Search: genuinely good comic writers

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.

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_Change

I 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.

Bell and Hockridge wrote some jokes over the top of a comic that already existed.

that is a pretty insulting summary of their work!

counterpoint: it is mindbogglingly insulting to Goscinny et Uderzo to suggest otherwise

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!

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.

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.

john stanley was a genuinely great writer who wrote terrific dialogue and clever plots, he is def worth checking out

Some people also really rate Hector German Oesterheld but I haven't sampled yet.

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.

the good funny bits

https://srikrishnadas.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/obelix-crazy_thumb.jpg?w=166&h=149

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 Herriman
Frank King
Elzie Segar
Walt Kelly
Charles Schulz
Bill Watterson
Georges Remi
Rene Goscinny
Harvey Kurtzman
John Stanley
Carl Barks
Jules Feiffer
Robert Crumb
Bill Griffith
Shary Flenniken
Dori Seda
Justin Green
Claire Bretecher
Phoebe Gloeckner
Gahan Wilson
Tove Jansson
Gregory Gallant
Jaime Hernandez
Gilbert Hernandez
Franklin C. Ware
Chester Brown
Jim Woodring
Peter Bagge
Dan Clowes
Eddie Campbell
Roger Langridge
Simon Hanselmann
Kevin Huizenga
Dash Shaw
Jacques Tardi
Tim Hensley
Lewis Trondheim
Ho Che Anderson
Sammy Harkham
Michael DeForge
Lisa Hanawalt
Jason Shiga
Peter Blegvad
Emily Carroll
Kate Beaton
Julia Gforer
Alan Moore
Olivia Jaimes

yeah, he dropped out as penciller after issue #2, and altogether after #5

Looks like he did a little penciling in #11: http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Legion_of_Super-Heroes_Vol_3_11

I ordered a “Like New” copy of this collection for $15, looking forward to it.

(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)

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)

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?

Thanks, sic (and sorry to sidetrack yet another thread with Cliff Claven–esque LSH ramblings, if that’s what I’ve done here...)

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.

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.

Speaking of Munoz, what about Sampayo as a writer?

john stanley was a genuinely great writer who wrote terrific dialogue and clever plots, he is def worth checking out

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.

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.

Bagge otm re pre-syndicate Griffith

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.

Hard mild-mannered disagree

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