Rolling 2015 Reading Funnybooks Thread

Oh yeah, that's on the list as well.

About ten issues into Scalped and really enjoying it, even though the lead character is probably the least compelling thing in it (so far). I was wavering, but a hilarious and pointlessly elaborate setup-joke about Merle Haggard's tour bus persuaded me to carry on.

Scalped retains its quality to the end, though IMO the eventual revelation of who killed Gina Bad Horse was pretty stupid. (I would've preferred she'd survived, as she was easily the most interesting supporting character, especially compared to the other women in the comic.) And you're right that Dash isn't the most compelling of leads, I guess Aaron himself figured that out too, since Lincoln Red Crow gets a lot of story space for himself, essentially becoming the second protagonist.

It's a pity HBO or some other channel hasn't opted to do a series based on Scalped, you'd have four seasons or already plotted out for you, and I'm sure people who watched stuff like Breaking Bad would appreciate Scalped too. Though I guess issues of cultural sensitivity would become more pressing when adapting the comic for a larger audience... I'm not sure if there has been much Native American criticism of Scalped, the whole premise might invite it, but IMO Aaron keeps his writing respectful enough, even though his depiction of life on the reservation obviously tends to focus on the negative stuff.

WGN America are developing a live action Scalped TV series with Doug Jung writing and executive producing the series.[8]

Scalped might be the bleakest comic I've ever read. It's great, but it makes Walking Dead look like Tiny Titans.

this idea that Dash not being the most interesting character being a flaw (stated plainly here http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2013/04/01/comics-you-should-own-scalped/ )is kind of ridic. You could say the same of Seinfeld, Silver Age Superman comics (probably not a coincidence), Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer series (Macdonald once said Archer as a character was so thin that if he turned sideways he'd disappear). Some eras of Batman belong on that list. I think there's a lot of benefit to having your main character be dull. It's almost a First-Person-Shooter effect.
http://photos-a.ak.instagram.com/hphotos-ak-xfa1/t51.2885-15/10919549_997276330289744_1401810027_n.jpg

I'm aware with this sort of "everyman" theory, the idea protagonist being more like the reader's eyes to the universe than an fully fleshed person (Tintin is probably the most famous example in the comics, Tintin is a cypher and the comics are all about his supporting cast)... But I don't think Scalped is an example of that, Aaron doesn't just use Dash as an observer character, he gives Dash a detailed personal history and inner demons, plenty of pages are devoted to his personal dramas, it's just that they aren't as interesting as, say, Red Crow's dramas.

Hmm - there are a lot of well-written cyphers and straight men. Dash doesn't seem like one of them yet, but then again I'm only ten issues in. Either way -- it's super enjoyable. It's certainly bleak, but it doesn't seem quite as bad as Waking Dead to me - the violence isn't quite so awful, and Aaron appears to able to tell jokes - I think he might be my favourite mainstream comics writer working now outside of Grant Morrison.

Walking Dead quickly became torture porn. Scalped never does, even when the violence ramps and gets very, very, personal.

Here is my current comic reading overview:

Black Science - I'm up to #10. While I like some elements of the series, it's not working for me. The action is relentless, it's pretty much been one long action scene. The artist has some interesting elements to his style, but I find often confusing to look at and follow. None of the characters are likable at all. In theory, I like the madcap alternate Earth time travel angle, but at least at this point the series hasn't gelled for me. The colors on the comic are really cool, it's probably the most impressive part of the book. I got #11 and probably will go one more. It's on the pull list chopping block.

Southern Bastards - I got the first trade over the holidays and read it two sittings. The comic issome pulpy cartoonish fun. I like the idea you could do such a comic with a couple of characters in their 60s getting into a street fight outside a BBQ restaurant. Nick Nolte's voice is what I hear out of my head for the lead character.

Judge Dredd Case File 5 - Dredd was really on a roll. The series gets much darker, pushing further out than anything Marvel or DC was doing at the time. I think the artwork is uniformly very good. I'm a couple of progs shy of Block War in the book. I have read some of these back in the 80s and in reprints, but not all of the progs.

Dreadstar - It's one of my favorite comics. I got that hardcover that had the first part from Epic Magazine which lead me to re-reading the series again. Starlin eventually kind of loses it after issue 12, but I love the early stuff and the first few issues of the series.

i didn't really like southern bastards it seemed a little Walking Tall

Southern Bastards has gone some interesting places since the first coupla issues, but It's still finding its voice. Entertaining, though.

I've never heard of Dreadstar before and want to try out some Starlic cosmic - that a good place to start?

Dredd so good

I think with Dreadstar, you want to start with the original stories that were put out in Epic Magazine and the early Marvel Graphic Novel. It's all one long story, but the first part is a finished piece. The regular series is a s sequel. I think the Warlock/Captain Marvel/Thanos story is probably better, but Dreadstar is a riff on the same zip code. To me, I think Starlin's cosmic comics are a pretty noticeable influence on Grant Morrison.

I'd say Southern Bastards really gets cooking in #4. It's kind of crackerxploitation in a way, kind of reminds me of some old 70s Burt Reynolds movies like Gator or White Lightning although the whole bat thing is definitely a nod to Walking Tall. Thing is that the dude with the bat died in '72, which I thought was kind of appropriate. Its a pretty weird genre for US comics, so I say to the creators go for it and godspeed get weird.

With Dredd, I'm reading a second in Vol. 5 which is all about "case files" getting into the weird crime of Mega City One. Damn that story with basically hackers in the big truck circling the building to tap into networks is pretty prophetic. The episode where the lost Angel family member with his pet rat kidnaps Hershey and they end up at that factory that recycles dead bodies is hardcore as fuk for the day. Bleak genius! Bolland's Judge Death sequel is about one of the most perfectly drawn comics, it's amazing.

I was wondering how far I got with the Dredd reprints before I stopped and according to the comic collection thread it was vol 8. I think that might roughly coincide with when I stopped reading 200ad for the first time.

the grim bleakness I found in Scalped maybe doesn't deserve comparison to Walking Dead (which seems to operate purely from the same "OH YEAH, WE WENT THERE" smugness as Family Guy, only with gore/trauma instead of crude jokes). The way every character in Scalped is compromised and doomed (even unto themselves) is probably why I didn't get farther than vol. 4. It's an unpleasant world to spend time in, though once you're actually in there, so fascinating.
I was just spitballin' on Dash's value anyway, probably muddied the water with the First-Person-Shooter comment. My other examples (maybe Richie Cunningham is a more apt notion) are not exactly ciphers, but not entirely removed from that tradition either. I haven't read Scalped in a few years so I'm mostly talking out my ass here.

i had a meeting with some folks at valiant and they gave me a pile of their current books in trade: Rai, Armor Hunters, Unity, Bloodshot, xo manowar, harbinger, eternal warrior, archer and armstrong, harbinger wars, quantum and woody... these arent' bad! Primary world building architects are Matt Kindt, Jeff Lemire, Robert Vendetti, Joshua Dysart and Greg Pak... Peter Milligan just came on board.

New Humble Bundle Comic bundle is Image based and has Saga, Walking Dead, Cowl, Deadly Class, Alex and Ada, Minimum Wage, Genius, East of West, Elephantman, Cowl, Manhattan Projects, Fuse and a lot more for $18
https://www.humblebundle.com/books

Heh, I just came here to post that. Looks good.

lol i wish i hadn't already bought all of those

i think i asked this in the 2014 thread but is anybody else uncomfortable with the way Fingerman writes/draws people of color in Minimum Wage? it really takes me out of the book with dismay, i had to drop it off my list, but i've never seen anyone else say anything out of the ordinary about it.

in current minimum wage or old school? i've always given him a pass as he seems to be working in a specific MAD bigfoot style that hinges on super carnival cartoonish style for all the characters.

The current one particularly--he's definitely going for cartoony caricature style, right, it just seems like way too often with non-white characters that slides into outright stereotype

gillen/mckelvie at image expo today announced the guest artists on the upcoming wicdiv arc and an august release date for phonogram vol. 3, which i'm p stoked about

Just read the first book of Wicked and Divine since my last post; that's good stuff!

I've decided I don't like Gillen's stuff except for Kid Loki. Everything else just isn't for me.

His Thor run that preced the Kid Loki comics was pretty good too, especially considering that he had the unenviable task of tying up the plots Straczynski left unfinished... I thought Young Avengers was really good for the first half, but admittedly the finale was a bit flat - it felt like Killen was trying to out-Morrison Morrison, but his imagination fell a bit short before the finish line.

I haven't read Phonogram, is it any good? The subject matter (indie rock) is something I really don't care about, so I've ignored the comic despite liking both Killen and McKelvie.

Vol 1 is sort of a book-length love letter to Britpop from one misanthrope's persepctive, which I've never much cared for--but Vol 2 (which you can pick straight up from) is pretty fun imo. Colors really pop, writing is wry--and it's not ~entirely~ about Britpop, which made it a welcome shift.

Adventure Time/Dinosaur Comics Ryan North is doing Squirrel Girl for Marvel:
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=preview&id=25308

speak of the devils: http://www.shortpacked.com/index.php?id=2181

http://fourcolorshadows.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-clown-of-death-manny-stallman-1952.html

Excellent news! (slightly old news but I've been checking comics news sites a lot less recently) Viz is bringing out Junji Ito's Fragments Of Horror (for the summer). I think that's the first new English translation of his work in a decade.

Image is doing a Heavy Metal/Epic Illustrated anthlogy thing called Islands.

http://www.comicsandcola.com/2014/11/gatignols-and-huberts-petit-looks.html
This looks pretty good too.

http://samehat.tumblr.com/post/106214448573/mangahakuran-the-internet

this is great.

ipad is really the most ideal way to read comix. i have never read as many, or enjoyed it as much, as i do now.

Yeah, have to agree with that. Colours look gorgeous.

^ this is arrant nonsense

How does Thickness look on ipad? How does Little Nemo look on ipad? How does Kramer's 7 look on ipad? How does Ganges look on ipad? How does Prince Valiant look on ipad? How does Tel-Tales look on ipad?

Sic otm

Wouldnt know, havent read any of them, so i guess the jokes on you!

In terms of art reproduction or ideal format or any number of other things, probably not. In terms of convenience, tablets + digital scans are to comics what iPods + mp3s were to music a decade back: a revolutionary dream come true.

Much like music circa late 90s, if the prices were a bit lower on GNs, I'd probably buy a lot more. Feels dumb that most graphic novels are the same price as the American Library complete Joan Didion.

(i.e they are super objects but not super-value-for-money)

Fidelity aside, you could put any kind of recorded music on an iPod and listen to it. There are only a couple of formats of comics that you can even read a page of on an iPad.

I've read thousands of comics on my home computer, zero on my ipad.

xp but if you go to a bookstore now, over half the books they sell are pretty much in that mini-format now anyway

i've read thousands of comic on my ipad. it's a good way to do story-driven comics.

iPad pretty great for floppies as long as they aren't too text heavy or have many splash pages. Even once you get to From Hell page size there are issues without zooming in (see also letterer styles).

I got a couple of Jason Aaron's Wolverine and the X-Men trades from the library and, I dunno, I think X-Men is for me what Legion of Super-Heroes is for other people. I can kind of get the gist of it, but there are just too many characters I don't have a clue about to work up any degree of caring. Really enjoyed the Roger Langridge Thor book and the Mark Waid Daredevil.
What else is going on (Hawkeye, I know about) that is of similar quality to those?

Where do you all get your iPad comics from? Last I bothered to check everything was more or less through Comixology, but I've seen Ta-Nehisi Coates talking about Marvel Unlimited, which sounds like a nightmare/dream.

If you have an iPad, marvel unlimited is good and there is no risk, especially with the occasional promo deal. Subscribe for a month, read all kinds of not-quite-fresh comics, and enjoy.

The other “curse” of popularity was the amount of fanmail I started to receive. Now, normally when someone is as “successful” and popular as these characters had made me, they would be able to afford to hire assistants to help with the work and the correspondence. But my pay was not even quite enough for one person much less several. And again, as a fan myself, I certainly could not allow myself to simply ignore the loads of fanmail as I am told the more sane authors or artists can do. So I always answered 100% of my fanmail myself with personal replies. I would send free drawings if the fan requested one, and I would only hope that the fan would not request a full-color drawing, because then I would send a full-color drawing. I was taking perhaps a day off per week, or a week off between story projects, just to answer fanmail. Any of you who wrote to me in those days can attest to the truth of this.

tbh, at this point i have to have paid well into the six figures for the collection i have

I hear you.

28 vols of The Spirit Archives
14 vols of Dick Tracy
12 vols of Prince Valiant
Complete Trigan Empire
Complete Storm
...

I'm stopping before that gets too depressing

I don't have anywhere near a six-figure collection - or even a "collection" really, as I give most of my comics to charity shops when I'm done with them.

But - I have gone digital only too - at least for weekly floppies. Same here for me - it's totally natural. And I think some comics are actually improved by the frame-by-frame thing on Comixology - it's given me a new appreciation for artists who bother to get the storytelling right. (Marquez, the guy on the new Iron Man series, is fantastic read that way. I imagine it would be great for, like Cameron Stewart or the Hernandez bros too.)

Also! Rosa sounds like a mensch.

the idea of saying Xaime would be improved by not having his panel-to-panel storytelling available to the reader is horrifying

Ha, okay, let's substitute improved for "inferior but more interesting and delightful than you might think". Sanctity of the page and etcetera. What I like about it, though, is that it forces me (ymmv) to study individual panels more closely in a way I don't over a whole page - the wit of a specific set of panel choices and transitions over a sequence becomes clearer. Not a substitute - just interesting.

Oh man I just read that don Rosa farewell ;_;

Comics break people. They break people!

Annie Mok and Sophia Foster-Dimino's wordless and frameless comic about trauma and processing, "Swim Thru Fire," is pretty devastating and can now be read in full: http://hazlitt.net/authors/sophia-foster-dimino

(Well, wordless in the later installments at least.)

Also, on a VIDA-ish note, Kim O'Connor on the gender dynamics of alternative presses:

The numbers are pretty abysmal. As recently as 2011, D&Q’s list was just 7 percent women—two of the 27 titles they published that year. For an 11-year stretch from 1996 to 2006, they published no more than four women per year. For five of those years (2000-2004), they published just one woman. In 2005, they published zero.
Sadly, in the landscape of comics publishing, that’s enough to put D&Q ahead of pretty much everyone else, at least among publishers of similar or larger size. To return to my pal's original finding: at Drawn & Quarterly, one cartoonist in every four is a woman. That's certainly a far better showing than we get from the Big Two, where that number is something like one in six or seven (a ratio that becomes way worse if you consider their catalogs holistically instead of as a present-day snapshot). And if I may hazard a guess, it is also a much better showing than D&Q’s alt-comics counterpart, Fantagraphics. By a lot.
On the other hand, one in four is still very poor—and it's hardly a "list that tends to be 50-50, male-female." That anyone would perceive an average of 25 percent as a history of equality speaks to the extent of the problem of gender disparity in comics.

http://www.comicsandcola.com/2015/12/on-drawn-quarterlys-feminist-legacy.html

Somebody needs to make the 2016 thread and I'm not brave enough

Rolling SERIOUS GRAPHIC LITERATURE Thread for Comics in 2016