Rolling Comic Book thread 2017

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 used to always say Bruce Jones was my favourite comics writer but I haven't read most of that stuff in a long time. A few of the Warren stories are really good, maybe some Twisted Tales and Alien Worlds. Rip In Time is fun. But I don't know how much of it would stand up.
Some of his Hulk work was pretty good but I didn't get far into it, I know some people said it went great places.

Most of his other superhero work seems poorly received and I don't think it's what he'd like to be doing. I'd like to try some of his prose someday. He writes a lot of thriller novels but I'll stick with his horror.

Going home from work I saw a guy in a One Punch Man car.

Finally got around to reading McCloud's The Sculptor. You know, actually pretty good. Could've even been truly great if it had been pared down in page count, among other things (ironically the book is so obsessed with time but seems to drag out on and on). That said some of the layout work in it is pretty astounding, what I would expect from the author. Connected with it emotionally so it all worked for me.

Ed Piskor (with a light redraw) noticed something in Wilson
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPTIYbaD1js/

The conceit of the Trondheim "Mickey's Craziest Adventure" is that it's a reprint collection of one-page-per-issue Paul Murry style Donald'n'Mickey adventure strips, complete with printing errors and water stains but that author and artist "found" an incomplete stack of old issues so we get installment 2, 4, 7, 8, 10, 11, 14 and so on through "page 82". It's remarkably clever and fun.

I just finished (and really enjoyed) Patience, which is Daniel Clowes in extended Death Ray/David Boring mode.

It's a lot more upbeat and sentimental than anything else Clowes has written - for me, a lot of the internal tension came from knowing his previous books rather than from the story itself, i.e. you keep waiting for something really nasty or depressing to happen, even though the story keeps not going that way.

ANYWAY some nerd must have read it on this thread surely

that would be me. i thought it was the best thing he's done since velvet glove.

by far, really.

I didn't like it much.

that surprises me. why?

I found it dull and far too long. There's a short story in the morass but as is it never grabbed me. Had to force myself to finish it.

I'm pretty hit or miss with Clowes in general. Respect him more than I've ever loved his stuff.

Like A Velvet Glove and David Boring I think are great. Ghost World is okay. Those are the only ones I'd ever want to revisit.

I've never read David Boring maybe I should give that one a shot. Everything else apart from LAVG I've thought varied from boring to actively irritating

well, of his long pieces. There's a bunch of shorter bits in 8ball that I love to death (Sensual Santa, On Sports, Pussey! etc.) and LAVG is great.

I assume this goes here

Ice Haven is peak Clowes for me but I think Wilson is the only thing of his I've read since then.

― Transformed From The Norm By The Nuclear Goop (Old Lunch), Wednesday, January 25, 2017 1:28 PM (twenty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I read and enjoyed Patience a while ago - definitely one of the best things Clowes has done, though I thought the art was a little slapdash in places. He seems to be inking with a brush a lot more these days - I miss the sharpness and accuracy of his pen line.

Never really understood the love for Velvet Glove, which feels too much like refried David Lynch to me. Ghost World remains his masterpiece.

Not quite comics, but just watched Very Semi-Serious, the documentary about New Yorker cartoonists, which you'll enjoy if it's the sort of thing you enjoy - I did. Surprising number of LOLs, too, although me and my partner are both twee bastards.

There is zero stuff about cartooning style, or even trying to anatomize the jokes, it's mostly just "lol cartoonists are weirdos", here's a good one about bagpipes. But fun nonetheless. Remnick remains impossibly oily.

i started watching the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure anime which is good, but it's really the manga artwork that is blowing my mind. i'm looking to pick up some books, should i go for the new viz reissues? is rohan goes to the louvre worth getting?

Rolling comic book thread 2018