Random Thoughts

I read some comics over the past few days.

Or rather… I think I actually read only four of these books?

Rea Irvin’s artwork is quite stylish, but man — even in 1930 people must have been going “well, this is a bit trite, innit?”

It’s just not funny, so I ditched this book after a couple dozen pages.

I did read the entirety of this “Modern Age” Daredevil collection. “Modern age” apparently means 2005?

The main attraction here is Alex Maleev’s artwork, which is just not the kind of thing you expect to find in a Marvel comic book.

My main problem with this book has mostly to do with the binding. This is one of those “Epic” collections, which means that the spine is very, very tight. Maleev has a tendency to draw panels horizontally over two pages, which means that many panels are just swallowed up by the binding. Couldn’t Marvel have spend a couple more millimetres of paper in the middle? Or just shifted everything out towards the opposite edges of the pages? It’s so annoying.

I quite enjoyed these comics overall, but, I mean, it’s… Daredevil. It’s OK.

Wow, what an ugly cover for this Total THB 1 collection.

The interior artwork is so beautiful.

I remember reading these comics back in the 90s and just being flabbergasted at the talent on display in the five THB issues. They were 64 pages each, weren’t they? And released monthly or something? So it just felt like we were witnessing some kind of prodigal genius working on a level rarely seen — not only were these comics original, interesting and engrossing, but they were beautifully drawn and done so fast!

And then there was the rest of Pope’s career, which I don’t think we have to talk about. Such a let-down.

I wondered whether Pope was going to redraw THB for this collection, because he’d already started doing that in the 90s, but I don’t think so? This all looks very familiar to me. The only thing is that the book seems more streamlined than I remember? One of the attractive things about THB was that it seemed to hint at an intriguing world outside the story, with various digressions and other characters? Or do I misremember? This is just focused on HR’s story, and it moves fast and is less mysterious than I remember.

Oooo, this is a scene I’ve thought about often since reading it. It’s so simple — just HR and THB sitting in the desert, talking, while HR is waving her flashlight around. But it was totally magical when I read it back then, and it still is now.

Let’s see… I’ve gotta google whether Pope’s been doing some editing… Or First Second, because this is published by them. Whenever I read that a comics artist I quite like is being published by them, my heart sinks — not because they don’t publish good stuff, but because their editing process seems to result in more “streamlined”, “readable” books. Either because the creators restrain themselves because it’s going to reach a more mainstream audience, or because the editors there suck.

Heh heh, I see that lots of people are saying “finally we’ll get the all the THB material collected!” I’ll believe that when I see it — I feel like a complete reprint has been announced quite a lot of times, but perhaps First Second will be able to pull it off. Won’t believe it until I have the final volume in my hands, though.

OK, Brian Nicholson has the goods:

What readers will receive from the collection is pretty close to what Pope drew in 1994. There are exceptions, which are partly marks against it. The cover design is pretty bad: For a guy whose work is clearly drawn very large then reduced in size for print, it’s an odd choice to focus on a small detail and blow it up large, even before the addition of gradient coloring and spot gloss. This is a minor complaint, as the interiors look pretty damn good. Rescanned artwork adds a great deal of depth to the textures of a sequence done with wash so it is now clear it was printed much too dark originally.

[…]

Total THB favors the initial printing of THB 1 over Version 2, and none of the new parts are included. However, in that first version of THB issue one, there is an extended silent sequence of HR chasing a bat she’s accidentally released from a jar. It is a scene which, in context, is perfectly charming as a showcase of visual storytelling, but version 2 deletes it because it doesn’t really do anything storywise, and it’s absent from Total THB as well. Another sequence, focused on a bureaucrat working as a censor, who secretly loves the material he suppresses, as do the people above him, was completely redrawn for its appearance in Version 2 and is likewise deleted. It strikes me as a shame that this sequence was removed: It expanded the sense of the book’s scope, although this is also the argument against its inclusion, from an editorial perspective: Deletion of this scene keeps the focus on HR Watson.

I didn’t hallucinate! Digressive sequences (that gave this world more depth) have been deleted! But apparently Pope edited these out already in the 90s.

Anyway, Total THB 1 is a great read — kinda magical.

I seem to remember THB 6 (which was published years later) being kinda naff, and that’s coming up in Total THB 2, but I guess I’ll be buying it, too.

This is not good.

I have no idea why I bought this, and I shouldn’t have. It’s a spin-off of some X-Men special event or other? I have no idea what’s happening here.

And this scene just made me go *sigh* and I ditched to book. It seems like the point of this book is to just trot out alternate universe versions of the characters people liked as children? It feels like reading a summary of adults playing with dolls.

William Vance is huge in French(ey) pap pap comics circles, so even his least distinguished work is being translated.

This is from the mid 60s, and mostly written by Jacques Acar. The reproduction is bad, and the storylines are almost non-existent.

Just one cliché after another. Didn’t finish this one, either.

I remember Cabbie popping up randomly in various European anthologies in the 80s.

Martí’s fevered version of Dick Tracy’s universe seemed so on point for the decade — it felt like outsider art, somehow: Super violent and not holding back any weird obsession.

So I found it fascinating, even though I never actually, er, liked it.

This edition collects the all Cabbie material, apparently. The first album I’ve read before, because it was widely translated back then. The second I haven’t (because it wasn’t), and while reading it now, it became clear why not — the first album had an insane kind of clarity of vision, while the second album is just a jumble of … stuff. It doesn’t work on any level, really. Even the artwork is less striking.

Oh, and while I’m complaining — Fantagraphics printed this on glossy paper, and while that does make the black ink pop more, it just doesn’t suit the material.

I found this at a used bookstore.

We’re talking very, very standard French early 80s action comics. But done very professionally, too. Denayer’s artwork isn’t very distinctive (to say the least), but it’s done very well.

And there’s a heist. Who doesn’t like a heist?

Van Hamme ends up killing off two thirds of the heist team, though, which is an unusual choice.

Oops spoilers!

And that’s it.

Hey, I read some comics over the past few days.

I bought the previous Attilio Micheluzzi collection from Fantagraphics last year, but I bounced hard — I abandoned it after reading a few stories. But I still bought Petra Chérie, because I really like Micheluzzi’s artwork.

And I found this one to be a lot more readable than the other collection. I forget what it was called… That one was more of a straightforward Guy On Adventure strip, while this is, er, Gal On Adventure strip, which apparently makes a difference? Anyway, this is an almost 300 page long book that collects stories that are mostly 12 pages (or less) long, so there’s plenty of opportunity to get really repetetive.

But Micheluzzi somehow avoids this, although some of the stories tend towards being vignettes more than actual stories. And then, halfway through, he goes for continuity, ditches the sidekick character, and has the heroine go from being captive by one force to being captive of another force, all throughout the Balkans.

She still gets to do heroic stuff, but she stops flying her plane and stuff. It’s an odd turn.

And then there was a one year break, and Micheluzzi continued the series (in black and white now) with a different magazine, and the stories are totally different in tone — and in one of them, he has her encountering Lawrence of Arabia. And after a couple more chapters, the story just ends, and not in a good place, really.

So — this doesn’t really work as “a book”, but it’s very entertaining to read on a story by story basis. And man, the artwork and the storytelling… With twelve page stories you’d think there wasn’t much place for character development and stuff, and you’d be right, but Micheluzzi has more character in one silent panel than most people have in a hundred pages of dialogue.

Top Shelf is kinda hit or miss, right?

I just couldn’t get into this. It’s all the stuff I don’t like — fake drama and clichéd storytelling.

I ditched it after fifty pages or so.

I’ve been a fan of Joe Sacco since the 80s, and I’ve liked all of his books, even the heaviest of the “reportage” books.

This one is about a massacre in India, and it’s really good. It’s structured around being an investigation into what actually happened, and Sacco encounters one official after another that just lie them straight to their faces, no matter how ridiculous the lies are.

It really works — you get involved as a reader in their righteous indignation toward being lied to this way.

(Apropos India and the legal system there — I was apparently part of a farce of a lawsuit along with Google and Yahoo, and I’m assuming I’ll be arrested if I go there. Darn! Seems like such a lovely country.)

Anyway, this is a good book, and Sacco has even continued to get even better (artwork wise) while still sticking to his very distinctive style.

I saw a recommendation for Charlotte mensuel in a Norwegian magazine, so I popped off a subscription order, and I got my first issue this week.

And what a surprise! Based on the title I assumed that it would be a humour magazine, but it’s not at all. Instead it’s something that I think you could compare with Mome or Now? That is, it’s a 120 page collection of shorter post-indie comics from France and the US. That is, narrative and depressing comics (i.e., not “art comics”) in a 90s tradition. Like the Chris Ware piece above, which I haven’t read before.

But mostly French stuff, and mostly newer stuff, even if they drop in older stuff, too.

Mostly serious things, but even the “funny” stuff is emotionally wrenching.

So of course there’s also some Julia Gförer here, too.

And… Andy Capp!? Oh those French people! But putting Andy Capp (and Hagar the Horrible) in this context seems to make a lot of sense — there’s a slight whiff of edgelordism about the magazine (I didn’t snap any of the worst offenders here), but it’s a tonally coherent magazine that’s really impressive.

You can get a subscription here.

Speaking of anthologies…

The new Heavy Metal is a successful Heavy Metal iteration. The enthusiasm of the editor is palpable — he’s willing this project to succeed.

It’s a good mixture of French and American stuff, too, and while there’s many stories that are a bit naff, there’s as many that’s solid (like the anti-AI story above). My only complaint is structural, really — it’s 230 pages long, and almost all the stories are between five and twenty pages long, which isn’t ideal. With that length, you could drop in a sixty page story at least, and sprinkle some one-pagers here and there for more variety.

But it’s a surprisingly good Heavy Metal, if you like Heavy Metal.

Speaking of anthologies…

This Spirou issue is special. It has three Au coin de la rue, and apparently the concept here is that you have three different creators (or teams) presented with the same setup.

So here you have three different men that have different reasons for not ringing the bell at a house.

It works. But it makes for a very odd issue of Spirou, especially since none of these stories are funny — mostly kinda depressing. But good.

I love me some Bill Griffith, so even though I’m not into biographies, I got this book.

And it starts off delightfully — Griffith’s artwork is so on point here, and the storytelling flows in a most pleasant way.

But then! After 43 pages, we get “Early Days” because it turns out that the first bit was just the introduction.

And then the rest of the book is apparently mostly an adaptation of the autobiography of the subject of the book (a photographer and painter who was Griffith’s arrière-grand-père), and… I’m sorry to say that I just lost interest. Sorry! I think if you’re into this sort of thing, this book is probably awesome? But I’m not, so I started zoning out.

Hm… it wasn’t on many people’s best of 2025 lists? That surprises me…

And there’s reproductions of some of his photos at the end (on glossy paper).

OK, that’s it.

I read some comics over the last week or so.

Mafalda used to run in the papers when I was a child, but I’m not quite sure whether I remember liking it or not. I like the artwork, but I think I found the humour to be rather annoying?

But I really liked Mafalda now — it’s funny and endearing.

The translation here, though, isn’t very good. I mean, there’s tons of puns in Mafalda and those are just a pain to translate, but frequently the strips (in English form) are more “eh? eh?” than “heh heh”, and I think that’s down to the translation.

It’s also a bit confusing that there’s not a hint of explanation of what we’re reading. I mean, I hate introductions and all of that jazz, so I’m happy that they let the work speak for itself, but there’s not even a date anywhere in the book — and that’s pretty important, since Quino speaks a lot about current affairs. But I’m guessing this book reprints work from about… 1966?

A new batch of minis from Kuš. I didn’t find this batch as strong as usual.

This one was overly didactic.

I liked this one.

And this one was funny.

And I have no idea what was going on in this one.

I read another Corto Maltese album in French (because reading works translated into French is easier than reading works written in French).

I’m not sure the colour palette chosen for this is totally successful — there’s a whole lot of beige and tans and not much else. I mean, I’ve got these comics in black and white, too, so that’s why I bought these French editions in colour.

In any case, these stories (there’s five more 20 page stories in this album) are still a delight to read. They’ve got such a mood going on.

Tegnehanne has done these books for a while now — they’re strongly autobiographical ones, and the worry is, of course, that she’d run out of stuff to write about.

Have no fear! This is as good as anything she’s done before — it’s funny and heartbreaking and uplifting at the same time.

She depicts her neighbours in rather, er, frank terms…

… so if these bits are true (and they certainly feel that way), I’m wondering whether there were strained relationships in the ‘hood after this was published.

I’ve been diligent with my French and read four issues of the Spirou magazine.

How current affairs-ey! Kid Paddle’s family takes in a Ukrainian refugee (from Chernobyl). (It turns out (on subsequent pages) that everything isn’t fun about a nuclear disaster anyway.)

Of the new serials, The School For Bad Parents has promise — very funny, but is he going to run out of ideas?

I love the Seccotine serialisation.

And of course, Les Fabrices are always hilarious.

And there aren’t too many series like the above (which I just find to be pretty dull), so this was a good batch of Spirous.

Galago is a long-running Swedish anthology. Lots of good stuff, but these two stood out:

This reminds me a bit of Lynda Barry’s late-80s artwork? And that’s high praise indeed.

This is very 2026, on the other hand, but also good.

Yes, I read some Marvel comics, too.

Planet She-Hulk is the worst of the bunch.

Venom (written by Al Ewing) is the best.

And some Image/Dark Horse/IDW books.

James Stokoe is insane (complimentary).

And so is Jake Smith (ditto).

Oh, and that’s it? I guess so…