Rolling 2015 Reading Funnybooks Thread

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.

Yeah, Marvel Unlimited is terrific value. I pretty much only read DC comics up till 4-5 years ago, and it's been really fun catching up (especially with the Sean Howe book on the side).

Wolverine and the X-Men is pretty dependent on Grant Morrison's (better) run on New X-Men - I would go back and read that, if you haven't -- it's almost as good as his JLA run.

Aaron's run on Thor has been my favourite Marvel Now title outside of Hawkeye/Daredevil. The Kid Loki comics obviously. And Aaron did a good, very silly, Spider-Man/Wolverine mini-series a few years ago - they're all on MU.

This is useful too.

my ipad experience for comics has been best served by Marvel Unlimited, humble bundle's book bundles, comixology sales, the occasional torrent of OOP material, http://digitalcomicmuseum.com and a handful of Japanese and European scanlation sites

Read an 8th of Tezuka's Dororo and then just flipped through it and read whichever pages took my fancy. There's a bunch of really good ideas in there, many of them I've seen done by other later people and I'm not sure if that's because they're Japanese myths or Tezuka's ideas.
Some of it's pretty sad, even on skimming.

the all-star superman run was gooooorgeous on a tablet

also read saga partly on tablet y because it look intersting

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.

haha totally feel you on this

I've been off the X-Teat for a little over three years now (I'll catch up eventually), but despite having read 90+% of everything X-related up to that point, I'll occasionally look at a newer X-book and be all, 'I have no idea who these people or what is going on.' So I sympathize.

http://www.upress.state.ms.us/books/1705

John A Lent's book Asian Comics covers all of asia except from japan. 400 pages. Don't know if I'll ever see this in the shops but I'd like to flip through it.

Just to expand a bit on my no-ipad post, I'm all for viewing comics in pixels — not instead of ink on paper, but in addition to — I just want to maximize the experience with my big-ass monitors at home. I have plenty of no-pic prose on the ipad to keep me busy until I get back to the house.

Yeah, it's like my brain can't keep hold of any X characters that weren't in the Claremont/Byrne or Grant Morrison eras, or, at a pinch, the movies. What is a Shatterstar or Gambit anyway? If they don't have good solo stories, I don't feel like I'm missing out.

LOSH is even harder because they're mostly all jockish white/orange dudes in similar costumes!

lol true. those LOSH jumpsuits tend to make a lot of them indistiguishable; probably why I tend to remember Karate Kid and Matter Eater Lad more than the rest.
-Shatterstar is a standard Rob Liefield burly dude with swords instead of guns, but later, gay?
-Gambit is your classical super-accented Southerner created by Claremont to compliment Rogue with a dash of 90s coolness and popped collar design. definitely key to early 90s X-Nostalgia

otm, they hide gambit on tertiary books now because he's so 90s

Not that I disagree, but he had a solo title (his third, I believe?) as recently as two years ago and is about to be featured in a solo film starring Channing Tatum.

yeah, Channing Tatum of 21 Jump Street and GI Joe fame! so 90s.

well, 80s in the latter case but you get my drift

Does Gambit have to be so 90s? X-Men must be the most constantly redesigned characters I can think of.

I think Bouncing Boy is the most memorable Legion member.

besides the horseman makeover where he got darker skin, he's pretty much had the same design for 20 years, no?