Rolling Comic Book thread 2017

Do regular bookstores order through Diamond? I always assumed they didn't but I don't actually know.

I'd imagine for an ongoing series that buying individual issues makes a difference but for most of the miniseries it has to be predecided that they're doing a collection. A writer said about Darkhorse that they're still making more money from serializing comics first so that's the reason they're not all graphic novels.

I mean making more money from doing both.

I thought Disney whipped Marvel Comics into a better business. Why are they standing by and watching this (assuming Disney really are as savvy as they seem).

I still go into comic shops occasionally so I don't know how I totally missed all this mega event stuff. All I hear about is Ms Marvel, Vision, Devil Dinosaur and a few other things.

while i have a great deal of affection for independent comic book shops, there's part of me that thinks of them in about the same way i think of radio shack.

Disney wrested control of Marvel Studios from Ike Perlmutter but he's still in charge (for now) of the rest of the enterprise, afaik.

my sense since more or less iron man's success is that marvel could give a fuck about the books as anything but feeder tubes for movie/tv ip

I haven't read anything post-Secret Wars (didn't even finish that one) but it's disappointing to hear that it hasn't worked out creatively. I would much rather see these kinds of crazy reboots in the wake of giant events with new (well, "new" characters) than the same old shit they do every time.

continuity is a harsh bitch goddess

and it's ruined the big two imo

I haven't made it that far, either, but I'd guess that part of the problem is that the two biggest Marvel Now world-builders (Hickman and Remender) split once Secret Wars was over.

Continuity (the Sisyphean, Icarusian task of hundreds of people trying to maintain something resembling a coherent story over the course of decades) is a large part of the reason I'm such a Marvel stan.

A "all major characters are who you remember them being" reboot would decimate Marvel's claims of diversity, I think. They're almost all legacy characters.

The good thing about Marvel crossovers is they tend to be less metaphysical, so often enough my fav titles get away unscathed barring an incomprehensible tie-in issue or two.

xpost That said, the point where I'm currently at (post-Original Sin and Axis) is so riddled with inconsistencies that it's driving me a little nuts.

Is there some master editorial plan where if they need to modify the X-Men in some way (kill Wolverine, have them fight the Inhumans) they just hand it over to Charles Soule? I feel like his desk (or a phone that calls him directly) is right outside the room where Perlmutter shoots down good ideas and he's on contract just to write these direction-steering things.

There was also that point in time where Matt Fraction was supposed to be writing the Inhuman(s) book and he announced Marvel decided to go in a different direction before Soule started writing it.

I checked out a random trade of this teen series Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur which was cute and charming but also forcefully tied into some kind of Inhumans event

Forgot another that Marvel seems to be doing well - Doctor Strange seems like a really solid title right now (but I'm six issues behind).

They haven't drained all the creative juices out of Jason Aaron, yet

re: Disney, Marvel Comics would barely be a blip on their balance sheet even run incredibly well. They're probably happy enough using it to farm IP.

Two or three indie publishers have opened up recently who seem to exist entirely to elicit movie interest. Predictably, this has not worked well.

Valiant is doing things well - good art, they keep trades in production and series on schedule, etc.. I just can't get people interested, unfortunately.

I'd advocate for most of the Valiant stuff. They seem to be on a similar schedule to some of the Image stuff where they run a title for a while and then it goes on hiatus, though.

Quite surprised they got off the ground again. I thought Jim Shooter's reputation would scare everyone away.

What? Valiant is good now? dang i feel old

What's a good one to try?

Unity is their 'team' superhero book that involves all the main characters IIRC.
I can't recommend anything in particular tbh, I just get to flip through every now and then and look at the art these days.

Don't start with Unity, it's several years into their continuity and it's really only there for a specific event so far

Archer & Armstrong was one of their early ones and is enjoyable, imo

Dr Aphra (Gillen book) is v likeable so far, by the way

http://i.imgur.com/7MWhDnE.jpg

v.definition of SERIOUS GRAPHIC LITERATURE but Sarah Laing's Mansfield and Me is gorgeous in a post-Fun Home way.

http://cdn1.bigcommerce.com/server5200/58zklai/products/1051/images/1506/Mansfield_and_Me_final_cover__50890.1467692638.1280.1280.jpg

i found a ten dollar first edition (in english) tpb copy of The Magicians Wife at the Strand yesterday; looking forward to trying that.
giftmas scores include the Trondheim Mickey book, the english translated Mickey's Inferno and volume 6 (7? 31 to 32) of Walt and Skeezix.

Haven't read it yet but the Trondheim Mickey Mouse book is gorgeous and much nicer than I expected (oversized hardcover!).

The Magician's Wife is a masterpiece (Billy Budd KGB isn't quite as good, but still well worth seeking out)

I somehow failed to notice my public library's ebook offerings include trade paperbacks and graphic novels so... I can now borrow comics from the library without leaving my couch?

nice. my electronic options are kinda garbage locally, only about 100 books and most of them are kids series

Speaking of Trondheim, I reread "Approximate Continuum Comics" recently and enjoyed it a lot more than I did when I first bought it. Kinda distraught at how much it has aged, though - lots of mentions of fax machines, Trondheim keeping a print magazine on computers because "it might teach me something interesting about my mac". This must feel like reading about pre-television days to someone even five years younger than me.

No mention on here of Gerard Jones' arrest for child porn the other day?

http://www.comicsbeat.com/comics-author-and-historian-gerard-jones-arrested-on-charges-of-child-pornography/

Jesus. Not sure I've ever read anything of his though - total avoidance of Green Lantern pays off again.

Sad to say, his Comic Book Heroes book is almost certainly the best single volume history of American superhero comics.

fucking hell

I saw that Gerard Jones story yeah, and I def read that book a lot as a kid (can't remember if I actually owned it or just checked it out of the library multiple times)

Apologies, I actually meant Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book by Jones, tho the earlier book is useful too.

I wrote a letter to GL: Mosaic as a kid and he personally replied to it in the comic. I was thrilled, but also deeply embarrassed that my nerd-dom had been certified in the public domain.

But yeah, that story is proper fucking hell

this Supergirl Silver Age Omnibus Volume 1 might be the greatest comic book collection I've ever read

I'd like to hear more about it.

artwork is all Jim Mooney (who adheres p closely to similar styles of Boring, Plastino, etc.) and stories are by Binder, Weisinger, Siegel, covers the first 30 issues or so of Supergirl. Non-stop nonsensical goofines: super-pets, seemingly endless iterations kryptonite, time travel, magic, proto-adolescent angst about getting adopted/going public/falling in love, ridiculous aliens/planets, Kandor, the Phantom Zone, Atlantis, etc. Every page features the use of super-powers in some deus ex machina way for either the most banal or the most fantastical purposes. Superman is like a really patronizing big brother who's always inconveniently off in another dimension or in another galaxy. It's just a joy to read.

I probably need to check for overlap with Showcase Supergirl because that was incredible tbh.

Never been a big Jim Mooney fan - always find his inking a bit 'soft' and his figure work a little static. Always thought it was a fanboy myth that he drew his figures 'nude' in pencil and then inked their clothing in afterwards, but apparently not, according to this interview:

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=lEWHfXUwUAwC&pg=PA27&dq=jim+mooney+interview+legion&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwji2PGUx7nRAhXDfhoKHfZbDdEQ6AEIIjAB#v=onepage&q=jim%20mooney%20interview%20legion&f=false

Link doesn't work.

works fine here.

And for me, though you're not missing much, mostly "yeah I worked on that, then I worked on this, this guy was an asshole, this other guy was also an asshole". The line is at the bottom of page 6 if you get the link working.

Sorry, I should've specified that the link does lead to an ebook, but I get a message that says the page in question is unavailable for viewing.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/134954755

Anyone read Hoshino's 2001 Nights? It sounds excellent. Science fiction writer Berit Ellingsen reviews it here.

i own it; loved it as a college kid and haven't read it since... i should dig it out...

I initially was kind of intrigued but

is Ales Kot’a writing kind of derivative and boring?

Ales Kot’s, that is

Agree. He has the same effect on me as Warren Ellis. I dig the fruitiness but find reading him a struggle.

I'm undecided on Ales Kot. He's definitely heavily-referential wrt works/creators that are not often referenced in mainstream comics, which can be cool in moderation but which has limited mileage if you aren't bringing enough of yourself to the table to offset it (see also: Marguerite Bennett's Marvel work, which repeatedly pulls me out of the story with all the fourth wall-breaking 'guys, I just alluded to another work of classical literature!' on every other page).

I think Ellis does some good straightforward plot work now, not just the mad doctor giggling as he throws out *real truth* or things he finds intriguing at the page. I think he’s kind of deep into the stage where he wants to make things screen-worthy

Kot was kind of fun in a way where I didn’t mind the lack of plot coherence or point but now it’s a slog through having half an idea and throwing interesting things he’s read in a haphazard way on the page and what should be interesting is just a boring exercise. There’s not a “do you see?!?” point, even

I read the two Zero tpbs. There was some segments and parts that were really interesting but that comic is so all over the f-ing place, it turned into a big mess.

Warren Ellis has some projects where he is just trying stuff out, but he's got a pretty solid bibilography of good comic work over the years. I'm sure Kot probably is a fan of him or not... I'm probably a trade behind but The Trees and Injection were both pretty good reads, just hopefully Ellis FINISHES the darn story.

Prophet by Brandon Graham and quite a few artists is one of the better scifi books that Image has done. It's got just boodles of good weirdness compared to that Zero comic.

Drifter is also a strange scifi comic. I don't half know what is going on, but I have liked it enough to play along.

Problem that scifi comics have is similar to crime comics, it's kinda hard to compare to the bunches of crazy novels out there in those genres. You got to either have some serious visual flair or a really good story. The thing about many of these scifi comics is that they seem to often be a mash of other movies/manga etc.

i have disappeared into the endless forest of hajime no ippo which, only 25 of 118 tankōbon in, is clever and fun and beautifully drawn and compelling and thank god only occasionally despairingly racist/homobphobic/sexist
fanlation is VERY rough but the real joy is found in the epic one hundred page boxing matches.

in between though, I've found a few other things worth recommending:
- Steve Skroce's Maestros which reads like a lost alt-universe new x-men and boasts impressive quitely/darrow aping art
- Head Lopper wrapped up its second arc very welll
- Gaby Bell's Everything is Flammable is a great diary
- Paolo Bacilieri's Fun is a great story done in Matt Howarth style
- new Locas shorts in L+R are primo as per always
- Michel Fiffe's Zegas is good enough that i probably need to retry Copra; it never clicked for me

King has completely found his stride with Batman btw, the current Supes/Bats Lois/Catwoman storyline is excellent

I'm also enjoying King's Batman run, but can't tell if he's in a groove or just repeating pleasant shtick.

xp i concur. randomly read those two issues, loved it. need to catch up on the preceding storylines

definitely enjoy Brandon Graham, his stuff has always had an idea of what he’s going for, and you get some level of investment in all of it, the goofy cat/cheesecake stuff include pd

Kot ['s work] seemed up himself, smug for references, and poor reading when I looked at it four years ago

Latest Trondheim (reading in French) is his usual slice-of-life slacker stuff but with a sci-fi twist. Digging so far.

Image has put out some pretty wacky scifi comics over the past few years.

― earlnash, Friday, 29 December 2017 00:52

ODY-C looked really odd but I wasn't into the art enough.

I bought Arclight recently. Churchland is talented but there's something not working for me, maybe I'll know what when I have another look.

wouldn't mind hearing more about that trondheim. what's it called?

Also, it's my hobbyhorse, but anyone into fantasy sci-fi who hasn't read "Donjon"/"Dungeon" really should!

I got halfway and took a (too long) break, so I'm gonna have to start from the beggining again, which is not a tragedy. This years resolution is to finish Dungeon and 20th century boys finally.

wouldn't mind hearing more about that trondheim. what's it called?

It's a new Lapinot (McConey) album, called Un Monde Un Peu Meilleur. Main plot is Lapinot and his buddy make the acquaintance of a guy who works as a test subject for competing pharmaceutical companies (which is illegal) and as a result of taking too many different meds can see people's auras. I really enjoyed it, especially the beautiful Paris backgrounds - Trondheim has the mix of fanciness and dirt of that city down to a t. It's also very Paris 2017, as at some point in the plot there's a punch-up including some Arab characters and this immediatley gets misconstrued as a terrorist attack - cue shock attack troops, news crews reporting false rumours, leftist protesters jeering at said news crews and some bigoted idiot showing up w/ a plan to lure them out with bacon perfumes.

the mcconeys are good! wish fanta had kept up with releasing them.

Rolling comic book thread 2018