Rolling Comic Book thread 2017

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Marvel has fucked everything up so badly they're having to give away comics to retailers to keep their numbers up. Outside of a few major titles, the last four or five weeks I've gotten freebies that sometimes equal what I ordered.

vision was good - anything else [in the serial dc/marvel worlds] worth reading atm?

at the thursday show last week for some reason idk why geoff rickley in between songs was like "i read some great comics this year but the best one was vision."

The Young Animals stuff – Shade, Doom Patrol, Cave Carson, Mother Panic – has been surprisingly good. Marvel's new Champions with all the teen heroes looks promising. Did you read Omega Men, also by Vision writer Tom King? That was good. I liked Ant-Man. I've heard King's recent Batman arc with Bane and Catwoman was good but I haven't had a chance to check it out.

Ant man was by the superior foes of spider-man guy, right? Need to find it.

Yeah, Ant-Man is the same writer and tone.

Milo Z- I thought Marvel were supposed to be doing well with the comics now? What went wrong?

They added a whole bunch of series full of nobodies and their last two major crossover events took forever because of delays and no one cared. Readers appear to be completely bored with Marvel jumping from BIGGEST STORY EVER to BIGGEST STORY EVER. They're still trying to make Inhumans happen. All the major characters are different people now (or have been recently) - Captain America is evil, Iron Man was a young woman and then Dr. Doom, I have no idea WTF is going on with Wolverine. The entire universe is incoherent unless you've read everything.

For a little while they were doing well with small story titles (Hawkeye, Ms. Marvel, Moon Knight, Vision) but those sales depend on people coming in to buy the big Iron Man/Avengers/Thor titles and picking up the side stuff.

As a retailer I'm not particularly fond of DC's $2.99 pricing scheme (sales need to increase 25% per title to make up the difference in profit for $3.99 vs $2.99 and so far they have but just barely and not on some titles), but it makes Marvel look bad when most of their books are $4.99 and lower quality paper/covers.

They probably need to do some kind of true New 52/Rebirth reboot, loathe as I am to say it.

They propped up last year's numbers with Star Wars but those have steadily declined and they've gone to the well too many times already. There's Star Wars, Han Solo, Poe Dameron, Doctor Aphra, movie tie-ins, miniseries for C-3PO/Chewie/Leia and probably a couple more series I'm forgetting.

Both companies have introduced series that no one cares about - this week there are two Doctor Atom miniseries debuting, I ordered about 8% of what I sell with Batman/etc. and even that's probably too high. Marvel has several titles that didn't sell a single copy of the first issue (Matrix comes to mind), which is a first.

Image is screwing up with six-month gaps between issues. Every time Saga or something like that goes on hiatus, retailers lose 10-20% of buyers. Theoretically people will just wait for trades to collect issues, but big gaps just make bigger gaps for trades and people lose interest in those too. They haven't had a Saga-level hit in quite a while, either.

In good stuff, the DC Hanna Barbera series are pretty good. I really like the Flintstones and the Scooby Doo titles are still fun.

I'm doing okay with numbers barely holding steady on comics by selling more board games/etc. and bringing in comic-related products that are different from other people near me and not the usual Pop figurine stuff you can get at Hot Topic.

What happened with Southern Bastards? That barely seems to come out anymore.

Mordy, re: Marvel - Black Widow is excellent. The Thor comics are still worth reading but you'd have to start from 2013 to figure out what's going on.

Also pains me to say but I don't think they're getting the best out of Al E - I miss him on Loki and Mighty Avengers.

Yeah.

The constant title shuffling/soft reboots were something I was willing to ignore when they roughly lined up with plot arcs, but the Civil War 2 bullshit just dropped into the middle of Al's Ultimates title and it broke me.

They probably need to do some kind of true New 52/Rebirth reboot, loathe as I am to say it.

― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Wednesday, January 4, 2017 1:59 AM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

They just did basically this a little over a year ago.

I'm Mr. Marvel Apologist but gaddam they really do need to cut it out with the constant ginormous mega-events for a while. After Onslaught, there was like a ten-year gap until their next big line-wide crossover, at which point they began to ratchet it up until they were perpetually transitioning from one crossover into the next. Al's work is a perfect example of something that gets ground up in the machine. Mighty Avengers ran for a little over a year and was tied up in three separate crossovers and was immediately followed by Captain America and the Mighty Avengers...which began and ended its equally-short run as part of two more crossovers.

Isn't it encouraging that big crossover events aren't doing well anymore? I assumed Marvel had mostly stopped that years ago.

How much does comic store sales reflect their overall comic sales?

Last year's Secret Wars had 100+ tie=in issues. This year's Civil War II probably came pretty close to that. They've only gotten more out of control over the past decade.

xp No one knows, because their official line is that comic store sales are the only ones they count

I don't wish milo or any other comic shop owner ill will and like that comic shops exist, but Marvel's insistence that sales of individual issues is only metric that counts isn't helping their company. I saw Brian Bendis going on about it on twitter -- basically "If you like a title, buy it in a comic shop in single issues or it might get cancelled!" -- which sounds like something that'd come more from a corporate rep than a writer.

If people like buying trades or digital copies, figure out how to make money on it?

I honestly don't understand why Marvel isn't making more of a push toward GNs or why they're using floppy sales to basically subsidize the digital side of things.

Maybe this should move over to the blabbery thread as I'm guessing this thread was meant for non-big two books.

The industry (in the States) is dependent on weekly foot traffic in stores to an unhealthy degree, right? Even premiere publishers that don't put out many floppies ride the coattails of the superhero publishers who manage to pull people out of their houses every Wednesday. (said the guy who hasn't been in a comic shop in 5+ years and may have no idea what he's talking about)

I don't know if it's unhealthy degree or necessary - there are too many titles to rely on much other than foot traffic to discover them.

Alternatives to the direct market haven't taken off because comic fans want sub services and expect their comics in near-mint condition with cheap bags and boards, not beaten up newsstand copies. Digital sales are flat or down for whatever reason (partially because 'browsing' Comixology, like Amazon, kind of blows for just discovering stuff?)

I honestly don't understand why Marvel isn't making more of a push toward GNs

They just did basically this a little over a year ago.

I'm talking about a back to square one, all the major characters are the one people know them to be, clear and distinct break kind of reboot. Take that opportunity to stop doing giant crossovers with diminishing returns, especially stop doing the smaller crossovers no one gives a crap about.

xpost

I thought Old Lunch meant 'original' graphic novels, where the content has not been previously published in floppies.

Isn't it encouraging that big crossover events aren't doing well anymore? I assumed Marvel had mostly stopped that years ago.

How much does comic store sales reflect their overall comic sales?

Image is screwing up with six-month gaps between issues.

this really annoys me as I've mostly been reading Image series. Why do they do this? It makes it seem like the people creating these are really lazy and need frequent vacations. Most issues take about 5 minutes to get through, you'd think they'd be able to consistently knock one out on a monthly basis.

I don't mind the gap with Saga and WicDiv, seems to have kept the quality up.

Civ War 2 Is such a fucking incoherent mess, i genuinely wonder how a book like that gets produced. It's so loveless and awful. It's the most DC book Marvel have produced.

WicDiv has only had a one-month gap, during which the latest TPB came out, in fairness.

I thought Old Lunch meant 'original' graphic novels, where the content has not been previously published in floppies.

― Darcy Sarto (Ward Fowler), Wednesday, January 4, 2017 10:49 AM (nineteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, that's what I meant. They've only done this a handful of times over the past several years. And then they also do things like drop a random 100-page floppy of Deadpool instead of seeing how a squarebound OGN featuring a popular character might sell in a Barnes & Noble. Makes no sense.

Where is Marvel selling those cheap Timely Comics line (if they're still doing it)? I only saw them solicited as a comic book shop thing, which makes no sense, really

They do a lot of things that make no sense! Another I just thought of: the Star Wars comics are such huge sellers, right? The ones that fill in the gaps between movies and have top-tier creative teams? Soooo why not do something similar and less perfunctory with the MCU tie-ins? Make them must-buy event comics instead of a tossed-off thing you seem almost ashamed to publish?

Clearly they need me to handle this shit for them. I'll keep waiting by the phone.

Do regular bookstores order through Diamond? I always assumed they didn't but I don't actually know.

I'd imagine for an ongoing series that buying individual issues makes a difference but for most of the miniseries it has to be predecided that they're doing a collection. A writer said about Darkhorse that they're still making more money from serializing comics first so that's the reason they're not all graphic novels.

I mean making more money from doing both.

I thought Disney whipped Marvel Comics into a better business. Why are they standing by and watching this (assuming Disney really are as savvy as they seem).

I still go into comic shops occasionally so I don't know how I totally missed all this mega event stuff. All I hear about is Ms Marvel, Vision, Devil Dinosaur and a few other things.

while i have a great deal of affection for independent comic book shops, there's part of me that thinks of them in about the same way i think of radio shack.

Disney wrested control of Marvel Studios from Ike Perlmutter but he's still in charge (for now) of the rest of the enterprise, afaik.

my sense since more or less iron man's success is that marvel could give a fuck about the books as anything but feeder tubes for movie/tv ip

I haven't read anything post-Secret Wars (didn't even finish that one) but it's disappointing to hear that it hasn't worked out creatively. I would much rather see these kinds of crazy reboots in the wake of giant events with new (well, "new" characters) than the same old shit they do every time.

continuity is a harsh bitch goddess

and it's ruined the big two imo

I haven't made it that far, either, but I'd guess that part of the problem is that the two biggest Marvel Now world-builders (Hickman and Remender) split once Secret Wars was over.

Continuity (the Sisyphean, Icarusian task of hundreds of people trying to maintain something resembling a coherent story over the course of decades) is a large part of the reason I'm such a Marvel stan.

A "all major characters are who you remember them being" reboot would decimate Marvel's claims of diversity, I think. They're almost all legacy characters.

The good thing about Marvel crossovers is they tend to be less metaphysical, so often enough my fav titles get away unscathed barring an incomprehensible tie-in issue or two.

xpost That said, the point where I'm currently at (post-Original Sin and Axis) is so riddled with inconsistencies that it's driving me a little nuts.

Is there some master editorial plan where if they need to modify the X-Men in some way (kill Wolverine, have them fight the Inhumans) they just hand it over to Charles Soule? I feel like his desk (or a phone that calls him directly) is right outside the room where Perlmutter shoots down good ideas and he's on contract just to write these direction-steering things.

There was also that point in time where Matt Fraction was supposed to be writing the Inhuman(s) book and he announced Marvel decided to go in a different direction before Soule started writing it.

I checked out a random trade of this teen series Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur which was cute and charming but also forcefully tied into some kind of Inhumans event

Forgot another that Marvel seems to be doing well - Doctor Strange seems like a really solid title right now (but I'm six issues behind).

They haven't drained all the creative juices out of Jason Aaron, yet

re: Disney, Marvel Comics would barely be a blip on their balance sheet even run incredibly well. They're probably happy enough using it to farm IP.

Two or three indie publishers have opened up recently who seem to exist entirely to elicit movie interest. Predictably, this has not worked well.

Valiant is doing things well - good art, they keep trades in production and series on schedule, etc.. I just can't get people interested, unfortunately.

I'd advocate for most of the Valiant stuff. They seem to be on a similar schedule to some of the Image stuff where they run a title for a while and then it goes on hiatus, though.

Quite surprised they got off the ground again. I thought Jim Shooter's reputation would scare everyone away.

What? Valiant is good now? dang i feel old

What's a good one to try?

Unity is their 'team' superhero book that involves all the main characters IIRC.
I can't recommend anything in particular tbh, I just get to flip through every now and then and look at the art these days.

Don't start with Unity, it's several years into their continuity and it's really only there for a specific event so far

Archer & Armstrong was one of their early ones and is enjoyable, imo

Dr Aphra (Gillen book) is v likeable so far, by the way

http://i.imgur.com/7MWhDnE.jpg

v.definition of SERIOUS GRAPHIC LITERATURE but Sarah Laing's Mansfield and Me is gorgeous in a post-Fun Home way.

http://cdn1.bigcommerce.com/server5200/58zklai/products/1051/images/1506/Mansfield_and_Me_final_cover__50890.1467692638.1280.1280.jpg

i found a ten dollar first edition (in english) tpb copy of The Magicians Wife at the Strand yesterday; looking forward to trying that.
giftmas scores include the Trondheim Mickey book, the english translated Mickey's Inferno and volume 6 (7? 31 to 32) of Walt and Skeezix.

Haven't read it yet but the Trondheim Mickey Mouse book is gorgeous and much nicer than I expected (oversized hardcover!).

The Magician's Wife is a masterpiece (Billy Budd KGB isn't quite as good, but still well worth seeking out)

I somehow failed to notice my public library's ebook offerings include trade paperbacks and graphic novels so... I can now borrow comics from the library without leaving my couch?

nice. my electronic options are kinda garbage locally, only about 100 books and most of them are kids series

Speaking of Trondheim, I reread "Approximate Continuum Comics" recently and enjoyed it a lot more than I did when I first bought it. Kinda distraught at how much it has aged, though - lots of mentions of fax machines, Trondheim keeping a print magazine on computers because "it might teach me something interesting about my mac". This must feel like reading about pre-television days to someone even five years younger than me.

No mention on here of Gerard Jones' arrest for child porn the other day?

http://www.comicsbeat.com/comics-author-and-historian-gerard-jones-arrested-on-charges-of-child-pornography/

Jesus. Not sure I've ever read anything of his though - total avoidance of Green Lantern pays off again.

Sad to say, his Comic Book Heroes book is almost certainly the best single volume history of American superhero comics.

fucking hell

I saw that Gerard Jones story yeah, and I def read that book a lot as a kid (can't remember if I actually owned it or just checked it out of the library multiple times)

Apologies, I actually meant Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book by Jones, tho the earlier book is useful too.

I wrote a letter to GL: Mosaic as a kid and he personally replied to it in the comic. I was thrilled, but also deeply embarrassed that my nerd-dom had been certified in the public domain.

But yeah, that story is proper fucking hell

this Supergirl Silver Age Omnibus Volume 1 might be the greatest comic book collection I've ever read

I'd like to hear more about it.

artwork is all Jim Mooney (who adheres p closely to similar styles of Boring, Plastino, etc.) and stories are by Binder, Weisinger, Siegel, covers the first 30 issues or so of Supergirl. Non-stop nonsensical goofines: super-pets, seemingly endless iterations kryptonite, time travel, magic, proto-adolescent angst about getting adopted/going public/falling in love, ridiculous aliens/planets, Kandor, the Phantom Zone, Atlantis, etc. Every page features the use of super-powers in some deus ex machina way for either the most banal or the most fantastical purposes. Superman is like a really patronizing big brother who's always inconveniently off in another dimension or in another galaxy. It's just a joy to read.

I probably need to check for overlap with Showcase Supergirl because that was incredible tbh.

Never been a big Jim Mooney fan - always find his inking a bit 'soft' and his figure work a little static. Always thought it was a fanboy myth that he drew his figures 'nude' in pencil and then inked their clothing in afterwards, but apparently not, according to this interview:

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=lEWHfXUwUAwC&pg=PA27&dq=jim+mooney+interview+legion&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwji2PGUx7nRAhXDfhoKHfZbDdEQ6AEIIjAB#v=onepage&q=jim%20mooney%20interview%20legion&f=false

Link doesn't work.

works fine here.

And for me, though you're not missing much, mostly "yeah I worked on that, then I worked on this, this guy was an asshole, this other guy was also an asshole". The line is at the bottom of page 6 if you get the link working.

Sorry, I should've specified that the link does lead to an ebook, but I get a message that says the page in question is unavailable for viewing.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/134954755

Anyone read Hoshino's 2001 Nights? It sounds excellent. Science fiction writer Berit Ellingsen reviews it here.

i own it; loved it as a college kid and haven't read it since... i should dig it out...

I used to always say Bruce Jones was my favourite comics writer but I haven't read most of that stuff in a long time. A few of the Warren stories are really good, maybe some Twisted Tales and Alien Worlds. Rip In Time is fun. But I don't know how much of it would stand up.
Some of his Hulk work was pretty good but I didn't get far into it, I know some people said it went great places.

Most of his other superhero work seems poorly received and I don't think it's what he'd like to be doing. I'd like to try some of his prose someday. He writes a lot of thriller novels but I'll stick with his horror.

Going home from work I saw a guy in a One Punch Man car.

Finally got around to reading McCloud's The Sculptor. You know, actually pretty good. Could've even been truly great if it had been pared down in page count, among other things (ironically the book is so obsessed with time but seems to drag out on and on). That said some of the layout work in it is pretty astounding, what I would expect from the author. Connected with it emotionally so it all worked for me.

Ed Piskor (with a light redraw) noticed something in Wilson
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPTIYbaD1js/

The conceit of the Trondheim "Mickey's Craziest Adventure" is that it's a reprint collection of one-page-per-issue Paul Murry style Donald'n'Mickey adventure strips, complete with printing errors and water stains but that author and artist "found" an incomplete stack of old issues so we get installment 2, 4, 7, 8, 10, 11, 14 and so on through "page 82". It's remarkably clever and fun.

I just finished (and really enjoyed) Patience, which is Daniel Clowes in extended Death Ray/David Boring mode.

It's a lot more upbeat and sentimental than anything else Clowes has written - for me, a lot of the internal tension came from knowing his previous books rather than from the story itself, i.e. you keep waiting for something really nasty or depressing to happen, even though the story keeps not going that way.

ANYWAY some nerd must have read it on this thread surely

that would be me. i thought it was the best thing he's done since velvet glove.

by far, really.

I didn't like it much.

that surprises me. why?

I found it dull and far too long. There's a short story in the morass but as is it never grabbed me. Had to force myself to finish it.

I'm pretty hit or miss with Clowes in general. Respect him more than I've ever loved his stuff.

Like A Velvet Glove and David Boring I think are great. Ghost World is okay. Those are the only ones I'd ever want to revisit.

I've never read David Boring maybe I should give that one a shot. Everything else apart from LAVG I've thought varied from boring to actively irritating

well, of his long pieces. There's a bunch of shorter bits in 8ball that I love to death (Sensual Santa, On Sports, Pussey! etc.) and LAVG is great.

I assume this goes here

Ice Haven is peak Clowes for me but I think Wilson is the only thing of his I've read since then.

― Transformed From The Norm By The Nuclear Goop (Old Lunch), Wednesday, January 25, 2017 1:28 PM (twenty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I read and enjoyed Patience a while ago - definitely one of the best things Clowes has done, though I thought the art was a little slapdash in places. He seems to be inking with a brush a lot more these days - I miss the sharpness and accuracy of his pen line.

Never really understood the love for Velvet Glove, which feels too much like refried David Lynch to me. Ghost World remains his masterpiece.

Not quite comics, but just watched Very Semi-Serious, the documentary about New Yorker cartoonists, which you'll enjoy if it's the sort of thing you enjoy - I did. Surprising number of LOLs, too, although me and my partner are both twee bastards.

There is zero stuff about cartooning style, or even trying to anatomize the jokes, it's mostly just "lol cartoonists are weirdos", here's a good one about bagpipes. But fun nonetheless. Remnick remains impossibly oily.

i started watching the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure anime which is good, but it's really the manga artwork that is blowing my mind. i'm looking to pick up some books, should i go for the new viz reissues? is rohan goes to the louvre worth getting?

also i think i'd prefer color over black and white.. i was under the impression that the viz reprints were in color? but in the amazon preview they're b&w

They're black and white with some colour pages. Worth getting but the earliest stuff isn't the best. You might want to start on the second or third part.

Some of Rohan looks quite nice, it's full colour but the story is not Araki switched on, sadly.

Went to Brussels for the weekend and made a trip to the bande dessinée museum. At the store I picked up an anthology of Péyo's Poussey (very charming comic strip about a cat) and that Trondheim Mickey Mouse thing which I think hasn't been released in English yet?

it has!

The conceit of the Trondheim "Mickey's Craziest Adventure" is that it's a reprint collection of one-page-per-issue Paul Murry style Donald'n'Mickey adventure strips, complete with printing errors and water stains but that author and artist "found" an incomplete stack of old issues so we get installment 2, 4, 7, 8, 10, 11, 14 and so on through "page 82". It's remarkably clever and fun.
― A big shout out goes to the lamb chops, thos lamb chops (ulysses), Thursday, January 19, 2017

I am really enjoying this Gene Colan Batman collection I got from the library, all early 80s stuff, inked by Klaus Jansen. Colan draws amazing hands.

I'd forgotten Janson had inked Colan on Batman...googling brought me to this nice original page. You can see that Klaus is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here, but his bold finishing really gives Colan's pencils a solidity they sometimes lacked at this stage in his career.
http://www.comicartfans.com/gallerypiece.asp?piece=249492

yeah it's not v far from the art in those Battlestar Galactica or Daredevil runs Jansen was on

er Janson

Janson deserves even more credit than he gets for all the great work he's done

I still remember the feeling as an 11-year-old, reading Marvel UK reprints of his Punisher work, when I suddenly went from "this guy is terrible and can't draw!" to "wait - this is... art?'

feel like there's a bit of Ditko in his style but more expressive, bolder

Well Janson started out as an assistant to Dick Giordano, and you can see quite a lot of similarities between their inking styles. They're also both part of that 'superb inkers/middling pencillers' club (see also: Dan Adkins, Joe Sinnott, Chic Stone, Frank Giacoia, Tom Palmer etc).

http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/February-2017/Emil-Ferris-The-Bite-That-Changed-My-Life/

An exclusive

that book is only looking better and better

also YOW at Jesse Jacobs' "Safari Honeymoon"
http://koyamapress.com/projects/safari-honeymoon/
http://www.tcj.com/reviews/safari-honeymoon/
http://www.newyorker.com/uncategorized/eyeball-kicks-a-surreal-safari-honeymoon
http://www.brokenfrontier.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Safarihoneymoon3_0714.jpg
http://https%3A//cdn.bleedingcool.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Safari-Honeymoon_1.jpg

on the second volume of Silver Age JLA collection and man this book is mostly garbage, so formulaic - not nearly as fun as the Superman/Supergirl/Flash stuff

the current state of newsstand comics is such a clusterfuck that marvel is contracting with archie comics to publish and market newsstand digest versions of marvel superheroes: http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/newsbrief/index.html?record=1210

So, uh...why didn't they do that decades ago? Seems like such a no-brainer.

because decades ago they still acted like a publisher of newsstand periodicals instead of the current direct market-only, single distributor, no returns mess they've now got going

pretty sure we've covered this elsewhere, but: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_market

by the end of the 90s the newsstand market was almost completely gone and all of the different distributors collapsed into Diamond

I was just wondering the other day what happened to all those spinning racks at 7-11 or whatever.

They've already been publishing these tiny little digest comics for years, usually under the Marvel Adventures line

xp - I had three of them at one point, but gave 'em all away

xpost Yeah, they've put out digest-sized tpbs but afaik the distribution has been basically the same as with their regular reprints. It felt like they were aiming more for the manga market than the casual 'eight-year-old bored at the grocery store with his mom' demographic.

I was super-psyched the other day when I saw some of those $5 bags of random-ass fifteen year old comics at Target. Those mysterious, context-free, random-ass issues of Micronauts: The New Voyages and Kull the Conqueror were what got me into comics in the first place.

Whoa - Target? What section?

When I do encounter a comics rack (at an actual newsstand), I notice it has only DC and Archie titles.

xpost There was just a small pile of those bags in the weird little trading card/vinyl figure keychain ghetto next to the registers. It's nice to see that someone out there is still engaged in packaging that stuff, however little respect it may be afforded. Kinda makes me want to go buy a ton of quarter bin stuff and do it myself.

I distinctly remember picking up a bag collecting Alan Davis's first solo storyline on Excalibur and being like...yeah, okay, now that I'm reading a whole story instead of just disconnected single issues of whatever's lying around, I can say that this comics thing is totally for me.

i really need to see book one first but this is strangely tempting
https://www.gofundme.com/beinagraphicnovel

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/2017/02/jeddah-sci-fi-fans-flock-comic-con-expo-170219150013781.html
First Comicon in Saudi Arabia.

Mads Mikkelsen, Charles Dance and a bunch of others were there. Oddly the entrances were gender segregated but the actual event wasn't.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPtF4YnDaUw

Shit, that's two different cons, one from 2014. Silly me.

Klaus Jansen's pencil work is a bit under appreciated. I think the last big project he penciled was the Death of the Maidens Batman/Ra's Al Ghul story with Greg Rucka. I know Jansen was doing some inks on some of JR Jr's last Marvel work, which looked a bit odd as Romita's been going with a bit more Kirby looking artwork, which seemed different with Jansen's looser inking.

Only read a few, but this French guy is pretty good and French: http://english.bouletcorp.com/2017/01/19/your-comment-here/

Love Boulet. My gf owns a bunch of his sketchbooks.

Finished Junji Ito's "Tomie". Definitley impressive, though could have been a bit shorter. I liked the bit with the photographer girl best - having an actual three dimensional protagonist to fight the threat gave it more oomph. Great art throughout, with some grody body horror.

Yikes, that looks creepy as shit. I'll check it out!

Just read The Nao of Brown by Glyn Dillon, which is gorgeous and funny, but the ending is a bit shit. And Shigeru Mizuki's Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths, which is technically incredible but so, so depressing.

the Vol. 2 hardcover of True Swamp is at the printer and Uncivilized tells me there's about even odds that advance copies will make it in time for MoCCA fest. Trying not to get my hopes up. I'll be at the Uncivilized table regardless, of course. Anyone else going?

Probably, yay you!

My Favorite Thing is Monsters is quite something. It's enormous and epic, and so big I don't quite see where it's going. There are moments of genius in it.
I have to say I was INCREDIBLY FRUSTRATED when I got to the end and saw this was only Volume 1. Dying to know how this story concludes!
Forks, in particular I think you will dig it, if you haven't read yet

i ended up giving her a hundred bucks and expect to be IN the second book as a character so yeah, i'm pretty into it! My copy has been held up on amazon for weeks.

anyways, i just finished all four volumes of Manu Larcenet's 800 page investigation into psychosis, BLAST. Boy, it's good! like stupidly good. beautifully beautifully realized.

RIP Bernie Wrightson.

Next to my recommendations on the obituary thread, his Purple Pictography collaboration with Vaughn Bode is brilliant.

It's odd that he never got a proper art book after A Look Back in the late 70s. There were sketchbooks but never any other big ass books that he deserved.

RIP snappy skip williamson
http://www.tcj.com/skip-williamson-1944-2017/
back to back with Jayzey Lynch, truly sad

Yeah, it feels like the Comics Journal site is just a sucession of RIP articles these days. :( is 2017 the 2016 of comics?

http://www.dynamite.com/htmlfiles/viewProduct.html?PRO=C1524101311#previewImages

I might go for this. I'm quite fond of Luis Garcia Mozos and Ramon Torrents. Apparently the reason so many of their women looked the same is because Mozos and a few others drew his girlfriend. They probably used a lot of the same models.

http://www.darkhorse.com/Books/3000-954/Will-Eisner-The-Centennial-Celebration-1917-2017-Ltd-Ed-HC#prettyPhoto

100 copies signed by Eisner?

A new volume of Miura's Berserk in July. Hope the story hurries up a bit but it probably won't.

you know what is low key one of the best monthly comics being made right now? The Flintstones. I shit you not.

Who's the creative team?

Barney and Wilma

I read a couple Flintstones comics after a previous recommendation on ILC. It's not bad, but it's just... too weird that it exists?

Like, it's a full colour, modern, Hanna-Barbera-approved glossy magazine,, when it feels like it should've been published in 1989, as some unofficial b&w photostatted piece of shit called the Flintstains or something.

http://www.denofgeek.com/us/books-comics/flintstones/263442/flintstones-10-exclusive-preview-pages
http://www.denofgeek.com/us/books-comics/snagglepuss/261937/theres-a-new-snagglepuss-comic-coming-and-it-sounds-great

Fred and Barney go to a porno theater is def some "1989... unofficial b&w photostatted piece of shit" steez no thx

eh, the vibe for me is peter bagge plotting with dan clowes dryness. i like it a lot.

has anyone on here read East of West? is it any good?

Well, I guess there's nowhere to go but up with Hanna Barbera characters, so good on DC, I guess.

I thought east of west was garbage

(And the most recent issue of the flintstones is the weakest unfortunately)

Much like Manhattan Projects, East of West is beautiful to look at, but gets wearyingly cynical after a few issues. Hickman is a lot like Geoff Johns sometimes - he likes pulling legs off flies and laughing about it. (He's a better writer than Johns, obviously.) And the 3000-part-storytelling gets a bit boring when he doesn't have iconic Marvel characters to hang his shtick off.

Which is to say, I think he's very smart but his sense of humour sucks.

Aside from that - just read By The Numbers, which collects a bunch of ligne-claire stories from the 90s, very much in Yves Chaland's "Tintin but ethically challenged" mode. Recommended library borrow, probably not worth paying for. The art looks better on the page than it does in JPG form below.

Also read Arkham Asylum for the first time - boy, everyone was right about it not being very good, but I guess you have to admire the fact that it was published at all. My favourite moment moment comes in GM's liner notes at the end, when he admits that the "subtextual material might have been lost on the casual reader". The 15th anniversary edition also includes GM's thumbnail panel sketches, with everything panelled out like a trad Jim Aparo comic. I think I might have preferred that comic.

https://cdn.bleedingcool.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/By-the-Numbers-lite-21.jpg

arkham asylum felt super important when if first came out and unfortunately it was

i can recommend Koren Shadmi's 'The Abaddon' as a worthwhile take on No Exit; nice art, well laid out story
https://www.amazon.com/Abaddon-Koren-Shadmi/dp/1940878055
http://mir-s3-cdn-cf.behance.net/project_modules/disp/e04ba324653975.5604a8fe7b641.jpg

arkham asylum felt super important when if first came out and unfortunately it was

― Bobson Dugnutt (ulysses), Sunday, April 9, 2017 5:20 PM (forty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think more than any other lesson, living more than a couple decades has given me the insight that art that seems poignant or edgy in its time will be recycled into mainstream culture that makes you shrug or die a little years later. The comics to movie/television arc that's come to fruition of the last few years is both enlightening and soul destroying.

There's Dave McKean stuff going on in the tv/films?

The art's still dated better than the writing, I think

Arkham Asylum's not the best Batman story, obviously, but yeah - feel like Batman creators has been rebelling for decades (and continue to do so to this day!) against the effects of the '60s TV series and comics of the time. Easier to look back and appreciate both sides for what they are.

McKean thought Arkham was overblown and embarrassing at the time iirc

if you read it as a parody of sandman starring batman it makes sense

insert sic comment taking me literally and explaining their publication dates were close enough together that it couldn't be the case

All those Hanna Barbera DC titles seem to be trying a bit too hard to me. I do read Future Quest because I needed some brainless superhero crossover stuff and having been introduced to a lot of those characters by Adult Swim it's never not hilarious to me when Space Ghost or Brak show up and the other characters take them seriously.

I gave up on East Of West and Manhattan Projects both because I was reading them in floppies and keeping track of what was happening seemed as difficult as it is with any superhero continuity wank. MP at least reads better in trade.

Fred and Barney go to a porno theater is def some "1989... unofficial b&w photostatted piece of shit" steez no thx

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, April 5, 2017

Late to correct this, but they aren't. They're going to see their version of Steel Magnolias and later persuade other Elks to go and see... I want to say it's Fried Green Tomatoes but I can't remember. It's women baring their souls they're talking about.

The Flintstones is the only one of the first wave Hanna Barbera books that's really been worthwhile but it's been wonderful and is without a doubt the bets thing DC are publishing just now. It's true this issue was maybe weaker than the rest but the end of the Vacuum Cleaner plot was unexpected and emotional.

Of the second wave, they all look promising except DiDio's Top Cat (some would say unsurprisingly). The crossover annuals pretty much stunk although I suppose the Flintstones/Booster Gold was at least engaging.

East of West started well then turned into a rambling, confusing mess. The Manhattan Projects was great for the first 10 issues or so but then I totally lost interest and I can't remember the last issue I read of the reboot.

the vacuum cleaner and crew rescuing bowling ball from the recycled pet food factory was kinda amazing

Loved bowling bowl learning an actual joke in #10 after the conversation in #9.

The positive discussion of the Hanna Barbera books feels a little like a very elaborate practical joke.

tbf, the book does too

East of West reminds me a bit of Grendel because of the scope and the artist's style reminds me quite a bit of 80s Matt Wagner. I've read it as the issues come out and it is a comic that might be a better read when it is all done. There are a bunch of characters and it took really 18-20 issues until you have really seen all of 'the world' and background. I'd say it's probably at the 3/4 mark in the total story, although I got a feeling at some point there are going to be some flashbacks to how this world came to be this way. I'm in for the duration to see how it plays out.

Faith Erin Hicks' The Nameless City Vol. 1 was fun, Avatar-style Chinese mythological adventure, though more grounded (no magic, lots of politics). Looking forward to Vol. 2 this year.

Reading IDW's first volume of Dan DeCarlo Archie comics. Caught myself wondering if some comic artists just become legendary through nostalgia and fans growing up - these comics aren't bad really, but they are frequently quite crudely drawn afaict. Is DeCarlo seen as a master of the medium or somesuch? The fact that the collection's named after him and not the scripter makes me think it might be the case. Anyway, still reading on because it's mostly Betty and Veronica stuff and the strips kinda give a wild look into what it was like to live under the patriarchy circa 1957 - Jughead gets straight up called out as a misogynist once!

I haven't seen that particular volume, but DeCarlo is definitely considered the 'definitive' Archie artist (I dunno about 'master of the medium'). 1957 would be fairly early into his career - by the 60s and, especially, 70s (when he co-created Josie and the Pussycats, for example) his work was slick, sexy and extremely accomplished in terms of clear storytelling; he pretty much single-handedly defined a more modern look for the Archie characters that was clearly copied by other, often less expert Archie artists. The fact that, as with so many other creators toiling on characters they didn't own, he was under-rewarded and under-recognised throughout his career may also have contributed to the rise in his posthumous reputation.

Good point in that the quality of his work improves immensely over the decades

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/extinction-a-graphic-novel-project-comics#/

The first season of the live-action Korean adaptation of Kaiji Kawaguchi's excellent manga "Eagle" (called "President" in English) is now available on US Netflix. Haven't seen but am curious based on an affinity for the source material
https://www.netflix.com/title/80154638
http://geekandsundry.com/if-you-like-house-of-cards-youll-love-the-manga-eagle/

Oh wow, I remember that series. Crazy!
Just read a decent bio, Glenn Gould: A Life Off Tempo by Sandrine Revel

The cartoonist Mark Newgarden recently re-shared this on his Facebook page, and I've been obsessed by it ever since. The only known comic strip by Eugene Teal, originally printed by R. Crumb in the first issue of Weirdo:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_O2DWDvN4DUU/SiRmI0Pgx0I/AAAAAAAAAqg/JleXFm4IsyM/s400/img019.jpg

This youtube version clears things up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hW2SZgROuMs&list=LLWwmSqUluMWZ5qidhsGaTzA

Doh, one more try

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hW2SZgROuMs&list=LLWwmSqUluMWZ5qidhsGaTzA

FFS

Oh man I think about that comic all the time even now, IIRC Jim woodring and I discussed our love of it once

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hW2SZgROuMs

that thing is pure woodring alright

Thanks ulysses - and Jon, I can see why it's relevant to yr interests :-)

Reading some Aquaman archives. The story where one of Aquaman's foes decides to attack the surface world and one of Green Arrow's goes underwater, so instead of switching villains GA and Speedy don diving suits and Aquaman walks around a city with a fucking tank full of fish - it still makes me as angry as it did the first time I read it.

On a different note, anyone read Peter Bagge's Zora Neale Houston bio?

I thought his sanger bio was a lot of fun, would like to read the hurston... what an odd late career direction for him!

Loved the Sanger bio, yes. He was always one of the most reasonable libertarians I was aware of (damning with faint praise?), his wokening has been a pleasant surprise.

I haven't read either of the bios yet but I love pete bagge fiercely and will always love him

"Hippy House" is a perfect comic

Anya Davidson's Banned For Life. Pretty good.

Bagge's Sanger bio is the best thing he's done since the end of HATE proper. For his first book intended as a single graphic novel, it's also more tightly compressed than anything else he's done: pretty much each page is completely self-contained as an anecdote or study, as if he had serialised it piecemeal like his Founding Fathers Funnies.

(I told Mr Bagge how great I thought the book was, and what a shame it hadn't received any real attention or reviews, and he barkingly laughed that it had sold better than anything else he'd done for years. An excellently libertarian response, I thought.)

I only discovered the existence of his Hurston bio when I was searching her name on Amazon recently. I was...surprised.

hey i have a question for you comics fans. our kid is about to turn 6 and is ridiculously psyched to see Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. My guess is for a six year old that'll be a "no", even though i don't know the rating yet. i'm thinking PG-13 seems to be a safe bet.

but i've considered picking up the Valerian collection that's coming out this summer, right after his bday. what's the age level w/r/t disturbing material, violence, etc? Is it pretty dense and adult or is it pitched at a younger audience? he's really into sci-fi, or at least the notion of it. he's into the visuals and the invention of it all.

thanks!

What books does the collection include? The first two ("Bad Dreams" and "City of Shifting Waters") are very clearly oriented for kids, and the series kinda gradually shifts from "all ages" to "adult" throughout the years, so the more recent the book, the less kid-friendly it is.

The violence is never that bad, it's pretty much on Star Wars level throughout the series. But sexual themes start getting into the books later on. The first one of to deal with sex is "Heroes of the Equinox", where baby-making is a big part of the plot. But it's done in a rather cute and humorous way, it's all implied and nothing is shown on page. I remember finding it funny when I first read the book, I think I was around 9 years old. So if your kid knows where babies come from, it shouldn't be disturbing at all.

However, "On the Frontiers" includes a rather graphic rape scene, which bothered me a lot as a kid, and still bothers me as an adult. So definitely don't let your kid read that one! And "Birds of the Master" has some disturbing imagery of people being made into the slaves of the villain via technological devices implanted on them, kinda similar as in The Tripods. It didn't bother me as a child 'cause I'd seen worse in horror movies, but if your kid is sensitive to that sort of stuff, you should skip that book.

Another thing is that the writer also starts adding more political and social satire into the series as it goes on. This is already happening in "Heroes of the Equinox" (which satirizes socialism, fascism, and the 1970s green movement), but that one can still be read as a fun adventure story even if you don't get the allegory. However, the political commentary starts getting heavier around "The Ghosts of Inverloch"/"The Wrath of Hypsis" two-parter. When I read those as a kid, I simply found them boring.

So, I would say that the run of books from "Bad Dreams" to "Brooklyn Station, Terminus Cosmos" is fair game for kids, with the aforementioned caveats for "Heroes of the Equinox" and "Birds of the Master". That's pretty much the classic run of the series anyway, the quality starts noticeably dropping around "The Wrath of Hypsis", and it never really recovers.

There's also a separate bestiary for the series, which depicts the various alien races and creatures Valérian & Laureline have met throughout their journeys, with beautiful painted illustrations by Mézières. Since I was a big fan of bestiaries with real animals too as a kid, I enjoyed that one immensely. Dunno if it's been translated to English tho?

And "Birds of the Master" has some disturbing imagery of people being made into the slaves of the villain via technological devices implanted on them, kinda similar as in The Tripods. It didn't bother me as a child 'cause I'd seen worse in horror movies

should i read this it sounds intersting

Everyone should read it, it's possibly the best sci-fi comic of all time, at least for the first dozen books or so. If imaginative cosmic visions and cool alien designs are your thing, you won't be disappointed. I'm still not sure whether George Lucas actually borrowed elements from it to Star Wars, but once you read it you'll understand why people (including the creators of the comic) think so.

the first volume includes Bad Dreams, City of Shifting Waters, and The Empire of a Thousand Planets. there are some more volumes slated for release, but i figured i'd just get the first one and see what he thinks. so i think i'll order it for him! he's watched the trailer probably about twenty times, i think he'll be pretty thrilled to get the book in lieu of seeing the film.

Wes Brodicus at 2:55 19 May 17

The scenes where people get swarmed by the titular birds are about as bad as the attic scene in that Hitchcock movie. Barely suitable for ten-year old me iirc.
xpost - "Les Habitants du ciel" - two volumes, neither of which was translated. The first one is grebt, haven't read the second.

I guess people's mileage may vary on this, those scenes didn't disturb me, and " Birds of the Master" was the first Valérian book I read around the age of 8. But I wasn't particularly scared by that Hitchcock movie either.

I didn't know about a second bestiary! Have to check whether they've translated that one into Finnish too.

xmessage

Yeah, that first volume should definitely be okay for a kid. It's worth noting that The Empire of a Thousand Planets is when the series really finds it's voice tho. Bad Dreams in particular is quite different from what follows, being a time travel story set mostly in the Middle Ages. So if your kid likes the cool aliens in the trailer, he might be a bit disappointed by it. TEoaTP is when depicting weird and colourful aliens and planets really becomes the series' draw.

http://www.paulgravett.com/articles/article/asian_comics

I think I've mentioned this before. I think I'll buy it but it's a shame there doesn't seem to be enough pictures. I tend to lose interest in a lot of books about comics quite quickly but in this case, everything is so vague to me that this might be more engrossing.
Lent has a book on Chinese comics coming out soon, might be a reprint because I could swear I seen a very similar book years ago.

sounds interesting but no pics.. eh

Do you mean preview pictures? There's supposed to be 178 pictures in the book but just not nearly enough to cover all that you'd want.

Drawn And Dangerous (the Italian comics book) didn't have enough images but it was a brilliant examination.

this weekend i splurged on the JOJOVELLER art book and it's worth every penny

http://i.imgur.com/CyrCeh2.jpg

basically every page is jaw-dropping. i think i like steel ball run and jojolion the best, but there are some good jolyne ones too

Finished the run of Chew. Fun book, good times.

Astonishingly, Steve Ditko is working with IDW for Mr A collections to come out. I never thought he'd bother with anyone but Robin Snyder.

This is gonna one of those things we highly regret once it comes out, won't we

Depends which end of the black and white card you're at

Mr. A is terrible

My friend and I used to try to use as many of his crazy initialized dialogue formulae

(DOWENOBU = "don't weep now, but")

In conversation as we could

I had a couple of issues of Mr. A in my first collection back in the 80s. I remember them being really f-in weird and having all sorts of wild lettering.

The earliest Mr A stories are really well drawn and appealingly weird, like the thing that shouts out letters at people. A lot of the best stuff was splash images of criminals flailing around and sinking into the black side.

The Question was overall better though. The DC reprints of it look awful though.

Crackling Blazer is still the weirdest small press thing he ever done. "CABOO!"

I agree that the early Mr A strips that appeared in Witzend and elsewhere are amongst Ditko's best-drawn comics, so to dismiss them as simply 'terrible' seems an inattentive judgement. I don't know of any comic book work (as opposed to newspaper strip work) prior to Mr A that had expressed so plainly a political viewpoint- and tbh, the 'A is A' 'philosophy' espoused isn't any cruder or lacking in nuance than the 'democratic vigilantism' of most mainstream superhero comics. There's something singular about Ditko's best 'political' comics - they're obviously very deeply felt, and that intensity radiates from the page - and in his desire to express his views, he seems to be grasping for a whole new form of comics, reaching its apogee with the utterly unhinged Avenging World comic (which I'm lucky enough to own a signed copy of, inherited from Martin Skidmore, who got a cover out of Ditko for his fanzine FA back in the day.)

Fantagraphics of course published two volumes of Ditko comics, including lots of Mr A, before they had a big fallen out with Sturdy Steve - I expect those volumes are pretty collectible now. It will be interesting to see if the hook-up with IDW lasts longer.

I was never able to get the second Fantagraphics collection.

Grrl Scouts are back!!! This totally took me by surprise, but I have a lot of nostalgia for the earlier series (they're some of the first comics I bought myself - the art really caught my eye), so I snapped the new issue up immediately. I've never really been convinced by Jim Mahfood as a writer, but who cares - it's delirious crazy fun, and of course the art is awesome.

Not quite comic-y, but I was in a London charity bookshop, flipping through Michael Cho's sketchbook of Toronto alleyways, and my old apartment in it. I was like, holy shit, Michael Cho drew my back deck and toilet window

And *found* my old... I meant

Amazon has some deal where if you buy a digital graphic novel you get one of a selection of Marvel tpbs free in digital, too. Also, I think I knew but forgot if you want a collection on comiXology, check on amazon because the kindle edition, which also gives it to you on comiXology, sometimes cost half the price (?!?)

Surprise surprise, the Mr A collections are cancelled.

lol

Just read the first volume of Clean Room by Gail Simone. Reallllllly good, nasty horror. I don't even want to spoil the premise, which is clear by the end of the first volume, but it's real good.

I thought it was really up and down in floppies, entertaining enough but the final act felt superfluous.

really up and down in floppies

*snort*

not a fan of Simone's work.
Something i read that i kinda love is "Delicious Dungeon" by Ryoko Kui, an RPG cooking manga about a group of adventurers who meet up with an oddball dwarf chef who shows them how to hunt for food inside a dungeon to better LEVEL UP
the recipes are meticulous (there are graphs showing fat/protein content) and it's all meganerdy fun.
Scanlated online here: http://mangakakalot.com/manga/dungeon_meshi

first volume available in english now
https://www.amazon.com/Delicious-Dungeon-Vol-Ryoko-Kui/dp/0316471852

I just read the three hardcovers of Casanova and man my head hurts, from the last story especially. Anyone know where I could find a good plot summary or notes to what the hell I just read?

The newer ones that follow Luxuria/Gula/Avaritia?

If you want to start a thread, I'm game. I'm not sure there's a great rundown out there, although if you're really lost, it's nice to check a wiki-style site just as a cheat sheet of who the characters were originally before they get twisted through the space-time continuum.

What's been released of the third series is both more straightforward and more of a departure.

Sorry, *fourth* series. For some reason I keep thinking it's the third they're on.

yeah i just finished Avaritia

just read josh simmons 'furry trap' and it's immensely disturbing work, right up there with graham ingels and s. clay wilson as the most genuinely unsettling comics i've ever seen. it's cumulative as much as anything but even excerpts are unpleasant.
http://68.media.tumblr.com/092c721ea67c070621ab373d996d3894/tumblr_inline_ne6kif2PEc1rb0pi4.png

checked some excerpts and it verges a bit into johnny ryan-style "macho male misanthropy is hilarious" styles for my liking. but persuade me i'm wrong!

I haven't read his most recent work but that's essentially my take on him

i understand the potential connect with Ryan (who I dig in a different way) but think Simmons work is drastically in a different vein. i don't think his stuff is misanthropic at all so much as it is an exploration of damage. It's painfully labored work and unpleasant to read but there's not really any irony or comedy at play that I can see.

http://www.tcj.com/one-more-lens-through-which-to-process-the-world-a-horror-filled-conversation-with-josh-simmons/

There’s an element of having your cake and eating it too with the violence in my stuff, I suppose: both indulging in it and commenting on it, or having some distance from it. Makes it harder to parse. I know I want the violence in my stories to have weight. I don’t want it to be violence for laughs, or to be numbing. I suppose that’s part of why people sometimes react so strongly to my stuff. Because it isn’t played for laughs, there isn’t an ironic distance. I work hard to make the characters feel believable and real. There’s humor in the stories, but it isn’t at the expense of the victim. What really perplexes me is when critics dismiss the work as a kind of calloused bro humor fuckery, when if anything the work is born out of hypersensitivity and vulnerability.

hmm

of course, he references Haneke (who i love) and Von Trier (who i hate) in the same paragraph so ymmv is about right.

Not a comics person, but I bought the first issue of the new Vader series today at Newbury Comics.

I read somewhere that the second one came out yesterday?

yep

Got it. Read it. Are all single issues of comics this quick to read?

most, sure. some are denser when it comes to dialogue or take some scrutiny to really dig into the art

I guess I just didn’t know!

It's something that sticks out for me as someone who imprinted on comics of the 70s and 80s, that many comics of the last 20 years or so are just SUCH fast reads (speaking mainly of mainstream stuff here - alternative stuff still runs the gamut from ridiculously chewy to sinfully lazy). I'm just a lot more comfortable in that verbose, purple but genuinely bizarre world of the first wave of post-Stan hippies.

When I started reading 50s-60s comics it was amazing how long they taken to read and loved seeing lots of small detailed panels but once the novelty wore off and it became apparent how redundant most of the text was, I much prefer minimal text and larger images. Can feel like a ripoff but I think it's better storytelling for the most part.

I bought Sandman Overture and decided immediately that I'd never read it. Looks like way too much work.

I like manga for the lack of clutter but the artists I like are so few and far between, unfortunately. Shouldn't be surprising how much price tag and page count restriction shape the storytelling techniques.

Remember so many interesting looking alternative comics in expensive hardcover but not much actual content.

I think Warren Ellis gets some blame for his philosophical waxing about "cinematic" comics with the larger panel layouts, widescreen-emulating dual page spreads, but it didn't really become an issue for me until it turned into writers trying to pull off the same shtick without thinking it through, and handing it to artists who were in a deadline crunch.

The previous Vader book was denser, but I could see an argument for using the style with that character. You could do a hell of a lot with a guy who doesn't speak a whole lot moving through these low-dialogue scenarios just going crazy with throwing guys around, lightsaber action, etc. I'm not sure how well this current book is doing that.

Manga is for sure the real influence, but there's a reason those volumes are so thick!

The style really needs to merit the large panels. I prefer heavily illustrated comics, so bigger panels become more desirable for the images to achieve full effect.

Anyone seen Superani? It's a Korean collective of mostly very skilled artists, some of them do comics. I knew Jung Gi Kim and Woojin Oh but the rest aren't familiar.
http://www.superani.com/index01.html

I like the looser lines, don't know if that's a Korean thing, but I have heard that Korean artists are more anatomically realistic than Japanese generally.

I think Warren Ellis gets some blame for his philosophical waxing about "cinematic" comics with the larger panel layouts, widescreen-emulating dual page spreads,

― mh, Saturday, 24 June 2017 15:05

I remember some of this. My main objection at the time was mainstream comics culture's nauseating reverence for blockbuster films (which has probably gotten worse).

the "widescreen action" that's taken over since the early 2000s is the Americanization of manga tropes. always thought it was due to the much more expensive per page rates of doing full color work, slow pages, etc. it's great when it works... and i'm not clamoring to go back tons of captions and dialogue boxes tbh

xp yeah, exactly

http://comicsworkbook.tumblr.com/post/136605908622/hey-everyone-this-is-an-article-on-color-i-did
Really good article about comics coloring.

xp
I recently read the LSH "Great Darkness Saga" collection, and was struck by how dense and complex it was... sometimes I couldn't finish a single issue in one sitting! (And I grew up reading comics in the '80s, so I'm used to lots of dialogue and captions; but that book is a tour de force of density.)

The fact that comics have become more $$$ over time (significantly outpacing inflation) can contribute to the feeling you're being ripped off sometimes these days. Most single issues I read feel satisfying enough, though; and I imagine it would feel odd / "retro" to read something new that uses the old style (characters speaking full paragraphs to each other in a single panel, while frozen mid-kick, etc.)

(Btw, I'm going to hope/assume that the $$$ surcharge mentioned above is being passed along to the creators, and isn't just the add'l cost of keeping the ship running due to declining readership... a question for others here who know more about the economics of the biz.)

http://weaves.tumblr.com/post/128584557180/gerte-dorch-scorch-the-porch-opens-friday-at

This guys work is pretty creepy

https://static.comicvine.com/uploads/scale_small/6/67663/5877267-01.jpg

Enjoyed this, one of those GNs done in collaboration with the Louvre. This one's about a Louvre security guard whose future in-laws are trying to force him to add a hideous old family heirloom to the gallery walls.

I think the worse thing about modern comics is that they are more under-written, stuff just takes forever to happen. Beyond the use of text, they just beat around the bush and then stretch out action scenes.

To me, I think heavier text comics work pretty well when the story fits. Jonathan Hickman's newer project the Black Monday Murders is pretty text heavy, using quite a bit of documents and other tricks that makes for a longer read. It works there. I think old Moore Swamp Thing still reads fine and that is very dense by modern standards. Dave Lapham does pretty dense story telling in Stray Bullets. Warren Ellis also is pretty good at the single issue comic book and has done quite a few using alot of 9 panel pages.

Yes the drip feed storytelling is infuriating

All of these writers have way too many monthly titles on their docket and their books read like it

These guys are generally writing for collected edition posterity and it would be better if there was no monthly version of them if they're going to be like that.

which is such a fucking paradox because Marvel, in particular, is still making their claims that series won’t be continued or even collected if single issues aren’t sold

Read the first volume of the new Flintstones. It IS good, I gotta say!

It's not so much a paradox as Marvel demanding to a) eat their cake and b) have it.

All of these writers have way too many monthly titles on their docket and their books read like it

Absolutley true, such a pain to keep up with favourites.

Read the first volume of the new Flintstones. It IS good, I gotta say!

What's good about it? (Honest question, no p.o.v. intended.) I assume it's funny? Does it require the reader to have any particular relationship to the 1960s TV series?

it's just well written and acid without relying too much on LOL THE FLINTSTONES or irony

it does have lots of goofy lol flintstones irony tbf, but that's almost secondary in a way. it's a cute satire - a modern updating of the original goofy premise of the flinstones - that's pretty funny and actually emotionally touching in parts. a lot of creative choices (not to spoil, but bamm bamm's origin definitely got to me)

My favourite bits (without spoilers):

Vacuum cleaner and bowling ball
How Gerald came to be
Carl Sagan's computer
Fred's War
The new office

Oh, just all of it. DC hasn't published a better book in easily a decade (but I have already said this multiple times).

vacuum cleaner and bowling ball are the real stars, yes

Is it me or are comics kinda the worst they've ever been at the moment? I know every few years I have an "off" period on comics, but this feels different - it's like there's no reason to come back after time away.

By this point my adult comic phase (roughly 2004-present) has lasted way longer than my childhood comic phase (1987-1993ish), so maybe I'm overdue. I know there are literally tons of awesome old comics I haven't read, but somehow if there isn't a supply of good new stuff, my interest wanes.

Anyway, tell me why you agree, or why I'm stupid and wrong.

By wrongness I mean:

* DC and Marvel full of horrible people who publish trash
* Even creators I like have been producing less interesting stuff for a while now (e.g. Moore, GM - it's been four years since Bats ended).
* Comics fans going full Gamergate
* Bright spots at the Big Two & Image not really bright enough to sustain my interest
* I read all the arty comics already
* I am old

I don't do a great job of keeping up with newly-released stuff so I don't generally notice, but multiple declarations of 'these Hanna-Barbera and Looney Tunes comics are some of the best stuff being published!' do make it seem like a bit of a fallow period.

I guess it depends what engagement looks like for you. I've wandered off for a couple years at a time over the last fifteen years, then bought a few trades or whatever before regularly reading a few series. If you can't have an interest in a few comics without delving deep, then maybe walk off for a while.

It's also one of those things where age has flattened out the curve of time for me. Nearly everything from 2009 onward seems "contemporary" but we're definitely in a different period now than we were then.

That's v. true

As with everything I think it's a question of how much you try new stuff and read various things and ahem t0rr3nt mothafuckaaaaaaaa

A Few Currently Publishing Comics I Can Recommend Without Feeling Like a Punk (That Are Not Battfudd/Flintstones):

Rock Candy Mountain - https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/04/advance-review-kyle-starks-brings-filthy-fucking-h.html
All New Guardians of the Galaxy - http://ew.com/books/2017/05/03/all-new-guardians-galaxy-gerry-duggan-comic/
Batman - Tom King doing good work out there
Letter 44 - https://io9.gizmodo.com/read-the-first-issue-of-letter-44-the-comic-everyones-1472795323
Rebels: These Free and Independent States - http://viewcomic.com/rebels-these-free-and-independent-states-002-2017/
Astro City - https://io9.gizmodo.com/reflecting-on-100-issues-of-astro-city-with-writer-kurt-1792683413
Kamandi Challenge - https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/01/kamandi-challenge-1-is-a-freewheeling-tribute-to-t.html
Black Magic - https://imagecomics.com/comics/releases/black-magick-1
Star Wars: Doctor Aphra - https://marvel.com/comics/series/22719/star_wars_doctor_aphra_2016_-_present
Adventure Time - https://www.comixology.com/Adventure-Time/comics-series/7420
Rick and Morty - http://onipress.tumblr.com/post/115216808549/wubba-lubba-dub-dub-rick-and-morty-1-is-here
Godshaper - http://comicsalliance.com/godshaper-si-spurrier-jonas-goonface-interview/
American Gods - http://ew.com/books/2017/03/13/american-gods-comic-adaptation-neil-gaiman/
Shaolin Cowboy - https://www.darkhorse.com/Comics/29-631/The-Shaolin-Cowboy-Wholl-Stop-the-Reign-1
Sex Criminals - https://imagecomics.com/comics/series/sex-criminals
Injection - https://imagecomics.com/comics/series/injection
Zombies Assemble - https://marvel.com/comics/issue/63031/zombies_assemble_2017_1
Delicious in Dungeon - http://mangakakalot.com/manga/dungeon_meshi
Bug Adventures of Forager - http://www.dccomics.com/comics/bug-the-adventures-of-forager-2017/bug-the-adventures-of-forager-1
Silver Surfer - https://marvel.com/comics/series/20502/silver_surfer_2016_-_present

the new Black Bolt book is also pretty good!
DC right now, Batman/Kamandi/Astro City excepted, is in the toilet more or less.

are any of those DC Young Animal titles any good?

Gillen's follow up to Darth Vader which is Doctor Aphra with artwork by Kev Walker is also a good read. Don't know if the series is catching on or not with readers, but it's a fine standalone comic in the Marvel Star Wars universe.

Thanks for the list! Sex Crims and Saga are the only single issues I'm still buying as they trades have a "less than the sum of" kind of feel. Gillen's great and still Doing Good Things but I have reached by Gillimits.

Will try some of those others. Black Bolt *does* look, and hopefully answers my question "What if Ody-C was actually readable?"

Probably I am underestimating my own reading habits as I have Simonson's Thor, Heartbreak Soup, 20th Century Boys on the go, plus rereading GM's Animal Man run for the first time in prob 20 years.

* I read all the arty comics already

― Chuck_Tatum, Thursday, 6 July 2017 21:16

They're still making them and there's a massive amount.

I've kind of fallen out of love with comics recently* but they still seem to me better than they've ever been over the last twelve or thirteen years(if we're just talking about English language). Way more variety in subject matter, art styles, translations and reprints than they've ever had.

I haven't been paying close attention recently. I just check TCJ every week. But things can't have changed that much? I'm sure Fantagraphics and NBM are still bringing the goods.

I know DC has been pretty awful for a decade or more but was Marvel really that much better in the 90s-00s?

Full gamergate? Is this a recent thing? What's happened?

* I've got a hunger for better and better images and I have less tolerance for cartooning shortcuts.
I'm still buying Corben's stuff but haven't read any of it in years.
There's a new Berserk out but I'm starting to doubt I've got the patience for the longwinded formula. I don't know how Miura can be bothered stretching this out for years and years, it's madness.
Always wanted to read season 4 and onwards of Jojo but even that has a formula that grates after a while.

Anyone read the Hanuka brothers Divine book?

Young Animal stuff I've read is pretty dece.

It's sad that it's such an overlooked thing at this point but, after disappearing altogether for years, Stray Bullets has been a very nearly monthly book for a couple of years now. That's pretty awesome.

I loved "City of Crime" but stupidly I haven't read Stray Bullets. Is there a good place to start?

I thought Doom Patrol and Cave Carson got off to good starts, but I find them a little heartless compared to the Vertigo books I used to love. Way seems very amused by gore and exploding body parts, which is fine, but doesn't do much to distinguish him from regular DC. I haven't tried Shade or Mother Panic but heard okay-to-goodish things.

The entire original series of Stray Bullets was fairly recently collected in a single massive volume (the Uber Alles edition) but it looks like they also reprinted everything as a conveniently-numbered series of trades at the same time. However you get it, it's highly recommended.

Is it me or are comics kinda the worst they've ever been at the moment? I know every few years I have an "off" period on comics, but this feels different - it's like there's no reason to come back after time away.

Yeah, you’re crazy – maybe if people who want to visit a shop every single Wednesday and come away with a fistful of things think this mb I could get behind it, but I go every month or three and have trouble giving everything a satisfying first read, let alone a second or third before they go in the cupboard. I went to a zine fair half an hour’s stroll from my house a month ago, didn’t even look at things that weren’t comics, and haven’t read everything I bought. (I went to America in 2013 and posted boxes and boxes of comics home to myself, and haven’t read all of them yet, either.)

On Monday I went to the comic shop and picked up #3 of the new Shaolin Cowboy (god the printing quality is so horrible on the Dark Horse versions, I wish Darrow could go elsewhere), Ganges #5, Ganges #6 and Crickets #6. Last week I got the latest two B&W Simon Hanselmanns in the mail, and he has his second full-colour hardcover graphic novel in a year out this month, too. Love & Rockets is coming out three times a year, with Jaime doing a new cycle of stories about the 80s-era female characters coming back together and finding their way into communication and friendship as grown-ups. Jason Shiga’s DEMON finished its run as one of the best-conceived pamphlet serials ever last year and is now coming out in mass-market paperbacks. There’s a new Pope Hats out in America, though not the rest of the world.

Like, I drastically cut down my purchasing because of finances, and haven’t bought a squarebound comic in a few years*, and am avoiding new-to-me cartoonists, and there’s STILL a glut of good stuff. I had to give up subscribing to Copra because of the cost, but that’s still churning out basically every month. Every month!

GANGES #5, ffs! That came out a year ago and I was only able to get it now, but how many years of re-reading one single issue would it take before that comic has tapped itself out? I’m certainly never going to need to read Batman Vs Elmer Fudd by Nine Different People On A Production Line, published by Sexual Abuser Comics Inc, to feel like this is a barely-acceptable, let alone wondrous and glorious time, for the English-language comics medium.

*except for picking up the run of Paul McGann-era Doctor Who Magazine comics collections in a Book Depository sale last year.

Stray Bullets is a pretty unique comic, you can kinda pick up at any story arc as the time line of the series jumps around from different years. There is a center cast of characters, but you see them at different ages and points of view depending on the story.

long as i'm making lists, here are a few graphic novels that I think are worth reading from the past year or so that i haven't seen come up much in conversation:

My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness by Kabi Nagata (secretly, this is both non-prurient and more about depression than anything)
http://mangapark.me/manga/the-private-report-on-my-lesbian-experience-with-loneliness-kabi-nagata/s2/c1/1

Providence by Alan Moore (possibly the best thing of his I've ever read)
http://www.tcj.com/providence-lovecraft-sexual-violence-and-the-body-of-the-other/

The Ogre Gods v.1 and 2 by Hubert and Gatignol (scanlated and available with a bit of hunting on the web)
http://www.comicsandcola.com/2014/11/gatignols-and-huberts-petit-looks.html

Libby's Dad by Eleanor Davis
http://www.tcj.com/reviews/libbys-dad/

My Favorite Thing is Monsters by Emil Ferris (everything you've heard is true)
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/17/arts/design/first-emil-ferris-was-paralyzed-then-her-book-got-lost-at-sea.html?_r=0

Blast by Manu Larcenet (Deeply disturbing, astonishingly structured and drawn, painfully memorable)
http://www.europecomics.com/serie/blast/

Anyone read the Hanuka brothers Divine book?

Lovely art, not very good writing (by someone not a Hanuka)

Thanks

Check out Loic Locatelli's Pocahontas too

New Alack Sinner collection - the first of two - looks like a mandatory purchase:

http://euro.idwpublishing.com/catalog/alack-sinner/

Hope this and the Corto editions are successful enough that IDW finally bring us Mort Cinder in translation too.

my favorite thing is monsters is really good shit. i said this already though

Ms Marvel and Squirrel Girl really doing the Lord's work for Marvel right now. Seconding Silver Surfer. Black Widow, for Samnee's art. I find Mark Waid's woke dad shtick in Champions endearing but ymmv.

Bitch Planet is good.

DCwise I read Gene Yuen Lang's New Superman, kind've overlooked?

I'm pretty out of the loop re: artsy/independent stuff, but if nothing else it feels like there's never been a better time for translations of Eurocomics.

Artsy/independent work also often proliferates in zines and webcomics rather than in the direct market: over the last couple of years, I've been especially impressed by Scout Tran's Failing Sky, Jae Bearhat and Rory Frances's Little Teeth, Sophia Foster-Dimino's Sex Fantasy series and Swim Thru Fire (her collaboration with Annie Mok), Austin Holcomb's Night Physics, Michael DeForge's Leaving Richard's Valley, and Tillie Walden's On a Sunbeam, all of which germinated outside the local comic store.

heyo

http://thebristolboard.tumblr.com/forgottenmasterpieces

Stray Bullets is much, much better than I was expecting, thanks for the recoomend.

That's great news! People were so in love with it back in the day that the muted reception over its return has been odd.

Based on the covers and Lapham's past work, I was expecting a larky Garth Ennis shoot-em-up, or a Brubaker noir tropefest, so the fact that it's resolutely neither of those things was the first major point in its favour. But, that aside - it's just really well-written and I'm in awe of how brutal it is without descending into cheap nihilism (as is comics' wont).

(I've only read the first six issues, mind.)

...and the way every issue shifts to a different time, but fits together into the macro story - that's just one of those forehead-slapping obvious ideas, I'm surprised it hasn't been imitated more.

(Except Sfar/Trondheim's Dungeon, I guess)

I'd have to think David Lapham is a fan of Love and Rockets. It's not obvious as an influence in that he's aping the Hernandez brothers, but I got to figure Lapham read that series as a teenager in the 80s and it was something that said, yeah I can go this way on this series.

I loved the first two Stray Bullets hardcovers, then for some reason the third one was really scarce and cost close to $100 here, and then went OOP and they never did a fourth so I’m still in 1996 going “gosh I’d like to read the rest of this series”

Ditto!! I have those first two HCs in a box somewhere and never got any further on my first readthrough because I could never find the third for a reasonable price. It was frustrating.

i'm sorry to be a crank but i've always disliked stray bullets and i find the new issues equally unpalatable.

i also find Yang's Nu-Superman to be a missed opportunity and it suggests he's not any better suited for capes and tights than T.N. Coates is... both are overly wordy and relying on awkwardly plodding plots

i will agree on squirrel girl tho'. Soule's Darth Vader book is shaping up nicely as well.

Brubaker's Kill or Be Killed for Image is pretty solid.
https://imagecomics.com/comics/series/kill-or-be-killed

I was surprised as you would be but R Aguirre-Sacasa's 'Chilling Adventures of Sabrina' is good stuff or leastwise the newest issue is... though the art is emphatically bad:
https://www.previewsworld.com/Article/195555-First-Look-Chilling-Adventures-of-Sabrina-7-from-Archie-Comics

New Groo miniseries for Dark Horse is the treat they always are; the full page panels are astonishing work from sergio... how does this guy still manage to do work of this quality?
https://www.darkhorse.com/Comics/3000-070/Groo-Play-of-the-Gods-1

WIth the second TPB out, I'm giving Monstress another shot. I like the Final Fantasy style visuals but the story is so jargon heavy and convoluted it's been hard to really embrace.

Isn't Aragones, like, 112 years old at this point? He's astounding.

aragones and stan sakai are two of comics most underrated creators imo simply because we take them for granted

so i was looking to get a compendium of precode horror comics, my understanding was that Four Color Fear from Fantagraphics is a really good one. Is that worthy of a pickup? are there others i could also get? is there any overlap between them?

Don't know Four Color Fear - is it a Craig Yoe joint? I'm kinda dubious abt that guy, but he def unearths some good stuff.

The one I have is The Horror! The Horror! published by Abrams. Pretty dece contextual notes; more than acceptable repro from comic book pages; some really great artists represented; lots of juicy rare cover imagery; comes with a DVD lol. Only downside I wld say is that some of the stories are excerpted rather than reprinted in full. (Also doesn't include any E.C. but that material is easily available in reprint).

it's this one:

http://fantagraphics.com/flog/now-in-stock-four-color-fear-2nd-printing/

http://fantagraphics.com/images/flog/covers/2011/bookcover_fofear.2.jpg

Looks good - the editors John Benson and Greg Sadowski are both E.C. experts and really know their stuff.

Editorial finesse is pretty important when you consider the comics themselves are p much all in the public domain now (apart from E.C., Atlas (notionally owned by Disney now I guess) and DC comics (tho DC's horror comics were v anodyne compared to 'the good stuff')).

Four Color Fear and The Horror! The Horror! are both very good. The Haunt Of Horror series is the only other multi-publisher/multi-artist book I can think of. There's 5 books so far.

I think Craig Yoe is doing a great job. Some people take issue with the reproduction (still miles better than Marvel and DC reprints) and there was some controversy about one book having a printing error, a missing page or something.

Well worth a look...

http://yoebooks.com/horror_books.php

My only issue with Yoe Books is that their artist focused books aren't long enough. The Bob Powell and Tom Sutton books could have been much longer. I think there was a possibility of sequels but it's been years.

I'd highly recommend the first Ditko Archives book and all the Graham Ingels Fantagraphics collections. Best Of Harvey Horrors is good but expensive.

I actually happened to buy the first 3 volumes of This Magazine Is Haunted today (all the good stuff in the 4th volume is in the Ditko Archives series). I don't buy much of this stuff anymore (they're not cheap) but I was amazed by the colour in some of these. I maintain that most old comics look better in black and white but the non-literal colouring in 50s horror comics can be amazing and in some of the This Magazine Is Haunted stories, it looks like some of the colorists really knew what they were doing and pushes competent drawing into amazing art.

Some examples

http://thehorrorsofitall.blogspot.com/2008/12/secret-of-walking-dead.html
http://creatfeatforever.blogspot.com/2013/12/touch-of-death.html
Bob Powell in this one

Dr Death and Dr Haunt are really cool too.

Those scans have much sharper black than the books I got. Normally I'd prefer sharper line art but I quite like the softer blacks and the way it mixes with the colour in the books.

btw, Tom King is starting a new Mister Miracle book next month and I am very much looking forward to that. He appears to be limiting his workload thus far thankfully.

*Theoretically* that is such a great fit for him, fingers crossed

I'm very excited about this

Marvel just dropped the news that they gave me the reins to make a comic encompassing Uncanny X-Men issues 1-280 into one tight story. #sdcc pic.twitter.com/bEINnmQJRg

— Ed Piskor (@EdPiskor) July 20, 2017

so he's going to ... re-write some old comics?

the majors are so creatively bankrupt

ed piskor? that's awesome!
i'd love to see how he handles it

I think it's not a horrible idea? The way different plot arcs fit together, and the way newer writers rely on plot points from stories that weren't that great.

It reminds me of an article I read about how Stephen King originally thought of his early Dark Tower books as a sketch of a book he'd write later as a more cohesive story. I think he decided a revision of only the beginning from a short story collection into a single work was sufficient.

If nothing else, it gives newer readers a starting point without it being the Readers Digest edition

Not going to lie, I thought KFC/Green Lantern was one of the most fun reads this week.

(Col Sanders gets made an honorary GL at the end for his services to suppressing the Orange Lantern. He offered Larfleeze the opportunity to run a KFC franchise because he has been stealing all the zinger burgers the GLC have been firing into space for publicity reasons. Yes, really.)

ok i gotta read these

let me tell ya, it's no batfudd

Absolutely not, but it is fun.

Anyone else think the Flash's costume is really bad? Jay Garrick's hat is kinda nice but I've always thought all the Flash guys had really dorky costumes.

derf's "my friend dahmer" movie has a trailer; could be good, will almost certainly be depressing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VX8ajObK81A

did not know that was happening

Maybe the trailer is misleading but I thought Derf would feature more prominently

I got Lent's Asian Comics overview last week. As I feared, it talks about way more comics than it shows and most of the pictures don't really grab me. Should still be very interesting though.

Here's his new book with Xu Ying focusing entirely on Chinese comics, cartoons and animation.
http://www.upress.state.ms.us/books/2027

This is very expensive so you might want to wait and hope for a paperback. My copy of Asian Comics was paperback.

http://www.vulture.com/2016/02/stan-lees-universe-c-v-r.html

Nothing most of you didn't already know but I was amused by Lee's Wu-Tang Clan quote and his names for the aborted Playboy characters.

Quite a few questionable claims in there too from the author and some writers.

good article

if you're gonna do a xxx rated cover of your 225th issue and put a censored version on the internet, here's the way to do it i guess
http://www.dreadcentral.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/savage-dragon-issue-225-1.jpg

Lee cooked up one superhero after another: Thunderer! Oxblood! Imitatia! The Streak!

Stan stole all these from Bob Burden iirc

Odd about the Savage Dragon cover, maybe it's a special order variant to be sold discreetly? At points Larsen seemed to want it to be an all-ages comic but now and again he goes heavy on the sex. The violence never stopped but in the last few years I read it, the sex had mostly disappeared.

yeah it's a limited edition variant cover with an all-white modesty cover on top of it.
as part of my quest to read every book the majors release, i've been flipping through it over the past year; the sex (and OTT violence and language) is most definitely still there.
Larsen was great when i was in high school.

I'm just looking at the cover going "..."

same here

and I bought at least one marvel swimsuit special

...

I never read Savage Dragon and had no idea that it had any sex in it, let alone that

Although somehow it's still no Ant-Man/Wasp

xp to self
I was twelve years old, though

I thought it was kind of funny and I don't think I understood the "people cranking it to cartoon characters" thing until much later in life, long after I'd perused it and thrown it away

it really is hilarious, but for all kinds of reasons I wouldn't have understood at the time

I had no idea such a thing existed and now have to resist searching for it so thx

namor in a speedo

(that's the funniest one, it's no different than namor on most other days)

namor in a speedo

I know, I know; it's serious

haha

http://i.redd.it/janpdeq8h5uy.png

^ this looks suspiciously like what normal people think people who read comic books think sex is like

well I am not psyched that I clicked on that on my work computer

lol, sorry; meant to link. mod?

PLUH!

I bought all those Marvel Swimsuit issues as a teenager. I bought all those crappy pinup gallery comics. The Marvel specials were different in that they did feature a lot of male characters.

Check out the letter from a woman requesting nude Thor.

http://www.cracked.com/article_19446_the-6-most-wtf-special-edition-comics-ever-released.html
http://www.cbr.com/flipping-through-the-weirdly-subversive-marvel-swimsuit-specials/

There was actually a fully naked Ghost Rider but he was just a flaming skeleton on a beach.

I'm not really into Savage Dragon or those type of comics anymore but I still think it did have a sense of consequences that Marvel and DC didn't and it could be very funny and sweet sometimes. Had a lot of problems too but it was fun.
It had a very mixed following with some typical 90s Image artists doing collaborations and backups but also Mike Mignola, Bob Burden, Don Simpson, Michel Fiffe, Jim Rugg, Benjamin Marra and weirder guys like Dieter Van Der Ougstraete.

The X-Men had Jim Lee during the swimsuit special years and they shoehorned in at least a few "Psylocke in the pool" scenes, which is p funny in retrospect, and given I was abt 13 vv ok with me at the time.

I swear half the x-men issues had one of those scenes and they had to majorly retcon the character later to insist her mind wasn't her own and there was subtle psychic manipulation of the other x-men because they were on the verge of having to rename the book The Horny X-Men

Did anyone ever listen to that podcast devoted to trying to explain ridiculous X-Men plots? I never listened but it was supposed to be quite funny.

Just remembered that Stan Lee didn't rate Gil Kane very high and complained his men were too "faggy".

There were so many x-books, and the art was so pin-uppy, it wouldn't have been a huge stretch for there to've been a pg13 "X-Men Nights" or something book, tbh. And yeah retcon mind control otm, lol.

psylocke has always been the most ridiculously broken backed, sexploited x-woman, even more than rogue

http://40.media.tumblr.com/b105f781f4d3281a9063e8e3b92426de/tumblr_nrd5qficfa1r34y4ho3_r1_500.jpg
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gKBSaKejhDA/TtoqEqvQuwI/AAAAAAAAAPY/l9AjT72SZPM/s600/x%20men%20wallpaper-bananasprice.blogspot.com-x-men.jpg
http://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/b0/e6/68/b0e6686c93d08f0cc26684f3194e22af--wolverine-art-deadpool-wolverine.jpg
http://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/d1/92/e0/d192e0bef19af7f8bdf855f1f631899b.jpg
http://i.pinimg.com/736x/6b/38/ce/6b38ce558fdc9772847f48bfc6733778--jim-lee-jim-orourke.jpg

grrroosss

Grant Morrison's Doom Force just confused me when I was a teenager

psylocke has always been the most ridiculously broken backed, sexploited x-woman, even more than rogue

I don't really recall seeing Rogue treated that way(?) At least not in the era in which I was reading (pre-"Fall of Mutants" through post-"Inferno"). She was even spared from having to wear a skimpy costume, thanks to "can't-touch-her-skin"...

Yeah, Rogue was a weirdly arbitrary choice from the era when every female character was risking permanent spinal injury in an attempt to show off their quad-D cups.

https://letterpile.com/books/Psylocke-Costume-History

go back to Armored Psylocke IMO

iirc jim lee's 90's rogue was a "look-but-don't-touch" cheerleader fantasy and was regularly depicted in a similarly creepy way but after crawling through the muck to get those psylocke clips, i'm gonna leave a GIS for "sexy rogue marvel" to someone else.

are you thinking of Savage Land Rogue?

prob

yup, a classically sleazy storyline that was. she hooks up with Magneto which is eww

Lee/Liefield/McFarlane, and the "trends" they drove and exemplified, were 90% of the reason I stopped reading comics in the early '90s. (I also went off to college, but that alone wouldn't have stopped me.)

everything they've touched in the past fifteen years (at least) is hot garbage
still angry i bought those damn gold ink spiderman #1s as a teenager; I WAS IMPRESSIONABLE

As much as I dislike the 90s xtreme style* and variant covers, the increased prevalence of multi-title storylines was far more damaging. I don't know if it's still a big problem but I remember they kept saying "okay, we know you hate that so we'll stop it now" then start doing it again later. Probably lost them lots of readers.

I remember some comic artists saying they felt ripped off if a story lasted beyond one issue. I wonder how many people try these comics and feel that way?

*but I still think McFarlane did some interesting things and no matter how bad their anatomy, some of those Image artists at least gave a shit. There's a lot of dull stuff that nobody remembers or particularly likes.

I liked McFarlane well enough as an artist on "ASM"; his faces could be weird, and anatomy funky, but his style felt fresh at the time, and he & Michelinie made a good team. The problem began when he started writing...

(...his own books, not "ASM" specifically; which had moved on to McFarlane knockoff Erik Larsen.)

He drew some things similar but Larsen was far more talented overall. I think he once defended himself saying that he had drawn crazy poses Spiderman before McFarlane did. He done a few issues before McFarlane but I can't remember them well.

Don't know if everybody's seen this cover recently, maybe it's been circulating? Somebody used it with regard to female Dr Who. Quite funny, Superman not getting with the times.

https://www.comics.org/issue/34518/cover/4/

Lee/Liefield/McFarlane, and the "trends" they drove and exemplified, were 90% of the reason I stopped reading comics in the early '90s. (I also went off to college, but that alone wouldn't have stopped me.)

Yeah this is what happened to me. I haven't really been back tbh. (Speaking specifically of superhero stuff here). Superhero art eventually recovered from that trough to some extent but there's still something deeply off-putting to me about the way the stuff is colored, I just hate it.

Yeah the colouring really destroys so much good drawing.

can't lie i loved that shit (Liefeld, McFarlane, Lee, etc) as a kid so i can't hate on it too much now. it was for its target audience, teenage boys, who still buy comics if one can believe it

As a battle-scarred half-cybernetic survivor of those times, I am still regularly amazed that I buy more Image comics than Marvel and DC combined. Partly because they seem the most aware that "our defence is that teenage boys buy it" is contemptible bullshit.

I was a huge McFarlane, Larsen fan and I liked most of the main Image guys as a teen. Dislike most of it now except little bits of Larsen, McFarlane and Joe Chiodo. Sam Kieth is pretty good. Jae Lee was always a bit different and he evolved into something quite interesting.

J Scott Campbell is an odd case, because he's capable of genuinely good caricatures and you'd think he'd pursue his greatest strengths but nope. I realise he probably wants to do more than caricatures but if he used real life + photo reference more extensively, his output would be way better.

I still have a soft spot for Steven Hughes.

it's weird, I got into comics right before Image and that sales boom, but I was more into the myriad of half-forgotten Marvel titles than I was any of the Image properties

the only things that really stuck with me, that I got into from the very first issues, were Mike Allred's Madman and Sam Kieth's The Maxx

Feeling the entirety of mh's post!

The only one of the original Image titles I stuck with for any length of time was Spawn and its spin-offs, and that was almost entirely because he had wisely pulled in a lot of big-time writers (Moore, Gaiman, Morrison, Miller, Sim...were there others?) to prop up his own questionable chops. Almost all of the rest of that first wave crap was unreadable.

I followed Warren Ellis to Image and started picking up his Stormwatch, which I loved to death. I liked the concept behind Gen13 but disliked most of the books (although I did dig Ellis's DV8 a lot). Never really read anything outside of the Wildstorm universe aside from one or two issues of Witchblade.

My engagement with Spawn began and ended with the movie, really.

Same as MH, except for completely-forgotten DC titles instead of Marvel. Yes, I'm the person who would have read a Conglomerate comic.

I think the only Spawn issues I read were the couple Alan Moore ones and the one with Cerebus

I did shamefully subscribe to Wizard magazine for a couple years

Weren't Gen13 kind of a Weapon X thing?

Unlike most early Image books, which were really just X-Men variants (although there was quite a bunch of military comics), I thought Spawn was quite promising but I never stuck with it for long. The HBO cartoon seemed to be more acclaimed than the comics.

I guess more people didn't jump on the Image bandwagon because they were scared it wouldn't last? It's odd that Stephenson and Larsen were there from the start but were the ones to push it in the direction it is today.

I read Wizard for years, it was awful (but so we're most of the comics I read at the time) but hated changing my standing order but the final straw was when they were slating the Catwoman film yet still put it on the cover. There were occasional interesting features and interviews and the earlier issues were quite funny. There was a poster that boasted "100 issues, (?) covers and more tasteless jokes about midgets than any other magazines".

Slating = mocking

the whole idea of the "Image bandwagon" was kind of a mess because "Image" was the publisher, but it was a conglomeration of individual studios and one-offs by specific creators published under the umbrella. pretty much every time they tried to coordinate between studios it was a complete mess

I still hold out hope that the conclusion of Alan Moore's 1963 series will be published any day now

Weren't Gen13 kind of a Weapon X thing?

Yeah, there was a group of soldiers (Team 7?) that had some experiments done on them that trickled down to powers manifesting in their kids; the soldiers were the 12th iteration of this project and the kids were kidnapped when their powers began to manifest so they could become the 13 iteration, hence "Gen13". They were also tied to WildC.A.T.S. through the character Grifter, who was in both Team 7 and WildC.A.T.S.

well
http://forums.millarworld.tv/t/biggest-news-ever-netflix-buys-millarworld/10356?u=mark_millar

that guy sucks

The BBC: Millarworld, founded by Mark Millar from Coatbridge, includes his portfolio of characters and stories such as Kick-Ass, Kingsman, and Old Man Logan.

But since the first two of these have separate movie franchises not included in the deal, wtf have Netflix just bought?

All three do, the last one being a Marvel franchise.

I guess they bought all future IP from the mind of Mark Millar?

there are also sources referring to 'millarworld' as a publisher, but weren't all the comics published by other publishers?

Yeah, everything associated with Millarworld is published elsewhere and the majority of it is already optioned or made (Wanted, Secret Service, Kick Ass all made, Chosen and War Heroes both optioned by Sony). All that's left is Nemesis, Superior and the actually quite good Jupiter's Legacy/Children.

I also noticed the ref. to "Old Man Logan," and concluded it must just be sloppy reporting... that's obv. a Marvel-owned property with motion picture rights held by Fox (who recently made a movie based partly upon it, in fact).

I guess Old Lunch might be right but regardless this is an idiotic deal.

New Kerascoet for November
http://nbmpub.com/comicslit/dontouchme/satanpre1.html

Oh great. Not sure I loved Miss Don't Touch Me but would definitely read more by the same people.

Unrelatedly has anyone read EXTREMITY? It's a very violent (but not at all Kirkman-y) space epic YA thing with very good Philip Bond/Hewlett style art. Only read a couple issues but enjoying it so far.

Wonder if the Comics Journal site will still do the weekly listings after McCulloch has wrapped up? His most recent entry was quite odd and funny. Don't know how much I care now, but I'm still a little worried I'm missing really good things. I'll never buy Previews again (don't want to feel that violent rage every month).

Still keeping an eye on Fantagraphics, NBM, Yoe Books and Dark Horse's Corben comics.

http://comicattack.net/archives/129408
Kenneth Smith is still around and should have more work coming out eventually, he talks a bit about that here. I'm only really interested in his art/fiction. I found his columns for Comics Journal incomprehensible at the time and I know a lot of people either hated or loved them.

man i forgot about him. I can cope with a lot of theory despite never getting to college but Ken Smith was yeah incomprehensible.

Years back I was quite struck by the fact that the only comics he seemed interested in were heavily illustrated fantasy stuff. Which was a bit at odds with the image people had of Comics Journal intellectuals at the time.

There's an audio interview of him on youtube rambling quite interestingly. His philosophy book Otherwise has a cool cover.

huh going out with a bang
http://www.tcj.com/this-week-in-comics-93-98-1-25/

(NSFW for anyone else who cares)

oh yeah, sorry: that's a historical look back at Lightning Comics and their many nude variant covers

Wasn't there one more to go next week?

The reader letter around the middle of that page is great.

http://www.tcj.com/eye-drum-yokoyama-yuichi-and-audiovisual-abstraction-in-comics/

See this manga street performer wearing a t-shirt with his own face on it.

i finally got around to trying JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and holy shit is it ever astounding.

How far along are you?

pretty early, but i get the impression there's not a whole lot that's been translated to English yet? I'm on book two of part two.
the blatantly homoerotic art! the bazonkers framing! the utterly batshit characters! the dialogue, and my god the plot! it's as nutty and neurotic a book as I've ever seen and i read all of cerebus!

Only 3 out of 8 parts have been translated to English.

Gotcha; I have the first two parts. They're really something! I was amazed he upped the ante for part two. Not sure how much more high stakes the book can get!

It's like Dickens via Romero / Miike

As far as I know, only the first three arcs have been officially published in English, but amateur scanlations for the other arcs should be fairly easy to find online. There's also a surprisingly faithful anime adaptation of the first three arcs up on Hulu, and the fourth is on Crunchyroll.

i'm surprised there's not been more talk of it on ILC before. It's virtuoso work and admirably insane on every level. The understanding of anatomy is Picasso-esque in its inside-out perversion and plasticine recreation of the human form. The landscape and clothing detail is similarly gaga and obsessive.

And the scope! Phantom Blood alone is a 900 page masterwork, enough to make a career... but I'm led to believe that's less than 1/20th of the complete story ?(!!!!!!!)

The third part is where it starts getting really nutty. The PS1/Dreamcast game was my introduction and it was pretty crazy.

Just as weird is the photoshoot of Araki meeting Clint Eastwood and that he designed fronts of Italian fashion stores with Jojo characters.
http://jojomenon.tumblr.com/post/66026270459/clint-eastwood-and-hirohiko-araki
This actually happened!

Unfortunately the official English translations get rid of a lot of the music references.
A character called White Album has a move called White Album Gently Weeps. Apparently Sex Pistols (tiny bullet creatures) can beat this move.
Characters called King Crimson, Killer Queen, etc.

Here's a review of his ideas of creating manga
http://www.tcj.com/reviews/manga-in-theory-and-practice/

I like it when characters have titles as names like Fun Fun Fun, Heart Of The Sunrise and Born This Way. Later stuff seems to include more jazz references.

hard for me to imagine this getting MORE nutty; looking forward to it

TCJ firing shots at Yoe Books:

http://www.tcj.com/craig-yoe-a-disservice-to-comics-history/

It's weird how the article kinda cuts straight to the chase but from my limited experience with the publisher dude has a point? Wasn't very impressed with the curation on anything I saw and Yoe's horny uncle shtick made me regret following them on FB. Defenders in the comments mostly suggest Yoe's ramshackle approach is truer to the "original spirit" of the books but frankly if that's the idea they could go a lot further with it, though frankly I don't find it very interesting anyway - pointless to try to reproduce the constrictions of commerce when the actual pressures aren't there.

You can address all those things without making the “not respecting comics as art” argument your key issue. If it’s really about making an affordable thing for fans, then print it in a softcover without blowing up bad scans to huge size. There’s a lot of scanned older stuff online, either in the public domain or a grey area, and I wonder if some of these projects aren’t even doing scanning work

It's funny that so many commenters on that post talk about how inexpensive yoe books are - I find them way too expensive for what you get. If they were trade paperbacks at normal size and ten bucks less, we'd be talking.

But then, the whole hardcover thing has pretty much taken most new feature length comics work out of the realm of possibility for me anyway. I literally can't afford comics anymore now that everything comes out in HC. Supporting two people on my paycheck, etc etc. (also I know I shouldn't talk as my last two things have been HC only)

there's some ambiguity in how "coffee table books" is being used, I think. on one end, that evokes some really expensive curated books that are done with an archivist's eye, where someone's dug through archives and inside sources to compile a large-sized book that might pair art with commentary

on the other end, you get the stuff that ends up on the large discounted shelves in the area in front of the cash register at big book chains like B&N with mediocre production values that are made to sell copies

there's overlap, and some publishers do both, but neither is really targeting people who just love flipping through comics

file me under "just glad he's getting this stuff in print"; i have discovered a few artists via Yoe (Boody Rogers for instance) that might've escaped me.

According to some these would have been in print by someone else in better shape.

Some of those complaints sound fair (unpaid people working on the books, not the best scans, Spiegelman lawsuit, apparently beating other people to the punch so that their version is less viable) but I like the designs of them better than a lot of otherwise superior Fantagraphics books. I'd go as far to say Fantagraphics are the best American comics publisher ever but some of their book design is a bit sterilizing and "arty" in a bad way.

I really dislike this cover
https://www.comics.org/issue/1153115/cover/4/
Why not just use one of the best drawings inside the book? I hate those closeups that fetishize the dots and roughness. I think that's a disservice to the artist.

Some felt that they made Peanuts look like something it wasn't. Exaggerated the glumness to make it more like Chris Ware or betrayed its true spirit? I don't know.
https://www.comics.org/series/15711/covers/
What do you think?

Quite a lot of Fantagraphics books are in softcover and have minimal commentary, so some of the people defending Yoe are talking rubbish.
Can't believe that guy complaining about political correctness.

I'll keep buying Yoe Books, atleast they're not as abominable as Marvel and DC reprints.

tacky reprints of peanuts continue to be published for those who aren't interested in fantagraphics' series.

That Yoe Books argument went on for a while. Somebody brought up Derf and insulted him, then him and some friends came in.

For something that was a big part of my life for a while and important in meeting a bunch of people (plus other nice people I don't see anymore), I don't really miss that Comics Journal forum crowd at all.

I don't think it's just that I was frustrated by a lot of the comics that were a bad fit for me and feeling tortured by wondering what was good and bad. So many of the people seemed similarly tortured and insecure. But also a lot of really constipated people. I didn't feel a lot of warmth from them like I do in other communities.

I imagine that a lot of fine art and literary fiction communities are like that. These confused, insecure, deeply unfulfilled people who hate each other.

Comics fandom probably the most insecure crowd of them all though, especially the artsier end of it - the Inferior Medium neurosis still lives for a lot of people, and US readers specifically seem to spend a lot of time untangling their own tortured relationships with the superhero stuff that probably drew them in in the first place but also lords over mainstream awareness of the medium; I mean these are all very old hat concerns and you'd think we'd be past them but it doesn't feel like we have, and so I often detect a lot of self-loathing in the more intelligent comic critics I know of. Which frankly I sometimes appreciate, especially contrasted with the acritical fanboy shit that a lot of mainstream comic/geek culture sites trade in.

Sure but I meant more than that. Like, a lot of the artists seemed a bit repressed or something. As if they were trying to live up to this ideal of what respectable comics were.
People closer to the Fort Thunder end were refreshing to me because they seemed like they were just doing whatever the hell they liked.

Part of it could be my prejudice because I always disliked that New Yorker/Drawn & Quarterly aesthetic. Although I have liked more D&Q stuff in the last 5 years.

I read someone's account of the New York poetry scene and he talked a lot about people just following respectable trends and not really expressing themselves. It reminded of those alt comix people but I think the arty art world in general has loads of that.

Jim Stenstrum turned Asskickers Of The Fantastic into a book series.

I'll be at SPX this weekend for the first time in many years. At the Uncivilized Books booth. Saturday only, as I want to be back in NYC to sit at the Brooklyn Book Festival on Sunday. P excited though, SPX used to be such a fixture of my year.

In case I forgot to mention it, the second True Swamp hardcover collection came out about a month ago, so I'm promoting that obv.

say hi to gilbert for me

sup from forks, beto

Jon, I'm gonna be in DC on Saturday for a loud rock/metal show. You should come out Saturday night!

And bring me a book.

aw man
i'm coming home Saturday evening.
it would be good to see you!
Email me your number in case I somehow decide to stay the extra night.

"Hi, you have cool breasts"
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/house-of-1000-manga/2010-11-11

Takashi Miike's Jojo film has came out but just like a ton of recent manga adaptations it looks excessively artificial. He done the recent Blade Of The Immortal too and I cant get excited about that either. anyone know if Miike does super-commercial stuff exclusively now?

xp heh. in an alternate universe this guy would've drawn The New Teen Titans

Why Teen Titans?

Everyone buy Strange Growths, a squarebound collection of sublime minicomics created over many years by Jenny Zervakis, just published by John Porcellino's Spit and a Half imprint. I have loved her comics for so long and it is so great to be able to direct people to a convenient motherlode of them.

xp at least one of the outfits in the article reminded me of Starfire at her most porny.

Read Shigeru Mizuki's Hitler, which was interesting but also deeply flawed

sounds like Hitler amirite

Teehee

I read it a long time ago - seem to remember that it starts well but ends up all over the place, and not in an interesting way like Phoenix.

Indeed. The language, translated via French, is ridiculous, rendering Hitler, Mussolini, etc all sounding like teenagers in a 1980s cartoon; the mishmash of art styles doesn't look good; it acts almost as though the death camps were just an incidental thing that happened to be going on at the same time as Hitler was in power.

I got the Abe Sapien book Lost Lives. Santiago Caruso is one of my favourite living artists (this is his first comic interiors) but the children in this look like small adults and I don't think they were supposed to.

Had a look at the Spirits Of Vengeance collection. Joe Kubert inks one of his sons pencil work and it looks great. Too bad it's only for two issues because I couldn't justify buying the whole collection for that. But I still kind of want it.

I loved it when Bill Sienkiewicz jazzed all over someone else's competent pencil work.

Surprised I didn't see any Black Flame comics in Forbidden Planet. Devil's Due usually gets their books in there.

Got very mixed feelings about Kelley Jones but the guy draws ribs, trees and mushrooms so well that I had to get his complete Deadman and Swamp Thing: The Dead Don't Sleep.

Still not sure it was a wise choice.

Comics often look better when you're standing with them in the shop and pondering if you need them.

Got the Black Flame stuff on kindle, glad I didn't buy it through mail because it's none of the artists best work, the older stuff is really hacky at times. Black Flame Archives series is drawn by Tom Sutton and Don Lomax (it's recolored) and the graphic novel Black Flame: Nobody Knows This Is Everywhere is drawn by Kelley Jones and Alex Nino. It's sword and sorcery with Dr Strange style travelling.

Head Lopper, y'all!

Has the price of softcover collections gone up recently because those Abe Sapien and Swamp Thing collections I bought yesterday were pretty steeply priced for not that many pages.

Collapse of the pound against the dollar

Oh yeah, I hadn't really kept an eye out for that.

Yes my friend who just moved here (nyc) from London was bemoaning the loss of that all powerful 1.8 conversion rate feeling. Said when he used to come over he’d just buy anything cause it felt like play money.

Have to say a lot of my recent magazine buying on ebay from America has been hurting.

This (forthcoming) book looks interesting -- anyone familiar w/the authors?: http://www.fantagraphics.com/howtoreadnancy/

i don't know if you're being sarcastic or not but newgarden and karasik set the table for that book about thirty years ago
http://www.laffpix.com/howtoreadnancy.pdf

no snark intended if this is new to you morrisp. they're both well known cartoonists and comic wonks.

not a Nancy fan but that PDF was pretty dang good, i gotta say

Thanks, I had no idea! :P

(Same thing happened when I was casually unfamiliar w/Warren Ellis in the Marvel thread, lol. I may be better suited for the I Like Comics But Easily Betray the Shallowness of My Knowledge About Them board.)

aw, now i feel bad. it's me, not you.
anyways, as apologies, here's online 5 card nancy solitaire 4 u
http://www.7415comics.com/nancy/

LOL, thanks. Odd that Fantagraphics doesn’t mention the history at all, in their blurb on the book.

I loved their first volume of “Nancy” strips (the jokes maybe not as fresh in the 2nd one).

http://www.tcj.com/reviews/last-girl-standing/

https://www.avclub.com/get-an-exclusive-first-look-at-berger-books-inaugural-1819107492

Shelly Bond also has a Vertigo-esque sub-imprint of her own kicking off at IDW: https://www.idwpublishing.com/blackcrown/

http://www.tcj.com/everything-sells-everything/

Whenever fans go into that "iconic modern myths" thing I want to bite out their wisdom teeth.

Started reading that a few days ago, nodding sagely along but then a few paragraphs into I realised I'd been nodding sagely along to the same arguments on the internet for 10+ years. Like I dunno, is anyone who reads TCJ gonna disagree with any of it?

Also read The Death Of Stalin; didn't do much for me, though I could see it as good source material for Ianucci's film, like he'll be able to fit in the character that's missing.

There still aren't enough critiques of franchise culture. It would be nice if it appeared on a larger site, although I would fear for the writer.

There were a few things I didn't know and its one of the better articles of this type. Things appear to have accelerated and the Northrup Grumman thing seems like a new low.

It's comforting to see TCJ is still that dude who comes back home from his first semester at college and hands his younger brother a stack of Adbusters in the hopes that he'll open his eyes and wake up from his consumerist coma.

That older brother would have helped me! When I started buying TCJ, I really wrestled with and was tortured by a lot of that stuff (but to be honest some of the articles weren't very persuasive at all) and it taken years for me to agree, partially because I didn't quite understand what they were saying.

I did meet an illustrator who sometimes drew comics and he was making fun of the stuff I was reading while being friendly about it, I think that might have planted seeds.

There has been some awful writing in TCJ, including a review that persuaded me to buy the Little Annie Fanny collection, he said it was timeless humour but it was mostly rape and sexual harassment jokes. Some of the art was pretty good though.

I found that TCJ thing kind of incoherent... what was its point, exactly, beyond "ads are bad"?

The point is that we all could have avoided our crippling, lifelong addictions to Hostess Fruit Pies if Spider-Man hadn't been such a sell-out.

I remember thinking even when I subscribed to TCJ 15+ years ago that they could've saved themselves the energy of writing yet another in a long series of articles on the subject by just inserting a little 'we still think mainstream comics are garbage' item in every issue.

i didn't think the point was that ads are bad; moreso that the characters in many ways are ads to sell 5 dollar leaflets and whatever else comes down the pike
corporate creations exist for the sake of the corporation and, as such, any attempt to heighten their status to folk myth in the age of continual copyright is quixotic
obvs none of this is new or shocking but it don't hurt to remind fanboys every once in awhile. tho of course, the self selecting TCJ audience already knew all that; this would've been more fun on buzzfeed.

Old Lunch- explaining the problems with them is important. Criticizing DC and Marvel has a lot more to it than just some crappy creator owned comic in a similar style.

I love my older brother but he asked me if I wanted to see Thor 3 and he didn't appear to be trying to annoy me, I need to ask him what was going on there.

I've never really understood why people have such difficulty seeing the big Big Two characters as both corporate trademarks which undeniably exist to make $$$ and iconic representations which have evolved beyond the mundane intentions of (and which will almost certainly outlive) those making $$$ off of them.

BTW, RAG, I totally agree with you. I would never suggest that people ignore the problematic elements of the Big Two.

That’s only true if by ‘those’ you mean actual execs rather than the corporations, though.

It's almost like it's possible to enjoy superhero comics without being an entitled fanboy, an indie snob, or an advertising exec

xxxp maybe your brother just wanted to go to a movie and was inviting you?

I get having objections to particular aspects of the corporate comic/superhero empires, but at some level there are cultural norms where you can just consume media or products on occasion without it being a morality play.

Like if someone offers me a Coke with lunch I don't immediately start questioning if my stances are being tested

^^ yep

Meanwhile, the past month has happened and DC still employ Eddie Berganza

Yeah, I was thinking about that exact situation the other day. How? How is that still possible?