2013 what are you reading thread

Flesh Phase 2 last night. GIANT SCORPIONS.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_CHfcL6vQT9Y/R0QYYWJLg8I/AAAAAAAAAhY/SMKurBkZN2I/s400/2000AD93-scorpions.jpg

The inspiration, I think, for one of my favourite Freaky Trigger ideas

Read all of Ghost Rider 2099 (lol) and was somewhat entertained by the 2000 AD homage bits. SHIELD agents of the future have large Judge-style badges!

Via Fortune, Time Warner is in talks to sell most of its publishing biz.
http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2013/02/13/time-warner-time-inc-sale/
No word on whether this would include DC Comics. My hunch is that the comics publishing is too inextricable from TV and film production of the same properties and wouldn't be included.

I agree, the intellectual property cash cow from DC is way too good to cast off with Time and People magazines

The new aya book from drawn and quarterly is great and affordable with the reissue compendium of the first three volumes.
Everyone should be reading these.

have the first two, thought about the "new" three, decided I couldn't take that much spindly pixellated computer lettering in one go

yeah, new edition doesn't reward previous loyal buyers, great though the comic is

Agree the lettering is meh but art and story more than make up for it imo

I'm a little annoyed that Multiple Warheads: Alphabet to Infinity #4 didn't tie up a single plot thread (it just advances the Nura storyline a bit and then stops dead; despite being an extra-long issue, it barely features Sexica & Nikolai at all), especially since it looks like it'll be at least a year until the next miniseries starts up. Though the character lineup on the back cover might mean these two are going to show up more, which would be nice:

http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2012/328/9/f/romance_mannnn_by_royalboiler-d5lzzo8.jpg

At least there'll be more Prophet in the interim, and the Walrus sketch comic book he's putting out with Picturebox.

Yeah that shat me a lot, especially bcz the TPB is going to feel extra pointless

um so can anyone recommend a good way to get cbrs of more obscure/interesting books? or feel like being all ysi?

i mean i buy a lot too but i'd like some ipad reading

Y'all be crazy, re: MULTIPLE WARHEADS resentment.

It's not resentment, really- I couldn't be happier with the actual comic, I'm just a bit peeved about where the arbitrary year-long chapter break is being placed. I guess I expected the miniseries to have at least some small arc of its own inside the larger narrative.

I don't know this comic! Explain it to me.

Hmmmm...

gimme a sec.

MULTIPLE WARHEADS = Brandon Graham's current writer/artist thing, put out by Image. It's sci-fi story set in an off-kilter setting, rife with puns, an extreme emphasis on environment, and a whimsical (but NEVER twee) internal logic - Graham's work is peculiar among sci-fi comics in that his work is pretty much vast swaths of "hanging out" with the occasional plot point. Currently it's a road trip between Sexica and Nikola, young lovers, intertwined with a trip undertaken by an assassin - it's kind of like SAGA, but COMPLETELY different. Presumably the paths of our characters will cross sometime in the next few years. The image posted above should give you a good idea of Graham's work. Here's another one.

My rather glib "resentment" comment above (sorry!) comes from my basic sense that Graham (as a single creative force) has never been especially big on story momentum/plot (He's writing PROPHET right now, which leans far stronger in that direction)- in terms of story, moments tend to accumulate over a prolongued period and connections are eventually made. KING CITY, his earlier solo opus, didn't so much end after 12 issues as stop, so I really girded my self for extraordinary consequence to happen. More often, the satisfaction derived from a comic derives from paying attention, going with the comic's own internal flow, playing along with the constant puns and games Graham inserts, so you could (possibly) spend 15 minutes staring at a single page or even a few panels.

I hope that came out alright.

"so I girded my self for nothing of extraordinary consequence to happen"

Awesome news, Pat McEown's graphic novel The Hair Shirt has finally got a US edition! It was originally published a few years ago in France. I've seen the English version digitally and it's AMAZING. You might remember Pat from Grendel: Warchild, or from his series of brilliant short pieces in back of Dave Cooper's comics. This represents his first extended piece in the awesome expressive skritchy cartoony style he got into in those Cooper backups.

Fantastic color job too.

http://new.publishersweekly.com/978-1-9068-3827-0

Didn't that already come out ages ago? I borrowed an English-language edition of it from the library like a year ago.

I thought it was pretty good, except that the ending was too oblique. When the climax of your book hinges on the characters discovering the truth about a traumatic event, it'd be nice if the reader could actually decipher that truth. Now there were only obscure hints... Or maybe I'm just stupid and didn't get it?

Just read Flashpoint. Huh. Could've been interesting, but kinda fizzled. A lot like House of M.

IMO "could've been interesting, but kinda fizzled" applies to pretty much all of Marvel's and DC's 00s mega-crossovers, except maybe World War Hulk.

i guess that's largely true; this one felt like more disappointing than the others for some reason though. Thomas Wayne was a good idea, even the spinoff series was fairly decent, and of course that ending is pretty emotional. Even Barry Allen, a character I have no real attachment to, was done pretty well here, but the plot just got swallowed up completely. or maybe i'm just burned out on the Muppet Movie plot that these alternate reality epics have, i don't know

I'll second The Hair Shirt. It's been out in English, just never in the US- I had to backorder a copy from a UK comic shop (even Amazon UK didn't have it).

Went to the London comic convention this weekend and bought Mark Waid's LOSH run for minus three pounds. It's really good!

Also comic conventions are depressing.

Got the print version of Faith Erin Hicks' Superhero Girl, which is a nice little comic. The strips works better when read in a row than as individual gags, because she's subtly building larger themes there.

Hicks' Friends with Boys is also worth checkin out, it's sorta like a comic book version of a teen movie like Saved!, except with less stereotypes and more humanism.

will check that out

Still mostly reading quarter comics. Occasionally posting fun bits of them to my tumblr. Have a slim stack of current stuff that I really am not all that interested in. Much more excited for the artist-driven EC collections. And still MULTIPLE WARHEADS, though there's not story there so much as there's comix.

Working my way through Hellboy, has been on the to do lust for a while, really enjoying it.

Lust? List! Fat hands, small phone.

I've tried to read Hellboy a few times, but it has always felt to me that the art is better than the scripts? Pretty much all the stories I've read have been recycled versions of Lovecraft and other pulp horror; enjoyable, I guess, but nothing particularly clever or innovative about them.

Yeah, it is the artwork that is the best thing for me, I can stare at a page for hours, which is a good measure of success for a graphic novel. I've never been much of a horror/lovecraft fan, so I guess I don't see the re-hash of stories. What I love is the quirky folklore stuff mixed in with Nazis and an action hero!

Hellboy reads much better in collected form, imo. The later issues are more plot-heavy and B.P.R.D. is a lot more interesting than I'd originally thought.

When Mignola draws Hellboy, I love Hellboy. Otherwise, I have abso zero interest. It's not that I don't LIKE his writing, more that it is inextricable from the way he draws for me. I'd rather have one 24 pager from him every two years than a dozen scripts drawn by his 'school'.

what were we reading in 1993?

I was not reading any of this shit, that's for sure.

well I guess I shouldn't lie, I had those Sandman and Eightball issues, and that is probably still my favorite single issue of Chris Ware's.

pretty sure i have owned/own/read every one of those books but the sonic

so you do have SOME standards

no

it's funny how so many of these covers convey absolutely no information about the story contained therein, just static pics of the titular characters

I had all the Vertigo stuff, Eightball and The Maxx. I don't think I've read any of those superhero books.

Out of those titles, I was reading Sandman/Death and The Maxx. Had pretty much given up superheroes, because they'd turned to grim'n'gritty Leifeldian shit, which I hated. I wasn't really into DC back then, but I was aware of the Knightfall and Death of Superman stories, though I've never actually read them. I remember reading Spawn for a while, because I was interested what this new company was doing, but it turned out to be just more of the same shit Marvel was pushing too. I guess the same thing happened to me as to many other superhero comic readers who remembered the more innocent Bronze Age stuff, in that the grim & gritty era drove me away from them, and into Vertigo and smaller publishers, and didn't return to superheroes until the early 00s, when they'd become more optimistic again, with less thigh pouches and grimaces in the art.

Obviously I was also reading Euro comics too, which thankfully didn't take such a grim turn in the 90s. And wasn't this the time manga titles started to get translated in larger amounts? I remember really liking Ranma 1/2 back then, it felt cool and fresh to me, because I wasn't yet familiar with the conventions and cliches of shonen manga.

that list was the very tail end of my first comics phase, i remember most of those covers

didn't know Jimmy Corrigan was around then - also surprised (if not... shocked) that i never saw that Static #1

Wasn't this also the time when the first Sin City book came out? That shit felt so groundbreaking and fresh back then, the chiaroscuro art especially was unlike anything I'd seen in American comics. Who would've guessed it was the last time a Frank Miller could be described as "groundbreaking and fresh"?

ha, funny you should say that. i was so into that book, while i'd give up reading superhero books right around that time, i would make trips to the comic store a couple times a year just for Sin City

Miller/Darrow also did the Big Guy and Rusty the Robot around the same time, which was the last time I cared about anything Frank Miller has done. really can't stand to even look at his stuff anymore. apart from Ronin lol.

Sin City started in Dark Horse Presents' 5th anniversary issue so 1990-91 I reckon. Big Guy & Rusty was mid-90s, and terrible - would have been 300x better without Miller's hamfisted dialogue slapped all over it.

of the list, I bought Death and Sandman and Acme Novelty Library at the time. Read Eightball in the shop but didn't buy it.

Morrison did the issue of Spawn after that one, didn't he? So close!

I didn't buy Maxx #1 at the time, but went back and caught up when Alan Moore wrote it a few years later.

I love Rusty, but mainly for Darrow. Sin City first hit trades in 1993.

Second volume starts after the last page Talia reveal which came out in a special called "Leviathan Strikes". I read it in the issues, but looking it up the first trade of the new series is called "Demon Star". Cool thing is that the whole New 52 really doesn't change Morrison's story, if you read the second volume of Batman Inc. on it's own, even though it ties into the current series.

I would imagine down the line the whole run of Batman Inc. will end up in one of those big huge hardcovers at some point.

i just finished reading up to that point too (end of Leviathan Strikes). Is Morrison's Batman run over yet?

Yes, about six months ago.

gotcha, cool. will get a hold of the (last) trade soon

read Sledgehammer 44 and Rover Red Charlie this week
S44 is a new Mike Mignola series, beautiful art, supposed to be in the vein of war comics as much as his Hellboy/supernatural stuff. I liked it and I'll stick to it (it helps that I pay $1.39 an issue!) but it's kind of frustrating that with series like this each issue doesn't read like a whole story - this was more like the first fifteen minutes of an hourlong drama. Which is cool, once they're collected but I'm finding I prefer comics in issue format.

Rover Red Charlie - three dogs surviving the apocalypse is my wheelhouse. Love the painted art - the dogs are expressive, there are some funny language gags, a few spots of 'oof' brutality. Unlike S44, it was a satisfying issue.

The three volumes of Herbie: The Fat Fury and the Ditko horror comix Vol 4 will see out 2013 for me.

I've been diving into Lone Wolf & Cub. It's damn good.

didn't know where else to put this but omg i want this
http://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/2-original-winsor-mccay-production-drawings-fro-1-c-8c6359f08a

like i am restraining myself from bidding

Buy me one, please.

LW&C is classic. I only got about 9 volumes in but it's on my "i will finish this someday in the post-apocalypse" list

they are currently reprinting it in books twice as thick as the 28 volume dark horse edition

(i found the bit with the poisoner dragged a bit but the end picked up again)

Glyn Dillon's 'The Nao Of Brown' was lovely btw. as a read and as an object.

good god, just realized those DH editions came out ten years ago. i stopped buying before they completed the series. maybe after these reprints are done i'll try again

are the new reprints in the same small size as the original dh ones?

according to amazon:
new: Product Dimensions: 6 x 12.8 x 18 cm
old: Product Dimensions: 2.6 x 10.4 x 15 cm

They looked roughly the same size to me when I saw them at B&N (except, y'know, way thicker...I think they actually comprise 3 of the old volumes). The spines were pretty much destroyed, though, but I don't know if that was an actual book design issue or if it was from overuse by the B&N mangaheads.

those little big book ones are more or less unreadable

that suggests an inch wider and taller and thicker

i think the 28 DH volumes are going to be 12 volumes in the new series. amz says "720 pages" vs roughly 300 in the old ones.

28 * 300 / 720 = 11.66, so, yeah, about that.

nicest way to read LW&C is the in the 1980s First Comics printings - twice the size of those needlessly dinky Dark Horse eds

i have been reading grant morrison's cutely curated anthology of mad old batman stories, and the first volume of slott's superior spider-man (ingenious and funny)

The First edition doesn't finish the story iirc though? (As well as being less readily available than an in-print version)

The new ones are definitely bigger than the early c21 edition.

i think you're right abt the comics not finishing the story - they just LOOK better at the larger size, to my tired old eyes. i'm guessing that the subsequent paperback reprints use the same translations/lettering/'film' as the first comics? do these new editions have the old frank miller covers?

the small books put me off ever going back to this. not the best representation of the excellent artwork.

the first edition did not finish the story. the new ones use same miller covers.

dh website says the new "omnibus" ones are 5 x 7". the older ones 4 1/2 x 6 1/2". so, much the same size.

what was the excuse? didn't they say something like the artwork was originally published in the tiny size?

the original japanese books were small. i used to have one of them (or maybe a reprint) but i don't remember it being quite as small as the dark horse editions.

the dark horse books do reprint the books as they appeared in japan, in 28 volumes, unlike the first comics which broke them up.