Hey! My cold’s gone, so I now have the requisite strength to read some comics. And listen to music from 1982.
| Kate Bush: The Dreaming |  |
13:07: We All Got Something by Lawrence Lindell (Drawn & Quarterly)
This art style isn’t really my thing… it’s so tablet-ey.
It’s kinda interesting how it paces things — it’s very subdued, but also kinda chaotic?
It’s a bit hard to follow sometimes as we drop back into the past all the time. It’s pretty enjoyable, though.
13:26: Single Camera Sitcom by Katie Lane (Comics Blogger Books)
I got this from here.
Uhm… the way this is printed, I literally can’t read the text. I’ve read some of Katie Lane’s stuff before, and I remember liking it? But I just can’t read this.
But it looks interesting! It could be genius! Perhaps somebody with younger eyes will like it.
| Peter Gabriel: Peter Gabriel 4 |  |
13:33: Mini Kuš #131-134 (Kuš)
Émilie Gleason’s mini is a polemic against meat eaters. It’s funny.
Janne Marie Dauer does a fantasy about food spillage. It’s funny, too! I really like the artwork.
Giovanna Fabi does a striking book about longing or something. Love the style.
Everybody’s favourite Yuichi Yokoyama’s mini is like a condensed version of this longer works. Riveting and very confusing. Class!
You can buy these and many other wonderful comics from here.
| Simple Minds: New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84) |  |
14:04: Call Me Emma by Makee (Street Noise)
Man, I have to fiddle a lot with the white balance settings today… it’s very sunny, so the room here is basically 5100K but keeps changing, and my reading lamp is 2700K. So either the room looks totally blue or the pages look orange, and I’d prefer the pages to look at least approximately accurate-ish…
Yeah yeah, whine whine. I should just buy a bulb for this lamp that’s colder.
This is an auto bio book about moving from China to the US as a teenager.
It’s pretty pleasant reading, but the way she draws the characters is even more confusing than a random Japanese comic book for children: I had no idea who that blond-haired person was supposed to be — but it’s her sister? And I assumed her father was extremely old to account for the white hair, but he’s just 49… she seems to just give people random hair colours? Which is, of course, a trope in Japanese comics for children, but they do it so that you can tell the characters apart, and everybody “understands” that they all really have black hair. There really aren’t that many characters here, so it’s just a supremely confusing decision.
| Eurythmics: Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This) |  |
14:56: Rust Belt Review 7 edited by Sean Knickerbocker
I got this from here.
It’s fun to see people doing something special with the oversized format. M. S. Harkness’s autobio story is a visual feast (and a good story).
Audra Stang’s story is interesting, but very confusing.
Sean Knickerbocker’s serialised story comes to an amusing end, but I have to admit that I’ve totally forgotten what this was all about.
But good anthology.
| The Cure: Pornography (1) |  |
15:44: Kylooe by Little Thunder (Dark Horse)
Wow, that’s a very odd look.
Oh, I guess it’s all based on photos, and then drawn over on the computery machine? (I think that’s what they’re called.) Or… is they using 3D modelling software, then flying in textures, and then drawing over it?
The actual drawings themselves are pretty arresting — it’s a kind of mix of Chinese and French comics, and also of course Japanese, but less than you’d expect.
See? Much better without the 3D modelling.
This book turns out to be a collection of three albums published in France (I think) between 2010 and 2013. It doesn’t really work well as a single book, even though there’s some connection between the three stories (a fantasy/cartoon character called Kylooe). The first two stories are wistful and filled with fantasy, while the third story seems to be a straight-up metaphor for Chinese fascism — it’s a country where it’s illegal to express any emotions, and if you do, you’re sent to a reeducation camp.
It’s really that heavy handed, and it’s a bit eyeroll inducing.
The artwork keeps changing over the three albums — perhaps improving, but mostly getting less and less fanciful.
I think collecting them together in this way really does the work disservice: I can totally see that either of these stories would have an impact when read separately, but all together it’s just kinda eh.
| Depeche Mode: A Broken Frame |  |
16:54: X-Men: Days of Future Fun by Jeffrey Brown (Chronicle Books)
I was a big fan of Brown’s autobio comics from way back when, but I lost track of him after he started doing the children’s comics versions of Star Wars (for even smaller children than usual, I mean), or whatever he was doing. I mean, I think I read one of those? And it was pretty funny? But then I forgot to buy more of those. But now I remembered! And now he’s doing X-Men? Sure, why not.
Uhm…
Well, the artwork is fun. But the jokes? I think the best joke in the book is the one to the right up there… Who is the audience for this? I’d say five-year-olds who know way too much about Wolverine? Or something? But do they exist?
It’s just odd. The jokes don’t work unless you know everything about the X-Men, but then you’d be too old to find the jokes funny.
I don’t think Brown’s heart is in this — I remember those Star Wars jokes being a lot more… heartfelt?… than this is.
| Blaine L. Reininger & Alain Goutier: Paris en Autumne |  |
17:10: I Hated You In High School by Kathleen Gros (Andrews McMeel)
The art’s pretty attractive, despite being super duper tablet-ey. And I know a restrictive colour palette is all the rage these days, but c’mon. C’mon!
Kidding! Looks good.
(Odd-looking ears, though.)
It’s kinda fun? It’s not super dramatic, and I like that.
And these sections where the protagonist goes through her high-school diaries are well executed.
So… it’s fine? But it’s not like… super exciting.
| New Musik: Warp |  |
18:18: Fugløya by Martin Ernstsen (Jippi forlag)
Hey, this is really good.
It’s about two guys manning a lighthouse who are getting on each other’s nerves, and it escalates in a very tense way.
And the art’s swell, too — especially the nature drawings and the mysterious otter.
| Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft: Für Immer |  |
18:31: Toxic Summer by Derek Charm (Oni Press)
Charm has been illustrating lots of books written by Ryan North, and they’ve all been fun. So I snapped this up.
At least the restricted colour palette trend has passed Charm by. Colours!
And… this is a lot of fun. It’s totally charming (heh heh, I’m a comedic genius) and gets everything right for this kind of lark. The storytelling is sometimes a bit rough, though? It’s like… choppy? I found myself flipping back and forth between pages to see whether I missed something, but it’s just a bit choppy.
But fun! It’s really good.
| King Crimson: Beat |  |
19:06: Sara Granér by Jag vill inte dö jag vill bara inte leverera (Galago)
Love the artwork.
It’s mostly one-page strips, but also some longer pieces.
Heh heh.
| Tom Robinson: North by Northwest |  |
19:29: Muybridge by Guy Delisle (Drawn & Quarterly)
OK, I’ve sworn to never read a comics biography of an artist ever again (because the all suck (except that one you loved; that one was great)), but I read an excerpt of this somewhere, and it was pretty good? So I bought the book, and I’m ready to be disappointed.
And… it’s good!
It’s a straight-forward biography of Muybridge…
… but it also covers a lot of the general developments in photography and stuff. It’s really interesting, I think — and I’m not really into this stuff normally.
Heh heh, love that parody of the horsey pictures.
Anyway, I should have known that Delisle would be able to pull this off — it’s amusing, it’s interesting, and it ends up being even kinda moving. Class.
| Grace Jones: Living My Life |  |
20:44: The End
And I think that’s enough comics for today, because I have to Do Stuff, too. (I’m so behind on my comics reading… I have to find more days to read comics soon.)