Random Thoughts

It’s a rainy day, and I got a whole bunch of comics in the mail yesterday, so it’s comics readin’ time. (Even though I don’t really have the time.) And for today’s music: Only stuff from the 4AD record label.

Modern English: Mesh & Lace

13:37: DogHead Comics #1 by Dave Cooper (The Mansion Press)

I got a sizeable package from Italy’s The Mansion Press…

… including all these er print things…

… and of course, a Who Raped My Horse? condom advertising Johnny Ryan’s book (which I didn’t buy).

Made in Malaysia.

Anyway, the Cooper book is big and handsome — larger than normal “album size”, and beautifully printed.

It’s the first of a projected six issue run, and it’s really intriguing. And it also feels a whole lot less improvised than Cooper’s stuff from the 90s? Mysterious things are happening…

And then it turns out to be a double cover thing!

The second story feels a whole lot more like Cooper from the 90s — weird, random things are happening. It’s fun and it’s wild.

Dave Cooper’s back! What more do you need to know? Get shopping, but postage from Italy is probably going to be discouraging for US readers. Does The Mansion Press have distribution in the US?

Colin Newman: Provisionally Entitled The Singing Fish-Not To

14:10: Grixly #62-64 by Nate McDonough

This is an autiobio book about a guy who sells comics. Which means that he’s buying a lot of comics, and the book is really about all the freaks he encounters while dollar box diving.

It’s fascinating in a horrible way. Fortunately, I’m a well-adjusted person and nothing at all like this parade of deplorables, so reading comics has nothing to do with turning out this way.

There are really enjoyable reads, but sometimes told with puzzling continuity — I sometimes find myself having to backtrack to see whether I’ve missed something, but it’s like he skips a beat here and there. But it’s good stuff, and a fascinating look at this world.

15:15: Me Me Me Me by Johnny P

I like the obsessive quality these have.

They feel necessary somehow.

The Wolfgang Press: The Burden of Mules

15:18: Evil Eyes Sea by Özge Samanci (Uncivilized Books)

I assumed this was autobio at the start, because it’s so filled with details about living in Turkey at the time.

But then it turns into a murder mystery, a political thriller and a heist movie rolled into one!

Colourbox: Colourbox [MAD315]

It’s really good. It’s intensely interesting — it’s not just the thriller plot, it’s all these details that keep cropping up, but not in an annoying way. It’s super exciting.

My only gripe with this is that somebody’s bound to snap it up for adaptation into an action movie set in Vancouver.

Cocteau Twins: Head Over Heels

16:52: The Red Hook X Dean Haspiel by Dean Haspiel

This is from a kickstarter.

This is a very dense 24 pages. It’s stuffing a lot of ideas into these pages, and reading it, I was wondering whether I was missing something? Or whether it would have helped to have read all of Haspiel’s previous work? (Speaking of which — I’ve been a fan for decades, but the publications have been all over the place… anybody published a Haspiel omnibus?)

The artwork’s sharp.

This Mortal Coil: It’ll End In Tears

17:06: Moonray 2 by Brandon Graham & Xurxo G. Penalta (Living the Line Books)

In the afterword, Graham talks about how a setting like this, where nothing is familiar, requires a different form of storytelling than comics set in the present time, and that’s well observed.

Dead Can Dance: Garden of the Arcane Delights

But there’s also a problem when everything is so alien that it’s sometimes hard to get into the story? I’m not sure Graham is altogether successful in making what’s going on here feel gripping, despite his obvious talents.

Dead Can Dance: Dead Can Dance

Is that an upvote troll?

Anyway, what I’m saying is that I like this book more in the abstract than as a read — towards the end, I just found myself getting impatient with it all.

But there’s several neat characters and interactions that almost carry the book.

And now I need a nap.

Cocteau Twins: Treasure

19:09: Toward a Hot Jew by Miriam Libicki (Fantagraphics)

Hey, two cancelled creators in a row. Or something.

This is something very unusual for a comic — it’s a collection of essays.

It’s a very interesting book — it’s mostly about Israel, and the by far longest essay is about Jewish Ethiopians and how they’re treated in Israel.

The Wolfgang Press: The Legendary Wolfgang Press and Other Tall Stories

But it’s also about hotness.

The artwork is mostly painted, and I think all the lettering is hand-painted, too? That’s a lot of work. But it really works — these things aren’t just illustrated essays, but something different. Good stuff. I think I’ll be doing some shopping here…

Richenel: L’Esclave Endormi

21:12: Star Fruit by Gretta Johnson

Love this art.

It’s a very loopy, and quite brief parable of sort, I think? It’s fun.

Dif Juz: Extractions

21:21: Opal and Earl by Jasper Krents

Wowzers!

This is a really powerful book — it’s about obsessions and stuff. I love how it’s put together.

21:31: The Power of Our Voices by Ethan Heitner

This is from 2015, but more relevant than ever, unfortunately.

It’s a straight-up fanzine about why artists should boycott Israel, basically.

21:45: Thurd by Mavado Charon (À mains nues)

Urr… I think this is a non narrative book? I’m not sure, because I started reading it and flinched: It’s just one page after another of sexual torture. So I started flipping through it, and it’s all like that? This is the only snap of the book I found that was possible to include in this family oriented blog, because all the other pages were just horrific.

*puts on school marm uniform* “Well, that’s just not nice, is it!”

Congrats on the transgressiveness.

Dead Can Dance: Spleen and Ideal

21:52: Mind Riot edited by Karen D. Hirsch (Simon & Schuster)

This is a collection of very short stories about growing up and stuff. As you can see, they’ve got some major talent here, but also people who aren’t as well-known.

It’s from 1997 — I think Glenn Head mentioned it on Twitter or something? So I picked up a copy.

Each author gets a one page introduction.

I assumed that this would be autobio, but there’s not that many — Diane Noomin seems to be.

And Phoebe Glockner does an apparent 50s Romance Comics take on her horrifying childhood — told through the eyes of an imaginary boyfriend. Very odd.

The most successful story is this by Carol Swain, which is just one of her normal stories, and could have been made without a remit from the editor of this collection.

Carol Swain also takes a Romance Comics approach to her piece.

Despite all the great people participating here, it doesn’t really gel as an anthology. Besides a number of downright weak pieces (not shown above), it’s like everybody’s trying to cram too much into their pieces (perhaps because it’s from a Big Publisher). Very odd.

Heh. This is a library copy, and it only had three takers before being pensioned off.

It was nominated for an Eisner, though.

Colourbox: Colourbox

22:47: Panga-Rehe Stories by Jüri Arrak (50 Watts)

Oh, very odd. The font looks almost like Futura, but it’s not quite?

And the rest of this short book is also very odd — it’s a series of dreams about a creature called Maiv, and they’re strangely fascinating. It was originally published in Estonia in the 70s?

Cocteau Twins: Tiny Dynamine – Echoes in a Shallow Bay

23:10: Phantoms of the Louvre by Enki Bilal (NBM)

Oh, hm. I may have this already… I thought it was new, but it was published a decade ago.

Oh, I’ve definitely not read this before.

And I’m not really interested in reading it now, either.

Bah humbug!

23:17: The End

OK, I think I’ll call it a day. “It’s a day.” There.

Here’s some comics I’ve read over the past few weeks — they’re almost all pretty big collections of older stuff.

Over 7kg of comics! That’s 15 pounds for you (ex-)imperials.

As all people of a certain age, I read and loved (the first four) Incal albums by Jodorowsky and Moebius, but I’ve never felt tempted to try any of the other Jodorowsky albums “set in this universe”, because I’m not really much of a Jodorowsky fan. But I read an article that went through everything, and they said it’s all pretty bad except Before the Incal and Metabarons Cycle 1.

And Janjetov certainly tries his best at emulating Moebius.

When it comes to prequels, there’s always naysayers going “but we know he’s not going to die so what’s the point of reading these things!!!!” which is, I guess, a take. I think a fun story is a fun story, but I think the main problems with prequels is how to make the story mean much without distorting the original work. That is, John Difool was (as the name subtly suggests) a know-nothing schlub in the first Incal album, so how can he be having all these adventures where he reveals all the deep secrets about the society?

(Spoilers following after the next snap. Scroll past if you don’t want to know!)

Well, Jodorowsky has his mind wiped at the end of this collection.

*sigh*

That’s just so incredibly lazy and unsatisfying. And then he later walked back even that — at the end of Metabarons Cycle 1, he says that while he was writing the Incal sequel, he decided that everything that happened in the original Incal (as well as the bit where he got his mind wiped at the end of this thing) was all a dream! So presumably the sequel starts off after four fifths of this thing…

I dunno. Maybe it’s just me? Jodorowsky obviously wings it, and he doesn’t take these things seriously — he’s not like, a *yuck* nerd — but it just feels so *rolls eyes*.

That said, as a stand alone book, it’s pretty entertaining. Well. After the first album — the first album is crap. The rest is fun.

I’ve been reading these collections to learn French, and it’s been fun. I read most of these (in other languages) back when I was, like, 14, and it’s been fun reading them again.

Love the artwork.

This book collects the last four albums he did back in the 80s, before taking a decade off. And I’m guessing that he didn’t quite know where to take the series. The series started off with Buddy Longway building a cabin in the woods, before meeting Chinook, and then they married and we saw their children growing up — almost in real time. That is, after 20 years of the book, their eldest child was about 20 years old.

But the problem is, of course, how to write a book like this without it becoming a total bummer. Longway is a cool guy who tries to do his best, but he’s not really a “hero” hero, and often can do nothing by stand passively watching while the American soldiers genocides the Native Americans.

So I was wondering whether he was going to pull off this ending — and he totally did. It’s very moving and heartfelt and somewhat hopeful, despite everything.

And next up, I’m going to read the final collection, which collects the four albums he did a decade later.

This thing collects everything Marvel published in 1961…

… which is the year they published Fantastic Four #1. But as you can see here, it’s mostly Archie rip-offs (but set in a fashion setting), western comics, and monster comics. And a couple of romance comics.

It’s… it’s… it’s easy reading? I can’t really say that there’s anything particularly good here, but it’s surprising to see Don Heck drawing in this style. He was pretty good.

The median length of these stories is about five pages, which gives no room for characters to develop, or even good jokes. It’s just plot plot plot next.

It’s not downright bad, though? I’ve certainly read a lot worse comics from this time. It’s competently done.

But very, very repetetive.

I did like Al Hartley’s artwork. It often looks pretty wonky (probably done in a hurry), but it’s quite attractive.

I got a little stack of these Free Comic Book Day comics…

… and they are, like always, pretty naff.

I’d have thought the way to entice people to read your book would be to give people a fun read, but instead they mostly all read like prolonged ads, ending after six pages with “to be continued…”

It’s just a slog to wade through this.

This, on the other hand, was unexpectedly fun.

And with pretty good artwork.

But as with all modern Marvel comics, it ends before it really gets a chance to develop into anything. This collects the 15 issues from this iteration of the series, and it stops just when you think that things would start developing.

Because the creators successfully set up a fruitful new status quo, with a handful of different, fun characters, and in a milieu that naturally allows fun stories to develop. And that’s what successful serial superhero comics do: Not do endless origin stories, or This Big Shattering Storyline That Will Change Everything Forever, but establish an environment where stories, characters and jokes thrive in. And they did that here, but then: The End.

Yes, this was the other Jodorowsky book that was recommended.

And it’s a lot weirder than the Incal book — it’s the story of the Metabaron dynasty, with about one album per ancestor.

And it’s a very jokey series — it’s told from the point of view of two bickering robots, where one is telling the story to the other.

It’s just… it’s so Jodorowsky. I mean, Gimenez is probably driving the proceedings, I’m guessing — he gets to draw all the stuff that he likes to draw, and he does it so well. But the stories are endless torture, killing and (threats of) rape. But the most annoying thing is how small everything is. I mean, Jodorowsky makes everything Huge, So Huge — it’s always one galaxy attacking another, or one universe attacking another, but it’s like “he didn’t like to go to The Wild Galaxy, because it’s always raining acid there”, and “the Hospital Planet ground to a standstill while taking care of the Metabaron’s baby” etc etc. That is, while he’s using Big Words, it always seems like everything is really happening in a minute village.

But for Jodorowsky all this is a lark — he’s not a nerd, and he’s making fun of super-duper-cosmic sci fi, so it doesn’t really mean anything.

Is it any good? Eh. It didn’t really feel like an optimal way to spend all this time reading this whopper of a book, and I certainly won’t read any more of this Jodononsense.

But I guess it’s successful?