Rolling Comic Book thread 2017

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.

I loved "City of Crime" but stupidly I haven't read Stray Bullets. Is there a good place to start?

I thought Doom Patrol and Cave Carson got off to good starts, but I find them a little heartless compared to the Vertigo books I used to love. Way seems very amused by gore and exploding body parts, which is fine, but doesn't do much to distinguish him from regular DC. I haven't tried Shade or Mother Panic but heard okay-to-goodish things.

The entire original series of Stray Bullets was fairly recently collected in a single massive volume (the Uber Alles edition) but it looks like they also reprinted everything as a conveniently-numbered series of trades at the same time. However you get it, it's highly recommended.

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.

Yeah, you’re crazy – maybe if people who want to visit a shop every single Wednesday and come away with a fistful of things think this mb I could get behind it, but I go every month or three and have trouble giving everything a satisfying first read, let alone a second or third before they go in the cupboard. I went to a zine fair half an hour’s stroll from my house a month ago, didn’t even look at things that weren’t comics, and haven’t read everything I bought. (I went to America in 2013 and posted boxes and boxes of comics home to myself, and haven’t read all of them yet, either.)

On Monday I went to the comic shop and picked up #3 of the new Shaolin Cowboy (god the printing quality is so horrible on the Dark Horse versions, I wish Darrow could go elsewhere), Ganges #5, Ganges #6 and Crickets #6. Last week I got the latest two B&W Simon Hanselmanns in the mail, and he has his second full-colour hardcover graphic novel in a year out this month, too. Love & Rockets is coming out three times a year, with Jaime doing a new cycle of stories about the 80s-era female characters coming back together and finding their way into communication and friendship as grown-ups. Jason Shiga’s DEMON finished its run as one of the best-conceived pamphlet serials ever last year and is now coming out in mass-market paperbacks. There’s a new Pope Hats out in America, though not the rest of the world.

Like, I drastically cut down my purchasing because of finances, and haven’t bought a squarebound comic in a few years*, and am avoiding new-to-me cartoonists, and there’s STILL a glut of good stuff. I had to give up subscribing to Copra because of the cost, but that’s still churning out basically every month. Every month!

GANGES #5, ffs! That came out a year ago and I was only able to get it now, but how many years of re-reading one single issue would it take before that comic has tapped itself out? I’m certainly never going to need to read Batman Vs Elmer Fudd by Nine Different People On A Production Line, published by Sexual Abuser Comics Inc, to feel like this is a barely-acceptable, let alone wondrous and glorious time, for the English-language comics medium.

*except for picking up the run of Paul McGann-era Doctor Who Magazine comics collections in a Book Depository sale last year.

Stray Bullets is a pretty unique comic, you can kinda pick up at any story arc as the time line of the series jumps around from different years. There is a center cast of characters, but you see them at different ages and points of view depending on the story.

long as i'm making lists, here are a few graphic novels that I think are worth reading from the past year or so that i haven't seen come up much in conversation:

My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness by Kabi Nagata (secretly, this is both non-prurient and more about depression than anything)
http://mangapark.me/manga/the-private-report-on-my-lesbian-experience-with-loneliness-kabi-nagata/s2/c1/1

Providence by Alan Moore (possibly the best thing of his I've ever read)
http://www.tcj.com/providence-lovecraft-sexual-violence-and-the-body-of-the-other/

The Ogre Gods v.1 and 2 by Hubert and Gatignol (scanlated and available with a bit of hunting on the web)
http://www.comicsandcola.com/2014/11/gatignols-and-huberts-petit-looks.html

Libby's Dad by Eleanor Davis
http://www.tcj.com/reviews/libbys-dad/

My Favorite Thing is Monsters by Emil Ferris (everything you've heard is true)
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/17/arts/design/first-emil-ferris-was-paralyzed-then-her-book-got-lost-at-sea.html?_r=0

Blast by Manu Larcenet (Deeply disturbing, astonishingly structured and drawn, painfully memorable)
http://www.europecomics.com/serie/blast/

Anyone read the Hanuka brothers Divine book?

Lovely art, not very good writing (by someone not a Hanuka)

Thanks

Check out Loic Locatelli's Pocahontas too

New Alack Sinner collection - the first of two - looks like a mandatory purchase:

http://euro.idwpublishing.com/catalog/alack-sinner/

Hope this and the Corto editions are successful enough that IDW finally bring us Mort Cinder in translation too.

my favorite thing is monsters is really good shit. i said this already though

Ms Marvel and Squirrel Girl really doing the Lord's work for Marvel right now. Seconding Silver Surfer. Black Widow, for Samnee's art. I find Mark Waid's woke dad shtick in Champions endearing but ymmv.

Bitch Planet is good.

DCwise I read Gene Yuen Lang's New Superman, kind've overlooked?

I'm pretty out of the loop re: artsy/independent stuff, but if nothing else it feels like there's never been a better time for translations of Eurocomics.

Artsy/independent work also often proliferates in zines and webcomics rather than in the direct market: over the last couple of years, I've been especially impressed by Scout Tran's Failing Sky, Jae Bearhat and Rory Frances's Little Teeth, Sophia Foster-Dimino's Sex Fantasy series and Swim Thru Fire (her collaboration with Annie Mok), Austin Holcomb's Night Physics, Michael DeForge's Leaving Richard's Valley, and Tillie Walden's On a Sunbeam, all of which germinated outside the local comic store.

heyo

http://thebristolboard.tumblr.com/forgottenmasterpieces

Stray Bullets is much, much better than I was expecting, thanks for the recoomend.

That's great news! People were so in love with it back in the day that the muted reception over its return has been odd.

Based on the covers and Lapham's past work, I was expecting a larky Garth Ennis shoot-em-up, or a Brubaker noir tropefest, so the fact that it's resolutely neither of those things was the first major point in its favour. But, that aside - it's just really well-written and I'm in awe of how brutal it is without descending into cheap nihilism (as is comics' wont).

(I've only read the first six issues, mind.)

...and the way every issue shifts to a different time, but fits together into the macro story - that's just one of those forehead-slapping obvious ideas, I'm surprised it hasn't been imitated more.

(Except Sfar/Trondheim's Dungeon, I guess)

I'd have to think David Lapham is a fan of Love and Rockets. It's not obvious as an influence in that he's aping the Hernandez brothers, but I got to figure Lapham read that series as a teenager in the 80s and it was something that said, yeah I can go this way on this series.

I loved the first two Stray Bullets hardcovers, then for some reason the third one was really scarce and cost close to $100 here, and then went OOP and they never did a fourth so I’m still in 1996 going “gosh I’d like to read the rest of this series”

Ditto!! I have those first two HCs in a box somewhere and never got any further on my first readthrough because I could never find the third for a reasonable price. It was frustrating.

i'm sorry to be a crank but i've always disliked stray bullets and i find the new issues equally unpalatable.

i also find Yang's Nu-Superman to be a missed opportunity and it suggests he's not any better suited for capes and tights than T.N. Coates is... both are overly wordy and relying on awkwardly plodding plots

i will agree on squirrel girl tho'. Soule's Darth Vader book is shaping up nicely as well.

Brubaker's Kill or Be Killed for Image is pretty solid.
https://imagecomics.com/comics/series/kill-or-be-killed

I was surprised as you would be but R Aguirre-Sacasa's 'Chilling Adventures of Sabrina' is good stuff or leastwise the newest issue is... though the art is emphatically bad:
https://www.previewsworld.com/Article/195555-First-Look-Chilling-Adventures-of-Sabrina-7-from-Archie-Comics

New Groo miniseries for Dark Horse is the treat they always are; the full page panels are astonishing work from sergio... how does this guy still manage to do work of this quality?
https://www.darkhorse.com/Comics/3000-070/Groo-Play-of-the-Gods-1

WIth the second TPB out, I'm giving Monstress another shot. I like the Final Fantasy style visuals but the story is so jargon heavy and convoluted it's been hard to really embrace.

Isn't Aragones, like, 112 years old at this point? He's astounding.

aragones and stan sakai are two of comics most underrated creators imo simply because we take them for granted

so i was looking to get a compendium of precode horror comics, my understanding was that Four Color Fear from Fantagraphics is a really good one. Is that worthy of a pickup? are there others i could also get? is there any overlap between them?

Don't know Four Color Fear - is it a Craig Yoe joint? I'm kinda dubious abt that guy, but he def unearths some good stuff.

The one I have is The Horror! The Horror! published by Abrams. Pretty dece contextual notes; more than acceptable repro from comic book pages; some really great artists represented; lots of juicy rare cover imagery; comes with a DVD lol. Only downside I wld say is that some of the stories are excerpted rather than reprinted in full. (Also doesn't include any E.C. but that material is easily available in reprint).