2014 what are you reading thread

They've put out two trades that I think cover all of their pre-Valentino appearances. Guardians of the Galaxy: Tomorrow's Avengers, I believe they're called.

In sort of similar news, they just solicited a complete '70s Deathlok the Demolisher trade for September.

these are in color i suppose? (aka I can't afford them)

Yeah, they are. And I guess Marvel has unofficially (but basically officially, since they haven't issued any since early last year) nixed the Essentials in favor of the color Epic Collections, so all of the old reprints are going to be unaffordable from here on out. The realization of which having kicked my Essentials collecting/hoarding into overdrive.

oh fuck that's bad news but thanks for telling me

are a lot of them already pricey?

Some of them are ridiculous {like Black Panther, which was released <2 years ago and is currently selling for >$50, and the fourth Thor volume, which I just paid more for than I care to disclose) but a lot of them are available really cheap used. I'd like to think that the prices will drop as the Epic Collections replace them but I'm not taking any chances.

I never even saw the black panther one :(

Didn't know that about the Essentials ending, wot a pisser. Think I've got most of the ones I actually want, but there's a few I'd hope would continue on a bit further (eg the FF volumes reaching the Byrne issues). This is a pretty useful list:

http://collectededitions.com/storefront/buy_essentials.html

I don't know about current in-print status, but most of Gerber's major work has been reprinted in some form or other over the last ten years (aside from the things Jon mentions, there's also a good Omega the Unknown colour collection from Marvel).

If you don't mind the overpriced color editions, they've been doing a decent job of bridging the post-Essential gaps. F'rinstance, I think there's only six-ish issues uncollected between the end of the Essential Avengers run and the more recent color trades they've done which collect everything through the late '80s. I'll give Marvel credit for effort and chutzpah (although we'll see what the final result is) inasmuch as these Epic Collections, much like Fantagraphics' Barks collections, have been released out of sequence but numbered with the apparent intention of being complete collections of a given title. Remains to be seen what "complete" really means in this context, and it's sure to be a frustrating endeavor for collectors, given Marvel's complete disinterest towards keeping stuff in print.

Guardians of the Galaxy: Tomorrow's Avengers, I believe they're called.

fuck yah

Not to derail too far towards making this an "old-school Marvel"-centric thread, but I just read yesteday that Dan Abnett is going to be writing an OG Guardians series starting this fall. I'll be reading that.

oh cool

damn man i think min wage might come off my pull list, i'm so bummed at the way fingerman only includes POC as cab drivers and barely-drawn shadowy beggars. i like rob, i like the writing, but i can't deal with the consistent gross stereotyping.

Ian McEwan - Sweet Tooth. What he's lost in verve he's compensated with (minor) ambition

Who drew that one?

i was about to say that i found sweet tooth to be really mediocre, but i now realize that's not the sweet tooth under discussion

oh hey issue one of Letter 44 is up free in this old i09 post:

http://io9.com/read-the-first-issue-of-letter-44-the-comic-everyones-1472795323

lol mordy

i'm surprised u like letter 44, h00s - seems pretty idk, jingoistic?

I've been thinking of giving Minimum Wage and other Fingerman stuff a go. I listened to an interview with him a couple of years ago and he was pretty funny.

I'm curious to see what the color is like in these new Marvel collections, because it tends to look bad in their reprint titles.
I honestly think those Essential collections are the best thing Marvel have done since the 90s, but I see them piling up in shops as if they aren't selling and they do take up lots of space.
Gene Colan's work in particular looks way better that way. I've been considering looking for other Essential books by him.

It's a shame with all their resources they've still never done a lot of the material justice for fans of the artists. Everything seems to be sold as continuity history. There has been some artist focused collections but they were done with the bad Masterworks reproduction.
With half decent scans, large collections of Ditko, Gene Colan, Basil Wolverton, Russ Heath, Joe Maneely, Bill Everett would be sweet as fuck. But it probably would make an incoherent reading experience.
Maybe best-ofs might be better because frankly, some of Everett's work was very poor. In the unlikely situation there is a Tom Sutton collection, I'd rather his superhero hackwork wasn't there because it really shows that he didn't enjoy doing it (some of the genres he did enjoy had lots of his hackwork too).

I read an interview with Mike Mignola recently where he said the Colan/Wolfman collection of Night Force was cancelled due to low orders. Out of all the crap sold in comic shops!?
There is copies listed with insane prices but I've seen that several times for books that seem to have never came out. I kinda wanted that Krenkel-Women book but I doubt it came out, I think the sellers are lying.

Yeah the tomb of Dracula essentials are probably my favorites, visually, of the ones I have. The buscema-Palmer avengers stuff looks awesome in essentials too.

Have they gotten round to collecting the power man & iron fist stuff yet? I've been hankering to read those for awhile. I love that faux-streetwise 70s marvel stuff.

they did an Essentials - maybe 2? - of the Power Man and Iron Fist series.

Ok I gotta get those asap

30 bucks good grief

Current stuff I'm enjoying at Marvel:
the various Avengers (not counting Rememder's mess or the Assemble title)
All-New Ghost Rider
Black Widow
Superior Foes of Spider-Man (the best of the lot by far)

At DC it's just All-Star Western and Wonder Woman (the latter because it feels the long story might be wrapping soon - it lost a lot of momentum). I expect to be reading zero DC books soon, which feels wrong.

Other stuff:
Archer & Armstrong
East of West
Flash Gordon (might be the most fun of them all)
Magnus Robot-Fighter
Southern Bastards
The Manhattan Projects
Turok Dinosaur Hunter

I'm really enjoying the Ghost Rider too, and the Doop mini has been a blast. Vic Fluro is knocking it out of the park on all his books at the moment too. One of the books published last week had the return to Marvel continuity (although not named, and in a clunky way which made it look deliberate) of The Fury, from the Moore/Davis Captain Britain.

You're not wrong about DC, and ASW is cancelled in 2 (?) issues. WW May well not be worth reading once Azzarello is gone which is only a couple of issues away.

I'm reading the usual suspects at the big indies, probably the only one nobody else has mentioned yet is Brain Boy printed by Dark Horse; this month it introduced a villain who is a direct rip-off of Herbie the Fat Fury.

i'm looking to that grant morrison wonder woman thing is that still happening?

ORCS TREASURE by Kevin J Anderson and Alex Nino.

An army of orcs raid and take over a humans' castle in search of treasure but don't have the same idea of what constitutes treasure. It's kind of a short simple fairy tale about culture.

Alex Nino has done a fair number of book length comics that rarely get mentioned. Adaptations of Moby Dick, Call Of The Wild, More Than Human and Tales From The One Eyed Crow; I think there are some more too.

The art in this is slightly uneven, some images are very impressively designed but others have parts that look too slapdash, you can even see quite a few pencil lines that haven't been erased. The orcs (which come in a large variety that don't look anything like most orcs in fantasy art) are sometimes very imaginative, others are scribbled without care.
Nino often does a very strange thing in merging a lot of background elements with things in the foreground. Objects often pierce and move through each other inexplicably. My favourite of this tendency is the orcs with the most demented teeth pierce their own rubbery lips and even cut through other teeth.
Another violation more familiar in fantasy art is the floating parts of the castle and parts of the forests. I really liked the blocks of the castle that are arranged like steps.

http://the9thblog.blogspot.co.uk/

Another interesting comics blog.

http://comicsalliance.com/ask-chris-best-compiliation-list/

Been looking for 90s-tastic images and there are some here but Bouncer is the real highlight here, he looks hilarious.
http://www.ugo.com/the-goods/boom-boom

http://www.tawmis.com/xtreme/

I once saw an image of a guy looking like Cable but more like an old man with one of the biggest guns I've ever seen. Can't find it.

waitaminute, i never realized Cable's shoulder pads go WAY over his shoulders! i just thought it was ridiculous power-suit padding

Cable's calves are bigger than his thighs in that pose sheet.

I feel really bad for knowing that thing in Boom Boom's mouth is some sort of brace for a broken jaw

http://www.tawmis.com/xtreme/adamxtreme.jpg

the braid clips with the x-men logo are what really sell this one imo

I can't agree with Dazzler and George Perez Nightwing on that list, I love all those disco style costumes from the late 70s/early 80s, I would be delighted if Marvel or DC did a 70s set superhero comic where the characters all have Perez style costumes and hang around with Bianca Jagger and Andy Warhol at Studio 54

Including the 1960s Havok costume is MADNESS

i'm surprised u like letter 44, h00s - seems pretty idk, jingoistic?

― Mordy, Saturday, June 28, 2014 3:27 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i haven't actually read it yet!!

my Beg The Question (the not awesome one-paperback reprint of 90s Minimum Wage) just came in, so i'm gonna give it a go and see if the writing doesn't redeem the new stuff for me

i think that's the only Fingerman I read, wasn't enthused

Yeah, I dig Fingerman's illustration waaaaaaaaay more than his writing.

his porn comics are his best work.

^same is true of dave cooper (at least, Cynthia Petal is my favorite thing of his)

well tied with Dan and Larry (which is the opposite of porn)

Cynthia Petal's Really Fantastic Alien Sex Frenzy >>>>>> anything Fingerman ever did for Eros. but I think Ripple and, yeah, Dan & Larry are far better comics

although both are about sexuality I guess

in older stuff, reading: dark horse's conan, kirby's superman's pal, kamandi + omac, otto binder's action comics

Fingerman said in an interview that he despised his old porn comics, he thinks they are total garbage and doesn't want them reprinted again. I don't think this has anything to do with the subject matter, just the execution.

Two or three weeks ago in a comic shop there was a guy who said to his friend "why are you buying this stuff? you can get it all for free on the internet" as if paying was a really stupid error. He said it loudly within earshot of the shop employees, I can't work out if that was intentional.

Yeah, I dig Fingerman's illustration waaaaaaaaay more than his writing.

― Love Theme From Meatballs 2 (Old Lunch), Sunday, June 29, 2014 10:32 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i really like the dialogue in the new MW run but the opening pages of Beg the Question are oof-worthy

He said it loudly within earshot of the shop employees, I can't work out if that was intentional.

did you punch him in the mouth y/n

No but I would have liked if the shop people confronted him.