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Post by disneyweirdness on Mar 9, 2024 22:37:22 GMT
Got the new Smoke Signal in the mail today.
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Post by robindh on Mar 9, 2024 23:28:26 GMT
I generally prefer Kochalka's polemic to his actual comics. The Cute Manifesto contains his best work IMO Yeah, I’m not that interested in if American Elf is or not a “good” comic, I just find it interesting that not that long ago a lot of artists would very directly mention it as one of the main things that helped them get started, but if you were to appear today without a memory at all, it’s as if it almost never happened. I find that strange.
I think comics are such that, moreso than with other media, influential work becomes less accessible and so the people that borrow heavily from that cartoonist become more well-known. Perennial example of this is C.F. and many of the Fort Thunder guys. (Though that might change with the forthcoming NYRC collection.) Kochalka's 'disappearance' doesn't get totally explained away by this, but I think it's definitely a significant part of it.
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Post by arecomicsevengood on Mar 9, 2024 23:49:39 GMT
Reading volume one of Osamu Tezuka's Black Jack, published by Vertical - these become rare and expensive with volume four, which I thought was due to a decrease in print run, but it turns out my copy of volume one is a tenth printing, so I guess Vertical just hasn't reprinted the later volumes even though the early ones presumably do pretty well. Anyway it's a lot of fun - short stories, not a long serial. It's described as Tezuka's most successful character "for adults" but it's pretty kid-friendly I think, not as dark as The Book Of Human Insects or something. Famously, one of the bits in this is that Black Jack, the world's greatest surgeon, removes a tumor of undeveloped organs from a patient and then this becomes this tiny doll-like sidekick assistant character. It is this weird cartoon take on the medical drama.
Also reading issues of Dame Darcy's Meat Cake - there's a big complete collection of these now but I found a cheap Ebay lot. There's a density to the stories/lettering where I want to read it in small doses. Anyway, weird to think about Dame Darcy in the context of both the comics of her era and more recent comics - its aesthetic is extremely girly and feminine when contrasted against Adrian Tomine or Chester Brown or whatever, wild and uncontrolled and interested in dolls and storybooks and their relationship to the imagination - but it's also so un-slick and confrontational, far from the world of YA library-ready work that is I think is viewed as the purview of "women in comics" today. It makes the most sense within the counterculture performance art context of Caroliner and Suckdog, but it was published by Fantagraphics and apparently talked up by Peter Bagge in Hate. (Dame Darcy also drew a few Cobweb strips for Alan Moore's Tomorrow Stories.) Would be cool to see who would pick up The Meat Cake Bible were it a comic shop today, but I think the painted covers of the single issues make a better introduction-at-a-glance than the design on that hardcover book.
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Post by disneyweirdness on Mar 10, 2024 0:13:52 GMT
Reading volume one of Osamu Tezuka's Black Jack, published by Vertical - these become rare and expensive with volume four, which I thought was due to a decrease in print run, but it turns out my copy of volume one is a tenth printing, so I guess Vertical just hasn't reprinted the later volumes even though the early ones presumably do pretty well. Anyway it's a lot of fun - short stories, not a long serial. It's described as Tezuka's most successful character "for adults" but it's pretty kid-friendly I think, not as dark as The Book Of Human Insects or something. Famously, one of the bits in this is that Black Jack, the world's greatest surgeon, removes a tumor of undeveloped organs from a patient and then this becomes this tiny doll-like sidekick assistant character. It is this weird cartoon take on the medical drama. My library had the full set of Black Jack and I tore through them in a weekend. So fun. I have a floppy single issue that I guess was meant to promote the book series, and I think that has the tumor sidekick origin story in it but i could be misremembering.
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Post by teemcgee on Mar 10, 2024 0:25:32 GMT
I think it's an interesting quirk of publishing history that Tatsumi's Drifting Life is the "history of gekiga" work known in the west, all down to Tomine's own passion for the artist, since Gekiga Fanatics is definitely the superior work from a narrative perspective, Drifting Life is a dry read when compared against the very sharp characterisation in Matusmoto ... I particularly like the (good natured) character assassination of Takao Saito in that book!
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Post by pentimento on Mar 10, 2024 1:12:43 GMT
I read Kolchaka from his first minis until about ten years later. At that point, I found his self-aggrandizement bordering on narcissism, with the humor just a form of deflection. And frankly I've known too many people in real life who have strong "personalities" that are just fucking obnoxious, and every video interview I've seen with the dude bears that out for me. I couldn't stand to be around him for more than five seconds without resorting to violence. Also, his childlike quirk and lack of filter is so forced and contrived I can only assumed he was abused as a lad; lots of people I know are the same way: very aggressively involved with children, acting like children etc. Fucking creeps, every one. I Liked his sparring with Woodring and others in the old TCJ Blood & Thunder, though, that was some of his best work. Funny to complain about how you think someone has an obnoxious personality in the same post where you baselessly speculate that someone was abused as a child. I would personally rather spend time with someone mildly annoying than someone who creates elaboratetheories about which person he barely knows may have been hit or molested in their youth. That's because you are a pussy
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Post by disneyweirdness on Mar 10, 2024 2:13:08 GMT
Do any of you read Dick Tracy through the Blackthorne reprints? To me, affordabiliyy goes a long way and i like how they collage the dailes into just a long 24 page comic. They reprinted the years I'm most interested in, but I'm unaware if they tamper with it or whatever. Interested if anyone else has read a chunk of those. Gladstone Comics (the disney / EC reprint people) had a couple Dick Tracy comics like this. I think I prefer reading old comic strips this way rather than in big expensive hardcovers.
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Post by dominocorp on Mar 10, 2024 3:20:28 GMT
me too, i've read a couple of these reprints over the years, but now I kinda wanna know if they tampered with it, cut out panels, etc.
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Post by adamszym on Mar 11, 2024 15:41:59 GMT
Funny to complain about how you think someone has an obnoxious personality in the same post where you baselessly speculate that someone was abused as a child. I would personally rather spend time with someone mildly annoying than someone who creates elaboratetheories about which person he barely knows may have been hit or molested in their youth. That's because you are a pussy "I found his self-aggrandizement bordering on narcissism, with the humor just a form of deflection. And frankly I've known too many people in real life who have strong "personalities" that are just fucking obnoxious" You could not have written a more accurate description of how you come across in your posts if you had tried.
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Post by dominocorp on Mar 11, 2024 18:35:45 GMT
Found a nice Wilhelm Busch book at The Strand, all I've had before is a more recent mass market Max & Morris book which is printed kinda cheaply. Seeing his stuff as it's meant to be seen, wow...comics academia is insane to me, there are so many books on Sandman, spiegelman, Bechdel, etc etc. All are fine to good to great artists, but it really is fascinating how little you hear about a total master like Busch. I know the history, Töpffer becomes congealed in Busch's approach, but when you see it on the page, it's so incredible. Clowes/Kirby, those are people who advanced the form light years ahead of where it was at, and Busch is one of them...though his influence is kind of ignored when you think about it. Caniff is in everyone's DNA (unfortunately, imo) whether one's aware of it or not and so is Busch, but Busch doesn't get re-enforced.
Herriman is, in the end, kind of a sui generis figure. Busch isn't, I see him in Segar and Crane (and Henriette Valium) but he must not get taught in Americam comics classes much, if he was you'd see people drawing like him all the time.
I was about to leave The Strand with a Dore book, because I thought 'ah maybe I should have this for to refer back to' but once I saw the Busch book, I let go of the Dore book as quickly as possible, which I think is what Dore deserves.
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Post by JerrryJames on Mar 12, 2024 4:59:48 GMT
After a few weeks, I finally received a couple Robert Williams books that I ordered from Last Gasp. As much as I LOVE Last Gasp's publications, I kind of hate ordering from them; every time something goes wrong with my order... but they had a pretty good Robert Williams sale going on a few weeks ago that I couldn't turn down, as much as I love his art, I don't own a single book of his. I bought 'The Lowbrow Art of Robert Williams' for $15 & 'Through Prehensile Eyes' for $30 & I'm still happy on those deals. Last week, I had 'Moonworks' by Tiger Tateishi out for delivery from 50Watts at the same time that the package from Last Gasp was out for delivery, but only Tiger Tateishi made it to me; somehow my apartment number didn't end up on the package from Last Gasp so it got sent all the way back to San Fran & I got an email from them saying that I entered the wrong address (I can practically guarantee it wasn't on my end, I've made that mistake once before & learned from it).. but either way, they made it to me in great condition still & they are amazing. As big of a fan as I already considered myself of Robert Williams, there's soooooo much in these that I haven't seen, or have only seen online. Veryyyyyy up my alley. (I'm still waiting on my copy of Smoke Signal though, never got a shipping notice)
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Post by crapmasterzac on Mar 12, 2024 13:46:27 GMT
Got smoke signal last night, really good read.
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Post by franlopez on Mar 12, 2024 19:46:03 GMT
A few days ago I finished Roaming by Mariko and Jillian Tamaki.
Maybe you're like me and liked This One Summer when it came out, but a decade later this book had 3 things going against your current prejudices:
- Somewhat connectable to YA (ok, not sure this is straight YA, and I am sure a lot of "YA literature" is good, even great, but the way things have been developing this last decade, not sure the "push" for YA has had a good effect in how we read and think of books) - New York City (don't get me wrong, I live in New York, I chose to live here and I like living here, but I'm sure I'm far from being the first one to be tired of the image of New York, and the reflection of the image of New York... pointing out the cliché of "new york itself is a character in this book" is probably a cliché in itself by now) - The super uniform, stabilized digital pen line (maybe it's because we're so constantly fed digitally produced-and-looking images that I have a hard time choosing to engage with that kind of work on my own)
I'm not so fond of my prejudices to begin with (and they're my problems, not any book's problems), so didn't take a lot of effort to engage with the book. But that was the initial mindset for me. And I'm happy to say the book really tore that through. The characters are very three dimensional, the book manages to build a very charming little world, show it's cracks (every little world is always almost falling apart, this is also true here) and show the different ways each character tries (and could stop trying) to hold it together. The pages are really solid when they have to be and manage to be light when appropriate. Reads like water flowing while being very rich visually. Even the digital line feels personal and coming from a very specific point of view.
(Side note: outside of the book itself... it does feel like something US/Canadian comics have been trying to do for a long time now, and this is best realization I've come across of, by far.)
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Post by slugfizz on Mar 18, 2024 17:58:09 GMT
Library indie check-out: "Isle of a Hundred Thousand Graves". Jason & Fabien Vehlmann. Always love Jason's art. Slightly uneven story tone if I cared about that. Good. Funny.
Library Batman check-outs: "Gotham Central, Book Two". Brubaker & Rucka. Art: Michael Lark. Okeydoke. Doesn't require reading Book One. Like watching a pretty nice TV detective drama. Seconds later, can't remember much.
"Dark Knight Returns: the last crusade". Miller & Azzarello. Art: John Romita Jr. Read this before. Every few months I try to take out "Dark Knight Returns" but somehow end up with this again. (Tinily printed "the last crusade" on cover-- trickster-y) Anyway, it's fine. Good inside the asylum art by Romita.
"Knightmares, vol. 10". Tom King. Art: Mikel Janin. Convoluted. Not in a way I enjoy either. Some real wordy pages. Includes fantastic long quote from Fitzgerald's "Crack-up".
"Cold Days, vol. 8" Tom King. Art:Lee Weeks. Heard great things about this one. First part-- Batman is Henry Fonda in '12 Angry Men'. 2nd part: Batman tracks down Russian hitman KGBeast. Didn't love it but story hums along well. Includes (real) Russian folktale "The Animals in the Pit."
"The War of Jokes & Riddles, vol. 4". Tom King. Art: Mikel Janin. Loved Joker's sullen grumpiness throughout. Nine course dinner between Joker & Riddler hosted by Bruce Wayne a stand-out.
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Post by manoopuesta on Mar 21, 2024 13:46:49 GMT
I've been reading Mary Fleener's Life of the Party and I loved it so much. I've been thinking of tracking down some Slutburger issues. Or does Life of the Party contains the stories from Slutburger? Anybody knows?
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