2014 what are you reading thread

nah

COWL?

― the other song about butts in the top 5 (forksclovetofu), Tuesday, October 7, 2014 5:37 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Chicago Organized Workers League--it's the story of the decline of a union of superheros in 60s Chicago, sort of Mad Men b/w Watchmen. the art is gorgeous and the story has really taken off by the fifth issue.

I read the first issue of COWL and it didn't grab me at all. Sounds like it's worth checking out in trades.

get the feeling this guy may have read one or two Sienkiewicz and Baker comics from the 80s

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/comic-riffs/wp/2014/05/29/image-comics-c-o-w-l-finds-heady-fun-on-the-big-shoulders-of-60s-chicago/

wow yeah this is SO Sienkiewicz:

http://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_606w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/05/27/Style/Images/COWL3.jpg

most def. looks interesting.

I read the first issue of COWL and it didn't grab me at all. Sounds like it's worth checking out in trades.

― EZ Snappin, Tuesday, October 7, 2014 5:58 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah honestly i wasn't quite sold on it even through 2 & 3 but had already decided i was chips-in for the first arc, then 4 & 5 really punched things up, really looking forward to where it goes next.

Read the Red Rover Charlie trade paperback (I've given up trying to pull issues for myself, new comic arrival on Tuesday sucks enough without figuring out what I want to read), it completely peters out - the characterization was great, the art good-to-great, but rushing it into six issues wasn't enough space.

From that Oni Press Humble Bundle:
Stumptown - Prime contemporary noir Rucka style, great read; good pseudo Lark art
Letter 44 is excellent; I only want more to keep up with the story
I Was the Cat is promising; curious to see a few more issues
Megagogo is kinda a kids book but it's not a bad read
Scott Pilgrim is Scott Pilgrim
Helheim is dopey escapist nonsense
Diesel Sweeties sucks
The Bunker was too convoluted to engage with
Down Set Fight is dumb as a box o rocks

Also copped the newest book of Antares; excellent as always. No idea why Leo doesn't have a bigger US following.

and my copy of Masterful Marks (alluded to in that Friedman Crumb piece upthread) just got here. It's great!
http://www.amazon.com/Masterful-Marks-Cartoonists-Changed-World/dp/1451649193

i have also now acquired seven books from this lineup:
http://www.fantagraphics.com/index.php?page=shop.browse&category_id=726&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=62
they're tough to read fun to back but great to read in quick grabs

http://wakanayamazaki.tumblr.com/
http://plurkerr.tumblr.com/

Quite liking these super wonky artists I found on Meathaus

Those of you who order comics by mail - is there a company/service that you swear by? I'm getting back into collecting and don't have a decent store within easy reach.

Spit And A Half, Wow Cool, Conundrum

I've had good luck with these guys for back issues. The site works well and they don't have the weirdo pricing like some other back issue sites.

http://www.mycomicshop.com/

Has anybody tried crunchyroll's manga subscription app?

$5 a month for all you can read from a fairly large back catalog.
http://www.crunchyroll.com/comics/manga/alpha?group=all

kind of considering going in for a few months to see what i think

NB: Attack on Titan back issues start around volume 11

punks is back and is great

http://i1.wp.com/comingupcomicsblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Punks-Pg.-2.png

holy shit, I love that, tell me more

yeah, that's good.

http://www.djfood.org/djfood/punks-the-comic

http://www.tcj.com/lianhuanhua-chinas-pulp-comics/

This is really good, I'm always hoping for big discoveries like this. Although it is possible there will be nothing much I'd like to read. But I really like the simple storytelling approach.

http://www.nickstember.com/chinese-star-wars-comic-part-1-6/
their design on star wars is better than lucas' tbrr

just ordered some more silver age superman - DC Archives Superman: The Man of Tomorrow vol. 2 (which is rumored to be the last of the Archives series? too bad if true)

Read the first two Stumptown collections and first issue of the new run, I dig it. Works better than I thought as a GN vs book.

Is anyone else reading Grant Morrison's Multiversity? It's good, obviously the best DC is doing these days (I guess, don't read anything else). Morrison is fantastic at sketching out worlds you'd wish had more than a one-shot to them. But it also feels as if he's done this exact plot way too many times before, which is boring, and I don't think I care enough about comics to care about meta-comics.

read the first five pp or so of the second issue last night and my eyes rolled out of my head in boredom, just panel after panel of superheroes introducing themselves to each other & winking to the audience

You mean the Chris Sprouse issue? I spent the whole time thinking it was some kind of overly complicated Tom Strong parody set on Earth-2.

The one that came out last week with the Ben Oliver art was very uninspiring; the "Neil Gaiman's Sandman" line had my eyes rolling so fast the Flash couldn't have caught up with them.

That said, I'm still excited to see Cameron Stewart do Captain Marvel.

But then I don't really want to see "Watchmen using the characters it should have been, updated so it's about terrorism".

But Frank Quitely, so...

woo my copy of fukitor came in

Best bag of comic I've taken home in a long time:

Hubert/Kerascoet - Beauty (but no cover gallery, as I feared)
Hubert/Kerascoet - Miss Don't Touch Me
Corben/Poe - Spirits Of The Dead

Couldn't find the new Sergio Toppi book or any Dungeon reissues.

Just saw that there's a new Corben series out next year called Rat God, based on native American mythology.

I looked at the Russ Heath book yesterday. Lots of unpublished art and what looks like reprints of some of his Warren stories, still impressive work but it doesn't quite hit me like it used to.

Keeping my fingers crossed that those long delayed Kaluta and Krenkel Women art books will finally surface in the next few months.

I really enjoyed the Sprouse issue of Multiversity. The next one, not so much, and then it just kind of ended when it ran out of pages. Generally the project seems entertaining but hasn't really persuaded me why it needs to exist yet.

Apart from that, I read Scott Snyder's The Deep, which is fun for the first nine issues, then has the worst ending since the end of Lost - actually, perhaps even worse.

Warren Ellis' Trees is looking to be a loooooong build, but i'm really enjoying the early developments

guys fukitor is really insane. recommended for sickos only.

Was looking at the Kelley Jones Batman collection. His art is often very uneven but some of his compositions and the shapes he makes characters into are incredible. Still thinking about buying it but I gave most of my Kelley Jones stuff to a friend and I feel reluctant to buy it all again.

Wonder what the books do when there are gaps between story that the artist didn't draw? Maybe they have a paragraph explaining what happened?
Some of those DC characters by specific artist collections seem to have stop and I wonder if Jones will get a second one. Gene Colan only got a first volume and I think Kirby's golden age DC books all stopped after first volume.

I read some reviews and it says that the Moench/Jones Batman collection does have real problems with the story gaps but annoyingly omits some Jones covers too.

Prices for Niles/Jones- Gotham After Midnight have shot up way further than I thought they would. Batman Unseen is still affordable though.

I don't follow that many artists through floppies anymore and I don't miss it. But I'm still a Jones and Phil Winslade fan but their work is appearing in little bits in issues of Phantom Stranger, Martian Manhunter, Justice League and Harley Quinn. Probably not worth it.

Mattotti's Hansel & Gretel supposed to be out this week. Excellent.

Trying to resist going back to town for another comic binge.

guys fukitor is really insane. recommended for sickos only.

how many nazi zombie nurse decapitations are there (rough estimate)

idk, two dozen per page?

Complete Hammer by Kelley Jones in November.
Ditko's Shorts in December.
Ditko Archives 5 hopefully in the next few months.

Excellent.

Just finished Beauty by the 'Little Miss Don't Touch Me' team of Hubert and Kerascoet; it's an A+ fairy tale
http://www.nbmpub.com/comicslit/dontouchme/beaupre1.html

Superman: Man of Tomorrow Volume 2
https://d1466nnw0ex81e.cloudfront.net/n_iv/600/675907.jpg

Have ordered Beauty, am impatiently waiting for it.

After years of being baffled by Love & Rockets, being unable to get past the awful early sci-fi cavewomen in space stuff, have cracked it by just reading Gilbert Hernandez stuff. OK, so I can see why people like this!

Beto's the one who did the sci-fi cavewomen in space stuff! (and still does)

I got into Beto first too, though, when Jaime’s stuff was too continuity-mired and (I thought!) slick to find a way into easily - Gilbert had more stand-alone (or seemingly so, like the 10” X) stuff, and his variety let one dabble as a reader.

Once I started buying the magazine-size TPBs in order, Jaime popped as pre-eminent genius on Death Of Speedy; they’ve switched order since then a few times, but post Ti-Girls the pendulum has swung so hard that I can’t see Beto rising to the top again.

(Though this is partly because 90% of his output now is in hardcover – if he was putting out four US$12 gns a year on top of L&R, it’d be easier to keep up [and, I’ve always said, would suit the content of the pulp/B-movie series better] than it is with, as in September, two US$30 books in two weeks...)

Well I'm confused. I guess I'm just talking about the Palomar stuff, then.

I got into Beto first too, though, when Jaime’s stuff was too continuity-mired and (I thought!) slick to find a way into easily

Hah, my only problem with Jaime is that he doesn't seem to care about continuity too much... Like, all of sudden Maggie is getting a divorce, even though her being married has never been mentioned before, and the husband isn't even shown until she'd divorcing him, even though she's apparently known him since the early 1980s. And later on Maggie suddenly has a psycho brother who'd never been mentioned before either. That plus the way the characters can drift out of focus for years makes it kinda confusing, when some old acquaintance of Maggie & Hopey shows up, it's kind hard to remember whether it's someone who actually appeared in the comic years ago, or some new character Jaime just retconned into the story.