Rubbish weather today. Yay! That means that I have to read comics.
| Stereolab: Instant Holograms On Metal Film |  |
12:25: The Cartoonists Club by Raina Telgemeier & Scott McCloud (Scholastic)
I’m trying something revolutionary today (photography wise) — I’ve changed my reading light bulb from the normal 2700K (“warm white”) to a 6000K (“daylight”) one so that it’s basically the same as the rest of the room. And look! I’m no longer sitting in a sea of blue! The system works! Magic! (Well, except for the other lamps, which now look like they’re totally yellow in the snaps, but they aren’t really. Perhaps I should have gone with a 4K bulb to even things out a bit… Hm…) Anyway, here’s a snap from last week, with the 2700K bulb:
SUCH BLUE ROOM
Oh, anyway, comics reading.
This book is very pedagogical — it’s about making comics. I mean, there’s a story, too, but it’s mostly about making comics.
It’s a very “up” book. Everybody’s smiling all the time.
But I wonder who this is for. Is this meant to be used in a school setting, to teach kids to create comics?
I mean, I’m not the target audience here, but I found this book to be kinda dull.
Too many pages like this. Spending more pages on the plot would have been nice.
But I mean, perhaps kids will find this inspiring? I don’t know.
13:00: Š! #54 (Kuš)
Well, I can just turn the other lamps off… now everything has the correct white balance.
I got this from here.
The theme this issue is happiness.
It’s a fun and funny issue, with superstar artists like Caroline Cash and Heather Loase.
Some people interpret “happiness” kinda widely.
It’s a great issue.
| Orbital: Radiccio (2025) |  |
13:25: Summer Shadows by Dunning/Cabral/Simpson/Campbell (Dark Horse)
Well, the artwork is quite attractive…
But the story is like… not there. And the characters have no character.
And it’s about gay vampires, and they all have to die! Die!
It’s not a good comic book, but the artwork’s kinda nice.
| Xiu Xiu: Orgasm Addict |  |
13:48: Urban Tails by Ilana Zeffren (Soaring Penguin Press)
These pages look really attractive — the airiness is appealing. But I wonder how it was made? It looks like pencil drawings that have been scanned on a low resolution, and then blown up and smoothed, so everything is slightly blurry? (And then the (translated) lettering is super sharp.)
Such a melting pot!
I quite like this book? It’s all one page strips, and that gets wearying when collected like this. So I bailed after 75 pages, but I’m going to read the rest later.
| Charli XCX: Number 1 Angel |  |
14:43: Previous Rubbish by Kayla E (Fantagraphics)
This is a book about childhood neglect, abuse and religious damage.
It’s a collection of pieces (many of which I’ve read before in various anthologies), and it’s unfortunate how repetetive it gets collected like this: We go over many of the same events again and again, and often is a sort of oblique way. This works extremely well as a shocking piece in an anthology, but after reading the fifth allusion to the same even, I’m sitting here going “can’t you just write plainly what happened?” Which is not the desired effect.
It’s an understandably angry book, but I feel that she takes the anger out on the reader a lot — the book is very sarcastic, and it feels like she’s venting at us, and we’re not doing anything but sitting here and reading the book!
| Various: The Residents Present: Buy or Die! (1) |  |
It’s a quite inventive book… I mean, not the artwork, which is extremely tablety (that’s a word), but using all these games and stuff to tell us about the horrors of her childhood. But does it work? I’m not sure. But what do I know:
Graphic Novel Review: Kayla E.’s PRECIOUS RUBBISH is an early book of the year contender
It’s truly one of the best things I’ve read in a long time, an astonishing and painful artistic accomplishment.
| Richard Dawson: End of the Middle |  |
15:39: Tedward by Josh Pettinger (Fantagraphics)
This is also a collection of stuff that’s been published before (I think), but it makes excellent sense in context — these are short stories that build to something bigger.
And it’s funny.
16:18: Eremitt by Martin Erntsen (Jippi forlag)
This is one of those wistful childhood autobio things.
It’s just kinda perfect? It’s funny and it’s touching.
| Led Zeppelin: In Through The Out Door |  |
16:25: Season of the Roses by Chloé Wary (Fantagraphics)
Lots of Fantagraphics stuff today…
This looks pretty good…
It’s the story of a feisty football team that has to defeat prejudices and obstacles and etc etc etc (you know), and that’s the problem: If you’ve seen any movie from the last five decades that deal with this, you totally know all the story beats, the three act structure, and how it’s going to end. The only reason this hasn’t been made into a movie (if it hasn’t; I haven’t checked) is that there’s nothing here to make into a movie: It’s all cliché. So of course it won prizes:
Au festival d’Angoulême 2020, l’album remporte le prix du public.
Except the artwork and the scenes from the football field — that’s actually pretty good.
| Miki Berenyi Trio: Tripla |  |
16:50: Denniveniquity by D. Boyd (Conundrum Press)
Huh… that’s some art style. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it reminds me of something, especially the staring eyes. The line is kinda adjacent to Rick Geary (but it’s on a tablet here, I think), and… Do I see some Don Martin here? It’s just odd.
I like the way she’s running in the last panel on the left-hand side there.
The way this is drawn, it’s just hard to tell the characters apart. The protagonist (the one that’s smoking and drinking Galliano) is supposed to be a 12/13 year old girl, but it’s hard to tell who’s supposed to be boys or girls, or adults or children, so I spent 37% of the time reading this going “is that one of her 12-year-old friends or is that her mother?”
What’s a wax cigar? I tried googling and I could only find an electric vape thing, and that’s not what that was in 1979.
Anyway, the storytelling here is extremely choppy, and there’s so many oh-now-they-broke-up, oh-now-they-didn’t, oh-now-they-did that it was just hard to care after a while.
| Max Richter: Vivaldi: The Four Seasons |  |
17:39: Low Orbit by Kazimir Lee (Top Shelf)
Again, the character design just doesn’t differentiate much between the kids and the adults.
But… it’s fine? It’s (once again) about growing up and stuff, and it’s pretty original is some ways. It’s not gripping, though.
18:43: Pharaon 1: Philtre pour l’enfer by Duchâteau & Hulet (E-Voke)
Well, the artist here is obviously inspired by William Vance…
… and the entire thing seems like a blatant rip-off of Bruno Brazil, but without the charm, the characters or the interesting plots.
This is just incredibly bad. Duchâteau has written hundreds of albums, and I’m not a fan, but even his stuff is usually better than this. It’s so choppy — it’s just hard to tell what’s supposed to be going on.
| My Brightest Diamond: This Is My Hand |  |
19:01: The End
And with that I think I’m going to call it a day. Man, I was really unlucky with a handful of these comics today…