Rolling 2015 Reading Funnybooks Thread

xp i won't argue the latter point at all but the former i think is more malleable. people can quietly toil and produce work of quality, just not at the speed of creation that is the current webcomic standard.

It's impossible to do that now, because while there have always been countless talented people working in obscurity, the internet allows/requires them to (*sigh*) brand themselves, advertise, platform. So if you're NOT doing that you're already putting yourself a rung down from thousands of others out there across the planet gunning for the same spots. I suppose that's how capitalism is supposed to function - rewarding the hustle over all else...

my wife went all-in on graphic novels for my birthday, I have quite a lot of reading ahead of me, lots of really cool looking stuff:

Sex Criminals vol. 1
The Technopriests
Megalex
Final Incal
Julio's Day
Love and Rockets #7

Just finishing Megalex, it was pretty batshit insane. Will probably tackle Technopriests next.

that, or be a second tier supermarket novelist or third-fourth tier TV guy

sick, truthful burn

I got the shipping notification that the newest collections of Prophet and Lazarus are heading my way :D

are there any writers/artists with no web presence who also don't do conventions?

Alan Moore?

Carmine Infantino?

I think Moore's Facebook page is managed by his daughter Leah, and he's not particularly active in supplying content for it, but it's an official web presence. And his zine Dodgem Logic had a website when it was a going thing.

The best answer I can come up with is Ditko.

haha yes of course

Obviously it's different for people who were big before the internet was. I don't think a big internet presence is that essential to success but I think it really depends on the sort of audience who's going to like them.
But I think it's different for writers and artists. Writers probably have to work harder at the social media aspect.

Ditko does have a blogging fan that does Kickstarters for him and Robin Snyder.

lol yeah I don't think the most established/known writers/artists of the last few decades necessarily need much press at this point

so do you mean to say that all the major artists/writers for DC have twitter/blog/facebook engagement explicitly about their work? I avoid that shit like plague so i dunno but i would think they would all be under non-disclosure clauses with contract labor or am i being naive?

It is good that people are challenging racist and sexist aspects of comics but even after that most of it's going to be more or less the same junk.
I'm doubtful yet still hopeful that people are going to challenge the way the industry functions and highlight the poison of franchise obsession/loyalty, crass consumerism and collector mania.

What I wrote on a geek thread recently..

There's two new-ish shops in Glasgow with "Geek" in their names. I never went into either but I looked into the window of one of them today and it seemed to be mostly expensive collectable junk. I'm a bit worried but I don't know if this poses much of a new threat to anything that is good but it's not nice seeing more people buying into all the worst aspects of this culture.
People often say that this side of comics fandom is dying out and is being replaced by something more positive but I'm not so sure. The bad side seems to be going more mainstream.

Re: comics pros blogging. I think it's part of the progress now. As well as authors talking about being harassed, Jerry Ordway blogged about suddenly being too old fashioned to get steady work and Jason Pearson talked about an editor treating him badly. This used to be exclusive to places like Comics Journal or talked about in pro-zines decades after it happened but now the dirt can come out immediately.

$500 Martian Manhunter statuettes subsidize a shop's ability (their willingness being another thing altogether) to also order $50 coffee table art books that will be of interest to three customers.

xxp No, I am saying that if you are not an established writer/artist right now, you are not going to break into the industry (or really further your position in it) unless you interact with your fanbase online.

If you're self-publishing, I can't imagine not having some sort of presence to sell your wares. If you are an established indie, you would need to make sure you have publicity for projects and have to DIY since you don't have the marketing budget of Marvel/DC, and if you're writing/drawing for one of the larger concerns, you might be able to get away with doing your work and keeping your head down, but you're going to be completely in the dark about some of the "industry" stuff.

But yes, a cursory search indicates that yes, most of these people do have social media accounts.

Looking at comixology's top sellers, pulling out writers/artists:
Jason Aaron (Thor) https://twitter.com/jasonaaron
John Cassaday (new Star Wars) https://twitter.com/johncassaday
G. Willow Wilson (Ms. Marvel) https://twitter.com/gwillowwilson
Robert Kirkman (The Walking Dead) https://twitter.com/robertkirkman

That's literally just from the first four books on the page

i guess i'm not just saying that they have a social media presence... _I_ have a social media presence
but that they are actively engaging with fans, trolls and pros on a daily basis in, well, i guess the way we do with ILX?

in an open forum i mean.

Old Lunch- Even if that's true, it isn't a situation we should be resigned to. Those art books are often overpriced too. I think we're way too accepting of this crap, it just isn't okay. If there was always more focus on content and quality maybe this stuff wouldn't be a debatably necessary evil.

I don't know what you're looking for, forks. All of those people seem to reply to questions, occasionally send an @ message to their peers, and opine as many Twitter users do. I'd say that's public engagement.

Don't worry about it, it's not very important to me to puzzle out. There are more paths than one, obviously.

RAG: not sure what the solution would be, though. Only direct buy books from indie presses? Shunt business to the remaining B&M retailers carrying comics? I always saw the figure collecting as something the very most hardcore fans were into - hence stores full of figurines that never or rarely sell...

I don't expect any clear or easy solutions but I think these things need to be discussed more. It's interesting that the comic stores I know all gave up on videos several years ago. Obviously there are other places to get them but I liked it when there was a wall of animation, horror films, science fiction tv shows and other cult stuff.
I've always wondered how well the prose book section does in Forbidden Planet, and all those Doctor Who audio discs.
When I started going to comic shops in the late 90s, model kits were quite popular, I think in general that stuff was more interesting than the standard statues you get today. I do actually like toys and statues a lot when there is lots of craft and imagination in there, and doesn't look like it was created purely for the sake of more product.

If there was a God of comics he would cry.
http://www.entertainmentearth.com/prodinfo.asp?number=FU3082
http://www.watchmencomicmovie.com/watchmen-kubricks-bearbricks-mez-itz.php
http://www.entertainmentearth.com/prodinfo.asp?number=DC19725#.VQt4c9BFAv4

That Watchmen bear is worth several hundred!

For a good decade I used to buy Previews, but the last eight times I bought it I kept promising myself never to buy it again because it's filled with stuff like that. It made me furious. When I saw that a Star Trek Pizza cutter was a top seller and some perfectly good comics are cancelled due to low orders... there are no words. This is really fucked up. Diamond stopped distributing so many worthy comics in favour of more collectables.

http://images.tcj.com/2015/03/Cartoonist_Threadmill-650x858.jpg
http://www.tcj.com/tcj-roundtable-discussion-applied-cartooning/

The latest issue of Red Hood has a whole new take on sideboob; Koriand'r's sister ACTUALLY HAS A BOOB ON HER SIDE.

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7288/16704813030_3d4e8e7629.jpg

totalrecallthreeboobedhooker.jpg

Still doing that Scribd subscription thing for another month. Browsing their selection is nearly impossible on iPad, but I ended up reading most of the Judge Dredd stuff recently published by IDW. Between that and the recent Valiant catalog, I think it's a reasonable deal.

"Will probably tackle Technopriests next."

I really enjoyed that comic. The artwork is so good through the whole book in both quality and style. It's pretty much a science fiction Dickens novel. Amazing stuff.

ODY-C gives me a headache

really enjoying the twists COWL is taking though

I got Ditko Archives 5 today. It is a bit annoying paying so much for a hardcover of mostly hackwork I've already seen but his inking was still so nice at that time. All his Dr Haunt drawings are great. I hope the next volume has better stuff. I wonder if they're going to bother with the Gorgo and Konga stuff that Yoe already covered, I hope not. The Stanton pages in the introduction help.
Surprised to see Blake Bell giving a big thanks to Jesus Christ above everyone else in the acknowledgments, I don't remember that in any of his other books.
Not a fan of the 3, 4, 5 covers in this series, don't know why some of the alternative publishers love that modern designy crap that shows off the dotty color of old comics. Why do this when you could choose so many well composed images from the contents?

I noticed that the new Jojo book seems to be selling really well. That's nice.

It's on my list for my next splurge. (Ditko Archives, that is.)

well this made my day

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CBHB7PSW8AAylZN.jpg

If they make the sane choice to leave out the Gorgo/Konga stuff from Ditko Archives, then volume 6 should cover 58-62. A bigger period because all the Marvel and Captain Atom stuff isn't an option. It would be awesome if they got to the late 60s Charlton ghost stuff because I've always thought that was some of his best work.

Been flipping through the Newsboy Legion collection. Hard to imagine there's ever been a more working class superhero comic. Quite strange that Joe Simon says in the intro that when he was a kid he thought being a newsboy would be glamorous (apparently lots of kids thought that). I love that one of the characters is called Big Words. Some of the drawings of the kids are so weird. They even throw bricks when they're fighting.
It's not surprising this and Boy Commandos never got a second volume. It must seem incredibly uncool for a lot of DC fans, next to the really cartoony Dick Sprang Batman stuff.

on the artists who look like their own drawings tip: Gil Kane
http://cdn.popcons.com/journals/jatinder_Ghataora/74/UKCAC_GilKane.jpg

That Newsboy Legion sounds right up my alley.

Yeah, I have no idea how much more they had to reprint of that and Boy Commandos. I thought maybe DC would consider the Kirby backlog important enough to reprint regardless of sales. Unlike the other Kirby Omnibus volumes, it looks like they used scans of old comics, perhaps Joe Simon had a say in this, I dunno.
There's a Newsboy Legion story where Scrapper accidentally becomes a popular surrealist artist but art dealing criminals take all the money he makes.

Looking through the Fantagraphics Ingels collection Sucker Bait and I realised they haven't reprinted any covers, I hope that comes later. Don't know if any of the other Fantagraphics EC collections did covers. I read a little about their plans before but there's still a lot I don't know. Does anyone know if they're saving the early and lesser known EC comics for later reprints? Or even Picto-Fiction era stuff? I assume the New Direction era will be a priority for some artists. Will there be a collection for guys who did a lot less like Joe Kubert?

do i have any hope of grasping Multiversity without first getting neck deep in years of DC mythology

no, just buy the Quitely issue if you've read Watchmen a dozen times

Junji Ito's Gyo is coming out in omnibus this week. It was only two volumes but nice to see it out again. Fragments Of Horror shall follow soon. I hope they reissue the Tomie and Museum Of Horror stuff. Praying for more to follow.

If you haven't read Gyo or Uzimaki before, get them now. It's rare for me to be able to say I love comics without any significant reservations but it's true for these cases.

Every issue of Multiversity takes place in a parallel DC universe we haven't seen before. It's occasionally dense (as is Morrison's wont) and you may get more out of it if you have some familiarity with DC mythology but it isn't a prerequisite by any means. I think he's gotten really good at that balancing act of writing mainstream comics that reward old-school fans but can be read by any newcomer who's willing to put in some effort.

Hitler on the toilet, how can you resist

like i picked up Ultra Comics because it said "#1" and "Multiversity" on it thinking "oh here's an on-ramp," not realizing i guess that they're *all* "#1"s? and i ~got~ it but also sensed i was missing most of what made it worthwhile for everyone peeing their pants about it.

each one is kind of a riff on a comic style

I still haven't read Ultra Comics but one of the underlying threads of the preceding (and ostensibly standalone) issues is a haunted comic book called Ultra Comics that keeps turning up and wreaking havoc in all of these disparate alternate universes. So, yeah, the impact is probably diluted somewhat without the build-up. But you unwittingly read a haunted comic book that's probably going to wind up destroying our world as a result of your having read it, so that's something.

one of the underlying threads of the preceding (and ostensibly standalone) issues is a haunted comic book called Ultra Comics that keeps turning up and wreaking havoc in all of these disparate alternate universes

yeah that's definitely a thing that is apparent in ultra comics