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Post by eheitner on Mar 23, 2023 20:56:19 GMT
Also ordered Paul Pope's P-City Parade from Ebay. Issues of THB listing this one as being for sale say it was "the experimental" one, that "critics hated," but it's kind of the best? Working through a manga influence, but printed big, looks great. Includes an essay where he talks about what manga is and how the storytelling is different from western comics, the bulk of the comics pages are excerpts of an abandoned longer piece. Maybe people objected to the lack of plot development but I would never. However I am receptive to arguments that Pope making work about teenage girls is weird, especially as this trumpets itself as being "for kids," Dr. Seuss influenced, but then kicks off with a two-page strip where two naked girls torture (by way of tying up in a rug and dropping ink on him) a cartoon elephant stand-in for the artist. The strip is fun and playful and I like it as an opening statement to work that's a little looser but it's very much the sort of thing that a self-censoring artist would not indulge in in recent years. (Although Michiel Budiel's Wayward Girls would be a fair comparison.) i have also had this thought haha, some of this stuff would be unpublishable today or get him cancelled for sure. to me that work just feels free and raw and open the way self-published stuff should be, but i also hear the other side of that discussion for sure. i also love how piecemeal the THB world is. i sort of love that it's unfinished, there is a central narrative sort of but altogether it feels like this big sprawling world that exists beyond the pages. the different sizes of the books and the little shorts and one-offs. love it.
Hi all-- I wanted to make a separate thread to discuss Paul Pope's THB because I ALSO recently reread my stack of issues. Man, I discovered THB by accident when I was a teenager and THB6abcd was coming out, and I just thought Pope had the most beautiful looking inky brush line in the universe. And they were such satisfying objects, each issue! Later I tracked down I think all of them. Some random thoughts: - I love so much the giant size magazines he put out-- the mixture of stories, art, articles etc., the giant size of the comix pages - Its wild to be reading stuff where he really thinks he has to introduce readers to Hugo Pratt and Moebius-- this was what cultural consumption was like pre-internet! - Paul Pope sounds like the most pretentious human being on the planet. I wonder if he still does? - Anyone ever figure out why he stopped making actual comics other than it was too much work for too little money? - I love the random digressions and piecemeal stories too-- feels somewhat similar to Sammy Harkham's "Blood of the Virgin" in terms of just following wherever the art took him? Ok I don't have anything else smart to say, I just think these comics are neat and feel great in your hand. |
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Post by eheitner on Mar 23, 2023 20:57:13 GMT
Oh also his weird libertarian obsessions and focus on teenage girls DEFINITELY read differently in 2023.
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Post by arecomicsevengood on Mar 23, 2023 23:34:00 GMT
I recently ordered Buzz Buzz Comics Magazine from Ebay so I'll be able to talk about once it arrives. That's one where Pope writes an essay about Moebius and runs a Moebius story untranslated.
It is really interesting to think about this dude being in his early twenties an obsessed with European comics, thinking that's the way to do things, then becoming exposed to manga and totally changing up his style. It could've happened in the nineties, but not in the twenty-first century. Theoretically a kid could be into manga growing up and then discover alternative comics and European comics later, and come to the opposite conclusion - that they could be telling their stories much faster if they used way less drawings and more text per panel. But maybe that would be terrible. And maybe it's the growing up on European stuff that makes Pope's work come off as affected or pretentious, but maybe it's also what makes his work feel like he has something to say.
And maybe it's the being into European comics (and maybe getting into manga via the Epic Akira reprints) that makes him do color versions of his work that don't work nearly as well as the black and white versions.
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Post by mikesheawright on Mar 24, 2023 1:22:07 GMT
cool i've been meaning to re-read these, this thread is a nice extra boost. will start tonight!
i kind of love how obnoxious his editorial tone is in all of these. it's so ridiculous and pretentious and smug but also pretty baller to talk like that as a self-publishing 20-something-year old making a living off comics in new york at that time. except for maybe his pre-internet influencing. "paul pope wears diesel jeans" lol.
but just the way those books are assembled is really inspiring. each "issue" is just whatever he wanted it to be. super free, no pressure to ensure continuity or character arcs or anything. long action sequences, i guess that came from the manga influence. neat ideas for the world. and there are panels from those issues that are absolutely branded onto my brain forever. THB spinning to life in the tent. great stuff.
so glad they're all black and white, almost all of his work is unreadable in color for me. the batman book might be the exception, but those computerized textures are just hideous next to his brushwork. whoever colored that one trick ripoff reprint should be horsewhipped.
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Post by bluebed on Mar 24, 2023 17:38:00 GMT
There's an interview with him where he (apropos of nothing) goes off about how much he hates Belle & Sebastian for being weak, it's very special. Different times.
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Post by disneyweirdness on Mar 24, 2023 19:31:26 GMT
What's the best way to read this stuff? The only Pope comic I own is that DC Solo issue.
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Post by mikesheawright on Mar 24, 2023 20:24:26 GMT
What's the best way to read this stuff? The only Pope comic I own is that DC Solo issue.
otherwise ebay as far as i know. there are probably scans floating around but i highly recommend the paper versions (as always) if you can track them down.
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Post by mikesheawright on Mar 24, 2023 21:03:06 GMT
hazlitt.net/feature/you-need-lot-stamina-make-comics-interview-paul-pope reading this interview now, minor update on projects: You’ve got multiple books on the go right now. Total THB, colour and black-and-white collections of your unfinished Mars sci-fi epic, a Jungian dream book for Dargaud called Psychenaut, the second and final installment of the Battling Boy series, and a top-secret book so big that it may eclipse everything you’ve ever done before. Can you give an update on the statuses of the first three projects?THB can’t happen until Battling Boy Vol. 2 is finished, which is with the same publisher—First Second Books, a division of Macmillan. That’s in our contract. Those books are aimed at young adult audiences. Psychenaut has kind of been on hold for a while. It’s a book about dream analysis, dream therapy, so it’s very personal and revealing. I wanted to rethink how much I wanted to share. It’s almost finished. That’s something that’s going to happen for my French publisher Dargaud. I have a couple of new things in the works that I hope to surprise people with in the next couple of years though.
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Post by arecomicsevengood on Mar 24, 2023 23:06:36 GMT
What's the best way to read this stuff? The only Pope comic I own is that DC Solo issue. I would say the best comic of Pope's that widely available, and still in black and white, is 100%. Reading THB in print editions is a huge pain in the ass, and expensive unless you happen to luck into cheap copies "in the wild." |
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Post by eheitner on Mar 25, 2023 14:30:06 GMT
Ok but how many times has he given an interview and said the work is forthcoming?
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Post by eheitner on Mar 25, 2023 14:38:02 GMT
There's an interview with him where he (apropos of nothing) goes off about how much he hates Belle & Sebastian for being weak, it's very special. Different times. It's very gen x of him how much he connects identity to having the right cool tastes in consumption. |
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devin
Junior Member
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Post by devin on Mar 25, 2023 15:07:28 GMT
There's an interview with him where he (apropos of nothing) goes off about how much he hates Belle & Sebastian for being weak, it's very special. Different times. Here, for general interest, is the clip. |
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Post by disneyweirdness on Mar 25, 2023 15:38:05 GMT
The library app Hoopla has 100%, Heavy Liquid, and Batman Year 100, looks like.
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Post by bluebed on Mar 25, 2023 17:10:11 GMT
There's an interview with him where he (apropos of nothing) goes off about how much he hates Belle & Sebastian for being weak, it's very special. Different times. Here, for general interest, is the clip. Amazing! Forgot all about the too clever/no balls bit. Fair enough, though. I remember seeing this as a wee man when I was into both BS and PP (god that sounds wrong), and feeling very confused--I think that's what made me get over both of them back then. But to be fair, he was hugely influential with the linework alone, we all had a PP phase at some point. It's easy to make fun of his shirtless photos and whatnot, but imagine having your blogs from early 20s printed out for posterity, fucking hell... |
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Post by whitecomics on Mar 28, 2023 15:06:05 GMT
This thread made me pull out my copy of Buzz Buzz. One funny thing about Pope how he leaves strewn behind him a true wasteland of announced and never released projects. Just in Buzz Buzz, he mentions Smoke Navigator (the comic excerpted in Buzz Buzz, which I actually think is great just in terms of atmospherics), THB-A, THB-B (separate from THB6a-d, since he also mentions THB single issues 6-7 and 12 (but not 8-11, of course)), Giant THB, Big Big THB, THB Color Special #1, Welcome to Mars, The Pigdog Parade, and obviously future Buzz Buzz issues. The often announced and more often delayed THB collection is hardly an aberration, this is someone who has been completely unable to estimate his own release schedule for decades! On the one hand, he's 24 at this time, riding high on the success of THB 1-5 which had recently come out on a monthly schedule and about to pour years into work for Kodansha that will be mostly unreleased. On the other hand, he's certainly continued to present himself with self-serious bravado over the years, as the interview Mike links above demonstrates.
I have to say I'm really not looking forward to any THB collection, since it really does work best as a confused, sprawling epic and I can't imagine any attempt to end it would work well. Plus of course the matter of color.
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