Rolling comic books 2021

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.

The new IDW Usagi Yojimbo Origins color collections - do they effectively replace the material that was originally collected in the Fantagraphics Special Edition? Or should I still read that (digitally) before grabbing Origins v.1?

I'm decades behind on Usagi but I'd read the B&W material in B&W rather than digitally colourised: he did draw differently for each mode.

Finished the first Megahex collection, or as I like to think of it, Noise Board: The Comic.

Also watched the 2000AD documentary, which was good as far as these things go. Pat Mills is quite the character! Alan Moore conspicous by his absence.

Portishead's David Cameron "obey" concert graphics must have turned up in the trenchant social commentary thread. Documentary was pretty good though.

The black and white Usagis are immeasurably better, imo. Bone, on the other hand, I liked better in colour.

i think i agree with that

hmm. ok you've all convinced me to not buy the new color editions

Portishead's David Cameron "obey" concert graphics must have turned up in the trenchant social commentary thread.

I like that judging by this doc 2000AD's influence on music consisted of 1)Portishead and 2)Anthrax.

After the Judge Dredd soundtrack I am stumped to think of more examples. I think Robert Smith did say he was a genuine fan of The Crow and 2000AD.

Madness' record label Zarjazz, which also released the Chas Smash and Suggs side-project Mutants In Mega-City One by The Fink Brothers, might have taken some influence, or it could just be a coincidence.

There's also Geoff Barrow's DROKK album, if that's not a cheat.

Did we mention this?

DC’s new Rorschach comic just took a turn from “unnecessary and sort of dumb” to “impossibly stupid” and I for one couldn’t be happier. pic.twitter.com/31r9bvuNqx

— K. Thor Jensen (@kthorjensen) April 13, 2021

Who written that?

ILX-beloved Tom King.

Coop in the replies:

Gotta respect DC's dedication to using Watchmen to wipe their asshole until it bleeds

— Art Of Coop (@ARTofCOOP) April 13, 2021

I dearly hope king has Miller take up the mask and fight for the forces of fascism

I wish he'd shown Miller wetting himself after saying "Are you going to kill me?"

Gorillaz surely counts in the 2000AD/music crossover world.

hahahah. i love it.

Gorillaz surely counts in the 2000AD/music crossover world.

One strip running for two months in 1991 likely outweighed by eight years of being the star and frequent cover artist of a comics/music crossover magazine, painting a dozen Senseless Things sleeves, doing the Common People comic book and selling a million t-shirts of band illustrations imo

Brian Bolland album covers

https://img.discogs.com/I-jANLciTUvoV7xGTMxtEZrrn7c=/fit-in/300x300/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/R-914396-1172326094.jpeg.jpg

https://img.discogs.com/SjXZqK9gKRvjus2QnAH6aelhbZo=/fit-in/600x615/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-748151-1154959819.jpeg.jpg

(xp: also he was an associate of Blur early enough that he's in the Starshaped VHS)

nish nish

I too know how to google CVs but that wasn't the point of what we were talking about.

Portishead's career also mainly consisted of non 2000AD work.

was sic's statement that Tom King is an ILX fave tongue in cheek? If not, what's wrong with you all?

King has lots of good comic work before he became DCs workhorse. It has been a little while though.

Tbf I only read his Mr.Miracle and thought it was frankly embarassing.

But also, former members of terrorist organizations - the KKK, the crips, the bloods and the CIA - should pay their debt towards society before being allowed to write comics.

I'll cop to still being a big King fan. The only thing I've really disliked of his recent work was Heroes in Crisis, never got around to Mr. Miracle yet. Strange Adventures is really good, though I don't understand what he's doing with the meta angle at all (quoting comic book writers at the end of every issue). Of course, it helps greatly that he's teamed with really great artists on all of these series.

I like Rorschach so far too, but I don't really have strong feelings about artists "ruining" Moore's work or whatever - same deal with like half of that Before Watchmen initiative.

Try his Omega Men and Vision series if you're totally new to him, though as forks mentioned those have been from some time ago.

https://hyperallergic.com/637691/jordan-eagles-save-superman-abroms-engel

I too know how to google CVs but that wasn't the point of what we were talking about.

I also know how to remember reading most of Haircut in a rush from issues in a newsagent at Erina Fair on school holidays, and to remember buying the die-cut-cover collection from the basement location of Kings Comics that you'd throw your bag in between the escalators up top and grab it from a pile at the bottom, and buying the Penguin collection of Tank Girl - still, three decades later, the only one printed in the correct "aspect ratio"! - at a midnight clearance sale at Dymocks on George Street, having traveled in with two friends from the same suburb and knowing we had 50 minutes to scour the store and get a pile sorted and bought before the last train home, and buying the gold-stamped Starshaped VHS from notorious industry promo sell-off haunt Lawsons, and buying the first blue-and-silhouettes-cover Gorillaz EP only to find by the time I got home that the edge of the 12" was so sharp that it had scored through the side of the sleeve. I got the Senseless Things album at another of the dusty health-hazard 2nd-hand record shops on the same block as Lawsons, but I admit I cannot recall the name of which.

But if Hewlett wasn't the connection, my apologies! I didn't detect a 2000AD influence on the concept of the band or the music at the time either.

Bisley was doing heavy metal paintings before he got recruited to Tooth - though it's probably where Scott Ian saw him - but the back cover illo for Overlord X's Weapon Is My Lyric was clearly a commission based on ABC Warriors.

https://i.imgur.com/J7CQFom.jpg

Cool concept on forks' exhibition link, and the virtual exhibition is done well, but it's extremely shitty, fifty years after Lichtenstein, to still not even annotate in the notes that human beings made this work. Michael Stipe and David Wojnarowicz get cited, though!

The University Of Alabama at least explains on a clickthrough how the Hulk and New Guardians comics relate to AIDS, though it doesn't mention David or Frank or Englehart or Staton.

Agreed that it’s weak that fine art continues to consider comic books as raw natural material to be mined

The work is good! But it’s actively about a context that the recontextualising artist doesn’t provide to his viewers

Yes and it's not like "Hemogoblin" is super well known by comic book nerds even

why did sic bury an actual amazing personal anecdote under the snitch tag

I don’t post on the interwebs not to relate to other humans and that was amazing

which one? I really badly doxxed myself in there to any time travellers who want to go back and kill me before my rise to power

The great and reclusive Barry Windsor-Smith was interviewed yesterday. This is a gem if you're a fan like myself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY6HwW1bQYE

Daijiro Morohoshi and Soji Yamakawa
http://www.ceiling-gallery.com/blog/2015/4/4/morohoshidaijiro
https://adamukun.tumblr.com/post/68059849566/error888-%E5%B1%B1%E5%B7%9D%E6%83%A3%E6%B2%BB%E3%83%AF%E3%82%A4%E3%83%AB%E3%83%89
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLW55D-2ibU

Mohoroshi's cover arts are worth an image search, he was really good at odd covers.

Feeling this article hardcore: https://bleedingcool.com/comics/when-graphic-novel-volumes-just-dont-stack-up-on-the-bookshelf/

What are some relatively recent trades of mini-series that stick the landing?
There seems to be no end of new comic series with promising starts but right around the last quarter of a book, there's that super-rushed, cobbled-together feeling...

OMG OL i HAAAAAAATE THAT SHIT and it has helped force me to make the transition to e-comics

It seems to usually be DC pulling these shenanigans, IME. Just looking at the shelf next to me, there's one volume each of the LOSH Showcase collections, the Kirby Fourth World Omnibi, and the Batman Adventures trades which feature that shit-ass peeling DC logo. They somehow managed consistent trade dress across all of the other volumes in each of these series.

It's a major, major problem. Major.

past time we were demanding infrastructure money to be allocated, call your senator now