Rolling Comic Books 2019

the harder hit will come when AT&T close down the publishing division altogether, and every other publisher collapses bcz every english-language comic shop in the world goes under

I think I've read maybe a couple issues of Lucifer and none of the others?

I must be the notional reader that only shows up for material when it's a title called Sandman that ostensibly stars that character

I'm not a con person but it is perhaps interesting to note that DC will not have a discrete booth at this year's SDCC but will rather be folded into a broader WB experience. I will not be surprised at all when that entire division is rebranded WB Comics.

they'd probably brand it in some way

branding is how you do your market segmentation, after all

I read a few things by writers whose work I'd liked previously on non-work-for-hire stuff that they drew themselves, eg Terry LaBan, Bryan Talbot, Ed Brubaker, Jill Thompson, Bill Willingham, Al Davison (who did get to draw his issues). The Jeff Nicholson issue Andrew points out was essentially a colour riff on Through The Habitrails.

I wasn't meaning Sandman spinoffs, but really I didn't know if anyone else had continued the character right after in a reboot.

But I did know they didn't just get John Byrne or Bill Mantlo to keep the title running.

They really tried to get Mantlo - in the end, solidarity with Bob Budiansky was the sole reason that he declined.

in case you didn't know, 22 issues in and the dark horse adaptation of gaiman's American Gods with P Craig Russell and Scott Hampton remains one of the best comics on the mainstream racks

via tcj: https://files.constantcontact.com/7c08b62b401/857e5ff9-cc24-4b82-93bd-4687ce4f2a1a.pdf

Dave Lapham put out a 24 page pdf of an unpublished Batman comic he did with Bill Sienkiewicz. “DC had long ago dumped the files off of their server, and Bill had sold the art and later had a hard drive meltdown. The art to this was effectively gone. All I have (and what you’ll see here) are a set of smaller-than-comic-sized printouts from low-res scans.”

Oh, so frustrating! I didn’t know that. What a great run though - with or without Sienkiewicz.

That said, the double page spread with the trail of bats is awesome in a way I can’t remember a Batman panel being in a very long time

very cool! I'm a huge fan of City of Crime, seeing that Sienkiewicz issue #1 take is fascinating

Maybe they don't know or don't like each other, but it always seemed like a no-brainer that Billy the Sink should have been paired with Grant Morrison on a project at some point.

Imagine if the Batman of Zur-En-Arrh segments in Morrison's run when he is trippin' balls were done by Sienkiewicz to show Batman's state of mind.

Lapham's Daredevil/Punisher mini-series is also a pretty good read.

i made a very important thread
Outrageous images from Classics Illustrated Junior

I finally read Otomo’s Domu, which has been on my shelf for years … and did not really enjoy it! Oh well.

I know the paper copy is quite difficult to find (I have the UK collected edition published in 1994ish) So if anyone in the UK wants my copy, I’ll be happy to send it out for Whatever the copy of post is

*the cost of post is

Traded out 10 1/2 long boxes today.

Anyone reading DIE?

It's doing well with the General Public, I've heard, but I'm not sure... it kinda feels like the boring dream sequence episode of a TV show stretched into eternity.

It's on the pull list so I'll give it another couple issues

Yeah, I was surprised by that, I assumed it would be "Writer assumes all of his interests are equally interesting, when one is pop music and another is boardgames"

At the moment it's kind of like bad Gaiman with better jokes. I sorta hate the art too; it's from the Frazer Irving school of pretty-but-unfollowable painted comics.

I dunno, something about it feels a bit "here is my tragic backstory" in a hacky storytelling 101 way that feels unusually lazy for Gillen. Although, to be more generous, I suppose that conceptually fits with a book about player-generated characters.

I dig it. D&D Teen goth angst to the max + mid-life crisis, somehow a winning combination

Anyone reading the 4th arc of Jojo? I don't think I can commit to it again but I'm interested to know what people think. I remember an old fan site saying that everything after the 3rd arc feels forced, but it looks like there's a lot of novelty with the different settings. The woman's prison and the big horse race sounds great but I just cant.

I've only read a few issues of Jojo's but I thought forced was the whole shtick?

Got my kids into Gogor, it is good

it's good fantasy!

It’s not an insane idea to want to b

The English language edition of Maggy Garrisson from SelfMadeHero is the best hunk of comics I've read in quite some time, and the best European homage to Engerland since Jacobs' The Yellow M:

https://www.selfmadehero.com/books/maggy-garrisson🕸

Beehive Press just sent out kickstarter digital edition promos of their lavish new Harrison Cady book and woooooo boy, it looks gorgeous. can't wait for the physical copy.
i've always been head over heels for Cady, but i was not aware he was responsible for so much explicitly racist and anti-semetic work. kinda wish it wasn't so beautifully rendered! Sign of the (turn of the twentieth century) times i guess.

We've barely talked about Gillen's WicDiv since it started, which I guess means there's been a general lack of interest - which is fair! I'm not sure it was very good - but curious for thoughts now it's all over

I thought it was fantastic, I surprised myself by considering getting a (first!) tattoo based on it. I'm aware this is a ridiculous thing for a 44-year-old straight white male to consider about a series largely devoted to early-twenties kids of various colours and sexualities, which I take as a sign of how much I liked it.

But tbh the demographics that it's meant the most to don't really overlap much with ILX, so I'm not surprised by the quiet.

I surprised myself by considering getting a (first!) tattoo

oh wow! ok, sorry to snark. that's amazing.

i did enjoy it - can see the appeal of a lil' loki tattoo, even

I've read Wicked + Divine aside from the last arc. I mostly haven't cared much for the story, but I stuck with it because they do some interesting things with the art and comics as a format.

I have wondered if I didn't get on with this comic because I'm just not the target demographic. Wicked + Divine has come up in discussions at a comic book group I go to and someone younger than me said they (and implied that younger people generally) would identify with the characters, or at least be sympathetic to them. The failing for me with this book is that I didn't care about most of the cast (and then most of the characters I connected to were the first to die).

I managed to enjoy parts of later issues once the pre-godhood backstories were revealed a bit more and the creators filled in some of the story gaps (like, why would a bunch of global gods reincarnate in London? ah, I see, because they've reincarnated in different places all over the world throughout the centuries, not just one place). I'll read it through to the end. And I wouldn't discourage other people from reading it, it just didn't land/hasn't landed with me overall.

can strongly recommend the wordless comic TRAP, new on Europe Comics; if the cover appeals to you, the internal art and cleverly executed story is even better.
http://i.imgur.com/iKJIoSN.png

https://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2019/03/17-1/viz-releases-hardcover-the-drifting-classroom-manga-in-fall-of-2019

If you passed up or didn't know about the 11 volumes of paperback years ago. I really hope this is just the start of more. I have complained about the needless expense of hardcovers but somehow manga getting this treatment gives me hope for a bigger reprints project.

How many of these are there gonna be? I started one of these manga reprints (20th Century Boys), bought like four volumes, gave up trying to keep up with the reading and buying. Maybe I'll try again with this, Fourteen fucked me up for life.

I was wondering that. It cant be one volume.

Kate Lacour is great and i am super glad fanta is pushing her now.
https://www.comicsbeat.com/kate-lacour-interview/

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/janstrnad/mutant-world-and-son-of-mutant-world/description
https://stuartngbooks.com/mutant-world-and-son-of-mutant-world.html

Wasn't aware of this until today. Those early issues of the second series really needed fixing, so this is very welcome. Don't know how many shops it will go to.

nice piece from Strnad here about the history of Mutant World
https://www.bleedingcool.com/2019/08/18/riding-coattails-to-success/

Never heard of that! Always loved Strnad tho

Especially Dalgoda and Who’s Stronger?

We did. Back then everyone could read joined-up writing so it wasn't anything we worried about. https://t.co/eZ3hYhZW1w

— Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) October 6, 2019

do people not know how to read cursive anymore?

"this font"

eh it's kind of messy, could have used a second pass. 'remarked' looks like 'resharfeed'.

it's meant to be messy ffs, Klein is communicating story information

the drawings would probably be clearer in autocad, eh DC should redo it

there are so many overwrought bits in Sandman that smudgy cursive is something I just kind of let go of caring about

years later, I still have a few of the more egregious lines stuck in my head. like the entire dialogue about the necropolis guy’s sex life

$45 is a lot to drop on Mutant World for me, but glad it did get funded

Kids havent been taught cursive in... 20 years?

adding “part of the last cursive generation” to my resume