Comics - November 08

[Abhay!]

I continue to enjoy / be impressed with the House Next Door's comics column. This installment is all about the relationship of comics to cartography...? I don't agree with all of it, but I really like how willing he is to try to wrap his arms around everything all at once, cramming opinions into every nook and cranny. I don't quite understand the point of many of the digressions, but... I like digressions so...
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2 Live Crew.

[John G]

I am both Spider-Man and Iron Man. Now you know.

Oh, also: I'm Rulk.

[Abhay!]

and waiting for a phone call...

that new Jill Thompson book's some good looking comics. It's a kids comic so I haven't read it, but I flipped through it a a bookstore the other day-- she really did a very nice job on that one. fun drawings, upbeat colors-- really nice.

a bunch of comics I'd never heard of at the bookstore. Ted Naifeh did a book with the Spiderwick Chronicles author? I'm not a Naifeh fan but it was some decent looking stuff, polished-- didn't catch who the publisher on that was. maybe that's been talked about and I wasn't paying attention.

Watchmen is fucking *everywhere*. It makes my heart hurt a little. Getting a copy of that book when I was a kid was -- I had to track that one down and it was a whole ordeal. To see it everywhere now... it was #3 on the best-selling books table at Barnes and Noble. #3!

Jeff Parker started a column for process junkies over at CBR.

MST3K reunion interview. The interviewer remembers " the one with Cesar Romero, and it's just endless rock-climbing footage" which-- shit, I remember that one... rock climbing!

here's a pretty neat short comic from Ed Subitzky, one of the founders of National Lampoon. I don't know enough about the old Lampoon...

from the Beat: Obama likes to doodle...? Good times.

Jigsaw

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2 Live Crew.

[rieber]

i'm pretty sure that scholastic published that holly black/ted naifeh GN. (also pretty sure that the title is something like 'kin: good neighbors'. book one of a trilogy?)

she has a poetic, highly textured prose style in the three YA novels (tithe, valiant, and ironside) to which the GN is a sequel of sorts. i was really interested in the ways that sensibility alternately translated and didn't translate in the four comic pages i've seen; i'd love to see what the script looked like.

[r_sail]

Anybody see that preview of the Youngblood Hard Cover?

I guess Joe Casey re wrote it? I dunno, I haven't been into anything Joe did in a while, but... I guess they re sized the balloons to fit the new words, or look better, or flow through the page better?

Anybody see the HUGE sections of line art missing where the old balloons were?

[CosmicPencil]

I guess I am somewhat out of the loop when it is considering mainstream books. I don't know when it came out, but today I picked up The Immortal Iron Fist: Orson Randall and the Death Queen of California one-shot.

When did Fraction stop this book and who is Duane Swierczynski? It's some nice writing, although I'm not familiar with whom the new writer is. I do like the artwork done by Giuseppe Camuncoli, the original reason I did pick this up. He seems to be something between Jim Lee and Pascal Ferry or somewhere along those lines. His art has evolved since the first time I had seen his work.

The story is a noir take on a different Iron Fist. While I haven't read the Iron Fist regularly, I do like the aspect of all the different Iron Fists from different timelines drawn by different artists. It does seem to make the book different than the majority of the mainstream books out there. I guess I could see myself getting the Iron Fist stuff in trade eventually. Is there anyone reading Iron Fist that has any thoughts on it?

Also picked up some Joe Kelly Spider-man for the hell of it, since it was a very small week. It was actually very tongue-in-cheek fun although I still find myself scratching my head with Chris Bachalo and his artistic evolution. It seems as if the style he evolved into on Captain America is staying for a bit. It just seems so busy at times...

Also picked up Remender and Nguyen's Gigantic which was a really fun ride. I am picking up all three of Remender's Dark Horse books and they hit high notes for me every time I pick them up. I just hope all the work that Rick is doing in the industry doesn't tap him out. He's got a very fresh voice in the comic industry and his creator-owned work is some of my favorite work from him.

-matt

[Abhay!]

[r_sail]

The thing about that Dorkin bit tha bothered me was:

[Drew Bell]

[r_sail]

I just thought that part of it was pretty fucking petty and irrelevant to his valid complaints about the convention itself and the industry as a whole.

I dunno... it's in pretty bad taste to shit on the people who make it possible for you to do what you do. You don't have to like those people, but you do have to appreciate the contribution they've made to your career.

And if that's not something you can deal with than go open Dorkin's Deli and serve milk and cheese.

[seth hurley]

Dorkin didn't seem to shit on the people who allow him to do what he does, he made a point to thank those people and say they were the one good thing about the show.

It's everything else about the show he derides, the manifestation of his own Eltingville Club in a show that doesn't seem, by many accounts, to have changed much in thirty years. Or have any desire to change.

If anything, Dorkin is guilty of deciding to get off that particular train one stop too late.

so yeah, old fat bald greasy mouthbreathers with no boundaries and enormous backpacks...fish, meet barrel.

impotent rage is still funny.

[r_sail]

I think all but that one paragraph of his rant is perfectly valid.

That one just seemed out of place and irrelevant to anything else he had to say.

and mybe that's just me.

[Ivan Brandon]

[Abhay!]

Maybe there's something really wrong with his hand. maybe he was doing people a favor because his hand's all, like, fucked up. like, he just has a vomit-claw for a hand, and ... and he can't really hide a vomit-claw in a glove because they don't build gloves for vomit-claws, so he hides it the only place he can hide it: by his balls. Maybe it's this amazing sacrifice that he's making. you know: on account of his vomit-claw.

that guy could've been some kind of tragic hero, and Evan Dorkin would never know.

finally sat down with Red Colored Elegy. really kind of rattling around in my head. I can see the French New Wave comparisons.

I kind of wish it'd come with some kind of critical writing though, putting it in a historical context-- it seems like there's a story around the comic that's interesting that... I'd rather have seen from the book than going to look for it on the web now. (EDIT: apparently every review ever written for this book has made this same complaint and I am a shitty cliche of a human being; Evan Dorkin, you were right!!!)

I'm not ... not sure how I feel about the story though just because-- I felt very aware while I was reading of the male filter on the relationship, you know? it's a little angry-young-man-ish in places. But I'm not sure how much of that's... that's just in my own head. I guess any relationship thing from a guy, I always wonder what the "real" story is, just knowing how... how things get filtered...

interesting book, though. nice drawings-- interesting storytelling ideas. but-- i don't know yet. just... just rattling around in my head.

Oh, neat: the internet found the red colored elegy song...
-abhay
read this really nice short story too tonight-- kelly link's "magic for beginners"...? apparently it won some of the big science fiction awards. You can find other stuff from her here, but not that story, so... oh well. EDIT: Here's the short story. I think it's pretty good, actually, if you're okay with fantasy-ish stories...
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2 Live Crew.

[seth hurley]

I really like Tom Spurgeon's line regarding The Demon: "it's Kirby at that point in his career where if he stood up too quickly a planet fell out of his pocket"