Rolling SERIOUS GRAPHIC LITERATURE Thread for Comics in 2016

Would almost rather have a DC archive collection of Plop, complete with the Aragones/Skeates strip that gave the comic its name.

Groo was my favorite thing in the universe when I was in junior high and those PC issues started coming out. Will gladly read any issue from any era. Aragones is a public utility.

Anyone read Nijigahara Holograph? Very intriguing horror.

Carlos Nine died recently. Can't find any proper obituaries for him, which is a shame because he had some of the most incredible drawing ability of artists from recent comics past. Dungeon was possibly the only English translation of his work.

Well here's one from good old Paul Gravett
https://m.facebook.com/paulgravett/posts/10153604904586176

Reading Rosalie Lightning right now, so devastating
Ilxor aero blurb on the cover

It is :(

http://www.tcj.com/comics-criticism-seven-hot-takes-for-summer-2016/
Found some of this funny. I definitely hate relevancy critics.

This man needs an editor

Art Of Ploog book finally became available on amazon. I might regret it because it was £40 and probably too much text (as much as I love them, I don't think most of these type of comic artists are interesting to read about and they rarely open up much in interviews). But I find Ploog's art kind of refreshing and nice.
Also bought Crumb's Art And Beauty box on amazon.

This week at the book shop I got Alexis Deacon's Geis. I didn't realise it's the first in a trilogy.

Ploog sequence from Heavy Metal is pretty much all you need to see from that movie.

Also, Ploog is one of those guys who is waaaay better than he was when he was better known. If only Shrek looked as good as his concept art.

Guys, that Trondheim Mickey Mouse book was apparently just the first in a series of Eurocartoonist Disney books IDW is putting out. Just saw this one by Bernard Cosey in this month's solicitations.

Recently read Carol Tyler's Late Bloomer (I couldn't find Soldier's Heart), which was so razor-sharp about everything and generally completely amazing, Rachael Ball's The Inflatable Woman (stunning and dissociative madness), and all of Ariel Schrag's High School Chronicles (just about the most enjoyable thing I've ever read, all the more impressive for having been completed by the age of 19).

In the process of starting a webcomic, but I have zero experience and really, artistic aptitude. I'm hoping it's something that just gathers speed the more you work at it... Are there any ILXors with comics or graphic novels in evidence? I'm sure there must be, but wouldn't know where to look.

Mike Ploog's art book has far too much of his 70s Marvel art* and not enough of his fantasy card art. Lots of film concept art and storyboards, it's always surprised me the films he's worked on, it even has storyboards for Polanski's aborted Master And The Margarita. The cover recreations are kind of nice sometimes but again, it didnt deserve that amount of space.
The people who made this clearly love Ploog's work but it seems like they're favouring big franchises over what is actually his better work.

* I don't get this fashion for huge books reproducing original comic art that doesn't really benefit from that format. The original pages for Stardust Kid were far more beautiful and there's some good ones that should have been in there.

Crumb's Art And Beauty book is very nice but the commentary and the fact that a lot of these drawings are from candid photographs makes it creepy at times. Like his claim that the Apache dance reaffirms that it doesn't pay for men to be too nice because women like dangerous men.

The Swords of Glass collection by Corgiat & Zuccheri - beautiful looking Euro fantasy

I gave a try to some of the DC rebirth comics but they even seem so much more sad when I compare it to some of the Image books I'm reading in trade and issues.

Black Monday Murders was a good and dense comic read. Hickman needs to pocket that Marvel money and get down to real business as this and East of West is better than any of his super hero stuff. East of West is starting to turn the corner into the last half of the story and all the world building over a couple years is starting to pay off.

I've got just the last issue in Prophet Vol. 4 left to read. That is some totally madcap science fiction comic fare. It definitely shows it's influences, but at the end of the fourth trade all the threads are really coming together and I am really curious to see how it's all going to end in Vol. 5. This series is probably going to get a complete re-read after I finish Vol. 5 which comes out in a few weeks.

Southern Bastards Vol. 3 seems to be introducing the rest of the cast for the series after the events of the first two. Jason Latour seems to be starting to stretch as an artist and push what he can do. I almost pickup a bit of Jack Davis and Eric Powell creeping into the artwork and it works with the over the top southern gothic plots that Aaron has going on.

Make sure to read the Prophet Strikefiles, too. They do a good job of fleshing out the grander universe, and make explicit some of the stuff that was just hinted at or left for the reader to infer from the main narrative.

Recently tried reading Moore's Courtyard/Neonomicon/Providence after seeing people discuss it somewhere on ILX (thought it was this thread?), but it's so fucking boring and stupid and awful I can't stand it! I'm done with Alan Moore--why does he even bother to write comics when he would obviously rather just provide an annotated bibliography of the books he's been reading recently? I can't imagine his recent stuff provoking any reaction other than http://i.imgur.com/XS5LK.gif

That came off as more impassioned than intended.

London people, this is happening at the Barbican in November. Sounds... interesting?

"In his Pulitzer prize-winning masterpiece Maus ... Art Spiegelman changed the definition of comics. Here he collaborates with Jazz composer Phillip Johnston on a show that expands the possibilities of the medium. Wordless! transforms the intimate act of reading comics into a group experience. Spiegelman leads you on a tour of the first graphic novels - silent picture stories made by early 20th-century masters like Frans Masereel, Lynd Ward, and Milt Gross - alongside a new work of his own drawn specifically for this show, Shaping Thought. Both the images on screen, and Spiegelman’s own infectious enthusiasm for the graphic novel are enhanced by Johnston’s swinging score, performed by his Jazz sextet The Silent Six."

https://www.barbican.org.uk/music/event-detail.asp?ID=19901

BTW, going to this tomorrow if anyone else is into it.
https://nycomicssymposium.wordpress.com/2016/08/31/cj-suzuki-sept-6-2016-at-7pm/

CJ Suzuki on Pushing the Boundary of Manga: Gekiga and Japanese Counterculture
In present Japan, gekiga loosely refers to a body of Japanese comics (manga) with a long narrative (story manga) that is oriented toward teen and older male readers, typically with little or no humor. In manga criticism, gekigahas been defined in contrast to mainstream manga in terms of visual style and content. Whereas postwar mainstream manga was formed around Osamu Tezuka’s (quasi-Disneyesque) cartoony style, gekigais frequently associated with more “realistic” drawing style with serious or darker themes. Though fully integrated into present Japanese manga culture, gekiga, from its nascent state, assumed a distinct characteristic of being (arguably) alternative to the mainstream manga.
This talk explores the socio-historical and cultural context of the development of gekiga by examining the shifting media ecology of Japanese comics industry, important comics artists and their works, and the impact of gekiga on other artistic and cultural practices. The focus will be on two major “alternative” magazines: Garo (1964 – 2002) and COM (1967-1972), both of which offered an outlet for innovative, unorthodox, and transgressive artists. Both comics magazines not only expanded comics expressions but also pushed the conceptual horizon of manga, attempting to legitimize the artistic value of comics while maintaining a sense of unruly proclivity by being “alternative.” Gekiga rose in tandem with the counterculture of Japan in the 1960s when Japan witnessed the rise of student revolt, civic and intellectual participation in politics, and artistic experimentalism–all of which synchronically shared the global cultural and political climate of the time. This talk traces the emergence and development of gekiga in the context of postwar Japanese visual culture, mainly from mid-1950s to early 1970s, illustrating how both these comics magazines played a role in shaping the visual culture of Japanese counterculture.

Sounds good. I don't look at as much comics coverage these days but seems like people have stopped talking about that stuff and weird manga in general. There used to be a few blogs.

Leiji Matsumoto has some English books coming out now but I haven't seen many surprise translations of classics recently.

xxp That sounds mad! And, I hope, good. Will definitely go to it, thank you.

Currently reading Allie Brosh's Hyperbole and a Half, which needs to be read sparingly in public through its ability to produce tears of laughter. It's a collection of work from http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.co.uk/ plus some new stuff. I think she's working on a second book, but has suffered a number of setbacks in the interim.

After some looking around, the guy(s?) who did the Tokyo Scum Brigade blog are doing a tumblr and a new blog

http://tokyoscum.tumblr.com/archive
http://www.ceiling-gallery.com/

Lots of oddities. Never understood why there isn't way more English speaking bloggers in foreign countries showing you stuff you'd probably never see otherwise.

xp Aw, I'm sorry to hear that - I am sure she is sick of people describing it as "the best description of depression I've ever read", but it is that, as well as incredibly funny.

My gf (only a very casual reader of comics) loves that book so much and has given it as a gift to a number of people who also love it very much. It's good.

I've only read that famous one that every one shared from a while back, but I'll dig deeper. Her MS Paint skills have gotten a lot more expressive, it looks like!

Dover have reissued my friend's incredible, meticulous Worry Doll.
http://store.doverpublications.com/0486806162.html
A few small panels are on his site here:
http://www.mattcoyle.net/worrydoll/
It's pretty amazing, but I am biased.

I got it in 2007, I liked it.

xp on tokyo scum: i was a big fan of SAME HAT!, shame they've gone fallow.

I don't know what he's doing now, I assumed he was moving into more publishing. Blog Of The Northstar was good too but that stopped too. I think some of those folks are still on Twitter but it's a shitty platform for such things.

hyperbole and a half was great, a rare standout from the web's flood of glurge and unfunny MS Paint webcomix.
sorry to see her followup is now scheduled for 2030
https://www.amazon.com/Solutions-Other-Problems-Allie-Brosh-ebook/dp/B00VNXKF3U
hope she's in the right direction

lol I would imagine 2030 is a publisher's way of assigning an arbitary far-off future date to indicate it's expected but to not expect it at a particular time

I prefer that approach to the ones that have a date set eighteen months out that keeps getting pushed back every two months. So frustrating to get "the new date is... even further out!" email messages from amazon.

oh sure! but i think the follow up was prior scheduled for 2017 so that's a not-so-good sign.

I'm totally projecting here, but I can imagine that the surprise popularity of a work that vulnerable might hobble an author's ability to follow it up.

there's lots of online speculation about her depression impacting her work but it's been mostly radio silence from her for the past few years best as i can see. Anything's possible i suppose... Achewood came back!

she's no longer depressed after making major bank on that first book and can't come up with new material about depression

(hah, I wish)

I believe her follow-up is entitled More Humble Than You Would Understand.

Er, the dates on that page say 2017.

No, wait - Amazon is being 'smart' and redirecting me to amazon.co.uk

Anybody been reading Mizuki's Kitaro stuff? Is it worth it?

From An interview with Kentaro Miura. He's talking about being inspired by his gang of friends and putting aspects of them into Berserk.

Miura: The yellow ranger, basically. I’m pretty sure that was the role I played. On the inside, though — and maybe manga artists tend to idealize themselves, but — I would have Guts-like thoughts, or Griffith-like thoughts. Manga is a funny thing: rather than taking base models and inserting them into your manga unchanged, you can do things like break the models up and rearrange their different parts into all sorts of strange things.

–What exactly do you mean when you say you thought like Guts or Griffith?

Miura: So, for example, in terms of manga, I was head and shoulders above everyone in terms of drawing, but at the same time, I looked up to the guy who used to act as the leader. He was very much like Griffith in terms of ability: he was the type who put his money where his mouth was, and he even had a bit of that touch-of-the-divine feel to him. In terms of violence, though, I’d say he was very much like Guts.

He would go out and get into fights every day and then come to my house afterwards and say, “Alright, let’s draw some manga,” and then he’d go to his part-time job the next day, sleep deprived. He was a wonder. So in order to keep up with him I felt like I needed some sort of trick of my own, and I decided to work hard on drawing manga. Later on, though, I would find out that he apparently used to act violently the way he did because he was amazed by my ability at manga.

So then in university he gave up becoming a manga artist, and he decides he’ll do things that the rest of us will be jealous of — sleep with a hundred girls, get hired into a first-rate company, that sort of thing. And he manages to pull it off. Then he becomes an illustrator, and starts pulling in tens of millions of yen a year while he’s still in his twenties. But it’s still manga that he wants to do, so in the end he throws it all away and starts from square one in the manga industry.

–Wow, that’s an amazing story.

Miura: See, so up until that point, he’s Griffith. But then from there he falls and re-examines what it is he really wants to do, and so in that sense, that makes him Guts, right? Maybe Griffith and Guts are symptoms that affect boys. When a boy seriously tries to do something, he could become either one.

https://mangabrog.wordpress.com/

This blog is full of good translated interviews. I think mainstream Japanese comic artists and games developers generally come across as far more philosophical than their American counterparts. Even for the crassly commercial manga there's sometimes interesting thought behind it. Which makes it all the more sad that there's so much pandering and strict formula in mainstream manga. Which are problems in Berserk but it amazes me how much he improvised the plot because you wouldn't know it and it's really brilliantly done.

There's an interview mostly concerning Otomo and different eras of manga, and there's funny talk of how jealous Tezuka was of Otomo and how being a manga powerhouse can shorten your life. Shigeru Mizuki saying he lived longer because he got proper sleep and wasn't overproducing.

Interesting comics article from one of the sites I linked earlier

http://www.ceiling-gallery.com/blog/2015/4/4/morohoshidaijiro

both bookmarked thanks

went to Lynda Barry's gallery show and was really wigged by the comics glitterati who were about: Spiegelman, Gloeckner, Chip Kidd... had a nice friendly upbeat with conversation with Chester Brown. Barry was spectacular (i gave her pottery) and made me feel special. Pretty great time.

her panels are selling for 3 grand now! I'm happy for her.

wow, sounds like a fun event

her work deserves frames, everybody was giggling in the gallery

There are probably a lot of ppl in town for Brooklyn book festival this weekend.

Tom Hart is at bbf today by the way, forx.

yeah, that's what Chester said! I am going for a walk in the cemetery tonight but would love to let Hart know how much Rosalie Lightning moved me. I do the "yes/thank you" breathing mantra daily these days.