Rolling Comic Book thread 2017

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.

I have fondness for the recoloured reprints in Mr Monster and Curse Of The Weird, some Basil Wolverton reprints and Eclipse/Pacific. They weren't at all faithful but they looked fantastic.

http://cartoonsnap.blogspot.com/2013/10/swamp-monster-by-basil-wolverton-from.html

http://monsterbrains.blogspot.com/2011/03/basil-wolverton-swamp-monster-weird.html

I'm sure the second version was from the Mr Monster recolouring, it's very nice.

In that Image documentary, Marc Silvestri claims that the first Iron Man film saved the comic industry by changing the popular perception of comics. I think he might have been slightly joking when he said "saved" and he did focus on the increased interest in screen adaptations of comics but was there really that big an increase in comics sales?

Comic Books Ordered by Comics Shops in North America (in units)

http://www.comichron.com/pix/vitalstatistics/AM1Units.jpeg

{obviously that doesn't include bookstore and digital sales but certainly the direct market hasn't seen any boom.)

leaving out digital/bookstore/online sales makes it hard to tell if that chart has any meaning in the last decade or so

I assume those recent-ish DC spikes correspond to New 52 and other big crossover events? If so, really illustrates how that frequent-hits-of-nitrous sales model works...

New 52 was Fall 2011, that's definitely responsible for that mysterious spike for Sep '11.
Trinity War/Forever Evil was Fall 2013, surprised it was that successful.

For Marvel, big 2008 spike was Secret Invasion, after which point there are diminishing returns post-Bendis control for awhile until 2012, around the time of Avengers vs. X-Men.
2015 spike was likely Secret Wars.

Nice to see that Image has been steadily rising over the last decade, but kind of sad it stil hasn't reached the late 90s level of success.

Also those aren’t sales, unless I’m mistaken? They’re how many units you’re convincing comic shop owners to roll the dice on.

Just came to my notice: Shiver Selected Tales by Junji Ito. It's a best of.

Out in a week or two

In that Image documentary, Marc Silvestri claims that the first Iron Man film saved the comic industry by changing the popular perception of comics.

Possibly just conflation of comics and the superhero genre at work here?

without the first iron man film, there would be no johnny ryan

DC and Marvel have also played some numbers games - DC offered returnability for the first 4 issues of each Rebirth title (not featured on that chart) so any store with enough of a piggy bank could gamble), Marvel offers extra discounts for meeting thresholds on certain titles they want to push (ie order 250% of a given title for Secret Wars #1 and you get a 71% discount instead of 56%) and requiring match or exceed numbers for things like the hip-hop variants.

Anyone else reading Kaijumax? Latest issue fucked me up proper.

yeah that is absolutely the "feel-bad" comic of the moment

http://www.tcj.com/ice-cream-for-bedwetters/

^ this was, i thought, a pretty good read and hits on some points that have really resonated for me lately about what's different about being a comic reader/collector in 1990 and 2017, to wit:

Now The Saga of the Sub-Mariner seems like an odd artifact because its purpose has been supplanted by technology. Fans can learn Namor’s history on Wikipedia or any number of even more detailed fan databases. It’s less fun, I think, than when all you had was what was on the page and what you could cadge from whatever old back issues were on hand. Maybe ask the guy (almost always a guy) behind the counter of the store if they knew anything.

In that economy a book like The Saga of the Sub-Mariner made a lot more sense. After all, what kid reading about Namor in the late ’80s would ever be able to read Namor’s earliest appearances? The guy has a long history, even if it’s often a dull history. Now I can go online and if the Namor books I want aren’t available legally via Marvel or Amazon, they’re available illegally on a torrent. Or I can read the summaries on Wikipedia. Anyone who wants to learn about Namor, in other words, can find out whatever the fuck they want about Namor at any time.

Marvel used to do books like these more often, and in a world without Wikipedia sometimes they were pretty useful. The Thomas’s dry approach is difficult to stomach in 2017 only because the reader ecosystem that could support books like this – history lessons, essentially – has dried up. Regardless of how boring it may have been I would still have loved this book I was a kid – even though the approach has the effect of erasing the creators whose work inspired the book and built the character. Buckler and McLeod filter Everett and Kirby and dozens of others through Marvel house style, already stodgy in 1988 but still readable. It creates the illusion of continuity between artists working separately across decades at the expense of the artists themselves.

some interesting reflection like in your pull-quote but god the style of writing was terrible

Tegan's voice has definitely wandered in the transition.

I'm loving Blue Planet 2 right now, but I've never figured out how to interest myself in water-based superheroes. Is it the water, or the superhero?

Never been done right

Wally Wood's depiction of Atlantis and the Sub-Mariner gets it right in Daredevil 7 imho, one of the greatest of all Silver Age Marvel Comics.

The Thing/Sub-Mariner punch-up in Sub-Mariner 8 by Roy Thomas and John Buscema is also pretty special, artwise.

thanks for the tip on Daredevil 7! To the torrent jet...

i didn't mind the "you may find yourself" writing style there as a re-introduction to Tegan. ymmv.
he's right about submariner being a lost character. i always thought there could be a good Alan Moore style reboot for him that restyled him as an emissary for the blue. It would explain the whole random violence schtick.

A problem w/water-based heroes (IMO) is that they seem to be able to traverse vast undersea distances in the blink of an eye, as if distance is meaningless in the ocean. They can seemingly just show up on any shore, when needed....

Sub-Mariner's "Random violence schtick" was explained in the John Byrne series as what happens when he's either too long in the water or too long on land. He must balance both sides of his being or some such. It's been a few decades since I read those comics.

x-post

oh yeah! i actually liked that explanation.

don't think i ever read that... it's the bends?

Alas, I don't remember how it worked.

like Aquaman after him, Namor was half-human/half-Atlantean, so it was an interesting "physiological" take on his madness and decent metaphor

I think Namor is really cool but it does seem like not many creators make the most of the underwater setting and I too have been pondering this lately. Some of Everett's early Namor art is lovely and Phil Winslade did a couple of Aquaman issues that really impressed me at the time.

I've been reading around for Aquaman reviews, some say he has incredibly few standout stories and some say the Skeates and Giffen runs are good.

Recently flipped through Spectacular Sisterhood Of Superwomen and it featured Maureen Marine.

https://pappysgoldenage.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/number-815-maureen-marine-i-believe.html

http://gone-and-forgotten.tumblr.com/post/163054973028

I checked out the Marvel Horror Magazine Collection. Reproduction is fine but it's a small selection of stuff, mostly heroes.

I could have sworn there was a bunch of Essential and Showcase books in my nearest comic shop a few months ago but they're all gone.
There is some Savage Sword Of Conan left which I might go for, but it's not the best stuff.

I just can't go for those Warren, Planet Comics and Vanguard Wally Wood hardcovers, too expensive. I'd like to know why PS Publishing stopped doing paperback versions, surely they could have found a way to cater to less wealthy people? Do bigger paperbacks or Best Of paperbacks? It doesn't sound right that they can only do hardcovers.

There was a Fiction House compilation recently but I don't know how much Planet Comics stuff it has. I could read most of this legitimately online because it's in public domain but there's so many blogs like Pappy's Golden Age, Horrors Of It All, Hairy Green Eyeball and Diversions Of A Groovy Kind that it becomes overwhelming and not much fun to browse and try to fit in reading them.
Never heard of John Douglas before but I like his Futura, he gets much better later on.
http://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=27143
I love this site. It's the biggest collection of public domain comics I've seen. Some of the scans are unreadable but there's so much. British girl comics (it just occured to me that British girl comics are totally different from American ones because they weren't just romance, female journalists, nurses and superheroines), Arabic Casper comics and Charlton comics that are just becoming public domain. Forum has discussions of what is coming into public domain soon and links to reprints.

Other than the creative opportunities comics offer, I'm trying to think what keeps me coming back to them that I can't get elsewhere and why I've been mostly gravitating towards silly golden & silver age comics. I think it's the really rich textured inking styles that are less common outside comics and modern comics don't do as much either. I like the crazy ideas in older comics and that they're less concerned about respectability.

Your thoughts on silver age DC like Metal Men, Metamorpho, original Doom Patrol, Unknown Soldier, Sgt Rock, Hawkman, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter etc?

That site looks amazing. Are the "British Girl Comics" in this section?: http://comicbookplus.com/?cbplus=leadingladies

A few more here
http://comicbookplus.com/?cid=270

More female characters under the compilation section too.
http://comicbookplus.com/?cid=1990

I did underestimate the American girl genres. There's more types than I remembered, but some of them weren't aimed at girls, like the Dizzy Dames and Moronica comics, which are kind of astonishingly sexist.

Re: oceanic mainstream hero stuff, was Arion Lord of Atlantis any more than competent? I never read it back in the 80s.

Arion was okay? Had a few moments more than competent but was mostly underwater Warlord.

I like original Doom Patrol, but then Arnold Drake the writer had a pretty unique imagination

Holy moly, just realized Hoopla has 28 volumes of Usagi Yojimbo. I know what I'll be reading all year now...

Katie Skelly's <i>My Favourite Vampire</i> : got into Skelly through the Factual Opinion and her defunct podcast. Felt a strong Osamu Tezuka influence in the art, while the story is some hallucinatory Jean Rollin thing. Thought I was very smart for noticing these influences, then a blurb on the back cover says basically the same thing.

Doesn't that confirm your smartness?

just got the complete scanlated hajimi no ippo... it's AMAZING and beautiful and then i got to book four and it got hella racist

Doesn't that confirm your smartness?

Hmm, it makes my insight less unique? Also my record o not converting simple HTML to BBcode...

I very reluctantly joined instagram because I've got so many bookmarks to people's instagram pages and there's a lot of stuff being posted there exclusively.

Place is joyless to be in for such a popular site. It really isn't a great way to view pictures but it'll be convenient to have the "following" list instead of a ton of bookmarks.
Just like tumblr, people post too much for me to want to go to the update dashboard. I don't think anyone has improved on deviantart's inbox and the way they divide and display content but ultimately I wish everyone used blogger for pictures (but in all these years I've never seen how they deliver subscribed content to you, I'll have to try that now).

Joann Sfar posts a hell of a lot of new little drawings. She's not a comic artist but Jessica Harper surprised me by being there.

This might be the first time I've seen a Marvel or DC artist getting their picture taken with the cast of a film adaptation.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BaMCa2mFl9j/?taken-by=billsienkiewiczart

I'm doing a re-read of Wicked and Divine over the holidays, before the series starts heading to its endgame.

It's definitely in the "admire" rather than "enjoy" column. Does anyone else find that sometimes the dialogue is so allusive (to other events in the continuity, seen or unseen) that it becomes annoyingly difficult to follow? I found with the same with Phonogram - I think I'll like Gillen's hack-for-hire work a lot better than his indie work.

(I mean, "I think I like" not "I'll like")

def feel the same about gillen's work

thirded

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/inkbot-a-monthly-indie-comics-subscription-box#/

^ cool thing