I read some comics the past few weeks! I know, unusual…
The heftiest item is this collection of comics by Didier Comès. I’ve read about half of this in translation before, but the rest is new to me.
(Too bad about the awful cover the publishers have chosen here…)
And… it’s just totally gorgeous.
And very mysterious!
His stories are all about mysticism and stuff, and it really works in his comics. Without his wonderful artwork and masterful storytelling chops, it would have been just, well, twaddle, but it really works. And since it’s in French, I’m having to read these works really slowly, which I guess also helps?
Comès is hugely influenced by Hugo Pratt, of course, and we also get a two page appreciation after Pratt died. *sniff*
But like… this is so good. Finally me learning French is starting to pay off! I can read stuff like this! (With a bit of help from Google Translate.)
Speaking of masterful… Fantagraphic’s Carl Barks series has now reached the next-to-last volume (I think). They’re doing the earliest material backwards, so this is from 1943-ish.
And Barks is just gag after gag after gag here in these earliest stories.
So inventive and so amazing. I’ve read all this stuff a gazillion times before, of course, ever since I was a child, but it’s even better in this presentation (which is very close to how it was originally printed; only better).
The sad thing is that there’s (I think) just one more volume to go: Bark’s first couple years on Donald Duck. *pout*
I’ve only gotten a single new issue of Spirou in the mail since last time.
There was a double-sized issue, but it seems like they also took a week or more extra off?
In any case, there wasn’t anything of particular interest in this issue, just the normal serials continuing. And the Soda serial turns out to be one of the worst Soda sequences ever, I think.
I read the final two Raina Telgemeier adaptations of the Baby-Sitters Club.
And.. these are perhaps a bit denser and plot filled than the first two?
They’re pretty entertaining? But… I’m still a bit disappointed, because Telgemeier’s solo books are so good, and this is just… fine.
DC Comics seems to have a lot of momentum and enthusiasm these days, and among other things is that they’re releasing a lot of collections of older stuff…
… and aiming them at people who are er casual readers. “The perfect starting point”. I haven’t read Wonder Woman since I was a child, so that sounds er perfect for me!
So naturally, the first thing in this collection is an issue from some execrable “countdown” crossover or other…
… and then we get an issue of Brave and the Bold that features Wonder Woman.
Before we finally get issue #14 of the Wonder Woman series that was running in 2008.
*sigh*
If this is the perfect starting point, I shudder to think what a bad starting point would be.
The artwork here doesn’t do much for me either, but I actually read the entire thing. There’s some amusing bits — Gail Simone is a pretty good writer, based on these issues — but half of the time, the plot lines require you to have deep knowledge about what sounds like pretty esoteric (*throws up in the mouth a bit*) “lore”, and also that you should care about these characters that you (well, I) know nothing about.
So that was a big let-down, really. Not buying any more of that crap, but I’ve also bought some collections of oldee tymey DC comics, and we’ll see how that goes…
I visited one of the few remaining used comics shops a couple months ago, and to my surprise, I found that they had a nice stack of French albums, so I bought about half of them. Dirt cheap, too, because not many people here speak French.
I’ve never heard of this series before…
And for good reasons — it’s pretty bad! It’s pretty bad! But the artwork is kinda OK? Reminds me a bit of Yoko Tsuno, perhaps.
But it’s bad!
OK, that’s it.