Rolling comic books 2021

I've not read Ex Machina and Pride of Baghdad, but it's not something I associate with Paper Girls, Runaways and Y: The Last Man? I'm aware I've already wandered into a spoiler minefield.

Ex Machina is by some measure the worst thing he's done, not counting Under the Dome, so lucky escape.

There's a random death at the end of Y The Last Man that's always struck me as a little dumb; killing Alex so quickly in Runaways seems like something he wouldn't get away (or choose to do) now

Anyway Saga's been fine and as long as he doesn't kill the adorable little seal who's obviously marked for death, I'm ok

Hard disagree on Ex Machina! Besides that I actually like it, you're ignoring all his (mostly passable) Marvel hack work.

That's true, I haven't read that stuff!

Ex Machina always felt a bit un-BKV-ish to me, like it's a weird Sorkin/Bendis mashup that happens to have BKV's name on. It's a bit too "I'm the dialogue guy!" for me

Yeah, Y: the Last Man is a prime example of him building up an interesting character throughout series, then killing them at the most tragic point imaginable, not because it fits the theme of the story or anything, but because he seems to think a story isn't good if a main character doesn't die.

prayers up for the little seal person

Vaughn's 'Logan' mini series with Russo was pretty cool. I've heard that Dr. Strange mini-series is a pretty good read too.

I read and liked Y the Last Man but I sold my issues of Saga cause they got going for stupid money and I never went back.

I'd pretty much read anything by Eduardo Risso. He's done some pretty weird stuff and I like some of those minis he has done like Spaceman (w/100 Bullets dude) & that bizarro Cain/exit of Eden comic he did with Jason Aaron. I think they got in that one and realized it was too crazy to go there for the cash payoff. I still haven't read that Lono mini-series yet, but 100 Bullets was one of those series I got hooked on trades. It was so long between issues!

I loved Risso's Batman. Love to see him do something with Ed Brubaker. That Werewolf/whiskey comic Moonshine I also really like. Azzarello has some stuff I did not get with...I read that western one but it was pretty forgettable.

After the Hellblazer issues where John Constantine talks like a Cheeky Cockney, I gave myself permission to never read him again. But I guess I could be missing something. David Lapham's patchy enough for me to want to read the Guy Who's Not Quite as Good as David Lapham.

Having never seen a photo of him, I was excited to discover Azzarello looks maybe 100% like I expected him to look

lol! that's totally the stereotypical '00s comics writer look

I went to a comic shop a number of years ago without realizing Jill Thompson was doing an in-store appearance and it took me way too long to realize that the sullen-looking dude sitting by himself off to the side was Azzarello. Didn't realize 'til just now that they've since divorced.

Oh, tangentially speaking of Jill Thompson, that reminds me that the new Beasts of Burden series is starting off really good, although she isn't involved with it this time around.

You know, I reacted badly after Jill [Thompson, co-creator of Beasts of Burden] left the book, and I still feel bad about taking that situation public. Jill and I are in touch now. We talk. I blew a gasket about the schedule of the book publicly, twice. At one point, I shot the book down. I was walking away from it. Things are okay now. Jill is doing a variant cover for us. I would like Jill to come back, but I understand if she might not want to. Maybe that experience is just not something she'd want to deal with again. But we co-own the series and we’re in touch when anything affects the series.

Misread that as "“I Consider Myself Very Lucky That I Don’t Really Have To Listen To A Conversation with Evan Dorkin".

His gasket-blowing was pretty fair at the time - she'd ghosted the book in the middle of an issue, and wasn't even replying to the editor as an intermediary anymore. By the time she agreed to let the replacement artist take over, the third issue of that miniseries came out over five years after the first, and they'd missed four Christmasses of hardcover collection sales = shoes and food for Evan and Sarah's kid.

Thanks for clarifying, sic!

Just read Sloane Leong's A Map to the Sun. Heavy adolescent drama. Extremely good and well-crafted.

On a whim, or compelled by Fantagraphics' Facebook ads, I bought Barry Windsor-Smith's Monsters. Looks fantastic, plenty of virtuosity on display, but he needed firmer editors than Gary Groth, Conrad Groth, and Mike Catron when it came to writing dialogue.

Oh man.
https://comicbook.com/anime/news/berserk-kentaro-miura-creator-dies-54/

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck
Beyond him just being too young, it leaves this mammoth unfinished work behind. Heartbreaking

Yeah, that's a heavy one. I'll need to read those remaining ones and Giganto Maxia.

I've been mostly lurking on and off here since the 2000s, aside from a few comments about Love & Rockets and Hellblazer. I've been feeling less blown away by comics lately, most likely from my becoming older and a parent and various larger factors (the mainstreaming of comics into YA/childrens lit, aging of the British invasion writers, not being that into most varieties of highly acclaimed comics of the present). So I thought I'd post, try to stir up some conversation and see if anyone else had read anything lately that seemed particularly stunning. Here are some recent picks from the library.

YELLOW NEGROES AND OTHER IMAGINARY CREATURES by Yvan Alagbé (NYRB) - This is probably the best comic I've read in the last year or two, a translation of short narratives by a Black French artist. There was a level of realism and social reality that I felt like put American comics to shame (something I weirdly felt also reading the much more picaresque Corto Maltese, a scene where he inquires about a character's illegitimate child). The book often touches on social issues without feeling self-conscious or discursive, (e.g., there's one a great page of a character jumping a turnstyle in a moment when NYC was criminalizing that).

KILLING AND DYING by Adrian Tomine (D&Q) - It's hard to imagine a more "well-crafted" version of what this is, but I was left wondering why the world needed another melancholic narrative about misanthropic middle aged dudes. This left me depressed about the imaginative narrowness of this generation of indie cartoonists.

AAMA by Frederik Peeters (Self Made Hero) - This is a four-part sci-fi series with a tinge of Fantastic Planet meets the trippy eco-horror Jeffrey Van Der Meer with a little bit Inkal messianism. The artwork has that hyperrealistic objective draftmanship that I've come to associate with French SF comics. Pretty enjoyable! I've started Lupus also by Peeters, a sort of stoner Y Tu Mama Tambien in space, but I'm finding the expressive brushwork difficult to get into.

ABBOTT by Saladin Ahmed - This is a urban horror comic set in 1970s Detroit that reminded me a lot of an early Vertigo comic, but I felt like the writer could have done more research on the period as the setting didn't feel very realized.

I liked Yellow Negroes too! Agreed on Abbott underachieving; there's a sequel that continues the Life on Mars vibe.

I feel that Adrian Tomine is actually a little younger than what I'd automatically consider that generation - he's only ("only") 47!

I missed that it was your first-ish post - it's a good one!

Not passing a judgment on Tomine, but he started publishing comics as a teen in the '90s, so he basically is part of that same generation you're referring to (with all the melancolic narratives about middle aged dudes) imo

The other titles sound interesting, thank you for the notes

Hey all, thanks for the kind words! Okay, so re Tomine: I think you're both right, as his precociousness makes him feel more like a peer to the Clowes/Ware types, which makes the book slightly more disappointing, since he was always more like the cool younger brother, doing cartoons about punk scenes, etc., rather than writing stories that might star Paul Giamatti.

Have any of you been reading anything mind-blowing lately? I feel like once Grant Morrison stopped producing work regularly, my comics purchases declined a lot. Okay, here are a few more things I've gotten from the library in an attempt to check that. My latest process has been looking at the Comics Journal link blog and seeing what's getting reviewed.

THE HOUSE by PACO ROCA (Fantagraphics) - This is a semi-autobiographical, humanistic story by a Spanish artist about adult siblings who go to rebuild their father's home after he's passed away. It's a little slow to start and then the details accrete on you and it ends up being fairly moving and absorbing without being very sentimental. Not an enormous fan of the artwork, which can be stilted like a cartoony film (same camera angle for several panels in a row), but unlike many comics, the pages sometimes detailed backgrounds and feel like lived spaces; also the coloring can subtle and sophisticated.

THE BOOK TOUR by ANDI WATSON (Top Shelf) - A dark comedy story about a midlist author who gradually becomes suspected of being a serial killer--sort of an English bookish humor meets Kafka or Aki Kaurismäki. The drawing style is all antique crosshatching and can go from being cartoony like Tom Gauld to more ominously shaded like From Hell. Slight but enjoyable?

BAD WEEKEND by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips (Image) - I've enjoyed their moody noir comics like Criminal and Sleeper. This comic has a similarly consistent quality, though never ends up being as provocative or good as those, maybe bc its focus on a comics artist means it can't deploy the old noir tropes. It's about a standard Brubaker/Philips stubbly brown-haired guy helping an over-the-top alcoholic comics veteran. The depiction here is a little more interesting and less hagiographic than the Seth/Clowes comics-about-comics in that it feels less nostalgic for the dirtbag old days and more willing to juxtapose that era with the contemporary world of cosplay and conventions.

Bad Weekend is just a mini-collection of a two-parter Criminals story iirc - I've enjoyed nearly everything they've growled out (though I'd give Fatale a miss)

cool younger brother, doing cartoons about punk scenes

I do not recall this being a feature of his work!

Maybe my own wishful revisionist thinking!

Have any of you been reading anything mind-blowing lately?

Read Barry Winsdor Smith's Monsters for my comic book reading group, and though it's not gonna be one of my all-time faves or anything it does feel very much a Major Work, just in terms of art if nothing else (like many comics nerds, the side of comics that I'm worst at talking about). Very dark, upsetting book.

I also read the new Matthew DeForge which I think would've blown my mind if I hadn't already read Ant Colony. Dude certainly has a style.

In general I think the Comics Journal is good for staying up to date on what's cool, also editor Stone's podcast Comic Books Are Burning In Hell.

Anyone read Nathan Cowdry's book, Crash Site? I gotta try to pick that up this summer. His "Sea-Diver" story on Instagram (@stinkstagram) has been great.

THE BOOK TOUR by ANDI WATSON -- just read this too, felt similarly

Finally got around to The Lie and How We Told It by Tommi Parrish, which was excellent, but at only just over 100p seemed way to short. Would have loved it to be a proper novel-length novel.

I'm up to about '74/75 in my continuing Hulk, Daredevil & now Defenders reading. Hulk is one of the most consistently bonkers and fun Marvel series of the old stuff. Herb Trimpe definitely is a child of King Kirby and he comes up with some bonkers looking stuff.

The scenes when T-Bolt tells Betty that Talbot is dead (presumably) and she freaks the f'k out is amazing. Then the Hulk tries to bring her flowers to like him again and fights Modok in a giant robot outside her hospital window. Then the next issue Modok turns Betty into the Harpy.

Marv Wolfman is not nearly as good as he later got in his DD run and it is a bit all over the places, but it's ok. The manipulation of photos by a computer and people being duped by conspiracy (based on the 73/74 version) looks a bit prescient in a 2021 lens though.

Okay, some new library reads:

GIFT FOR A GHOST by Borja Gonzalez (Abrams) - This is a beautiful nocturnal story by a Mexican artist that weaves between a contemporary girl indie band and a late 1800s debutante world, which may or may not be real. Not a lot of plot, but there is an interesting dream logic layered throughout the book and a lot of negative space and emptiness. The art is really immaculate: sort of like Mike Mignola (blacks and reds, ornate backgrounds) and Nick Drnaso (no one has facial features!).

ART OF CHARLIE CHAN HOCK CHYE by Sonny Liew (Pantheon) - A big book I meant to read when it came out. This is a super ambitious book that presents itself as a coffee table art book, a retrospective of a Singaporean comic artist (Charlie Chan Hock Chye), but this is a framing device. Chan is an invented protagonist and the book uses this form as a way to tell the story of his life and the history of 20th century Singapore/Malaya via his comic books, which are done in this amazing pastiche of global comics styles (Dan Dare, Pogo, Astro Boy, Harvey Kurtzman war, Ditko, Mad magazine, even Dark Knight Returns). This makes the book initially a bit staccato and hard to get into, but it comes together in the end and the framing device allows Liew to constantly translate out of the Singapore context to create a story that feels both personal and a history of the 20th century anti-colonial left. Here's an essay about it w/ some images: https://aaww.org/rewriting-singapore-story/

Oooh that last one sounds up my alley, thanks!

I just learned about the Warren Ellis metoo situation from last year (https://www.somanyofus.com/ if you somehow missed this like I did). The story resurfaced because Image is publishing a new comic from him. I'm not an enormous fan of his; just was a big fan of transmet back in the early 2000s. But the plethora of stories that these women put forward have me aghast. Why are people shit?

I had forgotten about the Warren Ellis story--terrible!

I really want to check out Barry Windsor Smith's MONSTERS. I remember loving his Archer & Armstrong run...

The art for The Lie and How We Told It by Tommi Parrish looks cool. I'll try to check it out.

Here are some more library reads:

THE ARAB OF THE FUTURE: A CHILDHOOD IN THE MIDDLE EAST (1978-1984) by Riad Sattouf -- This is a graphic novel I've seen on the bookshelves of a lot of non-comics readers and it also has the combination of being by both an Arab artist and a Charlie Hebdo guy, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect. The comic has a weird combination of objectivity and puerility, retelling the author's childhood experiences in Libya, France, and Syria with extensive detail but then (being from a boy's POV) often swerving a bit to focus on something juvenile (e.g., torturing animals, seeing a nude woman in the window). Almost every Arab character and especially every Arab man is depicted as a grotesque. There is a lot here that would delight a French Islamophobe in the depiction of Syria and Libya as (impoverished) dictatorships, though life in either country is surely worse now after Western intervention than it was in the early '80s. Other than that, the book is well-constructed, entertaining, humorous, etc., particularly scenes where the main character's dad negotiates humiliation or the main character imagines god as the french pop singer George Brassens. The art is "cartoony," but there is a strong sense of perspective, volume, and one-tone color, so the world feels real.

I REMEMBER BEIRUT by Zeina Abirached - A very abbreviated recollection of Lebanon's civil war (really a proxy war by other countries). Not really a comic or even a diary, but some memories with very graphic design-style images, seemingly influenced by David B and Marjane Satrapi. Her other book was supposed to be better, will check that out.

THE CONTRADICTIONS by Sophie Yanow - I'd heard about Yanow from the mailing list of Copacetic Comics, which seems to stock great art comics. This comic is about a queer American college student studying abroad in France and her adventures hitchhiking and crushing on a surly/depressed anarchist. (Possibly a spoiler: but lefty anarchism is revealed at the end as adolescent selfishness and the narrator returns to her previous bourgeois lifestyle!) The story is more developed and scene-based than most first person comics, but the ligne claire-style of the drawing makes the art feel like a summary of itself, so the comic feels less memorable.

RUNAWAY PRINCESS Johan Troïanowski - This is actually a comic I borrowed for my kid, but it was really fun. Not necessarily mind-blowingly original and definitely a kid's comic, ((translted from French and published by Random House 'ss raphic novel series for kids) bbut reminded me of Pippi Longstocking, Nausicaa, Valerian, etc., in its sense of playfulness and adventure! I

Almost every Arab character and especially every Arab man is depicted as a grotesque.

God Brassens aside (this is a consensus in France, I guess - Joann Sfar wrote illustrations for an exhibition on the man, in which he said "the Japanese have Totoro, we have Georges Brassens", surely on a level with comparing him to God), are there non-Arab characters and if so are they portrayed non-grotesquely?

I read Abandon The Old In Tokyo by Yoshihiro Tatsumi. The stuff I read by him before was very typical angry Japanese post-war stuff about those left behind as economic recovery took hold, but I don't remember it being as much about the grotesque as these are. He draws this one face that's sort of a blank friendly dumb guy, keeps showing up in different roles in different stories; Tatsumi says it represents himself. I dug it, tho predictably it's not great on women. Might have gotten my interest up to finally tackle his autobiography comic, which always looked like a chore to me.

Now I'm reading the Drawn & Quarterly anniversary book. I know that when I got into indie comics in the 00's I was always struck by how much talent was coming out of Canada specifically, but don't think I'd ever realised how much this was down to one specific publisher.

Oliveros' dedication is massively admirable, but before then you had Vortex, Aardvark-Vanaheim and Renegade, Tragedy Strikes and Black Eye, Strawberry Jam, even Matrix and Aircel, setting the stage for Canadian indie publishers. Plus people like Bernie Mireault and Dave Cooper who quickly hopped to US publishers soon after their earliest work, or never notably published in Canada, like Collier, Cherkas, Ho Che Anderson... Bryan Lee O'Malley, by the time you're reading.


(of D&Q's core 4 artists, only Julie was essentially an Oliveros discovery: Vortex had been publishing Chet and Seth for years, and Joe was on Kitchen Sink before moving to Canada. Rabagliati is probably 5th in the ranking, and aiui his audience in translation on D&Q was negligible compared to his Québécois readership?)

Advance solicitations corner: Wolk's Marvel book is finally dropping in October, and reprints of the Dungeon collections are coming(!) in anticipation of new Dungeon material(!!)

Fuck! That's major news for me on both points.

The new Trondheim with Bonhomme "Omnivisibilis" is great btw
https://www.europecomics.com/album/omni-visibilis/

Having suscribed to 2000AD for enough months now, I gotta say: I lack the historical knowledge to know whether the phase it's currently in is good or bad by the mag's standards, but I am falling in love w/ the weekly comics anthology format. I love the variety and the certainty that if something's not up to snuff, well, something else will come along in a couple of pages, and the thing itself will be replaced by something else in a month or two.

BWS's Monsters was pretty intense. Weird structure, but I dug it. Reminded me a little of Powell's Two Dead that I also read recently, as a black-and-white historical fiction/spooky epic mystery.

https://www.instagram.com/alfredcolumbia/

Apropos of completely nothing, I found these sketches in my parents loft during a clearup, and thought I’d share:

https://i.imgur.com/YF6pSXF.jpg

the holy trinity

who's the one on the left?

Nice!

Yea, those are awesome.