Rolling Comic Books 2022

Micronauts #26 back in the day, had letter printed for a No-Prize (signed by Bill Mantlo).

A year or so later, I got a letter from an African kid/guy (who I assume got my address from that issue), which started out "Hey, let's be pen pals" and ended with "Can you send me $250?".

Micronauts 26… that was during Broderick’s run iirc? I remain an unabashed fan of that series incl the ‘new voyages’

I was printed in Mickey Mouse! At 13!

Yes on Broderick, good memory!

This publisher is new to me
https://starfruitbooks.com/
Hideshi Hino book I haven't read and I've never heard of Noroi Michiru

I had a letter in Legion of Superheroes in, I don’t know, 1990-1992 timeframe? That’s the only one I think, though I sent a few to different comics over the years.

Inspired by that Douglas Wolk book, I'm reading Christopher Priest's run on Black Panther. Pretty fucking badass! Acknowledging the US govt (even with the fig leaf of "a rogue faction of") working with South American mercenaries to topple T'Challa in Wakanda, a govt spook saying "we could have given this to the Hand or Mossad", Black Panther making it clear he joined the Avengers because he saw them as a potential threat to his country (really annoying that the Coates run had him walk this back).

Yeah, I reread it a few years ago, it still holds up! I held off the reread for a while because I thought I was missing an issue near the end, which I thought I must have somewhere around here, but of course it was Marvel sticking in a random two-parter from someone else just before the final arc.

I want to strongly recommend "The Days That Disappear" by French writer/artist Timothé Le Boucher. It's a sci-fi psychological romance thriller of sorts that... you know what, it would be best to just go in cold. It's not available in English to the best of my knowledge but there's a scanlation by the estimable phillywilly available online in two parts here:

https://readcomiconline.li/Comic/The-Days-That-Disappear/TPB-Part-1?id=181860
https://readcomiconline.li/Comic/The-Days-That-Disappear/TPB-Part-2?id=181861

The art, the concepts and the writing are remarkable. Moebius-level good imo.

2-for-1 gift voucher sale at Fantagraphics this weekend: buy the upcoming Love & Rockets box set, get $400 in discounts off future purchases.

So glad to hear they're finally reprinting Love & Rockets. The wait is over!

tbf there will be pages and stories in this that have never been reprinted

Well of course there will be. Which was enough of a reason for me to order the forthcoming Woodring collection (of material I otherwise already own) but I own some of the L+R material in three different formats at this point, which seems like a sane place to stop.

oof, $400 far too rich for my blood. if i ever get back to collecting L&R i'll probably stick to those small paperbacks

Read a Lupin III collection. Very fond of Monkey Punch's facial expressions (closer to Mad magazine than anything in US superhero comics) and how his backgrounds bend and strech in this expressionistic manner. But boy are these stories rapey.

L&R collection looks amazing in theory, but I have never not hated the comic reading experience with big hardbacks

I also put off buying their hardcover Eightball set because of $$$, even tho my original comics are long gone, so I'm glad to see they're going to bring out a cheaper paperback edition of that, and maybe they'll do something similar with L&R.

https://www.fantagraphics.com/products/the-complete-eightball-1-18-reprint

Facsimile editions of the L&R issues themselves probably still the best way to read this material imho, where the separate worlds are rubbing up against each other rather than kept apart.

I don't know if I agree with that - having read the books in the giant hardcover collections I think made me appreciate it more than I would have in a drip feed. It's not the easiest to follow as it is with the massive number of characters and stories over decades

My problem with L&R remains that they are just too dense and rich to binge, but too complicated to read here-and-thee

*there

Picked up the Sobek one shot by James Stokoe, gorgeous and grody as always. Love that croc.

Now I'm reading the second volume of the Misty reprints. First storyline, The Sentinels, features both interesting kitchen sink period detail (family squats in haunted high rise because all the Council could offer was for kids to be taken into care and parents to live in a bed & breakfast) and just an absurd amount of guilt/masochism.

I love the Chick tract with the Stewie Griffin cameo because it seems to think he's some sort of beloved character aimed specifically at children like Elmo pic.twitter.com/ozQGdSK39c

— Zack Budryk (@BudrykZack) March 29, 2022

What happened to Jack Chick? The Chick I knew would make it clear BOTH families are going to hell, what is this weak boomer bullshit.

I binged the entirety of Love & Rockets during the first year of the pandemic when I had a broken leg and couldn't get around well. I've tried to reread it some and it reminds me too much of being miserable and on pain meds and I cannot go back to it. Gave the TPB's away to a friend because they bum me out.

Just finished the Captain Britain omnibus. Pretty good, but the coloring reproduction is awful. I'm impressed by how fast things move; those comics were pretty short.

The Moore/Davis Cap Britain stories were originally printed in black and white, so 'colouring reproduction' isn't quite accurate (sorry to be a pedant). I used to have a Marvel US trade paperback of those stories with equally lousy colouring, so I wonder if that's what they've used/referenced for this new hardcover (haven't seen inside it yet). The pages were also drawn for UK magazine format and don't squish down that well to US comic book page size. And I'm guessing that Marvel UK never took decent stats of the pages at the time. So short of an 'artist's edition' shot from the original artwork, I think repro on these stories is always going to be an issue.

The omnibus also collects before and after Moore’s run. I have the tpb of Claremont’s Captain Britain that came out around the time of the Excalibur comic so I can directly compare them. For the Claremont issues, it doesn’t appear that they have been recolored, but poorly copied. In the trade the colors are bright and vivid while in the omnibus they are washed out and muted.

that's disappointing to hear. I haven't read those stories yet but i guess i'll pass on this version, or maybe just go digital

It's funny, album collections of comics was always the way forward for me, the dream, based on the European model of constantly in-print books rather than ephemeral floppies with all their attendant collector scum hassles. But now that most of the major works of world comics are available in book form, there are so many issues and problems regarding reproduction (especially around colour) that the original floppies are starting to look much more attractive again. I guess reproduction from pristine comic books is still the way to go, but if it's not done with some care then the results can be just as disappointing as the digitally recoloured/redrawn muck.

Yes, e.g. it's super annoying that it's now impossible to read Miller's Daredevil run (or a lotta Marvel 80s runs) without the offensively crap 90s/early 00s colouring. I mean, I could go to a comic mart and spend £200 on the whole run, but... no

eh, i'm not going to go back to those floppies for this. i've long settled for bad color repro in general, i guess

What is the logic behind the digital recoloring? It seems an unnecessary expense that is frowned upon, so why do it? Is there a practical reason for doing this?

Surely some dumbassed reason. It always seemed to me neatness and evenness of color was being prioritized over other considerations. A lot of the industry and fans are colorblind.

I've never got into torrenting but surely there's scans of original floppies for a lot of marvel comics runs?

I believe it's impossible to do modern hi-res reprints without recolouring (and sometimes even re-arting) the books

Having said that I don't understand why the recolouring is often so drastically different (e.g. Sandman, Flex Mentallo, Killing Joke) or why publishers don't realise that "modernised" colouring looks just as dated ten years after publication. The Sandman recolours are just dire to the point of being destructive

Comics should be two colours: pop art primary or Vertigo sludge, there is no inbetween

Honestly the coloring aesthetic that’s been in effect at the majors for the last couple of decades is the biggest thing that’s kept me away from 21st century superhero stuff. I cannot stand it.

I understand not liking the recoloring of old books because of the way the art was constructed in the day, but how could you argue coloring is worse today? The tools and results (and even just printing) are so much better now?

really depends on the colorist, I think

I think colors are generally very good in most work, but there’s definitely a flatness or homogeneity. The baseline low bar is higher, but there’s not as much nuance, if that makes sense?

I think good digital coloring is a real rarity. A lot of very talented artists ruin their drawings with digital color and since I've never used digital tools I can't say where people are going wrong. It's an unsettling thought to imagine not having traditional tools and wondering if I'd ever be able to make it look good. It's an uncomfortable subject when I think about critiques of artists because my honest feeling is that most artists are ruining their own work with digital.

Most common problem I see in mainstream comics is the colors fucking around with the ink lines or the sterility of the color sucking the life out the drawings.

Most old comics coloring was not good but I don't think it was ever as destructive.

Coloring is worse today, the superiority of modern tools is utterly irrelevant

It’s competently shitty rather than boldly shitty; moreover, it’s intensely inimical to linework

There are some amazing coloring done on some comics but there are also loads of just absolute dreck of everything either way too dark and/or all monotone color wise. I think some of the latter is people wanting everything to look like a first person shooter game or something.

There's always going to be bad color work and bad color artists. But the floor has been raised immeasurably since we were children, and the best stuff out there now is a whole new level. Ya'll crazy! But I'll stop trolling now.

Do you guys have more info on this Love & Rockets reprint you were discussing above? I read every Fantagraphics newsletter and email blast, and have not seen it mentioned. Thx

Never mind, I found it buried in the “Coming Soon section” of the website.

Chartwell Manor is indeed great, thanks for the rec Forks

Not new, but I tried to get through Lynda Barry's Syllabus book (2014); Aimee Mann cited it recently as an inspiration for her diary comics on Instagram. I've tried to get into Barry before but her work doesn't click for me. I appreciate her passion, insight and very different way of looking at the world than I do, though. I just kept thinking... yeah, this sorta thing is why I didn't want to go to art school.

Something I've come to appreciate about comics, which is not exactly unique to them is "inky" drawing styles (for lack of a better term). I'm thinking of stuff along the lines of Mort Meskin, Blutch, early Joe Kubert, sometimes Frank Robbins and even Bastien Vives at times. Has a slight bit of mess to it. I don't see as much of this in pulp magazine art as I thought I would. Most of it is in the 40s and 50s, so I used to chalk a lot of it down to the influence of the films and photography of the time. I'm not explaining this that well but anyone got more names that could fit into this? I used to follow a tumblr artist who had a lot of this quality but I can't remember the name.

Otomo talked about the manga that came before him had an oppressive darkness and it wasn't quite the same but I do generally like comics and art where the first thing you notice is the sheer amount of blackness on the page, but the lack of clean cut separation between darkness and light maybe makes it feel heavier?

Still want to get Don Simpson's Border Worlds and I found this great drawing
https://78.media.tumblr.com/7e3854803e653aa0fa713a3a3d53db91/tumblr_p5i0fk1fcA1x6m6njo1_1280.jpg
I wish he always drawn like that, I find some of his work a bit bare bones

What sorts of manga was Otomo referring to?
That Don Simpson drawing is pretty dope

I think it was the sort of gekiga stuff that rarely gets reprinted outside japan.

My main memory of that era of manga and some of the stuff it influenced is there's a lot of wide shots with dark moody skies taking up a lot of space.

https://taniguchiscanlations.blogspot.com/2021/07/all-our-projects.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IETY0NdSXY