Random Thoughts

I was scanning some 1996 issues of Comics International and it turns out that each issue has a recap of what’s been going on on the Internet that month (comics-wise).

So there’s all the goss for the fortunate people who didn’t have access to the Internet yet.

*gasp* There’s even an explanation of what Usenet is.

Heh. Lots of fun.

I read some more comics over the last week.

I don’t quite remember why I bought this Justice League book — I probably thought it was a collection of 70s stuff? But it’s not — it’s from 85-87, so we’re in an era that’s totally unfamiliar to me.

So when this book starts out, the League lives in Detroit (!), and has members like… Vixen… Vibe… Gypsy… and Dale…

I guess Vibe made a return (well somebody with the same name returned), but it’s amusing how little success DC has had with introducing new super-heroes since, like, the 1940s? Sure, they go through a lot of names behind the various masks (how many Flashes have there been now?), but, you know, neither Vixen nor Gypsy have become household names.

We’re in 1985, so it’s during Crisis on Infinite Earths, so there’s crossovers. So we get an issue of Infinity Inc that reads like a headache on paper, and has artwork by Todd McFarlane.

As usual with “DC Finest” books, it’s not quite clear what the rationale behind why this section of the Justice League’s story has been collected here. We start off in Detroit, but after a handful of issues, we go to New York and then there’s a new penciller. And it’s all written by Gerry Conway, except the final handful of issues, which are by J M DeMatteis. But at least the end point is kinda logical — it’s where the series was cancelled (to be replaced by Justice League International), so perhaps the issue selection was just “the final 20-ish issues”?

Anyway, I was surprised at how readable this series is. I wasn’t expecting to actually read it, but I spent all night reading it and finished it in one day! It just flows very well, even though I can’t really say that it’s… good? It’s not actually good, but it’s not annoying in any way.

Like I said, DeMatteis took over at the end, and wrapped up Conway’s storylines over two issues, and then killed off two characters, and shut down the Justice League. The end!

I wonder what happened… Conway’s final issue had just him plotting, with somebody else doing the scripting, so he left in the middle of doing an issue, apparently. Since they cancelled the series shortly afterwards, I guess his run wasn’t a huge seller? Perhaps?

Speaking of “not a big seller”, here’s another “Lost Marvels” book from Fantagraphics. And this time around, it’s a whopper — this book is hefty.

Michael Dean writes in the introduction that Savage Tales was “gritty, realistic”, and that we may “groan at the machismo”, and that it has a “whiff of 1980s militarism”… but of course, the women are just as kick ass, and the war isn’t glorified, oh no! Which makes me wonder whether he’s actually read the book, because as a letter writer said, “[t]o put it bluntly, I like blood and guts, and you put them right in the palm of my hand”.

Dean says that editor Larry Hama jokingly said that the audience was guys in the military and guys in prison… but I don’t think that was a joke.

This book is almost all about how awesome violence is.

It’s almost all about awesome violence, and then some bits about how awesome the military is.

Sure, since this is an anthology with stories that are about ten pages long, and this book is almost 600 pages long, a couple of stories about other things is in here, too, but the majority are just about depicting violence. Which makes the book rather interesting — you avoid the trite O. Henry endings that have been done to death ever since EC Comics.

So while it’s an interesting book, about a quarter is basically unreadable (as a writer, Herb Trimpe makes a good artist), a fifth is pretty good, and the rest is… there. Story wise. But there’s a lot of really good artwork in here, if you’re into this sort of stuff.

Will Jungkunz’s serial stood out as something different — he went more for humour. (He died before finishing the series.)

Hama says that when the magazine was cancelled, they managed to use up all the stuff they had as inventory in the final issue, and… you can perhaps sense that they’d sat on the above story for a while.

Again, the only explanation I can find for Dean’s introduction is that he didn’t actually read the magazine — is that one of those strong, heroic women characters he was talking about?

I don’t know what you’d call the phenomenon exemplified by the introduction — “humane-washing?” “Booshwa-splaining?”

But! The quality of the physical book! Man! It’s perfect. It’s printed on thick, white, matte paper, and the reproduction of the artwork is just about perfect. There’s, like, no annoyances — the binding is even done so that the book stays open without you having to exert yourself.

And the issues are clearly marked so that you can find the issue you’re looking for by just looking at the side of the book.

If somebody wants to reprint some magazines, just give them a copy of this and say “do it like this”. Total class.

This is an early-80s French action book.

Previous albums were written by Van Hamme, but this one is better.

I mean, it’s standard fare, but it’s well done.

I have read most Freak Brothers stuff before, and many times, but I’ve been buying these collections anyway.

This is, I guess, the final collection? But it’s chronologically the first, which makes sense — the earlier collections collected later, longer epic stories, while this is early stuff, and mostly single page gags.

Which is fine, but it’s a bit wearying reading these one after another… I mean, I really like these strips — Gilbert Sheldon really has something very appealing going on here.

This edition, though, it’s… well, it’s a compromise, isn’t it? Some of this material was published in magazines, and some as comic strips, and some in newspapers, which means that it was originally printed in many different sizes. This book is smaller than magazine size, which means that (among other pieces), the one long storyline is printed much smaller than it originally was, which makes it a bit hard to read sometimes.

But… still a very pleasant way to spend an evening.

I picked this up at Un regard moderne last year, and I’ve been waiting for my French to improve enough that I can actually read it.

I’ve heard of Martin Veyron before, but I don’t think I’ve read much of his stuff before? In any case, it’s hilarious.

This was published in the early 80s, and it’s got that French late-70s surreal thing going on. It’s a kind of shaggy dog story, I guess, where the supposed point-of-view character gets involved with all these absurd characters.

Like the military of a South American country, and God, and L’eternel feminin… which I guess sounds like total chaos, but it’s not! That’s what’s so amazing about it — on a panel by panel basis, it reads like it’s improvised, with one gag after another, but Veyron juggles at least half a dozen separate storyline strands perfectly.

Very funny and oddly engrossing.

I think I may have picked this one up there, too? But I’m not sure.

This is early 90s stuff, and it’s very earnest. A bit silly, even, but a likeable album.

And with striking graphics.

I’m up-to-date with my Spirou subscription, so just read one issue this week.

A new Les cavaliers de l’apocadispe serial has started up, so that’s fantastic.

And a new Perdus appearance, so that’s great.

And… that’s it.

I read some comics over the past few days.

Or rather… I think I actually read only four of these books?

Rea Irvin’s artwork is quite stylish, but man — even in 1930 people must have been going “well, this is a bit trite, innit?”

It’s just not funny, so I ditched this book after a couple dozen pages.

I did read the entirety of this “Modern Age” Daredevil collection. “Modern age” apparently means 2005?

The main attraction here is Alex Maleev’s artwork, which is just not the kind of thing you expect to find in a Marvel comic book.

My main problem with this book has mostly to do with the binding. This is one of those “Epic” collections, which means that the spine is very, very tight. Maleev has a tendency to draw panels horizontally over two pages, which means that many panels are just swallowed up by the binding. Couldn’t Marvel have spend a couple more millimetres of paper in the middle? Or just shifted everything out towards the opposite edges of the pages? It’s so annoying.

I quite enjoyed these comics overall, but, I mean, it’s… Daredevil. It’s OK.

Wow, what an ugly cover for this Total THB 1 collection.

The interior artwork is so beautiful.

I remember reading these comics back in the 90s and just being flabbergasted at the talent on display in the five THB issues. They were 64 pages each, weren’t they? And released monthly or something? So it just felt like we were witnessing some kind of prodigal genius working on a level rarely seen — not only were these comics original, interesting and engrossing, but they were beautifully drawn and done so fast!

And then there was the rest of Pope’s career, which I don’t think we have to talk about. Such a let-down.

I wondered whether Pope was going to redraw THB for this collection, because he’d already started doing that in the 90s, but I don’t think so? This all looks very familiar to me. The only thing is that the book seems more streamlined than I remember? One of the attractive things about THB was that it seemed to hint at an intriguing world outside the story, with various digressions and other characters? Or do I misremember? This is just focused on HR’s story, and it moves fast and is less mysterious than I remember.

Oooo, this is a scene I’ve thought about often since reading it. It’s so simple — just HR and THB sitting in the desert, talking, while HR is waving her flashlight around. But it was totally magical when I read it back then, and it still is now.

Let’s see… I’ve gotta google whether Pope’s been doing some editing… Or First Second, because this is published by them. Whenever I read that a comics artist I quite like is being published by them, my heart sinks — not because they don’t publish good stuff, but because their editing process seems to result in more “streamlined”, “readable” books. Either because the creators restrain themselves because it’s going to reach a more mainstream audience, or because the editors there suck.

Heh heh, I see that lots of people are saying “finally we’ll get the all the THB material collected!” I’ll believe that when I see it — I feel like a complete reprint has been announced quite a lot of times, but perhaps First Second will be able to pull it off. Won’t believe it until I have the final volume in my hands, though.

OK, Brian Nicholson has the goods:

What readers will receive from the collection is pretty close to what Pope drew in 1994. There are exceptions, which are partly marks against it. The cover design is pretty bad: For a guy whose work is clearly drawn very large then reduced in size for print, it’s an odd choice to focus on a small detail and blow it up large, even before the addition of gradient coloring and spot gloss. This is a minor complaint, as the interiors look pretty damn good. Rescanned artwork adds a great deal of depth to the textures of a sequence done with wash so it is now clear it was printed much too dark originally.

[…]

Total THB favors the initial printing of THB 1 over Version 2, and none of the new parts are included. However, in that first version of THB issue one, there is an extended silent sequence of HR chasing a bat she’s accidentally released from a jar. It is a scene which, in context, is perfectly charming as a showcase of visual storytelling, but version 2 deletes it because it doesn’t really do anything storywise, and it’s absent from Total THB as well. Another sequence, focused on a bureaucrat working as a censor, who secretly loves the material he suppresses, as do the people above him, was completely redrawn for its appearance in Version 2 and is likewise deleted. It strikes me as a shame that this sequence was removed: It expanded the sense of the book’s scope, although this is also the argument against its inclusion, from an editorial perspective: Deletion of this scene keeps the focus on HR Watson.

I didn’t hallucinate! Digressive sequences (that gave this world more depth) have been deleted! But apparently Pope edited these out already in the 90s.

Anyway, Total THB 1 is a great read — kinda magical.

I seem to remember THB 6 (which was published years later) being kinda naff, and that’s coming up in Total THB 2, but I guess I’ll be buying it, too.

This is not good.

I have no idea why I bought this, and I shouldn’t have. It’s a spin-off of some X-Men special event or other? I have no idea what’s happening here.

And this scene just made me go *sigh* and I ditched to book. It seems like the point of this book is to just trot out alternate universe versions of the characters people liked as children? It feels like reading a summary of adults playing with dolls.

William Vance is huge in French(ey) pap pap comics circles, so even his least distinguished work is being translated.

This is from the mid 60s, and mostly written by Jacques Acar. The reproduction is bad, and the storylines are almost non-existent.

Just one cliché after another. Didn’t finish this one, either.

I remember Cabbie popping up randomly in various European anthologies in the 80s.

Martí’s fevered version of Dick Tracy’s universe seemed so on point for the decade — it felt like outsider art, somehow: Super violent and not holding back any weird obsession.

So I found it fascinating, even though I never actually, er, liked it.

This edition collects the all Cabbie material, apparently. The first album I’ve read before, because it was widely translated back then. The second I haven’t (because it wasn’t), and while reading it now, it became clear why not — the first album had an insane kind of clarity of vision, while the second album is just a jumble of … stuff. It doesn’t work on any level, really. Even the artwork is less striking.

Oh, and while I’m complaining — Fantagraphics printed this on glossy paper, and while that does make the black ink pop more, it just doesn’t suit the material.

I found this at a used bookstore.

We’re talking very, very standard French early 80s action comics. But done very professionally, too. Denayer’s artwork isn’t very distinctive (to say the least), but it’s done very well.

And there’s a heist. Who doesn’t like a heist?

Van Hamme ends up killing off two thirds of the heist team, though, which is an unusual choice.

Oops spoilers!

And that’s it.