Rolling Comic Books 2019

I saw a few articles in the comic/pop-culture press reporting on that (one included the full Batgirl page as part of the discussion). A particular panel of Poison Ivy was also being discussed in the same context (I won't mention the specific content of the panel, as it's spoiler-y).

My "takeaway" was that I've seen more sexualized art in comics; but I've also seen, er, less sexualized art. It didn't look like something I'd want to read, anyway.

(for other reasons, artwork aside... but I also didn't care for the art.)

I didn't completely see the furore about the Batgirl page - I didn't think it was any worse than the Poison Ivy or Black Canary ones - but the Lois page, which nowhere seems to making a big deal out of that I read, was just awful.

I've actually been nearly enjoying Heroes In Crisis at the plot level, but the execution is kind of off.

heroes in crisis feels a bit like a geoff johns joint tbh
which is to say, i'm not liking it

King's style has become too self-parodic and decompressed - like he's having his own "overindulgent mid-2000s Bendis" phase.

And I'm not sure having stabby psychopaths and Booster doing Robin Williams in Fisher King is really the greatest way of, er, "addressing mental health issues". (I mean, for comparison's sake, look how great Stan Lee - of all people! - is at portraying depression in FF 51.)

:)

To quote Alan Moore: “None of you understand. I'm not locked up in here with YOU. You're locked up in here with ME.” 🤣 https://t.co/8TCmKNJlkD

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) January 11, 2019

beat me to it

FWIW, Alan Moore said he was terrified that there were actually people out there who thought Rorschach was cool.

— Elitist Dentist-Goer (@agraybee) January 11, 2019

I guess we're only allowed to cheekily quote sympathetic fictional characters now

Given the critical faculties of a public that is probably convinced that AOC will be donning a swirly-twirly mask any day now, I guess so.

Bought a two issue serialization of Kaluta's Carson Of Venus. Why bother serializing a reprint over two issues? For the variant covers probably. I think serializing reprints in floppies is madness in general.

I got a cut out hardcover of Annihilator by Grant Morrison and Frasier Irving last weekend. Irving's artwork is even better than the DC stuff he did with Morrison and some pages seem to be channeling some Bill Sienkiewicz during Elektra Assassin days. It's a fun read, pretty much Grant goes to Hollywood story and the multiverse reacts.

I also happen to be re-reading Valis by PKD and Annihilator has two items both the "download into the mind" and "the creator god was insane, which is why the universe is f-ed up" sentiments pretty much straight from the book. It was a very PKD synchronicity.

Irving's artwork is even better than the DC stuff he did with Morrison

disagree, the almost total absence of backgrounds especially makes panel-to-panel continuity a pain to try and infer

Irving's artwork is a bit different style, he seems to use a bunch more feathery detail work on everything. Some of the pages are also almost designed paintings with the text overlaid including the pages on the godworld and viewing the space station. Those were some of the pages that reminded me of Billy the Sink.

Can't remember if Irving colored his own artwork on the DC comics or not.

I thought it was pretty fun and would read a sequel, if ever made.

Need to track down the last 2 issues of Nameless, which I never got on my pull list. Did not see how that crazy story was going to wrap up in 2 issues at all, it seemed like it was setup to be a longer series to me on the first 4.

I lost patience with Nameless, the body horror stuff was a bit offputting. IMO GM is much stronger at showing the horror/weirdness in the quotidian that going full oogum-boogum-horror.

I kinda hate Irving's art, I'm afraid. Klarion was fine but everything since has Bachalo-levels of unintelligibility to me, and I don't like the way he draws faces.

*than going

I know this is not exactly the right thread for this - do we have a thread for superhero movies that don't have their own thread yet? - but the news that there's going to be a Birds of Prey movie with
* Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn
* Jurney Smollett-Bell as Black Canary
* Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Huntress
* Rosie Perez as Renee Montoya
has brightened my day a bit

Formatting help you lieeeee

i'll put money on that movie never materialising

You don't think they'll release the Birds of Prey movie they're shooting right now?

It's the next The Day the Clown Cried.

I knew that would happen once I heard about the subplot with Jared Leto in a concentration camp.

St Marks Place closing next month
https://www.facebook.com/stmarkscomicsny/posts/1981009038615305

Huh... I lived in NYC at one point, but don’t remember a comic shop on St. Marks.

Seriously?!? That place was my store for like six years. It's very much what I think of when I think of a comic book shop.

so... if i want to give less money to amazon but my LCS is a dumpster fire (I've ordered about a dozen books this year through them that just never showed up) what's a good slightly more ethical source of comix

buying direct from the artists, or from What Things Do, or Wow Cool, or Spit And A Half (though I think he's reducing his operations?), or Emerald Comics Distro, or direct from publishers, or from comic shops that do mail order, or etc etc etc

Try doing that from Australia and you'll be bankrupt in a day.

I pretty much used to use my tax return to clear off my comics-ordering bill for the year, before postage went completely insane 5-6 years ago.

buying Australian comics direct from the artists has pretty much been the only option in Sydney since Land Beyond Beyond closed 20-odd years ago

i looked at those but they're pretty specific to particular artists and labels
looking for more general stuff. maybe i'll just stick to midtowncomics

well you did just ask for more ethical sources of comics w/ no further guidelines! buying direct from the artists is usu. going to limit you to those artists’ comics, yeah

closing entry on the ham fisher/al capp feud on TCJ comes with a solidly intriguing theory on the grit that caused the pearl:
http://www.tcj.com/hubris-and-chutzpah-how-lil-abner-kayod-joe-palooka-and-both-their-creators-came-to-grief-part-9/

Was surprised to find this on spotify btw:
https://folkways.si.edu/al-capp/an-interview-with/oral-history-biography/album/smithsonian
https://open.spotify.com/album/1eWf9BydlQx4uTfH7WodAt?si=bDnVHUCFTCmyy9ga5bpoLA

In December, Viz releases Junji Ito's adaptation of Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human. I had no idea he had done such a thing.

Gahan Wilson is suffering from advanced dementia and needs help. His wife of many decades passed away Saturday and as a result he is going to be discharged from the assisted living facility where they lived.

https://www.gofundme.com/gahan-wilson-team-effort

Speaking for myself, Wilson was the first invasion of my little mind by the Weird - my uncle gave my dad a copy of And Then We’ll Get Him for Xmas when I was 7 or 8 and I imbibed it utterly, terrified and transfixed by a world of bodily instability, disease and mutation which was also, apparently, funny??? God bless this man.

that's hugely sad to hear

I'm reading Uncomfortably Happily by Yeon-sik Hong. Comics artist couple move from Seoul to the sticks and deal with career and money worries, the cold, transportation. The protagonist is an archetypal Indie Comics Dude in a way - self loathing, neurotic, frequently a dick to his wife. But despite that I'm finding the narrative likeable and engaging - also fascinated by the author's choice of doing frequent musical numbers, which surely is not what the medium of comics is best suited to.

that's an interesting book but soooooooooooooooo long.
but it's a biography so he's really gotta makes you feel their pain

Yeah, it's super long. I got through most of it at one sitting because I was waiting for something, otherwise I dunno if I would have had the patience.

That Kirkman related Die!Die!Die! was not very good at all. I liked some of Chris Burhams earlier comics but man this one is gory as he!!. It's definitely trying to go over the top like something written by Garth Ennis, Millar or Hickman have done but with even less nuance.

Also kinda weird that it came out through Image the same time as Gillen/Hans' Die (which I'm liking so far!)

Kirkman is not very good at all

https://www.instagram.com/p/BbpnUgulSSI/
Jeremy Bastian is killing it these days.

Have not finished it, but I liked Outcast pretty well. I've tried with Walking Dead but have never finished the first omnibus. I liked his run on Ant-man, that was pretty fun.

Picked up a volume of the Fantagraphics Disney collection focusing on European artists - this stuff is super interesting to me, having read Disney comics as a kid and never having gotten any kind of explainer of how the system works - there's Italian, Danish and Brazilian writers that I know of, probably there's a ton more. And of course they wouldn't get credit on the comics themselves.

Half-off sale on a hundred books at Fanta (plus some other things, like early-90s postcard sets): http://www.fantagraphics.com/bargain-books/

good heads up

gonna need an issue number here

was this a comic you read while dreaming or are you referring to the issue of Fatale where Tom H and I get iced?

neither! Rookie Moves by N0vember G4rcia


Spurgeon was a nice refreshing voice amid the rest.

gonna disagree with the implication I'm reading here: a major project of Tom's in his life and his work was to highlight and enhance the wide variety of interested, caring, and worthwhile voices that are talking about comics everywhere, all the time.

Perhaps I'm just remembering a specific time when I was mostly around Comics Journal associated circles but I got the impression that he was a lot mellower and less deep into feuds than everyone else. Not to say there weren't a lot of good people, because there was and that community was important to me but that's just how I remember his place in it.

Top of the head, if I try and think of writers that Tom brought into the Journal, it's mild-mannered Chris Mautner, Bart Beaty writing about untranslated European albums, Ray Mescallado getting a monthly superhero column, gentleman Gil Roth... (while the feud-free Spurge himself was adding a Melody-Maker-style two-page spread of opening snark to every issue, and writing things like Shit List! and The Butt-Eye Address by "David Peters")

Agree that he didn't hold or build personal feuds in public, but this was more a function of him seeing disagreement and argument as valuable in discussion of art and labour.

this gave me the inspiration to read Julia Wertz's memoir Drinking at the Movies, which was... sigh.

[...] there are several funny jokes in this, but Christ, the quality of artwork is just so bad.

I’ve never looked at old artwork and been like, this is fine. But luckily I’m also aware that it doesn’t actually matter at all. pic.twitter.com/TEQQTPuRsg

— Julia Wertz (@Julia_Wertz) November 15, 2019

that... is... some regression

You’re gonna plotz if you ever find out about James Thurber

TCJ's Spurgeon obit is up

how mad Dean must have been to work in the same office as a fat person 20 years ago

Borrowed/read the three deluxe Wayward collections. As they advertise, mix of Buffy & Scooby gang with Japanese (and later Irish) mythology / monsters. Took some angles I wasn't expecting, which was cool. Liked the artwork a lot.

Don't know if I'll listen to these episodes but I love this podcast
http://www.scottedelman.com/2019/07/19/mark-evanier/

http://www.scottedelman.com/2019/11/15/paul-kirchner/
http://www.scottedelman.com/2019/11/29/larry-lieber/

Had no idea Lieber was still around.

http://www.scottedelman.com/2019/07/05/lunch-in-l-a-with-comics-legend-gerry-conway-on-episode-99-of-eating-the-fantastic/
Forgotten this one.

I never really got grip on the X-Men so I found this article fun, surprised how many of the basic concepts were unfamiliar to me despite knowing who all the characters are.

https://www.tor.com/2019/12/11/the-future-of-days-past-10-things-disney-could-learn-from-claremonts-run-on-x-men/

I appreciate that she noted the importance of the colours. In my continual assessment of why the characters/worlds appealed, I now think that the colour combinations were often stronger than the other design elements of the costumes.

Still would like to see more discerning reinventions of the stories. Couldn't Claremont do his own X-Men retelling from the beginning?

From hearing some talk up supposedly great unofficial fanfiction, do any of you know of particularly good DC and Marvel stuff online?

twenty minutes about dazzler. i never knew JR JR was such a jersey guy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvzCbPmj1AY

Video not available in UK? Sometimes it seems like there's no rhyme or reason to these youtube restrictions.

suprisingly deep coverage, good video!

i got a copy of Eleanor Davis' The Hard Tomorrow for the holidaze from my mom; it's breathtaking. What a talent.

SyFyWire have published a list of "the best indie comics of the decade" that consists of nine Image comics, one tumblr, one iOS app, and a DC book.

Finishing the last LOEG volume- the points being made are very much not new to those who follow Moore's work, but its stylistic playfulness still is enough to keep me gripped. That bing said, really can' be bothered with those 3D glasses for more than a couple of pages.

I loved the earlier volumes of LOEG but haven't yet got to this one. Partly because I don't give much of a shit about the comic characters he's making use of in the same way I do C19th literary characters. Is it still doing the "lots of unpleasant sex is really hilarious" thing?

It's still horny, yeah. All the other valid criticisms of the series also still apply (fucking Gollywog STILL IN IT ffs, I know Moore means well but god does he refuse to read a room). Did you read The Black Dossier? That's still my favourite, and probably the best summation of the serie's thematic concerns. This one has a lot of super hero stuff but also a lot of characters from spy stuff and weird animal characters that don't come from comics.

I think this is the only volume I haven't read. Black Dossier is great--my one claim to fame is getting a credit for explaining references in Jess Nevins's book of annotations.

controversial opinion: Moore does backmatter/prose breaks better than others and may be the best at it, but I keep getting more bored by these conceptual bits where he bounces between media and just wish he’d write a comic book

Just read the Fantagraphics-published BEST OF WITZEND, which collects some of the worst-written comics I've ever had the bad luck to come across. Luckily it was from the library.

Yeah, that was very much a regretful purchase.

Great art tho!

Oh aye, lovely to look at but it's a big bit of shelf (and cost) that could otherwise have been filled.

I mean, this splash page alone is worth 80 quid of anyone's money:

https://schulzlibrary.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/witzendmra.jpg?w=584

Also think it's interesting that Ditko was heavily involved with the editorial side on the early issues of WITZEND - he was obviously v sympathetic to Wood's desire to retain copyright/editorial independence, as well as being an admirer of Wood's incredible drawing skills.

It's not always about the writing.

I don't think a splash page with two ridiculously long speech bubbles is worth 80 quids, even if the layout is otherwise fine.

he really went full Ditko, there

that splash is amazing - is it all Ditko?

Yep - he had a real golden period after he was newly liberated from Marvel - see also those amazing black and white strips for Warren he was doing at about the same time

Man. Wonder if he'd kept up a style like that through the '80s, his overtly ideological work might have caught on better under direct market distribution?

(I love the fact that his drawing and techniques changed so often, and that switching to doing his own lettering eventually let him integrate it so much better in the polemic work - Tuomas is right that even on paper those rant-balloons would be foreboding - but the inking and especially shading there show how drastically undermined as an artist he was at Marvel.)

Right at the end of the 60s Ditko got very ill and he when he came back - mainly at Charlton - his style had notably deteriorated, even on the creator-owned material, sadly.

This site has 'Collector's Edition', his best-known strip for Warren - again decent page rates, and the opportunity to stick it to Stan Lee, brought out the best in him

http://steveditkostuff.blogspot.com/2019/02/collector-edition-creepy-presents-steve.html

very good!

The Mr A stuff is terrible. Huge slabs of libertarian bullshit text taking up half the page.

Right at the end of the 60s Ditko got very ill and he when he came back - mainly at Charlton - his style had notably deteriorated, even on the creator-owned material, sadly.

Ah / aw. if I'd ever read that I'd forgotten it, but certainly tracks with what I've seen of his '70s and '80s WFH (though I think Shade was good? I bought the first few back when the Milligan series started. Notably created and head-written by Ditko, which no doubt makes a difference.).

Thanks for the Collectors Edition link. Goodwin's adherence to both 1970s prolix standards and Feldstein homage shows how well-planned the lettering placement really is on that Mr A splash, by contrast! Do you mean "stick it to Stan Lee" by putting in more careful work for better money, or that Danforth, with his mustache and grasping insensitivity about art, is intended as a Lee dis?

I thought Gray Morrow's Witzend work was pretty good but there wasnt quite enough to be enticed to buy that. Not enough of the artists raised their game that much.

Is Silver Surfer: Black any good?

Huge slabs of libertarian bullshit text taking up half the page.

― Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison), Wednesday, March 18, 2020 12:36 AM

My comic collection: 98% good art with 90% slabs of bullshit text.

i like that we're so desperate to pretend we're not in the moment that we've gone back in time for this thread

but yes, Surfer: Black is excellent. You're right to make the Ditko connection with Moore.

but yes, Surfer: Black is excellent. You're right to make the Ditko connection with Moore.

(though I think Shade was good? I bought the first few back when the Milligan series started. Notably created and head-written by Ditko, which no doubt makes a difference.)

Oh yes, there are still plenty of highlights post-sixties - Avenging World (his densest, most intense tract where the word/text balloons REALLY go wild), the 'Killjoy' back-up strips in Charlton's E-Man, Stalker (a nice four-issue fantasy series inked by Wally Wood et al), Shade for certain, lots of things. But always the drawing is looser, cruder, than before, the panels larger and less detailed. I almost hate to invoke the phrase 'folk art' but there is a kind of individualistic intensity to Ditko's most engaged work that to seems to me beyond good and evil, left and right, just a unique personal iconography and mode of expression.

Do you mean "stick it to Stan Lee" by putting in more careful work for better money, or that Danforth, with his mustache and grasping insensitivity about art, is intended as a Lee dis?

Mostly the former, although Archie Goodwin wrote a number of variations on the grasping insensitive-exploited artist theme for Warren, and yes, the model is definitely EC. Goodwin and Warren used EC artists on Creepy and Eerie whenever the could, plus Ditko, Colan, Adams etc from the post-EC generation.

I think he was still doing some of his best work for Charlton in the early 70s.

Of his later creator owned stuff I prefer the loopiest things like Crackling Blazer, Missing Man and Mr Quiver. The drawing was a bit more oomph when he did humor. Then there was that ink wash thing he did for Strange Avenging Tales.