comics

love this moebiusesque art. is it in french only?

There are translations, at least english and german (which I read). But I don't know if they are in print. I envy France and Belgium for their wealth of bande dessinés, I always plan to refresh my school french enough so I don't have to wait for translations that never happen, but I never find the time.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
thought this deserved a mention on this forum just because:

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i'm not necessarily recommending it - concept is cool, like a b-boy version of Children of Men, art is decent, and the writing is kind of bare minimum OK so far (only 3 issues in), but the whole package is not amazing either. i do like how it depicts Americans living in a war-torn NYC, surviving amidst daily atrocities -- subtext being, at least to my mind: this is what is happening in Iraq.
 
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polystyle

Well-known member
The Second Doom

Seeing those Images from Marshall Law brought that back in a rush .
That was great ... Still kept it , have to dig that out again.

Crepax ? yes, Journals De Valentina

Hideshi Hino' Hell Baby was another good if not great one. 'Heartbreaking' , sad
Marvel's Inhumans art by Jae Lee
and going waay back to some old school , Golden Age
Marvels Nick Fury Agent Of S.H.i.E.L.D and Doctor Strange split Strange Tales series
and the best of all, Jim Steranko's Nick Fury Agent Of S.H.I.E.L.D 1 (Who Is Scorpio?) -5 or so.
Splurged and bought them all again some years ago before they crumbled.

Remembering all the comics we had when we were kids, hundreds !
Also the horror mags like Eerie , Creepy, even some early Vampirellas with covers by Frazetta
 

zhao

there are no accidents
speaking of "mainstream", only thing friom recent times got me excited during my last 3 weeks of geek session is Grant Morrison's stint on the New X-Men. def pushes the Marvel envelope a little bit... good writing and mostly good art... revitalizing such an old brand must be pretty damn difficult if you think about it, no? series been running for half a century now, to keep coming up with new character developments and twists without repeating or collapsing in a heap of cliches...

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Marshal Law... the Superhero Parody thing must have started in the... late 70s, early 80s? when a lot of the conventions started getting challenged, destroyed, made fun of... Cerebus got to be one of the first. and later the Tick and all those humourous ones. Marshall Law i guess is one of the apocalyptic 90s versions of that i suppose (and more).

but I was thinking about the thing with super heroes. you get sick of them and read Vertigo type adult titles like Preacher -- which is pretty good in an adolescent nihilism kind of way:

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but after a while of that you kind of come back to people flying around in tights saving the world... all analysis and criticism of the construct of Heroism and how it functions out the window. maybe because comics kind of developed around them -- superheroes being kind of central to the whole medium?

maybe that explains why people like Alan Moore keeps going back to them as well. his recent America's Best Comics line is pure entertaining with tongue firmly in cheek, just good fun:

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but after a while of that you kind of come back to people flying around in tights saving the world... all analysis and criticism of the construct of Heroism and how it functions out the window. maybe because comics kind of developed around them -- superheroes being kind of central to the whole medium?

Hmm, maybe american comics, but not the medium as a whole. My interest in superhero is close to 0 nowadays, I loved Batman and Spiderman as a child (the owner of the house my parents had rented for some years had a great silver age marvel collection), but my main entry points for comics were stuff like Asterix, Blake & Mortimer, Lucky Luke etc. I just saw that there's a complete edition of Goscinny's/Tabary's Iznogoud reissued in german, I'll probably get that :D

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zhao

there are no accidents
Hmm, maybe american comics, but not the medium as a whole. ... my main entry points for comics were stuff like Asterix, Blake & Mortimer, Lucky Luke etc.

guess you are right. I'm always a bit embarrassed when i realize just how much American shit has influenced me -- more than i care to admit to myself! :eek:

my first obsession was the Monkey King comics and TinTin i think...

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But Monkey King was sort of a super hero in a way too...

and speaking of american shit and revitalizing old characters, i've heard recent Garth Ennis run of Punisher Max is completely insane, stories of Frank Castle as an old man, and has nothing to do with "super heroes"...

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empty mirror

remember the jackalope
I just read the first six or so issues of Grant Morrison's run on ALL-STAR Superman. I really enjoy Grant's Vertigo stuff (Animal Man and Doom Patrol in particular) and his take on Supes is zany. I don't like my superhero stuff taken too seriously (Alan Moore's Watchmen and Dark Knight would be exceptions in my book) so this is just about perfect. Haven't read Superman since puberty, but strangely, this one does have the zany-ness i remember from 1980's Superman books, what with Bizarro and the like.
 
Thread needs more New Frontier.

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http://www.dccomics.com/graphic_novels/?gn=5886

The $75 I spent on the Ultimate hardcover boxed edition was the best $75 I've ever spent in comics. If I were going to recommend one single comic to anyone, even people who don't read a lot of tights and powers books, this would be it.

The book is set in the gap between Golden Age DC characters and Silver Age. Senator McCarthy and the Korean War feature big in this. A number of comics are grappling with "how do we do capes at this point in history" but none of them have nailed it like this. It really handles deftly but strongly the mythic elements of superheroes and the political landscape of today, but in an incredibly tightly-coordinated aesthetic package centered around the Silver Age.

I tried to get into random hipster sullen B&W comics after I drifted out of reading Vertigo years ago, but those were what finally broke my comics reading. I saw the animated version of this at a friend's house (also strongly recommended) and went and bought this hardbound the next day, and I've never been a big DC guy.

If I were going to recommend two comics to someone, the other would be Godland, absolutely worth the hardbound edition:

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http://www.imagecomics.com/

Likewise, I was never really a Jack Kirby guy, but this is the quirkiest yet most earnest Jack Kirby homage I've ever seen. They nail his "cosmic" style, but then play it light and sarcastic with the dialogue. Trippy characters like the drug-addled skull floating in a glass head on a robotic body, a playboy aristrocrat Destro-type, a giant space dog, astronauts, the history of the universe in issue #7, you name it. If you like hallucinogens, this comic is all you.
 
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droid

Guest
Just out:

Me and the Devil Blues: The Unreal Life of Robert Johnson, Book One

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Interesting art, starts really well, but then turns into a bit of a road/adventure story. Worth sticking with though.

And a Kazou Koike to avoid:

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Color of Rage presents the ongoing story of two slaves that manage to free themselves from a slave ship, washing up upon the shore of an Edo-era Japan in the year 1783. George is a Japanese man of considerable skill with a sword, and he is joined by his strong African-American buddy King, as they trek towards George’s village, where he hasn’t been home for over a decade.

Its pants unfortunately. More lIke Fist of the north Star than Lone Wolf and Cub...
 
At the risk of being called an elitist, a hipster or a marxist i'm going to add my voice to the chorus of praise of yuichi yokoyama's "New Engineering"

i was reminded of mat brinkman's Teratoid Heights (a masterpiece also lacking a mention here afaik) in terms of a new, near "silent" spatial language for comics

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also for those who haven't picked up the long awaited Fletcher Hanks anthology I Shall Destroy All the Civlized Planets...cop it. absolute highest recommendation.

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And a Kazou Koike to avoid


Its pants unfortunately. More lIke Fist of the north Star than Lone Wolf and Cub...

did you ever read Samurai Executioner droid? easily his most compelling work imo
 
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droid

Guest
At the risk of being called an elitist, a hipster or a marxist i'm going to add my voice to the chorus of praise of yuichi yokoyama's "New Engineering"

Thats an exceptional piece of work alright. Pure Garo. Have you read 'Red Colored Elegy' by Seiichi Hayashi or any of the Yoshihiro Tatsumi books?

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did you ever read Samurai Executioner droid? easily his most compelling work imo

Mainly because of its conciseness I think. Not sure if it trumps Lone Wolf despite the fantastic tension throughout.

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Path of the assassin is up to Vol 12 now and proving to be a bit of a slog!

Have you checked out Satsuma Gishiden?

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Administrative samurai manga with the odd ridiculous fight scene. great brushwork though!
 
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droid

Guest
I can't remember who recommended this one (thanks!) but I've been following the Freak Angels web-comic for a while now. Really good.

This is interesting. Ellis describes this as a 'totally British thing', although the art style is very similar to manga - specifically Shou Tajimas work in MPD psycho - and the theme? A bunch of mysteriously genetically engineered psychic kids struggling with the responsibility of their powers??

You couldn't get more manga if you were cosplaying in Akihabara!!
 
Thats an exceptional piece of work alright. Pure Garo. Have you read 'Red Colored Elegy' by Seiichi Hayashi or any of the Yoshihiro Tatsumi books?

no on both counts, i think the online bombardment of manga style imagery has queered me a little on japanese comics, or at least they aren't the first thing that tends to catch my eye, comics are so expensive and i'm always skint... that artwork looks familiar but i think it's just cos it looks a bit like Keiji Nakazawa.

Mainly because of its conciseness I think. Not sure if it trumps Lone Wolf despite the fantastic tension throughout.

that's certainly a factor, but it's the outright nihilism of it that seals the deal. by the end of the second chapter he's executed his old man and his bird which is pretty fair going. He's about as anti a hero as you'll find in comics- well he's the bad guy in lwac of course. i suppose it is just higher on the exploitation style content and lower on the near soap opera level of extended narrative lwac has. it's just so fucking long!


Path of the assassin is up to Vol 12 now and proving to be a bit of a slog!

Have you checked out Satsuma Gishiden?


Administrative samurai manga with the odd ridiculous fight scene. great brushwork though!

samurai executioner felt like a kind of ne plus ultra for this genre, i must admit i've not paid it much further attention since i read it. i'm in awe of these dudes inking though, always a pleasure to look at!
 
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