Random Thoughts

When I visit web sites, I often look for a date somewhere. That is, I want to know whether I’m looking at something that’s been dead for years, or that’s being actively maintained.

So I was reminded me that I hadn’t added that at all to kwakk.info, the site for comics research. So I was going to add one of those boring “last updated on” bla bla, but then I thought it might be more fun with one of those carousel things?

Now added.

And while I was futzing around with this yet again (even though I swore on everything that is unholy that I was going to take a break!), I also did a new audit. And:

Before: Look at all those missing issues!

After: Look at a bit fewer missing issues!

I wrote up some scripts to do semi-automatic searches for missing issues at various arr arr sites, which reminded me that I didn’t have a mechanism for keeping track of the “double issue” phenomenon. So that’s also taken care of:

#9-10 and #11-12 are really single issues, but that don’t bother the database no mo.

OK! Now I’m done! No more kwakking!

To keep the number of separate titles down in the kwakk.info search engine, I’ve avoided adding (most) fanzines about comics that only had a couple of issues, or where I could only find a very small number of the issues.

But… why not stick them in a “misc” category? Why not indeed.

And:

Yes, there’s also a category for miscellaneous promotional material, but it’s very sparsely populated at the moment.

Now I’m kicking myself for not saving the various smaller fanzines/mags I’ve encountered while searching for stuff over the last couple years…

While doing another spelunking through things at Anna’s Archive this morning, I’m finding some pretty surprising things. Like:

“It Magazine & Comics”!? From 1994!?

Unfortunately, whoever scanned it was only interested in the Gaiman interview. *pout*

And the Internet hasn’t heard of the magazine at all.

And I’ve been doing extensive searches for 90s comics magazines, including using All The AI, and Arena Magazine never came up. (The first two issues were called “Comics Arena”, even.) It looks kinda interesting and had almost two dozen issues?

I guess the 90s really are a lost decade… I mean, to computers. I betcha this magazine had a web site dedicated to it in, say, 1999, but it’d be long gone and forgotten by now.

Oh well.

It’s a lovely day, but I need a break from doing all the stuff with magazines about comics, so instead I’m going to read comics magazines. Makes sense.

And for music today: Coil. Just Coil.

By the way: The Ignatz Award winners were announced… and there’s good winners, of course, but I’m amused to see that absolutely nobody I voted for won (I voted for the first time ever this year). 100% miss rate! I’m the best!

Coil: Scatology (Vol 2)

14:17: No Future by Anders Fjeld & Esben Slaatrem Titland

This book is a collection of mostly shorter pieces — some illustrated text…

… and some comics. I really like the artwork here. The stories deal with climate change etc, but in an 70s science fictional dystopian/utopian way? It’s fun.

Coil: Horse Rotorvator

14:42: Crysanthemum: Under the Waves by Maggie Umber

I got this from here.

This is a collection of stories…

… but it’s amazingly unified in mood.

Many of these seem to reference old movies, or at least how people were dressed back then. They’re all narrative pieces, but (mostly) wordless, and it’s a bit vague what the story actually is — which works wonderfully, really. There’s like a despair emanating from these pages. Excellent work.

15:07: Les aventures d’Hergé by Boquet/Fromental/Stanislas (Cobolt)

I thought I’d already read a comics biography of Hergé (drawn in his style), but I guess this is a new one?

No, this looks very familiar… Oh, it’s from 2017 originally, even though this edition is from this year? Doh! I’ve read the Drawn & Quarterly edition! I should search my blog before buying stuff, really.

But I guess I’ll re-read it…

Uhm… or rather — no. This just isn’t good enough, and I’m not really interested enough in Hergé’s life. Oh well.

15:21: Cheat Sheets by Tiger Teteishi (50 Watts)

This is a book of one or two page visual gags, many playing around with comics stuff itself. Some of it’s (like the page on the left) a bit too reminiscent of old Road Runner cartoons, and some of it relies on absurdity (on the right).

It’s a fun, inventive book, but it’s not really my sort of thing? I mean, a page or two in an anthology would be refreshing, but to me, it gets a bit repetetive… There’s like nothing deeper going on here than just having fun on a comics page? Which is fine, but…

Coil: Gold is the Metal

15:45: Into the Cosmos by Stathis Tsemberlidis (50 Watts)

Well, this is an odd book.

It’s mostly a collection of illustrations Tsemberlidis did for a Danish edition of Solaris, and we get many of the same illustrations repeated, in black and white and in colour. I guess it’s got a kind of rhythm to it…

And then we get a short comic. I love Tsemberlidis’s comics, so that’s fun, but it’s a pretty odd book.

Coil: Windowpane

15:51: Ne lâche pas ma main by Cassegrain/Duval/Bussi (Mellemgaard)

Hm… this art style is generally pretty attractive… those big angular cheeks. It’s like… Oh, I know — it’s like somebody took Hugo Pratt’s general stylisations and applied them to commercial art? Does that make sense?

Bu there’s something seriously off. The book is told as if it’s a TV series.

And the angles are often way bizarre — like if they’re working from photo reference for each character, but they’ve take the pics with a camera that’s really close to the subject, and using odd angles. Like that right bottom panel on the left hand page — the arm is shooting off towards us. Which would be a fun effect in an action scene, but here’s it’s just disturbing.

And also the sheer copy-pastiness of the artwork. In four of the panels with the police woman on the left hand page, they’ve C-c/C-v’d her head while drawing the body in different postures. And, of course, the copy paste of the square-headed guy in the bottom left two panels.

Oh, and the story? It’s a really, really convoluted crime thing, with several twists and turns, and more withheld information than you can shake a stick at.

Did they write this as a pitch for an eight episode Quality TV series? I think it might have been more successful as that.

Coil: Unnatural History: Compilation Tracks Compiled

17:04: We Are Hungry/Bunworld/Pretzel by Maggie Umber

Three books with different formats. The first one is A4, probably screenprint? And read sideways. It’s a pretty brutal story.

The second is very cute, but it’s not quite clear what’s going on? It’s issue #1, so I’m guessing things will develop; it’s interesting. And the way it’s printed is interesting, too: I’m guessing the paper is multicolour, and then the black parts are screenprinted? Never seen anything like it — it’s a wonderful effect.

And the third little book has some artwork I like a lot.

17:16: Golem Pit 224 by Julia Gootzeit (Fieldmouse Press)

Hey! This comes with a four nice little paintings!

You can get the book from here, I think.

This starts off with a classic sci-fi-ish setup: Two people go to investigate a new mysterious phenomenon.

But then everything turns into a relationship thing, which is then further reflected in the Big Mysterious Object. I’m not quite sure it works? It, like, needs… more. Of something.

Coil: Love’s Secret Domain

17:39: Psychodrama Illustrated #8 by Gilbert Hernandez (Fantagraphics)

It’s been a while since the previous issue, hasn’t it?

This is another one of those “movie adaptations”, I guess? We get three of those movies in just 24 pages — one on the left-hand page there; very compact.

And one sci-fi one running along the bottom of the pages, as well as the main story, which is mostly rape, and is a really depressing one — even as Hernandez’ movie adaptations go.

17:59: Game Over by Yves H./Hermann (Faraos Cigarer)

This is a dozen years old — I’m not much of a fan of Yves H, but older Hermann can be really good stuff, even if written by others.

This is a classic home invasion story (with the requisite twists), and it works? It’s pretty good. It’s not big or clever, but it’s well done.

Hm… I should make dinner, I think? But one more comic first.

Coil: The Snow EP

18:22: Sainted Love by Orlando/Giopota/Andworld (Vault Comics)

Eh… this art style isn’t my thing. So digital.

And the storytelling is kinda choppy. There’s some fun pages here, but I’m not really feeling it, so I ditched it about half way through.

Perhaps I’m just hangry.

*dinner*

Coil: Stolen and Contaminated Songs

19:22: Yoko Tsuno – L’aigle des Highlands by Roger Leloup (Cobolt)

I haven’t read a Yoko Tsuno in years — I used to read it as a child, but wasn’t much of a fan back then, either. But I’ve read at least a couple dozen of these over the years, and Roger Leloup is still plugging away — but these days, there’s several years between each album. Leloup is over 90 now, so it’s impressive that he’s still doing these albums.

As usual, the castles and scenery look great — I really like that castle — but Leloup’s faces have deteriorated somewhat.

I mean, look at the Yoko’s sidekick in the two panels at the top of the right-hand page there — that’s awfully wonky. Leloup is much better at drawing the female faces, which I’m guessing he enjoys more anyway? Yoko Tsuno was, I guess, part of that 70s French(ey) comics movement towards bringing in more female main characters, but in stark contrast to series like Natacha and and Franka, she wasn’t an excuse to feature more boobs, but was instead an old-fashioned hyper competent main character with amusing (and male) sidekicks.

In this albums we barely see those sidekicks, and we instead get a bewildering array of female supporting characters that Yoko Tsuno has picked up over the years — from several planets and different time periods.

The story in this album, though, is… wow. Just wow. It’s incomprehensible while also nothing actually happens? A confusing void.

Oui — toujours confus. And the visages are difformes! Did I write that review!?

19:49: The Uncanny X-Men #1 by Simone/Marquez/Wilson (Marvel Comics)

I like having a handful of monthly comics going, but since it’s Marvel, they all end so soon, and then I have to find another set. So here I’m testing the new X-Men…

… and it’s OK? I missed the end of the Krakoa thing (did those series get cancelled half a year or so ago or something?), so I have no idea how we ended back in this status quo, but it doesn’t really matter.

I think I’ll stick with this one — it’s got that repartee and things seem to be moving along without the entire issue being a long fight scene.

20:05: Nyx #1-2 by Kelly/Lanzing/Mortarino/Angulo (Marvel Comics)

Oh, brain fart — I saw “Kelly” in the credits, and I bought it because I thought it was that Kelly I quite liked, but I’d forgotten that that was her first name — Kelly Thompson. Duh!

This is quite, quite bad. Not the artwork, but the storytelling and the basic plot is just one big mess. Ditchin’.

Coil: presents Black Light District – A Thousand Lights in a Darkened Room

20:23: Š! #52 (Kuš)

That was quick. Didn’t #51 arrive just a couple months ago?

This issue’s theme is “Elastic Spaces”, with the artists interpreting that somewhat literally in many cases — about a third of the pieces are photos of different spaces. They’re nice pieces, but not really gripping. But there’s really strong stuff here, too, like the above.

And some silly ones.

I liked this one.

Coil: Time Machines

20:37: Spirou et la gorgone bleue by Dany & Yann (Cobolt)

This is another one of those “extraordinary adventures of” albums, and some of these have been a lot of fun.

This one drags a bit. It sometimes reads more like a Spirou parody — sex jokes, Trump references, somewhat racist depictions, etc — and I don’t have anything against parodies, but at 80s very chatty pages, with a low hit/miss ratio, I got a bit bored by the end.

I was thinking — “this really reminds me of those 80s parody albums, like… that’s it called… Bob Marone?”

And those were written by Yann!!! Like this one is!

Wow. I amaze myself!

The people at bedetheque weren’t much impressed either.

21:41: The End

And now I think I’ve read enough comics for one day.