Random Comics

Yes indeed, I’ve read some comics over the past few weeks.

It’s taken a while for me to get through this Iznogoud omnibus.

I’ve read all these stories as a child (in translation), of course, and… er… I wasn’t a big fan then, so I’m not sure why I bought this now. In French. I thought I remembered this being more for younger children than Asterix, so I thought it’d be easier to read, and perhaps it is, but it can still get pretty rough — Goscinny sometimes does pun after pun after pun (and then ends the series of puns with “(no wonder we never win any prizes for best-written comics)” or similar, and I’m not at a level where I can really parse those puns.

And I wonder how many of them survived translation, and whether that might explain why I didn’t much like this series as a child. It’s very repetetive, though, and that might explain it in any case: The stories are pretty short, typically eight pages, and each involve a new way for the evil, evil grand vizier Iznogood to try to topple the Calif, and every one ends with abject failure.

These probably read a lot better when serialised, because then you just get one of these plots.

I have to say that I liked it a whole lot better now then as a child, really, even if the (bad, bad) puns were a struggle.

Here’s another one I’m not a fan of, but it much newer.

And again, I kinda like it more now than I did when I read it in translation. The language Van Hamme uses is pretty much idea for someone who’s learning French, because he uses virtually no slang, and people talk very straightforwardly.

The artwork is pretty stylish, if somewhat standard, but Francq is totally unable to draw children or teenagers, which is a real problem in this series, because we flip back and forth throughout the protagonist’s life story constamment: In the second panel there, he’s a grown-up, and in the rest of these panels, he’s 17 years old, but the only difference is that he’s slightly less tall.

I’ve picked up half a dozen of these albums at a used comics book store here. Cheap!

Speaking of things that I’m not quite sure why I’ve bought… This is a series that ran in the 70s, by Seron and Mittéï.

Seron was, er, “inspired” by Franquin. He mimics Franquin so completely that every time I open a new spread, by brain unconsciously goes “oo Franquin!” and then I read the swill, and it’s such a letdown.

It’s just depressing to read this stuff, because it’s so badly written. There’s no tension, the gags are bad, and the stories make little sense.

I picked this up at a sale…

And it’s really funny.

It’s a Swedish comic about hating the world of today, and surely that’s something we can all agree with.

The reason I bought this is because Deniz Camp sometimes tweets fun stuff.

This is how it starts — so this is part of some crossover thing I’m vaguely aware of, but anyway, this is, like, so symptomatic of Marvel these days: The original Ultimate Universe (of which I’ve read nothing) was apparently about bringing new readers in, but this is pretty hermetically sealed — it’s hard to see how this book would appeal to anybody but the hardiest Marvel fan.

First there’s an issue of a series called Ultimate Universe, and then we get a story from a Free Comic Book Day book, and then we get Ultimates #1. By which time I’ve totally lost interest.

And it’s just… meh. Half the book is odd versions of Marvel super-heroes fighting each other, and half is Such Shocking. It’s tedious beyond belief.

I’ve read a few of Strömquists books, and she writes about, er, current affairs. Her latest book was about how horrible the culture of self optimisation is (and how risible the manosphere is), so I assumed that this was going to be a fun look at astrology.