Comics Daze

It’s a day for reading comics for sure. And for music today: Albums from 1981 only.

Japan: Tin Drum (1)

12:48: Causeway 25-29 by CF

Oh, man, the white balance is so balanced today. That is, it’s very sunny, and the lamp I’m reading under uses a “warm” bulb, so to get kinda realistic white in the camera, the background looks like everything’s been painted totally blue… Sony should invent “dual white balance” stuff so that the foreground can have a different white balance than the background.

Causeway has been a grab bag of random stuff, but mostly not very narrative.

But in this batch we get a four part story, and it’s pretty cool. Sign up here.

12:57: How To Hold Back Tears by Jooyoung Kim (Kuš)

This is really funny.

And also kinda moving. I like it. Get it from here.

13:08: Ruse by Alex Wedderburn

I like the artwork here.

The story seems like a quite standard TV lawyer drama thing, but there’s a reason those things are popular. The storytelling here is solid, and I can totally see somebody like, say, Image publishing this in full in a couple years.

Yukihiro Takahashi: Neuromantic

13:18: Business Insider by Grayson Bear (Frog Farm)

This book is hilarious.

It’s very on the nose… but then it totally goes where you didn’t expect.

And there’s also a booklet in the book and all sorts of nice things.

13:28: Szarlotka by Jas Hice (Frog Farm)

This book is about a creepy neighbour.

The storytelling is solid, but I found the story frustrating. There’s a limit to how passive you can be.

13:37: Loops

This is a British anthology.

It’s mostly very short pieces. Some funny stuff.

*gasp* Nostalgia! Never heard of it.

The Cure: Faith (1)

13:45: Frontier by Giellaume Singelin (Magnetic Press)

Wow, what a strange hybrid style… It’s like Singelin took some extremely super-cutesy Japanese (or even Korean) comics figures and then smushed them into French comics parameters. So instead of hyperkinetic Japanese comics storytelling we get very staid French old-timey layouts, with no closeups, but populated with these munchkin characters with tiny bodies and bobble heads.

And, of course, mecha-influenced space ships.

Is there a Vaughn Bodé influence, too?

Very odd.

Every time I open a new spread, it all looks so good… until I actually read it. Seen at a distance, this looks like the best sci fi comic ever.

Everybody has exactly identical body and head shapes (men and women), and of course just dots for eyes, so Singelin is diligent in trying to keep all the character (and there’s a lot) separate by giving each one a distinctive hairdo. (And eyebrows.) It doesn’t work — I have no idea who all these people are, or indeed whether I’m supposed to know.

I gave up on this after two fifths.

Simple Minds: Sister Feelings Call

14:17: Jag kommer med stryk by Nanna Johansson (Galago)

This book is a mix of one page gags…

… and longer comics. It’s very funny.

14:53: Summit by Aby Wye

This one is excellent.

It’s a short book, but it packs a lot in — it’s Very Metaphorical Indeed, but works really well. Very sweet.

14:58: Mask 4 Mask by Ollie Kicks

This is the most coherent 24h comic ever.

And it’s very funny. Wonderful punch line.

Simple Minds: Sons and Fascination

15:03: Joe Galaxy Comix by Mattioli (Fantagraphics)

This is a collection of stuff that ran in various anthologies, I guess?

I think they used to call this stuff “anarchic”.

If you happened onto four pages of this in an anthology, you’d go “well, that was fun and pointless” and then move on. Collected like this, it’s mind deadening.

Oh, I guess Mattioli was inspired by Moebius’ Hermetic Garage? But Moebius has, like, a whole thing going on; it’s not just randomness and gross gags. And, of course, the artwork.

I found this book to be tedious — there are some gags that actually work, but they’re few and far between. I ditched it one third through.

15:32: Cold Chips by Chris King

Oh, this is very attractive… it’s got a proper mood going, too.

And it’s a very sweet little book. Class!

Tom Tom Club: Tom Tom Club

15:36: Krut: Seriemagasin

This is a curious artefact — it’s a special comics issue of a Swedish pedagogical periodical from 1989 that I found in a used comic book store the other day.

So you’d expect they’d soft-foot it and run kinda mainstream comics.

But nope, it’s got some pretty wild stuff, like this Max Andersson piece. Most of the pieces are about education and going to school, and most are pretty amusing. It’s an impressive little anthology, really.

16:00: CFBT by Cristiano Cardone and others

So this is one of those gritty Blade Runnerish types of sci fi comics…

… but… like… It’s not good.

I assumed that this was written by a teenager, so I wasn’t going to say anything, but I googled the writer (only his name is on the cover; the three illustrators are mentioned inside) and he’s an actual adult. Shocking.

Yet again, I ditched the book. Man, I’m not having much success with the longer books today…

Tuxedomoon: Desire

16:17: Zoo #3 by Anand

Oh, I’ve read these stories before in the collected edition. Duh!

But I re-read them now, and they’re still amazing — three tight, taut short stories in 44 page. Anand manages to squeeze so much into so few pages. It’s a gripping read.

16:41: Sanctuary by Lev Fielding

This seems to be printed pretty low rez? Was it drawn low rez on a tablet or something?

Anyway, it’s a very metaphorical story about… er… something. Finding your place? It’s nice.

16:55: War on Gaza by Joe Sacco (Fantagraphics)

This was serialised on the Comics Journal web site, so I’ve read these pieces before…

Yeah, it’s as good as I remembered.

And collected like this it’s even stronger.

Kraftwerk: Computer World

17:07: Worn Tuff Elbow #3 by Marc Bell

I love Bell’s line and design sense.

The story is mesmerisingly weird, as usual.

17:27: FK10,000,000 by Nell McKeon (Frog Farm)

This is printed so faintly that I first thought it was some kind of mistake…

… but it goes really well with the story, really. It’s an interestingly vague and somewhat goofy story, and I really enjoyed it.

David Byrne: The Catherine Wheel

17:45: Movie Theatre Stories #1 by Vincent Mollica

This starts off pretty normally, with four panel comics about going to the movies.

But then it turns into something quite else. It’s a fascinating book — so many different approaches; kinda obsessive.

Depeche Mode: Speak & Spell

18:14: The Devil’s Grin #6 by Alex Graham

This is an extra-long issue — 110 pages!

I don’t really remember what the plot was up to this point (even if there’s a recap in this issue), but I think things might be coming to ahead? It’s very entertaining, anyway.

18:53: Trap #2 by Matt Seneca

Hm, have I read this before?

Anyway, it’s pretty wild. Poor Chris Ware!

19:13: The End

Oops, I’ve forgotten to eat anything today, which may help explain why I feel like I’m about to plotz. So I think that’s enough comics.

Book Club 2025: Deeds of Honor by Elizabeth Moon

This is a slightly odd grab-bag of stuff. It’s got three proper short stories, one thirty page deleted sequence from one of the books, several things that I can only describe as “scenes”, and some “myth” recounts. None of these pieces would make much sense to somebody who hasn’t already read all the Paksenarrion books.

I found the “scenes” to be, er, not thrilling — most of this was originally published on Moon’s blog, and I can totally see these things making sense in that context. But two of the short stories were properly exciting, but most of all it just made me want to go back and re-read the original Paksenarrion trilogy.

Deeds of Honor (2014) by Elizabeth Moon (buy new, buy used, 4.34 on Goodreads)

Book Club 2025: Numero Zero by Umberto Eco

I got If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino as an Xmas present when I was seventeen, and I loved it to bits. Absolutely amazing book. But why am I talking about Calvino? Because I think I’m suffering from some obscure disease probably called something like calvinoecotrepidatioensis, wherein every time my eyes read the characters forming the name “Umberto Eco”, what reaches my brain is “Italo Calvino”.

It even happened when I picked this book up and sat down to read it. I though “ooh, can’t remember this Calvino book” and then I flipped to the copyright page and back and forth and finally “darn!! It’s Umberto Eco!!!! Again!”

I assume that the same thing happened when I picked this book up on a sale in 2019. I don’t know where the confusion originates — I’ve barely read any Eco (I think perhaps just one book — The Island From The Day before, which I quite enjoyed), while I’ve read a lot of Calvino’s books.

Uhm, uhm, uhm… I don’t really know what to say about this book. It’s obviously an Old Man Yells At Clouds type of book (it’s his last one), where he just bitches about all the things that annoy him. The main target here are those nefarious, untrustworthy, horrible nihilists in the press. Journalists! He hates them soooo muuuuuch. But there’s also just random things, like how things like mobile phones suck (which is a strange thing to include in a book set in 1992).

The other parts of the book are the kinds of things I’ve always imagined that Eco specialises in — there’s a lot of conspiracies and stuff. But also other typical Old Male Author Staples, like having the protagonist be an old male author who is inexplicably attractive to a much younger woman. And pages and pages and pages of stuff about WWII. This stuff is told with a very Italian slant, so he natters on about Mussolini minutiae that’s perhaps known to Italians, but he might as well be reciting car stats. Which he also does! There’s a half a dozen page monologue where he explains that all available options for buying a new car sucks, because of various car stats.

So this all sounds like the worst book ever, right? No, I kinda liked it. It’s oddly well written, and parts of it are downright exciting. And there’s a lot of witty dialogue, like the bit where they mouth off jokes to one another for four pages like “Why is it that God must be a completely perfect creation? Because if he were completely hopeless, he’d be my cousin Gustavo.”

Numero Zero (2015) by Umberto Eco (buy new, buy used, 3.17 on Goodreads)

Book Club 2025: London 2084 by Bing & Bringsværd

I guess this author duo has a special place in the hearts of all Norwegian nerds of a certain age. Not only did they champion science fiction in Norway in the 70s, but they edited a number of anthologies, got a bunch of classics translated, wrote sci-fi TV series… and also wrote a bunch of science fiction books themselves, and some of theme were geared with lased sharp precision at nerdy kids: The most successful book series was about a kid who flew around in space on a library space ship! These days you’d guess that something like that would be the result of extensive booktok market research, but I guess they’re just built that way.

The problem is… once I got older, I realised that they were (and there’s no polite way to say this) not good writers.

So I haven’t read any of their stuff for at least three decades, but I picked this 2014 book up at a book sale a few years ago, and then didn’t read it. Until now.

I kinda enjoyed it? And also, it sucks.

Let me explain: It’s written in a way that went out of style in the 1950s: We’re following an investigation taking place in 2084, and most of the space is devoted to explaining all the technical wonders of 2084. But written squarely to a contemporary audience. Like, imagine a sci fi short story written in 1945: “He pulled out his aetherium-powered pen, which worked as if there were an extremely tiny gasoline engine embedded (but without the fumes) that melted the lead and allowed the pen to write in a very fluid, manly manner.” That sort of style used to be a thing, but nobody writes that way any more.

I just found it to be an amusing read, because the authors’ enthusiasm for describing the World Of The Future is palpable. And like those oldee tymey sci fi stories, the protagonist has virtually no interior life or any character to speak of. While I was reading this, I was thinking “whew, people are gonna hate this!”, and I just checked Goodreads: Yup — it’s got 2.93, which is extremely low for that site.

The plot is stupid, and the ending is risible, but I enjoyed reading it anyway.

London 2084: en fortelling om fremtidige forbrytelser (2014) by Jon Bing & Tor Åge Bringsværd (2.93 on Goodreads)

Book Club 2025: De romantiske hundene by Roberto Bolaño

Of all the things I opine on that I’m utterly unqualified to opine on, poetry is the thing that I’m unqualifiediest (that’s a word) to opine on.

But I’ve never let that stop me before, so:

Eh, it didn’t grab me. I have no idea, of course, whether it’s the translation that’s the problem (this was originally Los perros románticos, or The Romantic Dogs in English), or whether the poems are just kinda flat, but it feels oddly lifeless and not very interesting. And that’s certainly not a problem with Bolaño’s novels.

I did like this one, though.

The Romantic Dogs (1993) by Roberto Bolaño (buy used, 3.95 on Goodreads)