Rolling Comic Books 2019

Tried the first omnibus of Valerian & Laureline (titled simply Valerian to tie in with the film), consisting of the first 3 volumes. Gave up just over half way through. I could see the improvements by the third episode and that is where many say it really begins but at the time I just couldn't hack it. I didn't hate it or anything but things about the style and the panel arrangements made it a bit offputting for me.

Read the Tuomas guide and since his recommendation would require only a further 3 omnibuses, I think I'll buy those and try again later. This might be a bad idea to ignore all my warning signs but I'm just very intrigued by all this acclaim. I'm bad for buying comics in bulk and then realizing I just cant get very far with them. I try to block out my memory how much they cost.

Yeah, sadly Valerian & Laureline is your textbook example of "gets better as it progresses". It started out as an adventure comic for kids, which is obvious with the first two books. The political allegory and social commentary doesn't really kick in until the 1970s. Looking at what's included in the omnibuses, vol. 2 is already way better than vol. 1, and vol. 3 has what I would argue are the three best books in the entire series. So if you still don't like it after reading vol. 3, there's no point in buying any of the later ones, it doesn't get any better than that.

And you absolutely should not buy vols 6 & 7, the diminishing quality of both the art and especially the writing is just sad. Vol 5 is borderline, IMO only one of the three books included in it ("The Living Weapons") is good, and you really don't need to follow the longer story arc beyond "The Wrath of Hypsis", which provides a decent enough finale for the series. The actual series finale ("Memories from the Futures") is just embarrassingly bad.

Haha, looks like even Cinebook realised "Memories from the Futures" is bad, because it's not included in the omnibuses, the final omnibus ends with the penultimate book. Though to be fair, the penultimate book was originally supposed to be the final book, until Mezieres and Christin decided to do one more victory lap.

Love Tom King's stuff and Clay Mann's a good artist, I've been reading Heroes in Crisis.
Anyone read #4? It's weird that... well... there's some strangely contextualized sexualized female shots in this?
Maybe it's just me, but I'm talking about the full page Lois pin-up in the Superman shirt and panties saying "What do you want me to do?" to the reader and ESPECIALLY the Batgirl confession that has her pointing out her bullet wound in an almost fetishistic fashion.
If this were an everyday teen manga I probably wouldn't even notice it but it's really odd in such a serious story, isn't it?

I saw a few articles in the comic/pop-culture press reporting on that (one included the full Batgirl page as part of the discussion). A particular panel of Poison Ivy was also being discussed in the same context (I won't mention the specific content of the panel, as it's spoiler-y).

My "takeaway" was that I've seen more sexualized art in comics; but I've also seen, er, less sexualized art. It didn't look like something I'd want to read, anyway.

(for other reasons, artwork aside... but I also didn't care for the art.)

I didn't completely see the furore about the Batgirl page - I didn't think it was any worse than the Poison Ivy or Black Canary ones - but the Lois page, which nowhere seems to making a big deal out of that I read, was just awful.

I've actually been nearly enjoying Heroes In Crisis at the plot level, but the execution is kind of off.

heroes in crisis feels a bit like a geoff johns joint tbh
which is to say, i'm not liking it

King's style has become too self-parodic and decompressed - like he's having his own "overindulgent mid-2000s Bendis" phase.

And I'm not sure having stabby psychopaths and Booster doing Robin Williams in Fisher King is really the greatest way of, er, "addressing mental health issues". (I mean, for comparison's sake, look how great Stan Lee - of all people! - is at portraying depression in FF 51.)

:)

To quote Alan Moore: “None of you understand. I'm not locked up in here with YOU. You're locked up in here with ME.” 🤣 https://t.co/8TCmKNJlkD

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) January 11, 2019

beat me to it

FWIW, Alan Moore said he was terrified that there were actually people out there who thought Rorschach was cool.

— Elitist Dentist-Goer (@agraybee) January 11, 2019

I guess we're only allowed to cheekily quote sympathetic fictional characters now

Given the critical faculties of a public that is probably convinced that AOC will be donning a swirly-twirly mask any day now, I guess so.

Bought a two issue serialization of Kaluta's Carson Of Venus. Why bother serializing a reprint over two issues? For the variant covers probably. I think serializing reprints in floppies is madness in general.

I got a cut out hardcover of Annihilator by Grant Morrison and Frasier Irving last weekend. Irving's artwork is even better than the DC stuff he did with Morrison and some pages seem to be channeling some Bill Sienkiewicz during Elektra Assassin days. It's a fun read, pretty much Grant goes to Hollywood story and the multiverse reacts.

I also happen to be re-reading Valis by PKD and Annihilator has two items both the "download into the mind" and "the creator god was insane, which is why the universe is f-ed up" sentiments pretty much straight from the book. It was a very PKD synchronicity.

Irving's artwork is even better than the DC stuff he did with Morrison

disagree, the almost total absence of backgrounds especially makes panel-to-panel continuity a pain to try and infer

Irving's artwork is a bit different style, he seems to use a bunch more feathery detail work on everything. Some of the pages are also almost designed paintings with the text overlaid including the pages on the godworld and viewing the space station. Those were some of the pages that reminded me of Billy the Sink.

Can't remember if Irving colored his own artwork on the DC comics or not.

I thought it was pretty fun and would read a sequel, if ever made.

Need to track down the last 2 issues of Nameless, which I never got on my pull list. Did not see how that crazy story was going to wrap up in 2 issues at all, it seemed like it was setup to be a longer series to me on the first 4.

I lost patience with Nameless, the body horror stuff was a bit offputting. IMO GM is much stronger at showing the horror/weirdness in the quotidian that going full oogum-boogum-horror.

I kinda hate Irving's art, I'm afraid. Klarion was fine but everything since has Bachalo-levels of unintelligibility to me, and I don't like the way he draws faces.

*than going

I know this is not exactly the right thread for this - do we have a thread for superhero movies that don't have their own thread yet? - but the news that there's going to be a Birds of Prey movie with
* Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn
* Jurney Smollett-Bell as Black Canary
* Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Huntress
* Rosie Perez as Renee Montoya
has brightened my day a bit

Formatting help you lieeeee

i'll put money on that movie never materialising

You don't think they'll release the Birds of Prey movie they're shooting right now?

It's the next The Day the Clown Cried.

I knew that would happen once I heard about the subplot with Jared Leto in a concentration camp.

St Marks Place closing next month
https://www.facebook.com/stmarkscomicsny/posts/1981009038615305

Huh... I lived in NYC at one point, but don’t remember a comic shop on St. Marks.

Seriously?!? That place was my store for like six years. It's very much what I think of when I think of a comic book shop.

so... if i want to give less money to amazon but my LCS is a dumpster fire (I've ordered about a dozen books this year through them that just never showed up) what's a good slightly more ethical source of comix

buying direct from the artists, or from What Things Do, or Wow Cool, or Spit And A Half (though I think he's reducing his operations?), or Emerald Comics Distro, or direct from publishers, or from comic shops that do mail order, or etc etc etc

Try doing that from Australia and you'll be bankrupt in a day.

I pretty much used to use my tax return to clear off my comics-ordering bill for the year, before postage went completely insane 5-6 years ago.

buying Australian comics direct from the artists has pretty much been the only option in Sydney since Land Beyond Beyond closed 20-odd years ago

i looked at those but they're pretty specific to particular artists and labels
looking for more general stuff. maybe i'll just stick to midtowncomics

well you did just ask for more ethical sources of comics w/ no further guidelines! buying direct from the artists is usu. going to limit you to those artists’ comics, yeah

closing entry on the ham fisher/al capp feud on TCJ comes with a solidly intriguing theory on the grit that caused the pearl:
http://www.tcj.com/hubris-and-chutzpah-how-lil-abner-kayod-joe-palooka-and-both-their-creators-came-to-grief-part-9/

Was surprised to find this on spotify btw:
https://folkways.si.edu/al-capp/an-interview-with/oral-history-biography/album/smithsonian
https://open.spotify.com/album/1eWf9BydlQx4uTfH7WodAt?si=bDnVHUCFTCmyy9ga5bpoLA

In December, Viz releases Junji Ito's adaptation of Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human. I had no idea he had done such a thing.

Gahan Wilson is suffering from advanced dementia and needs help. His wife of many decades passed away Saturday and as a result he is going to be discharged from the assisted living facility where they lived.

https://www.gofundme.com/gahan-wilson-team-effort

Speaking for myself, Wilson was the first invasion of my little mind by the Weird - my uncle gave my dad a copy of And Then We’ll Get Him for Xmas when I was 7 or 8 and I imbibed it utterly, terrified and transfixed by a world of bodily instability, disease and mutation which was also, apparently, funny??? God bless this man.

that's hugely sad to hear

I'm reading Uncomfortably Happily by Yeon-sik Hong. Comics artist couple move from Seoul to the sticks and deal with career and money worries, the cold, transportation. The protagonist is an archetypal Indie Comics Dude in a way - self loathing, neurotic, frequently a dick to his wife. But despite that I'm finding the narrative likeable and engaging - also fascinated by the author's choice of doing frequent musical numbers, which surely is not what the medium of comics is best suited to.

that's an interesting book but soooooooooooooooo long.
but it's a biography so he's really gotta makes you feel their pain

Yeah, it's super long. I got through most of it at one sitting because I was waiting for something, otherwise I dunno if I would have had the patience.

That Kirkman related Die!Die!Die! was not very good at all. I liked some of Chris Burhams earlier comics but man this one is gory as he!!. It's definitely trying to go over the top like something written by Garth Ennis, Millar or Hickman have done but with even less nuance.

Also kinda weird that it came out through Image the same time as Gillen/Hans' Die (which I'm liking so far!)

Kirkman is not very good at all

https://www.instagram.com/p/BbpnUgulSSI/
Jeremy Bastian is killing it these days.

Have not finished it, but I liked Outcast pretty well. I've tried with Walking Dead but have never finished the first omnibus. I liked his run on Ant-man, that was pretty fun.

Picked up a volume of the Fantagraphics Disney collection focusing on European artists - this stuff is super interesting to me, having read Disney comics as a kid and never having gotten any kind of explainer of how the system works - there's Italian, Danish and Brazilian writers that I know of, probably there's a ton more. And of course they wouldn't get credit on the comics themselves.

Half-off sale on a hundred books at Fanta (plus some other things, like early-90s postcard sets): http://www.fantagraphics.com/bargain-books/

good heads up

Love this cover line

https://getcomics.info/dc/aquaman-46-2019/

Oops

http://s24195.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Aquaman-46.jpg

how pathetic does Warner Brothers expect the Captain Marvel movie to sell if they have to advertise on the front cover of comic books

Did he look back at Sodom?

5 easy ways to survive when you turn to salt... #3 will shock you

Am also shocked that Impact font is still allowed (or desired by people whose job it is to put fonts on things)

DC has spent much of the year thus far (arguably for a number of years prior but really ramped up for 2019) demonstrating their dedication to questionable decisions. Subpar typefaces and movie ads on their covers are just skimming the surface.

(So much upheaval over such a little Batwang.)

I like the Bendis Superman books and assumed things were getting better. What have they fucked up now?

lengthy sidestep into crime-world and sudden introduction of superboy is readable i thought, sprawling super syndicate underground a little less so
in general they seem okay so far?

Finished the two volumes of Queen Esmeraldas by Leiji Matsumoto. I like how quiet and spacious it is, there's some cool places, and there is atmosphere but it's very annoying how Esmeraldas introduces herself constantly and keeps saying the same things about herself, the story is just way too impressed by the characters and ominous plot points seem to be dropped or ignored (unless they carried into other related stories).
There's a Harlock crossover with lots more humor, the cat being attached to the pole to eat the bird was funny. I was amused by the dad executing his own bratty daughter in the main story but I couldn't tell if it was supposed to be funny.

Read half of the first Captain Harlock book, much more comedic but still has some of the same annoyances. I dropped it, completely leaving the second book (hopefully I'll finally stop buying multiple comics in a series before I've read the first, thank fuck I didn't buy the third Harlock book and Space Battleship Yamato book. I'm worried I wont have the patience for my Hellboy omnibuses).

Having said all this I think others may want to give them a try. It does come off like a libertarian fantasy sometimes though, it's a cruel galaxy until kindred spirits with similar goals of absoloute freedom help each other out.

Some of the animated versions (Matsumoto seems to write most of them?) are supposed to be great, but there's hundreds of them. It's all one big Matsumoto universe.

I dug into some Marvel stuff lately to catch up and read the up-to-date runs of Conan, Punisher, Immortal Hulk and Avengers No Road Home. All pretty good, especially the last two. Ewing is on a roll!

So I guess Paul P0pe got out from under #metoo by virtue of getting #metoo'd before #metoo?

do I actually want to know what that’s in reference to, or would it just be more extraneous shit that makes me throw out things I could actually sell?

serial sexual creep allegations back in 2015? 2016?

He disappeared for a while following harassment allegations (haven't heard of anything he did since the third Battling Boy/West book in 2015), but i notice he's come back doing covers for Brian Azzarello/Maria Llovet's Faithless mini.
Not that I'm trying to raise pitchforks, honestly, but i'm surprised nobody noticed this

A film adaptation of that graphic novel Sabrina is being developed:

https://variety.com/2019/film/news/drew-goddard-sabrina-movie-1203183484/

They will probably have to (or will want to) change the title for the movie version...

when does Top Notch get a movie though #nichetweet

lol "a grieving man"

Die's first arc just completed. I'm definitely into it - the art alone is very nice, and I dig the idea of this RPG/social deconstruction. Warning though: super teen goth angst!

I like it more than WICDIV, but I'm not so sure about the art! Just a general Vertigo-era fear of painted comics

so i may have access to a seedbox that is slowly being populated with complete runs of FF, Hulk, Tales to Astonish, 1940's Cap and more for cbr download or on screen viewing
if that's a thing ilxors might be interested in, maybe note here and you could possibly get an ilxmail

don't you already have those as part of that mega chrono collection? Or are these better versions.

no, i got em already; just found this as a resource to share.

I thought this was a cool tribute to Carlos Ezquerra by Chris Weston. It's being auctioned off for a Cancer charity. I can name quite a few of the characters, but a bunch I don't know. Bloody Mary is hidden way up in the right top corner. I like how Gronk is right by Carlos.

https://assets.catawiki.nl/assets/2019/4/23/d/4/d/d4df869f-259c-4b98-b981-1c57375eaac2.jpg

so the conan books have been really good! like surprisingly so! There's a cohesive story, a long game, due deference to tradition, and the art does what it's supposed to do.

You know an old-school Marvel artist like Ron Garney is LOVING being able to do some Conan. If the editor is good, I would not be surprised you see quite a few names drop in doing issues.

Marvel for the first time really does the back matter really great on those Conan omnibuses. You can tell they got Roy Thomas in to work on it to make it a good book. They should be doing that type of context work on all of the old really classic Marvel reprints.

If you're into it, there's a whole serialized conan short story in text going on in the main book too.

Thoughts on Ales Kot?

Got into his stuff a couple years back. Ok, loves dropping all of his interests/reading into things, stories are kind of flat. Doesn’t come off as clever as he’s aiming for but a couple books were ok.

generation gone was readably okay superheroes-in-the-millar-hyperviolent-fashion
days of hate thought it was quite clever but moved into a space where i didn't give a damn very quickly
his take on bloodborne, quite frankly, doesn't do justice to the video game; this is mostly on point - http://www.tcj.com/reviews/bloodborne-the-death-of-sleep/
tried two issues of New World and signed off
not a fan.

I think of his non-Marvel/DC work I enjoyed Zero the most. I don’t think I’ve read either of the ones forks mentioned

Yeah, I found Days Of Hate a total slog. New World was a relief by contrast, just through virtue of being more colourful and playful and having a sense of humour. Tradd Moore is a dope artist imo.

I was wincing along to the idea of a rebel in the future listening to RATM and Billy Bragg. Then I saw the "Elena Ferrante will never die" graffiti and started to think "ok, maybe they're being ridiculous on purpose".

Parts of Zero was good, but parts of it was total art school showoff bunk. It didn't jump the shark as much as spend a couple of whole issues showing the jumping of the shark with lots of blood splatter and bullets.

I read Zero in singles the whole series and I was kinda pissed reading near the second half. They just went nuts and did that fight scene that went across a couple issues and then the plot got even more bonkers. Thing is for how wack it ended, there was some pages and parts of the comic that were really well done.

I get lured into these Image comics by the first issue being really interesting, then I get behind on my pull list and reading and get the whole series. Once I catch up and read them, I realize that 1/2 of them go totally off the rails and I think "I spent $40 bucks on this turd"... I supposed one more reason to follow series in trade.

The other sadness of following indie comics on a pull list is the one that is amazing that just cold stops and never concludes. Those are worse, as you really do want to read how it turned out.

earl otm on all points

His Winter Soldier series for Marvel is 90% characters and planets named after musicians and Aphex Twin songs

"Die Die Die" by Kirkman, Chris Burnham and some other guy is another one. First couple of issues were fun but good lord people are just f-ing nuts when it comes to the gore these days. Burnham has done some cool comics but I was pretty honked up after reading the next few after say #3 later on in the comics pile. Parts of it seemed a total nick of The Boys and honestly, I don't know if you really want to go there anyway. I dropped Die Die Die from the pull list afterwards with extreme prejudice.

"Black Science" is another series I read the whole thing and wish I would have bailed way early on. There were some parts that were ok, but pretty much all the characters are totally unlikable. Fear Agent is a good read though. I need to get my set of Black Science together and try to blow it out on ebay. Stuff like this makes me just want to go read old Moon Knight or Swamp Thing.

<i>Heroes in Crisis</i> finally ended; I have to say it didn't wrap up as neatly as I hoped. It was a fun read but didn't quite come together. I also hate mysteries where previously known facts are hand-waved away as imaginary. I really liked individual bits of it (particularly the confessionals).

Doomsday Clock #10 came out and we finally get an answer to what Doctor Manhattan's been up to. I have to admit, as silly as this whole project is on a meta level (Geoff Johns, lol) it's been a pretty entertaining series. This issue in particular was quite good, imo.

Is that this?

Here's an honest to god page from DC's big murder mystery event comic. People have been praising the writer as a genius for years. pic.twitter.com/BNOIyvq3LK

— Hurb Cherpley Sea-Doo (@hurbcherpley) May 29, 2019

So that's by Tom King? His Vision run from a couple of years back was awesome, what happened to him?

He wrote a Mister Miracle 12-issue series that covered a lot of the same ground -- marriage and parenthood, what we'll do to protect them, etc. I liked it more than the Vision series.

It was just announced yesterday that he's scripting Duvernay's New Gods movie, for whatever that's worth to you.

King's run on Batman has had dips but has been consistently enjoyable for seventy issues and running.
Omega Men and Vision are both excellent; I need to return to Miracle Man.
I thought Heroes in Crisis was garbage; highlighted all his writerly weaknesses unnecessarily and made almost no sense.
Overall, my sense is that DC is overworking him and his output is watering down but he's proven himself worth following.

also i swear i've made that post like three times already.

xp pretty much agree with you

Overall, my sense is that DC is overworking him and his output is watering down but he's proven himself worth following.

See also any popular superhero comics writer ever

I swear at any given time the whole industry is being written by just 5 or 6 ppl

well sure! But not all those "doing 42 books at once" guys are at all interesting even when they started; cullen bunn and jeff lemire come to mind immediately in that category.

"Hey Bill Mantlo, can you get me a script with (insert character) by 2pm tomorrow?"

"No problem."

Sounds like a dream job, even in that situation lol

I've heard that Joe Gill (who was perhaps only behind Paul S Newman as most prolific American comics writer) was asked to write stories just as he was about to leave and could whip something up in 15 minutes, probably shorter than 22 pages though.

guiltily agree that Doomsday Clock is trash but a fun read

feel kinda bad that geoff johns must think it’s his Big Artistic Statement though

why would you feel bad, he got paid $$$$ to deconstruct his own mistakes

That tweeted page (“Bros before heroes”) is indeed awful... the art sucks too. (Who’s the green, bare-breasted heroine?)

Well, she's getting hugged by Harley Quinn, so if she's not Poison Ivy, she should watch out...

Cullen Bunn and Jeff Lemire were already writing The Sixth Gun and Sweet Tooth respectively when they started their big careers - I'd rep for both. My read is that Lemire is interested in doing a bit of everything (I enjoyed Descender), whereas Bunn would rather be making horror.

guys, get this: Doomsday Cock. It’s about Dr. Manhattan’s casual nudity

i thought this run of TCJ diaries was pretty good; will keep an eye out for Melanie Gillman's work in the future:
http://www.tcj.com/author/melanie-gillman/

http://images.tcj.com/2019/05/WLAR-Day-10-768x1024.jpg

check out When the Crow Flies if you like this

Saw the couple pages where Manhattan is explaining how the timeline is shifting and I have to say that is some pretty potent DC nurd catnip. It seems an extension of the old 'hypertime' that Morrison and Mark Waid were putting out there.

I still say Johns it would have been a heck of a lot cooler if the Flash that showed up in Final Crisis and in the New 52 would have been the Barry Allen from old Earth 1. One reporters opinion.

That Morrison GL/GA issue is an absolute stinker.

Slightly off-topic but I recently became curious about DC and Marvel novels. Always wondered how well superheroes might work in this medium (same with martial arts, I wonder how much it relies on the visual and could you novelize a Fred Astaire film successfully?) and given that one of my bigger frustrations with the comics is the usually very rushed art, it might have some advantages.

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?33519
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?30173

There are some authors with good reputations here but I'd imagine much of this was hack work.
Batman anthologies contain Asimov, Silverberg, Sheckley, Tepper and Landsdale. Wonder Woman anthology has Pamela Sargent. Steve Rasnic Tem is in Batman and Silver Surfer anthologies. Lansdale also wrote a Batman novel about a man who transforms into a car.

I think Joe Pulver said he'd like to do a Doctor Strange story and I was intrigued but as usual I'd prefer something in the milieu that isn't tied down to an existing IP, even ripoffs of Doctor Strange, Aquaman, Namor, Green Lantern and Swamp Thing might be preferable but how do you ripoff Ghost Rider and Silver Surfer without completely ripping them off?

Anyone read the comics of Nnedi Okorafor, Saladin Ahmed and Cassandra Khaw? It's difficult for me to understand why a prose writer would want to enter into comics where you don't get to choose the artists and probably done on tight deadlines.

Saladin Ahmed's runs on Exiles and Black Bolt were fun, to me.
Why would a writer do comics? Because, they're comics. Comics are great. ;)

But giving away the control of the visuals must be hard. I mentioned recently on another thread, Rachel Pollack (mostly a prose writer) was horrified by the art she was saddled with on New Gods (and it was particularly bad).

Ahmed’s taste in comics, as inferred from millions of retweets of him I saw before I even knew he was a writer, suggests that he has almost no interest in visual narrative & thus would be a fine Marvel writer.

Also, I wonder whether it was James O'Barr or an editor who chosen Somtow and Attanasio to write Crow novels, because that sounds pretty cool.

After reading a bit more about online fanfiction, is there any famously good fanfiction or does it all just get lost in the shuffle?

Other comics writers better known for prose works: Patricia Highsmith, Alfred Bester, Manly Wade Wellman, Lucius Shepard, Nancy A Collins, Nancy Holder, Nancy Kilpatrick, Elizabeth Hand, Harlan Ellison, Genevieve Valentine, Catherynne M Valente, Margaret Atwood, Joe R Lansdale, John Shirley, Neal Stephenson. Any good comics in there?

Did Clive Barker write any of his own comics?

It's been a long time since I read Nancy A Collins' run on Swamp Thing but i think it was ok.

China Mieville's run on Dial H is great though.

Related: an anthology of prose by comics writers
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?284814

Kazumasa Hirai (8 Man, Wolf Guy, Spiderman) seems to be well known for both comics and books. Hideyuki Kikuchi (Vampire Hunter D, Demon/Wicked City) done some original comics.

i should try rereading lethem's omega the unknown: y or n?

lansdale has done good comic work!

Collins's Swamp Thing run is pretty much abysmal imo.

Caitlin Kiernan's Vertigo work (she wrote the bulk of The Dreaming with a couple miniseries digressions) otoh is pretty good.

Barker wrote a lot/all(?) of the most recent run of Hellraiser comics from several years back.

I need to read more Lansdale comics, because that first Jonah Hex mini he did with Tim Truman is badass.

Loved Lethem's Omega mini-series, even though I'm not sure what he was going for with that final issue.

I like lethem’s omega way more than the one novel of his I’ve read (as she climbed across the table)

Weirdly the comic it most resembles is city of crime, the lapham batman book (but for spoilery reasons)

Ha x-post, the spoilery reason was to do with that last issue

all the lansdale jonah hex stuff is really fun imo

Related: an anthology of prose by comics writers
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?284814

Even if we put aside Gertler's actively repellent design preferences, I can't imagine that standing up to https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2037136.Words_Without_Pictures

Lethem's Omega is good, possibly aided by having a cartoonist draw it.

Barker wrote a lot/all(?) of the most recent run of Hellraiser comics from several years back.

All of those have other writers credited beside him, so he may not have been doing any hands-on comics writing, even if he worked on it month-to-month.

Other comics writers better known for prose works: ...Harlan Ellison... Any good comics in there?

The entirety of Ellison's credited scripts are:

- A Batman: Black & White backup 8-pager in 2001
- Three pages of X-Men: Heroes For Hope in 1985
(one, two, three - Stephen King and "George Martin" had 3pp apiece in this, too)
- And a Batman story that was commissioned in 1971, for which Ellison turned in a title page and fourteen blank pages in a manila envelope in 1981. (Fifteen pages saw print in 1986, eight years after the editor had left the comic.)

Ellison was a joke

Didn't Ellison also write an issue of Hulk? (Possibly in collaboration with someone else?) I remember seeing his name in the credits in one of those microverse stories of the seventies.

Oh yeah, it was The Incredible Hulk #140, though apparently Marvel only commissioned the plot from him, and Roy Thomas did the scripting.

https://static0.cbrimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/u3-20-094-3.jpg

A friend of mine began a review of (useless Dark Horse anthology comic) 'Harlan Ellison's Dream Corridor' with "Not, as you might have imagined, Harlan Ellison contemplating his ideal hallway..." - and Ellison actually rang up the editor to complain about the review. Amazing that he didn't have better things to do.

That reminds me of a friend explaining that there was a band on his college campus called Godot. Their fliers said something like, "Have you been waiting for Godot? Wait no longer!"

pretty sure they came up with the band name just to make that joke

Harlan Ellison was a pain™ in the hole®.

here's two old men bitching
http://www.tcj.com/the-harlan-ellison-interview/

one of them is 24; both of them had much more curmudgeonliness to discover after that

Thatsthejoke.jpeg

I kno but other ppl scrolling might not have

He seems to have a sole writing credit on Phoenix Without Ashes, Chocolate Alphabet, some Heavy Metal issues and maybe some other stuff, but my curiosity wont go that far.

Forgot to mention Richard K Morgan, done a bunch of Black Widow and Crysis.

He seems to have a sole writing credit on Phoenix Without Ashes

An TV pilot teleplay from 1973 that he Smithee-ed when it was produced as a series, which was adapted into a novel by someone else in 1975, which in turn was adapted into a comic by a different someone else in 2011. The teleplay has been in and out of print since possibly February 1975.

Chocolate Alphabet

26 one-page prose short stories that were written in public on a typewriter in a bookshop window & hung up to be read by passers-by as Ellison continued to write, printed in typeset in The Magazine Of Fantasy & Science-Fiction in 1976, and collected in Ellison's Strange Wine in 1978, before being printed in hand-lettering by Larry Todd on Last Gasp.

some Heavy Metal issues

"How's the Night Life on Cissalda?" - prose story printed in the paperback anthology Chrysalis in 1977, reprinted in Heavy Metal November 1977, collected in Ellison's Shatterday in 1980, Datlow's Alien Sex in 1990, etc.

"Croatoan" - prose story printed in The Magazine Of F&SF in 1975, collected in Ellison's Strange Wine in 1978, reprinted in Heavy Metal September 1978, analysed in King's Danse Macabre 1981.

"Flop Sweat" - prose story written in six hours to be read on the radio in 1977, printed in Heavy Metal March 1979, collected in Ellison's Shatterday in 1980.

"Santa Claus vs. S.P.I.D.E.R." - prose story printed in F&SF January 1969, collected in Ellison's The Beast Who Shouted Love At The Heart Of The World in June '69, reprinted with new introduction in Heavy Metal December 1979.

"Fear Not Your Enemies" - two-page essay about John Lennon's shooting getting more press than other famous Americans shot that day and gun control maybe being something the US should look into, published in HM March 1981, collected in Ellison's Sleepless Nights In The Procrustean Bed 1984.

but really, if you think about it, each letter of the alphabet is a pictogram, which we are reading in sequence, so words are basically comics etc etc

I always thought Jerome Charyn's collaborations with Boucq were considered the gold standard as far as prose writers scripting comics go (never read 'em myself).

Ikki Kajiwara, writer of iconic late 60s manga like Ashita no Joe and Star of the Giants, wrote the novel that Takashi Miike's film Big Bang Love, Juvenile A was based on.

I think Tom DeHaven has written a few comics, I remember liking a short he did for RAW drawn by Richard Sala.

Tom Veitch has written novels and poetry. His collaboration with Greg Irons in the 70s produced some good, if gruesome, comix.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/dc-closing-down-vertigo-imprints-1220225
They started Ink and Zoom less than six months ago!

Don't fret, DC being DC, they'll probably reinstate the lines they cancelled after another six months have elapsed. Or at least some equally clueless + dipshitty variation thereof.

Ha, didn't realize this was a thing but of course it is: http://www.hasdcdonesomethingstupidtoday.com/

Just read Petit (Ogre Gods Vol. 1) and wow.
Is there some kind of weird French comics tradition of stories about incredibly scary giants

And so now, less than a week after shuttering Vertigo and streamlining their sub-imprints into three age-delimited lines, DC announces that Joe Hill will be running his own Vertigo-esque sub-imprint under the mature readers Black Label (a sub-sub-imprint, if you will). This is definitely the work of people with a clear vision and a firm hand on the wheel.

it's impressive! DC did similar shit back in 1975 if i recall correctly.

it's honestly a shame because i liked the Black Label imprint idea - out of continuity, well known creators, often magazine format limited series

Oh, Black Label will apparently still exist. It will just be housing the forthcoming Hill House line (as well as whatever lines will in time presumably be nested within that line). They're simplifying things, do u see, I cannot possibly fathom what part of this organizational structure doesn't make sense to u.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/comicgeeks/comics/covers/large-4202640.jpg

IN ORIGINAL LOOSE-LEAF FORMAT!

I'd been wondering about the origins of the loose-leaf format.

Recommended investment: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/beehivebooks/laab-the-art-newspaper-powered-by-the-radical-imagination

The English language edition of Maggy Garrisson from SelfMadeHero is the best hunk of comics I've read in quite some time, and the best European homage to Engerland since Jacobs' The Yellow M:

https://www.selfmadehero.com/books/maggy-garrisson

wow, Lewis Trondheim!

yeah, i fucks with anything he or anyone from l'association does

From a while back, but I re-read Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #31 - the one-shot story where Nancy and Doreen get stuck in hypertime - gotta be one of the best single issues I've read of any comic in years. Such a wonderful series.

Yeah, Squirrel Girl is great. Still haven't totally understood if it's getting cancelled or if the creative team just decided they were done and Marvel went "well, no point in carrying on the title then". If it's the latter that's a bit of a paradigm shift for a Big Two title, no?

She's carrying on in Marvel Rising, I think?

And I think it happens more than one might think - Young Avengers, if I remember right, was also "well we've done what we came here to do"

Also Erica Henderson left on interior art a little while back, still doing covers. (She's doing that Assassin Nation mini at Image right now). The current artist is fine, but definitely feels a little weird since she's essentially the co-creator of this version.

I guess Sandman was cancelled after Gaiman finished?

DC made it a point to "respect" him (true or not, i don't know) by not giving his Sandman/Dream/etc. to any other authors without his permission. They got his blessing for that line reboot recently iirc

I wonder if after the original run was finished, if other writers would be too intimidated by the idea of following Gaiman?

was thinking about what i still read from DC with any interest this year and came up with:

- Action/Superman - Bendis' schtick is starting to wear thin and I explicitly don't care about whatever this LEVIATHAN thing is supposed to be about but when they're not nattering (b)endlessly, the characters feel refreshed/classic/eager to please enough to make these fun reads for me

- Batman - With the fake wedding done, the current WAY too long running storyline has been the moment where I've soured on King's (generally impressive!) run, especially the at-least-twice-taken choice of scripting a single voice interior monologue and fluffing it with pin-up art for a filler issue. I'm increasingly sensing that King was done with bats at around issue #50 but they've made him an offer he didn't want to walk away from... maybe he's gonna do some writing work on the movie? Or they're gonna incorporate some of his themes and they want him as a continuity supervisor or something? In any case, it's been cold for a few months, but I still open a new issue hopeful.

- Flash - The immediately-happening "Year one" reboot they're doing has been surprisingly enjoyable. NB: I am a sucker for the origin stories but my interest often fades once the nostalgia's gone. Only four issues along though; so far, so good.

- Green Lantern - It's everything I'd want a sci-fi police procedural by Morrison to be: arcane, melodramatic, casually clever, obsessive in detail, fun to read in batches of three or more. I would recommend the first trade more or less unreservedly.

- Wonder Woman - G Willow Wilson is a good fit on the book. I need to do an 8 issue reread and see if she's stringing together a good long form story but she's doing well on an issue by issue basis.

And frankly that's it! I think Marvel has a much higher hit ratio at the moment which i could capitulate if asked.

Not for nothing, but I would be inclined to take the various Vertigo/Sandman offshoot books on if only anyone could recommend them. I'm not exactly dying to leap into a new series since they're canceling the imprint; it's off-putting and unclear to me if the current lineup will be folded in or canceled or re-solicited with new creative teams or?

ANYWAYS anybody reading: Books of Magic, Dreaming, Goddess Moon, House of Whispers or Lucifer?

My understanding is that the Sandman Universe and Young Animal titles will be the only surviving ongoing mature readers titles at DC and that they'll fall under the Black Label banner until some WB exec or another makes a different decision on the fly.

I've been buying the Sandman books but I haven't read them yet. Every several years, I do a readthrough of all the related material from Moore's Swamp Thing through like late-period Hellblazer and genuinely love a lot of it, so I want these new books to be good. But I've avoided reading them because I'm afraid that they might not be good. Or at least not what I want them to be. Maybe it's time to make the leap. For you, forks.

I wonder if after the original run was finished, if other writers would be too intimidated by the idea of following Gaiman?

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Monday, July 15, 2019 8:38 AM (fifteen hours ago)

oh yeah, this DEFINITELY would have been the case

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Dreaming,%20The/16900.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Witchcraft-%20La%20Terreur/215418.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Destiny-%20A%20Chronicle%20of%20Deaths%20Foretold/91151.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Dreaming,%20The/54710.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Sandman%20Presents,%20The-%20Deadboy%20Detectives/153953.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Dreaming,%20The/214272.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Lucifer%20(Vertigo)/106091.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Dreaming,%20The/215667.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Sandman%20Presents-%20Petrefax/244535.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Little%20Endless%20Storybook,%20The/194581.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Dreaming,%20The/82313.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/D/DC/S/Sandman%20Presents,%20The-%20The%20Furies/295292.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Sandman%20Presents,%20The-%20Thessaly-%20Witch%20for%20Hire/224911.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Girl%20Who%20Would%20be%20Death,%20The/197110.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Sandman%20Presents,%20The-%20Everything%20You%20Always%20Wanted%20to%20Know%20About%20Dreams-But%20Were%20Afraid%20to%20Ask/247999.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Dreaming,%20The/206262.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Sandman%20Presents,%20The-%20Merv%20Pumpkinhead,%20Agent%20of%20D.R.E.A.M/268638.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Death-%20At%20Death

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Dreaming,%20The/10783.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Sandman%20Presents,%20The-%20Bast/9405.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Sandman%20Presents,%20The-%20The%20Thessaliad/54926.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Dreaming,%20The/138090.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Sandman%20Presents,%20The-%20The%20Corinthian/259315.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Dreaming,%20The/86290.jpg

Point off for missing the Thessaly miniseries - point restored because the Jeff Nicholson Dreaming issue fucking rocks.

xp okay you're in the clear, we can probably stop short of 'every cover of the Dreaming'

(each of those is the first issue of a separate commission)

xp no repeated writers on the Dreaming covers!

first issue

nb WitchCraft is the second mini, bcz the first one came out during Sandman

If you're talking about the actual character of Dream (as opposed to the broader set of characters/concepts created or revived for Sandman), there actually are very few post-Gaiman instances of such. Morrison's JLA, Kiernan's run on The Dreaming, maybe a couple others.

And frankly that's it! I think Marvel has a much higher hit ratio at the moment which i could capitulate if asked.

I think this has been the case for many years now, but tbh my Marvel pull list has been shrinking steadily through the last year or so too.

my takeaway here is that no one is currently reading any of the vertigo books

I'm surprised it didn't hit harder. Are they no good?
(Btw that Lucifer run linked above by Mike Carey was pretty solid.)

even if they're any good, it has been Didio policy to starve them of internal or external support

very few post-Gaiman instances of such

this was bcz Gaiman made his further work for the company contingent on the restriction of that one character

the harder hit will come when AT&T close down the publishing division altogether, and every other publisher collapses bcz every english-language comic shop in the world goes under

I think I've read maybe a couple issues of Lucifer and none of the others?

I must be the notional reader that only shows up for material when it's a title called Sandman that ostensibly stars that character

I'm not a con person but it is perhaps interesting to note that DC will not have a discrete booth at this year's SDCC but will rather be folded into a broader WB experience. I will not be surprised at all when that entire division is rebranded WB Comics.

they'd probably brand it in some way

branding is how you do your market segmentation, after all

I read a few things by writers whose work I'd liked previously on non-work-for-hire stuff that they drew themselves, eg Terry LaBan, Bryan Talbot, Ed Brubaker, Jill Thompson, Bill Willingham, Al Davison (who did get to draw his issues). The Jeff Nicholson issue Andrew points out was essentially a colour riff on Through The Habitrails.

I wasn't meaning Sandman spinoffs, but really I didn't know if anyone else had continued the character right after in a reboot.

But I did know they didn't just get John Byrne or Bill Mantlo to keep the title running.

They really tried to get Mantlo - in the end, solidarity with Bob Budiansky was the sole reason that he declined.

in case you didn't know, 22 issues in and the dark horse adaptation of gaiman's American Gods with P Craig Russell and Scott Hampton remains one of the best comics on the mainstream racks

via tcj: https://files.constantcontact.com/7c08b62b401/857e5ff9-cc24-4b82-93bd-4687ce4f2a1a.pdf

Dave Lapham put out a 24 page pdf of an unpublished Batman comic he did with Bill Sienkiewicz. “DC had long ago dumped the files off of their server, and Bill had sold the art and later had a hard drive meltdown. The art to this was effectively gone. All I have (and what you’ll see here) are a set of smaller-than-comic-sized printouts from low-res scans.”

Oh, so frustrating! I didn’t know that. What a great run though - with or without Sienkiewicz.

That said, the double page spread with the trail of bats is awesome in a way I can’t remember a Batman panel being in a very long time

very cool! I'm a huge fan of City of Crime, seeing that Sienkiewicz issue #1 take is fascinating

Maybe they don't know or don't like each other, but it always seemed like a no-brainer that Billy the Sink should have been paired with Grant Morrison on a project at some point.

Imagine if the Batman of Zur-En-Arrh segments in Morrison's run when he is trippin' balls were done by Sienkiewicz to show Batman's state of mind.

Lapham's Daredevil/Punisher mini-series is also a pretty good read.

i made a very important thread
Outrageous images from Classics Illustrated Junior

I finally read Otomo’s Domu, which has been on my shelf for years … and did not really enjoy it! Oh well.

I know the paper copy is quite difficult to find (I have the UK collected edition published in 1994ish) So if anyone in the UK wants my copy, I’ll be happy to send it out for Whatever the copy of post is

*the cost of post is

Traded out 10 1/2 long boxes today.

Anyone reading DIE?

It's doing well with the General Public, I've heard, but I'm not sure... it kinda feels like the boring dream sequence episode of a TV show stretched into eternity.

It's on the pull list so I'll give it another couple issues

Yeah, I was surprised by that, I assumed it would be "Writer assumes all of his interests are equally interesting, when one is pop music and another is boardgames"

At the moment it's kind of like bad Gaiman with better jokes. I sorta hate the art too; it's from the Frazer Irving school of pretty-but-unfollowable painted comics.

I dunno, something about it feels a bit "here is my tragic backstory" in a hacky storytelling 101 way that feels unusually lazy for Gillen. Although, to be more generous, I suppose that conceptually fits with a book about player-generated characters.

I dig it. D&D Teen goth angst to the max + mid-life crisis, somehow a winning combination

Anyone reading the 4th arc of Jojo? I don't think I can commit to it again but I'm interested to know what people think. I remember an old fan site saying that everything after the 3rd arc feels forced, but it looks like there's a lot of novelty with the different settings. The woman's prison and the big horse race sounds great but I just cant.

I've only read a few issues of Jojo's but I thought forced was the whole shtick?

Got my kids into Gogor, it is good

it's good fantasy!

It’s not an insane idea to want to b

The English language edition of Maggy Garrisson from SelfMadeHero is the best hunk of comics I've read in quite some time, and the best European homage to Engerland since Jacobs' The Yellow M:

https://www.selfmadehero.com/books/maggy-garrisson🕸

Beehive Press just sent out kickstarter digital edition promos of their lavish new Harrison Cady book and woooooo boy, it looks gorgeous. can't wait for the physical copy.
i've always been head over heels for Cady, but i was not aware he was responsible for so much explicitly racist and anti-semetic work. kinda wish it wasn't so beautifully rendered! Sign of the (turn of the twentieth century) times i guess.

We've barely talked about Gillen's WicDiv since it started, which I guess means there's been a general lack of interest - which is fair! I'm not sure it was very good - but curious for thoughts now it's all over

I thought it was fantastic, I surprised myself by considering getting a (first!) tattoo based on it. I'm aware this is a ridiculous thing for a 44-year-old straight white male to consider about a series largely devoted to early-twenties kids of various colours and sexualities, which I take as a sign of how much I liked it.

But tbh the demographics that it's meant the most to don't really overlap much with ILX, so I'm not surprised by the quiet.

I surprised myself by considering getting a (first!) tattoo

oh wow! ok, sorry to snark. that's amazing.

i did enjoy it - can see the appeal of a lil' loki tattoo, even

I've read Wicked + Divine aside from the last arc. I mostly haven't cared much for the story, but I stuck with it because they do some interesting things with the art and comics as a format.

I have wondered if I didn't get on with this comic because I'm just not the target demographic. Wicked + Divine has come up in discussions at a comic book group I go to and someone younger than me said they (and implied that younger people generally) would identify with the characters, or at least be sympathetic to them. The failing for me with this book is that I didn't care about most of the cast (and then most of the characters I connected to were the first to die).

I managed to enjoy parts of later issues once the pre-godhood backstories were revealed a bit more and the creators filled in some of the story gaps (like, why would a bunch of global gods reincarnate in London? ah, I see, because they've reincarnated in different places all over the world throughout the centuries, not just one place). I'll read it through to the end. And I wouldn't discourage other people from reading it, it just didn't land/hasn't landed with me overall.

can strongly recommend the wordless comic TRAP, new on Europe Comics; if the cover appeals to you, the internal art and cleverly executed story is even better.
http://i.imgur.com/iKJIoSN.png

https://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2019/03/17-1/viz-releases-hardcover-the-drifting-classroom-manga-in-fall-of-2019

If you passed up or didn't know about the 11 volumes of paperback years ago. I really hope this is just the start of more. I have complained about the needless expense of hardcovers but somehow manga getting this treatment gives me hope for a bigger reprints project.

How many of these are there gonna be? I started one of these manga reprints (20th Century Boys), bought like four volumes, gave up trying to keep up with the reading and buying. Maybe I'll try again with this, Fourteen fucked me up for life.

I was wondering that. It cant be one volume.

Kate Lacour is great and i am super glad fanta is pushing her now.
https://www.comicsbeat.com/kate-lacour-interview/

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/janstrnad/mutant-world-and-son-of-mutant-world/description
https://stuartngbooks.com/mutant-world-and-son-of-mutant-world.html

Wasn't aware of this until today. Those early issues of the second series really needed fixing, so this is very welcome. Don't know how many shops it will go to.

nice piece from Strnad here about the history of Mutant World
https://www.bleedingcool.com/2019/08/18/riding-coattails-to-success/

Never heard of that! Always loved Strnad tho

Especially Dalgoda and Who’s Stronger?

We did. Back then everyone could read joined-up writing so it wasn't anything we worried about. https://t.co/eZ3hYhZW1w

— Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) October 6, 2019

do people not know how to read cursive anymore?

"this font"

eh it's kind of messy, could have used a second pass. 'remarked' looks like 'resharfeed'.

it's meant to be messy ffs, Klein is communicating story information

the drawings would probably be clearer in autocad, eh DC should redo it

there are so many overwrought bits in Sandman that smudgy cursive is something I just kind of let go of caring about

years later, I still have a few of the more egregious lines stuck in my head. like the entire dialogue about the necropolis guy’s sex life

$45 is a lot to drop on Mutant World for me, but glad it did get funded

Kids havent been taught cursive in... 20 years?

adding “part of the last cursive generation” to my resume

are kids seriously not taught cursive anymore?

They are not. Because it is not a useful skilll.

Hence they don’t have signatures really

They have thumbprints and retinal scans and two-factor authentication, who needs a signature

this seems positive, if insanely priced and unnecessarily superhero focused:

The $30 monthly membership fee pays for the art materials and instruction and entitles the young subscribers to borrow one comic at a time. It costs $5 to keep one. The focus is currently on single issues, but the library will soon add graphic novels.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/02/nyregion/comics-brooklyn-loot.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRKUiJ58uRM

via tcj
https://www.instagram.com/b_w_h_a_m/

i like!

First part of Mutant World is a real downer in parts, some really nasty stuff off-panel. Will leave a bad taste for a lot of people but I was never entirely sure what they were going for.

An obsession with food pops up in the most unexpected manga. Food is a nuisance for me and I'm always suspicious of people who love it so much.

what an odd opinion

I mostly hate food these days.

So many harem manga have food as lovingly drawn as the girls bodies, and a cherishment of eating with other people at a table.

really limits your choice of harem mangas huh

Never really been a fan of that genre, so maybe it was just the few I've seen? I've heard some say that eating scenes are important in Miyazaki films but I actually don't remember any.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Od0XjF8qXos

haha, seen this post recently
https://littleredreviewer.wordpress.com/2019/10/01/manga-and-graphic-novels-about-food-and-cooking/

I also noticed this in the Muramasa videogame, how well all the food was rendered.

Don't know how to feel about all this, but these people seem happy.

I know nihilistic non-sequitur internet cartoonists are a dime a dozen these days, but I like this one

https://instagram.com/yoyorobot

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/_0NhYEqw2Ahw/Su-RTfW007I/AAAAAAAADyI/_IznrUS_7iA/s1600-h/IMG_0003.jpg

Every now and then I look back at this image to see if it's as bad as I remember it. Good example of what I don't like.

The drawing isn’t great, but the writing is completely repugnant. Is it Johns?

I think it is. I'm not really hating on the drawing but not a fan either.

I think I remember that episode of Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie. It was tight.

https://abload.de/img/0br4kzw.jpg

for fuck’s sake

TBF I'm pretty sure most DC comics these days are written in the darkest hours of a blackout bender so I'm sure King (I think that's King) has no recollection of writing those words.

Yup, it's King. I'm a big fan of his but the quality of his varies.... wildly.

it sure does lately, yes

I'm guessing that one page is from Heroes in Crisis?

One thing I think that is different in some of these modern comics is that editorial kind of plans the general plot on some of those big crossover stories. And I think to try to make the plot fit, there ends up being some wacky stretches to tie the story together. This scene looks pretty much par for the course in stuff like JLA: Cry for Justice or that wacky Meltzer mini-series where the Atom's wife is a murderer.

The other type of big mini-series is where you take a story that might work as your usual series arc and then try to force it into some big crossover mini-series. I'd say the old DC Genesis series is like that one and that Daredevil Shadowland crossover was a couple of those type of series.

Heroes in Crisis actually is pretty bad on its own merits, but to be fair it didn't have a huge impact on the DCU and you didn't need to read the spinoffs to get it

By contrast, even though I'm reading Event Leviathan and Batman I'm totally confused about how this whole Year of the Villain thing shakes out (not even considering Doomsday Clock is finally about to end)

Every event is just ridiculous now. I mean the number of books Marvel put out for both War of the Realms and Absolute Carnage is insanely offputting, even for someone like me who alread buys 20-30 floppies a month

Just read the crossover miniseries, if there is one, and the main title it spun out of. Despite it not being the explain everything every issue era, they tend to summarize or duplicate the key points

It’s more irritating when a title gets diverted from a main plot via editorial mandate and you can’t be sure whether the regular story is just going to touch on the crossover junk or it’s a throwaway issue.

DC crossovers are maybe worse than the Marvel ones in that they feel the need to jack with every character’s status quo

in my experience, the dead giveaway is when the issue that’s part of the crossover has a different writing/art team and the regulars are back the next issue post-crossover. just leave it on the shelf!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z32rTai1w3s

i believe ty templeton ghosted the newhart comic art
marc silvestri is like twice jim lee's height

I watched that whole thing looking for some art that might be by Ty, you owe me ten minutes back

afaipk Ty had nothing to do with the TV show, and iirc most or all of the ghosted Newhart art was by Paul Power (although Ty was acting in Canadian sitcoms around this time?)*, who also appeared in the "bullpen" doing the same role on-camera


Ty wrote and cartooned and lettered one side of the tie-in flip-book comic series, a faux-1960s replica of the original Mad Dog comic Bob had done in the series. This is great, a cross between Mad parodies and the Batman TV show.

Evan Dorkin wrote, and various other people pencilled and inked and lettered, the other side, which was the faux-Image reboot of the comic that was being made in the present day of the TV series. Dorkin did not know that Ty was doing the other side, or that he was allowed to make it a parody, or be funny at all, so it is played straight and sucks total dog dick unless you have watched the TV show and understand why it is bad. (In the latter case, it only sucks 98.5% dog dick.)



* I caught him playing a priest in one episode of something, by chance, but no idea what. I rewound his scene on a VHS rental of Sea Of Love several times when my dad got it out, but was never convinced I was seeing him. Bob, though, I was regularly setting the VCR to record at 4am and then stopping it when I got up at 6. Absolutely not worth it, and until that youtube my recollection was that Kirby and Aragones appeared visiting the studio, with Evanier and others in tow.

(Evanier for sure wrote an episode about Fredric Wertham turning up to apologise for thinking comics were bad and having hauled Bob in front of the Kefauver hearings, though.)

sic, are you the Uatu of the comics industry or what

sic you crazy bastard, i said nothing about ty being in that video; i said i believe he ghosted the comic art. likely at the credits; never heard of Paul Power. I have the same issues of Mad Dog you do apparently and yes they are great.

looking for some art that might be by Ty

can’t believe this disrespect to the author of The Rock Warrior in Skateman #1 who also storyboarded the reshoots of the last half hour of Predator

looking for some art that might be by Ty

i like the phrase "Storyboarding Some Movie Called Predator," might delete later idk

turn in your I Like Ty The Guy fan club membership card imo

when I was a #teen in the ‘90s I thought Continuity colouring was lurid and weird and ugly. now, instead that panel makes me sigh for how the entire American assembly-line comics industry apparently took every wrong lesson from Adams that they could

I Like Ty the Guy! On Instagram even!

Those reading who are less familiar with Templeton's work should check out his excellent (and not updated since harlan ellison died) comic journal blog:
https://tytempletonart.wordpress.com/

I had to Google 'Uatu' , handing in my M.M.M.S. membership card :-(

"I can't believe you're in a position where you can't name a Watcher!"
"Well, Uatu."
"No, I can name several!"

https://thenib.com/lighten-up-4f7f96ca8a7e

has anyone in the ol’ USA ever done a 2000ad/megazine paper subscription? cycled off of some other magazine subs and I am tempted to opt in for a year. how’s the shipping delay, condition of the comics when they arrive, etc?

I've been following a cartoonist named Jordan Jeffries who does one-panel movie scenes on Instagram. He's pretty good. I think this gave me the inspiration to read Julia Wertz's memoir Drinking at the Movies, which was... sigh.

As a human being, I have some respect for anyone who does a memoir and exposes their warts to the world, and there are several funny jokes in this, but Christ, the quality of artwork is just so bad. If I were a more positive person, I would use this book as an example to young students to scream "YOU SEE? Anyone can be a professional cartoonist. Absolutely anyone, if this is possible." Instead of being astounded that someone can accomplish this when I see hundreds more talented individuals desperately selling their wares at NY ComicCon every year for crumbs. Or hell, even at the indie festivals.

Julia Wertz is great!

Tbf she’s gotten much better w the art

yeah, wertz developed her art really really well and some of her earlier work does not reflect where she landed.

Got some cool back issues at the small local con we had here that my local shop hosted. Getting close on completing a couple of runs of stuff I have been working on for a few years. Got a good stack of various old Savage Sword of Conans for a buck or two each. Got a couple of old 70s Marvel monster reprints for a buck each too. First con I had been to for a few years. It was a pretty fun haul.

Wertz has always (Fart Party started fifteen years ago!) been a great writer-in-pictures, pacing her gags and effectively communicating her characters through very basic conventions. She also would have probably been both better and more successful if she had more range and depth to her drawing.

She obviously doesn't think so, though: even after getting into the New Yorker and then a big hardcover book deal based on her detailed, representational drawings of buildings, she's now doing her gag cartoons for TNY as straight-up stick figures drawn with a pen.

picardfacepalm.gif

I’ve been reading some of the current Sonic the Hedgehog IDW series with my son... it’s surprisingly dark for a kids’ book. The plot beats will be very familiar to anyone over the age of six (a ragtag band of heroes tries to save a populace from a spreading zombie infection; as the heroes themselves succumb and are transformed, one by one...) — but it’s done well, with solid dialogue and brisk plotting. The art is strong, too. There’s something compelling about these cute mutant-animal characters being placed in a straightforward action narrative, without irony or condescension. I guess there are whole genres like that, but I don’t usually encounter them.

I'd say that's most Sonic games since Adventure; I hate what they did with those but ymmv.

https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/russo-brothers-marvel-vs-dc-docuseries-quibi-1203402642/

RIP, Tom Spurgeon.

:-(

RIP

A great writer, a long-time force for good in comics, and a lovely person.

^^^

btw Jon I read your ^^^ last night, then went to bed and you turned up as a "character" in the comic I read

https://www.instagram.com/p/B40uSVDFAFO/

Spurgeon was a nice refreshing voice amid the rest.

Xpost sic was this a comic you read while dreaming or are you referring to the issue of Fatale where Tom H and I get iced?

gonna need an issue number here

was this a comic you read while dreaming or are you referring to the issue of Fatale where Tom H and I get iced?

neither! Rookie Moves by N0vember G4rcia


Spurgeon was a nice refreshing voice amid the rest.

gonna disagree with the implication I'm reading here: a major project of Tom's in his life and his work was to highlight and enhance the wide variety of interested, caring, and worthwhile voices that are talking about comics everywhere, all the time.

Perhaps I'm just remembering a specific time when I was mostly around Comics Journal associated circles but I got the impression that he was a lot mellower and less deep into feuds than everyone else. Not to say there weren't a lot of good people, because there was and that community was important to me but that's just how I remember his place in it.

Top of the head, if I try and think of writers that Tom brought into the Journal, it's mild-mannered Chris Mautner, Bart Beaty writing about untranslated European albums, Ray Mescallado getting a monthly superhero column, gentleman Gil Roth... (while the feud-free Spurge himself was adding a Melody-Maker-style two-page spread of opening snark to every issue, and writing things like Shit List! and The Butt-Eye Address by "David Peters")

Agree that he didn't hold or build personal feuds in public, but this was more a function of him seeing disagreement and argument as valuable in discussion of art and labour.

this gave me the inspiration to read Julia Wertz's memoir Drinking at the Movies, which was... sigh.

[...] there are several funny jokes in this, but Christ, the quality of artwork is just so bad.

I’ve never looked at old artwork and been like, this is fine. But luckily I’m also aware that it doesn’t actually matter at all. pic.twitter.com/TEQQTPuRsg

— Julia Wertz (@Julia_Wertz) November 15, 2019

that... is... some regression

You’re gonna plotz if you ever find out about James Thurber

TCJ's Spurgeon obit is up

how mad Dean must have been to work in the same office as a fat person 20 years ago

Borrowed/read the three deluxe Wayward collections. As they advertise, mix of Buffy & Scooby gang with Japanese (and later Irish) mythology / monsters. Took some angles I wasn't expecting, which was cool. Liked the artwork a lot.

Don't know if I'll listen to these episodes but I love this podcast
http://www.scottedelman.com/2019/07/19/mark-evanier/

http://www.scottedelman.com/2019/11/15/paul-kirchner/
http://www.scottedelman.com/2019/11/29/larry-lieber/

Had no idea Lieber was still around.

http://www.scottedelman.com/2019/07/05/lunch-in-l-a-with-comics-legend-gerry-conway-on-episode-99-of-eating-the-fantastic/
Forgotten this one.

I never really got grip on the X-Men so I found this article fun, surprised how many of the basic concepts were unfamiliar to me despite knowing who all the characters are.

https://www.tor.com/2019/12/11/the-future-of-days-past-10-things-disney-could-learn-from-claremonts-run-on-x-men/

I appreciate that she noted the importance of the colours. In my continual assessment of why the characters/worlds appealed, I now think that the colour combinations were often stronger than the other design elements of the costumes.

Still would like to see more discerning reinventions of the stories. Couldn't Claremont do his own X-Men retelling from the beginning?

From hearing some talk up supposedly great unofficial fanfiction, do any of you know of particularly good DC and Marvel stuff online?

twenty minutes about dazzler. i never knew JR JR was such a jersey guy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvzCbPmj1AY

Video not available in UK? Sometimes it seems like there's no rhyme or reason to these youtube restrictions.

suprisingly deep coverage, good video!

i got a copy of Eleanor Davis' The Hard Tomorrow for the holidaze from my mom; it's breathtaking. What a talent.

SyFyWire have published a list of "the best indie comics of the decade" that consists of nine Image comics, one tumblr, one iOS app, and a DC book.

Finishing the last LOEG volume- the points being made are very much not new to those who follow Moore's work, but its stylistic playfulness still is enough to keep me gripped. That bing said, really can' be bothered with those 3D glasses for more than a couple of pages.

I loved the earlier volumes of LOEG but haven't yet got to this one. Partly because I don't give much of a shit about the comic characters he's making use of in the same way I do C19th literary characters. Is it still doing the "lots of unpleasant sex is really hilarious" thing?

It's still horny, yeah. All the other valid criticisms of the series also still apply (fucking Gollywog STILL IN IT ffs, I know Moore means well but god does he refuse to read a room). Did you read The Black Dossier? That's still my favourite, and probably the best summation of the serie's thematic concerns. This one has a lot of super hero stuff but also a lot of characters from spy stuff and weird animal characters that don't come from comics.

I think this is the only volume I haven't read. Black Dossier is great--my one claim to fame is getting a credit for explaining references in Jess Nevins's book of annotations.

controversial opinion: Moore does backmatter/prose breaks better than others and may be the best at it, but I keep getting more bored by these conceptual bits where he bounces between media and just wish he’d write a comic book

Just read the Fantagraphics-published BEST OF WITZEND, which collects some of the worst-written comics I've ever had the bad luck to come across. Luckily it was from the library.

Yeah, that was very much a regretful purchase.

Great art tho!

Oh aye, lovely to look at but it's a big bit of shelf (and cost) that could otherwise have been filled.

I mean, this splash page alone is worth 80 quid of anyone's money:

https://schulzlibrary.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/witzendmra.jpg?w=584

Also think it's interesting that Ditko was heavily involved with the editorial side on the early issues of WITZEND - he was obviously v sympathetic to Wood's desire to retain copyright/editorial independence, as well as being an admirer of Wood's incredible drawing skills.

It's not always about the writing.

I don't think a splash page with two ridiculously long speech bubbles is worth 80 quids, even if the layout is otherwise fine.

he really went full Ditko, there

that splash is amazing - is it all Ditko?

Yep - he had a real golden period after he was newly liberated from Marvel - see also those amazing black and white strips for Warren he was doing at about the same time

Man. Wonder if he'd kept up a style like that through the '80s, his overtly ideological work might have caught on better under direct market distribution?

(I love the fact that his drawing and techniques changed so often, and that switching to doing his own lettering eventually let him integrate it so much better in the polemic work - Tuomas is right that even on paper those rant-balloons would be foreboding - but the inking and especially shading there show how drastically undermined as an artist he was at Marvel.)

Right at the end of the 60s Ditko got very ill and he when he came back - mainly at Charlton - his style had notably deteriorated, even on the creator-owned material, sadly.

This site has 'Collector's Edition', his best-known strip for Warren - again decent page rates, and the opportunity to stick it to Stan Lee, brought out the best in him

http://steveditkostuff.blogspot.com/2019/02/collector-edition-creepy-presents-steve.html

very good!

The Mr A stuff is terrible. Huge slabs of libertarian bullshit text taking up half the page.

Right at the end of the 60s Ditko got very ill and he when he came back - mainly at Charlton - his style had notably deteriorated, even on the creator-owned material, sadly.

Ah / aw. if I'd ever read that I'd forgotten it, but certainly tracks with what I've seen of his '70s and '80s WFH (though I think Shade was good? I bought the first few back when the Milligan series started. Notably created and head-written by Ditko, which no doubt makes a difference.).

Thanks for the Collectors Edition link. Goodwin's adherence to both 1970s prolix standards and Feldstein homage shows how well-planned the lettering placement really is on that Mr A splash, by contrast! Do you mean "stick it to Stan Lee" by putting in more careful work for better money, or that Danforth, with his mustache and grasping insensitivity about art, is intended as a Lee dis?

I thought Gray Morrow's Witzend work was pretty good but there wasnt quite enough to be enticed to buy that. Not enough of the artists raised their game that much.

Is Silver Surfer: Black any good?

Huge slabs of libertarian bullshit text taking up half the page.

― Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison), Wednesday, March 18, 2020 12:36 AM

My comic collection: 98% good art with 90% slabs of bullshit text.

i like that we're so desperate to pretend we're not in the moment that we've gone back in time for this thread

but yes, Surfer: Black is excellent. You're right to make the Ditko connection with Moore.

but yes, Surfer: Black is excellent. You're right to make the Ditko connection with Moore.

(though I think Shade was good? I bought the first few back when the Milligan series started. Notably created and head-written by Ditko, which no doubt makes a difference.)

Oh yes, there are still plenty of highlights post-sixties - Avenging World (his densest, most intense tract where the word/text balloons REALLY go wild), the 'Killjoy' back-up strips in Charlton's E-Man, Stalker (a nice four-issue fantasy series inked by Wally Wood et al), Shade for certain, lots of things. But always the drawing is looser, cruder, than before, the panels larger and less detailed. I almost hate to invoke the phrase 'folk art' but there is a kind of individualistic intensity to Ditko's most engaged work that to seems to me beyond good and evil, left and right, just a unique personal iconography and mode of expression.

Do you mean "stick it to Stan Lee" by putting in more careful work for better money, or that Danforth, with his mustache and grasping insensitivity about art, is intended as a Lee dis?

Mostly the former, although Archie Goodwin wrote a number of variations on the grasping insensitive-exploited artist theme for Warren, and yes, the model is definitely EC. Goodwin and Warren used EC artists on Creepy and Eerie whenever the could, plus Ditko, Colan, Adams etc from the post-EC generation.

I think he was still doing some of his best work for Charlton in the early 70s.

Of his later creator owned stuff I prefer the loopiest things like Crackling Blazer, Missing Man and Mr Quiver. The drawing was a bit more oomph when he did humor. Then there was that ink wash thing he did for Strange Avenging Tales.