Here’s some comics I’ve read over the past week.
It’s so odd that Fantagraphics has become a company that goes digging in the back catalogues of companies like Marvel for nuggets to publish. But I guess there’s precedent — they did publish guide to X-Men back in 1981…
But now there’s even a series? “Lost Marvels”?
Tower of Shadows is presented as if was Marvel’s attempt at doing EC horror comics, but isn’t a more likely precedent DC’s House of Horrors? It was pretty popular — it certainly ran long enough. And the stories are a lo more like those than EC’s stories.
Fantagraphics also stresses that these comics have never been reprinted before in the US, which is true (for the most part), but being Scandinavian, I’ve read a few of these as a child — in Scandinavian horror anthologies.
The stories are OK, I guess, except the ones Wally Wood wrote, which are pretty nonsensical. (But do feature all his obsessions.)
The reproduction is fine — I like that it’s on matte paper. I guess most of it was shot from published copies? Or at least some of it, which makes me wonder why they printed it larger than original, because that just makes the blotches stand out even more.
I bought a mid-80s Legion collection, and I continued to read the snarky recaps here. This isn’t a period I was previously very familiar with, but this is apparently after the big event — “The Big Darkness War” or something — and before the next major sort-of redo.
It’s pretty entertaining? I read the entire thing, which I wasn’t sure I was going to do. They prop the issues so full of plot — there’s an A, B, C and sometimes D plot in every issue for the first half of this volume. It’s fun!
And towards the end, Giffen starts on his journey from being a totally unremarkable super-hero artist to becoming Jose Muñoz reborn, and that’s fun to watch. (It’s not so much fun watching him ditch Cockrum’s fun 70s costumes for much duller, plainer (but probably easier to draw?) ones.)
It’s fun. I think I’m going to be buying more of these… perhaps that Darkness thing?
Another Franka. Has Franka ever been translated to English?
It’s Dutch, and it’s been running since the mid 80s, I think — so it’s not exactly one of those classic French(ey) adventure series, but it’s fun, for the most part. This one is very wordy, and the mystery doesn’t really take off.
But it certainly looks good.
Yeah, I’ve never read Rick Veitch’s Swamp Thing run. I’d stopped reading super-hero comics at the time, and when I started again a decade later, it didn’t really occur to me. I mean, I like Veitch’s other comics, but I thought the likelihood that a DC Vertigo book by him would appeal to me was small. I mean, his “mystic” stuff isn’t my thing, and Vertigo books usually go hard on that.
Like most DC collections, I don’t quite understand the thought process behind what they include. This starts with two issues of Hellblazer — and they’re not written by Veitch, either. John Constantine features in Swamp Thing, of course, but what happens in the two included issues seems to have absolutely no bearing on anything, so…
And, yes, there’s pages and pages of mystical gobbledygook, like I was afraid of.
Towards the end of the volume, it starts to pick up — it’s not just Swamp Thing having mystical talks with mystical beings, while Abby is in the swamp, staring at nothing (didn’t she bring a book or something to read?) — and we get a plot. A plot that’s not very interesting, but still: A plot.
And do we get the conclusion to that storyline in this volume? Do we fuck. It’s a DC collection, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but *sigh*.
“What? You’ve brought Den? The new restored edition? Surely you had the Catalan Communications version that was published when you were a teenager?” Yes! I do! But I can’t find it!
I was wondering whether to buy the later volumes in this series, but I wanted to read the first two (Neverwhere and Den II) first, and I just can’t find them. I can’t find any of the Catalan books I have — like Squeak the Mouse, Anarcoma, etc. WHERE ARE THEY!??! It’s driving me nuts.
So I just bought this new version.
And the restoration looks really good. I saw some progress rapport from Villaruba in Twitter while he was restoring it, and it seemed like he had a good grasp of what’s important in a Corben book. In addition to rescanning everything, he’s also relettered it — because Corben’s lettering was awful. But… I’m not sure the computer lettering was a good choice.
I remember from when I was a teenager that I thought that these comics were really stupid, but I didn’t remember how … little there is in them. One thing happens after another, but you can’t really call it a plot.
Fun facial expressions on Den, though.
I do remember reading them quite a few times, but the lack of an actual plot means that I didn’t remember anything in specific (except the art). So it was a bit weird reading them now, because I was expecting myself to go “oh, I remember this part”, but — zilch.
I’d also forgotten how hairless everybody in this book is — like Segrelles, really. If you’re going for this rounded, bulbous look, hair gets in the way.
So… I think I’m going to pass on the rest of the volumes in the series.
This is the final batch of Det grymma svärdet that I have.
But it’s a good batch.
Lots of interesting stuff.
And Caroline Sury does Mark Beyer’s Amy & Jordan! Heh heh.
Ballpoint comics rule.
It’s mostly Swedish comics, but here’s Roberta Scomparsa with a strong piece.
The most annoying thing about the anthology is that they don’t really say who did most of the comics. Just based on head size, I’m wondering on this is Moa Romanova, but I have no idea. It’s good, though.
And that’s it.