2014 what are you reading thread

reading Batman Inc Demon Star - pretty good, usually GMoz silliness

Finally decide to tackle Tezuka's Buddha. Read the first couple of volumes and I'm hooked.

oh yeah, it's all time

I read the first volume when the reprints started but never followed through on the rest. A friend found a cheap used set so he's passing them along as he reads them.

concur wrt Buddha, good shit

i'd seriously be interested in a retelling of The Bible with that kind of fun/pizazz

crumb's genesis has its own appeal but hoping for another tezuka is a long shot

Just finished Binet's 'HHhH'

Townscapes by Christin and Bilal
Crossing the Empty Quarter and other stories by Carol Swain
Complete Eddy Current by Ted McKeever

all very cheap in forbidden planet glasgow

Was in Forbidden Planet Glasgow today, bought the Ingels EC compilation Sucker Bait. Also the Beautiful Darkness Kerascoet book, I just flipped through it an hour ago and one page really fucked me up like nothing in Berserk ever did, really not a kids book unless films like Watership Down and Plague Dogs dont bother your kids.

There is Wolverton's Bible but I didnt think it was anything special aside from the revelation images at the end.

What the hell

http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20140220/PC1603/140229919

There is a lot of comics collections I resisted for a long time because of the good art/poor writing thing and also that I'm familiar with a lot of the stuff already but the temptation is rising again. I try to resist them unless they look amazing but just the quality of the drawing/linework has drawn me back to the idea of getting this stuff again, even if the individual images arent as powerful as I would often want.
All this stuff is going to cost about 250 pounds if I really want it all. Ditko, Mort Meskin, Simon+Kirby, Joe Kubert, Nicolas De Crecy and Bastien Vives.

I cut and paste my response to this topic...
www.hoodedutilitarian.com/2014/02/most-overratedmost-underrated-comic-strip/

The appeal of newspaper strips and webcomics in this style has always mystified me. I dont count Eisner’s The Spirit and similar comics because it feels just like a regular comic book.

It is a total mystery to me why so many people prize this form for creativity. Monthly comics is a bad idea for a very large percentage of creators, but weeklies and dailies sounds insane. It’s like standup comedy in that there are so many factors against you that you have to be a truly special type of freak to make it work.
It makes me think of crazy ideas for professions; like a chef who wants to have rocks thrown at him and a bull chasing him around a kitchen while he tries to work.
Deadlines aside, creating humor or any other type of amusement in the form time after time seems extremely tough to me too.

I think the only comic strips I’m a proper fan of are Gustave Verbeek’s visual trickery.

Even if I like the drawings in some strips, I never feel drawn or compelled by the content of 99% of them. I’ve been tempted to buy a Krazy Kat (because it is often called the best comic ever) or Thimble Theatre (because Domingos liked something that had a pop culture phenomenon in it) book before but there is just isnt enough allure in what I have seen. When I was a teen I assumed someday I would read Terry And The Pirates, Steve Canyon, Prince Valiant, Tarzan, Flash Gordon and Peanuts but I have pretty much no interest now. When I’m tempted I think the desire is to be totally enveloped in a world that you get to spend a very long time in.

From what little I seen of CC Beck’s critical writing, I always found it a bit unconvincing but it was kind of weird and funny. I always remember him saying “newspaper strips are boring because people who read newspapers are boring”; I found that funny in how sweeping a statement he made.
A lot of the strips in newspapers I’m familiar with seem almost invisible, because it taken me years to consciously notice/think about them, even though I’d seen them for so long. They seem like sleepwalking cartoons; you wonder who reads them. Some were unbelievably banal.

The only collections I’ve had are Windsor Mccay ones. Nemo is amazing in terms of the visual trickery but in general I found it a real heavy chore to read. At first it has quite a lot of unnecessary text but even when it cuts down there is still too much and the formula gets really stale even if the images and ideas are still excellent.
I just couldnt read a strip collection daily or weekly. I cant think of many things I’d want to read that regularly over one year let alone many years (decades in some cases).

Just looked at Nicolas De Crecy's blog, that guy draws like a motherfucker.

just read black hole for the first time and liked it enough to check out x'ed - which i much preferred! fantastic stuff.

I loved Black Hole; X'd has great work too, but I'm kind of hoping it all ends somewhere well, it was starting to feel like super-indulgent Clowes stuff where I left off.

My newspaper strip love honestly largely comes from having read them every week as a kid, so I'm very familiar with the form, gobbling up collected editions from my libraries and bookstores throughout my life. This extended to daily webcomics as well by the end of the '90s. But I have a harder time getting into the old 30s/40s/50s material.

Monthly comics is a bad idea for a very large percentage of creators, but weeklies and dailies sounds insane. It’s like standup comedy in that there are so many factors against you that you have to be a truly special type of freak to make it work.

For anyone interested in this I highly recommend R.C. Harvey's biography of Milton Caniff. That guy was superhuman.

I heard the acclaim for that. Wasnt there two books?

Even reading about people who couldnt do it is interesting. I think it was Frank Thorne(?) who basically had no life doing his strip and drew on public transport and had his wife drive him to deliver the work while he slept in the car from exhaustion.

The lives of many japanese comic artists sound terrifying; although I dont know what is the general standard of living/creating. Why would anyone want a bestseller series when your trade your entire life for it and dont have the time to make it of any real quality? No wonder there is so much cliched crap with no signs of new elements when you have zombies who basically do nothing but create comics.

I think it was Frank Thorne(?) who basically had no life doing his strip and drew on public transport and had his wife drive him to deliver the work while he slept in the car from exhaustion.

Thorne never had a newspaper strip of his own, only drew them briefly when he was young.

newspaper strip similar to a sonnet - a minature mode of expression with tightly bounded formal rules/properties. it is a quite different experience from the novelistic comic book/graphic novel, but imho no less pleasurable once you accept the limitations of the form.

The great newspaper strip creators worked worked long and hard over many years, but the most successful of them could afford to hire assistants to do quite a lot of the heavy lifting (eg Dick Rockwell pencilling and Shel Dorf lettering Steve Canyon for something like 30 years).

Just finished Buddha. I'm a little dumbstruck. What an amazing work.

Just starting "Ubik"

Also reading "The Fighting Temeraire"

Then on to "Unfinished Tales" from Tolkien, Hamiltons "Reality Dysfunction"
Whilst dipping into from time to tome, lovecraft collection and the science fiction megapacks

argh, wrong board

As for comics, just got hold of "The Art of Denis McLoughlin"

heh - for 2015 make sure to put COMICS in the thread topic

Was reading one of the latest House of 1000 Manga posts by Jason Thompson. A manga was mentioned called Tuna Empire with a woman trying to spread peace in afghanistan using a mass orgy. Bush jr and Hussein end up having sex and Bin Laden makes an appearance too. Sounds funny.

oh jeez i remember that one

it's very silly

I walked around my nearest comic shop picking up things in a dilemma of buying them or resisting them. Mostly 40s-50s Simon/Kirby, Mort Meskin and Ditko. I spent about an hour and a half changing my mind because it was all going to cost so much money. In the end I just bought Polina by Bastien Vives (his linework is gorgeous).

Even after leaving the shop I was still extremely conflicted over getting them someday. Part of the dilemma is that I'm already very familiar with that era of Simon/Kirby, Meskin and Ditko. I feel like I've been there and done it when I had a big phase in my late teens/early 20s. So it's hard to pull out my money so fast when the excitement is mostly gone. I envy people who are just getting into this stuff right now, with all these comprehensive collections coming out finally. If all this was out a decade ago I would have attempted to get all the PS Publishing 50s horror reprints, Warren reprints, Fantagraphics EC reprints; the Kirby, Ditko, Meskin, Everett, Krigstein, Kubert, Bob Powell, Jack Cole and Toth collections. Too bad most of the scripts aren't too good.

But the compositions of Ditko are often really impressive even when the drawings are a bit lacking (he was churning out a lot at that time) and there are so many beautiful touches.

I love the chunky, rubbery, doughy look of old Kirby art, especially the faces he draws on thugs and kids, they look like you could knead their faces; the panel/page compositions also look great (even if they aren't always smooth to read).

I don't think the Meskin compilation has the best selection sadly.

A couple of days ago I ordered the Ditko books and Kirby's Sandman.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that someday Marvel and DC will offer Meskin, Kirby, Ditko, Heath and Everett collections with decent scans. It's horrible how much they put into those expensive Masterworks and Archives collections and the art reproduction is terrible.

Can someone tell me which Tezuka books are unflipped? I read one volume of Phoenix and it was great but the flipped aspect bothered me (they are becoming very expensive too. I think that eventually (presuming the planet is in decent shape) all manga will be unflipped and I'm willing to wait a few decades to read Otomo's Akira and a lot of Tezuka.

black jack and dororo are unflipped.

Thanks.

Creature Commandos is batshit and poignant. Fred Carrillo very underrated imo.

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2014/02/28/star-wars-comics-will-never-be-the-real-thing-eric-stephenson-publisher-of-image-comics-talks-to-comicspro/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

It's very nice to hear a big guy in the industry clearly state so many of the problems of the industry. Quite a few things I always feel like saying, especially about nostalgia for old IPs.

I have never read an Image comic but that's a great speech

also kind of self-serving on his part

"SEX CRIMINALS, LAZARUS, VELVET, PRETTY DEADLY, ROCKET GIRL, and RAT QUEENS"
all of those titles added up, were they to magically release in the same month, would equal one low middle-tier DC title (Catwoman or Green Arrow, maybe) in sales at my shops.

The graphic novel format and the tendency for indie titles to seem like they're just being produced for the inevitable trade paper collection is actually not very good for comic shops, IMO - I sell a lot of Saga TPBs, sure (though roughly half as many as an event DC release like Joker: Death of the Family), but not that many single issues and I make more money on single issues than I do on trades. Batman readers come in multiple times per month (because they know their titles will be released in a timely manner, unlike a lot of Image titles that can go months between releases), meaning they see the superhero merch and GNs I've gotten in from week to week, they buy a vinyl Batman figure or a poster.

Saga readers don't have any of those ancillary benefits and often can't be seen other than to pick up the latest collection - which also makes them far more likely to ditch me for Amazon.

Also, this is some catty shit, because IDW (who produce the Transformers/GI Joe/My Little Pony/etc.) recently passed Image in dollar market share and are right on their heels in simple comics sold.

Because they want the real thing.

TRANSFORMERS comics will never be the real thing.

GI JOE comics will never be the real thing.

If he wants to prop up Saga as a model for new comic books I can't complain about that at all. And honestly he's right; the women's audience always feels under-served.

The question that comes up every few years, is that hardcore Batman audience that comes into the shop every month always going to be around? It has for the last twenty years or so for the direct market, but as he alludes to, there's a lot of people like me, with the disposable income to buy comics, older, who has no interest in going to these shops every week. What keeps me coming back is this stuff. Build that larger audience that might only buy a few books a year.

You're right though - it's tough to resist the siren call of Amazon when it's so much cheaper than retail.

(And come on, Transformers and GI Joe comics are generally awful.)

The IDW titles aren't great, IMO, but it's not like every Image title is Saga, either. There's no shortage of women in refrigerators, ultra-violence and craptastic spinoffs (this week's Tales of Honor looks like videogame art) in the Image catalogue.

"SEX CRIMINALS, LAZARUS, VELVET, PRETTY DEADLY, ROCKET GIRL, and RAT QUEENS"
all of those titles added up, were they to magically release in the same month, would equal one low middle-tier DC title (Catwoman or Green Arrow, maybe) in sales at my shops.

Sex Criminals #1 is into its fifth printing. Pretty Deadly had a first-issue run of 57,000 and sold out before release.

Milo, your comments here suggest that a Beto or Seth or Kelly reader would not feel welcome in your store, and thus they have no impetus to come in, rather than going to Amazon.

Howso? The stuff I personally read, aside from a couple of Marvel titles I'm trying to get into, is in the vein of Saga/Pretty Deadly/Deadly Class/Hellboy/etc.. I didn't read superhero comics as a kid and still really don't.
I don't let that color my ordering or displaying, because I'd rapidly go broke if I catered to my tastes instead of what sells. I carry 99% of titles from the big 5 and many from the next 5.

Pretty Deadly was a returnable title. I ordered as many of that one as a Justice League title and sent back 60%. It was also a hyped number one and sold about as well as a decent DC title does mid-run.

Image is a good company, I enjoy many of their books - but the speech does little to convince me that they're the One True Path of comics. The successful titles they've got right now have a lot of precedence in Vertigo from 10-15 years ago... owned, of course, by DC.

In that you specifically value someone who is going to impulse-purchase a Batman statue more than someone who buys Palookaville.

It's not startling that the publisher of a company would say good things about his company at a trade meeting, surely? And Vertigo aren't doing what they did fifteen years ago now, and obviously never will under Nelson.

I've been reading some of the Bleeding Cool forum comments and I found it quite funny that one of the first comments was by someone with a GI Joe avatar saying "what an asshole".

Some were making the points that Transformers and GI Joe had more in-depth storylines than the cartoons or films ever did. Also That the Star Wars universe was explored in a way that the films could ever manage. Some people are saying these are notable exceptions but dont reflect what most cross media tie-in comics are like.

Some people were saying that Stephenson underestimates how many readers come in due to cross media tie-ins.

I think what is most important that Stephenson talks about is building a future which supports new ideas and bringing in more different types of readers. It doesnt really matter whether you like Image (they have changed a lot and might be taking on titles in the future that they dont right now; they surprised me by taking on Bob Fingerman) or that most of their titles dont sell as well as the big franchise ones. I think comics have been going in the right direction for a long time but it has been going at such a horrifically slow pace that many current creators and readers are suffering for it. It's just downright morbid to imagine in decades later Marvel and DC still being the backbone of comic shops and the only places creators are likely to make a living.

I think it is interesting that this is about supporting the direct market in particular. About maybe 8 years ago I started seeing comic fans who didnt care if the direct market survived and I felt that way for a while but now I think if it changed enough it could make great things happen.
I recently started hearing about Homestuck being wildly popular and stuff aimed directly at school children like Amulet doing extremely well. So comics are growing in ways that might change it a lot regardless of what direct market people are doing and they might have to take advantage of these developments.

For many years I bought Previews every month and eventually there was just too little that interested me and the stuff that filled the catalogue was too depressing. Like seeing how well a Star Trek pizza cutter sold. Probably the most horrible thing I ever saw was a vinyl bear with the Watchmen logo on it, going for an obscene price. The idea that this was seen as more saleable than a lot of comics that couldnt get on to Previews.
I started seeing so many comics creators coming out who were only found in the most extremely specialised stores. Occasionally I buy Previews again and it depresses me so much that I swear off it every time but I buy it again a roughly a year later. I try and roughly gauge the percentage of creator owned comics (maybe including art books) versus everything else and I think it's only something like a quarter or a fifth.

I have to go now but I've got more to say later.

In that you specifically value someone who is going to impulse-purchase a Batman statue more than someone who buys Palookaville.

(Note: this is an oversimplification as there's massive overlap between superheroes and Saga and Star Wars - but it's the monthly superhero and Star Wars comics that keep people coming in.)

It's not startling that the publisher of a company would say good things about his company at a trade meeting, surely?

It's also worth noting that Ms. Marvel and the new Serenity series (Big 2 superhero and spinoff) are bringing more young women in to the stores than any Image title of late.

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2014/03/03/dark-horses-mike-richardson-and-idws-ted-adams-respond-to-eric-stephensons-comicspro-speech/

Response from guys at Dark Horse and IDW.

My local shop is really great on breaking that cave stereotype and getting out of just superhero comics. They are also good selling titles through trades more than the monthly book and have displays in their store to appeal to different types of readers including a children's section. I know the owner has said that the Walking Dead trade when it comes out is the best selling comic in the shop. Robert Kirkman's a local here, so his comics were really, really popular before the whole TV show happened.

They also are really involved in the local comic scene doing events for 24 hour comic day and having meetings for local creators etc.

yeah my local shop is like that - kids' section, foreign language section, LGBT section, crime section, local/zines section. art gallery in the back. couches, coffee table, loads of trades. taking my daughter there is great.

My kids sections have been colonized by Bronies.

put in smaller chairs

from the aforementioned "ahem" forum: the complete Miss Don't Touch Me with at least two chapters of not-yet-released-in-America material
I have the first two US books (and will buy the others when they are released here) but getting them now on digital is a great giftmas treat.

Pretty sure that is the collection that just came out from nbm.

Well, the new book is the page count of the combined first two volumes. If the story is still going after that, why did NBM call it complete?

Wish NBM had wider distribution, I rarely see their books, even in specialist stores. Probably doesn't help that so much of their output has so much extreme content, even the stuff that looks all-ages friendly.

Wish nbm would do a completist Rick Geary compendium. There's soooo much magazine and anthology stuff that was never collected.

Wish NBM had wider distribution,

They have broader distribution than DC Comics to comic book stores, and the same UK bookstore distribution as Marvel, Archie, Dark Horse, Fantagraphics, Legendary, Humanoids, Knockabout, Blank Slate, Panini and Toon Books, not to mention Bantam, Doubleday, National Geographic, Putnam and Moleskine notebooks.

Jon - They've got some Geary books coming. Just saw them in the upcoming section.

Sic - I'm a little surprised by that. I do see some and have bought a few in recent times, but somehow I never see Dungeon in Forbidden Planet or Waterstones.

okay, so wrt Miss Don't Touch Me: It seems their "complete" edition adds about 30 to 50 pages of new material. They are "sold out" of volume one and are selling volume two for $3 on their website and there is no volume three to be purchased. This is one of those cases where i feel well justified, having bought the first two volumes at retail, to download the unpublished finale. Very disappointing way to treat a reader/customer imo.

Wolf Hall by Mantel. Next: Wolf's Hour by McCammon.

got all excited for half a second about a graphic novel adaptation of wolf hall

seems like it would be well suited for an adaptation

meaning TV or film

was hella confused until i realized calstars doesn't know this is the comics thread

it's a new year, someone remember to put COMIX ED. in the next one

lol sorry dudes!

i was thinking if someone was doing robert r mccammon comic adaptations i was gonna hafta go get those.

they are doing a tv adap of wolf hall xp hbo iirc?

it's a new year, someone remember to put COMIX ED. in the next one

No!

ILC was here first, the ILB folks should put "BOOKS WITH JUST TEXT AND NO PICS ED." to their thread.

it's just too much to ask these "books" people to know what board they're on

But I enjoy our usual cycle of "mistaken post about Thomas Paine biography" followed by passive-aggressive rebuttal of comics' worth

ILC was here first, the ILB folks should put "BOOKS WITH JUST TEXT AND NO PICS ED." to their thread.

― Tuomas, Monday, 29 December 2014

That would probably rule out a lot of books, especially nonfiction.

sigh

"what is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without pictures or conversations?"

http://media.giphy.com/media/6ZHUmnZdVQB9K/giphy.gif

Been stuck at home sick for the past week so got into Blacksad and The Wake

I was really put off by the whole furry connotations of Blacksad but it is a gorgeous piece of work

The Wake begins as a stereotypical Eurocomix thing but keeps building the moral ambiguity and craft until by the fifth or sixth vol it's totally cranking

Wake is pretty good, yes

Going to start a "What are you Watching" on the I Love Game Casting board.

Curious what youse thought about the end of the Wake (potential spoiler - I thought it was a daft cop-out and waste of potential)

First seven-eight issues are terrific tho'

Oh it ends? I'm only up to ... no. 11. They just announced no. 17, so I didn't think it was wrapping up. (Are we talking about the same book? I'm talking about the French one, 'Sillage')

Haha, I'm thinking of some trashy Vertigo comic. Yours sounds better.

http://www.eurocomics.info/wake.html

Someone's gotta name the new 2015 thread and I'm not going to screw it up.

I'll screw it up then.
Rolling 2015 Reading Funnybooks Thread