Here’s some comics I’ve read over the last week. Or rather… that I attempted to read — I bounced on *counts on fingers* four of these seven books, which is, like, a lot for me.
I’ve never heard of these creators before — Pierre Jean Bichose and Zimmermann — but this album apparently won some kind of prize (for the writing)? Anyway, I picked it up dirt cheap in a used bookstore.
And I have to say that I quite enjoyed it. The linework is somewhat basic, but the page designs, the colouring and the storytelling really work.
It’s about a gang of terrorists that destroy various artworks in museums (no, it’s not new — late 80s), and it manages to jam a very satisfying story down into the standard 44 pages allotted to French(ey) comics. I mean, it’s not a masterpiece or anything, but it’s a surprisingly good trifle.
I shouldn’t have read it in one sitting, though — my brain starts shutting down after reading French for more than half an hour, so the last third of this book is rather hazy to me…
I read The Tomb of Dracula when I was, like, twelve? And I remember really enjoying it. And I’ve seen some people calling it the best comic book of the 70s.
And I still enjoy Gene Colan’s artwork — it’s really moody and appropriate.
But I was just really bored by the stories. I read 400 pages of this very shiny-papered omnibus and then decided that I’d definitely had enough.
I was really surprised. Perhaps my expectations were too high?
These early Corto Maltese stories come in very convenient format for me.
They’re all 20 pages long, which means that I can read one complete story (takes me about half an hour) before my brain starts sending out distress calls.
I’ve read these stories so many times now (in various translations) over many decades, but I still find them absolutely fascinating.
This one, though, was totally not my thing.
I mean, the artwork’s fine.
It’s just the storytelling style. I didn’t find it enjoyable, and I dropped it after a couple dozen pages.
Ditto with this, but for very different reasons.
The tablet-ey artwork looks offputting to me, and the constant fake drama — you can’t have two people just talking to each other; they have to start shouting (for no reason whatsoever) — *sigh*.
C’mon Avery Hill. What’s going on.
This comes in a box…
… and like Chris Ware’s Building Stories, it’s a collection of pamphlets in various formats.
No comparison otherwise.
But it’s fun! It’s apparently a true story, and it’s about when the author and his brother (both early 20s, I guess) were taken on a Mediterranean cruise by their mother. So you get a lot of scenes of people being bored on a cruise ship, but! The author had also been given a lot of tasks to execute (“it’s an art project”), and it makes for a good read.
I can’t say the same for this.
It’s one of those Comedies In Space, where the schtick is that the human protagonist is an asshole and a moron.
So far, so familiar, but the jokes are just so… lame. Does the writer work in animation, I wonder?
Anyway, it’s been a disappointing Week In Random Comics.