2014 what are you reading thread

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.

But Locas does have some sci-fi stuff in the early stories too, it's just not cavemen in space, rather than dinosaurs and superheroes... So maybe that's what you were thinking of, James?

I think the "all of a suddens" you mention above are part of the point! I like the idea that there's so much about Maggie we don't know.

Jaime skipping 11 months of Maggie's life between chapters is the same style of storytelling as him skipping 23 minutes between panels, not of him disregarding continuity.

And the creation of Calvin was entirely because someone pointed out to Jaime that he'd given a different number of brothers to Maggie in one dialogue balloon years and years apart from another one, and he started coming up with a reason why one of them might not have been mentioned again -- ie paying INCREDIBLY CLOSE ATTENTION to continuity, not ignoring it.

ie Chuck otm, xpost

Yeah, I just recently reread all of L&R and I can confirm that the Locas stuff is amazingly tight, continuity-wise, particularly given the fact that Jaime's been adding to it for 30+ years.

Reminds me I need to get the new New Stories

Dungeon Monstres Vol 5 in June

glad the next one is lined up; pissed that this is on a yearly US release schedule

I wish more stuff was on a yearly schedule. Dungeon is one of the few things I feel like I can keep up with.

i would take dungeon on a weekly schedule if i could

Finished Y The Last Man - kind of peters out at the end? Felt like it needed a lot more room over the last 2-3 GNs to get where it was going.

This is an issue with BKV in general imo

But Locas does have some sci-fi stuff in the early stories too, it's just not cavemen in space, rather than dinosaurs and superheroes... So maybe that's what you were thinking of, James?

Thanks, yes, that was what I was thinking of.

I looked around at some of the recently Winslade floppies (Bodies, Phantom Stranger) and nothing really caught my eye but Judge Dredd Megazine issues were sealed so I couldn't peek (I hate that. I probably would have bought more Heavy Metal issues if I could check the interiors).

There was a Corben bit in a new Buffy issue but it was only 3 pages. Nice but not enough.

Bought Batman 35 for a nice Kelley Jones backup feature.
Harley Quinn was sealed because it has an unusual scratch and sniff gimmick that I'm surprised DC would go for (a measure against piracy and full digital takeover?). I took a risk and bought it but waaahhhhh, only 2 Kelley Jones pages, so it wasn't worth it.

Also bought the Batman Unseen GN by Moench/Jones

I'll probably clip out the Jones pages from those floppies.
Years ago on the Comics Journal forum I said I wanted to clip pages out of anthologies (which was the majority of my collection and took up a lot of space) but was scared/reluctant to.
Eddie Campbell replied and said he loves doing that and didn't hesitate to clip from fancy hardcover books, just taking one panel sometimes. He talked about enjoying how your clipping collections change over the years.
I did clip out plenty but there was still some comics I was reluctant to clip apart, especially if I thought I might give it away later on. But it was really nice to condense the best parts of your collection and get rid of hundreds of pages of stuff you never wanted.

I have dozens of Kirby monster stories clipped out of 70s monster anthology reprints

The last issue of Saga was amazing!

I sometimes think about carefully cutting "The Trumpets They Play!" out of my copy of BLAB! #10 as it's one of the greatest comics things ever surrounded by a ton of crap I never need to see again.

Yeah I clipped from loads of those titles like Where Monsters Dwell and Where Creatures Roam. I kept my 90s reprints like Curse Of The Weird and Monster Menace because the overall contents were much stronger.
Marvel would go up in my estimation if they finally did nicely reproduced monster/weird tale collections focusing on artists on Best Ofs instead of title archives.

Xpost oh man that story. That's Al finally nailing what he was going for all along.

It's an enduring tragedy that it's never been reprinted and given its proper due. It's part of the canon, AFAIC.

Otm

jon, i have the amazing fantasy marvel omnibus; is that nnot the vast majority of kirby's giant monster material?

Not even close, he did loads of that monster stuff. Even the less prolific Ditko has loads more.

I think the vast majority of the Kirby monsters for Marvel are on the Unlimited app.

The last issue of Saga was amazing!

― Frederik B, Friday, October 31, 2014 5:50 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wowwwwww yes

Just finished Drawn And Dangerous: Italian Comics Of The 1970s & 1980s by Simone Castaldi.

He makes an argument that this era of Italian adult comics is a unique thing that embodied that time like no other cultural artefacts. Similar to american underground comix but way more political and more extensive cultural crossover.
It packs a lot into just 150 pages. It establishes all the previous Italian comics movements and talks about the relationship between French and Italian scenes. There's a lot about the political movements, rock bands, writers and fine artists of Italy at the time and how they related to the comics.
What I know about Italian rock and horror movies also makes more sense now, about the climate they came from.

I'd highly recommend it even though I'm not really interested in buying the comics of the core artists he focuses on. I prefer the artists he devotes just a few paragraphs to like Mattotti, Battaglia and Buzzelli.

But I was skimming a lot of the more analytic and political parts because I just barely understand it. I'm not a very good noon-fiction reader and I need to stop overestimating my ability to read non-fiction unless it's something I'm crazy about.

Another interesting thing is how he talks about the intellectual justifications or condemnations some Italians made for Johnny Hart's BC and Gould's Dick Tracy. About self-censorship because of oppressive ideology.

Castaldi is a university professor and I think he writes for the more academic comic journals. The only other major comics-related credit I can find is that he is a translator on the new version of Corto Maltese.

I think this is him.
http://www.hofstra.edu/Faculty/fac_profiles.cfm?id=222

just read gil hernandez's "chance in hell" on the train this morning, seeing it billed everywhere as a "stand-alone graphic novel" and found it kinda abstract and weird and didn't really dig it.

read up afterwards to discover it's part of a meta-series of "Fritz B-movie" standalone graphic novels, which are comics adaptations of fictional movies starring or co-starring [love & rockets character] Fritz"; understanding its place in the L&R universe might have made it way more comprehensible to me, but maybe not, idk

understanding that never helped me!

the ones i read i thought were pretty decent in their own right

There's one coming soon (or maybe out now) that sounds like a telenovela adaptation of Poison River. I'm keen on checking that one out.

understanding its place in the L&R universe might have made it way more comprehensible to me

nope

several issues of HELP! magazine posted on archive.org
https://archive.org/search.php?query=collection%3Awarrenpublishing&sort=-publicdate

including this R Crumb sketchbook of Bulgaria
https://archive.org/details/Help_025_1966-07_Warren

i also got on a bit of a curious kick about Ballyhoo Magazine, a pre-Mad (1930's) cultural parody mag with fake advertising and celebrity lampooning. It was apparently spectacularly popular in its time; I have a random common issue from the late 40's reboot and it's a humdinger. Some kicking around online found this small cache of scanned issues:
http://www.sendspace.com/folder/ymmuim
highly recommended!

nope

― the incredible string gland (sic), Monday, November 10, 2014 10:17 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i just mean in the sense that knowing this was an "adaptation of a b-movie" would have helped me process the book like 'oh this is one of those bonkers exploito movies from the 70s full of lurching dream plot twists and wanton violence i get it' as opposed to 'beto wtf r u doin'

yep

Anyone know how far through the b-movie cycle he is? I think some of them were short pieces in Love And Rockets.

cycle?

Sorry, I mean the line-up of Fritz films that are being made into books and short stories.

yes, but... how long is a piece of string?

Isn't there a finite number of them planned? Pretty sure there was.

http://loveandmaggie.blogspot.ie/2009/08/gilbert-hernandez-and-fritz-film-novels.html

I heard Loverboys is supposed to be part of the series but I can't see it on the list. Probably changing titles or adding new films to the list.

"abstract and weird" describes pretty much everything gilbert does these days. that, combined with the rushed art on some of his recent stuff, makes for books i couldn't recommend to new readers. a while back he said how he was putting out all these books because he needed the income. it's unfortunate as the work is suffering with the rough art. "maria m." was a big disappointment for this reason compared to the prior fritz books.

i dunno if "loverboys" is intended as part of that series though it does contain an older fritz-like character. it was published by dark horse whereas the fritz series up till now have all been fantagraphic books.

*"putting out all these books" being gilbert's recent several books a year schedule.

fritz series up till now have all been fantagraphic books.

Speak Of The Devil was Dark Horse.

(Fatima: The Blood Spinners and, way back, Girl Crazy are both as full of big thighs, sci-fi twists, and bloody violence as many of the B-movie books - I was surprised that Fatima appeared to be stand-alone.)

I'm a huge fan of Los Bros, but outside of L&R proper, I've probably only read 5-10% of Gilbert's output from the past ten years. I can't even keep track anymore.

ah, i wasn't aware "speak of the devil" was even a fritz book... (looks at pages robert adam gilmour linked)... and there the details are.

I was wondering if the art was rushed or he's drawing differently now. Whatever the case I don't think his lines have the same oomph they did when he was finishing up the Luba titles.