Marigaoka. The story centers around two friends Juichi and Hajime, yakuza related maybe earlier twenty somethings trying to figure their shit out. Vivid spectacular art, a story centered around the brutality of neoliberalism (sorry) and gentrification, and writing that somehow manages to feel sparse and dense and confounding all at once.

Heaven No Hell by Michael Deforge - fantastic collection, my introduction to Michael Deforge, a writing style that reminds a lot of the best of James Tate. Hilarious and confident and a wonderful rendering of this burdensome world.

Magician A by Natsuko Ishitsuyo - six short stories that are interconnected in slight ways and are all about sex, but honestly saying that they're about sex seems shallow and nearly misleading. Sex here is adjacent to pleasure and more a method of maybe gaining some competitive edge in their worlds. Success, whatever that might mean, is the main drive of all the various protagonists, and they aim to achieve it with a casual ruthlessness and a resolve that suggests that makes it appear as though they will never reach resolution. It's not meant to be titillating, is weirdly funny, surreal, complex, unsettling and has haunted me since i read it.

Liked those first two, will check out the third!

Ant Colony is another DeFporge banger.

Oh great, I will definitely seek out Ant Colony

even bad deforge is generally worth a read

i will check out Mu-Town

I’m finally reading Tom Strong, which I always assumed was the dud of the ABC line and avoided, but it’s fun! Chris Sprouse’s work improved somewhat since his JLI work.

oh yeah, it totally ruled

Yeah loved Tom Strong. As far as ABC duds go I remember losing my patience with Promethea's "magic: let me explain you it" thing but it's been ages since I read it.

https://www.tcj.com/this-town-is-big-enough-for-all-of-us-ralf-konig-on-lucky-luke/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=this-town-is-big-enough-for-all-of-us-ralf-konig-on-lucky-luke

Cool interview with Ralf Konig on his new Lucky Luke volume.

Really enjoying this collection of the Friday Foster newspaper strip from the early seventies - gorgeously groovy artwork from Jordi Longarón:

https://www.comicsbeat.com/friday-foster-editor-christopher-marlon-interview/

that's on Hoopla - will check it out. I remember greatly enjoying the Pam Grier movie

Figure this makes more sense on here than on the ILB what you reading thread:

Very close to finishing All The Marvels, an ex-ilxor's book of essays based around his reading, indeed, everything Marvel published since the first appearance of the Fantastic Four.

I suppose the point of the book is that the continuity modifies the reading experience, that having decades of writers and artists work on these properties makes new moments resonate in ways that would otherwise be impossible. Obv I'm not impervious to that, or I'd never have gotten into Marvel and DC in the first place, but on that level the book doesn't really convince me much that it's all worth it; the reboots and re-imaginings are described in ways where you can see how they would matter to the character, but not why they would "matter" in a larger sense outside of insular continuity porn.

Prob the weakest chapter is on the NORMAN OSBOURNE PRESIDETN era, partially because there's so much happening that the chapter has much more description than analysis, but then the analysis itself suffers majorly from this weird liberal amnesia - he views the whole thing as prophetic of Trump, when really it was writers reacting to and digesting the Bush era.

Much more enjoyable are the chapters where he focuses on a single character - Shang Chi, Black Panther - and just kinda guides you through what the best runs of it are, and usually the strenghts he pinpoints in those are unrelated to continuity. The chapter on Ms Marvel and Squirrel Girl is also v good.

I'd be totally up for further installments of just letting me know who his fav runs on Doctor Strange or Ghost Rider or whoever are.

That project reminds me of the Flaming Carrot’s origin story: “he read too many comic books in one sitting, and became simple”.

haha, quoted in the first chapter!

Lol

Ut!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXDeAcyt8Ng

was hoping for a local theater release, but i guess it came and went

oh actually it's currently playing still. i might get lucky

Found this perplexing review on youtube: "A24 producing it just made it more pretentious, it did not add anything."

I didn’t care much for it, though it is clearly a labor of love and has a great deal of fidelity. Without giving too much away, I felt like the amount of anxiety it made me carry didn’t equal the story’s extremely pfffft ending.

I was a bit letdown by the ending but it felt like it made enough sense that I can't complain too much and a good bunch of my favorite films made me say "oh shit, that's it?"

i'm good at complaining

I generally don't care about references but it was still an odd novelty to have a scene in which people rip into some guy for copying Larry Marder's Beanworld

not just people: andy milonakis!

Finished Kerascoet and Hubert's Beauty. Good fun, including the Prince Valiant style character. Kerascoet has another book coming soon.

It's called The Court Charade and hopefully there will be a paper version, I only see a digital one for the end of this month

Coddie was supposed to be cute?

English version hasn't been in print a long time? I really love this cover and hope new editions will include all the covers
https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1456289940i/18214409._SX540_.gif

Does anybody even read these anymore?

―(forksclovetofu) (eight months ago)

???

I've been getting back into reading them recently (just found a better rotation of reading different things) but this might be the slimmest Rolling Comics thread. Is the business doing worse than even the last two years?

I've been reading, I just rarely post. Currently making my way through Hellblazer from 0 onwards. Mostly enjoying, only a few real dud issues. Nice to see something UK based. Some really creepy/grotesque demons to gawp at.

ILComics was to be fair always one of the smallest communities on here.

Also when it was at its most active it was a lot about following Big Two titles month to month - I never did this but yeah I think less ppl are doing so now.

Anyway, recent reads I've enjoyed: Chainsaw Man (still only up to vol.4), Orochi (by the guy who did The Drifting Classroom - mysterious woman in a sort of crypt keeper role witnessing the brutality of postwar Japan), Falconspeake (short vampire hunter thing, just a lot of fun) and Newburn (ex-cop private investigator working as a detective for all sections of organised crime in NYC).

what's Hellblazer 0? i think i have the first 200 as floppies somewhere, probably the thing i have most of (or maybe swamp thing)

the DC Infinite app has added a few runs of MAD magazine now

I was curious about Hellblazer #0 too: a 2018 Halloween freebie reprint of #27 (1990, Gaiman & McKean), but with the cover of Warren Ellis’ first issue (#134, 1999) by Tim Bradstreet, instead of Dave McKean’s cover

i still read a ton, but more manga these days
also all my library reads tend to be forgotten already by the time i get to them
current Marvel/DC is basically OK but nothing to shout about

Chainsaw Man is great! i read all the trades and started reading them contemporaneously on Shonen Jump, who post the last three chapters for free

In fact I liked Chainsaw Man so much I went out and got the first volume of the author's previous series, Fire Punch, which good god was fucking terrible edgelord shit

Yeah, it's really fucking funny as well is the thing. Obviously it jives with our zeitgeist - overworked gen z'ers in a cruel capitalist society. I love how the protagonist is such a loveable goofball - those early volumes where he says stuff "maybe one day, if I work really hard, I will be able to touch a boob"...that could very well feel icky in many other manga but here he's such an innocent kid that it just feels endearing. I also really love Power, whose behaviour is a very accurate depiction of cat.

He did a one shot story for the Shonen Jump app as well that from what I've heard is a lot more self-conciously artsy.

Goodbye Eri was awesome, hunt it down. He's done a lot of one-shots that have been recently/are being collected into trades for English publication r/n

I want to pick up more of Fujimoto's work but yeah FP really burned me (har-har) and I'm gonna wait a while. Or maybe just start paying for SJ, $2 a month is incredibly cheap

Sorry all I mean hellblazer 1, the Jamie Delano ones from the 80s, it has been a tiring week

I'm just waiting to get the Tim Hensley version of Maggie, one of my favorite books.

I wish I knew Maggie to appresh the Detention better! there's some wild-ass hensleying in it for sure tho

RIP Kevin O'Neill. Need to read more of his non League stuff.

Shame to hear, RIP.

RIP Carlos Pacheco.

O'Neill's "Nemesis the Warlock" was some mind warping strange comics to my teenage mind. That artwork kinda freaked some people out. I seemed to recall there being some issues with a US printer as the employees thought it was was obscene at one point in the 80s.

I'd say that series, Marshall Law and a graphic novel that he did with Pat Mills for DC called Metalzolic are worth searching out.

I never read Nemesis because it looked so creepy. I still find it creepy! But will give it a shot.

I’ve always felt like there’s a very “my brain does not want to look at that” quality to O’Neill’s art, which is probably why he’s so great!

Not a printer - the CCA.

I need to get on Orochi soon

Kerascoet's Beauty is getting a paperback reprint this month

For the single-digits number of people still following the big two:

Any thoughts on DC Universe Infinite Ultra, other than that name being a mouthful? They're claiming the yearly price is "introductory" and going to go up to an unspecified number at the end of the month. I'm not sure if I care about getting new comics sooner, but I'm wondering how expanded the Black Label/Vertigo selection is

Might be appealing for a one-off year’s payment based on what’s in the vertigo library.

Weirdly I am finally rediscovering the joys of paper collected editions. I’ve had Jason Aaron’s Avengers run on my iPad for years and never wanted to read it; but now I’m whizzing through it after taking the trades out of my local library

i flip through the current books but it's impossible to care tbh

I got the Dorian Gray adaptation by Corominas today and it's pretty stunning, I haven't seen much else like it. I don't think it has ever been in english but I guess a familiarity with the source material will help
https://www.danielmaghen-editions.com/catalogue/dorian-gray/

Kentaro Miura - Giganto Maxia

Kaiju desert adventure with nice creature and setting designs. The main characters (an increasingly young looking girl who pisses on a wrestler to keep him energized) are insanely powerful so it feels like the opposite of the struggle in Berserk.

I found it a little slight and it seemed just open ended enough in case he managed to finish Berserk so who knows if there was grander plans.

I didn't think Japan (written by Buronsen) was especially good but I hadn't heard of King Of Wolves until today, has anyone read it?

Reading the first Nemesis The Warlock omnibus in honour of Kevin O'Neill. I love that the humans are the bad guys but not in an essentialist way - there are humans who join the good side but crucially they are not promoted to main character status for it. Also surely this is one of the main influences on Warhammer 40k?

The art is uniformly excellent, wild stuff - by O'Neill but also Bryan Talbot and Jesus Redondo, whom I'd never heard of but who def holds his own.

I know I'm late to this, but I've just noticed how much Martínez looks like his face has been drawn by Ken Reid in this picture

https://pbs.twimg.com/card_img/1606364688756899844/UAUvB9Wa?format=jpg&name=medium

really should be speech bubble next to him saying "ERK!!"

i am doing my yearly reread of Berserk in honor of the final miura volume being released. astonishing how quick he got so good and how incredibly complex and dark the story is.

exporting the ILB what did you read this year tradition because hell why not:

* - I really loved this

Grandville: L'integral, Bryan Talbot
Gil Jourdan - Premieres Aventures, M. Tillieux
Hyperthick #1-3, Steve Aylett
*Crisis Zone, Simon Hanselmann
*Warlock, Jim Starlin et al
Popeye Vol.1: 1986-1989, Bobby London
Mickey Mouse: Race To Death Valley, Floyd Gottfredson
The Caterer, Steve Aylett
*Red Flowers, Yoshiharu Tsuge
Dancing Plague, Gareth Brookes
*Black Panther, Vol.1, Christopher Priest, Mark Teixeira et al
Lupin III: Greatest Heists, Monkey Punch
Miles Morales, Vol.1, Saladin Ahmed, Javier Garron et al
Sobek, James Stokoe
Misty, Vol.2-3, Malcolm Shaw et al
Mickey Mouse: The Man From Alcatraz, Romano Scarppa
*Chartwell Manor, Glenn Head
The Swamp, Yoshiharu Tsuge
Beta Ray Bill: Argent Star, Daniel Warren Johnson
Guardians Of The Galaxy, Vol.1, Al Ewing, Juann Cabal et al
*Hellboy Vol.6, Mike Mignola, Scott Hampton et al
Poussey: L'integrale, Peyo
*The Thief Inoue Akizazu, Osamu Tezuka
Apollo's Song, Osamu Tezuka
*Red Seas, Vol.1, Ian Edginton, Steve Yeowell
* The Good Asian, Vol.1&2, Pornsak Pichetshote, Alexandre Tefekghi et al
The Birth Of Kitaro, Shigeru Mizuki
* Paralell Lives, Oliver Schrauwen
Concrete Surfer, Pat Mills, Christine Ellingham
The Man Without Talent, Yoshiharu Tsuge
Judge Dredd: Complete Case Files Vol.1, Matt Wagner et al
TMNT Adventures, Vol.2, Dean Clarrain, Ryan Brown et al
Seven Soldiers Of Victory Vol.1-4, Grant Morrison et al
*Chainsaw Man, Vol.1-6, Tatsuki Fujimoto
Good Night, Hem, Jason
Umma's Table, Yeon-Sik Hong
Jinty: Land Of No Tears/The Human Zoo, Pat Mills et al
Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter, Dan Abnett, Tom Mandrake et al
Falconspeare, Johnson-Cadwell
Orochi Vol.1-2, Kazuo Umezzo
*I Want You, Lisa Hanawalt
Keeping Two, Jordan Crane
*The Best Of 2000AD, various
Something Is Killing The Children, James Tynion IV et al
*Newburn, Vol.1, Chip Zdarsky, Jason Phillips
Stages Of Rot, Linnea Sterte
Reckless: Follow Me Down, Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips
Absolute Sandman, Vol.1, Neil Gaiman et al
*Nemesis The Warlock, Vol.1, Pat Mills, Kevin O'Neill et al

> *Nemesis The Warlock, Vol.1, Pat Mills, Kevin O'Neill et al

oh, i should've picked this up from home at christmas.

and then sold it on amazon to some sucker

"1 Used from £190.00"

points of overlap

*Crisis Zone, Simon Hanselmann
Mickey Mouse: Race To Death Valley, Floyd Gottfredson
Sobek, James Stokoe
*Chartwell Manor, Glenn Head
Apollo's Song, Osamu Tezuka
* Paralell Lives, Oliver Schrauwen
*I Want You, Lisa Hanawalt
*Newburn, Vol.1, Chip Zdarsky, Jason Phillips

Something I should say more often: nice drawings, shame about the faces

Here are the TCJ Best of 2022 lists:

The Best Comics of 2002

My reaction is similar every year to the point where it's a ritual: I look forward eagerly to the lists; once I read them am horrified by the bulk of them*; find comfort in the lists of Jog, Tucker, Cynthia Rose**, Ristau, Nicholson***, one or two others; revert back to my default state of ruing the State of Modern Comics (TM) (or should that just be modern comics criticism).

*Giving the side-eye this year to any list featuring Jordan Crane. Great editor, good cartoonist, but some of the most bathetic scenarios known to mankind (which is saying a lot in indie comics).

**Had no idea there was a new version of Objectif Pub (a gorgeous 1980s compilation of ads drawn by cartoonists, mostly of the ligne claire/Atom Style a la Chaland, Benoit, Clerc etc.) - one of my most treasured, ah, objects.

***Even the good lists suffer from a fill-in-the-blanks predictability: here's RJ Casey with a New Yorker cartoon, here's the 2000AD entry for Jog; here's Tucker with the edgy DC genre entry.

Ah, I'm just being crabby.

Rolling Comic Books 2023