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What was the last comic or graphic novel you read that didn't come from Marvel or DC...

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Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

21:37 / 12.02.05

The Walking Dead is great, though.

Is it?

I LIKE it and am following it, but as I read it, it's starting to look more like a soap opera than a great comic. The latest issue really rammed that home to me, as they are bringing down the number of characters, and upping the gore, we also get pages of romance problems and some silly character actions that. Maybe I'm just upset that the writer has such a great idea for doing something BIG (characters are locking themselves in a prison for their own safety) and is pissing it away instead of going for anything more that zombie hunting.

I bring this up because I have been reading George Romero's "Toe Tags", which, while he doesn't quite grasp the comics medium, and the editor isn't doing much to make his story fit better, Romero is filling it with social commentary, expanding ideas from his movies and is trying for something more than a zombie soap opera.

Don't get me wrong...Walking Dead is fun, and I'll read it first every week it comes out, but it strikes me as simple genre fiction (in a tight genre) rather than something special...

And why is it that gerne fiction that isn't super-heroes merely has to be mediocre for people to shower it with praise in comic books?

16:38 / 13.02.05

returning to try and add comments on some of the other comics brought up -

Demo - Becky Coolan's art was tops by Brian wood's contributiuon really left me cold - which is an improvement on his work on Pounded and Couscous Express which actually made me angry. An odd reaction perhaps but there is something about the type of 'snotty, self-important brats are like really cool 'cause they look hot and are young and stuff' he puts in his comics that really puts my back up.

Yeah - while I want to see small publishers like AiT/planet Lar do well, nothing that I've read of theirs so far has really tickled my fancy...

16:57 / 13.02.05

I've also recently read Louis Riel - Chester Brown's comicstrip biography of the Canadian political figure Louis Riel...

The hard cover, which is the only colllection that is available at present, is a really beautiful package and Brown's artwork is equally attractive. Louis Riel's life is a compelling tale. Unfortunately, in attempting to remain as true to the facts of his subject's life as possible (and there are extensive annotations noting exactly when and where Brown has bent the facts in his creation) the cartoonist doesn't really flesh out any of the characters much. The result reads rather flat. This quality is probably enhanced by the rigid 6 panel grid system that comprises every page of the narrative...

But all the rest asside, Louis Riel offers a highly acessible and engaging overview of the life of one of Canada's most intriguing and important political figures. I enjoyed it.

Haus of Mystery

18:30 / 13.02.05

How does it compare to Chester Brown's other stuff - it seems a million miles from something Like 'Ed the Happy Clown'.

Has anyone read David B's 'Epileptic'? My girlfriend's reading it, so I'm just waiting but sneaking peeks at it, it looks amazing. Really vivid, creative artwork and a magical realist slant on the problems involved with raising a child with a disability.

Would also like to shout out Teratoid Heights by Matt Brinkman, published by highwater books (sadly defunct, but the books are still available). Strange and wonderful stuff involving odd creatures in a very alien, but recognisible lnadscape. Sort of fantasy, but really heady and absorbing little (im)morality tales played out on a bizarro landscape. Wordless, with art that resembles woodcarving as much as pen & ink. Very fine indeed.

18:35 / 13.02.05

I do fancy that Mazzuchelli adaptation of City of Glass that just came out/was reprinted.

Other than that, can't remember. Was reading Humanoids books before DC took them over and the first couple Stray Bullets.

18:47 / 13.02.05

To be honest - I haven't really read much of Chet Brown's stuff before - I've read the the comics he illustrated for Harvey Pekar, the jams he did with Dave Sim and browsed through Ed the Happy Clown and I Never Liked You in shops (so many comics, so little time). From this less than scientific sample I'd say that Reil is probably a lot less stylized than Brown's normal style - none of the characters have massive foreheads or pencil-thin limbsbut there is still room enough for a few idesyncracies...

As for Dave B's Epileptic - this is another comic i have yet to get round to - although I have flicked through several volumes of them of them belonging to an ex-housemate in French... I've also saw Mr B himself at the ICA last year -

On the highwater tip - I think their list of books is available through Topshelf - so if people are interested to try they ould try and order them from Topshelf...

Haus of Mystery

19:27 / 13.02.05

I read The playboy by Brown a while ago, and while I was slightly put off by what seemed to be another comic about a neurotic white middle aged man/nerd's sexual inadequacy, I have to admit being won over by the candour of his autobiographical tale. He really nails the mixture of thrills and shame associated with the discovery of masturbation, and bears it to painful scrutiny. Probably the best ode to wanking since 'Portnoy's complaint'.
'Ed the happy Clown' seemed disturbing and jam-packed with self-loathing, but was weirdly lucid and engaging. I shall add 'Louis Riel' to the (very long)wish list....

21:29 / 13.02.05

Pretty much all the T.P.B.'s I've bought in the last 12 months have been none D.C. or Marvel. At the risk of being a cliche I've bought a stack of Rebellion collections (which would be D.C. if I were in America. Thankfully I'm not so I can still claim this).

Devlin Waugh is a botched job in terms of the printing and the Siku art is...less good than the rest of the art in it...but there's some superb John Smith madness in it.

RoboHunter:Verdus is a real treat. It's, frankly, barmy and enormously entertaining. I could go on and on about it but won't.

Bad Company contains all the good stuff and none of the bad stuff, Rogue Trooper 1 and Nikolai Dante 1 have the early steps of strong serials and are worth looking out for.

Modesty Blaise and James Bond have been reprinted by Titan and are surprisingly readable and strong with lovely art.

Dan Dare is getting the releases they've long deserved in a lovely range of hardbacks.

Charlies War. The best comic Britain produced in the 1970's? Probably still one of the best.

21:57 / 13.02.05

Ohhh Duncan - definitely get City of Glass - it is absolutely fantastic -

Have you read the original standard test short story? Karasik/Mazzucchelli's version is of equal length and, if anything, manages to cram more in. For a story that is, in part, about the limits of language comics is in many ways the ideal for it. The visual element eludes the confines of a standardized language, of simple meanings.

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

03:31 / 14.02.05

I don't buy any Chester Brown until he's done with a story. I'm STILL upset I invested so much money and mental power into Underwater, and just as it was starting to come together...he just quit doing it.

Anytime a creator does something like that, it makes me terribly wary of picking up their work.

06:40 / 14.02.05

But, Louis Reil is both finished and collected.

at the scarwash

07:30 / 14.02.05

Well, it's not exactly new, but i re-read Seth's It's a Good Life if you don't Weaken recently, which was a pleasant reacquaintance with the potentials of comic storytelling free from any sort of referentiality or other exterior concerns. It's just a well-written story.

Jake, Colossus of Clout

16:54 / 14.02.05

Craig Thompson's Blankets is not new, but it is brilliant. An autobigraphical first love / coming-of-age story, but not cliched in the least and it has gorgeous art. It's 600 pages long and so good you'll read it in one sitting.

02:32 / 15.02.05

Paul Hornschemeier's collected Sequential. Not as good as his Mother Come Home - but then, what is? - but it's still very good and fascinating in terms of his artistic growth from joke comics to something really unique and powerful.

Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima's Samurai Executioner. The series they did before Lone Wolf and Cub. Again, the former isn't as good as the latter mainly because it lacks the huge over-arching story. Also, every other story seems to feature rape which becomes more than a little unsettling.

Robert Kirman's Invincible.Just bought the first trade and I'll definitely be getting more. Intelligent and funny superhero stuff.

13:43 / 15.02.05

"Invincible" is definitely quality work, though I kinda prefer Cory Walker's art to Ryan Ottley's. That's not to say I don't like Ottley's work, I just don't like it as much. The last TPB I bought was Andi Watson's "Love Fights" which I think I raved over elsewhere. Other than that I have been catching up on Morrison's J.L.A so I've been spending my money on those recently. Next I think I'm going to pick up some the "Hopeless Savages" trades. I bought the first series in singles and it was quality with some nice artists involved so that's my next purchase.

14:54 / 15.02.05

Have you read the original standard test short story?

I don't know what you mean, Sleaze; the original gn? I've read the novel, which I liked a lot, and I do love the Mazz.

14:57 / 15.02.05

Also, this and Epileptic seem to be '05's 'Biff! Pow! Whiz! Comics aren't for kids anymore!' books.

As Blankets was in '03(?) I hate that in principle, after it became the book to tout on such unlikely venues as MillarWorld.

15:16 / 15.02.05

'test' was a typo for text - for the uninitiated, City of Glass is the first of three short stories in a collection of Paul Auster's stories called The New York Trilogy - the story is told pretty much in standard text apart from the visual reprisentation of the maps - if you haven't read the standard text version i'd recommend that too, if only as an interesting contrast to the GN version.

As for the notion of 'this year's serious comics'... the comics version of City of Glass was first published a decade ago and I think an english translation of the first volume of the english translation of Epileptic was published a couple of years ago... It feels a bit like that to stand any chance of getting properly reviewed and reaching its market graphic novels need to be published more than once...
perhaps an argument to keep pre-serialization (comics as most of us would recognise them) around for a while yet...

The Natural Way

20:31 / 15.02.05

Aaaah, but Dunc, Blankets really is pretty good. Most perfectly distilled teenage roance I've come across in any medium

The Natural Way

20:33 / 15.02.05

Fucking keyboard...

"roance"="romance".

Henningjohnathan

20:40 / 15.02.05

BONE by Jeff Smith.

(SMAX from ABC but that is technically DC).

22:16 / 15.02.05

Hey henningjonathan

What did you think of Bone then? did you get the original issues - the cartoon books collections the single volume edition of the colour scholastic version?

08:36 / 16.02.05

Christ, Sleaze, you've been posting on Barbelith for years and you still can't read his mind?

Haus of Mystery

09:13 / 16.02.05

Pappuce is such an old roantic.

yawn - thing's buddy

10:18 / 16.02.05

i cannot think beyond POISON RIVER at the moment.

(tho have to say i think WE3 is one of my favourite comics of all time)

10:22 / 16.02.05

Poison River - what is?

Haus of Mystery

10:26 / 16.02.05

I'd like to give props to The Amazing Screw-On Head by Mike Mignola, a non-Hellboy one-shot. Whilst not really a graphic novel, it is an immensely funny bizarro read, almost stream of consciousness. Reads a bit like the funnier issues of Grunt's Doom Patrol. Always lovely Mignola artwork - damn, the man can draw a monkey.

10:56 / 16.02.05

I've always wanted Mignola to do more monkey-centric work. His Kriegaffe in Hellboy was brilliant. Perhaps we should try and convince him to do the comic adaptation of Peter Jackson's King Kong?

13:43 / 16.02.05

Come on now everyone I want more than a simple list of titles that might not mean anything to some readers, particularly those who haven't read comics outside the Marvel/DC duopoly...

Poison River is a Love and Rockets GN set in the Mexican village of Palomar... I enjoyed it immensely when I read it (I tend to prefer Gilberto Hernandez's stuff), but don't actually own any Love and Rockets myself. With the distorted chronology of the Palomar tales I get mixed up with what actually happens actually happens in each book...

14:02 / 16.02.05

Thanks, Sleaze. I've not read much L&R, but what I have read I've loved - almost all Jamie Hernandez, as far as I can remember.

What is it about Gilberto's stuff that you dig? Most people I've spoken to seem to rate Jamie's work over his brothers.

Haus of Mystery

14:24 / 16.02.05

I think Beto's stuff is kind of the 'magical-realist' variant of Jaimie's (although J's stuff slides that way occasionally - see Penny Century, Costigan and Izzy). The Palomar stories concern a mexican(?) town and it's inhabitants, and jumps around in time in a similar vein to Marquez (to name-check the most obvious influence). Characters often look alike or share names, to add to the confusion. It's good, often great, stuff, provided you can get over the outlandish breast-size of some of the characters. Interestingly Jaimie seems to favour girls with big bums and lady wrestlers. I prefer J's work generally, although i would like to read the Palomar sequence in complete form.

14:50 / 16.02.05

For me it mainly comes down to a difference in subject matter...

Jamie/Xamie's stories tend to revolve around Maggie and Hopey and Penny Century and the whole arena of female wrestlers - its also about the lives and loves of twentysomethings with more than a few flourishes of magical realism.

Gilbert's stories tend to revolve around the Mexican village of Palomar and has less magical realism and perhaps focuses more on the lives loves and power structures that effect that less-than-prosperous town. One of its main characters is Luba, a woman who has been everything from a gangster's girl to the propritor of a local bath house to the town's mayor.

Hmmm - reading that back I'm not sure how much this might elucidate matters...

To put it another way I find Gilbert's choice of subject matter to be more engaging and more ideosyncratic than that of Brother Jamie's...

14:54 / 16.02.05

Hmm, any particular books you could recommend (assuming it has been collected)?

15:00 / 16.02.05

Whilst the lives and loves of twenty somethings isn't unusual subject matter, I'd say that Jamie's work is pretty idiosyncratic. I've not read much else like it.

yawn - thing's buddy

15:06 / 16.02.05

bobos:

poison river!

cos its stand alone.

you can read this and not give a fuck about anythin else in the entire series.

it's quite simply one of the best soap operas anywhere. if you like soapranos, you'll like this.

it is actually 'better' than the sopranos.

some of the characters - wow.... fermin rio and his dapper son, peter, so cool....and just so damn perverted!!!! ortiz, the bent cop, isabel..woah, isabel! so many...

tho i've got palomar collected - it's good, some amazing stuff in parts(funnily enough, the very first palomar story is also just about the best) - but the sustained virtuosity within the collected poision river (it was rejigged compared to comic originals) is, I think, unparalleled.

it has hot sex, gangster shit, beuatiful people, incredible artwork, snappy dialogue, expert plotting, and well............

it made me cry!

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