Rolling Comic Books 2022

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

I binged American Splendor really hard about 7 years ago.

Currently reading Dark Horse EC comics reprints. They are good but you can only read so many at a time; the rhythm of the stories is very repetitive.

This two-part feature came across my feed, I thought it was somewhat interesting: https://www.comicsbeat.com/jla-avengers-1983-oral-history-part-1/

is anyone else doing craft-focused video comic book analysis besides Cartoonist Kayfabe? Rapidly losing my patience with Piskor

Factual Opinion's Comic Books Are Burning In Hell is audio only and Tucker seems to hate Kayfabe but it's the most similar thing I can think of

Yeah I'm a regular listener. I think a lot of ppl in the comics world dislike Kayfabe, or Piskor at least. That dumb Maus thing did a lot of damage.

Was really thinking of video stuff specifically tho because audio or text is never going to be as good at actually showing you what it's describing.

I didn't expect to like it but I think the Comic Tropes sometimes does interesting videos and there is analysis but not the page by page kind of thing.

There isn't anything quite as alternative as I would like. Domingos Isabelinho had a rough enough time among Comics Journal community so I doubt he would get a warm reception on youtube. A shame his blog seems to be gone because there isn't anyone else much like him that I've seen.

Not to say Domingos' taste was much like mine, I very much like comics for their more shameless and trashy side but he covered a lot of comics nobody talks about.

Which is partly what I like about Kayfabe, the whole Outlaw Comix thing they push.

Was curious and read about the dumb Maus thing. Ugh. That’s pretty dumb!

Wow, that sucks. Was not a fan of Red Room in the first place.

Has anyone else been reading Step By Bloody Step? New sci-fi fantasy limited series from Si Spurrier and Matías Bergara. On the rare instances when talking is used, it's in weird alien glyphs, rather than English or anything. It's a beautiful treasure.

Liked this video, I still want big book compilations of the best Filipino comics from the Philippines and America, there's some really good artists who slightly predated the ones who went to america
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAYeYCMZUck

I tried the first issue of Step by Step and enjoyed it, thanks for the recommend. I think I’ll pick up the trade though. The art’s gorgeous but I found myself wishing the storytelling/storyboarding was a little easier to follow.

Yeah, I can agree with that a little, although I think that being difficult to follow is intentional to an extent.

Okay I completely missed a Nestor Redondo book from 2017 and it seems to have gone scarce but there's a Sanjulian book coming soon. I was never a great fan of Sanjulian but I really liked a book cover by him recently and maybe I should give him another look. These are both books by Manuel Auad and I have a few of his previous art books like the Alex Nino book. I find a lot of classic illustrators a little bland so I didn't go for a lot of the others. He made some Jordi Bernet books and I'd file him as another good noir artist but a lot of his cartoonier stuff I just didn't like

Which is partly what I like about Kayfabe, the whole Outlaw Comix thing they push.

Really wouldn't claim this for them, they cover so much Big Two stuff and when it's something outside that sensibility it tends to be entry level (Clowes, Hergé, Akira). Even with the b&w 80's stuff that used to get written up in Wizard and shit.

RAG, I don't know if you're on Facebook, but if you are it's worth friending/following the artist and comics historian David Roach. He's a massive expert on Filipino comics and often shares rare artwork etc.