Rolling Comic Books 2022

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.

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

yeah agree on that

Quick recommendation: I randomly started reading an Image comedy/mystery series called "The Six Sidekicks of Trigger Keaton" and it's quite funny unusually well-plotted for a throwaway comic. (Proviso: I've only read two issues.)

Daniel_Rf - I was just meaning the trashy mainstream styled independent comics. I don't watch their videos that regularly, or many other podcasts really.

Ward - I'm not on facebook but I couldn't find his page so I guess you need to join to see his image posts?
I'm glad to see he's got a Luis Garcia art book out next month, I've been waiting for a book dedicated to him. Someone says the date keeps getting pushed back. Hope it comes out soon because there's so many books that just never came out: A Glenn Chadbourne book. I'm not sure Krenkel's Drawings Of Women ever came out (I don't think so). Kaluta's art book will probably never come out from the publisher who announced it. The Lale Westvind book has been pushed to august and I really hope it's going to come out then.
I haven't been a regular comics buyer for several years and I forgot just how bad the delays can be.
I passed up the book of Spanish comic art because I think I had already seen most of it.

I haven't been a regular comics buyer for several years and I forgot just how bad the delays can be.

Comics printing and shipping delays are far, far worse during COVID, various supply chain collapses, and a war that impacts the production of paper and packing materials, than they were years ago.

Sorry if this has already been covered upthread, but why haven't the big comic companies tried to get back into grocery and drug stores? Why not bring back the spinner racks? There's a huge built in audience from the movies, why aren't they taking advantage of it?

I don't know about the Westvind and Luis Garcia books but a lot of the others I mentioned seem to have been abandoned during the process. That Kaluta book was promised for several years (went from Desperado to IDW) and then no word. I'm tempted to email Kaluta about it but I'm scared it will be the thousandth time for him.

xp because people buying periodicals is just, dead

I could see the convenience store in my neighborhood that’s a block from the high school selling a few copies, but I also remember my middle school classmates giving me a great deal on comics they’d “already read” and it took me way too long to figure out they were just pocketing comics from the grocery store and making a quick buck (or less, this was when cover prices were $1.25 or less)

the distribution chain broke a number of years ago and it’s not coming back. I haven’t seen more than a couple tabloid diet/celebrity things at grocery stores for years, and I don’t think the large commodity chains really have a full rack of magazines. comics are collections and/or niche

My toddler love magazines and comics and not-screen things, so do most other kids and teens I know.

Yes, it's about the collapse of the periodical and mag distribution industries (and the relentless optimisation of grocery store shelf space as family grocery stores and newsagents get smaller and smaller), but it's also about the way the floppy publishers stopped marketing/making comics for kids (or do a crap job of it).

E.g. A manageable sum for a low-quality Marv Wolfman/Jim Aparo Batman comic vs. £4.99 for a part 1 of 6000 modern DC batcomic with characters being skinned alive in loving detail

xp yeah, I didn’t mean to imply the demand isn’t there, but all of the progressive closing of the distribution chain and the business decision to get out of accepting returns probably burned a lot of bridges

wld love to see Cow_Art pitch Perlmutter on the concept of returns

I agree that the system is too fucked to be fixable at this point

I just ordered some stuff from MyComicShop for the first time in years. How many of you still track stuff down at dedicated back issue sites/stores? There isn't that much I really crave badly, I mostly just hope for reprints or anthology pieces turning up on blogs.

I spent a huge chunk of my teenage years writing and rewriting checklists for things I lost interest in.

I read all the Swamp Things a while back, and I had to hunt down a lot of single issues.

a huge built in audience from the movies

I didn’t mean to imply the demand isn’t there,

It might be safe to just say it. Three of the top twenty graphic novels sold in mainstream outlets last year were Baby-Sitters Club books, and the top twenty include Attack On Titan, My Hero Academia, and Demon Slayer. Sales on those range from 313,000 to 150,000.

Marvel's top-selling title, on which the major plot thread of their Avengers films is based, ranked at #892, with 10k sold.

There's TONS of Marvel interest with the kids I work with and they all obviously see the movies, and given how graphic novels/comics/manga are super popular in with kids in general - maybe even more than before, because comics aren't really "uncool" anymore - can't help but feel Marvel and DC are really missing the boat. Walking Dead capitalized on it, right?

and given how graphic novels/comics/manga are super popular in with kids in general

I don't think you can bracket them like that - graphic novels (mostly YA stuff) are self contained stories, manga is serialized sure but usually has the advantage that you can start with a Volume 1. So both are easier to access than US superhero comics and both also provide better value for money. I don't think US comics are super popular with kids at all, in fact what I hear from art teachers and such is that manga is universally adored, western comics (not just DC and Marvel either) mostly ignored and the graphic novel stuff that's popular bases itself on manga, in style and storytelling.

Yeah I think there's a reason everybody reads Watchmen first.

I mean obviously DC and Marvel have published many (or at least several) outright masterpieces that can be read as discrete stories and enjoyed by non-comics audiences (the Miller run on Daredevil springs to mind) but good luck finding them at a comic book store at an affordable price

A counter example might be Grant Morrison's JLA's run - it's incredible! But there's a lot of DC continuity tied into it, and I can't imagine a new fan being patient with Howard Porter's dreadful art

I did think those manga sized reprints published in the 2010s by Panini in the UK, of Claremont's X-Men run, were a pretty good attempt but they didn't seem to take off at all

I mean ultimately most of these comics and pieces of shit that you had to be young to enjoy and still be sentimental about. Like, I don't think David Tennant's Doctor Who ever resulted in a mass audience run on Castrovalva DVDs

*are pieces of shit

Growing up in Portugal my access to US superhero comics used to be these Brazilian paperbacks, kind of Archie digest format, and being used to that the first time I found out what US issues were like was a real "lol why the fuck would anyone bother?" moment.

Now I'm remembering the last gasp of Marvel on the newsstand... via Archie Comics. I guess that Marvel Comics Digest lasted eight issues in 2017 before they canned the experiment.

I don't think you can bracket them like that - graphic novels (mostly YA stuff) are self contained stories, manga is serialized sure but usually has the advantage that you can start with a Volume 1. So both are easier to access than US superhero comics and both also provide better value for money. I don't think US comics are super popular with kids at all, in fact what I hear from art teachers and such is that manga is universally adored, western comics (not just DC and Marvel either) mostly ignored and the graphic novel stuff that's popular bases itself on manga, in style and storytelling.

Yup 100% the US floppy format kinda sucks ass and is so expensive. Only benefits are getting regular material every month (hopefully) in color and on nice paper compared to manga

I know we're likely sort of using "Big Two/Image/DH/etc." as shorthand for US comics en total, but that's really not true anymore. You have to include Scholastic as a major publisher and very representative of the industry at this point (as well as companies like First Second, Boom, etc.)

and yes, also 100% every series being discrete/being easy to pick up is a huge reason why these YA series and manga are doing well, i mean look at the Babysitter's Club series and flippin' jankass Dog Man. (lots of books also that aren't really manga style, closer to Cartoon Network/Disney TV, many current animators putting out GAs) there is ZERO reason American superhero comics can't be produced like this and DC is at least trying with their standalone YA books with Batgirl, Raven etc.

we have tons of checkouts in my school of the low-effort "ready to read" paperbacks in Marvel and DC, they love the MCU movies and cartoons, but sadly few decent comics actually aimed at the audience (age 5-11). (The Marvel Adventures stuff is clearly B and C-tier work, and DC seems content reprinting old Batman Adventures comics from 20 years ago.) Meanwhile these same kids are reading everything put out by Jennifer Holm and Raina Telgemeier while constantly asking me for manga like Jujutsu Kaisen and Toilet-Bound Hanako-Kun which we're never going to buy for them (lol)

so - yeah, i get that it's not completely fair to bridge YA material with standard superhero comics, but trust me, the audience and interest is there. they are just completely blowing the opportunity on a massive scale OR choosing not to understand it

A counter example might be Grant Morrison's JLA's run - it's incredible! But there's a lot of DC continuity tied into it, and I can't imagine a new fan being patient with Howard Porter's dreadful art

I mean ultimately most of these comics and pieces of shit that you had to be young to enjoy and still be sentimental about. Like, I don't think David Tennant's Doctor Who ever resulted in a mass audience run on Castrovalva DVDs

no idea what's in Marvel Adventures these days, but these digest collections c. 16 years ago were great* - about six bucks, fun all-ages superhero stories with jokes in. basically the only way that C21st superhero comics should even exist.

https://i.imgur.com/YcU3n6J.jpg

* I mean, eventually I bought one that wasn't primarily written by Jeff Parker and tapped out - probably the third one - but kids don't need them to be as funny as I did.