Rolling SERIOUS GRAPHIC LITERATURE Thread for Comics in 2016

Post your dissertations here.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/d0/44/82/d044820214e1c1c1289d54053c4abecd.jpg

I've barely been in comic shops recently and I only look at the Comics Journal site's weekly releases column. Any recent interesting developments?

um so this is the early comic work of Andy Weir, author of 'The Martian'
http://www.cheshirecrossing.net

Really wish that kickstarter Art Of Ploog book was available in shops. I've always wanted a book of his fantasy paintings.

Laura Knetzger, grim but affecting, on suicidal ideation: http://lauraknetzger.com/I-Lose-My-Way

here's some notes on some stuff i bought a year ago at MOCCA that i found tucked into an old email:

Summer Pierre - “Paper Pencil Life”
Engaging and well-considered autobio diary comics about an upstate NY mom/writer/cartoonist making life work. Scritchy drawing style that’s evocative and versatile and immediate. Occasionally poignant, sometimes ephemeral,very enjoyable. Weekly updates on her blog.
http://summerpierre.com/
https://summerpierre.wordpress.com/

Max Clotfelter - “Snake Meat”
Overstuffed mega-grossout stream of consciousness grotesqueries with heavy Johnny Ryan and Roy Tompkins influence. Packed with loads of chicken fat and scribbly details oozing from the corners. Very much the sort of thing where you’ll be able to assess if it’s to your taste on first contact.
http://maxclotfelter.blogspot.com/

Molly Brooks — “Post”
Well done dystopian future stuff with complicated characters and intelligent interactions. Solid art, good ear for dialogue. Full comic available online.
http://www.mollybrooks.com/gals/comics/054_post/

Jonathan Baylis - “So Buttons”
The issue I got featured art from Jay Lynch (cover), Fred Hembeck (meeting Joe Simon) and Josh Bayer (the tribulations of Herb Trimpe). Would like to get more of this.
http://sobuttons.com/

idk if I would consider this stuff "SERIOUS" but watching my daughter voraciously devour various graphic novel series (Zita the Space Girl, Amulet, Greek Mythology, etc.) I am struck by just *how much* of this stuff there is now, it's kind of a mindblowing generational shift in publications and marketing, none of this kind of thing was available when I was a kid. If you read comics when I was growing up it was either the monthly superhero stuff + maybe graphic novel sorts of stuff from other countries (Asterix, Tintin, etc.), and it was far and away a male pursuit. Now there's like a million different graphic novel things aimed at kids, including girls, while monthly superhero comics are largely the province of old men.

I'm not sure what the exact timeline documenting this shift would look like, but it's clear that at some point the debates that used to rage about why comics were consigned to a ghetto of adolescent males got resolved, and America got over its weird prejudices about the format and realized there was money to be made by expanding comics' basic readership/targeting different demographics

Aren't Marvel increasingly selling to young girls? DC to a lesser extent with Batgirl and Harley Quinn?
I haven't been paying much attention.

I think Marvel wants to sell to everyone at this point

dunno tbh - my daughter's only 8 and doesn't really give a fuck about Marvel

but yes, marvel is (was? dunno what the hell is happening post secret wars) clearly aiming at expanding their audience with female-centric titles with a sense of humor and i really like them.

that being said the superhero market seems like an increasingly small part of the overall actual comics/graphic novels market, including the younger/kids market

xp

like, my daughter doesn't have to look very far or try very hard - at all - to find non-superhero graphic novel stuff to read. they're all over the place.

Shakey, getcher daughter some Ms. Marvel and Squirrel Girl and see what she thinks.

i would add the recent run of she hulk and lumberjanes and howard the duck to that.

I just found Morning Glories and Black Science both of which are sorta meh in small doses but addictive as BKV/Morrison-esque dark soap opera in large doses.

Speaking of BKV Papergirls is good but i just don't dig reading stories in 25 page batches anymore. I'll wait for a trade.

I never really got into superhero-type comics until middle school. I actually kind of liked Archie and the like when I was younger. Also Mad Magazine, although half the jokes flew over my head.

And the Scrooge McDuck/Donald Duck stuff! So great.

yeah the Scrooge/Donald collections are a big hit at my house

but tbh I don't recall *ever* seeing that stuff in comics shops growing up. I remember very clearly the first time I read an issue-length Donald/Scrooge story, and it was a Don Rosa one where they go to South America (the name Manco Capac has stuck in my memory) that it was in my orthodontist's office, I was around 12 or 13.

that was before I ever went to comic shops! grocery store newsstand for sure

also fwiw it's not like my daughter doesn't like superheroes (we just started watching the Batman Animated Series and she's seen/read tons of DC stuff) just that Marvel hasn't really piqued her interest. I will keep an eye out for Squirrel Girl at the comics shop though.

xp

yeah that makes sense mh. grocery newsstands, such an anachronism now - although I guess I still see Archie digests at the checkout counter.

Has female Thor and black Captain America stuck?

I wonder if any kids read Venus/Measles or if it's just Love And Rockets fans.

I haven't read it yet but Moon Girl & Devil Dinosaur looks like another new Marvel title that would appeal to the younger girl set.

i had a letter published in the Gladstone Mickey Mouse when i was thirteen. The bigfoot disney stuff is very much at the core of who i am.

i bought my comics at a local drugstore off the spinner. still have quite a few of those!

I have one, Invaders #21. It is the most tattered thing

I never ever saw a duck comic before the Gladstone license took effect. I had heard barks name but had no clue what the stuff looked like

i think my first exposure to those were old dells culled from my dad's underground comic collection. i started buying disney in those polybagged, three to a purchase gold key grab bags at dollar stores where they were 99 cents. Barks stuff was so obviously a cut above everything else, even at seven i could tell there was something special there.

I think I checked out some of the older stuff at the library, but the first Gladstone publishing period started up in '86 when I was five, so most everything was through them.

Not to bring this conversation down even further, but I'm really enjoying BMB's current run on Iron Man - lovely glossy-but-cartoony art, and Bendis doing his Bendis thing but with more charm than usual. It'll probably be a terrible mess of unresolved plots and bad fill-in art this time next year, but right now it's pretty breezy.

Outside of Thor (always good) and Al E's New Avengers (his best of three titles right now) not much in the ANAD Marvel has really grabbed me - too much New 52 "talent" hogging the good titles.

I did get the first Corto Maltese for Christmas though - worried it wouldn't live up to the hype, but it's fucking great (he stated obviously)

well this is certainly a list
http://loser-city.com/features/the-100-best-comics-of-the-first-half-of-the-2010s-part-1-100-80

I was considering getting Jaybird by the Ahonens, it looked really fresh.

I probably need to take a better look at the comic shops soon. I'm at least glancingly familiar with most on that list but there's got to be some stuff emerged recently that I'd like.

Seems to always be old reprinted stuff that catches my interest, like those non-Pogo Walt Kelly comics and Garrett Price’s White Boy (too expensive for me though).

Seems like western English language comics are going in a great direction and getting back to the variety they used to have a long time ago. I was reading about the comics code recently and there is speculation that it reduced the variety of subjects drastically but I think censorship was pretty much inevitable and television is often mentioned in reducing the readership for certain genres.
I always like to imagine the different ways comics history could have went (we clearly live in a shitstained alternate universe) and I'm curious why more people didn't jump of the magazine bandwagon to get away from the comics code.

I hear DC Comics are doing really badly right now. Really interested to see how much more the industry changes in even 5 years.

White Boy looks grrrrrreeat but i can't really get more coffee table books before i get a coffee table.
specialty forums and torrents and marvel unlimited and small press cons and the complete mainstreaming of comics as both junk food and academic text have opened up the modern comics world to me enough that i feel like we must be in the middle of a golden age of sorts but it's so sprawling and all at once it's hard to quantify it properly.
DC has gone through several years of death throes it feels like; if the movies don't work out, who knows what's gonna happen. maybe time/warner sells all the intellectual rights to disney for ten billion dollars? it's weird that the future of cable monopolies may influence whether we see a JLA/Avengers xover film in ten years.

I've heard that in the early 80s, there was talks of DC merging with Marvel because they were doing so poorly. Their behaviour since the 60s has been due in large part to rivalry. I wonder what they'd do without that competition?
If they did merge, I'm sure fans (who'd be cumming gallons) would want a shared universe, and since their histories aren't compatible, they'd have to reboot everything again and probably not be able to split again, regardless of how many universe reboots they do.

is wildstorm or w/e still merged in, how is that going?

Don't know but I don't think the characters were ever that popular, it was probably more the artists. The Charlton, Quality and Fawcett characters worked out quite well for DC.

Fantastic list upthread, thanks for posting. I'm exclusively reading female-authored GNs at the moment after I realised my shelf was disappointingly lacking. Recently bought Through The Woods, so I'm excited to see it placing so high!

I've just finished reading (amongst others) The House That Groaned by Karrie Fransman, Marbles (Ellen Forney), and One Hundred Demons (Lynda Barry), all of which I unreservedly recommend. Incidentally, if anyone has any unusual graphic pathographies to recommend (doesn't have to be female actually), I'd love to hear about them. It seems to me that the utility of internal/external, symbolic, parallel worlds in GNs in relation to experiences with various sicknesses is nonpareil in its access to meaningful and relatable expression. Would love to write something on it at some point if I can get enough material together.

Oh wow, also Becoming Unbecoming by Una, about her experiences growing up at the time of the Yorkshire Ripper murders and how it fed into her understanding of female identity. Its use of space was explosively creative.

lol, the bolding is hopping threads!
I love Ellen Forney, Marbles is mannered but funny and sexy and well told and well cartooned imo. Lynda Barry is the Funk Lord of The USA and 100 Demons is as good as anything she does which is to say it will save your soul. If you're not reading her teaching blog, you should be:
http://thenearsightedmonkey.tumblr.com/

Other graphic pathologies that come to mind
Our Cancer Year by Harvey Pekar and Joyce Brabner
http://www.momscancer.com/
Can't we Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast
Special Exits by Joyce Farmer
With the Light by Keiko Tobe <-Autism manga

More here:
http://www.graphicmedicine.org

Lol I figured that because you were here I would demonstrate my seriousness about bold highlights. (Still managed to miss one...)

YES thank you so much for these! I've read and loved the Harvey Pekar and Joyce Farmer, but I'll definitely check out the others when my supply runs out. And that blog. Will forward my impressions as they arrive...

Other graphic pathologies that come to mind

Julia Wertz' "The Infinite Wait"

Oh and for anyone in London, I just found out about this taking place between February and May, which is very exciting: http://www.houseofillustration.org.uk/whats-on/current-future-events/comix-creatrix-100-women-making-comics

xp

This looks fantastic, thank you.

Wertz is great, I love her. and it's been awesome to see her grow from someone who barely draws stick figures into an artist with an accomplished, refined style.

Psychiatric Tales by Darryl Cunningham, "My Mother, The Schizophrenic" by Chester Brown.

tangentangent, you should read David B.'s Epileptic if you haven't already.

whoa, that's abrupt isn't it? RIP.

as reported on the ILX obit thread, Jack Chick apparently died yesterday.

I'm less taken aback about Jack Chick's death than I am by my sudden discovery that Jack Chick is an actual person.

My being surprised by the existence of such extreme people is becoming increasingly common.

https://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0046/0046_01.asp

and lest we forget the man was an explicit bigot
http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/1052/1052_01.asp

Here's a PDF of The Imp #2, Dan Raeburn's tract-format biography of Chick.

sic, that was a phenomenal bio. thanks!

http://www.tcj.com/reviews/my-favorite-thing-is-monsters/

A review/preview of the aforementioned Emil Ferris book.

that looks really really good.

For those of you not reading Strong Female Protagonist, i STRONGLY recommend it. Likely my fave webcomic.
You could start at the start but if you wanna jump in when Ostertag's art hits stride, I'd recommend here: http://strongfemaleprotagonist.com/issue-5/chapter-5-cover/

roll call on Brooklyn Comics Festival attendees this weekend?

is that the same as CAB? Cause I'll be at CAB

That's CAB, yes. See you there! You selling anything new Jon?

Nothing new from me until the hardback collecting the 2000-2001 true swamps, for spring 2017 publishing season. Which is not new work anyway. I'm still limited to prose and music bc of my nerve injury unfort

ulysses - wow halfway through the chapter is EXACTLY where i stopped reading it years ago (for reasons unrelated). thanks for reminding me about this comic

it's great! it was great! it got better though i think.

Mickey's Inferno is available in early December; I found an online scan and it's AWESOME
https://www.amazon.com/Disney-Graphic-Novels-Parodies-Mickeys/dp/1629915920

what is that?

it is a for real retelling of dante's inferno starring mickey and goofy as dante and virgil that's been translated from Italian and you can buy it!
http://67.media.tumblr.com/ba01a6cb5365d5edfa1aa60d9b66e26b/tumblr_nd6hqqd8X21sp3y55o1_500.jpg

wow! must find.

$8 in hardcover via that amazon link up there!

bob dylan discussing his painting
http://media.vanityfair.com/photos/581a602f784cf8ac089e6930/master/w_900%2Cc_limit/bob-dylan-paints-exhibit-03.jpg

There was a conscious attempt to dismiss consumer culture or popular culture, including mass media, commercial art, celebrities, consumer or product packaging, billboard signs, comic strips, magazine advertising. “The Beaten Path” works represent a different subject matter from the everyday imagery of consumer culture. There is nothing to suggest these paintings were inspired by the writings of Sigmund Freud or that they were based on any mental images that occur in dreams, no fantasy worlds, religious mysticism or ambiguous subject matter. In every picture the viewer doesn’t have to wonder whether it’s an actual object or a delusional one. If the viewer visited where the picture actually existed, he or she would see the same thing. It is what unites us all.

Bob Dylan, frustrated photographer.

Bob Dylan, frustrated photographer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjPxlzjuLww
Great looking cast; Harrelson is absolutely perfect based on the clips and I would follow Laura Dern into a forest fire.

Seemed kinda off to me, honestly. But the original book didn't exactly have much of a plot, so I can see how they'd have to come up with more material for a film.

the original book is garbage but I am v favorably inclined to that cast

http://scroll.in/article/737262/graphic-novel-what-if-the-british-had-never-left-india

I'm a fan of Alcatena but I haven't read much of his comics.

In case that link does someday it's Empire of Blood, by Arjun Raj Gaind/Enrique Alcatena from Graphic India

interesting

http://www.tcj.com/kerascoet-interview-by-alex-dueben/

Includes the news that Kerascoet are doing a kids book with Malala Yousafzai

rad. highly underrated duo in us for my money.

Beautiful Darkness was kinda incredible but also so fucked up I kinda never want to read anything else they ever make

I don't think the other ones are as bad/nasty.

Their work on Miss Don't Touch Me, Beauty and Dungeon is just excellent

Benjamin Bin Zhang anyone? I've heard mixed things about his writing but his art can be impressively shoegazey though I'm not completely sold on his style. I only just found out his name but I'd seen his work when his earlier books were out.

Can't believe Kevin Smith still dresses like he does.

he'll be buried in skorts

Reading through those Comics Journal magazine history pieces on the site right now. I feel quite grateful they were raking people over coals for lousy comics and practices.

Ditto -- I want a copy of that book.

As many critics as there are online it's tough to find someone unforgiving and difficult to please without being too dismissive and reductive in their elitism.

http://www.solomonenos.com/work#/vii/

Very impressed by the art of Solomon Enos from Hawaii (although the lettering is a bit off). You can download his comic here.

dope

Just spotted the Harvey Horrors Best Of vol1 today and bought it. It's a pretty good selection, some of Rudy Palais' best work.
I'm still mulling over getting the new Ditko art book, it's really damn expensive and I've seen most of the stuff.

Saw Harvey Kurtzman's Trump. Wonder if they chosen a cover character that could glacingly be mistaken for a cartoon Donald.

Christmas swag:

Agony by Mark Beyer (from that interesting new New York Review Comics line) - sold my original copy in a previous purge, glad to have one of my fave ever comics back. It would be a good game to play find the bleakest/funniest dialogue balloon (flipping through, "There are worse things than being in prison. Just being alive is worse. Maybe if we're really lucky someone will strangle us in our sleep!" is def a strong contender)

Young Romance: The Best of Simon & Kirby's Romance Comics - really adore Joe Simon's inking over Kirby's pencils, he adds such a beautiful rough texture to things

The Arab of the Future 78-84 by Riad Sattouf - possibly an ILC recommendation, somewhere? Anyway, looks great on a quick (so far) skim - cute cartooning and I really like the limited palette colouring

Messages in a Bottle: Comic Book Stories by B. Krigstein - this passed me by at the time (it came out in 2013), but a v solid selection of B Krig's greatest hits and a few rare b-sides etc. Still not totally sold on the Marie Severin re-colouring on the EC stories (first used by Fantagraphics for their B.Krigstein Comics hardcover volume, also put together by Greg Sadowski, and which duplicates quite a lot but not all of the contents here), but it's not disastrous and prob works better in this slightly smaller paperback format. Sadowski's notes are excellent, and very sad in a way - so many missed opportunities.

Simon is my favourite Kirby inker for the reasons you mention.

Another thing I got was the Alexander Goudie illustrated Tam O' Shanter by Robert Burns. It's laid out just like a graphic novel, but some images are just sketches. The large paintings are really impressive.

Got Hip Hop Family Tree vol 4 and Charles Burns' Last Look for Christmas. Both excellent.

Are there any good Philippe Caza art books? Seems like he's been left behind his peers a bit.

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Rolling Comic Book thread 2017