2014 what are you reading thread

Have Helfer or Baker ever talked about their (excellent) Shadow run and why it got cancelled? I can guess someone wasn't happy with what had transpired in the comic but iirc it just stopped without announcement (though it had reached the end of a storyline).

ah

I found this explanation on a Shadow fansite:

The Shadow made an appearance in Batman's issue #253. DC Comics published a 12 issue series from 1973 to 1975, featuring art by Mike Kaluta and Berni Wrightson. This is considered (and deservedly so) one of the best adaptations. Issue #11 features an appearance by The Avenger, another pulp character. Howard Chaykin tried to update the character in 1986's four-issue The Shadow for DC, with great success. There was another series in 1987, by Andrew Helfer and Kyle Baker, with 19 issues. According to Tim Elliott, "The Baker/Helfer series was probably the best written series among them all, but was cancelled at the request of Condé Nast, not due to weak sales, but they disliked what DC was doing with the character. DC had no choice but to abruptly cancel the series, but restarted with the good but still inferior The Shadow Strikes!, returning the character to the 1930's." It lasted 31 issues, until Dark Horse obtained the rights for the character before DC could renew their license.

― aldo_cowpat (aldo_cowpat), Wednesday, July 21, 2004 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wowee the new hawkeye--next to no dialogue, sign language diagrams interspersed throughout, had me choked up in the mexican restaurant.

My partner came back from Canada with a copy of Seconds - it's really good! At least for the first two-thirds as a character hangout comic. Then the plot stuff kicks in a little too much in a big budget "soon to be at theatres near you" kinda way. But the art and colouring are gorgeous throughout.

Cool, I tried to order a copy over the weekend, but it got screwed up. Will try to grab another copy soon.

http://4thletter.net/2014/07/diversity-marketing/

Good piece by David Brothers about Marvel's recent moves in character diversity.

Since I've been considering Thorgal recently I imagined asking for some at a shop and someone replying "it's not Thor Gal you prick, she's just Thor!"

There actually is a superhero called Thor Girl, they'd just think you're talking about her.

You can imagine the tremendous mental labor that went into that one... "She's like THOR! Except she's a GIRL! Now what should we call her?"

Hammer Wielder Lass

No, no one in 2014 would hear "Thor gal" (which is horrible and seems like a corruption of Thogal, but tibetan buddhism aside..) and think of some obscure character barely used in the Marvel universe when this new thing is the talk of every comics/non-comics publication in the present time

People may be really literalist in Tuomas-world, though. It's been a thing.

Well, she's been used far more than I would have imagined, even in recent years. Romita Jr is said to be the guy who designed her and drew her for a while but I can't find any of his images of her.

I picked up he Chaykin Shadow mini and the trades with Billy The Sink art and the Helfer/Baker Finns plot line.

Damn.

I was right saying these were the great lost reprint trades, because they're exactly as great as I remember them and, more tellingly, EXACTLY as I remember them. Every line and every frame. I can't think how many times I must have read them bitd, because all of it is so, so familiar.

It's definitely the lettering and layouts that make the Chaykin mini sing though, transcendent stuff.

I got Tales From The One Eyed Crow in the post. Nino's interior art is among his blandest but the cover art is lovely (I should scan it soon because there isn't any large images of the cover online).
It's one of the Byron Preiss books that he seemed to sell to the wider book market than comic shops. There is another called Starfawn, drawn by fantasy artist Stephen Fabian, I never knew he did any comic art.
Preiss had a line of Bank Street comic adaptations of genre fiction classics, but they are extremely rare. I cant find one image of Bank Street Book Of Horror or any trace of copies for sale. Some of the others are on amazon.

I've always found it interesting seeing in the library what looks like Young Adult novels but are actually comics inside.

What do you guys use to read CBRs?

(just got the x-statix omnibus and uhhh stoked)

I've used Simple Comic for years, love it.

http://dancingtortoise.com/simplecomic/

SImple Comic is great. I use that for a lot of my stuff, but manage my library through Comic Book Lover, which I can also use on the ipad.

+1 on Simple Comic, great viewer for the Mac

where were we talking about ROM?

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wO3rSqqgoII/U9fbH5iSrCI/AAAAAAAA9-4/oxC289PgiHE/s1600/Rom+%2302_01.jpg`

I think it was the Guardians of the Galaxy film thread? Relating to Mantlo's authorship of Rom and Rocket Raccoon, I believe?

Still plowing through my massive Marvel silver age undertaking. I've read everything up through the end of '65 now, and after a hell of a lot of gasps and sputters, they're finally starting to fire on...well, if not all cylinders at least more than before. I appreciate the move to longer storylines (some over a year long!). Just finished reading the intro of Galactus and Silver Surfer for the first time. Much more nuanced (and almost small scale) than I had imagined all these years. And also almost casually dropped in between a couple of other storylines. Just started Spidey: The College Years. I've been surprisingly enjoying the Fury stuff (both Howling Commandos and SHIELD) quite a bit. Both books had a weightiness and sense of purpose that was in a bit shorter supply among the other titles at the time.

In all honesty, I still haven't finished reading Ant Man. That shit went from poor to downright dire pretty quickly.

Also, that recent color collection of Lee & Kirby's Tales of Asgard is the only thing I've read thus far that I'm thinking of getting as an upgrade to my current Essential copies. Storywise, it's almost exactly what I always wanted from Thor, and it looks great even in black and white.

Tales of Asgard is so awesome

I thought those weren't included in Essential Thor?

After the first miniseries, a lot of the early Hulk stuff really sucks.

Any good artists you guys been noticing in mainstream American comics in the past few years?

is anybody reading batman '66?

Tumblr has way too many amazing artists on it. Just discovered Manu Larcenet and Loic Locatelli today.

Here's a bunch of tumblrs.

http://www.loiclocatelli.com/
http://unomoralez.tumblr.com/
http://nightofthecomics.tumblr.com/
http://samhiti.tumblr.com/

Sometimes I'm like "Bah! There's hardly any good comic artists around today" but there might be more than ever, they are just a bit hard to find sometimes. Also, all these comic artists really blend in with a general amazing scene of illustrators, concept designers and cartoonists. Loads of them are French.

reading legion of super-heroes. started w/ the waid series and now moving onto some other stuff. i've never really read them before (i've only seen them crossing over into other titles i've read) but some of these stories are pretty great.

man i torrented the fourth world omnibus and reading it feels like homework, but out of curiosity i grabbed a hard copy off a shelf at the shop friday and it was like 'wow,' i instantly understood why it was worth the money

I kind of would be interested to read all the LOSH comics from start to finish tbh. Insane there isnt currently a title being published.

Levitz was fired

Not that his recent Legion run was any good.

no (idk I only read the two issues that Giffen did) (the only Legion comics I have bought in the last 20 years were also reunion jobs by Levitz/Giffen) but him writing is not the point

true. He kept the Legion going through thick and thin because it mattered to him. And his 70s and 80s work is what made me a fan.

The Abnett & Lanning led run in the 90s/early 00s was quite god. I hope people rediscover that sooner or later.

OK, so Grant Morrison's Multiversity #1 finally appeared, and it's pretty promising. Structure seems to be going to be a mini-7-Soldiers thing.

I will probably read it cuz hey why not but man this sounds exactly like Final Crisis, 7 Soldiers etc. How many of thees multiple-reality-doomsday-scenario things can one write

I read some annotations of it, looks pretty awesome tbh, i love this crap

i liked multiversity #1 a lot

http://www.tickld.com/x/the-difference-between-dc-and-marvel-this-is-priceless

lol

http://wellnotwisely.tumblr.com/post/95086233531/beaute-illustrations-by-kerascoet#notes

Really looking forward to the Kerascoet books in October, I just hope that cover image will be included inside.

Yeah i think that's the endpapers?

I mentioned the new English Dungeon earlier, looks like they're reprinting all of them as well, so good chance to grab ones you're missing

Cool. I've got the Carlos Nine one (which to be honest, the stories didn't grab me at all) but I otherwise ignored it until I started grooving to online images by Blain and Star and I want more Dungeon books for that reason. Dave Cooper was supposed to do one but he missed the deadlines.

Are they doing them in bigger collections? That would be great.

The book I had recommends it for children but it has several horrific rape scenes in it!

Sfar not Star

A comment I left for this podcast
http://www.factualopinion.com/the_factual_opinion/2014/08/the-top-four-horror-comics.html

I'm only familiar with the Japanese stuff and some of Emily Carroll and Al Columbia. I might go for some of these others someday.

That really sucks that Museum Of Terror seems to have been stopped due to the public intolerance to short stories. I gave my copies away years ago and haven't been able to get replacements because they are more expensive to find than Uzimaki and Gyo. I'm actually holding out for a reprint if someone wants to attempt that again. Maybe the Tomie parts will get their own book again.

The "Pigeons From Hell" (Robert E Howard) adaptation in Spookhouse 2 (specifically that version) by Scott Hampton is by far the scariest comic I've ever read, quite possibly the most memorable comics experience I've ever had. It was actually terrifying (although I was in my late teens at the time; since everyday is Halloween for me I'd be less scared now) and for the first time in many years I was scared to go back and look at certain pages.
Those two Spookhouse books (mostly adaptations) made me believe that Hampton is one of the most powerful comic artists who sadly, rarely gets to show what he can do. I bought a number of his later mainstream collaborations and none of them had the same magic.
I try and recommend Spookhouse 1-2 fairly often.

The adaptation of Ramsey Campbell's "Again" that appeared in Taboo had a really powerful final image that chilled me.

Hino wasn't all that scary (actually, the start of Red Snake was pretty scary but it promised a bit more than it delivered).
As annoyed as I am about the lack of translated horror manga in the past several years, we did get lucky with Hino, we got Hino Horror 1-14 (15-16 were cancelled), Panorama Of Hell, Hell Baby, Lullabies From Hell, Art Of Hideshi Hino and a story in an anthology (which I sadly don't own).

I wish I could read French because a lot more Junji Ito and Maruo was translated into French.
Really drives me nuts that after a few good years, horror manga in English totally dried up. Some of the Hino was a bit samey and a few of the Umezu books were not so great and I think people might have got tired of the stuff (also tired of J-horror films and the remakes) and manga sales in general went downhill but for fuck's sake! Some publisher needs to get it going again.
I wonder if the Uzimaki hardback book sold well? Maybe they would have translated more if it sold better?

Are they doing them in bigger collections? That would be great.

Looks like they're just reprinting what they already have, also in those sets-of-three-with-a-ribbon-around-em. So no giant omnibuses or anything

http://www.harkavagrant.com/nonsense/batch10sm.png

she's so good
"you alone walk this path"

as the self-proclaimed ILX #1 dungeon fanboy, I am super excited by the last volume of twilight and plan to reread the whole goldurn thing from scratch.

I'm pissed they're not releasing the six OTHER volumes of Monsters and Parade that have already dropped in Europe and would desperately love to find scanlated copies

If Dungeon is popular enough to get a reprint, I wish they'd print it in the original size too. I don't really like reading those NBM and Cinebook half-size editions where you have to squint your eyes to see the details.

I never really felt I had to squint, they are pretty small though. The only time the shrinking was a reading problem for me was The Incal.

Does Forbidden Planet UK or Waterstones do NBM books because I never see them in shops?

don't like the smaller size either. didn't realize that they were shrunk, but you could sort of tell given the detail in the artwork

Picked up julia wertz's "the infinite wait" yesterday and plowed through it. Love her so much. Also got the first couple issues of transformers vs g.i. joe which are maybe the first floppies I've gotten in a decade.