Rolling Comic Books 2019

Collins's Swamp Thing run is pretty much abysmal imo.

Caitlin Kiernan's Vertigo work (she wrote the bulk of The Dreaming with a couple miniseries digressions) otoh is pretty good.

Barker wrote a lot/all(?) of the most recent run of Hellraiser comics from several years back.

I need to read more Lansdale comics, because that first Jonah Hex mini he did with Tim Truman is badass.

Loved Lethem's Omega mini-series, even though I'm not sure what he was going for with that final issue.

I like lethem’s omega way more than the one novel of his I’ve read (as she climbed across the table)

Weirdly the comic it most resembles is city of crime, the lapham batman book (but for spoilery reasons)

Ha x-post, the spoilery reason was to do with that last issue

all the lansdale jonah hex stuff is really fun imo

Related: an anthology of prose by comics writers
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?284814

Even if we put aside Gertler's actively repellent design preferences, I can't imagine that standing up to https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2037136.Words_Without_Pictures

Lethem's Omega is good, possibly aided by having a cartoonist draw it.

Barker wrote a lot/all(?) of the most recent run of Hellraiser comics from several years back.

All of those have other writers credited beside him, so he may not have been doing any hands-on comics writing, even if he worked on it month-to-month.

Other comics writers better known for prose works: ...Harlan Ellison... Any good comics in there?

The entirety of Ellison's credited scripts are:

- A Batman: Black & White backup 8-pager in 2001
- Three pages of X-Men: Heroes For Hope in 1985
(one, two, three - Stephen King and "George Martin" had 3pp apiece in this, too)
- And a Batman story that was commissioned in 1971, for which Ellison turned in a title page and fourteen blank pages in a manila envelope in 1981. (Fifteen pages saw print in 1986, eight years after the editor had left the comic.)

Ellison was a joke

Didn't Ellison also write an issue of Hulk? (Possibly in collaboration with someone else?) I remember seeing his name in the credits in one of those microverse stories of the seventies.

Oh yeah, it was The Incredible Hulk #140, though apparently Marvel only commissioned the plot from him, and Roy Thomas did the scripting.

https://static0.cbrimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/u3-20-094-3.jpg

A friend of mine began a review of (useless Dark Horse anthology comic) 'Harlan Ellison's Dream Corridor' with "Not, as you might have imagined, Harlan Ellison contemplating his ideal hallway..." - and Ellison actually rang up the editor to complain about the review. Amazing that he didn't have better things to do.

That reminds me of a friend explaining that there was a band on his college campus called Godot. Their fliers said something like, "Have you been waiting for Godot? Wait no longer!"

pretty sure they came up with the band name just to make that joke

Harlan Ellison was a pain™ in the hole®.

here's two old men bitching
http://www.tcj.com/the-harlan-ellison-interview/

one of them is 24; both of them had much more curmudgeonliness to discover after that

Thatsthejoke.jpeg

I kno but other ppl scrolling might not have

He seems to have a sole writing credit on Phoenix Without Ashes, Chocolate Alphabet, some Heavy Metal issues and maybe some other stuff, but my curiosity wont go that far.

Forgot to mention Richard K Morgan, done a bunch of Black Widow and Crysis.

He seems to have a sole writing credit on Phoenix Without Ashes

An TV pilot teleplay from 1973 that he Smithee-ed when it was produced as a series, which was adapted into a novel by someone else in 1975, which in turn was adapted into a comic by a different someone else in 2011. The teleplay has been in and out of print since possibly February 1975.

Chocolate Alphabet

26 one-page prose short stories that were written in public on a typewriter in a bookshop window & hung up to be read by passers-by as Ellison continued to write, printed in typeset in The Magazine Of Fantasy & Science-Fiction in 1976, and collected in Ellison's Strange Wine in 1978, before being printed in hand-lettering by Larry Todd on Last Gasp.

some Heavy Metal issues

"How's the Night Life on Cissalda?" - prose story printed in the paperback anthology Chrysalis in 1977, reprinted in Heavy Metal November 1977, collected in Ellison's Shatterday in 1980, Datlow's Alien Sex in 1990, etc.

"Croatoan" - prose story printed in The Magazine Of F&SF in 1975, collected in Ellison's Strange Wine in 1978, reprinted in Heavy Metal September 1978, analysed in King's Danse Macabre 1981.

"Flop Sweat" - prose story written in six hours to be read on the radio in 1977, printed in Heavy Metal March 1979, collected in Ellison's Shatterday in 1980.

"Santa Claus vs. S.P.I.D.E.R." - prose story printed in F&SF January 1969, collected in Ellison's The Beast Who Shouted Love At The Heart Of The World in June '69, reprinted with new introduction in Heavy Metal December 1979.

"Fear Not Your Enemies" - two-page essay about John Lennon's shooting getting more press than other famous Americans shot that day and gun control maybe being something the US should look into, published in HM March 1981, collected in Ellison's Sleepless Nights In The Procrustean Bed 1984.

but really, if you think about it, each letter of the alphabet is a pictogram, which we are reading in sequence, so words are basically comics etc etc

I always thought Jerome Charyn's collaborations with Boucq were considered the gold standard as far as prose writers scripting comics go (never read 'em myself).

Ikki Kajiwara, writer of iconic late 60s manga like Ashita no Joe and Star of the Giants, wrote the novel that Takashi Miike's film Big Bang Love, Juvenile A was based on.

I think Tom DeHaven has written a few comics, I remember liking a short he did for RAW drawn by Richard Sala.

Tom Veitch has written novels and poetry. His collaboration with Greg Irons in the 70s produced some good, if gruesome, comix.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/dc-closing-down-vertigo-imprints-1220225
They started Ink and Zoom less than six months ago!

Don't fret, DC being DC, they'll probably reinstate the lines they cancelled after another six months have elapsed. Or at least some equally clueless + dipshitty variation thereof.

Ha, didn't realize this was a thing but of course it is: http://www.hasdcdonesomethingstupidtoday.com/

Just read Petit (Ogre Gods Vol. 1) and wow.
Is there some kind of weird French comics tradition of stories about incredibly scary giants

And so now, less than a week after shuttering Vertigo and streamlining their sub-imprints into three age-delimited lines, DC announces that Joe Hill will be running his own Vertigo-esque sub-imprint under the mature readers Black Label (a sub-sub-imprint, if you will). This is definitely the work of people with a clear vision and a firm hand on the wheel.

it's impressive! DC did similar shit back in 1975 if i recall correctly.

it's honestly a shame because i liked the Black Label imprint idea - out of continuity, well known creators, often magazine format limited series

Oh, Black Label will apparently still exist. It will just be housing the forthcoming Hill House line (as well as whatever lines will in time presumably be nested within that line). They're simplifying things, do u see, I cannot possibly fathom what part of this organizational structure doesn't make sense to u.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/comicgeeks/comics/covers/large-4202640.jpg

IN ORIGINAL LOOSE-LEAF FORMAT!

I'd been wondering about the origins of the loose-leaf format.

Recommended investment: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/beehivebooks/laab-the-art-newspaper-powered-by-the-radical-imagination

The English language edition of Maggy Garrisson from SelfMadeHero is the best hunk of comics I've read in quite some time, and the best European homage to Engerland since Jacobs' The Yellow M:

https://www.selfmadehero.com/books/maggy-garrisson

wow, Lewis Trondheim!

yeah, i fucks with anything he or anyone from l'association does

From a while back, but I re-read Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #31 - the one-shot story where Nancy and Doreen get stuck in hypertime - gotta be one of the best single issues I've read of any comic in years. Such a wonderful series.

Yeah, Squirrel Girl is great. Still haven't totally understood if it's getting cancelled or if the creative team just decided they were done and Marvel went "well, no point in carrying on the title then". If it's the latter that's a bit of a paradigm shift for a Big Two title, no?

She's carrying on in Marvel Rising, I think?

And I think it happens more than one might think - Young Avengers, if I remember right, was also "well we've done what we came here to do"

Also Erica Henderson left on interior art a little while back, still doing covers. (She's doing that Assassin Nation mini at Image right now). The current artist is fine, but definitely feels a little weird since she's essentially the co-creator of this version.

I guess Sandman was cancelled after Gaiman finished?

DC made it a point to "respect" him (true or not, i don't know) by not giving his Sandman/Dream/etc. to any other authors without his permission. They got his blessing for that line reboot recently iirc

I wonder if after the original run was finished, if other writers would be too intimidated by the idea of following Gaiman?

was thinking about what i still read from DC with any interest this year and came up with:

- Action/Superman - Bendis' schtick is starting to wear thin and I explicitly don't care about whatever this LEVIATHAN thing is supposed to be about but when they're not nattering (b)endlessly, the characters feel refreshed/classic/eager to please enough to make these fun reads for me

- Batman - With the fake wedding done, the current WAY too long running storyline has been the moment where I've soured on King's (generally impressive!) run, especially the at-least-twice-taken choice of scripting a single voice interior monologue and fluffing it with pin-up art for a filler issue. I'm increasingly sensing that King was done with bats at around issue #50 but they've made him an offer he didn't want to walk away from... maybe he's gonna do some writing work on the movie? Or they're gonna incorporate some of his themes and they want him as a continuity supervisor or something? In any case, it's been cold for a few months, but I still open a new issue hopeful.

- Flash - The immediately-happening "Year one" reboot they're doing has been surprisingly enjoyable. NB: I am a sucker for the origin stories but my interest often fades once the nostalgia's gone. Only four issues along though; so far, so good.

- Green Lantern - It's everything I'd want a sci-fi police procedural by Morrison to be: arcane, melodramatic, casually clever, obsessive in detail, fun to read in batches of three or more. I would recommend the first trade more or less unreservedly.

- Wonder Woman - G Willow Wilson is a good fit on the book. I need to do an 8 issue reread and see if she's stringing together a good long form story but she's doing well on an issue by issue basis.

And frankly that's it! I think Marvel has a much higher hit ratio at the moment which i could capitulate if asked.

Not for nothing, but I would be inclined to take the various Vertigo/Sandman offshoot books on if only anyone could recommend them. I'm not exactly dying to leap into a new series since they're canceling the imprint; it's off-putting and unclear to me if the current lineup will be folded in or canceled or re-solicited with new creative teams or?

ANYWAYS anybody reading: Books of Magic, Dreaming, Goddess Moon, House of Whispers or Lucifer?

My understanding is that the Sandman Universe and Young Animal titles will be the only surviving ongoing mature readers titles at DC and that they'll fall under the Black Label banner until some WB exec or another makes a different decision on the fly.

I've been buying the Sandman books but I haven't read them yet. Every several years, I do a readthrough of all the related material from Moore's Swamp Thing through like late-period Hellblazer and genuinely love a lot of it, so I want these new books to be good. But I've avoided reading them because I'm afraid that they might not be good. Or at least not what I want them to be. Maybe it's time to make the leap. For you, forks.

I wonder if after the original run was finished, if other writers would be too intimidated by the idea of following Gaiman?

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Monday, July 15, 2019 8:38 AM (fifteen hours ago)

oh yeah, this DEFINITELY would have been the case

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Dreaming,%20The/16900.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Witchcraft-%20La%20Terreur/215418.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Destiny-%20A%20Chronicle%20of%20Deaths%20Foretold/91151.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Dreaming,%20The/54710.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Sandman%20Presents,%20The-%20Deadboy%20Detectives/153953.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Dreaming,%20The/214272.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Lucifer%20(Vertigo)/106091.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Dreaming,%20The/215667.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Sandman%20Presents-%20Petrefax/244535.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Little%20Endless%20Storybook,%20The/194581.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Dreaming,%20The/82313.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/D/DC/S/Sandman%20Presents,%20The-%20The%20Furies/295292.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Sandman%20Presents,%20The-%20Thessaly-%20Witch%20for%20Hire/224911.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Girl%20Who%20Would%20be%20Death,%20The/197110.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Sandman%20Presents,%20The-%20Everything%20You%20Always%20Wanted%20to%20Know%20About%20Dreams-But%20Were%20Afraid%20to%20Ask/247999.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Dreaming,%20The/206262.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Sandman%20Presents,%20The-%20Merv%20Pumpkinhead,%20Agent%20of%20D.R.E.A.M/268638.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Death-%20At%20Death

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Dreaming,%20The/10783.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Sandman%20Presents,%20The-%20Bast/9405.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Sandman%20Presents,%20The-%20The%20Thessaliad/54926.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Dreaming,%20The/138090.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Sandman%20Presents,%20The-%20The%20Corinthian/259315.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Dreaming,%20The/86290.jpg

Point off for missing the Thessaly miniseries - point restored because the Jeff Nicholson Dreaming issue fucking rocks.

xp okay you're in the clear, we can probably stop short of 'every cover of the Dreaming'

(each of those is the first issue of a separate commission)