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A weekly thread for people to share what comics they've been reading. Whats good? Whats not? etc
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My reading from the past few weeks:
“Tekkonkinkreet” by Taiyo Matsumoto. This is my second Matsumoto comic, after having greatly enjoyed “Gogo Monster” a couple of years ago. I absolutely love the artwork here, which is very different from “Gogo Monster”: fluid, dynamic and stylized in a way that brings to mind Brandon Graham and Jamie Hewlett, with hints of José Muñoz in the distorted look of some of the faces. I really can’t overstate how good it looks; every single panel is awesome! I love how cartoony it gets, especially in the backgrounds. I can’t get enough of these cityscapes full of buildings composed without any straight lines; it makes the city seem so alive. In short, this is one of the best-looking comics I’ve read. As far as the story’s concerned: it took about 100 pages for me to warm up to it and get a sense of what it was going for, then after a while of being very into it, towards the end I lost track of the plot, especially the characters’ motivations and relationships to one another, so the (melo)dramatic finale didn’t really land for me. That said, I think I probably did the comic a disservice by reading it in bits and pieces over the course of several weeks, while I was very busy, so not in the best headspace to get immersed. In any case, I’ve left it with an overall positive impression and a strong desire to read more Matsumoto soon. Plus I think sooner or later I’ll give this a re-read, to see if I can get more into the story the second time through.
“Red Colored Elegy” by Seiichi Hayashi. Another comic with absolutely gorgeous artwork. Moreover, this one does some really cool formal stuff, using interesting and original visual techniques to tell its story. The story has a premise that appeals to me a lot, followingthe deterioration of a toxic relationship between a young aspiring mangaka and his girlfriend, who works in animation, and who has sacrificed her social respectability by choosing to cohabit with her boyfriend in 1970s Tokyo. I’m not especially into art about artists, but I have a lot of time for pessimistic narratives about shitty people and doomed relationships. I have to admit that although I appreciate the experimental storytelling, it sometimes acts as a bit of a barrier to me connecting with the story and characters as much as I’d like, but nonetheless I found this a very worthwhile read, and it’s another one that I think I might connect with more on a second attempt.
“Megahex” by Simon Hanselmann. The first half of this book is mostly made up of very short comics that focus almost exclusively on humour, largely revolving around Megg and Mogg bullying poor Owl. Some of them are funny, but they largely lack the emotional depth I associate with Hanselmann’s work, with little effort to flesh out the characters. However, about halfway through the book, the quality switches up a gear, with the strips getting a bit longer and exhibiting a greater sense of coherent chronology, and Hanselmann introducing more exploration of his protagonists’ psychologies and relationships. There are still plenty of laughs, but by the end it’s become exactly the mix of black comedy and drama that I want from Hanselmann’s work. I’m now fully hooked and itching to get my hands on more!
I recently reread Megahex and was surprised by exactly that emotional shallowness -- I didn't realise/had forgotten how far Hanselmann had come since those early strips
Blankets - by Craig Thompson
Have you ever finished a book, or any media for that matter, and found you have no idea how you feel about it afterwards? This is me, with Blankets. It's taken me a few weeks to get through this. I spent the first two thirds of the book honestly really disliking it. I am not naturally inclined to emotional introspective autobiographical works like this, but have been giving them another go since reading Kate Beaton's Ducks last year (and finding it very worthwhile). I am not going to pretend that the final third of the book made me fall in love with it, but it did for me at least, let me see the quality of the work.
There is raw, familiar, human emotion here. The way the author describes his young love in particular is achingly familiar and heartfelt. The tenderness and softness he can portray here is really quite good. His recounting of experiences through the lens of Christian dogma and those limitations is insightful and challenging.
And yet... I remain unsure. I can't pretend I enjoyed this book particularly, neither claim I found it impactful enough to push it over that edge of "Well I didn't enjoy it per se, but I know it was important". (For instance, I think Maus is an excellent, powerful, important work that most anyone should read at least once - but I wouldn't say I enjoy it, as such). Yet I can't deny Blankets did touch me at times and for the moment at least, left an impression. Whether that impression stands the test of time is yet to be seen.
Still, it has given me respect for Thompson's work, and I've added his other works - Habibi and Carnet de Voyage to my list to check out from the library, perhaps one of those will gel with me more easily.
Three - by Kieron Gillen et al
Even with my fondness for history, I've been on something of an unintentional historical-setting graphic novel bend, continuing here with the story of three Helot slaves trying to escape their Spartan masters in ancient Greece.
I really enjoyed this quite a lot. It manages something of an authentic feeling, and its quite clear that the authors love the setting and period. What I really liked in this, was the page-by-page walkthrough at the end of the book describing why they had depicted something in a certain way, and explaining any deviations from good history and why they felt inclined to make them. It's a really nice addition that helps alleviate any concerns I had in my mind. Additionally, there's eleven pages of interviews with Professor Stephen Hodgkinson, the historical consultant for the book, and a well regarded expert on Spartan history. Again, this explains the logic of the creative choices and liberties taken, and is also just a nice little bit of extra educational history.
The story itself is competent and engaging, arguably a somewhat simplistic tale of slave rebellion, but it works. The brutality of the Spartan system is well portrayed here and the sharp art and broody colouring lends itself to the grim mood of most of the book. I just really rather enjoyed it.
This week I finished Locke&Key and found it absolutely marvelous. The last arc kept me on the edge!
I am half way through Daytripper, I’m enjoying it a lot. Loving the concept.
Locke&Key is incredible. One of the best series I’ve read.
I'm also re-reading Locke & Key now because I (out of the loop me) just found out about the Sandman/Locke & Key crossover.
My two favorites together!
The Old Geezers by Lupano and Cauuet. Entertaining with good art. One striking thing for me about this series is its indefiniteness, the feeling that it can go anywhere and be anything, a sensation I haven’t felt this strongly since the stylistically unrelated Chew. L+C envision these characters as anarchist-rebellious-bohemians but old, which empowers them to do whatever the hell they want because there are no consequences. Their concerns are the same things as younger heroes (sex, old affairs, sticking it to the man), but their age lends a comedy to it all because we inherently think of the lives of old people as unserious and meaningless. The age thing has a way of making old tropes feel fresh, though. For example, the plot of the first story involves a character unwittingly sharing personal information with an enemy. In literature this would be done as a fever dream or a letter falling into the wrong hands, but here the guy has dementia. Voilà! It’s believable! So far, so good; I’ll see where goes.
The House by Paco Roca. A slice-of-life story about some children reflecting on their deceased father as they try to fix up his house for sale. The story is good as it goes, since the themes of sibling rivalry and the child’s never-satisfied demand that their parent be boundlessly loving and infallible in every way never get old. Roca’s art is remarkable, though. I’m impressed at how good he is at drawing subtle changes in pose, to the point that the reader effortlessly fills in the gaps between panels with movement. Perhaps it helps that he uses a clear delineation that makes his postural mastery obvious to the reader, but everything looks so natural and fluid.
The 7th Voyage of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers by Shelton and Sheridan. I was kinda disappointed by this one. I thought it was weird when Fantagraphics began their reprint series with later comics from the 80’s, but now it’s clear to me that Shelton was a much, much better writer in later years. The main story here, of a trip to Mexico, is badly plotted compared to, say, the later Idiots Abroad arc, and relies heavily on the Deus-Ex-Machina antics of a Don Juan figure straight out of Carlos Castenada. I guess this is meant to be comical but it got more chuckles from me than real guffaws. I remain frustrated that Fanta insists on removing the Fat Freddy’s Cat basement strip and printing it separate. It doesn’t look right and interferes with the messy, every-square-inch-of-space filled-up look of alt comix. Also, I wish Fanta could reproduce that smell of incense and roach clips that I remember from old floppies of TFFFBs, but I guess that’s asking too much.
I've only read the first book of the Old series but I absolutely loved it! Ver funny and I really like how they tackle the generational divide stuff
Didn't care much for The House but maybe I should give it another read considering the praise it always gets
I don’t think The House is a must-read masterpiece, but it’s easy to see why people are so excited about Paco Roca. But Old Geezers on the other hand… man I’m so glad I bought both volumes! Book two’s going to accompany me to the pool as soon as summer break arrives.
Fatcop by Johnny Ryan – hilarious, had me guffawing from the first page all the way to nervous, uneasy chuckling at the end, so much that I did something I almost never do, viz. read it in one sitting as soon as I bought it. It’s a savage, silly, gross-out potty-minded slapstick satire of America’s monstrous, rampaging, gluttonous id, in the form of the repulsive title character, Fat Cop himself, who, in between various abuses of police power and obnoxious interactions with his colleagues, gets embroiled in a thinly veiled analogue for Pizzagate at Trader Joe’s. (Yes, “Fat Cop” is his actual name and, as in Moby-Dick, the character’s name is spelt slightly differently from the book’s title).
The book opens on the tombstone of a “beloved mother”: a guy with a mullet and Super Smash Bros T-shirt looks around furtively, then drops his pants and squirts diarrhoea on it, wipes his ass with the flowers on her grave and takes selfies of the scene while doing the V-sign-plus tongue; Fat Cop arrests the perp, takes a “DNA sample” by pulling his intestines (?) out of his arse, then calls in with dispatch for a dead body. When the perp points out that he’s not dead, Fat Cop leaps in the air and squashes him with his obese body.
After this, Fat Cop goes to Arbys and orders “Two Smokey Mountains with cheese, a Loaded Curly Fries and a Farmhouse Salad [...] four Chicken Sliders [...two] Cinnamuffins [and] a Sierra Mist” – this kind of banal texture, of shoddy mediocrity of life under capitalism, is very important for Ryan, never more than in this book. Along the same lines, the animated musical Sing 2 plays a minor role later in the book – not, say Frozen 2, or even Sing *1*, but *Sing 2*.
Next Fat Cop watches some “Fucktube” on a mobile phone while sitting on a (disgusting) toilet, stops a mugger robbing a woman and erotically licks the vaginal-looking knife-wound on her face, after which he heads to “Claim Jumper” to order “a Widow Maker, a Miners Combo, a Red Velvet Bundt Cake [...] a Cajun Cowboy [...] and a California Citrus Salad and a Diet Pepsi”. Then he investigates a missing girl, tells the mom he needs to investigate her bedroom and not to come in while he’s got the door closed; unsettling, ambiguous sounds emerge from behind the door – “GRKK GRKK SHUMP SKRIIITCH SLORT FRSSSST” etc – so the mom looks underneath it. Whatever she sees Fat Cop doing in there is evidently so disturbing that she slits her own throat, after which Fat Cop drags her body into the room and closes the door. (There’s more than one joke in the book that relies on the idea of unspeakable, unseen things happening behind closed doors or through darkened doorways).
After a trip to Pioneer Take Out for some more fast food (not itemised this time, but evidently substantial, from the look of it), Fat Cop then pulls over a driver for no reason and sexually assaults her; when a kid passes by and asks “what’re you doing to that lady’s butt”, he answers “Emergency CPR”, then asks in reply “Hey, is that bike the Rockrider ST 100?”, throws the kid off the bike into the air and impales him on a tree branch.
And that’s just the first 12 pages.
Hard as it may be to believe from that description, Ryan has, er, grown up a little bit since his 00s material of Angry Youth Comix/Blecky Yuckerella/Comic Book Holocaust/his Vice strips. There’s still toilet humour galore, but nothing here is as pointlessly racist or misogynistic as his low points from that period (like the Adrian Tomine bit in The Day The New Yorker Came to Town). There’s less “punching down”, in case you’re bothered by that sort of thing.
With its combination of body horror, bodily-function humour, and evocations of *other* nameless horrors lurking just off-panel, Fatcop represents a sort of culmination of Ryan’s talents, managing to merge his earlier pure comedy (especially the Boobs Potter issue of Angry Youth Comix), the grotesque action of Prison Pit, and the unsettling monstrosities of some of his strips for Vice (especially ones like Mining Colony X7170 or the all-time great Home Early). His best work yet, A+.
(Of course, as always with comedy, YMMV. If that write-up makes you think you won’t like the book, you’re probably right. It is not for everyone)
Kona Monarch of Monster Isle vol 1 (issues 1-4) by Sam Glanzman et al – like I said in my write-up for the top 300 this week, these comics are nuts, a frenzy of relentless action, Man v a Nature that hates him, all of it breathlessly narrated with fevered biblical declamation. Small wonder that Dan Nadel included an issue in his Art In Time anthology.
Bludzee by Lewis Trondheim – a fun series about a cat who gets caught up in a world of assassins and hit-animals, in the form of what appear to be page-length daily strips, although once again you wouldn’t know it from any note in the book itself. FFS how hard is it for a book to explain the backstory to the most basic, unmissable, structural organising principle of a comic, even if it’s only as a back cover blurb? The tell is that every page contains some element of closure (in the general sense, not Scott McCloud’s famous bit of comics jargon) and either a sort-of or actual punchline. Visually, the strips are relatively minimalist, or at least relative to most cartoonists if not to Trondheim, who has gone even sparser in other comics; compared with some of those other comics, this is slicker, good-looking cartooning from Trondheim with more especially attractive colouring than normal.
New York Cannibals by Francois Boucq and Jerome Charyn – a sequel to their Little Tulip, which I was surprised to discover only came out ten years ago. I would have placed that among their decades-earlier collaborations, given that the story in here has jumped ahead by what seems like fifteen years or so, and that this art is a little coarser with a little less fine detail, although you’d never think to describe it that way if this was the only Boucq book you’d read yet. But even at that, Boucq’s chops and draughtsmanship are as undeniable as ever, combining ever-so-slightly caricatural faces with solidly realist bodies and backgrounds. Charyn’s script doubles down on the pulpier aspects of Little Tulip by recreating some of the horrors of that book’s prison camp in a suitably run-down New York of 1990, with a turn into magical realism in the later parts of the book. [NB: although a French album, the title is in English in the original]
Corum vol 1 by Mike Mignola, Mike Baron et al, adapted from Michael Moorcock – the plot is the usual Moorcock guff; you know, tragic last Prince of a dying race of degenerate yet noble aesthetes, who gets co-opted into the cosmic struggle between Lords of Order and Lords of Chaos. To be honest I wasn't sure whose side Corum ended up on, which says more about how invested I was in the plot than in how difficult it actually was to follow. I buy these things for the art. (No offence to the guy, whose work on Nexus is very good, but did anybody ever go *Oh, Mike Baron wrote this, I'd better buy it then*?)
This one was drawn by Mike Mignola, though you wouldn't know it, since it doesn't look much like his signature blocky, shadow-drenched style. It looks more like he was trying to ape P Craig Russell who had, by the time this originally came out, done several Moorcock adaptations himself. Shit, there are worse artists you could base a house style on, and of course Mignola would go on to create his own house style, to great financial success. If his work here doesn't reach the art nouveau heights of Russell's elegance, it's nonetheless pretty good!
As with all Titan's reprints in their Moorcock Library, special props to the production values on the colouring. I wish every “mainstream” reprint would copy Titan and reprint books with colours that look the way they were supposed to, instead of oversaturating them on glossy paper (let alone the hideous addition of digital gradients in things like the Dark Horse reprints of EC, or Laura Martin’s recolouring of Rocketeer)
Agreed on the coloring.
The Complete Kirby War & Romance by Jack Kirby, Dick Ayers, Vanishing Vince Colletta, Geo. Bell, Stan Lee et al – these comics were among the last major bits of Kirby’s career that hadn’t been reprinted in the last two decades; with them out of the way there’s really only, what, his Westerns left to go? (My kingdom for a similar Complete Kirby Westerns from Marvel). The romance comics are generally dull since they don’t play to Kirby’s strengths; hard to create bombast, pulse-pounding, technological sublime, explosive battle poses and baroque character design out of stories about teenage girls learning to abandon their autonomy/change their entire personalities to adapt to patriarchy/whatever in order to get a husband. (A genre-based foreshadowing for the kind of negging of the Invisible Girl and Marvel Girl that Stan Lee would shoehorn into the dialogue for Fantastic Four and X-Men, thereby overriding Kirby’s more equal, positive representation)
Of course it’s by now one of the things Everybody Knows about Kirby, that together with Joe Simon he pioneered the whole genre of romance comics, but if you *didn’t* know that, you wouldn’t in a million years pick him as the guy to do romance. No one ever looked at a Kirby drawing of women and girls and thought oh, how glamorous and good-looking they are. Also: Vince Colletta, boooo, although at least I can recognise what his inks brought to the table for the romance comics, namely the ability to dewonkify Kirby’s faces and reshape them into something more conventionally attractive.
Then there’s the war comics which, well, on the one hand, they’re not exactly Jacques Tardi, or even Harvey Kurtzman. But overall the genre obviously affords more opportunity for Kirby’s talent for action and visual excitement. And who doesn’t love the dopey kid-gang-ish character designs for Sgt Fury’s Howling Commandos, especially Dum Dum Dugan’s ridiculous hat and moustache, and Gabe Jones’ signature, highly awkward for combat, trumpet?
Marvel Masters of Suspense 1 by Steve Ditko, Stan Lee and a couple of other people – think of this as the next instalment of Fantagraphics’ Steve Ditko Library, collecting the same kind of short science fiction comics, only in this instance done for Atlas/Marvel around the same time and in the same series as the Kirby-centric Monsterbuses. The scripts are sub-Twilight Zone hokum; if you can’t work out the twist within the first page or two, you’re simply not paying attention. (Hint: the main character is an alien, they’re actually sub-atomically tiny compared with our world, the one thing the invaders from another dimension can’t defeat is the human spirit, it was actually a ghost, the spell/wish ironically backfires to provide just deserts, it was just a dream or was it etc). But Ditko was never as hungry in later years as he is here, with arresting splash page openings, and stylish design and layout throughout. His later work, during his 60s-70s superhero peak, hides its inventiveness and skill to focus on crystal-clear mimesis – in some ways, that material shows his technical genius precisely through not looking like genius, through not drawing attention to itself as genius – but this early work is all bold, look-at-what-I-can-do showcase.
Scoop Scuttle and His Pals by Basil Wolverton – a collection of short-lived comedy features by Wolverton, seemingly all or most of which were originally intended as submissions to the newspaper strip syndicates, rejected and then reworked for comic books. It’s such a shame that he never cracked the newspaper market, as well as being a mystery to me – his work is just so fun to look at, immediately recognisable, cartoony yet robust. You would have thought that he might be able to parlay the fame of creating Lena the Hyena for the Lil Abner competition into a strip, but for whatever reason, that didn’t happen. I could look at Wolverton’s comics all day long.
Routledge Companion to Comics ed by Frank Bramlett, Roy T Cook and Aaron Meskin – a very good collection of chapters which cover a large range of issues around, and approaches to, comics. Not quite as jam-packed with insight as Critical Approaches to Comics, which I read the other week, or at least not as interesting to me; on the other hand, it covers a whole lot more ground. A couple of the pieces towards the end of the book are disappointing; one on “Comics and Politics” which focuses on the least interesting area to consider there, viz superheroes, thereby rehashing the hoary old fascism v moral exemplar debate; another on “Comics and Cultural Studies”, which covers, at mind-numbing length, whether a couple of specific bits of other comics writing count as genuine “cultural studies” or not, which *who could possibly give a fuck about* except for, like, the two or three people directly involved. This anxiety over boundaries is a sure sign of that field’s decline into insignificance and, worse, academic uncoolness, eclipsed as it has been by the identity-studies offspring it helped spawn. Cultural Studies: the Okay Boomer of the ivory tower.
Only two duds in that kind of Companion is pretty impressive. Which pieces would you say are standouts?
Bouncer 8: To Hell by Francois Boucq and Alejandro Jodorowsky – another entertaining entry in the Western series about a half-Native American one-armed saloon bouncer. This time it's a classic plot of hunting down an evildoer for justice and revenge, an especially vile and sadistic evildoer dressed all in white (oh sorry, did that irony just blow your mind?) whose own physical disfigurement echoes Bouncer’s and who is protected – and then some – by corrupt local authorities.
There's a cage fight, pursuit by wolves through a frozen landscape, a hero who needs to sober up to defeat a threat to civilisation, mistreated whores (sic), a bear getting punched like in that one issue of Punisher, and more. In other words, there's a whole lot of tropes going on. The plot structure overall suggests that Jodo has been paying close attention to Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey”. What makes the book more than just a jumble of tropes, or the umpteenth rehash of Campbell, are Boucq’s pencils, as attractive as ever, and the audaciously colourful setting that occupies the back half of the album, a lion's den/pit of vipers/pick your metaphor into which Bouncer must descend to get his man. Uncharacteristically for the series, it ends on a cliffhanger, to be resolved in the next album.
Bouncer 9: And Back by The Same Guys – speaking of which. [NB: as with New York Cannibals, both titles are in English]. A fitting conclusion, which broadly reflects, like a mirror, the motifs and settings of the first volume. (eg Tome 8 features a perilous trek through a hostile snowy landscape, whereas this one features a similar trek through a deadly desert).
What If? Special #1 What If Iron Man Had Been a Traitor by Steve Ditko, Pat Redding, Peter B Gillis et al – a question that often keeps me up at night. What if, indeed.This is the first story in the What If Into the Multiverse Omnibus, aka The Guilty Pleasure Omnibus. Ordinarily I wouldn’t mention a single issue in a collection, but I just have to point out the art in this, a relatively rare trip by Steve Ditko back to the Marvel well in 1988. Although an Iron Man story, it features a lot of panel-time for the Fantastic Four, who Ditko never really drew much, apart from the time, very early in Amazing Spider-Man, when Spider-Man tried to join them.
I *loved* his work here, sympathetically and unobtrusively inked by Pat Redding, whose name I don’t recognise from anything else. Unlike a lot of Secluded Steve’s latter-day inkers, he lets Ditko’s idiosyncrasies shine through, to the extent that I think this is some of Ditko’s best work on super-heroes, especially on the ones he didn’t create himself. Great stuff, appearing in, of all things, a one-off revival of a hacky old continuity porn series, starring a character who had, at the time, been one of Marvel’s B-list journeymen, plodding along uncoolly, for a couple of decades.
Reread Dungeon Parade 1-4 by Lewis Trondheim, Joann Sfar and Manu Larcenet, and Dungeon Early Years 1 by Trondheim, Sfar and Christophe Blain – read these with my 8 year-old. In amongst the convoluted structure of Dungeon’s various sub-series and offshoots, Parade is the funny one, featuring side (mis)adventures with the odd couple buddy comedy of gruff Marvin and a still hapless Herbert between Tomes 1 and 2 of the main series. Early Years is the story of a young Keeper and how the Dungeon came to be; it’s more adult and sober than Parade or, from what I remember of them, Zenith or Twilight. Jointly the vast, sprawling series(es) of Dungeon is one of my favourite comics, and rereading these books reminded me why; not that I’ve ever needed the reminder.
How is the 8-year old liking “Dungeon”?
It started because he liked the look of the cover of Parade 6 (in French), so I translated/read that for him. Then we moved on to the main series in English and more Parade, then he wanted to check out Early Years. I'm thinking Early Years might be too dark for him; I know for sure some of the Monsters books are, and there's bad language here and there (so far: ass, shit)
It's no Dog Man, as far as he's concerned, or Peanuts, or Barks/Rosa, and some of the humour is lost on him, but he's enjoying it and asking to read more.
I’ve been trying to gauge the appropriate time to introduce my own 8-year old to “Dungeon”, and though the language and some of the adult humor weren’t necessarily a deterrent before, the downbeat turn in the last couple of Zenith albums made me decide to hold off for a while.
Batman The Brave and the Bold: The Winning Card by Tom King and Mitch Gerads. Seemingly proved popular enough from within the pages of the new Brave and the Bold series, that this story got published as its own book. Another edgy, dark and violent Batman tale in Year One of the bat, as Gotham meets the Joker for the first time. Again. If you've read this pair's Riddler: One Bad Day then the tone (and obviously the visuals) will be very similar. The Joker is out proving how truly twisted he is, tormenting souls and outsmarting the GCPD on a killing rampage while the Bat tries to hunt him down. This was pretty good and I can see why it has been popular. I don't really buy into the whole figuring out his pattern plot point which seems so often done and so often weak, but it's fairly minor anyway. This is a Tom King book with a number of his trademarks (why does his dialogue so often consist of two characters each having their own separate conversation?) but we are also treated to some cameos of his own 'art', if you are familiar with his bespoke covers he often does. Like most Bat books I read, it doesn't quite qualify as essential, but it was worth the read.
Victory Point by Owen D Pomery. Ellen returns to her scenic coastal hometown to visit her elderly father and mulls over her feelings of the place she once called home. A quaint little story set in a quaint little town. Not a lot really happens here and it really is a small Slice of Life story - a fleeting visit and overnight stay. It's a very quiet book throughout and told through gorgeous visuals in Pomery's Ligne Claire style. Pomery's architecture background shows in the art and the history of the town, where tourists come to explore the design of the local landscape. Which does however pose the question of what Ellen so dislikes about returning home. Ultimately it just felt like snobbery; through her interactions with people she encounters, she seems to view them as a bit simple yet her own ambitions are hardly too big for this town. It was a breezy read and nice to look at. I don't necessarily think it was as meaningful as it perhaps aims for.
Gris Grimly's Frankenstein by... It's in the title. And of course Mary Shelley. This book is something of a Frankenstein's monster itself, lifting prose directly from Shelley's book and fusing it to illustrations in something that at times was more of a text heavy illustrated edition and at others virtually wordless comics. The visuals are light but somewhat grotesque almost Burtonesque characters with a touch of steampunk but it seems to work and fit the era. I don't normally get on with classic literature but I really enjoyed the beauty of Mary Shelley's prose. It could be a lot at time for a comic, especially in the written letter pages but it was eloquent like poetry even when the monster is speaking, in stark contrast to his appearance and the events throughout the book. I've long known that the original tale of Frankenstein's Monster is not well represented in modern depictions, and I found this a great way experience it as someone who was unlikely to get through the full novel.
Splurged on a few Avery Hill shorts and read them on slow days at work:
Buttertubs by Donya Todd - I've read some weird shit but this has me beat. Buttertubs is a horndog, always running after the ladies. The problem is, he's dog like creature running after human princesses, and he constantly sweats slippery butter. Shenanigans ensue. It has kind of an Adventure Time vibe, but on a messed up cocktail of speed and shrooms
Grey Area: Our Town by Tim Bird - A poetic short story about the day we remember the places that mark our stories and the relationships that shape our lives. Very good use of color and imagery
Goatherded by Charlo Frade - A psychedelic scifi story worthy to grace the pages of Métal Hurlant. A boy wakes up in a floating cube on a barren planet and is confronted to a man with a goat head. As he explores, he lands on a portal that transports him to another planet, where he gets sacrificed to some malevolent god while tourists watch absentmindedly. It's all very weird, and I'm not quite sure what it means, if anything. But it's very moody and incredibly cool looking
A Projection by Seekan Hui - It's trying too hard to be deconstructed, and the story flow suffers from it.. Not that the story really has that much to it either. A young girl gets hired as the live-in family photographer in what turns out to be a very disfunctional family. I'm not sure if it's supposed to be drama, horror or fantasy or what
Parsley Girl: Carrots by Matthew Swan - Some weirdo injects something into one of the main characters' carrots, and when he cooks an army of mutant carrots comes to their world through his saucepan ? It's like a wild episode of Gravity Falls or something. The art is fun and creative. I wasn't sure going in but I kinda loved this, in a silly way
Other than that I read :
Flashpoint by Geoff Johns and Andy Liberty - I've been fiending to read some cape stuff as of late, and have had this on my shelves for a while, but it was not it for me at all, sadly... I guess it probably hits harder if you read the stuff that comes before and after but as is, it's a mess of exposition dialogue and shitty in world explanations to justify an event that ultimately kinda doesn't matter. And I seriously don't care for the Kuberts of this world. DC house style bores me to death
I knew the concept of the Flashpoint event but didn't know the twist so at least that took me by suprise. And those moments where Barry gets to spend time with his mother, and Bruce gets a message from his father.. That shit always hits me in the feels
Grain De Beauté : Trois Variations by Jean Philippe Peyraud - One night, two exes, and the three ways it could go. Peyraud imagines these three scenarios, where two old lovers find each other again for a one night stand, cheating on their respective significant others. Once at her place, once at his place, and once at a hotel. They all start the same, with him counting her freckles, but what comes after is up to both of them. Though the focus is more on their relationship and interactions than where they end up on the last page. It's a very well made little book, full of melancholy, bitterness and love.. and great cartooning ! The characters feel real, deeply flawed and deeply human. It's a very cute experiment that I'm glad I picked up in a whim !
Shazam! The Power of Hope by Paul Dini and Alex Ross - Now this was more like it ! A short but sweet love letter to Captain Marvel, who seems to be a favorite among writers, despite not really being a household name in pop culture. Billy Batson is feeling a bit burned out, what with juggling between school, his job at the radio station, and most importantly, his work as the superhero Shazam. When he receives a bundle of fan mail and finds one coming from a doctor in a children's hospital, he decides to makes his own little version of the Make-A-Wish foundation. A powerful story about hope and the wonders of being a child. It's more of a storybook than an actual comic, the whole story is told through narration. But Paul Dini writes the hell out of the character, as usual, and Alex Ross follows suit on the art. Honestly, the format kind of plays to his strengths I think, much like Marvels did.
Gleem by Freddy Carrasco - This was something else ! Three "slice of life" vignettes set in the singular afrofuturistic universe of Gleem. The art is definitely the main draw here. The first story is literally just a kid finding drugs under a bench during congregation, and taking the trip of his life. And it's absolutely glorious ! The third story's the only one that didn't do much for me. I don't think color suits Carrasco's art (at least not this coloring). He did capture nightclub vibe perfectly though. The second story's the most "fleshed out" one, where a group of stray kids find a destroyed android kid and do what they can to bring him back up to join their gang. There's a surprising amount of humor in these as well
Funky Town by Mathilde Van Gheluwe - Sitting somewhere between a classic folk tale and an Alice in Wonderland inspired fever dream, the story follows young Lele, who's about to turn 12 and lives in a city where cats talk and magic is widespread. I don't want to say too much about the story or characters at the risk of spoiling the immaculate world building of the story. I'll just say I can't wait for her follow up to come out and flesh out the world ! It's fun and weird and gorgeously illustrated
I don't think the third Gleem story was much of any anyway, its pretty much just Carrasco vibing on his pages.
That's pretty much what this whole book is, to be fair haha
True true
I Am Stan by Tom Scioli - I guess after you do a Kirby biography you have to do a Stan Lee one. It's the law! Ugh, how did this odious little weasel become our hero? He seemed so lovable. Oh well. Most of the pages in this book are made up of long thin panels that stretch across the width of the page. There's usually a person or two talking in the middle and their word balloons are on either side of them. It's an interesting effect. Hopefully it's easy to read for people who don't usually read comics. I like Scioli's simplified style. I kinda miss his Godland stuff, though. I hope he does something like that again in the future.
Are You Willing to Die for the Cause? by Chris Oliveros - I remember doing an essay on the FLQ for a high school history class but I don't remember any of this. I guess I wasn't very thorough when I frantically did it the night before it was due. I just remember the mailbox bombings and the kidnapping and those aren't even in this volume. Apparently that'll be in volume 2. Everything in this book is drawn in a funny style like it's Dennis the Menace or something. It creates a kind of distance to the events. Like someone is telling you all this at a bar and they're laughing at everything they say.
My Pancreas Broke but my Life got Better by Nagata Kabi - Sheesh, she's a mess. I've read My Alcoholic Escape From Reality and things did not get much better for her after that. She must have oppositional defiance disorder or something. She can't follow orders from doctors. I guess her life gets better in the end? I mean, it's in the title so it must. The art is pretty messy and chaotic. It black and white with some orangey colour to add highlights. I gotta say that single colour elelvates it from sketches on back of napkin to professional manga quality
Murder Falcon (By Daniel Warren Johnson and Mike Spicer): Wasn’t expecting to tear up at the end of a book about Heavy Metal but here we are. Daniel Warren Johnson has written two books that I’ve read recently that resonate with me way more than I thought they would. This book has a lot of heart and I’m so thankful for that. This is easily one of the best books I’ve read this year, and it makes me want to see what else DWJ will make me care about.
I love this book. There’s a soundtrack online meant to play while you read it also.
I bought all the collected Hellboy and BPRD trades and I'm making my way through that. I've read both before of course, but it's been a long time. Hellboy is my favorite comics character.
I have a sketch of a bust of Hellboy saying "SHUT UP!" that I got at a con from Mignola. Got it tattooed on my arm.
Animal Man by Grant Morrison vol. 2 - Finished this amazing and meta comic book trip. So, so good. Is his Doom Patrol run this run? Does he kept pushing boundaries in his writing or played more in a safe side since that run is way longer than Animal Man?
Animal Man is better than Doom Patrol IMO. It’s weird and clever and all that, but I find Buddy Baker and his domestic drama more interesting than the suffering of Robotman for example. You’ll never top the gospel of Crafty.
PACIFIC by MARTIN TRYSTRAM and ROMAIN BAUDY
Lovely art and a well packaged product, but left me feeling like I had missed something major. I left it feeling that it was ultimately a (very) partially developed story idea with vague spiritual and magical realism themes.
I am far from thinking it was a waste of time reading it, due to enjoyment of the artistic craft and (especially) the widescreen shots of the sea and deserted islands, especially as I bought it very cheaply. But disappointing.
ASTERIX AND THE WHITE IRIS by FABCARO and DIDIER CONRAD
Some return to form for the Asterix franchise after a change of writer, Fabcaro definitely has the sweetly anarchic sense of humour of the best Goscinny books, while not quite reaching those lofty heights. And Didier Conrad is a worthy successor who captures Uderzo's style and the characters perfectly.
Bought on immediate impulse after seeing a review that opined that the Asterix books were back on track with this volume, and can definitely agree that this was the case for me too.
$crooge McDuck.
Black Hole by Charles Burns
It was a very marvel focused week this week.
Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E - It's like Shakespeare but with lots more punches (if you don't get it, you should listen to the theme song). I've heard amazing things about it but I could never find it anywhere but I went to my local comic shop and it was just there. I brought it and read it over the course of two days. It was a pretty good parody of Marvel, and I enjoyed it, although it probably wouldn't be in my overall top ten.
I also reread some of Hawkeye by Matt Fraction and loved it, which I knew I would (it's really good and the art, by David Aja, is really cool).
Read Essex county. Loved it. The emotional attachment to the characters was done beautifully. Will keep and read multiple times
Now I’m reading Berserk deluxe 3
I finally got my hands on Sandman. Just the first volume, but that's been my go to.
I read the first 10 or so issues of Immortal Hulk. I love the dark vibe and the artwork. Looking forward to continuing it this week.
Igort - How War Begins
Amazing and moving.
I’ve been reading Dissident X and it’s interesting as it ties in elements of mr robot and current day issues with the digital age of terms and agreements. Excellent read
Greyshirt by Rick Veitch.
Indigo Sunset?