Rolling Comic Book thread 2017

i understand the potential connect with Ryan (who I dig in a different way) but think Simmons work is drastically in a different vein. i don't think his stuff is misanthropic at all so much as it is an exploration of damage. It's painfully labored work and unpleasant to read but there's not really any irony or comedy at play that I can see.

http://www.tcj.com/one-more-lens-through-which-to-process-the-world-a-horror-filled-conversation-with-josh-simmons/

There’s an element of having your cake and eating it too with the violence in my stuff, I suppose: both indulging in it and commenting on it, or having some distance from it. Makes it harder to parse. I know I want the violence in my stories to have weight. I don’t want it to be violence for laughs, or to be numbing. I suppose that’s part of why people sometimes react so strongly to my stuff. Because it isn’t played for laughs, there isn’t an ironic distance. I work hard to make the characters feel believable and real. There’s humor in the stories, but it isn’t at the expense of the victim. What really perplexes me is when critics dismiss the work as a kind of calloused bro humor fuckery, when if anything the work is born out of hypersensitivity and vulnerability.

hmm

of course, he references Haneke (who i love) and Von Trier (who i hate) in the same paragraph so ymmv is about right.

Not a comics person, but I bought the first issue of the new Vader series today at Newbury Comics.

I read somewhere that the second one came out yesterday?

yep

Got it. Read it. Are all single issues of comics this quick to read?

most, sure. some are denser when it comes to dialogue or take some scrutiny to really dig into the art

I guess I just didn’t know!

It's something that sticks out for me as someone who imprinted on comics of the 70s and 80s, that many comics of the last 20 years or so are just SUCH fast reads (speaking mainly of mainstream stuff here - alternative stuff still runs the gamut from ridiculously chewy to sinfully lazy). I'm just a lot more comfortable in that verbose, purple but genuinely bizarre world of the first wave of post-Stan hippies.

When I started reading 50s-60s comics it was amazing how long they taken to read and loved seeing lots of small detailed panels but once the novelty wore off and it became apparent how redundant most of the text was, I much prefer minimal text and larger images. Can feel like a ripoff but I think it's better storytelling for the most part.

I bought Sandman Overture and decided immediately that I'd never read it. Looks like way too much work.

I like manga for the lack of clutter but the artists I like are so few and far between, unfortunately. Shouldn't be surprising how much price tag and page count restriction shape the storytelling techniques.

Remember so many interesting looking alternative comics in expensive hardcover but not much actual content.

I think Warren Ellis gets some blame for his philosophical waxing about "cinematic" comics with the larger panel layouts, widescreen-emulating dual page spreads, but it didn't really become an issue for me until it turned into writers trying to pull off the same shtick without thinking it through, and handing it to artists who were in a deadline crunch.

The previous Vader book was denser, but I could see an argument for using the style with that character. You could do a hell of a lot with a guy who doesn't speak a whole lot moving through these low-dialogue scenarios just going crazy with throwing guys around, lightsaber action, etc. I'm not sure how well this current book is doing that.

Manga is for sure the real influence, but there's a reason those volumes are so thick!

The style really needs to merit the large panels. I prefer heavily illustrated comics, so bigger panels become more desirable for the images to achieve full effect.

Anyone seen Superani? It's a Korean collective of mostly very skilled artists, some of them do comics. I knew Jung Gi Kim and Woojin Oh but the rest aren't familiar.
http://www.superani.com/index01.html

I like the looser lines, don't know if that's a Korean thing, but I have heard that Korean artists are more anatomically realistic than Japanese generally.

I think Warren Ellis gets some blame for his philosophical waxing about "cinematic" comics with the larger panel layouts, widescreen-emulating dual page spreads,

― mh, Saturday, 24 June 2017 15:05

I remember some of this. My main objection at the time was mainstream comics culture's nauseating reverence for blockbuster films (which has probably gotten worse).

the "widescreen action" that's taken over since the early 2000s is the Americanization of manga tropes. always thought it was due to the much more expensive per page rates of doing full color work, slow pages, etc. it's great when it works... and i'm not clamoring to go back tons of captions and dialogue boxes tbh

xp yeah, exactly

http://comicsworkbook.tumblr.com/post/136605908622/hey-everyone-this-is-an-article-on-color-i-did
Really good article about comics coloring.

xp
I recently read the LSH "Great Darkness Saga" collection, and was struck by how dense and complex it was... sometimes I couldn't finish a single issue in one sitting! (And I grew up reading comics in the '80s, so I'm used to lots of dialogue and captions; but that book is a tour de force of density.)

The fact that comics have become more $$$ over time (significantly outpacing inflation) can contribute to the feeling you're being ripped off sometimes these days. Most single issues I read feel satisfying enough, though; and I imagine it would feel odd / "retro" to read something new that uses the old style (characters speaking full paragraphs to each other in a single panel, while frozen mid-kick, etc.)

(Btw, I'm going to hope/assume that the $$$ surcharge mentioned above is being passed along to the creators, and isn't just the add'l cost of keeping the ship running due to declining readership... a question for others here who know more about the economics of the biz.)

http://weaves.tumblr.com/post/128584557180/gerte-dorch-scorch-the-porch-opens-friday-at

This guys work is pretty creepy

https://static.comicvine.com/uploads/scale_small/6/67663/5877267-01.jpg

Enjoyed this, one of those GNs done in collaboration with the Louvre. This one's about a Louvre security guard whose future in-laws are trying to force him to add a hideous old family heirloom to the gallery walls.

I think the worse thing about modern comics is that they are more under-written, stuff just takes forever to happen. Beyond the use of text, they just beat around the bush and then stretch out action scenes.

To me, I think heavier text comics work pretty well when the story fits. Jonathan Hickman's newer project the Black Monday Murders is pretty text heavy, using quite a bit of documents and other tricks that makes for a longer read. It works there. I think old Moore Swamp Thing still reads fine and that is very dense by modern standards. Dave Lapham does pretty dense story telling in Stray Bullets. Warren Ellis also is pretty good at the single issue comic book and has done quite a few using alot of 9 panel pages.

Yes the drip feed storytelling is infuriating

All of these writers have way too many monthly titles on their docket and their books read like it

These guys are generally writing for collected edition posterity and it would be better if there was no monthly version of them if they're going to be like that.

which is such a fucking paradox because Marvel, in particular, is still making their claims that series won’t be continued or even collected if single issues aren’t sold

Read the first volume of the new Flintstones. It IS good, I gotta say!

It's not so much a paradox as Marvel demanding to a) eat their cake and b) have it.

All of these writers have way too many monthly titles on their docket and their books read like it

Absolutley true, such a pain to keep up with favourites.

Read the first volume of the new Flintstones. It IS good, I gotta say!

What's good about it? (Honest question, no p.o.v. intended.) I assume it's funny? Does it require the reader to have any particular relationship to the 1960s TV series?

it's just well written and acid without relying too much on LOL THE FLINTSTONES or irony

it does have lots of goofy lol flintstones irony tbf, but that's almost secondary in a way. it's a cute satire - a modern updating of the original goofy premise of the flinstones - that's pretty funny and actually emotionally touching in parts. a lot of creative choices (not to spoil, but bamm bamm's origin definitely got to me)

My favourite bits (without spoilers):

Vacuum cleaner and bowling ball
How Gerald came to be
Carl Sagan's computer
Fred's War
The new office

Oh, just all of it. DC hasn't published a better book in easily a decade (but I have already said this multiple times).

vacuum cleaner and bowling ball are the real stars, yes

Is it me or are comics kinda the worst they've ever been at the moment? I know every few years I have an "off" period on comics, but this feels different - it's like there's no reason to come back after time away.

By this point my adult comic phase (roughly 2004-present) has lasted way longer than my childhood comic phase (1987-1993ish), so maybe I'm overdue. I know there are literally tons of awesome old comics I haven't read, but somehow if there isn't a supply of good new stuff, my interest wanes.

Anyway, tell me why you agree, or why I'm stupid and wrong.

By wrongness I mean:

* DC and Marvel full of horrible people who publish trash
* Even creators I like have been producing less interesting stuff for a while now (e.g. Moore, GM - it's been four years since Bats ended).
* Comics fans going full Gamergate
* Bright spots at the Big Two & Image not really bright enough to sustain my interest
* I read all the arty comics already
* I am old

I don't do a great job of keeping up with newly-released stuff so I don't generally notice, but multiple declarations of 'these Hanna-Barbera and Looney Tunes comics are some of the best stuff being published!' do make it seem like a bit of a fallow period.

I guess it depends what engagement looks like for you. I've wandered off for a couple years at a time over the last fifteen years, then bought a few trades or whatever before regularly reading a few series. If you can't have an interest in a few comics without delving deep, then maybe walk off for a while.

It's also one of those things where age has flattened out the curve of time for me. Nearly everything from 2009 onward seems "contemporary" but we're definitely in a different period now than we were then.

That's v. true

As with everything I think it's a question of how much you try new stuff and read various things and ahem t0rr3nt mothafuckaaaaaaaa

A Few Currently Publishing Comics I Can Recommend Without Feeling Like a Punk (That Are Not Battfudd/Flintstones):

Rock Candy Mountain - https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/04/advance-review-kyle-starks-brings-filthy-fucking-h.html
All New Guardians of the Galaxy - http://ew.com/books/2017/05/03/all-new-guardians-galaxy-gerry-duggan-comic/
Batman - Tom King doing good work out there
Letter 44 - https://io9.gizmodo.com/read-the-first-issue-of-letter-44-the-comic-everyones-1472795323
Rebels: These Free and Independent States - http://viewcomic.com/rebels-these-free-and-independent-states-002-2017/
Astro City - https://io9.gizmodo.com/reflecting-on-100-issues-of-astro-city-with-writer-kurt-1792683413
Kamandi Challenge - https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/01/kamandi-challenge-1-is-a-freewheeling-tribute-to-t.html
Black Magic - https://imagecomics.com/comics/releases/black-magick-1
Star Wars: Doctor Aphra - https://marvel.com/comics/series/22719/star_wars_doctor_aphra_2016_-_present
Adventure Time - https://www.comixology.com/Adventure-Time/comics-series/7420
Rick and Morty - http://onipress.tumblr.com/post/115216808549/wubba-lubba-dub-dub-rick-and-morty-1-is-here
Godshaper - http://comicsalliance.com/godshaper-si-spurrier-jonas-goonface-interview/
American Gods - http://ew.com/books/2017/03/13/american-gods-comic-adaptation-neil-gaiman/
Shaolin Cowboy - https://www.darkhorse.com/Comics/29-631/The-Shaolin-Cowboy-Wholl-Stop-the-Reign-1
Sex Criminals - https://imagecomics.com/comics/series/sex-criminals
Injection - https://imagecomics.com/comics/series/injection
Zombies Assemble - https://marvel.com/comics/issue/63031/zombies_assemble_2017_1
Delicious in Dungeon - http://mangakakalot.com/manga/dungeon_meshi
Bug Adventures of Forager - http://www.dccomics.com/comics/bug-the-adventures-of-forager-2017/bug-the-adventures-of-forager-1
Silver Surfer - https://marvel.com/comics/series/20502/silver_surfer_2016_-_present

the new Black Bolt book is also pretty good!
DC right now, Batman/Kamandi/Astro City excepted, is in the toilet more or less.

are any of those DC Young Animal titles any good?

Gillen's follow up to Darth Vader which is Doctor Aphra with artwork by Kev Walker is also a good read. Don't know if the series is catching on or not with readers, but it's a fine standalone comic in the Marvel Star Wars universe.

Thanks for the list! Sex Crims and Saga are the only single issues I'm still buying as they trades have a "less than the sum of" kind of feel. Gillen's great and still Doing Good Things but I have reached by Gillimits.

Will try some of those others. Black Bolt *does* look, and hopefully answers my question "What if Ody-C was actually readable?"

Probably I am underestimating my own reading habits as I have Simonson's Thor, Heartbreak Soup, 20th Century Boys on the go, plus rereading GM's Animal Man run for the first time in prob 20 years.

* I read all the arty comics already

― Chuck_Tatum, Thursday, 6 July 2017 21:16

They're still making them and there's a massive amount.

I've kind of fallen out of love with comics recently* but they still seem to me better than they've ever been over the last twelve or thirteen years(if we're just talking about English language). Way more variety in subject matter, art styles, translations and reprints than they've ever had.

I haven't been paying close attention recently. I just check TCJ every week. But things can't have changed that much? I'm sure Fantagraphics and NBM are still bringing the goods.

I know DC has been pretty awful for a decade or more but was Marvel really that much better in the 90s-00s?

Full gamergate? Is this a recent thing? What's happened?

* I've got a hunger for better and better images and I have less tolerance for cartooning shortcuts.
I'm still buying Corben's stuff but haven't read any of it in years.
There's a new Berserk out but I'm starting to doubt I've got the patience for the longwinded formula. I don't know how Miura can be bothered stretching this out for years and years, it's madness.
Always wanted to read season 4 and onwards of Jojo but even that has a formula that grates after a while.

Anyone read the Hanuka brothers Divine book?

Young Animal stuff I've read is pretty dece.

It's sad that it's such an overlooked thing at this point but, after disappearing altogether for years, Stray Bullets has been a very nearly monthly book for a couple of years now. That's pretty awesome.