Rolling 2015 Reading Funnybooks Thread

heh that may be it!!

lol

matt wagner and kevin matchstick from mage.

http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/scale_small/9/99019/1862439-mage1.jpg
http://www.co2comics.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/booth_2.gif
http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/scale_small/14/148518/3034418-mattwagner.jpg

oh jeez that's more exact than I ever suspected

the drummer from planetary was john cassaday drawing himself:

http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20070311134416/marveldatabase/images/b/be/John_Cassaday_001.jpg
http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/scale_small/3/38919/987024-drummer.jpg

Ha!

drummer + matthew lillard = cassaday imo

You could have a super hero team of comic artists as superheros.

I'm not sure if this is actually ture, but I've heard people say that Terry Long, the former husband of Donna Troy, is supposedly is based on Marv Wofman:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Marv_Wolfman_%281982,_cropped%29.jpg

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9Bv2nyoPDAQ/UKvBJq6QBtI/AAAAAAAAAA8/V86V15dm8Bw/s640/NTT2.jpg

If it is true, then he basically added himself to his comic so he could have sex with Wonder Girl... Lovely.

makes sense!

And Jack Knight of Starman apparently has the same tattoos as his original artist Tony Harris, though I can't find any picture of Harris online that would show them. In his foreword to one of the Starman collections James Robinson even says that the reason Jack got a new clone body during the outer space arc was because Harris had been replaced by Peter Snejbjerg, so he didn't feel like Jack should have Harris's tattoo anymore.

Here's a pic where you can see he has the same dragon and compass tattoos:

https://igcdn-photos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/t51.2885-15/927181_427770554018455_1510507545_n.jpg

this should be a tumblr

Terry Long is a mashup of Wolfman, Perez and Wein.

so i'm reading all of usagi yojimbo now. i read the first 6 books last week and i'm upto gen's story.

usagi is great and highly underrated. Sakai and Aragones are amonst the most prolific and consistently strong cartoonists of their era.

Both completely amazing cartoonists and mostly taken for granted.

http://alanmooreworld.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/dylan-dog-meets-alan-moore.html

hairy-chested love god Neal Adamas and goateed swashbuckler Mike Grell, 1977
https://2warpstoneptune.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/adams-grell-1977.jpg

Just finished Yoshihiro Tatsumi's The Push Man and Other Stories. Picked it up to sort of start delving into his back catalogue, after finishing (and loving) A Drifting Life last month. This one's quite the counterpoint to the (almost) idyllic and hopeful world he creates in that memoir. Its unsettling, stark, dark and often deeply creepy. All of the stories look at down-on-their-luck people (mostly working class men) in 1960s Japan. A lot of them living what you might call dead-end lives, not really going anywhere, keeping to themselves and the small worlds they exist in, in whatever huge japanese metropolis they live.

The tone is realism, but gone a little askew. The last story is about a guy who leaves his girlfriend (who can't get pregnant), for a nasty looking momma rat that he becomes attached to once he realizes its pregnant with like five rat babies. The girlfriend moves out because the rat keeps creeping into the apartment and joining her for her tea ceremony or a shower. But the guy is down with the rat moving in because of some unfulfilled paternal desires. Other subjects include the dating life of a crossdressing (geisha?) dude, a pretty devastating story about sewage workers finding aborted fetuses floating in the currents of garbage and muck of the sewers, impotence induced suicide, murder. And much of it revolving around sexuality and domestic violence; lots of prostitution and abusive relationships between men and women. In the opening story a guy shoves his girlfriends hand into a fish tank full of piranhas, she's been sleeping around and doesn't appreciate that he purposively lost his own arm at his manufacturing job for the insurance payout to help her open a bar. Another guy puts a scorpion in his girl's purse before she sets off for a rendezvous with an older lover. Probably most unsettling was the one about a sperm donor who stalks and then attempts to rape a woman who had been trying (but failing) to become pregnant with his sperm from the sperm clinic.
Apparently Tatsumi would browse police reports for inspiration for the stories, and a lot of them feel uncomfortably authentic. Hopefully he lightens up a bit in the 70s haha, will be picking up one of those next.

that book was my first introduction to Tatsumi, really dug it

http://www.viz.com/search?search=jojo's+bizarre+adventure

I don't know why I'm finding this out so late but the first two parts of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure are getting released in omnibus editions. The whole of part 1 is already out on digital but will be coming out in hardcovers throughout the year.
Part 3 came out years ago in print and is available in digital.

No idea if they're going to re-release the third part in omnibus books or if they are planning to go beyond the third series. I've only read the first 3 parts and I want to get beyond that point.

Digital omnibuses seems ideal for this series because it's so enormous and I have doubts that they'll ever get very far in print. Sad that it taken more anime and videogames to get to this point. Seems that some fans of the franchise aren't interested in the comic, perhaps allergic to good drawings like many manganime fans are.

Amazon is missing volume 2 of part one for kindle. None of part 3 is there either.

it's one of those series that's so enormous it's intimidating to even start (as we talked about with Berzerk also)

perhaps allergic to good drawings like many manganime fans are

reading Shizeru Mizuki's series of Japanese history books 'Showa' and its pretty fantastic. any other recommendations for him?

I don't think it's the queerness of Jojo that puts people off. That stuff is fairly normal in Japanese comics, games and cartoons. I mean Prince, Bowie and Motley Crue are more homoerotic than Jojo, but Jojo is weirder overall.
The old PS1/Dreamcast game is fantastic and hilarious.

Berserk is indeed a commitment (which is a shame because if if was shorter and missing several crucial flaws it would be the best comic I'd ever read) but the different phases of Jojo can be read individually without losing out on too much.

Shigeru Mizuki's Nonnonba is very good.

This user made a good series of video overviews of each part of Jojo.

This one is top 10 strangest stands (stands are supernatural assistants)
https://youtube.com/watch?v=d0uj_mkj6OM

Dig the music references, which often are sadly changed on English translation for copyright reasons.
Names like King Crimson, Tarkus, Purple Haze, Devo, Killer Queen, Sticky Fingers and Vanilla Ice have to get changed but Speedwagon stays I think.

http://jojo.wikia.com/wiki/JoJo_Wiki:Name_Variants

Really sad to miss out on stuff like "White Album Gently Weeps!!!"

Haha, there's even characters called Born This Way and Tubular Bells!

Brremaud and Bertolucci's "Love v. 1: The Tiger" is GORGEOUS and worth a look

Does Dark Horse have some digital sale going on in conjunction with Amazon? It looks like pretty much all of their Kindle editions are $3/each right now, even the lengthy ones. If nothing's been announced, I am thinking there was a serious fuckup.

Ah, it looks like maybe it is just the first volume of different series

Yeah, I saw that Love: The Tiger book today, I was impressed.

Two comics I didn't get because I didn't have enough money and I bought pricey ukiyo-e books instead:

A quite big impressive looking complete edition of Celestial Bibendum by Nicolas De Crecy. There's a bigger Humanoids edition of it that is way more expensive. Dunno if they'll do a smaller for poor people. Maybe they don't do it when a British publisher does the smaller version? I don't like that Humanoids caters to collectors so much, are they trying to keep this stuff obscure?

Part of the reason I didn't buy the Jojo hardcover is that it's less than half the page count I had seen listed. I was worried they were going to string the thing out in more volumes in some crazy last minute change but for some reason it's just much shorter than the forthcoming volumes. Seems that the second series will be in 5 volumes.
I was thinking I couldn't be arsed getting this because I'm not going to reread it but I'd feel guilty for reading and enjoying it many years ago online but not paying for it. It's nice to see the color reproduced.

Think I'll get both these in two weeks.

I asked about Dungeon and the guys said they'd never heard of it. I was quite surprised because they tend to know what's what. I swear I don't think I've ever seen them in physical shops.

heard good things about the recent IDW dungeons & dragons series and apparently comixology is selling them all really cheap now

Gosh has some Dungeons, but Amazon is the best option, unfortunately.

Opinions on Lone Wolf & Cub? I was looking at some today and it has a nice earthy look about it.

LW&C is great. it drags a bit in the middle, imo (the poisoner). but the middle is 4000 pages away...

i keep meaning to pick up one of the newer edition to see how it compares (i have the 28 dark horse volumes which were reversed. new one is apparently larger and japanese style).

or do you mean the NEW ones? (which i didn't know existed until just then)

http://www.darkhorse.com/Books/Previews/25-153?page=0

the newer dark horse omnibus editions retain the reversed pages.

I was looking at the old and new stuff and it all looks nice. The new artist Hideki Mori is very talented.

I think it remains flipped because the demographic isn't overwhelmingly a manga fan one. A shame because I tend to refuse to read flipped art.

i guess they didn't want to have to reletter 8000 pages.

lol

weak! ah well, i got about 11 volumes (the small DH books from 15 years ago mentioned) before I forgot to keep up. maybe when it's all done this time around I'll purchase them all in a manic binge

I don't know if Lone Wolf & Cub is included but some of the older DH manga wasn't mirror flipped but instead rearranged all the panels instead. I think this was partly because the Japanese considered which hand the sword was held in too important to be mirror flipped.

I've just checked and the 28 volume version is flipped

Cover of #28 is also a massive spoiler

http://www.darkhorse.com/Search/Browse/%22Kazuo+Koike%22/PpwNwkt8
That's a lot of Koike.

Just a few volumes until the Lone Wolf & Cub omnibus series is finished (12 books should do it), currently at omnibus 7 with the next two following soon.

Samurai Executioner has been completed in 4 omnibus volumes.

I read first two newer print Lone Wolf & Cub omnibuses and read quite a few of the First comics printings back in the 80s. It is a pretty amazing comic and has some beautiful nature artwork throughout the bloody series. I'm hooked and will eventually read the whole thing.

I'm reading Onslaught for the first time and I remember why I skipped the 90s. Story is a mess, and the Joe Mad art is horrifying (why did/do people like him? He sucks so bad). However, I missed the era of Wolverine with a do-rag mask and bike gloves and being drawn like a poor man's MAXX in full faux-Sam Kieth style. I hope he comes back after whatever the super-sized secret wars thing ends up being.

POWERS this month had another Bendis crack in a police station scene, rando shouting at cops

"how can a war be SECRET if EVERYONE KNOWS about it??"

I missed the era of Wolverine with a do-rag mask and bike gloves and being drawn like a poor man's MAXX in full faux-Sam Kieth style.

I only found about Wolverine's "caveman era" when Comics Should Be Good wrote about it last year, and I was like, wtf, could the 90s have been any more 90s?! Seriously, look at this shit!

http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/11111/111111327/3025438-110-1997-bennett-feral+001.jpg

And apparently Wolverine going feral means he will also lose his nose, because why not?

http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/wolverineferaldisplay.jpg

'take a ride on the meat wagon' is such a baller pick-up line, good job wolvie