Here’s some comics I’ve read over the past week.
I’ve enjoyed several comics written by Matt Fraction, so I gave this a go — even though I’ve barely read any Iron Man comics since I was… hm… I may actually never have been reading Iron Man comics ever? I mean, I read Avengers and stuff, but never the Iron Man title.
But… like… is that what Stark looks like now? Or, I mean, 15 years ago? It’s just odd.
And the book is pretty dull. The entire thing has one super duper villain that’s plotting against Iron Man, but it’s so… stupid? And then Fraction spends a lot of time on fake drama like the above, possibly to divert attention from “The Mandarin” being a horribly boring villain.
But back to Larroca’s artwork — the most fascinating thing about the book is the way Stark’s nose changes size all the time. I mean, it’s generally pretty big, but sometimes it’s 2x the size. Which is something you see often when artists are snapping reference photos too close up, which again happens when they use themselves as the model. (Too short arms.) So I didn’t google this, but now I’m gonna! What does Larroca look like!
Hah! I’m a genius comics art sleuth!
This is a brick of a book — over 400 pages. It’s a German comic made by Nando von Arb and originally called Fürchten Lernen. You don’t see many German comics…
And I really enjoyed the artwork.
It has an impact and it’s got something going on.
The book is about various mental health issues, and while it’s a good read, it does go over some extremely well-trodden ground for comics.
When I heard that Jim Woodring had a new book out, I was excited, but I’ve registered zero chatter about Quacky on the intertubes.
And it’s not in Woodring’s normal style (which tends towards wordlessness). Instead it’s done in the Little Big Books style, I guess? I’ve never seen one myself, but…
So there’s a text on the verso page and an illustration on the recto page. And then a sentence beneath that that recaps it all — sometimes in a slightly mischievous way.
At first I went “noooo”, because I’ve seldom seen a successful book done in this way… but then I got really into it. You work up a rhythm, and it all becomes rather intriguing.
The Frank stories usually are pretty distressing, but this one is less distressing than most. And then there’s a shorter story in the back which is much weirder.
So I liked it a lot. And of course Woodring’s artwork is fantastic as usual.
The only thing I wonder about — what happened to the expensive plant! Did Frank take care of it!? THE PUBLIC DESERVES TO KNOW
This book by Rotem Anna Diamant is something else again.
I like the general approach of the book…
… but the fairy tale/myth thing has never been my thing, so I didn’t really take to this book, even though I like the art.
A Swedish book — Taggig by Alva Skog.
And yes, as you already guessed from the cover, there’s a lotta gender goin’ on, as they say.
I really enjoyed this book. It’s got such an easy flow — it doesn’t get bogged down, but instead just meanders easily, taking in the story points. Really good storytelling chops.
And attractive artwork.
I’ve read some Achille Talon in translation as a child, but I didn’t quite remember what it was like. But I found this in the used comics store, so I picked it up.
And… yes, the gag here is that Talon (and most of the other characters) never stop spouting verbiage. So it’s one over-the-top dialogue after another, and most of it goes over my head — I can barely make sense of the surface level dialogue, never mind make out all the jokes. Reading a comic that mangles the language in this way isn’t ideal for a French beginner like me.
But it is very funny. Funnier than I think I remember it being when I read it as a child. (Although I never read this album, I think.) Took me several hours to get through it, though.
I’ve not heard of Berthet or Tome before…
… but this album is from the early 90s, and it’s about a favourite subject of French comics — racism, sex and violence in the Deep South of the US.
It’s not bad… and it avoids some of the clichés. But it’s not… very interesting.
And! I read a bunch of super-hero books.
I started a Flash subscription because Ryan North started writing it, and that was a good decision, because it’s pretty entertaining. But it’s a very Ryan book — that is, The Flash gets lots of incredible new powers and stuff, and while that’s fun, you have to wonder about the long term viability of this stuff.
Like, his Fantastic Four are now so powerful they can pretty much do anything… so the stories veer between being way too Everything Is At Stake Now and Let’s Just Have Fun in a rather bewildering fashion.
But it is still fun.
The pretty bad Planet She-Hulk series ends in a bizarre way — with She-Hulk being back on Earth, and having total amnesia about it all. But somebody from that planet drops by and recaps what (I’m assuming) were to have happened in the series. I’m guessing this is because the series was cancelled? So it’s nice of them to give us a “this is what was going to happen” issue… and it kinda turned out to be the best issue?
OK, that’s it.