2014 what are you reading thread

Wa-hey, got Richard McGuire's 'Here' last night, and it was great. Could have quite happily read it expanded to 3 or 5 times as long, tbh.

Alfredo Alcala was great. "The Tower of the Elephant" adaption that Alcala did with Roy Thomas and John Buscema is one of my favorite all time comics. His inking style was so signature he was like Tom Palmer in that it absorbed the pencils into a total hybrid look.

That's cool that the same company is going to reprint Puma Blues. It would be even better if they somehow could do a conclusion as if I remember right, that series just stopped, it wasn't concluded. I'm sure they never complete perhaps what was planned, but it would be cool to see the creators at least be able to put a capstone on the series. Michael Zulli obviously did other comic work after that series. There was some crazy pen and ink detail in that series too, not completely unlike Alcala's mad detail.

"would be"

I'm glad this art book is coming out partly because Alcala is one of those artists whose work is so scattered that it's hard to recommend him to people. His Conan work with Buscema wasn't always working at full power. I got one of his Voltar comics and some of the pages were incredible, others were okay.
He mostly spent the end of his career inking and his solo works I've seen from 80s-90s mostly look burned out, unfortunately.

If Dark Horse kept doing their Warren artist collections, he'd be a great candidate.

Long time no comics. Just read two collections of the Geoff Johns Justice League, #2 THE VILLAIN'S JOURNEY and #4 THE GRID. Holy smokes, them's some bad comics. Both of them use a lot of elements from older DC stories, Villain's Journey is pretty much the same story, on a wider scale as the Zoom storyline Johns did in his run on The Flash what, 10 years ago? And it really didn't actually show much of the villain's journey. It was obsessive, however, in hitting markers about the dynamics between Justice League members, which was nowhere near as interesting or entertaining as the comic thinks it is. The Grid meanwhile, is basically the Judas Contract (80s New Teen Titans) for the emotionally stunted.
For all the big whoop about adding Cyborg to the line-up of original Justice Leaguers, all he ever does is Google shit for Batman. Like, come on. In Villain's Journey, over the course of two issues (everything takes forever, because there are so many splash pages) each Leaguer revisits their defining trauma and they are related to father figures. EVEN WONDER WOMAN (ok, bit of a stretch to call Steve Trevor her father figure, but considering he's the first man she's ever known, I mean, right?)
The Grid is also utter nonsense because it's so dependent on what's going on in the other Justice League books, but never really gives you a reason to go read those books. I mean, I remember when Justice League International crossed over with the Suicide Squad in issue #13 and a) you had to go read Suicide Squad #13 to get the conclusion to the story b) they totally sold me on the Suicide Squad.
What else have I read since I last I darkened ILC's door...
I really enjoyed the first four or five Scalped trades. Bleak bleak bleak, holy moley.
Also loved the Torpedo 1936 reprints. Full of nasty stuff I hate seeing in superhero books, but gorgeous art and consistently sadistic.
I was super-excited to get the Corto Maltese reprints a while back, but didn't really get into it.
A bunch of small press stuff by people I know that's really good.
THIS IS AMAZING: http://studygroupcomics.com/main/calgary-death-milks-a-cow-by-connor-willumsen/
I have Lethem's OMEGA THE UNKNOWN in front of me right now and am looking forward to cracking it, but thought I'd check out this thread and see what's good.
I am waiting for the trade

dr supes have u seen the studygroupcomics thread?

thanks, Mordy!

Supes, if you liked Scalped, I'd check out Jason Aaron's Thor, which is probably my favourite superhero comic of the past few years -- go back to the first issue from 2012.

I just finish bingeing on Rick Remender's Captain America run -- it's exactly how I remember 80s Marvel being, kinda super dumb but insanely what-happens-next-y.

you mean like the Mark Gruenwald era?

Yep, totally!

ok, i'll remember to check that out on Unlimited. i think i'm still 3-4 years behind where i stopped in the mainstream MU, sometime around Heroic Age

Bought LB Cole - Black Light, it's mostly a cover collection but there is some art you can't find anywhere else (good thing too or else you could just look at comic databases to see it all), I nearly didn't buy it until I saw the previously unseen art. I find the more recent work pretty fascinating, it's softer but still unique. Some of this stuff has a real intensity, I love it.
Just noticed there is a swipe of Graham Ingels (or maybe it's the other way around).

Also got the Ditko Shorts book.

Are these books getting more expensive? I had planned to also get Complete Hammer (Kelley Jones), Hansel & Gretel (Mattotti/Gaiman) and the Howard Nostrand collection, but if I did get all five books it'd be over £100.
I guess I can do without the latter three.

I must admit that when I started doing mainstream comics I was at a very low point in my life and career. My own publishing company, Fantagor Press was collapsing and I didn't know what I might be doing to support my family. My first step into the mainstream was thanks to Mark Chiarello and his project, Batman Black and White. I had never done a super hero before and it was this quality or short coming that Mark wanted for his book. I did my best and apparently it was good enough. I then started doing non hero stories for Axel Alonso's books at Vertigo. Each project led to the next. I was privileged to work with Scott Allie and Mike Mignola on Hellboy. Even after doing several mainstream hero and anti-hero books I'm afraid my talent is not best suited for this kind of material. But I am eternally grateful to the editors who helped me through those hard times.

http://www.corbencomicart.com/interviews.html

I've always been interested in him talking about this. Quite a good interview.
This new site also has previews of some upcoming things that haven't been properly announced yet.

I finally finished up Local - so bummed about the accusations re: Brian J Wood, because that might be the best comic series I've read.

i went on a fairly cheap $50 ebay spree and pieced together a complete collection of Manga Vizion:
http://www.comicvine.com/manga-vizion/4050-75524/
lengthy, complete serialized (and often out of print) stories from Rumiko Takahashi, Ryuichi Ikegama, Kei Kusunoki, Tezuka, Keiko Neishi, Kia Asimiya... about two feet of paper pulp to pore through!

EXCUSE ME FOR BEING A DOG!

Yeah, that's great! I also have a soft spot for the penguin story.

i have never read it, i just loved that title and cover.

Rumiko Takahashi is one of the great unsung women of the comics
http://www.furinkan.com/takahashi/

whoa, she's still active? damn! i knew she did a lot of stuff, but I never read much more than Ranma and a bit of Urusei

she's also responsible for inuyasha which is probably a little after both our times but is hugely popular as a cartoon/comic/cultural signifier in the west

oh yeah, that's absolutely right

When I lived in Gainesville I had a brainy teenage friend who was a huuuuuge inuyasha fan

Hasn't Takahashi sold like a billion comics? And Ranma 1/2 was one of the most manga in the west back in the 90s, so I wouldn't really call her "unsung"...

"Ranma 1/2 was one of the most popular manga..."

But yeah, I still have a soft spot for Ranma, because it was the first manga I really got into back in the early 90s... Though after a while I got bored with the whole formulaic "will they or won't they" romantic tension, which seems to be a trope Takahashi has used in pretty much all of her comics... Maison Ikkoku had a similar formula, though more mature and romance-fiction oriented. At least she ended Maison Ikkoku with a proper closure, in Ranma she seems to have liked the Ranma/Akane love/hate thing so much that, after years of teasing a romance between the two, she didn't bother resolve it in even in the final issue, they just kept on bickering...

We don't really have a news thread but
http://www.thewrap.com/steve-carells-north-korea-movie-pyongyang-cancelled-in-wake-of-sony-hack/

xp to Tuomas: though her characters are fantastically popular, her name is more or less unknown in America, even among comic circles

Ahem, out of print Moebius

Thanks for the ahemories

Those Moebius Epic books seemed like they were promominently displayed in every comic book shop ever in the 80s, wish I'd picked em up

thank you

A lot of those comics on that forum are readily available in English.

Some of them just came out very recently.

Which ones? I've seen Arzach in some foreign language printings, but nothing in English since that Marvel printing looking around on Amazon.

None of the Moebius stuff, I mean a lot of the other stuff on that forum.

I believe the people who hold the rights for solo Moebius work are extremely demanding. I think several people have tried to get them but it's too expensive for something with cult appeal like that.

Finally got piskor's hip hop family tree. So awesome.

Yeah the incal reprint is the most recent english reprint.

xp

and that other Jodo/Moebius thing "The Cat" I guess...?

"The Eyes of the Cat"

And Madwoman Of The Sacred Heart.

After putting it off forever, I finally finished L'Incal a few months back and was less impressed than I'd expected to be. The first volume is terrific, then both writing and art kind of go down the tubes. I guess I like plotty Moebius more than mystical Moebius.

That said as I am a comic fan and I never learn and I am super excited to finally read Airtight Garage &tc.

i inherited an old-gen iPad and since i pretty much only wanted one to read comix on it fits my needs perfectly. so far i've loaded the following on it to read: the new Prophet run, the last year of adventure times, the recent scott snyder run of batman, a bunch of guardians of the galaxy and annihilation stuff (just saw the movie finally lol), manifest destiny, recent moon knight, recent ms. marvel, recent silver surfer, the multiversity stuff, and the united states of murder. oh, and the recent greg pak action comics. what else should i add? i kinda haven't been paying attention to superheroes since we last had those diamond shipping threads

xpost
'plotty' and 'less mystical' are not the first terms i wld use to describe airtight garage, fwiw

Yeah I think Airtight Garage is him at his most experimental.

what else should i add?

Kieron Gillen's Journey into Mystery is possibly the best superhero run of this dedace so far, though in order to fully get it you kinda need to be familiar with the Thor comics that preceded it (meaning Straczynski's reboot and Gillen's own Thor run, which are pretty good comics in themselves), at least read the Wikipedia summaries. Killen & Jamie McKelvie's Young Avengers run was also quite good (McKelvie in particular has a fantastic, crisp and detailed line), though its ending was bit meh, especially compared to the JiT finale, where Killen pulled that rare Morrisonesque trick of being totally meta and tearjerkingly sentimental at the same time.

And if you like teen superheroes, I would also recommend Christos Cage's Avengers Academy. It was quite uneven, mostly because the "Avengers" title in the name meant it had to be involved in various crossovers, even though it would've worked better as a fairly standalone title, a la Runaways... But the highs in it were still quit high, the school setting and the wide-eyed idealism made it feel like Claremont's early 80s X-Men, so if you dig that, you should dig AA too.

Oh yeah, and Saga by Brian Vaughan and Fiona Staples, of course! It's one of the best, and definitely the best-looking, American mainstream comics in recent memory.

Copra is the only good action comic of the last couple of years that I've read

(counting Prophet as sci-fi and the revival of Shaolin Cowboy as an older work. if Saga's the best-looking mainstream comic, mainstream comics are worse than I thought)

You don't think Saga looks good?! I know some people don't care for Vaughan's writing tics, and sometimes they irritate me too, but I've never heard anyone not liking Staples art in it.

I'm with sic, I think it looks OK but I wouldn't say it was one of the best looking current comics.