Rolling SERIOUS GRAPHIC LITERATURE Thread for Comics in 2016

lol, the bolding is hopping threads!
I love Ellen Forney, Marbles is mannered but funny and sexy and well told and well cartooned imo. Lynda Barry is the Funk Lord of The USA and 100 Demons is as good as anything she does which is to say it will save your soul. If you're not reading her teaching blog, you should be:
http://thenearsightedmonkey.tumblr.com/

Other graphic pathologies that come to mind
Our Cancer Year by Harvey Pekar and Joyce Brabner
http://www.momscancer.com/
Can't we Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast
Special Exits by Joyce Farmer
With the Light by Keiko Tobe <-Autism manga

More here:
http://www.graphicmedicine.org

Lol I figured that because you were here I would demonstrate my seriousness about bold highlights. (Still managed to miss one...)

YES thank you so much for these! I've read and loved the Harvey Pekar and Joyce Farmer, but I'll definitely check out the others when my supply runs out. And that blog. Will forward my impressions as they arrive...

Other graphic pathologies that come to mind

Julia Wertz' "The Infinite Wait"

Oh and for anyone in London, I just found out about this taking place between February and May, which is very exciting: http://www.houseofillustration.org.uk/whats-on/current-future-events/comix-creatrix-100-women-making-comics

xp

This looks fantastic, thank you.

Wertz is great, I love her. and it's been awesome to see her grow from someone who barely draws stick figures into an artist with an accomplished, refined style.

Psychiatric Tales by Darryl Cunningham, "My Mother, The Schizophrenic" by Chester Brown.

tangentangent, you should read David B.'s Epileptic if you haven't already.

Psychiatric Tales was great, though I wanted it to be about 400 pages longer. I'll add the Chester Brown one to my list, for sure.

Epileptic is an absolute triumph of the form imo. Its unforgiving frankness brings to mind Bukowski at his most incisive. And all that abstracted visualisation of despair... Amazing.

http://i.imgur.com/2XfFC1C.jpg

There is just so much going on here... Felt it necessary to post.

For graphopathographies, see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stitches_%28book%29 about the author's childhood cancer and awful parents

Love Ellen Forney, especially Monkey Food.

Ellen Forney is the only famous person I've ever approached in "public" and asked if I can send a photo to a friend (back in Australia, who reads her)

Some other comic pathologies:

Raina Telgemeier - Smile (orthodontal issues, haven't read this one but it's gotten some good reviews)
Marian Churchland - Beast (depression, or at least I think it's about that, it's heavily symbolic)
Brian Fries - Mom's Cancer (the title says it all; this is done in a super simplistic style, but it's really moving)
Sophie Campbell (this published as Ross Campbell before she changed her name) - Water Baby (amputation)

Cosign the praise for Marbles, but I gotta admit I didn't quite get The House That Groaned, I think I'm just too dense for comics like that.

Also, that top 100 looks pretty comprehensive, but I thinks it's weird they completely ignored the comics of Julia Wertz (Drinking at the Movies, Infinite Wait) and Faith Erin Hicks (Superhero Girl, Friends with Boys, Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong), I thought they were fairly acclaimed?

No Alex + Ada either, but maybe that's because it was finished in 2015, so it was partially outside the scope of the list?

John Porcellino - Hospital Suite

Almost too relatable for me to bear tbh but superb

Weird to realize how many of these I've read, guess I am attracted to these kinds of stories
Support the recs on Stiches, Porcellino, Epileptic

Our Cancer Year, Psychiatric Tales also good

hideo azuma's 'Disappearance Diary' is one of the best books that i never hear anyone talk about. it's about the author's alcoholism.
http://www.amazon.com/Disappearance-Diary-Hideo-Azuma/dp/8496427420
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/69/Disappearance_Diary_by_Hideo_Azuma.png

I am literally going to buy all of these tomorrow. If I can find them.

one more for you regarding PTSD and life and grandiosity
http://www.fantagraphics.com/soldiersheart/
highly highly recommended; carol tyler is one of the greats

http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/cr_holiday_interview_10_carol_tyler/
http://www.tcj.com/reviews/soldiers-heart-the-campaign-to-understand-my-wwii-veteran-father-a-daughters-memoir/

put in for You'll Never Know vol. 1 at my local library, i gather that book is the collected trilogy

btw love that cover for Disappearance Diary, sold

yes, 'soldier's heart' is the collected three volume set of Tyler's masterwork.

disappearance diary is an autobiographical story of a man who becomes a popular manga artist, cracks under the pressure of the work and alcoholism, then drops out entirely and opts into homelessness. Following an interim period of physical labor, he cleaned up and created a cartoony silly story of his deep depression. it's pretty special.

http://gwillowwilson.com/post/138315140383/art-and-money

Maybe should have gone in a marvel thread but I don't follow those, so here it sits.

New 3-D Frank book is out (my copy is on the way, will report back). It sounds like the 3-D has been very meticulously finessed to suit Woodring's art. So psyched.

did everyone hear about the latest angouleme shitshow?
http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2016/01/angouleme-organizers-criticized-for-presenting-fake-awards/

Saw the 3D Frank book screened as a "movie" at Short Run last year. Unsurprisingly, the Unifactor and Woodring's linework are both excellently suited to 3D.

Alvin Buenaventura has passed away. I'm shocked by this.

That's sad; he was a powerful voice and young.

Oh good, Chester Brown is doing ANOTHER graphic novel about how waaaaay cool prostitution is, this time all about how the Bible is actually all pro-prostitute and every woman in it was actually a prostitute if you just read it right

He really is a creepy little shit

You've read it?

Toronto (or at least parts of it) has a pretty respectful culture towards sex work and the rights of sex workers. That's a good thing and I don't think Brown is creepy for putting together two books about it. He is plenty odd for other reason though.

I've never really delved into Brown's work but this single line from his wiki bio kind of made me put my head in my hands

Brown began to question traditional male–female relations after he had read Cerebus #186, which contained an essay attacking the modern state of such relations.

ed the happy clown is like next level genius, all of which said genius was completely flushed down the toilet when he became obsessed with sex workers and started making comics about it.

Toronto (or at least parts of it) has a pretty respectful culture towards sex work and the rights of sex workers.

I have no problem with that, and I do a fair bit of work with sex workers and their advocates myself, it's just the sleazy men who use them and then try to justify it all at great length with reddit-style logic that shits me

I own "Paying For It" and think it's a pretty great piece of work - very odd, occasionally funny, def unusual. The art is great. The more polemical appendices (which clearly owe a debt to Sim on some level) v much less so. Apart from Seth's riposte, which is (as usual) hilarious.

That being said, if this "graphic novel about how waaaaay cool prostitution is, this time all about how the Bible is actually all pro-prostitute and every woman in it was actually a prostitute if you just read it right" description is at all accurate I don't think I'm going to be much interested in reading it, it just sounds gross. Chester seems to have fallen into this weird developmental predicament where he figured out he couldn't function within society's traditional framework, found a way out of that, and now is on a mission to prove that his solution is actually a solution for everybody, if only we all weren't such sheeple. He resents his initial alienation, and wants to connect with others by making them go through the same process he went through - locate their unhappiness within failed sexual relations, discover how awesome prostitution is, attempt to reshape society accordingly. And you can see him grappling, in his own sort of intellectually honest way, with countervailing points of view but at bottom he seems to not grasp that there's *not* a single path to happiness for everyone, there are such things as successful non-transactional monogamous sexual relationships, people's unhappiness/loneliness is not going to be magically washed away by everyone engaging in prostitution. I don't really give a fuck what he does, I'm fine with legalizing sex work and affording legal and financial protection to prostitutes, but the proselitizing about it as some sort of social panacea is just presumptuous and creepy.

Also Ed the Happy Clown is a masterpiece, everyone knows that right? cool

of seth, chester brown, and joe matt, i wouldn't have predicted chester brown ending up the "sleazy one"

ha I am v curious to read Joe's next book whenever it finally comes out

his whole porn obsession/guilt trip seems so pre-internet/90s these days

I'm a little disappointed with the 3-D Frank book inasmuch as I thought it was an actual new story instead of just isolated images, but Woodring is one of the few comics artists whose art books I buy so I'm not actually disappointed. And the 3-D is without a doubt the best anaglyph 3-D I've ever seen. The paper stock is thick enough that you can tap the back of a page and watch all of the individual elements in the image wobble briefly. It's pretty impressive.

Booming post shakey. It's deeply depressing to me that I can barely muster up the will to read someone who was once so incredibly electrifying to me. Also, this here is a v particular pitfall for independent cartoonists, with our decades of self enforced alone time and delight in total control of our built worlds:

Chester seems to have fallen into this weird developmental predicament where he figured out he couldn't function within society's traditional framework, found a way out of that, and now is on a mission to prove that his solution is actually a solution for everybody, if only we all weren't such sheeple.

applies to Sim, Ditko, probably a bunch of others

Great post upthread Shakey.

I'm not sure about the whole "sex work is fine but speaking about it is gross" idea. Why not? There's no pressure to agree.

I think Brown has a long, long way to go before he hits Sim/Ditko levels of oddballery.

Great post upthread Shakey.

OTM

Why not? There's no pressure to agree.

it's p clear Chet wants to convert readers to his POV. "Paying For It" succeeds in spite of that polemical undertone. idk if this next book will pull off the same trick.

I'd say it succeeds *because* of the awkward polemical tone - I mean, I didn't like it either, but it took me to a weird emotional space as a reader, which felt like it was more interesting than if he'd made a better effort to be even-handed.

Obviously at the extreme end of that, my argument is nonsense, because you end up with something like Reads in Cerebus, where my weird emotional space was "Please shut the fuck up, Dave."

Paying For It is trying to convince, but not convert, imo.

ha I am v curious to read Joe's next book whenever it finally comes out

This is never happening, the 13 sort-of-finished pages in D&Q25 are all he's done in a decade.

oh you cynic

I liked those 13 pages

dope

Just spotted the Harvey Horrors Best Of vol1 today and bought it. It's a pretty good selection, some of Rudy Palais' best work.
I'm still mulling over getting the new Ditko art book, it's really damn expensive and I've seen most of the stuff.

Saw Harvey Kurtzman's Trump. Wonder if they chosen a cover character that could glacingly be mistaken for a cartoon Donald.

Christmas swag:

Agony by Mark Beyer (from that interesting new New York Review Comics line) - sold my original copy in a previous purge, glad to have one of my fave ever comics back. It would be a good game to play find the bleakest/funniest dialogue balloon (flipping through, "There are worse things than being in prison. Just being alive is worse. Maybe if we're really lucky someone will strangle us in our sleep!" is def a strong contender)

Young Romance: The Best of Simon & Kirby's Romance Comics - really adore Joe Simon's inking over Kirby's pencils, he adds such a beautiful rough texture to things

The Arab of the Future 78-84 by Riad Sattouf - possibly an ILC recommendation, somewhere? Anyway, looks great on a quick (so far) skim - cute cartooning and I really like the limited palette colouring

Messages in a Bottle: Comic Book Stories by B. Krigstein - this passed me by at the time (it came out in 2013), but a v solid selection of B Krig's greatest hits and a few rare b-sides etc. Still not totally sold on the Marie Severin re-colouring on the EC stories (first used by Fantagraphics for their B.Krigstein Comics hardcover volume, also put together by Greg Sadowski, and which duplicates quite a lot but not all of the contents here), but it's not disastrous and prob works better in this slightly smaller paperback format. Sadowski's notes are excellent, and very sad in a way - so many missed opportunities.

Simon is my favourite Kirby inker for the reasons you mention.

Another thing I got was the Alexander Goudie illustrated Tam O' Shanter by Robert Burns. It's laid out just like a graphic novel, but some images are just sketches. The large paintings are really impressive.

Got Hip Hop Family Tree vol 4 and Charles Burns' Last Look for Christmas. Both excellent.

Are there any good Philippe Caza art books? Seems like he's been left behind his peers a bit.

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Rolling Comic Book thread 2017