Here’s some comics I’ve been reading the last couple weeks.
This is a collection of an early (but apparently still-running) web series by Boulet (who I’m quite unfamiliar with).
Nooo! The broken glass of a fridge shelf doesn’t go with the glass bottles! Noooooo
Anyway, there’s an admirable variety to the art styles, and Boulet apparently did all these without pencilling (to make things fresh and less like his day job, which is drawing comics). There’s a number of travelogue bits…
… but mostly little scenes like this from his daily life, and he makes himself out as being really uptight and not actually very likeable, which is, of course, very likeable.
But then he challenges the entire Internet to a death match!
It’s all very entertaining, really, but the format here doesn’t do the material any favours. In France, this was released in three 100-pageish books, but it’s here collected as a 300 page book, and if you read this in one sitting (which I didn’t do), it would be very repetetive. Because he goes over many of the same things, again and again. But I think a 100 page book would have been a very nice way to spend an evening.
And Boulet even makes the same point himself, sort of, and that was for the French edition. The problem is much more pronounced in this Oni Press edition, but I guess that’s the only way to get it into the US market.
Several years ago, I bought a new Danish edition of the entire Tintin series in a “classic” dress — all the Tintin stories that were published before 1950 were later revised (some several times), and I had only read those versions. And… yes, this edition is better. (It collects not the original original version (which was mainly in black and white before WWII), but the second edition. Confused yet?)
But I finally got to Tintin et les Picaros, the last Tintin album (which was ever only published in one version anyway).
And this is by no means the best Tintin album, but it’s still fun.
I was thinking that this would probably be the final time I re-read Tintin, but now I’m thinking that I should read a French edition, too… but perhaps just the “core” albums, starting perhaps with the 13th, Les Sept Boules de cristal, and ending with the 21st, Les Bijoux de la Castafiore, 1943-1962.
Hm… yeah, I think I’ll do that.
No, I didn’t read The Sandman in the 90s.
But I’ve read the five collected editions (issues 1-75, and then this one that collects various bits that were published after the main series ended).
And I think Sandman is quite OK? I really liked the issues Mike Dringenberg drew, and after that I rather lost interest.
This volume, though, is a snooze fest. Perhaps the worst thing about it is that is wastes the time some rather talented artists could have spent doing basically anything else than this (Milo Manara above).
And having Miguelanxo Prado, of all people, spend his time illustrating this piffle? Miguelanxo Prado!!! He writes wonderful comics himself, and instead he’s illustrating a fucking Sandman spinoff issue!?
What a waste.
Looks great, though.
I think I’ve mentioned before that I was going to stop buying Tif et Tondu albums…
… but this one, originally from 1993, is pretty good!
I mean, the mystery isn’t much of a mystery, but it’s properly exciting. As these things go.
I guess I’ll be picking up the rest of this reprint series too, then. *sigh*
And speaking of series I’ve been totally wrong about — I always thought that Jérôme K. Jérôme Bloche wasn’t much cop, because I’d only read the first album, written by a different author. But after Dodier took over writing (with the fourth album), it because a quite different series, and very, very enjoyable.
These are the last four albums, and I think the newest is from 2022, so it’s still puttering along after 28 albums.
I really like Dodier’s artwork — it’s very humane. And that goes for the stories, too.
These are all mysteries, and the mysteries are all quite original. In that they’re not about what these of things usually are: No spies or mass murders, but very down to earth instead. Extremely enjoyable reading.
I’m learning French, though, and there’s quite a few expressions not even Google Translate can help me with… so it’s sometimes a bit confusing reading, but I don’t mind.
Oh! And the latest album had this insert advertising the Spirou weekly magazine. I had no idea that it still existed! I thought it had been cancelled like the Tintin and Pilote weeklies.
So I signed up for a subscription. Who says advertising doesn’t work!
Johan et Pirlouit is an early Peyo (of The Smurfs fame) series.
And it’s very, very 1956.
I remember that some of these had been translated into Norwegian when I was a child, and I didn’t even like the series then. And I still don’t! So I don’t know why I bought this!
I don’t even like the Smurfs! Never did!
I only have myself to blame; I know. But perhaps this’ll remind me to never buy any Peyo reprints.
OK, that’s it.