Rolling Comic Books 2020 Visions

send us all $5,000 for a computer that has a rotating screen so we can read it, apparently, and we can talk about the comic

My crappy Dell monitor, date of manufacture January 2004, can do it.

I have not owned a desktop computer since 2002

I'm not sure what that has to do with anything - a monitor is not a computer (except in the most general sense that, say, a Tamagotchi is)

send everyone one of those setups where you plug an external keyboard and an external monitor (with a rotate function) into a laptop, with all the requisite cables, and a monitor stand thingy that sits over the laptop and behind the external keyboard, then, I guess? it's still an inconvenient way to read a comic whether you're shipping one box or four boxes of computer equipment to dozens of people around the planet in order for them to be able to read a whole panel at a time tbh!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHGJEdjCoeU

looked fine on my phone, fwiw

I was being kind of tongue in cheek, but the comic looked good on my phone and tablet. looks fine on my laptop if I change the scaling and they probably should set the scaling for computers so it fits better if they run a lot of comics!

to take ulysses' point and paraphrase

They tell me about families they're trying to start and real estate that they're trying to buy, and I tell them about comics on The Nib and what devices they display in while maintaining panel integrity -- one per screen. I'm posting about it on message boards. The exchanges left me feeling that the chickens I had set free when I was 23 were coming home to roost. I could have chosen to do anything I wanted, and this is what I chose to do.

loved the comic, especially the twists and turns and expressions as the narrator's stand-in reacts to the even-keeled scientific explorers as they explain their methodology and reject woo-woo claims and show more interest in big cats than the more esoteric examples. going out to listen to what you hope is weird stuff and finding a group of very methodical and, relatively boring, investigators. special guest appearance by Steve Bissette!

yeah, i liked that it went to some surprisingly personal places. somehow i did not know that bissette did gojira!
https://www.jimkeefe.com/archives/5585

The Bissette Godzilla comic also includes a pin-up page by Alan Moore

best thing about pinups is you don't have to scroll

steady

That pinup page looks crap on my knackered ipad, to whom should I complain?

Scans_Daily Artisanal Lithography

Been looking looking at Michael Deforge and Beatrix Urkowitz for the first time in years and I'm more impressed now than I was back then, so much good design. I remember the name Lale Westvind but jeezhus fookin' christ, some of this is amazing
https://www.instagram.com/lalewestvind/
There's a compilation book out in november called Grand Electric Thought Power Mother!

Did anyone ever read any Loic Locatelli books? It slightly annoys me that some of his characters look jarringly more manga than others but he's really good at drawing and design. Persephone and Pocahontas are both in english.

Loving the Tardi/Manchette collection, hard boiled Paris noir with a background hum of radical politics.

Also read Tom King's Mister Miracle, kinda dumb Vertigo fan fiction? Felt like a very surface level grappling with philosophy, and the winks to Kirby pretty cheap. But I'll admit I'm biased against ex-CIA agents.

Forgive some film talk for the subject matter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7MpVdZ9SXU

Tokiwa: The Manga Apartment - This lovingly wallows in sentimental nostalgia for 50s japan and the manga artists of the time who either worked in this apartment or passed through it. Period music, shots focused perhaps more on the settings than the characters, manga authors huddled together discussing their successes, insecurities, failures and the audience and business, and they sumo wrestle in their garden in one scene.

I had heard this was mostly a biopic of Hiroo Terada (he did baseball manga) but it's actually more spread out than that. Terada is quite happy being a slightly old fashioned storyteller for kids, Shotaro Ishinomori (Kamen Rider, Super Sentai) despairs and hasn't yet found his thing yet (his sister is a prominent character), Hideko Mizuno seems to have been the only woman there but didn't stay long term, Tezuka leaves the place quite early and quickly becomes an important figure, babies cry in the presence of Tsuge, Suzuki leaves for animation, Fujimoto's mother asks why everyone wears berets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokiwa-s%C5%8D

That looks really cool, thanks!

I initially found the nostalgia too gooey but eventually it won me over. I don't know how it has managed to stay so under the radar, I first heard about it when the star Masahiro Motoki was being discussed in the Tsukamoto book by Tom Mes.

http://www.magnetic-press.com/toppi/
Didn't know this series was happening. Publisher is new to me.

I believe they work as lion forge

Lion Forge bought Magnetic in 2016 (and Oni last year)

did not know about Oni!

any idea where their money comes from?

the owner's dad is the 745th richest man in the US, so it's anyone's guess rly


* (nb: second-richest black man)

huh, wild (some pun intended)

We never expected this to become a trend, but David Steward II is now the third son of a billionaire to launch his own animation studio, following in the footsteps of Travis Knight’s Laika and David Ellison’s Skydance Animation.

buy all the cinemas and make them $2 entry

the laika story is a huge bummer btw
https://priceonomics.com/how-the-father-of-claymation-lost-his-company/

Does anyone else remember a comic set in a graveyard or castle with superhero-esque characters, drawn in a Kirby style, probably from within the last decade and maybe from Image?

Re: Corben's death in the obituary thread. I think his last appearance in Heavy Metal should have been on the shelves by now, thankfully he got that finished. I gave up on the serialization and am waiting for the collected edition.
Dimwood was to be his next thing, his facebook says that he was working on the last page a while ago.
https://muuta.net/wp/dimwood/

He always experimented with animation and put them online occasionally (but nothing ever stays up for long on his official site) there's a video here of some recent works
https://www.facebook.com/Corben-Studios-Inc-193240777737358/

I heard several years ago that Fantagraphics offered to print his underground era work but Corben already had plans for that stuff.

I would have loved to read Martin Skidmore on Corben :/

My favorites by him are probably the second Den book (really shows off his skills and it's the most disturbing thing he ever did, probably), his House On The Borderland adaptation, some of the Warren comics (most of which is in Creepy Present Richard Corben), and the graphic novel length House Of Usher. I've heard Bloodstar is very good but I think I never got that because there are two versions and maybe it was too expensive. There's a ton of stuff that hasn't been printed in decades and his family is intent on keeping his works out there, so fingers crossed, I would buy a bunch of this stuff a second time but there's lots of odds and ends I never got, thankfully a great deal of his work was creator owned.

Just discovered this artist, really amazing but none of her comics in english yet
https://www.instagram.com/tamia.baudouin/
Claire Wendling has been around much longer, I think Lights Of The Amalou is her only graphic novel in english but there's lots of sketchbooks and some covers for Marvel and DC. I think her most recent drawings look like her best, some of it quite NSFW. I discovered her from youtube interviews but I probably seen her american comic covers when they came out.
https://www.instagram.com/claire.wendling/

Corben's Hulk was fun! I don't know any other artist whose weird approach to anatomy stayed so weird for so long.

I think he never stopped doing life drawing but when he got cartoonier it was this odd combination of long and short features.

yeah, the late era marvel and dc cartoony stuff could get mannered and sloppy.
no disrespect though! he was formative for me!

By cartoonist/illustrator standards, I don't think that was ever a real problem for him. It annoys and worries me how easily so many amazingly skilled drawers fall into cliche mannerisms, "overacting" and sameyness and I think he avoided that to a remarkable degree for someone who spent their life doing comics and illustration.

To focus on problem areas, I think he often struggled with smooth textures against rougher textures, he once said he makes his characters balder and shaved because "hair destroys form", I guess it's similar to when a lot of sculptors don't even bother trying eyelashes.

Although his writing and the writers he worked with were mostly very readable, I do wish he had some standout scripts because (unless my few unread Corben books surpass expectations) I wouldn't say he has any real must read books, but he had the skills to make one (true for so many great comic artists who never lucked out with a script).

if you're looking for "problem areas" I would point to the guy's consistent default body types: 0% body fat mega-schlonged double-jointed men and impossibly cantilevered gargantu-breasted and buttocked women, all sculpted from the same stippled putty. I loved him, I remember Fantagor being one of the first comics I ever saw, but he was undeniably working in a specifically pulpy milieu that came with certain limitations. But I hear you.

Everyone could use more body types but the women were one of the main draws for me and there actually was quite a bit of variety: the super muscled women, skeletal woman in Den, quite a lot of bald and balding women, lots of different faces but he seldom drew people with fine delicate facial features.

And quite a lot of grannies recently!

All his people looked made of plasticene

often they were

his distorto body types did often repeat over one phase in his career, but the stock shapes would change over time

(my impression based on reading a couple of things a decade, and glancing at a few more)

Much of this is NSFW but it shows a bunch of his models, including Gilbertson, who I think worked with him for maybe a decade. Love his Nosferatu pictures.
https://muuta.net/wp/miscs/photo-models/
https://muuta.net/wp/figure-gallery/
https://muuta.net/wp/articles/karen-gilbertson/

This is the Claire Wendling video I saw, there's way more of these with other artists, a few comics people but I think they're mostly concept artists. It's a fun series even when I'm not a fan of whoever is on and one of the hosts laughs at everything.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtfRoXTbbUc

those corben photo model images produce some of the least corben looking corbens i've ever seen!

wendling is great btw

Have you read her books? The reviews of Amalou mostly said it was disjointed and confusing on a story level but I want to check it out sometime.

I haven't! This thread is the first time I've heard of her!

I seen another interview with her and she said she was done with comics (or at least interiors) because she got tired of it and felt trapped, hasn't done comics stories since 2002.