Search: genuinely good comic writers

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