Rolling comic books 2021

Then again, the only time I met Harlan Ellison he was amazingly nice and cool and seemed to really enjoy talking to me. But hey I was also running a booth at a comic con and was had a copy of the Deathbird stories with me.

Same con, I pissed off Julius Schwartz asking a question about him being a literary agent for HP Lovecraft (and got death glares galore from comic nurds of a couple generations at the 50th anniversary Superman con).

My recollection is Julie saying "I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT THAT DRUG FIEND!".

Schwartz known to be a serial sexual harasser, so bit rich of him to take the moral high ground:

https://www.comicsbeat.com/how-a-toxic-history-of-harassment-has-damaged-the-comics-industry/

Oh yeah, I don't doubt it as I said on some comic people kinda in general and not that HP Lovecraft was a nice person or anything.

At that point being like 18, I don't know that I had been in that situation of pissing off that many people at once. I usually reserve that for a one on one situation. I just thought it was a more curious thing to me in his career than the same question on the Legion or some Superman question.

I should have asked him why the Superman comics mostly sucked for the last 25 years of his career and went from a top seller to who cares, it make more money in t-shirts and lunch boxes.

Alan Moore asked him all about his Lovecraft connection but he was a star writer at the time

I read a bit about FJ Ackerman sexually harrassing someone who worked with him and it was horrible

I ran across this video of Ann Nocenti talking about Steve Ditko and found it entertaining, so I thought I’d share
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvQtwceDILI

pretty sure the comment on the video mentioning that she’s probably thinking of a Daredevil issue he illustrated is correct

I seen Ditko's nephew say something about his uncle being disappointed that comics hadn't become more educational. Maybe that sums up what I don't like about the direction he taken for what ended up being the majority of his career. And maybe that's why despite loving fancy costumes, super powers and fights, I don't care for the amount of superhero stories that are about right and wrong, good and evil, heroism etc. It's a problem with martial arts films too.

pretty sure the comment on the video mentioning that she’s probably thinking of a Daredevil issue he illustrated is correct

Yep, when Ditko returned to Marvel he was adamant he wouldn't draw Spider-Man or Dr Strange ever again, not even in cameo appearances etc.

I recently read through most of Nocenti’s run on Daredevil. The “babies in bags” thing she mentions made it in, but if it was a metaphor for socialism (lol) she omitted that part or Ditko did not exactly explain how to convey that bit

The idea of Steve Ditko wandering into your office and rambling about his philosophy is pretty funny.

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