Rolling Comic Book thread 2017

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).

it's this one:

http://fantagraphics.com/flog/now-in-stock-four-color-fear-2nd-printing/

http://fantagraphics.com/images/flog/covers/2011/bookcover_fofear.2.jpg

Looks good - the editors John Benson and Greg Sadowski are both E.C. experts and really know their stuff.

Editorial finesse is pretty important when you consider the comics themselves are p much all in the public domain now (apart from E.C., Atlas (notionally owned by Disney now I guess) and DC comics (tho DC's horror comics were v anodyne compared to 'the good stuff')).

Four Color Fear and The Horror! The Horror! are both very good. The Haunt Of Horror series is the only other multi-publisher/multi-artist book I can think of. There's 5 books so far.

I think Craig Yoe is doing a great job. Some people take issue with the reproduction (still miles better than Marvel and DC reprints) and there was some controversy about one book having a printing error, a missing page or something.

Well worth a look...

http://yoebooks.com/horror_books.php

My only issue with Yoe Books is that their artist focused books aren't long enough. The Bob Powell and Tom Sutton books could have been much longer. I think there was a possibility of sequels but it's been years.

I'd highly recommend the first Ditko Archives book and all the Graham Ingels Fantagraphics collections. Best Of Harvey Horrors is good but expensive.

I actually happened to buy the first 3 volumes of This Magazine Is Haunted today (all the good stuff in the 4th volume is in the Ditko Archives series). I don't buy much of this stuff anymore (they're not cheap) but I was amazed by the colour in some of these. I maintain that most old comics look better in black and white but the non-literal colouring in 50s horror comics can be amazing and in some of the This Magazine Is Haunted stories, it looks like some of the colorists really knew what they were doing and pushes competent drawing into amazing art.

Some examples

http://thehorrorsofitall.blogspot.com/2008/12/secret-of-walking-dead.html
http://creatfeatforever.blogspot.com/2013/12/touch-of-death.html
Bob Powell in this one

Dr Death and Dr Haunt are really cool too.

Those scans have much sharper black than the books I got. Normally I'd prefer sharper line art but I quite like the softer blacks and the way it mixes with the colour in the books.

btw, Tom King is starting a new Mister Miracle book next month and I am very much looking forward to that. He appears to be limiting his workload thus far thankfully.

*Theoretically* that is such a great fit for him, fingers crossed

I'm very excited about this

Marvel just dropped the news that they gave me the reins to make a comic encompassing Uncanny X-Men issues 1-280 into one tight story. #sdcc pic.twitter.com/bEINnmQJRg

— Ed Piskor (@EdPiskor) July 20, 2017

so he's going to ... re-write some old comics?

the majors are so creatively bankrupt

ed piskor? that's awesome!
i'd love to see how he handles it

I think it's not a horrible idea? The way different plot arcs fit together, and the way newer writers rely on plot points from stories that weren't that great.

It reminds me of an article I read about how Stephen King originally thought of his early Dark Tower books as a sketch of a book he'd write later as a more cohesive story. I think he decided a revision of only the beginning from a short story collection into a single work was sufficient.

If nothing else, it gives newer readers a starting point without it being the Readers Digest edition

Not going to lie, I thought KFC/Green Lantern was one of the most fun reads this week.

(Col Sanders gets made an honorary GL at the end for his services to suppressing the Orange Lantern. He offered Larfleeze the opportunity to run a KFC franchise because he has been stealing all the zinger burgers the GLC have been firing into space for publicity reasons. Yes, really.)

ok i gotta read these

let me tell ya, it's no batfudd

Absolutely not, but it is fun.

Anyone else think the Flash's costume is really bad? Jay Garrick's hat is kinda nice but I've always thought all the Flash guys had really dorky costumes.

derf's "my friend dahmer" movie has a trailer; could be good, will almost certainly be depressing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VX8ajObK81A

did not know that was happening

Maybe the trailer is misleading but I thought Derf would feature more prominently

I got Lent's Asian Comics overview last week. As I feared, it talks about way more comics than it shows and most of the pictures don't really grab me. Should still be very interesting though.

Here's his new book with Xu Ying focusing entirely on Chinese comics, cartoons and animation.
http://www.upress.state.ms.us/books/2027

This is very expensive so you might want to wait and hope for a paperback. My copy of Asian Comics was paperback.

http://www.vulture.com/2016/02/stan-lees-universe-c-v-r.html

Nothing most of you didn't already know but I was amused by Lee's Wu-Tang Clan quote and his names for the aborted Playboy characters.