[spinach]

sim would save a lot of work by learning to draw and using a model

but what do i know - i never drew for a comic that wasn't stick figures and even those suck

[Daphaknee]

yeah the more i think about glamourpuss the less i like it, im just hoping it makes some huge turns like cerebus did

if i only read the first issue of cerebus i dont think iwould like it much either so im just gonna get this comic based on hope
_________________

the internet's

[Ebrey]

Tracing hot girls seems like the natural place for Dave Sim to end up to me. Cerebus was the prettiest comic art I've ever seen. That's not always good, (detailed, pretty art is terrible for action sequences) but it's damn impressive.

He just has a creepy, gravelly voice.

[Harveyjames]

[Ebrey]

Are they any other Love & Rockets readers here? It's the other 3 decade long indy comic, composed of 2 different storylines from 2 brothers. The Jaime Hernandez comics are very accessible and charming. He's a gorgeous artist who makes great use of black and white. His central character, Maggie, is a charming bisexual punk rock teenager who grows into a plump woman with a series of failed relationships. Almost as good is Ray, one of her flings who ends up roaming around LA narrating his life as a loser as if he was a film noir detective. It's all really fun, and yet unique in that it describes decades in the characters' lives, something you don't normally see outside of epic novels.

The first few issues of Love & Rockets have spaceships and dinosaurs and other crap that eventually gets phased out. It's weird, but then again the first few issues of Sandman had superheroes, and the first few issues of Cerebus were a Conan parody. I recommend every Jaime Hernandez comic available.

Gilbert Hernandez is a worse artist who tells stranger stories, set mostly in Mexico. I like most of his stuff, but I don't think he's nearly as talented as his brother.

[Renfrew]

RASL, the new Jeff Smith book, is blowing me away so far.
_________________

[Daphaknee]

harveyjames you need to tell me when these chats happen
_________________

the internet's

[glossolalia]

just finished volume two of osamu tezuka's buddha series, with volumes three and four on the way. i wasn't expecting it to start out as a ripping adventure yarn with groin-injury and fourth-wall-breaking gags, and it's a bit disconcerting to see a villain bounce a fat woman like a beach ball only to get speared through the mouth a page later, but i guess that's tezuka's take on yin and yang. and anyway the cinematic clarity of the storytelling is remarkable. some of the human character designs are a little funky, but i love the animals and landscapes.

has anyone read mw yet?

[Ebrey]

I heard not-so-great things about MW, so I haven't picked it up. I read another one of Tezuka's huge-one-volume works called Ode to Kirihito which was pretty good. One of the main characters is constantly raping people which is a little odd. Tezuka addresses this hobby of his, and he meets a tragic fate, but it's still strange how low key it is presented.

[Harveyjames]

What's MW?

I read quite a bit of Buddha but I wasn't that engaged by it! That bit with the rabbit sacrificing itself was brilliant, but the rest just seemed like he's forcing the story of Buddha through his standard repertoire of visual tricks and stock characters. You get the sense that the tone would be exactly the same if he was telling the story of Christ, or the underground railroad, or Idi Amin. Or Astro Boy. I don't think it's a classic of visual storytelling or anything like that, just Tezuka cranking it out as usual. Of course his 'cranking it out' is better than most people's best efforts, but even so, what I read was no great shakes.


Apologies for how big this is, but I thought a few of you might find this interesting: It's Dave Sim's prayer! Sim wrote this prayer and says it aloud five times daily while kneeling. It was featured on the back cover of the last ever Cerebus.

[Dracko]

Jonathan Hickman is going to be writing Nick Fury for Marvel, you guys. :O
_________________

[Harveyjames]

More like Jonathon HACKman





(I will concede I am not familiar with his work)
_________________

[Dracko]

N'Kantu, the Living Mummy: MustDie/EatSoul and Pax Romana #1.
_________________

[Capt. Caveman]

Well after a good deal of waffling, I dipped my toes into the pool that is Scott Pilgrim and read the first volume. It always struck me as being something I'd sort of hate, but it gets so much praise I figured I might as well give it a fair shake.

...I didn't really like it. The artwork was pretty good (and I've heard it gets better), but I can't say I was too fond of any of the characters, outside of (I guess) the asian girl and the gay guy. I enjoyed it most at the goofier parts ("Sweet! Coins!"), but those seemed few and far between. I couldn't really relate to the whole Toronto hipster-vibe, the protagonist seemed like a jerk, and the girl he's pining after just struck me as being kind of a slut. So I couldn't really care less about the whole dilemma.

Are the later volumes any better? Is it worth it to keep going? What should I be reading instead of this?

EDIT: Pax Romana is pretty raddd

[glossolalia]

i don't understand the scott pilgrim love either. at its best it's alright, at worst it's basically questionable content.

[Dracko]

[jdoe]

Scott Pilgrim is overrated, but it's not terrible. He's at least attempting humor, which several "alternative" cartoonists avoid like the plague, and some of the set pieces in books 2 and 3 are enjoyable. You get the sense that the cartoonist is enjoying himself and totally oblivious to the series' faults (the writing is terrible, the characters make no sense, there are flashbacks within flashbacks) - which is cute at first but annoying when you realize how popular the books are now.

Craig Thompson is one of the best artists in comics right now (no one has does body language like him since Jaime Hernandez and Will Eisner), but the book you're going to hear most about from him, Blankets, is his worst. It was probably a necessary work for him - it's the story of how he became the person he is today - but from a reader's perspective it's not an engaging story (and 500 pages at that). His first book Goodbye Chunky Rice covers similar ground in a more interesting and concise way. However, his "light" journal, Carnet de Voyage, that he did during his research for his next book is wonderful. There's a narrative there, but the fact that it's buried under day to day activities and frustrations makes it a unique little package.

[Ebrey]

I was just about to say, Goodbye, Chunky Rice is a charming, well drawn book, while Blankets looks like emo tripe. I haven't read it, and now I won't.

[Capt. Caveman]

Yeah I kept seeing copies of Blankets in bookstores and it looked pretty bland. What can ya'll tell me about Paul Pope?

[Ebrey]

[Marshmallow]

dave sim sure seems to be trying very hard to be eccentric.

[Renfrew]

Is anybody reading the new Thor one-shots, Ages of Thunder and Reign of Blood? I'm not familiar with every Norse myth ever, but I think these might be comic book versions of some Norse myths. Most of the panels stretch across both pages. They're pretty interesting.
_________________

[mals marola]

just got Jimmy Corrigan.

right now it seems like "loneliest man on earth" would be a more accurate subtitle, but i guess this part is just a really long diversion

[spinach]

I've been reading Anita Bomba and enjoying it a lot. Apparently, there is a fifth volume that has not been translated from French. I have no idea what else either Cromwell or Gratien have done since the series started - the latter I can't find anything on aside from his involvement with the series, but I did find out Cromwell is a graduate of Gobelins, which pumps out some of the best student animation around.

This is all I know.

Anita Bomba is about the only thing I've read out of Heavy Metal.

[Lurky]

I've been reading 70's Heavy Metal. The Richard Corben stuff really stands out. Den was great, as was New Tales Of The Arabian Nights.

The magazines are kind of interesting as period pieces, they talk about Dawn of the Dead and Alien a lot, Dawn of the Dead being the hip recent movie and Alien being the upcoming horror film that's going to be unlike any horror film you've ever seen. They really hype the shit out of Alien.

[Dracko]

Beckett wrote comics (not).
_________________

[haze]

Bambi and her Pink Gun is good manga. did they stop translating this after vol 2?

I keep rereading Sexy Voice & Robo and I still think it's pretty overhyped. people must namedrop this book just because it's "different" from the manga norm. the writing is terrible!

[DonMarco]

I was looking for the Watchmen collection at Barnes & Nobles. The whole western comic book section is only 8 feet, while the manga section is easily 3-4 times larger than that.

And they didn't have Watchmen. So I picked up the Zombie Survival Guide. Fourth time I've bought this book. Twice it was stolen and twice I gave it away as a gift.
_________________
Still alive.

[spinach]

So, uh, there's this thing going a few miles away and I was wondering if any of you guys might be there. I have no idea what's going on with this year's 'Con, but that's where I'm hanging out this weekend.

[Ebrey]

I'm pretty sure I would have had to buy tickets a long time ago to get in.

[Toto]

The ending of Y: The Last Man was an almost ridiculous anti-climax. Brian K. Vaughn just takes the build to these epic levels, and keeps on building until there's no possible ending that can fit. So, in saying that it was an anti-climax, I will also say that any other ending would have been an anti-climax also.

[Ebrey]

I just wrote a short film script about a Dave Sim-like misogynist who leaves his lair and finds the perfect partner: a young misanthropic girl. Anyone want to read it? I might actually make it so I'd love some comments.

[spinach]

[Capt. Caveman]

Ooh, Rice Boy is now available in a big, fat, hardcover volume.

I stopped reading it a while ago because the plot was getting too weighty and convoluted for my tastes, but damned if I wouldn't buy that just for the artwork.

I took Dark Knight Returns, Heavy Liquid, and Goodbye, Chunky Rice out from the local library. (They were ignominiously placed in a graphic-novels subsection of the "young adult" area. Why can't a man get some graphic novels from his library without being made to feel sort of creepy?) DKR and Heavy Liquid were both fantastic, Chunky Rice was almost, but not quite, satisfying. Definitely a bit too twee for me.

Though I'm a big Jeff Smith fan, I've thumbed through the first few issues of RASL at the local comic shop and it just hasn't grabbed me. I'll wait for the inevitable collections to come out.

Good people, if you have not yet, please read this book. It is quality.

[glossolalia]

...

[Dracko]

Oh my fucking God!
_________________

[rabite gets whacked!]

You dismissed my earlier claim that it might end up as awful as V for Vendetta. Care to reconsider?
_________________

[Dracko]

This is pretty much its death knell.
_________________

[CubaLibre]

Someone with more movie knowledge than me name perfectly serviceable or even great movies that have had terrible pop-punk and/or nu-metal songs over the end credits:
_________________
Let's Play, starring me.

[Marshmallow]

Transformers was alright?

[CubaLibre]