The older I get, the more I'm inclined to like and enjoy Gaiman, even though he's done a lot of rubbish. I think what I like is, he treats almost every project like a potential starting point for a new reader (there's that "good reader" thing) again. But at the same time, he's not a gateway drug and he's not a "comics for people who don't like comics" writer.
None of the people I know who enjoy his work are twee goths, either.
But yes, a lot of it is bad. My family love Neverwhere and I can't bring myself to talk to them about it.
― Chuck_Tatum, Wednesday, 21 November 2018 16:50 (five years ago) link
Also interested to see what he comes up with showrunning Good Omens. It could be the ultimate in Gaimanny indulgence, or it could be really good, or it could be both!
― Chuck_Tatum, Wednesday, 21 November 2018 16:52 (five years ago) link
Again, just to be clear, I do actually enjoy at least some of Gaiman's work, but, as is the case with probably 95% of what I enjoy, I don't think 'enjoyment' alone is enough to elevate a work to the status of 'genuinely good'. I also enjoy the film Robot Monster.
― 'Rock Me (I'm a Dais)' (Old Lunch), Wednesday, 21 November 2018 16:59 (five years ago) link
it'd be interesting to see whom collaborating artists consider the best writers. if gaiman turned in incoherent outlines scribbled on the back of rolling papers we'd be none the wiser.
― Philip Nunez, Wednesday, 21 November 2018 18:11 (five years ago) link
on the creator/artist front, i will say that jaime and huizenga come to mind immediately
― Fuck the NRA (ulysses), Tuesday, November 20, 2018 8:19 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
Horrocks, let's not forget
― valet doberman (Jon not Jon), Wednesday, 21 November 2018 18:30 (five years ago) link
Plots/Structures/Characters/Settings etc in Asterix all come from Goscinny/Uderzo.
also, the comic. Bell and Hockridge wrote some jokes over the top of a comic that already existed.
Herge said similarly complimentary things about the English language versions of the Tintin albums (translated by Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner) but you can be damm sure he wouldn't have recognised them or credited them as writers.
Herge didn't even credit the artists!
"how can you stay mad at someone for forty years for playing sax for a while because they liked Art Pepper, and then playing some quotes from Miles on a few gigs in 1985?"
LOL nice try sic, but c'mon - Giffen profited from the work and imagination of another artist without any kind of acknowledgement (until he was caught swiping panel after panel after panel) - really don't see the difference between him and Stan Lee here.
I'm not familiar with his work before he started half-writing it, but my impression of the Kirby period is that he was influenced by Kirby body language (certainly he was the only Marvel artist ever to be so) and stuck Starlin faces over the top, not that he was ripping Kirby panels.
And the Munoz rips sit extremely different in context 33 years later, having seen many instances of Giffen first taking on another style and then adapting it to his own ends (eg keeping shadowy faces through a couple of styles after Munoz, taking on a fine-lined Maguire-esque approach to faces on the Invasion fill-in, then rebuilding his entire structure of body language around those blocky heads by The Magic Wars [and then dumping that style and inventing an entirely new one in two months before 5YL!]). Out of hundreds of panels he did in the Munoz style, directly quoting 8 or so of them doesn't bother me overmuch. It's 1985! Half the best records out are made of huge actual samples of other records. Plus at the same time he was working on ways of arranging panels and panel-to-panel flow that had nothing to do with Munoz' storytelling.
Denying it once was nagl, fessing up immediately after that and continuing to give shine to Munoz and apologies to the entire world for decades afterwards has surely earned him your slightly-reduced enmity.
― Bing The Mighty Seat (sic), Thursday, 22 November 2018 19:28 (five years ago) link
I wish the Magic Wars stuff was collected, doesn’t seem to be(?); so I haven’t read the end of the Baxter series (and the end of “true”/classic LSH, as far as I’m concerned).
― my guitar friend wants his money (morrisp), Thursday, 22 November 2018 22:33 (five years ago) link
(5YL also hasn’t been collected, and probably should be, for historical interest — but I don’t think it’s aged very well.)
― my guitar friend wants his money (morrisp), Thursday, 22 November 2018 22:37 (five years ago) link
All of it's on Comixology.
― EZ Snappin, Thursday, 22 November 2018 22:49 (five years ago) link
Cool, maybe I’ll check it out next time they run a promotion or something.
― my guitar friend wants his money (morrisp), Thursday, 22 November 2018 23:48 (five years ago) link
I think they're $1.99 an issue. I've never seen them on sale but fingers crossed.
― EZ Snappin, Friday, 23 November 2018 00:43 (five years ago) link
Huh, that does seem more economical (on a per-issue basis) than the collections themselves, when they exist (I think the Magic Wars arc itself is only 4 issues, but there are a lot of issues prior to that I’d like to go through).
― my guitar friend wants his money (morrisp), Friday, 23 November 2018 01:37 (five years ago) link
afaik only the first 5 out of 63 issues of the Baxter series were collected? It’s probably still cheaper to buy on paper than digital even today (I bought the Tales Of newsprint reprints in the ‘90s when I caught up during 5YL)There are for sure some reallly fallow periods when Giffen’s not on the book, but it all pays off (yeah, he’s back a year or so before Magic Wars) & Levitz is good at keeping the soap churning.
― Bing The Mighty Seat (sic), Friday, 23 November 2018 08:51 (five years ago) link
afaik only the first 5 out of 63 issues of the Baxter series were collected? I thought so too, but searched last night and apparently there’s one more (collecting #7-12): http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Legion_of_Super-Heroes:_The_More_Things_ChangeI think Giffen’s mostly absent from that arc.That still leaves 51 issues of the Baxter series floating out there; maybe I will try to track them down on paper (my preferred format); make it a 2019 hobby.
― my guitar friend wants his money (morrisp), Friday, 23 November 2018 15:21 (five years ago) link
Bell and Hockridge wrote some jokes over the top of a comic that already existed.
that is a pretty insulting summary of their work!
― Chuck_Tatum, Friday, 23 November 2018 16:18 (five years ago) link
counterpoint: it is mindbogglingly insulting to Goscinny et Uderzo to suggest otherwise
― Bing The Mighty Seat (sic), Friday, 23 November 2018 16:42 (five years ago) link
I'm going to put aside the matter of Thief Giffen as I don't think sic and I are ever going to reach much accord on that and agree very strongly with him on this. Chuck, you seem to be claiming writerly privileges for Bell and Hockridge that would not be given to any other translator, afaik. I mean, don't all translators create their own approximations and variations of linguistic puns, local jokes, character names etc - that's the job of a translator!
― Ward Fowler, Friday, 23 November 2018 16:58 (five years ago) link
is "genuine writer" supposed to mean they transcend the limitations of the piddling, juvenile medium, or something?
― my guitar friend wants his money (morrisp), Monday, November 19, 2018 11:35 PM
It mostly means that many comic fans are untrustworthy and "amazing" tends to mean just being distinctly better than most comics you read. I don't trust my memory of what I thought was amazing years ago because my standards were mostly based on reading certain kinds of comics.
As a teenage comic fan I liked Bruce Jones a great deal and at his best he was possibly very good, but a lot of that affection probably came from subject matter, approach, that he worked mostly with the best artists (he was good at drawing too) and the fact that he wasn't in the harrowingly shit cringetastic "hip" mode of a lot of the comics that were popular in the 00s. Bruce Jones wrote quite a number of novels so I'm curious to try them someday.
There were quite a few writers I liked just because they gave me a break from things I didn't like. Sometimes it's like how I feel about Jean Rollin in films: I respect him for what he's NOT doing more than thinking he's particularly great. Will Eisner is kinda like this, obviously great drawings/compositions and his writing goes down easy, but the tales are instantly forgettable.
I used to hear a lot of respect for writers like John Stanley and Carl Barks but it might be a similar thing. No idea, I don't think I've ever read Barks.
I've seen quite a few discerning readers rate Kazuo Koike as some sort of genius, probably uneven.
Chuck Tatum says "But at the same time, he's not a gateway drug and he's not a "comics for people who don't like comics" writer."
I thought Gaiman a textbook example of both. There's lots of people who only seem to read Sandman and the related titles.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Friday, 23 November 2018 18:57 (five years ago) link
I'm pretty sure there's plenty of writers of books and comics who have only done very good work, but they tend to have smaller bodies of work.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Friday, 23 November 2018 18:59 (five years ago) link
john stanley was a genuinely great writer who wrote terrific dialogue and clever plots, he is def worth checking out
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Friday, 23 November 2018 19:49 (five years ago) link
Some people also really rate Hector German Oesterheld but I haven't sampled yet.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Friday, 23 November 2018 20:12 (five years ago) link
Thief Giffen
:D :D
I think Giffen’s mostly absent from that arc.
yeah, he dropped out as penciller after issue #2, and altogether after #5
--
Chuck, try this as an illustration of why I'm disagreeing: with any English-language volume of Asterix, take away any of the captions that refer to the scenario, plot or setting; remove any of the dialogue that illustrates or depends upon characterisation, or that advances the plot; then get rid of all of the drawings, the colour, and the panel borders. What's left is a comic originated by Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge.
― Bing The Mighty Seat (sic), Friday, 23 November 2018 21:50 (five years ago) link
the good funny bits
― mark s, Friday, 23 November 2018 22:07 (five years ago) link
https://srikrishnadas.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/obelix-crazy_thumb.jpg?w=166&h=149
― Ward Fowler, Friday, 23 November 2018 22:21 (five years ago) link
Will Eisner is kinda like this, obviously great drawings/compositions and his writing goes down easy, but the tales are instantly forgettable
loads of the late 1940s Spirits he wrote himself are absolutely crackerjack on "plotting or concepts. " nearly everything after the 1950s is absolute waste in both writing and compositions.
I thought Gaiman a textbook example of both
yah
Now that RAG has clarified that he does mean cartoonists, not just writer-only ppl, some genuinely good writers:
George HerrimanFrank KingElzie SegarWalt KellyCharles SchulzBill WattersonGeorges RemiRene GoscinnyHarvey KurtzmanJohn StanleyCarl BarksJules FeifferRobert CrumbBill GriffithShary FlennikenDori SedaJustin GreenClaire BretecherPhoebe GloecknerGahan WilsonTove JanssonGregory GallantJaime HernandezGilbert HernandezFranklin C. WareChester BrownJim WoodringPeter BaggeDan ClowesEddie CampbellRoger LangridgeSimon HanselmannKevin HuizengaDash ShawJacques TardiTim HensleyLewis TrondheimHo Che AndersonSammy HarkhamMichael DeForgeLisa HanawaltJason ShigaPeter BlegvadEmily CarrollKate BeatonJulia GforerAlan MooreOlivia Jaimes
― Bing The Mighty Seat (sic), Friday, 23 November 2018 22:35 (five years ago) link
yeah, he dropped out as penciller after issue #2, and altogether after #5Looks like he did a little penciling in #11: http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Legion_of_Super-Heroes_Vol_3_11I ordered a “Like New” copy of this collection for $15, looking forward to it.
― my guitar friend wants his money (morrisp), Friday, 23 November 2018 22:40 (five years ago) link
(I actually have #10 on my shelf already; it’s one of the few LSH comics I picked up as a kid: http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Legion_of_Super-Heroes_Vol_3_10)
― my guitar friend wants his money (morrisp), Friday, 23 November 2018 22:49 (five years ago) link
Reading up a little more, perhaps I should just stop at #18 (the Crisis crossover issue),as I understand that everything afterward is now apocryphal/non-canon... (lol)
― my guitar friend wants his money (morrisp), Saturday, 24 November 2018 04:31 (five years ago) link
pretty sure I have linked morris to this before but if you want to record your readalong: The Legion Of Super Heroes: Classic Or Dud?
― Bing The Mighty Seat (sic), Saturday, 24 November 2018 19:17 (five years ago) link
Thanks, sic (and sorry to sidetrack yet another thread with Cliff Claven–esque LSH ramblings, if that’s what I’ve done here...)
― my guitar friend wants his money (morrisp), Sunday, 25 November 2018 05:02 (five years ago) link
I mean, don't all translators create their own approximations and variations of linguistic puns, local jokes, character names etc - that's the job of a translator!
This is fair! I guess what makes me want to stand up for Bell is that the jokes and puns in her translations are (in UK culture, at least) as iconic and essential contributions to the book as Goscinny's or Uderzo's - although, of course, as Sic notes, her contribution wouldn't exist without their previous work.
That's not to take away from G & U, more to acknowledge that a simple "translated by..." note never seems like enough recognition to me.
― Chuck_Tatum, Monday, 26 November 2018 15:33 (five years ago) link
I think we're all agreed that Bell and Hockridge were exceptional translators, and that Asterix was an especially tricky text to translate well.
But when I was a kid, getting into Asterix, most of the puns - and all of the classical allusions - soared right over my head. I was responding to the slapstick, the characters, the energy of Uderzo's drawing, the structural precision of Goscinny's plotting.
I think it's interesting that all of that witty wordplay is absent from Goscinny's Lucky Luke scripts - apparently because Morris simply didn't care for puns.
― Ward Fowler, Tuesday, 27 November 2018 09:53 (five years ago) link
Speaking of Munoz, what about Sampayo as a writer?
Yeah, I got one of the old Another Rainbow sets a decade ago and was amazed at how good he was, especially since the structure was so formulaic. I would roll my eyes every time there was yet another "Lulu babysits Alvin and tells him a tale" story and then by the end of each one be like "Wow, that was great!"
Iou Kuroda is a good writer, but his best work (the eggplant themed Nasu series, and his short stories) hasn't been officially translated.
Agree on Trondheim. Lapinot has great dialogue and situations. Burned out on Sfar (he's reeeeeally hated by a lot of French readers on an almost-visceral level - not sure why).
Late 70s-early 80s Bill Griffith is incredible - the Rousseau bio, the Claude Funston wet dreams one, Griffith's Observatory. Peter Bagge once said that Griffith may have been the best cartoonist on earth in that period and I'm tempted to agree.
Yoshiharu Tsuge of course.
― gjoon1, Saturday, 1 December 2018 00:10 (five years ago) link
I quite like that early 60s John Stanley horror story about the hand coming from the sewers, it was allowed to be a bit grimmer because the publisher (Dell?) was one of the few to escape the comics code. I never seen any of those other stories from that era. I think he only did a few of them.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Saturday, 1 December 2018 13:35 (five years ago) link
Bagge otm re pre-syndicate Griffith
― valet doberman (Jon not Jon), Saturday, 1 December 2018 17:24 (five years ago) link
just finished the most recent issues of Piskor's X-Men recap (which is fun in its silliness) and man this really cemented my opinion upthread re: Claremont and his terrible ideas. Had forgotten the whole yakuza/ninja plotline but you can throw that on the trash heap with the Alien ripoff, space pirates, 18thc. costume drama, etc.
― Οὖτις, Monday, 3 December 2018 23:36 (five years ago) link
Hard mild-mannered disagree
― Chuck_Tatum, Tuesday, 4 December 2018 23:58 (five years ago) link
I have no good reasons but I love the Alien ripoff and also the idea that 80s teenagers spent the decade following Claremont's wackadoo idiosyncrasies and fetishes like they were the Talmud or something
― Chuck_Tatum, Wednesday, 5 December 2018 00:00 (five years ago) link