Rolling comic book thread 2018

it'll be interesting to see what Olivia Jaimes does with Nancy's aunt because the Gilchrists seemed a little too into doing a cheesecake thing

AGES ago Blount posted a Gilchrist-era Nancy strip to ILM where it was Nancy confused because her cheesecake had taken her to a Rock concert but there was an orchestra and turns out it's because it's THE MOODY BLUES.

Also really into respecting our troops/hating the kids these days.

Oh man, now I really want to create a comic strip about kids from the perspective of someone who makes almost no effort to hide their obvious disdain for children.

Got the X-Men: Grand Design trade by Ed Piskor. As much as I loved Hip-hop Family Tree, this one is a bit of a disappointment. The art and presentation are amazing, but the story is summarized to such an extreme degree that it is nearly incomprehensible.

Thesis: there is something wrong with Erik Larsen's head.

https://www.bleedingcool.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/SavageDragon-233.jpg

going to have to agree with Moodles, there’s just some element of joy missing from it. the minor changes and summaries somehow make it less good, where much of the history of the x-men has been in retelling or reflecting anyway

not as fun as HHFT, but the history of X-Men itself is so crazy that I admire what he did with it in condensing it and making his own revisions

the art is a lot of fun, though!

agreed! but his art style clearly suits the material of HHFT better

The next volume is coming in July. I'd love to see him continue to plug through the entire increasingly-convoluted mess (a mess which I dearly love).

He’s got to improve on Onslaught

there are four more issues / two more volumes planned afaik

he said it takes him six months per issue, so hopefully by mid 2019 it'll all be out

Just read Green Lantern, Earth One, Vol. One. Pretty good! Co-written and drawn by the guy who does Invisible Republic (which I'm guessing I should also read now). Actually made me give a shit about HAROLD JORDAN for the first time in decades, though he's still kind of generic at his core.

As a Comics Journal article pointed out recently, Hal Jordan is the ultimate narc: a cop AND a soldier.

Wasn't that effectively the basis for GL's frenemy-style conflict with radical/revolutionary dude Green Arrow, back in the '70s?

So this Spider-Man podcast just described someone as “what’s his name, that crazy bald guy with the magic,” and I thought “Mysterio.”

And then he went, “Grant Morrison.”

Now I have a whole new take on Mysterio.

— Kurt Busiek Resists (@KurtBusiek) April 23, 2018

To tie that together, I believe there's a rumour that GM's the new ongoing writer for Green Lantern. Which could work! I've disliked most of his work since Batman ended, but he's never had a bad ongoing run, as far as I can remember. (Authority doesn't count.)

Is it just a rumor? I thought I saw a news item about it the other day. Which, if true, goddamn you for dragging me back into the DC books, Morrison.

The photo of Bendis in the back of this month's issues has been bugging me what it reminded me of and I've finally got it - it's Harry Shearer in For Your Consideration once he hits the publicity circuit before the Oscars.

I don't know how big a 'get' Bendis is for DC, really. Even if you generally dig the thing he does (which I mostly do, when he's on), he's been phoning it in for the past couple of years. I mean, maybe he's been bored with Marvel, I dunno.

I know that "angelpaws" in a Marvel comic was months ago but... the only piece of ILX lore I really want to see out in the world is "thassa noice Vageen".

For the first time in about 30 years, I have a pull list at my local comic book store. God help me.

thanks to FCBD and a lift, I learnt that a shop that's moved an hour and a half away is really good now

the one half an hour's walk basically sells Marvel & Image and roleplaying stuff, but is clean

This sounds good for any London ILC-ers

http://www.jewishmuseum.org.uk/asterix

I didn't know Goscinny was Jewish! Both my Asterix and my Jewish nerdery have failed me

TCJ to the rescue yet again! I learned like thirty things about Goscinny reading this, starting with his Jewish heritage:

http://www.tcj.com/french-and-frisky-the-man-behind-asterix/

Thanks for that, really good piece. Although arguably Asterix had already peaked at the time of Goscinny's death, his passing at just 51 still feels like one of comics' greatest losses.

Hoping to get to that Asterix exhibition when I'm down in London in July - have never been to the Jewish Museum either, so that will be interesting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Asterix_volumes

In the UK, the back covers didn't list the books in the correct order, so I've never thought about Asterix books having a set running order like Tintin.

But still - Goscinny's run of ten books in six years (!) is a pretty spectacular imperial phase:

1965 Asterix and Cleopatra
1966 Asterix and the Big Fight
1966 Asterix in Britain
1966 Asterix and the Normans
1967 Asterix the Legionary
1968 Asterix and the Chieftain's Shield
1968 Asterix at the Olympic Games
1969 Asterix and the Cauldron
1969 Asterix in Spain
1970 Asterix and the Roman Agent

When I was a kid I fooled myself that Uderzo's later stuff is just as good as the Goscinny volumes, despite my father's grumblings. But looking at the stuff coming out now - admitidely more from a leafing through volumes pov than actually sitting down and reading - it does seem so inferior.

I watched a few eps of Goscinny's tv series. It's on YT, though w/o any English subtitles. Really enjoyed the one about a group of businessmen going to lunch to "discuss business" and just getting progressively more drunk and stuffing their faces in food.

Oh, I've never heard of that - you got a link?

Of the Uderzo stories, I think The Great Divide is on par with the Goscinny books (perhaps the English translation helps), Black Gold and Magic Carpet are fun but dumb, and the rest are disasters.

I've not read any of the new ones, but they seem to follow on from the Uderzo "more is more!" template, and the art seems grotesque in a way the classic books never did.

Yeah, don't they have aliens in them at some point? smh

First episode: http://youtu.be/pWarqUINgNk

I have read the new ones - agree that the art isn't quite 'right', but the scripts are generally better than the Uderzo-written ones, and the second one in particular - The Missing Scroll - actually quite effectively nudges the series out of its narrative comfort zone.

That list of Goscinny's 'imperial phase' really is remarkable - especially when you consider he was also writing some superb, and quite different, Lucky Luke volumes at the same time (I like Iznogoud too, but it's not in the same league as the other two series).

I'm fighting the horrible impulse to start contributing to the Hellboy comics wiki

Chuck OTM re the Uderzo volumes

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/11/nyregion/the-sistine-chapel-of-comic-strip-art.html

my mind is kind of blown

Mr. Jaffee, who couldn’t precisely recall what he drew in ’76, addressed the wall’s value wryly. “The scribblings on the caves in France also became more important in recent times than they were in their own times,” he said.

Al is still insanely in character at a ripe old age

Been quiet lately. Aside from Superman: The Final Last Stand, Power Pack: Retribution and Squirrel Girl: The Requiemening, anything interesting lately?

i think i know what the first one is, but what the other two

They're all fake. I was just trying to imagine the daftest titles I could. Angel And The Ape: Revelations, Paste Pot Pete: Evolution, Woozy Winks: Redemption, Snapper Carr: Exodus, Gay Ghost: Dark Awakening, Bouncing Boy: Rising, Devil Dinosaur: Defiance, Willie Lumpkin: Devastation, Newsboy Legion: Absolution etc...

but who doesn't want to see the Dark Awakening of a Gay Ghost?

They renamed him Grim Ghost. No joke.

Been quiet lately. Aside from Superman: The Final Last Stand, Power Pack: Retribution and Squirrel Girl: The Requiemening, anything interesting lately?

oh fuck yeah, Non is storming, Hanselmann has a new mini, I went to FCBD for the second time ever* and picked up several giveaways were actually fun & interesting, plus (in sales) a MariNaomi on Retrofit that I didn't know, and a Bob Levin prose novel. No Better Words by Carolyn Nowak on Silver Sprocket is the best new single issue I've seen this year. Found it in a comic shop, but Blocked is the first kickstarter-funded themed anthology I've read that isn't 72% trash (and unlike, say Spike's, doesn't consistently suffer gutter loss). The new Daygloayhole #1 turned out to be mostly a reprint of the old Daygloayhole #1, but Passmore's profile has risen a lot since then and what the heck, my copies are on another continent. I haven't even re-read Pope Hats #5 since I picked it up last year, but the Young Frances collection is out there and is unlikely to have turned shit by getting between hardcovers. Jen Wang's The Prince And The Dressmaker is a surprising delight for :01 YA. The material in Mudbite is slight (appearing to be two dream comics), but FFS the first Dave Cooper comics in...fifteen years? can't be sneezed at. I wish there was more drawing-qua-drawing in Bizarre Romance, but it's worth checking the range of approaches used. Picked up the first offset trade and two riso minis of Band Vs Band at VanCAF on the weekend, and the story is... not there yet, but the design and colour pallettes are g--o-r-g-e-o-u-s. Was also thrilling to see that Colin Upton is still out there doing real actual $1 minis (lotsa ppl's minis were $5-10) - picked up three 2018 newies.

*the other time was to get the issue of Langridge's Thor romance that hadn't been printed in the cancelled run.

ooh and there's a new L&R out this week, and the new Karl Stevens GN

http://www.comicsreporter.com/images/uploads/lnr05bottom_thumb.jpg

I might get Mudbite. Could swear I seen Cooper say he didn't think he could still do lengthy comics anymore, but that was maybe 5 years ago.

Last thing I got was one of those Bastien Vives adult comics which will probably never get translated to English.

https://www.blackgate.com/2018/06/13/two-count-em-two-nazi-robot-t-rexes/

More funny golden age silliness.

Some poor bastard bought $18k wholesale in Batman #50 (~10k copies) because of the promised wedding that's not happening.