2014 what are you reading thread

lol
fault lies on both the threadstarter and the non-topic reading posters
too lazy to care about the thread as it already exists though

http://www.jimzub.com/creator-owned-sales-over-the-long-haul/

so this fascinates the fuck out of me

ha, I remember The Makeshift Miracle! cool to see that guy went full pro

http://www.filmlinc.com/films/on-sale/aya-of-yop-city

i didn't even know this got made! Looks great!

apology for thread title change

I've been continuity to read 2000 AD related series including both some classic series and newer stories.

Strontium Dog Agency Files Vol. 1 - I'm a couple progs past the time travel story where Johnny, Wulf and Gronk capture Hitler.
Judge Dredd Case Files Vol. 3 - I'm about 1/2 way through this collection.
Slaine "Time Killer" - This was a delightfully weird and lunacy filled comic. Sections of it reminds me of the Archon parts of the Invisibles at the end of Vol. 3. I'm not sure the story really made a whole lot of sense, but it looked cool and was really fun.

Shakara "The Avenger" - I've read the first story now twice. Henry Flint's artwork is really great.
Judge Dredd "America", "Origins", "Mutants in Mega City One" & "Tour of Duty: Mega City Justice" - I've been on a run trying to catch up with more current Judge Dredd titles, so I started with these collections as while a couple of them are older stories, they do tie in with what has developed over the past couple years. I thought they were all really good. I'm going to follow through on the Tour of Duty, Day of Chaos and Trifecta collections next.

Other than that I am up to date on East of West, Lazarus and Black Science from Image.

I'd also like to try some of those Alejandro Jodorowsky/Moebius comics but am unsure really where to start, especially since The Incal looks to be out of print

What would be a reading order for The Incal, Metabarons & Techopriests? I've been trying to figure out some kind of reading order without having the stories ruined, but from what I understand they are all inter-related correct?

Incal is first

I haven't read them yet but I guess reading them in published order shouldn't spoil anything.

The UK version of Incal published by Self Made Hero is still readily available and just as good as any other version (although it is regular comic sized pages and the Humanoids version is probably magazine sized). I even saw it at Waterstones book shop last week.
Imported copies may be more expensive but just checking on the American version of Amazon, it is still far cheaper than the Humanoids version. I'd say it was a better cover too.

Humanoids put out the Incal series in a couple of different sizes. The regular hard cover is pretty much the same at least size and page count as the UK version.

Before the Incal is pretty cheap if you get the Wildstorm issues, which are like a buck each used at mycomicshop.

Received my copy of Madwoman Of The Sacred Heart and it is also not the Humanoids version, but another UK publisher, Sloth.

For those of you reading comix on tablets, here's something I didn't know:

https://archive.org/search.php?query=astro%20boy%20AND%20collection%3Aadditional_collections
https://archive.org/search.php?query=alita%20AND%20collection%3Aadditional_collections
https://archive.org/search.php?query=royale%20AND%20collection%3Aadditional_collections
https://archive.org/search.php?query=%28collection%3Amanga_library%20OR%20mediatype%3Amanga_library%29%20AND%20-mediatype%3Acollection%20AND%20title%3A%22%20century%20boys%22
https://archive.org/search.php?query=%28collection%3Amanga_library%20OR%20mediatype%3Amanga_library%29%20AND%20-mediatype%3Acollection%20AND%20title%3A%22adolf%22

and lots more but none of it really organized

something tells me this stuff shouldn't actually be on archive.org

the dark horse copyright was my tip off

Robert Stanley Martin has been doing extensively researched articles mainly about 70s-80s Marvel and trying to be more impartial about the people involved. Some people have been annoyed at him because they think he's anti-creator but I'd say whether he is right or wrong, I don't think he wants to flatter anyone.

I had never heard anything good about Jim Shooter for years and R S Martin managed an incredibly impressive defence of him that seems to have impressed even a lot people who were previously content to view him as a bad guy.
http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/2013/01/jim-shooter-a-second-opinion-part-one-the-best-job-he-can/
http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/2013/10/jim-shooter-a-second-opinion-part-two-romper-room-on-crystal-meth-installment-1/

His piece on Steve Gerber and the Howard The Duck controversies, second link is all the official documents.
http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/2014/05/all-quacked-up-steve-gerber-marvel-comics-and-howard-the-duck/
http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/2014/05/the-howard-the-duck-documents/

Another thing from the same site.
http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/2014/05/wonder-woman-bondage-feminism-all-for-20-off/

Noah Berlatsky finally got his Wonder Woman book published. He started writing about the original Wonder Woman a couple of years ago, he believes that she is one of those idiosyncratic creations (from idiosyncratic creators) that don't make much sense or hold much value when authored by anyone else. I remember being curious why more stuff like this about Wonder Woman hadn't been written a decade earlier because it seemed odd that Batman and Superman and even Green Lantern had more discussion when Wonder Woman seemed more interesting in so many ways.

I have to confess that even though I like Noah and think this book is worthwhile, I'm not interested enough in superheroes anymore to read this but for anyone who is, go for it.

"here" (mentioned upthread) gets expanded to 320 pages:

http://www.randomhouse.com/book/111690/here-by-richard-mcguire

From one of the great comic innovators, the long-awaited fulfillment of his pioneering comic vision.

Richard McGuire’s Here is the story of a corner of a room and the events that happened in that space while moving forward and backward in time. The book experiments with formal properties of comics, using multiple panels to convey the different moments in time. Hundreds of thousands of years become interwoven. A dinosaur from 100,000,000 BCE lumbers by, while a child is playing with a plastic toy that resembles the same dinosaur in the year 1999. Conversations appear to be happening between two people who are centuries apart. Someone asking, “Anyone seen my car keys?” can be “answered” by someone at a future archaeology dig. Cycles of glaciers transform into marshes, then into forests, then into farmland. A city develops and grows into a suburban sprawl. Future climate changes cause the land to submerge, if only temporarily, for the long view reveals the transient nature of all things. Meanwhile, the attention is focused on the most ordinary moments and appreciating them as the most transcendent.

(With full-color illustrations throughout.)

wow.... so is that a comic... or?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57hR44mB5u0

it's a comic:

http://imgur.com/a/EeNpT

― Mordy, Tuesday, May 6, 2014 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^def one of the greatest comic strips ever

― Ward Fowler, Tuesday, May 6, 2014 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Is McGuire's comic a comic or an adaptation someone made as a student film 23 years ago?

er xpost

fawa - i'm familiar with the original but that expanded book says "illustrations throughout" which doesn't sound like a comic

ok wasn't sure... yeah that press release is vague.

Pantheon has it listed as a graphic novel.

that isn't Here "in full" btw - the 1989 version has been under expansion over the last decade or so, for eventual book-length publication by Pantheon

(McGuire has also done lots of other graphic design and 3D design and toys and illustration and film, and two other comics, btw)

― (D1CK$) (sic), Saturday, February 1, 2014 11:13 PM

he's also shown sections of the work in progress as an installation a couple of times IIRC

cool, i'm excited

Robert Adam Gilmour, thank you for posting those Robert Stanley Martin links, which were of course very interesting. I don't know about him being 'anti-creator' so much as him being on the side of efficiency, capital, common-sense. That's probably the right way to run a business in America, but it makes for poor artistic-critical judgment, imho. Like, right at the start of that Shooter piece he flatly states, "From an aesthetic standpoint, the Shooter era at Marvel is easily the most vibrant time in the company’s history apart from the heyday of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko back in the 1960s" which is, to say the least, up for debate, but presented here as a simple statement of fact. And then: "The writer-editor position had always been a bad idea" - well, tell that to Harvey Kurtzman. I could go on.

I also applaud him for doing some basic journalistic digging around the Howard the Duck case which yes, should have been done years ago, but his recourse to contracts, legal obligations and court rulings does seem to blind him to the fact that Gerber's artistic achievement trumps all the cards in Marvel's portfolio of 'own-it-all grab-it-all' work-for-hire properties. Compelling as all this history and gossip is, it's no substitute for watchful appreciation and illumination of works of art, like issue three of Howard the Duck, say.

I admire a lot of his approach but in terms of taste I don't think I'd agree with much, but I guess I don't see eye to eye with many comic fans taste wise.
For my favourite 80s Marvel stuff more of the credit probably goes to Goodwin.

Looks like more Sergio Toppi is getting translated.

A collection of all Corben's Poe work for Dark Horse called Spirits Of The Dead is coming in October.

Thanks for the Martin links - I find his bias (and his perception that he lacks bias) irritating, but they're all really interesting pieces. I did go on to read his blog about Locas, though, which is such an incredibly closed-minded reading, it kind of makes me distrust anything he might say.

he is a terrible thinker and a total asshole (as a writer/on the internet). that Gerber piece is notable for largely suppressing his weird pro-mgt anti-creative tendencies, and doing lots of good research that he mostly just reports on (rather than having 1.5 facts that he extrapolates from heavy-handedly while ignoring other sources)

it's p good, is what I'm saying

weird? America was built by psychopaths with bottomless greed, my friend

http://www.raggedclaws.com/home/2011/02/05/look-here-read-just-passing-by-by-alex-nino/
Probably one of the best things Alex Nino ever did.

sic is otm re: martin, and berlatsky is even worse.

Yeah, I'd not looked at the Hooded U before because of a deep aversion to Berlatsky's thought and writings. I can't help feel that he's using things like the Shooter piece primarily to wind Gary Groth up.

I like Berlatsky. He can be painfully contrarian and provocative for its own sake (I think Martin does this sometimes too) but he's good at writing about issue driven things he really cares about. He used to be quite rude but that died down and he's very welcoming, nice and encourages all sorts of views to come in for discussion.

My problem with Hooded U is that he is constantly dismissing superheroes as irrelevant but mostly features writing about them. Rather than writing feminist critiques of X-Men, I think more writing about explicitly feminist comics by writers who could defend themselves would be better (there has been some, such as the Tits & Clits anthology). I kept suggesting Sam Kieth because he is a weird combination of things whose work always has some level of feminist consciousness (My Inner Bimbo was very strange), but he didn't sound interested.

I appreciate Zainab Akhtar, Domingos, Joe McCulloch and Sarah Horrocks because they cover stuff that nobody else ever talks about. I think this is REALLY IMPORTANT in comics. Considering the amount of people writing online about comics, the lack of variety is astonishing and depressing.

Writing outraged feminist thinkpieces about the latest superhero blunder is just pointless after a certain point, they just keep coming (I think some of those offenses are intended to anger bloggers to create more publicity). Bad comics should be marginalized rather than spotlighted.
Shifting the focus to genuinely good comic creators is way more important than trying to reform some hopeless cause. It really infuriates me when people want to correct DC and Marvel to be a certain way when there are already comics that fulfil that criteria. I think comics journalists should try to consciously keep contributing something positive, it's way easier for fans and critics to change the comics industry than something like the film industry.

I find it amazing that Zainab manages to keep talking about interesting comics I've never heard of. That's a valuable contribution to comics.

More about Hooded Utilitarian.

Ng Suat Tong writes some good criticism, unlike most critics he is properly demanding of comics and I appreciate that.
http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/author/ng-suat-tong/

Comic artist Mahendra Singh rarely writes there but I enjoy his opinions a lot.
http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/author/mahendra-singh/

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/gallery/2014/jun/06/jesse-jacobs-safari-parasites-in-eden/

http://assets.nybooks.com/media/img/blogimages/SF_35_jpg_600x950_q85.jpg

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2014/06/08/magazine/world-cup-curse-of-maracana-1402024157285/world-cup-curse-of-maracana-1402024157285-largeHorizontal375-v3.gif

what do ilc'rs think of some kind of rolling notable comic, cartoon, editorial images thread?

golf, amirite? ilx's comic strip voting thread is now open

just picked up the new Mighty Avengers and the recap page made me do a double-take for its use of TRUTH BOMB

http://therumpus.net/2014/02/the-new-york-comics-picture-story-symposium-keren-katz-on-the-history-of-israeli-comics/

Keren Katz is insanely talented, buy her minis if you get the opportunity

i'm generally skeptical of buzzfeed but this seemed like a good roundup-
http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewziegler/indie-comics-that-you-need-to-be-reading

counterpoint: most of those look terrible

Hey, at least they seem to have some good art in there. I just ordered The Last of Us: American Dreams, coincidentally.

yeah! i thought some looked great. i checked out kinski, strange nation, + deadly class. i already like saga

I can always use more library recommendations, will definitely both these on reserve if I can find them

Whoa, I had no idea Faith Erin Hicks is doing The Last of Us, her previous comics (Superhero Girl, Friends with Boys, Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong) have all been really good. I'm generally wary of comics based on video games though, have there ever been any good ones?

Pretty Deadly has absolutely gorgeous art by Emma Rios, but the plot is hard to follow. It's more of a mood piece than a plot-driven comic anyway, but I found it to be more admirable than likable. Minimum Wage is definitely worth reading if you like stuff like Hate: it's all about these slacker types inhabiting the border zone of geek and alternative cultures. I haven't read it since the original run in the 90s though, I have no idea how dated it might feel in the 2010s.