Random Thoughts

The magazines are still trickling into the search engine for magazines about comics, but I guess it’s mostly done now. I mean, it’s by no means complete — it has about 10% of the Comics Buyer’s Guide issues, for instance — but I guess all of the most important magazines are basically there.

The search engine has only magazines about comics, and not comics magazines themselves. But there are some magazines that are 90% comics, but then has some text features that might be interesting in the context. The one that comes immediately to mind is Heavy Metal, since it was running for so long, so there’s just a lot of issues. (And besides, I’d already downloaded it from the torrents.)

But I don’t want to have actual comics on the site, because that’d be way too copyright violationey (that’s a word) for little gain.

So I pondered using an LLM to categorise pages into comics pages/non comics pages, and then went “eh, nope”. But a pretty solid rule of thumb is that text pages have, like, more text than comics pages, so what about just filtering out all pages that have less text than, say, 2K?

The results are here — I guess it’s about 8 pages per issue that made the cut?

It works!

See?

I mean, it’s a fairly crude way to segment — I’m sure there’s some Byron Preiss-packaged comics pages that were included (heh heh), and some pages that had a huge illustration with a text box under saying “this art sucks” that were excluded, but whatchagonnado?

Hm… are there any other long-running magazines like this? I mean, that are mostly comics, but also have some interviews/reviews/etc?

I was in Paris last week, so I went comics shopping again. I mean, there’s a lot of nice comics shops in Paris, of course, but I was looking for shops that had a selection outside the normal Delcourt/Dargaud/etc mainstream stuff.

So I visited Un regard moderne, and it’s very nice indeed.

I guess the selection is, like, one quarter comics and the rest are books (with a lot of art books).

It’s cool! Highly recommended.

So what did I get?

Lots of stuff!

Some very small-press stuff…

Some very elaborate (and screen-printed stuff).

More alternative things…

Joost Swarte!

A screen-printed huge magazine from Le dernier cri.

With four different booklets stapled inside.

Fab!

And just a lot of interesting-looking stuff I’m looking forward to reading.

I went back to Aaapoum Bapoum, which is a huge store, and yet again I only jogged through quickly, because there was so much stuff I wanted to buy, but I’m limited to what I’m able to carry up the stairs here…

See?

Lots and lots.

Like this book by Muñoz and Sampayo — Sophie — that I didn’t know existed.

Look! It’s awesome!

And this one, drawn by Anna Brandoli.

It looks fantastic! And both of these were ten euros or less! *gasp* *swoon* *faint*

Actually, this trip to Aaapoum Bapoum reminded me of a recurring dream I’ve had since I was a teenager: I discover a new comics shop, and I go in and I find new books by Hergé, Pratt or Tardi, and I’m like frantic; I’ve got to read them all! Muñoz/Sampaya or Brandoli is kinda like that — mais je rêve!

This edition collects all the Blotch stuff — I’ve read the first half of this before, but not in French, so there.

And this looks fun…

And gotta buy Gipi.

Anyway, good shop.

I was in the neighbourhood, so I stopped in at the extremely confusing Album BD shop. I mean, it’s confusing since it appears to say “MomieBD” on the front (and does that mean “mummy”?) and not AlbumBD.

And if you look up the locations on the web site, you see that it’s… er… OK! The locations are where the puffins are? Sure, that makes sense for AlbumBD/MomieBD… a puffin… Anyway, three locations near each other.

And the shops are perfectly nice, but the selection is very, very mainstream, from what I could see.

Finally, I went to Bulles-en-vrac (which I guess means “bubbles whole sale” or “self picking” (like with candy) (“bubbles” as in “speech bubbles”), and it was also nice.

Mostly mainstream things, but they had this shelf of more oddball things.

I got a little stack.

I haven’t seen one by Yuichi Yokoyama before.

Looks cool.

And the storytelling in this looks very interesting…

But most importantly: Fuck ze tourists.

Looks like some kind of masterpiece!

Anyway, that’s Paris for you.

I’m still on the lookout for shops that have more oddball comics — these things are really hard to google. Anybody know of a shop in Paris with a big selection of Le dernier cri, for instance? And Bries? And so on.