Rolling Comic Books 2019

I surprised myself by considering getting a (first!) tattoo

oh wow! ok, sorry to snark. that's amazing.

i did enjoy it - can see the appeal of a lil' loki tattoo, even

I've read Wicked + Divine aside from the last arc. I mostly haven't cared much for the story, but I stuck with it because they do some interesting things with the art and comics as a format.

I have wondered if I didn't get on with this comic because I'm just not the target demographic. Wicked + Divine has come up in discussions at a comic book group I go to and someone younger than me said they (and implied that younger people generally) would identify with the characters, or at least be sympathetic to them. The failing for me with this book is that I didn't care about most of the cast (and then most of the characters I connected to were the first to die).

I managed to enjoy parts of later issues once the pre-godhood backstories were revealed a bit more and the creators filled in some of the story gaps (like, why would a bunch of global gods reincarnate in London? ah, I see, because they've reincarnated in different places all over the world throughout the centuries, not just one place). I'll read it through to the end. And I wouldn't discourage other people from reading it, it just didn't land/hasn't landed with me overall.

can strongly recommend the wordless comic TRAP, new on Europe Comics; if the cover appeals to you, the internal art and cleverly executed story is even better.
http://i.imgur.com/iKJIoSN.png

https://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2019/03/17-1/viz-releases-hardcover-the-drifting-classroom-manga-in-fall-of-2019

If you passed up or didn't know about the 11 volumes of paperback years ago. I really hope this is just the start of more. I have complained about the needless expense of hardcovers but somehow manga getting this treatment gives me hope for a bigger reprints project.

How many of these are there gonna be? I started one of these manga reprints (20th Century Boys), bought like four volumes, gave up trying to keep up with the reading and buying. Maybe I'll try again with this, Fourteen fucked me up for life.

I was wondering that. It cant be one volume.

Kate Lacour is great and i am super glad fanta is pushing her now.
https://www.comicsbeat.com/kate-lacour-interview/

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/janstrnad/mutant-world-and-son-of-mutant-world/description
https://stuartngbooks.com/mutant-world-and-son-of-mutant-world.html

Wasn't aware of this until today. Those early issues of the second series really needed fixing, so this is very welcome. Don't know how many shops it will go to.

nice piece from Strnad here about the history of Mutant World
https://www.bleedingcool.com/2019/08/18/riding-coattails-to-success/

Never heard of that! Always loved Strnad tho

Especially Dalgoda and Who’s Stronger?

We did. Back then everyone could read joined-up writing so it wasn't anything we worried about. https://t.co/eZ3hYhZW1w

— Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) October 6, 2019

do people not know how to read cursive anymore?

"this font"

eh it's kind of messy, could have used a second pass. 'remarked' looks like 'resharfeed'.

it's meant to be messy ffs, Klein is communicating story information

the drawings would probably be clearer in autocad, eh DC should redo it

there are so many overwrought bits in Sandman that smudgy cursive is something I just kind of let go of caring about

years later, I still have a few of the more egregious lines stuck in my head. like the entire dialogue about the necropolis guy’s sex life

$45 is a lot to drop on Mutant World for me, but glad it did get funded

Kids havent been taught cursive in... 20 years?

adding “part of the last cursive generation” to my resume

are kids seriously not taught cursive anymore?

They are not. Because it is not a useful skilll.

Hence they don’t have signatures really

They have thumbprints and retinal scans and two-factor authentication, who needs a signature

this seems positive, if insanely priced and unnecessarily superhero focused:

The $30 monthly membership fee pays for the art materials and instruction and entitles the young subscribers to borrow one comic at a time. It costs $5 to keep one. The focus is currently on single issues, but the library will soon add graphic novels.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/02/nyregion/comics-brooklyn-loot.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRKUiJ58uRM

via tcj
https://www.instagram.com/b_w_h_a_m/

i like!

First part of Mutant World is a real downer in parts, some really nasty stuff off-panel. Will leave a bad taste for a lot of people but I was never entirely sure what they were going for.

An obsession with food pops up in the most unexpected manga. Food is a nuisance for me and I'm always suspicious of people who love it so much.

what an odd opinion

I mostly hate food these days.

So many harem manga have food as lovingly drawn as the girls bodies, and a cherishment of eating with other people at a table.

really limits your choice of harem mangas huh

Never really been a fan of that genre, so maybe it was just the few I've seen? I've heard some say that eating scenes are important in Miyazaki films but I actually don't remember any.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Od0XjF8qXos

haha, seen this post recently
https://littleredreviewer.wordpress.com/2019/10/01/manga-and-graphic-novels-about-food-and-cooking/

I also noticed this in the Muramasa videogame, how well all the food was rendered.

Don't know how to feel about all this, but these people seem happy.

I know nihilistic non-sequitur internet cartoonists are a dime a dozen these days, but I like this one

https://instagram.com/yoyorobot

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/_0NhYEqw2Ahw/Su-RTfW007I/AAAAAAAADyI/_IznrUS_7iA/s1600-h/IMG_0003.jpg

Every now and then I look back at this image to see if it's as bad as I remember it. Good example of what I don't like.

The drawing isn’t great, but the writing is completely repugnant. Is it Johns?

I think it is. I'm not really hating on the drawing but not a fan either.

I think I remember that episode of Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie. It was tight.

https://abload.de/img/0br4kzw.jpg

for fuck’s sake

TBF I'm pretty sure most DC comics these days are written in the darkest hours of a blackout bender so I'm sure King (I think that's King) has no recollection of writing those words.

Yup, it's King. I'm a big fan of his but the quality of his varies.... wildly.

it sure does lately, yes

I'm guessing that one page is from Heroes in Crisis?

One thing I think that is different in some of these modern comics is that editorial kind of plans the general plot on some of those big crossover stories. And I think to try to make the plot fit, there ends up being some wacky stretches to tie the story together. This scene looks pretty much par for the course in stuff like JLA: Cry for Justice or that wacky Meltzer mini-series where the Atom's wife is a murderer.

The other type of big mini-series is where you take a story that might work as your usual series arc and then try to force it into some big crossover mini-series. I'd say the old DC Genesis series is like that one and that Daredevil Shadowland crossover was a couple of those type of series.

Heroes in Crisis actually is pretty bad on its own merits, but to be fair it didn't have a huge impact on the DCU and you didn't need to read the spinoffs to get it

By contrast, even though I'm reading Event Leviathan and Batman I'm totally confused about how this whole Year of the Villain thing shakes out (not even considering Doomsday Clock is finally about to end)

Every event is just ridiculous now. I mean the number of books Marvel put out for both War of the Realms and Absolute Carnage is insanely offputting, even for someone like me who alread buys 20-30 floppies a month

Just read the crossover miniseries, if there is one, and the main title it spun out of. Despite it not being the explain everything every issue era, they tend to summarize or duplicate the key points

It’s more irritating when a title gets diverted from a main plot via editorial mandate and you can’t be sure whether the regular story is just going to touch on the crossover junk or it’s a throwaway issue.

DC crossovers are maybe worse than the Marvel ones in that they feel the need to jack with every character’s status quo

in my experience, the dead giveaway is when the issue that’s part of the crossover has a different writing/art team and the regulars are back the next issue post-crossover. just leave it on the shelf!