Rolling Comic Book thread 2017

yes, because Valentino came from Aardvark-Vanaheim and Renegade (& al), so knew that indie publishers existed and proportionally paid better, with no interference. his entire "mainstream" career was only about two years?

I meant the shift towards more genres and styles that were different than the founders.

don’t forget the very special issue of Spawn where he met Cerebus

Both issues of Splitting Image came out before Spawn #10 tbf

Leslie Stein and Emily Flake getting good New Yorker placement
https://www.newyorker.com/sections/humor/the-man-with-a-discman
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/04/young-and-dumb-inside

did you miss the gabrielle bell page a couple of weeks ago about taking care of my elderly dog?

(I think it was online edition only but - highly recommended)

I did!
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/adventures-in-geriatric-dogsitting

That's great

Can't remember if I posted this before or someone else.
https://www.comics.org/issue/247718/cover/4/

ha, that ny’er piece is great

birth of the truth bomb!

Been looking at the art of Jorge Zaffino and Nestor Infante, good stuff. Infante did a bunch of daft looking Continuity comics, very 90s but also done quite well.
I like Kaja Saudek but the only thing I can find is a massive book in a Czech online store. I only discovered him recently, but I've always been a fan of his brilliant photographer brother Jan Saudek.

Considering buying a lot of comics I didn't think I'd be interested in again. This could easily be another elaborate form of procrastination, I constantly change my mind about what kind of comics I can get along with. So many things I've bought I just can't be bothered reading after I've had a look at the art, like Tipping Point from Humanoids, which had a pretty solid line-up. I just wasn't in the mood for Akira and was happy to read the synopsis.

Want to buy the first Marvel release in ages, their Horror Magazine Collection. It's not in colour so I don't think they can ruin it.

Whole bunch of Joe Kubert, Mort Meskin, Civiello (never been quite sure what to make of), Arthur Ranson, Russ Heath, Blutch, Mizuki's Kitaro books, Lone Wolf & Cub, Samurai Executioner, maybe some Planet Comics, Mystery In Space and similar science fantasy.

Reason I've been previously put off is because their drawings, taken individually don't stand up to as much scrutiny as I would like. But I've started thinking maybe that doesn't matter as much as the overall feel of their drawing styles.

Got an eye on the Showcase and Essential collections because they're getting a bit more scarce now and these comics might never be packaged so cheap and nice again.
I've never been a fan of most of the old DC artists, especially Infantino, Swan, Boring and Plastino. But I've never read enough of the really crazy old DC comics so I'm hoping Atomic Knights, Strange Adventures, Metamorpho, Metal Men and maybe even Aquaman, Martian Manhunter, Hawkman and Green Lantern will do. Throw in Amethyst (much newer), Sea Devils and a bunch of anthologies. Some decent Kubert, Heath, Ramona Fradon and Nick Cardy in there too.

The reason I'm more likely to try golden/early silver age versions of superheroes with art I'm not crazy about is there's less attempts to make characters emotional in a way the artist can't deliver, less continuity heavy long arcs and there's less attempts to be hip (although I've been told to be wary of Bob Haney in this regard). With the Showcase collections I don't need to worry about bad digital colour.

I'll never read all this and can't afford it all but I'll do what I can.

I don't know if that new horror magazine collection is among them, but there are a number of previous collections of '70s Marvel b&w magazine material that they edited for content (naked boobies: okay in 1977, not okay in 2017). I'll leave it to you to decide whether those alterations ruin the material.

I mourn the essentials line, what a great thing those were. Everyone except colletta looks fantastic without color.

I think shops probably started to hate them. A lot of them (particularly DC's Showcase line) had a very limited audience and just sat there for years, taking up a lot of space. There were times you could tell they were struggling to get rid of them.
Probably the same for Gollancz SF Gateway Omnibus series which stopped a couple of years ago.

I'd love it if they brought them back, I really believe it's one of the best things Marvel ever done. Hardly anyone outside Marvel and DC jumped on this bandwagon. There were Savage Sword Of Conan, Savage Dragon and Fred Hembeck (that one was massive) books, can't remember anything else. Dark Horse made some surprisingly cheap colour omnibuses.

I absolutely hate Showcase and Essentials reprints, cheapo b&w crap is for chumps

Seriously, any dumb a-hole who ain't willing to shell out a measly $75 for a Masterworks collection is unfit to clean my gold-plated toilet.

hey I get all my comics from the library

Some comics suffer for the black and white but Ditko and Colan look superior in that form.

The current Marvel colour reprints look utterly foul (especially Masterworks), so it's not like we're spoiled for good options. If you want the best colour versions it's either buying back issues (could be well outside your price range) or finding decent torrent scans.

If anyone thinks Masterworks look better than Essential books, they're... I have no words for such an ailment.

Wolfman/Colan's Night Force was recently reprinted but again, the new colouring ruins it and I'd rather seek out back issues.

Another book I decided not to get because of the recolour: Winterworld by Chuck Dixon and Jorge Zaffino.

The only Masterworks i own are kirby Thor editions from some years back and they look great imo

*shudder*

I don't regret burning my Masterworks and DC Archives at all. Hideous they were.

Yr nuts

The Man of Tomorrow DC Archive editions i have are wonderful

Maybe I'm nuts, but I'm very far from being the only one who hates them. I mean, some people think the Dark Horse reprints of Warren or the Yoe and PS Publishing reproductions are awful but it's a whole different level from Marvel Masterworks and DC Archives.

I dearly wish I was wrong but I paid a lot for those books, tried to convince myself they didn't look so bad and I'd be even more nuts if I managed to delude myself about it.

Here's some writing about the reproductions
http://digitizingcomics.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/marvel-masterworks-reprint-or.html

http://community.comicbookresources.com/showthread.php?1611-How-do-old-comics-get-reprinted

The recreations on those pretty obviously look like someone used a projector, either focused to enlarge or not, and traced it? I used to play around with doing that as a kid because my family had one and you have to be good at following lines and contours but pre-computer image editing it was a time consuming but easy way to recreate images.

It reminds me of all the fairly thankless work that artists that haven't broken through end up doing, either as interns or in-house at Marvel. I'm sure DC and others have similar roles, but the basic role is churning out all the stuff that goes on merchandise that's either mimicking existing art or recreating stock superhero poses for use in promo materials, t-shirts, coffee mugs, whatever

I had a high school friend who was an intern and ended up doing some of that stuff, but worked as an assistant to an artist who was doing several books. I think his highest profile published comic work, at least that he told me he did, was the cityscape backgrounds for several Ultimate Fantastic Four issues.

Strangest thing about using such disreputable techniques is how much extra work it must have taken. In other comparable art reproduction worlds you wouldn't be caught dead doing this stuff.

Surprisingly there aren't many side by side comparisons. Years ago I scanned some and I wish I'd kept them up. The overpowering solidity of the new colour on the bright white paper really contrasts with the subtler dotted colour on a less bright white.

In one of the comparisons with Kirby+Ayers with super thick lines it actually doesn't look too bad but on an artist whose linework is more delicate, it looks awful, like a person who's just had their teeth over-whitened.

Reading those cheapo B&W collections always felt wrong to me, like it was the pan & scan of comic books. Also especially when you're used to reading manga that was produced and meant to be read in B&W in the first place, even the great Marvel/DC stuff feels strangely incomplete without color. I'd prefer it even with the "bad" color reproduction in the glossy Masterworks collections - though to be honest, it's still more readable than a 30-year-old floppy of such-and-such, dotted on newsprint.

I'm too much of a rube to really notice bad colouring jobs I guess. I own plenty of Essential/Showcase volumes (initial Showcase fever was a great time to be on ILC) but I do think Silver Age superhero comics beg for colour in a way many other comics don't; b&w feels like removing a really essential component of the aesthetic.

I'm not going to argue that any of the reproductions are ideal, but I'm glad they exist because I'm not a millionaire who can afford to buy all of the reprinted issues. And none Marvel or DC's reproductions have been anywhere near as awful as, say, Checker's Supreme reprints or Dynamite and Dark Horse's R.E. Howard reprints. The Big Two's reproductions at least look like they were done by professionals.

(And tbf, the Dark Horse Conan reprints have gotten much better since those eye-gouging early volumes.)

I find the b&w reprints too hard on my eyes - sometimes it's hard to distinguish between picture and text. Also "Ditko and Colan look superior in that form"? - I'll take a look but that's surprising.

Gene Colan even said he considered himself a black and white artist.

I had about 30 of those Masterworks and DC Archives books and if you really care about the drawings, the flaws of those books quickly become apparent.
Imagine your favourite album horribly remixed with previously subtle elements turned up really loud.
One of the most pronounced differences I saw was in the Simon+Kirby Boy's Ranch comics. Beautiful scenes turned to shit.

Here's one Fantatastic Four comparison. The original colour is not nice by any means, but the second is like drinking undiluted concentrate Orange juice or as he says, so bright you feel you'll need sunglasses to read it.
http://www.printmag.com/featured/remembrance-of-comics-past/

I know it's Fantagraphics, Who are among the best in the game and more faithful but the colour in the second Meskin page is just ugly, I'd prefer black and white.

https://ditkocultist.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/original-comic-art-steve-ditko-tales-to-astonish-13.jpg
This isn't going to look much better in colour whether you go with the original colour or take a masterworks shit on it. You'd need to do completely unfaithful colour to improve it.

Masterworks reproduce the inks better than DC Archives, which thicken the inks and ruin the drawings more.
But I've actually found DC are more variable and likely to produce good colour reprints in their other formats. Their Newsboy Legion collections used decent scans.

The Gemstone EC Archives have less overpowering new colour but it's still a bit too solid and they made the colour more literal, which destroys a lot of the effect.
Thankfully the black and white Fantagraphics EC collections taken off, you might reasonably miss the colour but if you think the EC artists look bad in black and white, you're a sick fuck.

Will Eisner's The Spirit Archives are good. I've heard that he made sure they didn't look like DC Archives.

I love the essentials/showcase books and really regret that I didn't buy more of them at the time given that a lot of them are now difficult to find for an affordable price. I guess I just assumed that they'd be around indefinitely? it seems like it was only a few years ago that they were taking up around 60% of the shelf space in my local comic shop.

http://belatednerd.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/monster-pants-rommbu-202x300.jpg
http://www.collectededitions.com/marvel/omnibus/images/TTA1959019001_col.jpg

https://i.pinimg.com/236x/9b/72/65/9b72651846eddd6dacaffb80c7afdd14.jpg
What? That yellow isn't strong enough for you?
http://www.collectededitions.com/marvel/omnibus/images/TTA1959005001_col.jpg

http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/simonandkirby/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2007/02/Astonishing56AfraidToDreamPage1.jpg
Messy but at least it's not this...
http://www.collectededitions.com/marvel/omnibus/images/ASTON1951056005_col.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_BJjJ5EGTBC4/TL04uK5YQGI/AAAAAAAAAr8/3RKcsPZUqSc/s1600/googam.jpg
http://www.collectededitions.com/marvel/omnibus/images/TOS1959017001_col.jpg

Interesting. Yellows aside, I don't mind some of those recolourings. The FF panels, for example: sure, they look bad up against the originals, but without that context I'm not sure I'd notice or care that, e.g., the colour of the sky has turned from yellow to cyan. I'm more bothered by stuff like the "modernised" versions of Daredevil or Killing Joke, where the changes are so obvious they're practically unreadable.

And even relatively new recolourings like The Sandman look uncanny valley awful (even when the originals were pretty garish too).

Imagine your favourite album horribly remixed with previously subtle elements turned up really loud.

I mean the choice here is between that and an edition that removes these subtle elements entirely, so...

I'm just a philistine I guess, since I just dgaf about reproducing the precise look and feel of something that was originally produced as quickly and cheaply as possible for a mass market of children. Things being brighter and crisper doesn't seem like much of a crime to me. I have some original Kirby-era Thor and FF issues and the printing quality is atrocious and they are old and falling apart and faded. By contrast the Marvel Masterworks books I have of the same material are well-made and don't (to my eyes) look like they've been re-drawn wholesale or otherwise butchered or "updated" to a modern look (in contrast to, say, the Man from S.H.I.E.L.D. reprint that was recolored with modern shading techniques and looks like total garbage) .

Like if some clear attempt has been made to reproduce the look and feel of the original work like the Ditko panels above, I'm ok with that. the differences seem minor to me. Certainly preferable to owning a bunch of rapidly deteriorating and expensive original issues.

I think they get the spirit, if not the substance, right or close enough the majority of the time. But the Nick Fury/Strange Tales/SHIELD stuff was such a clusterfuck because Steranko played off the way the color process worked, and the dot textures, and they just kind of flatted the whole thing blindly

guys these things look hideous and you have Stockholm syndrome

I guess describing them as "hideous" implies that the original production jobs were somehow far superior and that seems weird to me. this stuff often looked like garbage when it was printed. you look at an old issue of FF and there's panels where the color separations are a total mess, for ex.

I'm not entirely convinced of the inherent superiority of, say, the medium of duller, coarser near-newsprint quality paper making colors washed out.

That's why black and white is so good.

Post-Joe Simon era Kirby survives the Masterworks approach better than Ditko, Maneely, Kubert, Colan, Krigstein, John Severin and a lot of the more textured 50s artists. If I could find comparisons for more artists I'm sure the difference would be more glaring. It particularly doesn't suit rough looking horror, war and westerns.

Maybe you can see how these pages would have benefited from different approaches.

http://www.collectededitions.com/marvel/mm/atlas/st/images/ST027015_col.jpg
http://www.collectededitions.com/marvel/mm/atlas/menace/images/MENACE001021_col.jpg
http://www.collectededitions.com/marvel/mm/atlas/menace/images/MENACE005009_col.jpg
http://www.collectededitions.com/marvel/mm/atlas/menace/images/MENACE006009_col.jpg
http://www.collectededitions.com/marvel/mm/atlas/jim/images/JIM026022_col.jpg
http://www.collectededitions.com/marvel/mm/atlas/jim/images/JIM027007_col.jpg
http://www.collectededitions.com/marvel/mm/atlas/battlefield/images/BTFLD005001_col.jpg

Accuracy of the colour recreation isn't nearly as important to me as letting the drawings breathe because they are often what gives a lot of these comics any lasting worth, why people spend lots of money to get them. I'm sure not buying them for backstory or the writing quality. For lovers of comic art I can't stress enough how important it is to get this stuff right. It's another sad aspect of the medium that you can't get respectful versions of some of the most important comic art there is.

Personally I'd take better looking drawings on deteriorating pages over Masterworks.

Hey everyone! If you're in the NYC area Jose Muñoz ( of Alack Sinner/ Joe's Bar fame) will be at the opening of his gallery show today - 5 to 9pm - at the Scott Eder Gallery in Jersey City. Saw him speak last night at Parson's and while jetlagged he had a very cool dialogue with Peter Kuper.

I honestly wouldn't know re: most of those artists. I recently checked this out: https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse4.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP._0q2uIOBXz0WMQZmB-dZvgDlEs%26pid%3D15.1&f=1 and thought it was great, but then that's Fantagraphics.

Colan's (color) art in the Steve Englehart/Dr. Strange "Essentials" edition (this: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/512M2-UxcwL._SX322_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg) looked great imo

xp

I'm sure I've said before on here that I like the Essential volumes partly because they remind me of British Marvel Comics of the 1970s, which reprinted the American comics in black and white (often with a grey tone added, and printed at magazine as opposed to comic size). The lack of colour definitely allows you to study the quality of the inked artwork more closely - to see the incredible brush control of a great finisher like Joe Sinnott or Tom Palmer, or to spot the shoddy, corner-cutting work of a bodger like Vince Colletta or Mike Esposito.

A major part of the problem for Marvel in particular is that they did not start to keep good film/stats of their artwork until the late 1960s, so lots of the reprints of key Silver Age titles are produced from second or third hand film that has been extensively 'restored', redrawn, corrected etc. Some of the Essentials have whole issues where no restoration work has taken place and are barely legible as a consequence. So the recolouring - which I agree, is often ugly and inappropriate (ugh those early Marvel Masterwork hardcovers)- is by no means the only problem with regard to fidelity to an original.

My preference would always be for directly reprinting from the printed comic pages, with as little 'adjustment' as possible while still preserving legibility, but really, one's preference has to be on a case by case basis with this stuff.