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Author Topic: Funnybooks  (Read 170167 times)

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Norondor

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Re: Funnybooks
« Reply #1560 on: September 29, 2011, 01:42:36 PM »

it would probably be easier if they knew any writers who had at any point spoken to a female human
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Mongrel

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Re: Funnybooks
« Reply #1561 on: September 29, 2011, 01:51:45 PM »

it would probably be easier if they knew any writers who had at any point spoken to a female human


Thank you. SOMEBODY had to say it.

EDIT: A refined version could be "Someone who had at any point spoken to a female human and actually listened to what they had to say instead of tuning out that droning noise while mentally undressing her."
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Büge

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Re: Funnybooks
« Reply #1562 on: September 29, 2011, 05:00:15 PM »

but guys starfire is a female alien hurr hurr
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Mongrel

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Re: Funnybooks
« Reply #1563 on: September 29, 2011, 05:09:26 PM »

Quote from: Scott Lobdell
but guys starfire is a female alien hurr hurr
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Thad

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Re: Funnybooks
« Reply #1564 on: September 29, 2011, 09:40:36 PM »

On the subject of superhero romance: Thor: The Mighty Avenger was fucking awesome.
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Kashan

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Re: Funnybooks
« Reply #1565 on: September 29, 2011, 09:49:07 PM »

On the subject of superhero romance: Thor: The Mighty Avenger was fucking awesome.
Also Spider-man Loves Mary Jane.
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Mongrel

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Re: Funnybooks
« Reply #1566 on: September 29, 2011, 10:08:16 PM »

On the subject of superhero romance: Thor: The Mighty Avenger was fucking awesome.
Also Spider-man Loves Mary Jane.

I went to high school with the guy who drew that (Takeshi Miyazawa).

So yeah, I bought that for a while.  :nyoro~n:
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Thad

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Re: Funnybooks
« Reply #1567 on: October 03, 2011, 08:09:21 AM »

A few quick run-throughs:

Kick-Ass: Oh boy, gang rape and child murder.  Think I'm finally done with this book.

DC Comics Presents: I've seen lots of people suggest this was a middling book, but I really liked it; I'd say it's one of my favorites of the DC relaunch.  Perfectly decent Deadman introduction, and hopefully this book will continue to highlight B-listers.

Aquaman: I was a little put off by reading that it's yet another book that tries to directly take on all the Aquaman mockery, but it's actually pretty good!  This Aquaman is, like all other versions of Aquaman, not as good as the one on TB&TB, and is in fact kind of a dick.  But I like him as a long-suffering character who's tired of getting made fun of, and I laughed several times.

Futurama: Oh boy, HERE'S a comic that no British person read before it went to press.  Because otherwise you can pretty safely assume that Steampunk Bender would not have referred to rescuing Queen Victoria from "space-wogs".

Dark Horse Presents: Beasts of Burden and Age of Reptiles continue to be two of my favorite comics, and they're true to form here.  The rest of the book is competent but not standout.  Chaykin continues to frustrate; just as he's finally hitting his stride and beginning to get the hang of characters and pacing, bam, it gets all rapey.

Treehouse of Horror: This may change once I finally get around to Love and Rockets, but as of now this is the best thing I've read all month.  I considered putting it in the Comics for People Who Don't Read Comics thread, but given that the highlight is a Jim Woodring pastiche of the old EC horror tales, I would have to explain who Jim Woodring is and what EC was.

Suffice it to say that it is a gorgeous fucking book and Treehouse-the-comic has never worn its influence on its sleeve so clearly as it does here.  The art is incredible and the story could have come straight out of Tales from the Crypt -- but with a neat little metafictional twist.  Just delightful.
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Mongrel

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Re: Funnybooks
« Reply #1568 on: October 04, 2011, 08:59:13 AM »

So, you know how folks (especially me) often complain that we see modern North American (NA) comics as something of a wasteland. That apart from some independent work superhero comics have come to dominate meaning that the crappy superhero genre is now conflated with NA comics as a whole.

Now I'm beginning to see more and more that the real tragedy is actually masked in a way, because a lot of people seem to think that Superheroes have always dominated the American comics scene. That the issue is more one of the quality of the genre than with NA comics as a whole.

This wasn't always the case. There used to exist a vastly more mainstream comic form, one with an incredibly sophisticated level of writing that calls back to some of the very best of American writers like Twain or Whitman, or earlier writers like Jonathan Swift. Those would be newspaper comics.

I think by now a lot of us have been educated on the demise of the funny papers by Bill Watterson, but I don't think it's truly appreciated what's been lost, because a lot of the material has simply never been reprinted, has not been reprinted in an accessible way (such as with the lavish Popeye and Krazy Kat coffee-table books), or was once reprinted in a widely available form, but has not been reprinted since the 60's. Just about the ONLY book I can think of that avoided this fate is Peanuts.

A lot of that stuff is dismissed - like Superhero Comics - as kids' stuff. That's understandable, considering the absurdist, often slapstick humour, the fondness for gibberish and satire, and so forth, but man, when you actually read the best material, it's phenomenal stuff. There's always that idiot debate about how artistic comics can be, but apart from some more modern outliers (Will Eisner for example), some of those early newspaper strips may have reached for heights higher than any other comics published in any country at any time have scaled.

There's this sort of dim awareness that maybe something is gone, but really the tendency is to automatically slot newspaper funnies in the "Blondie" cheap sitcom slot (well, even Blondie was kind of neat when it was new). Bill Watterson's most lasting legacy may have been to provide a sole living example to current generations of what was once a thriving, bountiful industry.

There's just this huge hole now and superhero comics (or any single genre for that matter) are never going to fill it.

None of what I have to say will probably be any kind of surprise to Thad, but I dunno about anybody else. At the very least, the following strips are worth looking at if you ever get the chance. Some of these are no doubt blindingly obvious choices (Calvin & Hobbes), but are included on the list for completeness' sake (Thad, feel free to add any suggestions of your own):

George Harriman - Krazy Kat
E.C. Segar - Popeye
Walt Kelly - Pogo
Al Capp - Lil Abner (not so much the later stuff after Capp became a horrible reactionary curmudgeon. Anything prior to Vietnam is probably still good.)
Crockett Johnson - Barnaby
Charles Schultz - Peanuts
Gary Larson - The Far Side
Bill Watterson - Calvin & Hobbes

There's a wealth of other stuff (especially in the earlier half of the 20th century), but my experience of it has been so limited that I don't know enough to recommend stuff like Little Nemo, or the early works of Rube Goldberg (and even if I did, I'm not sure how much of it would be easy to find, other than Little Nemo). In the same vein, I have yet to get much in the way of exposure to some of the long running drama strips (Terry & the Pirates, Scorchy Smith, Gasoline Alley) or comedy-dramas (Barney Google). So I don't know where they fall on the spectrum from really good to boringly soap-operatic.
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Thad

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Re: Funnybooks
« Reply #1569 on: October 04, 2011, 09:30:34 AM »

Actually there's been a real push to reprint old newspaper comics in the last decade or so, spurred on by the aforementioned Complete Peanuts collection.  The work of John Stanley is highly recommended -- did you know Nancy used to be AWESOME? -- and, thanks to Dark Horse and Drawn and Quarterly, his work is widely available.  Little Lulu is his best-known work, but I'd recommend anything with his name on it.

Bloom County's getting the same treatment Peanuts is.  Early strips are rough but it's a great comic.

Joanna Draper-Carlson has a recent review up of the first two volumes of Archie Archives -- those aren't actually the Archie newspaper strips (which are being collected separately), but I expect that most of her praise and criticism apply to those as well.

I think my next book purchase will probably be the first volume of Floyd Gottfredson's Mickey Mouse strips.  There was a preview last FCBD and it was just beautiful.  And, starting next month (if I'm not mistaken), Fantagraphics is going to be publishing reprints of Carl Barks's Duck comics.

Strips that I haven't really read but which have gotten the reprint treatment and which I hear good things about include Bringing Up Father, Dick Tracy, and Prince Valiant.

And now's as good a time as any to link to Digital Comic Museum again; it's an archive of public-domain comics which includes a number of the strips we've talked about.

Only problem with all of these is that they're usually hardcover coffee table books -- meaning they're expensive, heavy, and not conducive to throwing in a bag and taking with you to flip through when you have a few minutes to spare.  I've got a stack of hardcovers I haven't even cracked yet, and a handful which I've started but haven't been able to finish, even as I'm finally starting to dent my backlog of trades.
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Mongrel

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Re: Funnybooks
« Reply #1570 on: October 04, 2011, 09:33:43 AM »

The one I'm really waiting for is the long delayed Pogo reprint collection. The main problem is a lack of good quality source material and I don't know if they've completely solved that problem yet. They keep pushing back the publication date and the last update was a vague "Autumn 2011", but I haven't heard anything concrete about a release that's supposedly imminent.

At any rate, even if we do see real significant reprints of classic work, I'm not sure that will necessarily translate into genuine new material or if it does, that that new material will appear in any quantity to threaten superhero books for volume (Bone is a good example of what's possible though).
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Royal☭

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Re: Funnybooks
« Reply #1571 on: October 04, 2011, 10:28:59 AM »

Little Nemo deserves to be on the list, and it's got a current print run of the series, but is also available on some online archives.

A lot of people are looking into these older works and trying to bring them back into the fold, which is a good thing. It takes artists who look back, like Spiegelman, Pope and Watterson, to really get the ball rolling, and critics like Seneca who know the history to press for it.

Zaratustra

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Re: Funnybooks
« Reply #1572 on: October 04, 2011, 10:57:08 AM »

I once saw a My Little Nemo collection for sale and didn't  buy it, and spent five years looking for it afterwards.

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Re: Funnybooks
« Reply #1573 on: October 04, 2011, 10:59:02 AM »

I'm collecting the Peanuts collections. I already have the C&H one, which is absolutely beautiful. Every strip has a date it was published and everything.

If you have your eye on the peanuts ones, though, jump on them NOW. Some of the earlier sets are starting to vanish.
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Thad

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Re: Funnybooks
« Reply #1574 on: October 05, 2011, 09:46:30 AM »

Love and Rockets: New Stories #4: ...wow.  Going to have to chew on that one for awhile.

It's definitely The Jaime Show this year, even moreso than last.  There are only two Gilbert stories in this one; one's a kinda fun take on the vampire trend through the lens of Fritz's B-movie career, and the other is a slice-of-life story that's mostly just Fritz chatting with her guy.  (I don't know who he is; haven't been keeping up with Fritz.  I don't really like Fritz very much, though I like her as an "actress" who appears in other stories.)  It's decent stuff and highlights Gilbert's gift for dialogue and mundane, day-to-day stuff, but again, I don't like Fritz very much so it ultimately doesn't do much for me.

Jaime's work is mostly the conclusion of last year's The Love Bunglers, with an interlude for another story from Maggie's childhood.

I think the reviewer who said that the back half of The Love Bunglers was more emotionally brutal than the front half was overstating it, but there's still real pathos, tragedy, and loss here.

It's also an ending.  A real, full-circle, the-past-thirty-years-have-all-led-up-to-this ending.  Which is not to say we'll never see our girls again -- indeed, this is at least the third real, full-circle, the-past-X-years-have-all-led-up-to-this ending the series has had -- but it closes the book on another chapter in the lives of our three leads, and, while there's shock and tragedy along the way, it ends on a positive note.

L&R is still one of the best goddamn comics ever.  And it's consistently worth the wait.  I don't know that I'd recommend this book on its own -- you get a good sense of who Maggie and Ray are without needing any backstory, but last year's book is essential to understanding who Calvin is -- and if you're already reading, you probably don't need me to tell you to keep reading.  Just rambling, I suppose -- because it's the kinda book where you finish it and want to talk about it.
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Rico

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Re: Funnybooks
« Reply #1575 on: October 05, 2011, 11:06:30 AM »

So, we got a new DC pint glass collector set in at work today. All classic art, screened to look like newsprint.
Superman: Getting hit by lightning bolts and saying "That tickles."
Batman: A normal Batman pose.
Green Lantern: Using his ring to stop a missile from hitting a city.
Wonder Woman: Shrunk to a tiny size and being tortured with a pair of tweezers.

For some reason I was reminded of a couple of recent discussions.
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Thad

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Re: Funnybooks
« Reply #1576 on: October 05, 2011, 11:18:40 AM »

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Büge

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Re: Funnybooks
« Reply #1577 on: October 05, 2011, 11:27:37 AM »

is that real
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Thad

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Re: Funnybooks
« Reply #1578 on: October 05, 2011, 12:13:09 PM »

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Büge

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Re: Funnybooks
« Reply #1579 on: October 05, 2011, 12:20:37 PM »

 :disapprove:
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