Rolling comic books 2021

xp Tuomas: your mention of Sacred Heart got me to check it out. Pretty good stuff, like a punk rock cousin of Black Hole. Still trying to piece together what it was all about, exactly, besides the plot. Def interested in a followup, but knowing that Egg Cream is only part 1 makes me want to wait for a full sequel.

Billionaire Island by Russell and Pugh - funny, not angry enough, but a good effort.

Def interested in a followup, but knowing that Egg Cream is only part 1 makes me want to wait for a full sequel.

It's technically part 1 of a sequel, but really it's more of an epilogue taking place years after the events of Sacred Heart, explaining most of the odd stuff that happened in the first story. There's some hints of where the story might go in future installments, but if you liked Sacred Heart I think you can easily read it now, cos it's not like it even starts a proper new plot.

Always loved this cover.
https://www.comics.org/issue/5609/cover/4/

Fiction House is the fucking best imo

I'm not sure if I've read much of their stuff. Thought of getting the big compilation.

a lot is available for free i think.
hang on.

https://digitalcomicmuseum.com/index.php?cid=16
^requires a login but worth it

*cough* librarygenesis

yow that's a find

giving credit to ilxor dean intercom

Just discovered 2020 documentary "For Madmen Only: The Stories of Del Close" on Kanopy (movie streaming service free for library card holders in US and .au and elsewhere) - I would have been happy if it mentioned Wasteland at all, but it leans HEAVILY on it in the early parts, including recreated scenes of writing sessions with James Urbaniak as Close, Matt Walsh as Mike Gold, and Josh Fadem (Twin Peaks / Better Call Saul) as John Ostrander.

Had no idea he wrote comics, is it any good/worth looking for?

Wasteland is pretty classic as i remember it, Bill Loebs / David Lloyd / Dandy Don Simpson on the art for the most part
https://readcomiconline.to/Comic/Wasteland-1987

Thanks! I remember the cover design so vividly but never read it

Just looking at Lovern Kindzierski's garish-but-amazing colouring is instantly transporting

For some reason I only just realised he was a guy

Feels like this thread is slower than usual. Because of covid? Do you buy less comics when you can't browse around shops? For years I haven't been reading much comics other than little online quickies. I seen that Barry Windsor Smith's Monsters (35 years in the making) is coming very soon and I just want to flip through it quickly, I truly respect the dedication but I don't think it's something I want to read much, will be interested to hear reactions.

i'm reading a lot of digital comics and could talk about them but they're really all over the place.

I've actually gotten more into comics during the pandemic, especially once my LCS opened back up (although they were doing curbside pickup almost immediately and actually implemented a delivery van as well!). I used to just wait until tpbs came out of the stuff I was interested in, but now I'm subscribed to a bunch of comics. I just don't participate because I feel like I don't have the depth of knowledge about comics shit that most everybody else on here has. Shit I've read lately:

True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys: National Anthem (great series; wasn't thrilled by the ending)
You Look Like Death
We Only Find Them When They're Dead (have all the issues, but I'm not fully caught up on reading)
Something Is Killing the Children (and lots of other James Tynion-involved stuff: Razorblades, Department of Truth...)
Redfork (by Alex Paknadel on TKO, whose Giga I'm also following, although I'm not totally into it yet)
All the little TKO Shorts books
Bitter Root, which is really beautifully colored
Just got the first issues of both Nocterra and Stray Dogs, which are both promising in very different ways.

I bought four paper comics last year (one miniseries) and read the last two of them this week

Am enjoying Something is Killing the Children. Reading that via Hoopla from library, which has the first two graphic novels (1-5, 6-10) and single issues of 11-15. Waiting for the next collection to finish it in one borrow.

Red Mother looked interesting - any opinions?

I think it's in the current Boom Humble Bundle - might grab that, lots of new stuff in there
https://www.humblebundle.com/books/best-year-of-boom-studios-books

^^ I came here to post this! I've been off comics since around September in favour of other hobbies and because libraries (where I get a lot of my books) are closed, but this bundle looks like some fun weekend reading

Physical comics stuff I have bought this year, mostly from online sources

Morbius Epic Collection 1 by Gerber, Moench, Gulacy et al
Crashpad by Gary Panter
New Yorker cartoons issue
Trigan Empire Vol 2 by Butterworth and Lawrence
The Steel Claw: Invisible Man by Bulmer, Tully and Blasco
A 'facsimile edition' of Black Knight 1 (1955) by Lee and Maneely

I've been bulk reading piles of manga and had to stop reading Berserk because it was starting to giving me nightmares
http://i.imgur.com/Nzcp13Q.png

http://i.redd.it/qypeyxt0lot41.jpg

http://pm1.narvii.com/6748/694570930e51e1292942b5410ac79eb11868329bv2_hq.jpg

my understanding is that this is where Dark Souls got its look and that seems about right
http://i.pinimg.com/736x/91/1a/34/911a3450962f40438a4bf9d0d6a923e9.jpg

just thousands and thousands of pages of this stuff, it's really astonishing
http://www.bogleech.com/manga/berserk-cave.jpg

Where did you get to? I still haven't read the last few.

Book 19? I was knocking out three a night before bed and had to stop.

Wow, that looks bonkers.

I forgot that I tried reading some manga earlier this year - Junji Ito's Remina. The concept - sci-fi horror about a planet-eating planet - really appealed to me but the story wasn't all that compelling and the ending was just plain stupid. Couple that with the learning curve of reading right-to-left and it will probably be a while before I dip back into manga again. After reading it, I went and checked some reviews and apparently other people feel the same way.

i have definitely completed the rewiring necessary for right to left reading. i am occasionally accidentally reading american comics the wrong way!

Important warning for anyone trying to read Berserk: it uses rape as a major plot point for its major characters (male and female) and it is brutal about it.
https://www.jacksonpbrown.com/anime-and-manga/2018/10/12/thoughts-on-casca-and-some-uncomfortable-truths-in-berserk

Oh? You don't say!

I've been bulk reading piles of manga and had to stop reading Berserk because it was starting to giving me nightmares
http://i.imgur.com/Nzcp13Q.png

― G.A.G.S. (Gophers Against Getting Stuffed) (forksclovetofu), Saturday, March 27, 2021 2:34 PM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

http://i.redd.it/qypeyxt0lot41.jpg

― G.A.G.S. (Gophers Against Getting Stuffed) (forksclovetofu), Saturday, March 27, 2021 2:35 PM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

http://pm1.narvii.com/6748/694570930e51e1292942b5410ac79eb11868329bv2_hq.jpg

― G.A.G.S. (Gophers Against Getting Stuffed) (forksclovetofu), Saturday, March 27, 2021 2:36 PM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

my understanding is that this is where Dark Souls got its look and that seems about right
http://i.pinimg.com/736x/91/1a/34/911a3450962f40438a4bf9d0d6a923e9.jpg

― G.A.G.S. (Gophers Against Getting Stuffed) (forksclovetofu), Saturday, March 27, 2021 2:40 PM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

just thousands and thousands of pages of this stuff, it's really astonishing
http://www.bogleech.com/manga/berserk-cave.jpg

― G.A.G.S. (Gophers Against Getting Stuffed) (forksclovetofu), Saturday, March 27, 2021 2:42 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah, though. When I bought that Junji Ito book, I was worried that getting into manga would eventually end up with me buying something like that and that I would be harshly judged by the nice women behind the counter at my shop.

I think about sometimes picking up some of those books by Shintaro Kago with similar feelings. Not being judged so much as just acclimating myself to excessive nightmare gore. Like the Berzerk stuff up there, still pretty astonishing to look at.

I love Kago's work but some of it is deeply nauseating.

As a corrective, I've been plowing through Space Brothers instead. Which is fun! But occasionally inconsequential.

I don't think Berserk is especially gory given it's a dark fantasy, it's about what I'd expect.

This publisher is new to me but the magazine they publish is something I mentioned here once.
https://hollow-press.net/

i LOVE those guys, went to their table at Comic Arts Brooklyn a few years ago and basically bought everything they had.

okay yeah I just finished vol 1 of Something is Killing the Children and it's the highlight of the humblebundle so far. think I'm going to regret having read it right before bed though

the berserker art is interesting - that sort of busy/dense B&W style tends to put me off bc it takes me so long to parse what's going on. but in the context of berserker, does that 'slow parse' -- i.e. having to take time to read the art/having it reveal itself more slowly -- do a better job of building up the unsettling/horror vibes than art styles where you can understand the scene with a glance?

berserk? berserker? the thing forks posted above, obv.

Berzerker is the brand new comic that starts with the Sad Keanu meme, Berzerk the ultra-gory '90s medieval horror fantasy

I went back to Berserk again last night. Jesus it is relentless.
You can certainly take your time with each page for sure but it's... well, it's a lot.

Here's five sample pages from the first quarter of book 20 that i saw last night while trying to fall asleep.
http://i.imgur.com/MQ9ctVI.png
http://i.imgur.com/gh0yopo.png
http://i.imgur.com/KWAGVc5.png
http://i.imgur.com/pWUGorY.png
http://i.imgur.com/0SMn8kz.png

The epidemic did make me purchase stuff much more often, in order to support my local shop (Gosh in London). Reading them is another matter - previously my non-comic prose reading was done almost entirely on public transport, and this having vanished it now encroaches on my funnybook reading time.

That being said, I've recently gotten back into a groove. Read Crepax's American Stories; I was skeptical that I could draw something from what are clearly comics to masturbate to w/o sharing the author's fetishes, but actually once I started paying close attention to the actual drawing style it was a pretty wild ride. Helps that I have a soft spot for the kind of mid-century European culture that Crepax belongs to - radical leftist politics, fascination with American jazz and cinema. Pretentious as fuck, too - there's a really long story concerning Valentina's lover trying to make his way back to her from the US in a very obvious retelling of the Odyssey, with captions saying CIRCE or ITHACA in case you didn't get it. Except, of course, instead of defeating the Cyclops or whatever dude just keeps getting abducted by women who want to fuck his brains out. Fair play to the one who did taxidermy sculptures and wanted to turn his corpse into an alligator statue tho. Wild stuff, as I said. There's also a noir story with a black protagonist that has little masturbatory content and is a lot less cringy than you'd expect from a white Italian boomer writing about a black guy (onetime ILXor Nate Patrin contributes an essay about it).

I then moved on to Les Grands Espaces, Catherine Meurisse. She was one of the Charlie Hebdo ppl and apparently wrote a v good graphic novel about the attacks. Anyway this has no culture war talking points, it's just about growing up in the countryside as the child of ex-city dweller ecologists/intellectuals. That's my background, too, and it was really interesting to see which bits resonated, and which were very different - Portuguese villages in the 90's weren't yet experiecing the fever for cultural events and rural tourism that Meurisse depicts invading her hamlet in 80's France, though I understand they're at that stage now. Anyway, lovely stuff.

Currently I'm halfway through Mujirushi by Naoki Urasawa, a magna made with the official collaboration of the Louvre. Strong bonkers start: Trump is about to get elected, except in this reality it's a woman, and her opponent gets metooed shortly before the election so she wins. Problem is the protagonist's father invested in novelty masks of her and now that she's actually won she turns out to be a very vannila politician and no one cares anymore. This was all written in 2016, not quite how it panned out! Anyway after that strong start it all feels a bit half baked, meandering plot with French art thieves and such. Still the Japanese fixation with France is always fun - magna Mitterand! Manga Sylvie Vartan!

I have also suscribed to 2000AD. You'll all be pleased to know the reader's mailbag section currently includes ppl whining because the magazine made fun of Trump and Keep The Politics Out Of My Judge Dread, Godamnit. What planet these people live on even Tharg can't say. I might also fuck around and get a Spirou subscription.

It's funny, in most comics those Berserk pages just posted might seem memorable but I don't really remember the context for that part.

I was laughing at Savage Dragon fans who objected to the Trump skewering but I remembered that however much I might respect the writers doing what they want, I really don't like seeing real horrible politicians in cool comics either. It feels sort of yucky to me. Part of the fun of supervillains is that they're cool and often have a kind of dignity. Robert Crumb said he just couldn't stand drawing people he hated that much and that political cartooning was "a dirty job but somebody's got to do it".

It's a bit different when political satire is at the heart of your most iconic character though.

The idea of someone reading Judge Dread "without the politics" is...scary.

True but I also sympathize with people who just really didn't want to see Tony Blair's face in 2000AD regularly. The documentary regarded the Blair comic as a failure but I don't know why.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/02/nigel-farage-morphs-into-2000-ad-cartoon-villain-bilious-barrage
Farage is a perfect target but again, yuck, I don't want to see his face. But I've never really been a 2000AD guy.

Not keen on political caricature either, always seemed to me like it's feeding into the problem of politicians images being more important than what they do and say. All those politicians who got ridiculed for years for being fat or ginger.
I think my "yuck" is both about the caricature and the horrible banality of the actual politicians.

Also in Savage Dragon was Hitler in the form of BraniApe, it was kind of weird seeing him kill a huge crowd of people. And wasn't there an acclaimed comic where a superpowered Hitler actually kills some DC heroes?

Or did he just beat them up?

Farage is a particular case because, while that cartoon would never be mistaken for an actual human, it's not too far from how he actually looks.

While I think it's valid not to want to see their faces all the time, I also think we can't have this convo w/o acknowledging that 90% of the time "keep politics out of it" is code for "I'm angry because your politics differ from mine". And yeah, I think if you'd rather just not have that shit in yr comics 2000AD is not the place for you.

What you say about political caricature is true but you can easily take the next logical step and say that villains being portrayed as ugly and grotesque is messed up in the first place, reinforcing prejudices even without a real world target. We live in a fallen world and so on.

A friend of mine, who organised comic conventions in the UK, met Ditko up at the American Marvel offices in the early 1980s. Rather cheekily, my pal asked Ditko if he would like to come over to the UK as a comic con guest. Ditko just said, "No, I did one of those in 1964".

All Time Comics vol 1

This seems is mostly modelled on 80s and 90s superhero comics but I thought there was a lot of golden age in there too. I didn't like the stories much, it felt something like a reverential parody, embracing the clichés too much. It improves a little bit after the first couple of issues but never stopped feeling a bit restrained to me despite the outlaw attitude. There are some funny bits, but overall it's pretty staid. I know some artists find collaboration fun but as with the mainstream comics they're paying tribute, the pencillers and inkers rarely shine brightest when working together.

I mostly bought this because I wanted to see Josh Bayer's drawing and he doesn't have that many pages but writes most of it. He has a wonderfully sludgy drawing style so the writing kind of perplexes me because it's so straight forward. I quite like the stiff tensity of Benjamin Marra's best drawing and the work by the 4 colorists is really nice and warm, the most consistently good thing here. Herb Trimpe doing some of his last work. There's a ton of pinups and covers by a lot of artists and the several Das Pastoras pictures are why I'm keeping this book.

I have the second volume and it looks more energetic so I'm still looking forward to it.

"No, I did one of those in 1964".

👑

George Pérez is leaving us.

To all my fans, friends and extended family,

It’s rather hard to believe that it’s been almost three years since I formally announced my retirement from producing comics due to my failing vision and other infirmities brought on primarily by my diabetes. At the time I was flattered and humbled by the number of tributes and testimonials given me by my fans and peers. The kind words spoken on those occasions were so heartwarming that I used to quip that “the only thing missing from those events was me lying in a box.”

It was amusing at the time, I thought.

Now, not so much. On November 29th I received confirmation that, after undergoing surgery for a blockage in my liver, I have Stage 3 Pancreatic Cancer. It is surgically inoperable and my estimated life expectancy is between 6 months to a year. I have been given the option of chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy, but after weighing all the variables and assessing just how much of my remaining days would be eaten up by doctor visits, treatments, hospital stays and dealing with the often stressful and frustrating bureaucracy of the medical system, I’ve opted to just let nature take its course and I will enjoy whatever time I have left as fully as possible with my beautiful wife of over 40 years, my family, friends and my fans.

Since I received my diagnosis and prognosis, those in my inner circle have given me so much love, support and help, both practical and emotional. They’ve given me peace.

There will be some business matters to take care of before I go. I am already arranging with my art agent to refund the money paid for sketches that I can no longer finish. And, since, despite only having one working eye, I can still sign my name, I hope to coordinate one last mass book signing to help make my passing a bit easier. I also hope that I will be able to make one last public appearance wherein I can be photographed with as many of my fans as possible, with the proviso that I get to hug each and every one of them. I just want to be able to say goodbye with smiles as well as tears.

I know that many of you will have questions to ask or comments to make, and rather than fueling the fires of speculation and well-meaning but potentially harmful miscommunication, I will be returning to the arena of social media by starting a new Facebook account where fans and friends can communicate with me or my designated rep directly for updates and clarification.

Please search for @TheGeorgePerez on Facebook if you’d like to join the page to receive updates. For media and press inquiries, please use the contact information on the page as well. Please respect the privacy of my wife and family at this time and use the Facebook page rather than reaching out through other channels.
I may not be able to respond as quickly as I would like since I will be endeavoring to get as much outside pleasure as I can in the time allotted me, but I will do my best. Kind words would also be greatly appreciated. More details to follow once it’s up and running.

Well, that’s it for now. This is not a message I enjoyed writing, especially during the Holiday Season, but, oddly enough, I’m feeling the Christmas spirit more now than I have in many years. Maybe it’s because it will likely be my last. Or maybe because I am enveloped in the loving arms of so many who love me as much as I love them. It’s quite uplifting to be told that you’ve led a good life, that you’ve brought joy to so many lives and that you’ll be leaving this world a better place because you were part of it. To paraphrase Lou Gehrig: “Some people may think I got a bad break, but today, I feel like the luckiest man on the face of the Earth.”

Take care of yourselves—and thank you.

George Pérez
December 7th, 2021

I hope George has a great Christmas.

A real legend.

Eloquently written. Thanks for posting that.

https://www.ign.com/articles/huge-games-company-embracer-group-buys-dark-horse-comics

I was like, who the heck is Embracer Group? They're a renamed conglomerate pka Nordic Games that also owns Gearbox, Deep Silver, and dozens of other studios and media companies.

bbbut Mike Richardson said last Friday that reports they were looking to be acquired were untrue

we need a new thread but till then, i wanna recommend this guy:
https://www.instagram.com/derekmballard

I hit him up on IG and bought some originals. His shit is so good!

I saw that Zdarsky's DD run described as critically acclaimed and apparently Elektra is taking on the mantle and having gone through 4 trades I feel confident in saying this is low brow trying to pass itself off as mid brow.

that's zdarsky's specialty but I don't mind it

Zdarsky's DD run is one of the weaker ones imo - it's not bad! it's just DD is probably the most consistently good mainstream superhero comic (tends to get good writers on long runs) so there's a lot to live up to and I wasn't sure this one did. I thought it had too much repetition over the whole DD manslaughtering a guy thing. Or idk maybe I was just a bit fatigued bc I caned all of Soule + Zdarsky over Xmas break.

i'm curious too, but never started the run. one day i'll catch up with the last 20 years of Daredevil. someday...

https://treasuryofbritishcomics.com/between-the-historical-and-the-fantastical-on-don-lawrences-karl-the-viking/
Never seen this stuff before

rebellion is constantly pumping out old boy's comic collections that confound me.

Who knew about Marney the Fox for instance?
http://doomrocket.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/marneyTF_01.jpg

Didn't know about the Karl The Viking release so it is now on my buy list

Good artwork on both

we're not even gonna try for a 2022 thread?

Agreed that Rebellion are finally doing justice to the IPC library that they inherited, though there is still so much that has never been reprinted.

The Book Palace company have also been reprinting classic Brit comics for a number of years now. They're a small publisher, so their prices are not cheap, but I would especially recommend the Larrigan collection in their Fleetway Picture Library series, with great illustrative artwork by Arturo del Castillo:

https://bookpalace.com/bpb/Larriganpeek/26/index.html

Of course, the cream of Leo Baxendale, Ken Reid, Davey Law's etc work for DC Thomson's humour comics has never been reprinted in any kind of coherent fashion. Which makes this two-volume set of Reid's non-Thomson stuff especially essential:

https://www.brokenfrontier.com/frankie-stein-ken-reid-power-pack-jasper-grasper/

Rolling Comic Books 2022

I like how Marney the Fox thinks: "'Tis the stumbling approach of hated man!"

I do too!

the reference point is at least partially the original Bambi book