Random Thoughts

The cache of unread comics has shrunk considerably! So let’s get reading, and as usual: No reviewing.

Fashion Forecasts by Yumi Sakugawa (Retrofit/Big Planet)

So this booklet is based on an Insta thing?

Hey, this is amazing.

Not only is it funny, but the artwork’s so appealing. Love the colours. It would have been nice if it had some kind of progression to it, but it doesn’t really build up to greater fashion fabulousness, but just starts off high and keeps it there…

Oh! Somebody made these clothes into reality!?

Wonderful.

And then there’s other bits and pieces that relate to the concept… This book feels less than a book than a… show catalogue? Perhaps that’s what it is? I’m slightly disappointed by the whole thing, because it started off so strong.

Man-Eaters #9 by all those people above (Image)

Man-Eaters is a very high concept book with a sort-of strange execution. It’s about how girls turn into were-panthers once they begin menstruating, so the gummints response to that is to give them hormones to make them not menstruate. (I think?) It’s a lot of fun!

The strangeness here is that the artwork is super-duper “mainstream” “realism”…

… while being mixed in with a lot of other “found” material (forms, magazines, books, ads), and that doesn’t really quite work for me. Perhaps it’ll read better in the collected edition, because there’s so little happening per issue that it’s difficult to get a grasp on it.

Oh, yeah, this was the issue that broke the twitters. For some reason, some transsexual women felt that a storyline that involved menstruation as the major plot point was exclusionary or something. Somehow Cain didn’t respond with *rolls eyes*, but instead included the tweets in the book…

Oh, yeah, one of the things that’s been confusing me throughout this book is why all the estrogen-free drinks are called something with “estro”. Isn’t that just bad branding?

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #45 by Ryan North, Derek Charm and other people (Marvel)

Up until now, Squirrel Girl has been immune from Marvel cross-overs (which has previously knocked the wind out of any other Marvel comic that I’ve been reading (like Howard the Duck)), but North seems to be able to muddle through. True, these are the worst Squirrel Girl issues ever, but they’re still pretty entertaining.

2001 by Blaise Larmee (2d cloud)

So I was wondering whatever happened to Larmee after all that drama last year… and the news item on The Beat has gone missing, leaving only a stub from the Tumblr mirror. He’s even gone from Wikipedia. Did he ever exist? This 2011 interview is still up, so perhaps… not?

Anyway, this book is great. The play with the grid is captivating.

*gasp*

Flabbergasting. Well, he’s probably off somewhere doing art that pays better, I’m guessing…

Marécage (Lagon)

This is a physically beautiful object. It’s oversized, and about half the pages are riso and half are very glossy offset printing.

And it’s half in French and half in English, so there’s this booklet with translations included… which isn’t ideal…

This book reminds me quite a bit of Mould Map? It’s got the same forward-looking aesthetic.

But it’s very French.

About half the pieces are non-narrative…

… but the ones that are aren’t… very?

It’s amazing how varied the approaches are while still being a coherent reading experience.

Ooo! Jaakko Pallasvuo! And he provides the funniest piece.

It’s a pretty amazing publication.

Krüger & Krogh 2 (Egmont) by these people:

This is a Norwegian comic, and the selling point is that it’s a traditional Franco/Belgian adventure comic.

But set in Oslo in the … 60s?… so it’s a double whammy nostalgic venture, I guess?

It’s not very exciting. The plot is pretty muddled for something so simple. Think Yoko Tsuno, but with Men in Black, and you’re there.

The artwork’s particularly uninspiring.

Now 5 edited by Eric Reynolds (Fantagraphics)

Now goes from strength to strength. This issue is particularly abject, which makes the opening page seem vary apposite.

I mean…

I don’t think there’s a weak piece in here, but it’s a bit emotionally draining on the whole…

No, they embody the message “I am bald”.

The Prince by Liam Cobb (Retrofit/Big Planet)

Well, this certainly has an interesting look.

But with the fake riso aesthetic, there’s a fake Japanese horror comic plot to go. Every dialogue feels fake and the attempt at being increasingly unnerving falls flat.

Uhm…. Parker Ito? (Landfill)

Actually, I don’t know what this spiral-bound thing (with attached plastic medallion is called). Most of the pages are in Japanese and … appears to be an essay about something?

Then there’s a bunch of single page illustrations by various people.

And a text in English. Most confusing.

The funnest section in the book is a series of pages with acetate overlays. So you have that with the overlay…

… and this scary thing without the overlay.

Oh! It’s a catalogue from an exhibition. Or something. That makes more sense.

It’s a very cool-looking item.

Magnum Song by Jean-Claude Claeys (Borgen)

This is a weird genre exercise. It’s basically a bunch of old movie stills that the artist has traced or… xeroxed? Transferred, anyway, to the pages.

So it’s a Fumetti/comics crossover thing, and it looks stilted as hell.

And it’s just lacking in all kinds of storytelling ability. Brando’s to the left of Wayne and then suddenly he’s to the right, probably based on what stills the artist had at his disposal?

He sometimes actually kinda draws, but it’s strictly limited to making his guys look beat up and bloated.

Oh, the story is some kind of noir non-sense.

FOR 120 PAGES!

Survive 300,000,000 by Pat Aulisio (Retrofit/Big Planet)

Huh. Sure is a lot of Retrofit books today… I have no recollection of buying these… perhaps I did some kickstarters or something?

I was all “oh noes, not another post-apocalyptic waste land thing”…

… but this is very lively. I like the ratty drawing and crazy digital colours. It’s not like anything very exceptional happens in this story, but it moves fast, is kinda funny and has a good vibe.

I was thinking towards the end “but surely there should be more of this”, and there will be! I’m there.

The Clandestinauts by Tim Sievert (Uncivilized)

Oops. PLEASE LET THIS NOT BE A ROLE PLAYING GAME INSPIRED COMIC!

AAAAAURGH! It is.

If there’s one thing I hate almost as much as video game inspired comics, it’s role playing game inspired comics.

But, c’mon, this is Uncivilized… Surely it’s not just … that… Uncivilized used to be cool; I bought absolutely everything they published for years, although I lost a bit track of them last year (as I did with everything else, really). Did they stop being cool?

It’s just page after page after page of this.

OK, then.

I bailed on page 20. Perhaps the remaining 200 pages are great; I’ll never know.

Perfect Hair by Tommi Parrish (2d cloud)

Hey, that’s a nice table of contents…

That’s just what it feels like!

But joking aside, this is a powerful little book. I absolutely adore Parrish’s sense of colour and space. And it’s not all sex and abject behaviour.

There’s also sweet things.

Sort of.

Sprawling Heart by Sab Meynert (2d cloud)

This is a very pretty booklet, but I didn’t really connect much with it. The texts seem to have a self-help vibe, which isn’t my thing.

Time Capsule by Maggie Umber (2d cloud)

I was absolutely captivated by Umber’s grey/blue book about owls… what was it called… something with snow? Anyway, that was amazing.

This one’s a smaller work, and it’s got an ending I didn’t see coming at all.

Five Years #2 by Terry Moore (Abstract)

I only read a couple of issues of Moore’s long-running (and successful?) series… which was called… uhm… Oh, yeah, Strangers in Paradise. It looked a bit like Love and Rockets, but it wasn’t Love and Rockets, so I just avoided it. But I thought I’d give him a try again, and this is more than a little confusing. If I read issue one, I’ve forgotten it, and he doesn’t explain anything here. But that’s fine. What’s more disappointing is how the artwork is rather unengaging.

What’s Michael? vol 11 by Makoto Kobayashi (Dark Horse)

The first volumes of What’s Michael? were some of the funniest things I’ve ever read in my entire life ever, but it seemed to get less inspired as it went along. Fewer characters introduced; fewer scenarios — more streamlined. And so this volume continues…

… until the second half, which is all dedicated to a new concept: A planet where the cats are the dominant species. It’s not prime Michael silliness, but I laughed out loud a couple of times.

This was the final volume Dark Horse published, and I wonder whether that was because Makoto Kobayashi stopped doing them, or whether it was because they didn’t sell…

Beasts of Burden by the people named up there (Dark Horse)

I’ve been a diffident Dorkin fan since forever. I mean, I’ve bought and read everything he’s done (except Pirate Corp$; I hope that’s collected sometime soon), but I’m not… I mean, Dorkin has his faults.

And the new artist here is more Generic Image than Jill Thompson, so there isn’t that much to recommend this latest series. There’s a “the end” on the final page, so it’s just a two issue series? And … nothing that mattered much happened here? It’s just… odd.

Prince Valiant vol 18 by Foster and Murphy (Fantagraphics)

We’re in deep pap pap territory now.

I used to read Prince Valiant in crappy editions as a child, but reading these new editions from Fantagraphics has been an eye opener. Sure, Foster’s stories got increasingly boring as time went on, but the artwork sure is nice.

Except now Foster isn’t doing the artwork any more, and everything that doesn’t look like bad anatomy looks like reproduction mistakes.

I hadn’t quite realised how much my enjoyment of these comics hinged on the artwork, but I guess it did? Or perhaps Foster’s stories got even more boring when he stopped inking, because I just can’t pay attention to this, and I bailed about half way through. I’ll stop the subscription now for sure.

What Am I Doing Here? by Abner Dean (New York Review Comics)

This is a “real book”. Nice to know.

It does seem pretty much like a collection of cartoons, though. *gasp*

Quite a few of these have the non-joke structure of New Yorker cartoons.

But some of these are kinda good.

And some are way smarmy.

The True Death of Billy the Kid by Rick Geary (NBM)

I have no interest in Billy the Kid, but, then again, I’ve had no interest in any of the killers and murders that Rick Geary has meticulously made book after book about for the past… three? decades. I just love Rick Geary and the way he makes comics. His pacing and panel to panel transitions are immaculate.

This story gives Geary lots of fun possibilities to play with, which doesn’t hurt.

Tempo 23 (Egmont)

Comics for boys: Tempo was an anthology running from the late 60s to the late 70s (I think) and translated and reprinted material mostly from the Franco/Belgian weeklies Pilote and Tintin. So you get comics about race car drivers, pilots, football players, detectives and everything that interests boys.

This is a newish go-around with the same series, but this time a couple of albums per new “book”. I’m guessing the target audience is the same as before, only fourty-fifty years older.

I wouldn’t claim that these comics are … good? Because they’re pretty weak stuff: Usually pretty stilted an formulaic. But it’s in a style I kinda like. And at least they tried to be progressive, like bringing in a female Soviet astronaut into the Dan Cooper story above, for instance.

But it’s mainly the style. I just like looking at pages of nice interiors, as in this … Luc Orient? thing?

The story is beyond tedious, and I can’t quite put my finger on why. I mean, it looks pretty exciting, doesn’t it?

And there’s other odds and ends in this book; it’s most amiable, but I wouldn’t really recommend it to anybody. There’s a reason these comics end up here instead of in proper collections: Even fewer people would buy them then. I’m guessing the only reason that it’s feasible now at all is because the French have gone in for a massive scanning-and-reprint operation for many of their “classic” series, which makes the material cheaply available for anybody who wants to publish translated versions.

Is my guess.

OK, it’s now way late and I should go to sleep. And there won’t be any more posts about comics for… four days? There’s a free jazz festival happening, but I may be back on… Monday? Yup. Monday.

The was an unplanned service interrupting in this blog series yesterday (OK, I went to a garden centre and bought a rose bushlet that I then had to plant and etc), but I’m now back to reading comics all day long. And as before: No reviews, because ain’t nobody got time for that.

War of the Realms: Journey Into Mystery #3-5 (Marvel) by all these people:

There was a decade and a half where I didn’t read any super-hero comics, but then I dipped in here and there and now I’m getting a handful per month. Unfortunately, the ones I like keep getting cancelled. On the other hand, Mile High Comics has this weird thing where you get “cross-overs” with the books you’re buying, and I guess I got this because I was reading Hawkeye (written by Kelly Thompson)? I could get them to stop it, but I kinda like getting these random comics…

This one is more random than most: It’s part of Marvel’s latest (?) mega-crossover thing, and I have absolutely no idea what’s going on.

Or who these characters are.

But no matter: This is totally amiable. There’s gags that kinda work, and there’s fun fights, and it ends with nothing really having happened, really, because it’s a mini-series designed to slot into a mega thing.

That’s fine.

Almost Completely Baxter by Glen Baxter (New York Review Comics)

I love silliness (Michael Kupperman is a favourite), but this book just doesn’t connect for me.

So many of these just don’t seem very inspired.

This one did make me laugh, though.

And the one on the left.

About half of these seem to be exercises in taking a still from a movie (or something) and then adding an incongruous title, and that’s just lazy.

OK, that’s a good one.

Salz and Pfeffer by Émilie Gleason (2d cloud)

This book is about Disney characters alternatively torturing people…

… or being tortured. And the last half is also one big giant fart gag, so what’s not to like?

It does feel excessively inconsequential, though.

Trying Not To Notice by Will Dinski (2d cloud)

This is a very non-2d cloud book: It’s a traditionally told story about the most boring characters ever in the history of ever: Stand-up comics and accountants.

It does become a bit more interesting in the final section, which is about what the title says. There’s some eerie, effective scenes in there. But if you sum it up (“oh boy, movie stars sure are delusional!”) (ok, that’s the crassest way possible) it’s all rather slight.

Twists of Fate by Paco Roca (Fantagraphics)

This is the story about Spanish antifascists.

There’s two layers: There’s a comic book artist interviewing a veteran, and the stories by the veteran. It’s a moving story, and I cried a bit when they entered Paris, but let’s face it: This book’s a mess. I immediately assumed that the framing story (“Roca” and the veteran) was complete fiction… because that’s what it reads like. Then bits of the history itself started seeming more and more unreal, what with the “ironic” twist of getting killed just when they were out of danger. They should sell Extreme Eye Roll Insurance with this book, because I sprained my eyeballs.

Worst of all, it reads like an adaptation of a movie: There’s nothing comicsey about the work at all. You can translate it to film, frame by frame, scene by scene, and that makes for a less than idea reading experience.

But there are powerful scenes in here, and that’s mostly when Roca doesn’t have the veteran telling “Roca” how wonderful he is.

Abyss by Saman Bemel-Benrud (2d cloud)

This is an interesting booklet that starts out like an anti-gentrification thing and then spins out in all kinds of interesting way. It’s pleasantly unsettling.

Untitled by Unknown (2d cloud, perhaps)

There’s no text anywhere in this booklet, so I don’t know who this is by, but it was amongst the stuff I bought from 2d cloud recently, so I’m guessing they’re the publisher.

It’s kinda hypnotic. There’s page after page of this mixture of very concrete and then more dream-like imagery…

And then in the middle of the book, there’s this thing, which comes as a visceral shock.

I don’t know what the book is about, but I’m guessing war and death.

It Felt Like Nothing by Fifi Martinez (2d cloud)

This booklet is pretty awesome. It’s got this flow…

… and the marks are so appealing.

Gustave el Aubert Tro Is Contes by Christopher Adams (2d cloud)

This mini seems to perhaps be composed from conversations overheard on CB radio… and other places? It’s got a nice rhythm.

Tim & Thomas 38: Fristelsen by Will and Desberg (Zoom)

This is a direct continuation of the Tif et Tondo album I read the other day, and it’s slightly less depressing. It’s about Tif (I think) going undercover in the fascist organisation, and eventually defeating it (before they make France into a whites-only monarchy).

(That’s the fascists’ propaganda video.)

It’s still a wildly incongruous reading experience… and it’s… not good?

It’s got a nice ending, though: The villains’ ill-begotten money goes to fund childcare for immigrants.

Comics as Poetry (edited by Franklin Einspruch)

Hey, this is really special. I like the Ink Brick anthologies, but they do have a surfeit of works that are simply illustrated poetry. This is much more ambitious, with works that really hint at a comics poetics.

Like the thing above that you have to work out how to read.

And this, which is very… Something. I’m so erudite.

All the work in here is good, but I particularly liked this four page piece by the editor.

Frontier #19 by Hannah Waldron (Youth in Decline)

This is a booklet of weaved material. I was a bit confused about the presentation until I, genius that I am, realised that we’re seeing both the front and the back of these tapestries.

Front…

Back. So we’re sort of reading a book of tapestries; how it’d look like if they were bound in this format.

Only on paper.

Neat.

Mr & Mrs X vol 1 (Marvel) by all these people:

Thompson has written some other super-hero comics I’ve kinda enjoyed, so I got this one.

It starts off amusingly enough. I mean, it’s not actually funny or anything, but it’s OK. The artwork’s a bit confusing, though, because nobody looks like they usually do. I think? Or were all the characters replaced by other people while I wasn’t paying attention? It’s happened before.

Well, I don’t care.

And the action bits (and there are a lot of them) are also not awful, but about halfway through this volume I lost all interest and it was rather a chore to get through. These aren’t bad super-hero comics, but, you know.

Roopert by August Lipp (Revival House)

Well, even for odd books, this is an odd book. I guess it’s meant to look like it’s been drawn on a yellow notebook? But then that means that all the figures have been whited in? And then drawn with blue over the whiteout? That doesn’t make sense, so the conceit falls apart…

It’s just so bizarre. I mean, that’s a very very simple pee joke, but drawn in this style it feels less like a joke and more like a transmission from another planet.

Mami by Diigii Daguna (Peow)

My immediate reaction to this was “oh no, not another European guy doing Japanese comics”, but this is from somebody on Manila, and it’s rather cute. The cartoonist is going for “manic fun”, and only occasionally lands at “incoherent chaos”.

In addition to the fun storyline, there’s also cooking. I like that.

All the Sad Songs by Summer Pierre (Retrofit/Big Planet)

I didn’t know anything about the Pierre, so I thought this was just going to be about growing up and making mixtapes, but it turns out she’s a musician, so
I put on this playlist about halfway through reading. She should have mentioned that at the start so that I could have been listening all the way through. Dude.

This reminds me of an interview I read with a novelist just the other day. She said that people often tell her they like her books because they identify with them, but she finds that so odd: Just liking something because it’s about somebody similar (in one way or another) to themselves. She likes reading about people totally different from herself.

Pierre has a really appealing line, but the pacing of this book seemed way off to me.

You Don’t Get There From Here #46 by Carrie McNinch

I usually read these pretty quickly upon getting them (because I find them really soothing), but this was stuck between some other comics, so I re-found it recently. And went “hm, hasn’t it been a while since I got new issues?” and my subscription had expired. But the good news is that four new issues is coming my way any day now.

This one deals with (among other things) January 2017, so it’s not completely undepressing.

It’s still irrepressibly readable.

But now I think it’s time to go to bed. Another day of reading comics tomorrow? Sure, why not?

It’s day two of the comics reading marathon, and today I hope to put in more hours than yesterday. The rules are the same, though: No reviewing.

Nocturne by Tara Booth (2d cloud)

This is amazing! It’s a hilarious but simultaneously moving look at an encounter gone wrong and the aftermath.

Booth’s artwork is so fresh and expressive: This is exactly what not being able to sleep is, in one single piece.

It’s wordless, but it’s a very clear, extremely readable narrative.

Masterful. And yet another beautiful 2d cloud production job; as an object it’s totally appealing.

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Beats Up The Marvel Universe! by Ryan North and Erica Henderson (Marvel)

Squirrel Girl has been a monthly delight for years now, but it’s unfortunately shutting down now. So I got this 2016 graphic novel that I somehow missed at the time.

The good thing is that it’s just as silly as the normal issues are.

But… it’s… not actually hilarious. Perhaps they got too caught up in making a good story to allow for good gags? I mean, it’s perfectly fine, and the story is good — really good — but I’m still disappointed. I guess I was perhaps just looking forward to reading this too much.

It’s got an epic feel.

Pope Hats by Hartley Lin (Adhouse Books)

Hey… didn’t he used to be named something else? Ethan… not Van Sciver… er… Rilly? Ethan Rilly? Well, something like that.

I’m guessing this is his real name, because (unlike the previous five issues of this series), these are short vignettes about his own life, apparently.

I’m not going to make the usual comparison to a certain other cartoonist (oops!), but this is even more like that than usual. It makes for a perfect comic book, though: Lin must be just about the only alternative comic book person to still have a comic in this format. (There’s Love and Rockets and… uhm… uhm…)

Half of the vignettes here are great, but the rest didn’t really do much for me.

Escape Journey 3 by Ogeretsu Tanaka (Sublime)

Hm… How did I end up with this? I haven’t read the first two volumes, so it was initially rather hard to follow.

But then it turns out that there’s basically no plot to speak of beyond the two main characters coming out to everybody, and that’s it. No intrigue or storyline.

Adult adoption!? The Japanese are weird.

But they sure know their science facts.

Blame This on the Boogie by Rina Ayuyang (Drawn & Quarterly).

Well, this is a structurally odd book, but let’s read the first-ish four pages:

Yes, that’s very typical of what’s to follow: Ayuyang has a chatty style where she talks directly to the reader, which is a pretty charming thing.

The first half of the book is a traditional retelling of her childhood (well, up until high school), and nothing really dramatic happens. It’s a typical sensitive child story: The horror of school and the fantasy life at home.

The most vivid bit is when she discovers musicals. That sequence is absolutely brilliant.

And while the art style is… simple… she does manage to convey a lot of emotion.

But then the second half of the book is just random things from her life without much theme or anything. It’s such a weird thing to do in a book. And it’s just hard to understand what she wants to make here; it’s like looking in on somebody that’s convinced that everybody else is the same as her and thinks the same as her.

So there’s a lot of sports talk.

And a long long sequence about a reality TV game show or something. Why would anybody…

>

NO I DON”T KNOW THE ONE YOU”RE TALKING ABOUT.

Poochytown by Jim Woodring (Fantagraphics)

Hm… so is this the last Frank book?

Anyway, I love Woodring, and this is very much in the same vein as those earlier books. The style is even more perfect than before, and the storytelling is magic.

This time Frank (sort of) befriends Man-Pig and gets to heroically rescue his real valise creature friends, so it’s… the gentlest of all Frank adventures.

Still lots of killing and maiming, of course. It’s Woodring.

An Honest Performance by Will Dinski (2d cloud)

This is a little rumination on being in a documentary movie. Eerie.

Comets Comets by Blaise Larmee (2d cloud)

There was some big controversy over Larmee last years that I don’t quite recall what was about, but one of the more puzzling things about the coverage was that several news outlets were treating Larmee’s fictions as non-fiction. I mean, some of that’s understandable, because he went to some lengths to establish web sites and stuff to “document” the reality behind his stories. And I love that stuff, but it’s fiction.

Part of the fun is decoding what Larmee is having performing, and in this older little comic, he seems to be documenting a podcast? “Comets Comets”? Is that a reference to the “Comics Comics” podcast? Was that a podcast?

In any case, this is a fascinating little booklet, and Larmee does all the fun tricks like obscuring part of the text and stuff.

And I love his artwork.

Looking Good by Will Dinski (2d cloud)

Oh, yeah, I bought a lot of older 2d cloud stuff.

This is a pretty non-consequential mini, but it’s cute. It folds out, and it’s rather… bemusing.

Ablatio Penis by Will Dinski (2d cloud)

What? Another Dinski think? Yes. But this is no mini, but instead a full-sized comic. Sort of.

Dinski is trying out something here in the layouts, and I think it kinda works? It makes things feel a bit like a TV show, though. I’m not sure why — the laboured pacing…

The story is just bizarre. It’s like an extended shaggy dog tale, but told with a weird gravitas.

Radically Rearranged Ronin Ragdolls by … lots of people:

But mostly Kevin Eastman? And a lot of different covers.

I bought this because I was just curious. I was never a fan of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (although I bought issue #1 when it was published, because I was curious back then too. Most curious), but it just seemed to weird for Eastman to return to this stuff after all these years.

It’s about three ninja cats or something. As these things go, I’ve read a lot worse, but that doesn’t mean that this was worth the time spent reading it.

Well, that’s cute.

Shit is Real by Aisha Franz (Drawn & Quarterly)

This is really special. The largely unexplained shifts between reality and fantasy are so fluid that after a while you stop to try to even decode what’s what, and whether things are dreams or hallucinations or just idle thoughts. (All of them may be represented here.)

It really works. The story being told isn’t very… unusual (it’s about young people trying to figure out their lives (and going to parties)), but Franz makes it feel like it matters.

And the artwork’s nice. I guess you could call it Post-Hanselmann or something.

Tegneserier by Tim Ng Tvedt (Jippi)

The title of this slim book means “Comics”, which is amusing. Tvedt’s previous book was absolutely fantastic; a tour de france I mean force of comics stylisation, reducing the form down to an irresistible hypnotic rhythm. So I was wondering what he was going to follow that up with, and I think he’s moved more into visual poetry territory.

There’s still some recognisable comics elements here, and the book is pretty amusing: It’s based on well-known phrases cut up and rearranged, sometimes to humorous effect.

It’s pretty unique.

And not to spoil the ending, but here’s a spoiler for the ending: “ERASING IT”.

Oops!

Tim & Thomas 37 by Will & Desberg (Zoom)

This is an album in the less than celebrated series about Tif et Tondu. As you can see, it’s in the very stiff pre-Franquin Spirou style. Apparently they didn’t even bother to issue some of the earliest adventures in album for in France, but now they’re gearing up for an Integrale, which means that they’ve gotten scanning… and which also means that other countries can translate and print them up cheaply. And so, suddenly, a Danish company is dumping a huge number of them on the market, and I’m sufficiently on board to pick up a couple of them.

I have no nostalgia towards these characters, but I do find this style very appealing. I mean, just look a that attempt at 50s high class furniture.

Too bad the computer lettering is so awful.

This album is, incongruously enough, from the late 80s, and it’s a depressing read. Tif et Tondu have lost all their money and have to take crappy jobs… and the plot of the album involves racist cops that have a plan to make France French again…

… by killing or deporting all immigrants. (That was “self defence”.)

I can totally understand them wanting to bring this comic up to date, but it’s just so weird reading a comic book in this style about racist cops murdering immigrants.

Rudy by Mark Connery

This is a cute little mini of more Rudy stuff. And… That’s it.

Ink Brick: A Journal of Comics Poetry no. 3

Wow. This has a dust jacket that folds out into this huge Prince Valiant-like Sunday page thing. Nice.

And the selection is really strong. I don’t think there was a single piece in here I though was bad, but the question is with “comics poetry” just what that is, and some go for illustrated text, really.

But most are more integrated.

And I loved this thing. En excavation of poetry.

Strong Eye Contact by Christopher Adams (2d cloud)

This is a series of tiny stories about a sad sack unlucky character…

… but is there more? I don’t really get it. Me dunce.

And then it shifts to this format. Admirably huge gutters.

And then there’s this style.

OK, that’s enough comics for today. I’m woozy.

See you tomorrow.