Rolling Comic Book thread 2017

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

seems like a very good idea but i feel like i'd need to know more about the curators

I can say I know Fantom Comics (a DC institution for deep geeks & neophyte-friendly too) is a delight, but yeah, not much about who on staff will be making selections

nice little page with their prospective first box https://www.inkbotcomics.com/featured-creators/

not to say there's not room for more in the market, but this really looks like "lets copy ShortBox, but be crappier"

I just got DC's collection of Viking Prince by Joe Kubert. It is recolored with solid filling but it's not too bright and all in all it looks pretty good.

Re: Steranko's politics on alt-right thread. Somehow comic creators being on social media is still very strange to me. You did used to hear weird things about them before internet was huge but I still cant wrap my head around all these guys being so accessible. I wonder what it would be like if I was a young fan today.

sounds like the bad side of it, but they also get unprecedented access to them compared to con meet-ups and letters pages

Maybe part of the strangeness is that aside from comics journal, comics coverage and interviews tended to be very shallow and uncontroversial.

But I actually haven't really seen many mainstream guys talking among themselves. John Byrne could be a bit nutty on his forum (is he still around?)

I read through the first four WicDiv trades recently and wasn't crazy about it either. I couldn't get interested in much of what happens after the first arc. McKelvie's art, though good, is a bit too clean and neat for my taste as well (most character faces are remarkably spotless, and he mostly draws teenagers...); I read a few reviews saying the third book suffers from guest artists, but I actually found them a welcome relief.

there is something about it that seems a little to sterile, but I want to catch up with the newer books when I get a chance

I somehow missed the news that DC had moved beyond furrowed brows and gravely-serious assertions that they'd totally look into these disturbing allegations that they'd already been aware of and ignoring for years to actually firing Eddie Berganza. Clearly, WB execs are the real heroes.

Been enjoying this blog a bit. From the guy who wrote the Regrettable Superheroes and Supervillains books.

What you make of his Gaiman assessment?

http://gone-and-forgotten.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/31-days-of-halloween-90-from-90s-part.html

eh. didn't like. far too reductive imo

Probably, I've found a few statements to be a bit reductive but I think mocking comedy is part of the design of his blog and books.

But the thing that caught me was about Gaiman as one of those people who always talks about the power and magic of stories, which I've never found as profound or interesting as its supposed to be.

Bradbury was one of the only writers I can think of who rhapsodized about that AND was great

And even then not always successful

"Highly literate writer without ultimately much to say" is mean but probably accurate.

The stuff about Gaiman as originator-of-grimdark is nonsense though.