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Post by sarapen on Aug 9, 2017 12:19:07 GMT -5
Hardly anyone ever goes into the Comics sub-board so I'm making this thread.
Here we can discuss what we're reading in comics, graphic novels, bandes dessinées, manga, manhua, manhwa, webcomics, webtoons, newspaper comics, Tijuana Bibles, doujinshi, and whatever else has illustrated characters talking in word balloons.
There are existing threads for Franco-Belgian comics and manga, but no one's posted in either since 2015. I think I wrote some pretty good manga recommendations on that second thread if you were wondering what I liked.
As for what I'm reading,first off is Pretty Deadly, a magical realist supernatural Western series about Death and cowgirl psychopomps and such. The first volume is a typical Western story of revenge but with skull-headed artillerymen and butterfly monsters, but by the second volume it turns into a World War 1 story, which is great because I hadn't realized the dusty Western landscapes were getting repetitive.
I'm also reading Autumnlands, which is a pulp sci-fi story about a soldier from the future waking up in an even more distant future ruled by magic and beast-men. Just to make clear where it's coming from, it regularly has splash pages that look like they came from a mid-70s sci-fi adventure magazine.
On the manga front I'm reading Delicious in Dungeon, which is about the adventures of your typical RPG dungeon raider party, except half of it is fake recipes for cooking monsters. See, our heroes get their asses kicked and run out of food and money down in the dungeon, so they start eating the dungeon monsters. The book is just as much about the ecology of monsters and how to prepare them for consumption as it is about fighting and looting. It does a pretty good job of fleshing out what on the surface is a fairly generic fantasy RPG setting. Also it can be pretty funny.
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Post by Ben Grimm on Aug 9, 2017 12:25:44 GMT -5
I may need to check out Delicious in Dungeon - it sounds fun.
Recently, I've read the first two volumes of the One Punch Man manga - which were fun, but, having watched the anime, familiar, for the most part. I'm looking forward to getting past the stories that I've seen adapted already.
I still mainly read comics through Marvel Unlimited - on Mondays, the new (to MU; it's usually stuff from about six months back plus some older content) stuff turns up.
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Post by Superb Owl 🦉 on Aug 9, 2017 12:55:13 GMT -5
I have so many comics from the library right now! The recent reads:
Howard the Duck, Vol. 1 - The current series. I'm not sure why I resisted checking this one out for so long, it's a lot of fun. I'm sure it's terrible and a slap-in-the-face or whatever if you were a fan of the original series, but it scratches my itch for Squirrel Girl-ish goofy fun with the Marvel canon.
Black Widow, Vol. 1 - The Mark Waid series. It was fun enough, I'll probably check out the next trade as well to see where it's going, but I wasn't blown away.
World of Wakanda, Vol. 1 - As with the rest of the Coates Black Panther universe, the ideas are more interesting than the execution.
Star Wars: Doctor Aphra, Vol. 1 - I've pretty much liked all of the new Marvel Star Wars output. Lando and Poe Dameron have probably left me the most cold so far, and even those were fine. I'm sad that the original Darth Vader series had to come to an end, but this is a worthy follow-up.
Descender, Book 4 - Continuing to enjoy this series quite a bit, and it was nice to get back to the main plot after the character work tangents of Book 3. It's funny, I'm sure Lemire and Nguyen picture it as a big, sweeping Star Wars-esque epic (and it does work as that), but my mental adaptation as I read it kept reverting back to these classic Doctor Who style production values. I don't know why.
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Post by sarapen on Aug 9, 2017 13:05:33 GMT -5
I may need to check out Delicious in Dungeon - it sounds fun. Recently, I've read the first two volumes of the One Punch Man manga - which were fun, but, having watched the anime, familiar, for the most part. I'm looking forward to getting past the stories that I've seen adapted already. I still mainly read comics through Marvel Unlimited - on Mondays, the new (to MU; it's usually stuff from about six months back plus some older content) stuff turns up. You may not realize this but there are actually two One Punch Man comics - the one you're reading and the original, which is a shoddily drawn webcomic the author releases on his website (and which the manga artist uses as a reference to make the good stuff). I think the author just doodles on a tablet then directly uploads it.
The webcomic is really half-assed but it's obvious the guy is just lazy instead of a bad artist - he's got a good sense of perspective and composition, he just doesn't want to take the trouble to make it look good. The webcomic is way, way ahead of the manga, which is itself ahead of the anime. But yeah, I do like all iterations of One Punch Man as well.
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Post by ganews on Aug 12, 2017 20:55:22 GMT -5
Recently, I've read the first two volumes of the One Punch Man manga - which were fun, but, having watched the anime, familiar, for the most part. I'm looking forward to getting past the stories that I've seen adapted already. My anime-watching is mostly behind me, but I was literally yesterday thinking about starting to read the comics online again. My labmate just told me how his bald one-year-old is going to be One Punch Man for Halloween and he is going to be a towering villain. |
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Post by W.S.Punk on Aug 15, 2017 20:32:25 GMT -5
I work part time at Barnes & Noble and during my 15 minute dinner breaks, I've been working my way through the DC Rebirth trades.
So far I've read the first two Green Arrows, the first two Aquamans, the first two Supermans, the first two Action Comics, and the first volume of Titans. I'm not sure if I'm going to go after Batman or one of the Green Lantern titles next.
The Aquaman books have so far been my favorite of the lot, with the Superman books coming in second. I really like Super-Dad and think it's a great version of the character.
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Post by sarapen on Aug 16, 2017 17:44:35 GMT -5
Well, I just got Street Angel: After School Kung Fu Special from the library. This is a sequel to the original series from 2004, which was about a homeless skateboarding girl who fights ninjas. As you might expect, that book was very deliberately dumb in a mid-2000s sort of way (it actually uses that pirates and ninjas thing from the Real Ultimate Power website, remember that?). The story is kind of a satire of Golden Age superhero comics with plot points involving time travel and ancient gods just stuffed in between scenes of people getting punched and/or kicked. The art is actually pretty neat and does some interesting stuff with negative space, which I like a lot. Anyway, that was a decade ago. I figured the whole thing was a one-shot miniseries (it was only 5 issues) but then I was in a comic book store a couple of weeks ago and saw a big display of new Street Angel books. Being a cheapskate, I just made a note on my phone to see if my library had any of the new books, and now here we are. This current book is in full colour now and is about Street Angel fighting the Ninja Kid at school. The book's pages are actually pretty damn big and I kind of feel like I'm reading a kid's book, which is neat because I can see all the art very clearly. Anyway, it's more of the same as the original series, though it's much shorter. Basically, I like it. Also, if you feel like checking it out but don't want to get out of your seat then there are actually free stories on the comic's website.  |
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Post by Nudeviking on Aug 16, 2017 19:57:16 GMT -5
I got a trade of the old Marvel Star Wars comics on the cheap and have been reading through that. I'd had some single issues as a child, but they did not prepare me for how absolutely batshit insane Marvel's Star Wars got after they'd done a comic book adaptation of the first movie. One of the earlier arcs has Han and Chewie in an homage to The Seven Samurai with a team that includes an anthropomorphic rabbit, a Don Quixote rip-off (Don-Wan Kihoty), a porcupine man, the demo version of Luke Skywalker, and more.  |
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Post by Ben Grimm on Aug 16, 2017 20:02:06 GMT -5
I got a trade of the old Marvel Star Wars comics on the cheap and have been reading through that. I'd had some single issues as a child, but they did not prepare me for how absolutely batshit insane Marvel's Star Wars got after they'd done a comic book adaptation of the first movie. One of the earlier arcs has Han and Chewie in an homage to The Seven Samurai with a team that includes an anthropomorphic rabbit, a Don Quixote rip-off (Don-Wan Kihoty), a porcupine man, the demo version of Luke Skywalker, and more. I reread the entire run 5-10 years back, and it immediately became my favorite EU thing. There's something to be said for not aiming to be weighty and instead just having fun with the original movies. |
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Post by Roy Batty's Pet Dove on Aug 16, 2017 22:34:05 GMT -5
I got a trade of the old Marvel Star Wars comics on the cheap and have been reading through that. I'd had some single issues as a child, but they did not prepare me for how absolutely batshit insane Marvel's Star Wars got after they'd done a comic book adaptation of the first movie. One of the earlier arcs has Han and Chewie in an homage to The Seven Samurai with a team that includes an anthropomorphic rabbit, a Don Quixote rip-off (Don-Wan Kihoty), a porcupine man, the demo version of Luke Skywalker, and more. Why is Chewbacca thrice as tall as everyone else? Also, were these comic books canon before Disney acquired Star Wars and erased the EU? |
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Post by Lord Lucan on Aug 16, 2017 22:51:23 GMT -5
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Post by Nudeviking on Aug 16, 2017 23:33:42 GMT -5
I got a trade of the old Marvel Star Wars comics on the cheap and have been reading through that. I'd had some single issues as a child, but they did not prepare me for how absolutely batshit insane Marvel's Star Wars got after they'd done a comic book adaptation of the first movie. One of the earlier arcs has Han and Chewie in an homage to The Seven Samurai with a team that includes an anthropomorphic rabbit, a Don Quixote rip-off (Don-Wan Kihoty), a porcupine man, the demo version of Luke Skywalker, and more. Why is Chewbacca thrice as tall as everyone else? Also, were these comic books canon before Disney acquired Star Wars and erased the EU? I think back in the day they were S-Canon (secondary canon) so they counted unless something from a higher canonical level contradicted them and there were no rules against contradicting stuff that appeared in them in later works. |
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Post by Roy Batty's Pet Dove on Aug 17, 2017 0:10:41 GMT -5
Why is Chewbacca thrice as tall as everyone else? Also, were these comic books canon before Disney acquired Star Wars and erased the EU? I think back in the day they were S-Canon (secondary canon) so they counted unless something from a higher canonical level contradicted them and there were no rules against contradicting stuff that appeared in them in later works. Was the book series I'm Vader's Son Because I Found His Glove and Also I Have Three Eyes also S-Canon? Edit: Apparently it was Palpatine's son, but definitely still Vader's glove. |
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Post by Nudeviking on Aug 17, 2017 0:31:23 GMT -5
I think back in the day they were S-Canon (secondary canon) so they counted unless something from a higher canonical level contradicted them and there were no rules against contradicting stuff that appeared in them in later works. Was the book series I'm Vader's Son Because I Found His Glove and Also I Have Three Eyes also S-Canon? Oh man those books were terrible/awesome. I think though that they would probably belong to the category above this one since they were created post-"continuity is important," whereas the original Marvel comics were just kind of like, "Shrug, whatever...how about a giant talking rabbit?" |
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Post by Jean-Luc Lemur on Aug 17, 2017 1:27:18 GMT -5
The Life & Times of Scrooge McDuck[/i]. Everything else comics-related has been sixties black-and-white madcap noir-ish or weird French SF, so it’s actually taking some adjusting to get back into the swing of just a normal fun adventure story. But it’s great digging into Scrooge’s origins, strange seeing him so young (I’m having trouble imagining a voice), and we do get a bit of weird when we head into the Badlands: 
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Post by Celebith on Aug 18, 2017 0:24:53 GMT -5
I got a trade of the old Marvel Star Wars comics on the cheap and have been reading through that. I'd had some single issues as a child, but they did not prepare me for how absolutely batshit insane Marvel's Star Wars got after they'd done a comic book adaptation of the first movie. One of the earlier arcs has Han and Chewie in an homage to The Seven Samurai with a team that includes an anthropomorphic rabbit, a Don Quixote rip-off (Don-Wan Kihoty), a porcupine man, the demo version of Luke Skywalker, and more. Marvel Star Wars #11 was the first comic book I bought or read, and for a year or two, it was the only series I collected. Eventually some friends got me into X-Men and Spider-Man and it just took off from there.  |
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Post by Superb Owl 🦉 on Aug 18, 2017 10:40:50 GMT -5
I got a trade of the old Marvel Star Wars comics on the cheap and have been reading through that. I'd had some single issues as a child, but they did not prepare me for how absolutely batshit insane Marvel's Star Wars got after they'd done a comic book adaptation of the first movie. One of the earlier arcs has Han and Chewie in an homage to The Seven Samurai with a team that includes an anthropomorphic rabbit, a Don Quixote rip-off (Don-Wan Kihoty), a porcupine man, the demo version of Luke Skywalker, and more. Marvel Star Wars #11 was the first comic book I bought or read, and for a year or two, it was the only series I collected. Eventually some friends got me into X-Men and Spider-Man and it just took off from there. ooo this could be fun. If I recall correctly, the first comic I ever owned was this random issue of Marvel Team-Up that I stumbled upon in a shop when my parents were heavily into their antiquing phase.  |
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Post by W.S.Punk on Aug 18, 2017 20:59:01 GMT -5
I just started Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps Vol. 1. It is good old-fashioned cheesy space opera fun. I took a few years off from the GL mythos, so I barely understand what is going on - Soranik is a Sinestro Corps member now? The Green Lantern Corps was destroyed? Sinestro is running War World? - but the image of Hal Jordan forging a new ring and reciting the oath is enough to suck me in like I was 12 years old again.
Speaking of which, I don't remember the first comic book I ever bought. I think it was an issue of Teen Titans (maybe even "Tales of the New Teen Titans"), where they fought the HIVE or something.
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Post by Tea Rex on Aug 23, 2017 17:17:09 GMT -5
I finally got around to watching all of Silver Spoon. And there will be no more. So, it's time to read the manga.
If not in the know, it's a slice of life manga by Hiromu Arakawa, who is most known for writing and illustrating Fullmetal Alchemist. She based it on her time at an agricultural sleep-away high school. Premise: a super academic from a prep middle school chooses to go to an agricultural high school for no other reason than to get away from his overbearing father. He is impressed by his classmates (whom he initially underestimated because they aren't academically fluent) due to their focused knowledge in agriculture and the fact that they all have their goals and dreams figured out. He's doing well, learning about a totally different way of life, and trying to figure out what the he'll he wants to do after high school.
As always, Hiromu Arakawa is thoughtful in her plotting and diverse in her character design. And I love the deep dive into agricultural sciences and the focus on what it is to run a family farm - both with success and failure. The characters feel natural, and while there are beats of other high school manga (crushes, fights with friends), this one has a groundedness I haven't really seen before. She lets the story breathe and progress at its own pace.
Also, it's a hell of a primer on Japanese farming practices.
Recommended, yo. It isn't complete yet, but I looked at the premise of the latest book and it's definitely close to completion. Main dude is already considering colleges.
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Post by sarapen on Aug 29, 2017 9:12:50 GMT -5
Tea Rex FYI The Silver Spoon anime is also on Crunchyroll. Been on my queue unwatched for 2 years now. In comics adjacent talk, I just finished watching The Defenders and it reminded me of classic comics crossovers. Specifically, it reminded me of just how contrived they were and how they were mostly just excuses to see our heroes punching bad guys together and/or each other. That last episode with the Defenders standing around in a large empty room yelling at each other? That was basically like half the scenes in Infinity Crusade. Plus Zero Hour had a lot of scenes where the good guys were standing around gaping at a computer screen, which we were at least spared in the show but instead got the exposition around dinner in a Chinese restaurant. Smaller crossovers seem to work better, at least when talking about the Arrow universe. Anyway, I guess the punching in Defenders was fun but otherwise we really need better narrative justifications for crossovers.
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Post by Tea Rex on Aug 30, 2017 15:11:06 GMT -5
Tea Rex FYI The Silver Spoon anime is also on Crunchyroll. Been on my queue unwatched for 2 years now. Yo, sar, I'm gonna officially steer you away from the anime. Not that it isn't good - it is! But the manga is a bit more nuanced, especially with side characters, and the anime follows the manga so closely that it is a bit of a chore to read through the manga after watching the show to get to the new stuff - and yet, it's kind of necessary to get the built up jokes later from the earlier nuances. If you get my meaning. |
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Post by Ben Grimm on Aug 30, 2017 15:15:52 GMT -5
I read The Death of Stalin last night. Fun comic - basically about the scrambling as Stalin was dying first about bringing in doctors, then about the succession. Also, it's the basis for a fantastic looking upcoming Armando Ianucci film.
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Post by sarapen on Aug 31, 2017 13:56:35 GMT -5
I just finished volume 1 of the revamped Powers, titled All the New Powers. I'd never before appreciated how goddamn obnoxious Brian Michael Bendis' dialogue can sound, but holy crap it's so obnoxious.
Supposed conversations actually sound more like one person talking to his reflection in a mirror. Everyone sounds the same. Which wouldn't be so bad if the dialogue wasn't so artfully naturalistic, by which I mean it's supposed to sound like how normal people talk, judging by the vocabulary and the repetition which recalls natural speech.
However, the actual things that the characters say are so perfectly contrived that if this were a thing an actual person had said, I would assume that they had composed this bon mot beforehand and had been waiting all day to unload it. And I mean composed as in having a draft and then maybe a couple of revisions because it's all just too perfect. It's like an uncanny valley of dialogue stuck between naturalist speech and theatrical perfection.
Thinking more on it, Bendis dialogue reminds me of Mamet dialogue. But, y'know, crappier. |
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Post by W.S.Punk on Sept 2, 2017 12:12:39 GMT -5
I finished up the Green Lantern offerings, and now I'm on to the Rebirth Batman books. Started with King's "I Am Gotham." This is good. This is really good. King has Batman's voice down, his heroism, his willingness to sacrifice - and his streak of possibly suicidal martyrdom. Alfred is a treat. And I love that the book opens with Batman's response to a typically Superman-sized problem: a jet aircraft going down in the middle of his city.
Volume 2, "I Am Suicide," starts off really strong. Great art, great characterization, great hook. Batman forms a Suicide Squad team to infiltrate Bane's island prison fortress. Great stuff. But. I am not all that keen on the characterization of Catwoman, who has never walked the side of the angels but has never been this... bloodthirsty is the term, I guess. I'm only halfway through, so I expect the twist at the mid-point will somehow work out, but I dunno. Selina Kyle is one of my favorites, and to see her like this does not excite me.
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Post by Judkins Moaner on Sept 3, 2017 8:33:17 GMT -5
August backlog at my LCS wasn't as forbidding as I'd feared. Got through Josie and the Pussycats (the conclusion?) and a strangely meditative Conan the Slayer. Still have Black Magick, Saga, Horizon, and Bitch Planet to get through. Depending how my own comic work goes this morning, maybe all of 'em'll fold tonight?
Also trades from the library--third of Rat Queens and first of Mirror (I fully cop to trying to even out my consumption numbers for the year--I'll likely hit a hundred books before the end of the month, and one regular trade counts as a fourth of a regular book--but I'd been curious about these two anyway). The first... oy. I'm glad learning of Roc Upchurch's spousal abuse got me to stop buying this series, because more overt seriousness (Hannah's parental issues and Dee's crisis of faith or whatever it is) does not serve it well, and the sweary "wit" casts a much more obnoxious shadow as a result.* It sucks because Fowler's art and Bonvillain's colors are sumptuously appealing; I don't think I've encountered a more pungent recent example of textual/artistic mismatch; even Snotgirl feels more mutually fitting. Mirror, on the other hand, feels more in the From Under Mountains vein of meditative allusion and, though I think I still only understand half the story, it was a haunting way to spend a late night, not least as the art feeds into my growing interest in watercolor; I can't tell exactly how Hwei Lim's work fits into this tradition, but more than any other recent comic, I found myself trying to follow the color technique as I read. Weird but fulfilling.
*Can't stress that enough; Kurtis Wiebe makes Steven Moffat look like Iris Owens.
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Post by Celebith on Sept 16, 2017 3:21:00 GMT -5
I finally got around to watching all of Silver Spoon. And there will be no more. So, it's time to read the manga. If not in the know, it's a slice of life manga by Hiromu Arakawa, who is most known for writing and illustrating Fullmetal Alchemist. Realizing that this is the manga thread, have you watched / read Azumanga Daioh? It's a nice, slice-of-life thing about a group of high-school girls. Passes the Bechdel test so hard you'll forget it was even a thing. It's funny, not pervy (except to call out some pervy teachers) and kinda charming. No romance plots, no horrible secrets, lots of weirdness but none of it supernatural. The 'manga' is a series of 4-panel comics, which are also pretty funny. |
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Crash Test Dumbass
AV Clubber 
ffc what now
Posts: 7,058
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Post by Crash Test Dumbass on Sept 16, 2017 8:26:21 GMT -5
I finally got around to watching all of Silver Spoon. And there will be no more. So, it's time to read the manga. If not in the know, it's a slice of life manga by Hiromu Arakawa, who is most known for writing and illustrating Fullmetal Alchemist. Realizing that this is the manga thread, have you watched / read Azumanga Daioh? It's a nice, slice-of-life thing about a group of high-school girls. Passes the Bechdel test so hard you'll forget it was even a thing. It's funny, not pervy (except to call out some pervy teachers) and kinda charming. No romance plots, no horrible secrets, lots of weirdness but none of it supernatural. The 'manga' is a series of 4-panel comics, which are also pretty funny. I love Azumanga Daioh and really should check out Yotsuba& one of these days too. My only complaint is that they gave Osaka (who is the best) a Brooklyn accent in the original manga translation, then gave her a Southern (I've been told "Texan") accent in the anime dub, and turned around and gave her a Southern accent in the manga compilation. Azuma really knows how to use beat panels. |
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Post by Celebith on Sept 16, 2017 9:29:33 GMT -5
Realizing that this is the manga thread, have you watched / read Azumanga Daioh? It's a nice, slice-of-life thing about a group of high-school girls. Passes the Bechdel test so hard you'll forget it was even a thing. It's funny, not pervy (except to call out some pervy teachers) and kinda charming. No romance plots, no horrible secrets, lots of weirdness but none of it supernatural. The 'manga' is a series of 4-panel comics, which are also pretty funny. I love Azumanga Daioh and really should check out Yotsuba& one of these days too. My only complaint is that they gave Osaka (who is the best) a Brooklyn accent in the original manga translation, then gave her a Southern (I've been told "Texan") accent in the anime dub, and turned around and gave her a Southern accent in the manga compilation. Azuma really knows how to use beat panels. Osaka's accent in the dub really bugged us for the first few episodes, but it started to grow on us and we loved it by the end. It works with the spaciness of her character, even if it doesn't have quite the original voice right off the bat. ETA: I was phone-posting earlier and kept things brief. The ADVision folks are based in Texas, and they recruited a lot of local voice talent, so Osaka's accent is definitely Texan. For a few years, I got my daughter a volume or two of YotsubaTo for her birthday or Christmas, so she has the first ten or so. I haven't read them, but I probably should. We had all the Azumanga collections, but then we got the giant single volume book, and a giant companion book that we've only found in Japanese, so we gave away the original volumes. Over the years, we converted most of her girl scout troop families and a few other folks into fans. |
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Post by Tea Rex on Sept 16, 2017 9:33:42 GMT -5
I love Azumanga Daioh and really should check out Yotsuba& one of these days too. My only complaint is that they gave Osaka (who is the best) a Brooklyn accent in the original manga translation, then gave her a Southern (I've been told "Texan") accent in the anime dub, and turned around and gave her a Southern accent in the manga compilation. Azuma really knows how to use beat panels. Osaka's accent in the sub really bugged us for the first few episodes, but it started to grow on us and we loved it by the end. It works with the spaciness of her character, even if it doesn't have quite the original voice right off the bat. Is she supposed to have a Kansai accent or something? |
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Crash Test Dumbass
AV Clubber
ffc what now
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Post by Crash Test Dumbass on Sept 16, 2017 9:42:37 GMT -5
Osaka's accent in the sub really bugged us for the first few episodes, but it started to grow on us and we loved it by the end. It works with the spaciness of her character, even if it doesn't have quite the original voice right off the bat. Is she supposed to have a Kansai accent or something? Short answer: yes. I don't want to ruin how she got her nickname because I found it very amusing. |
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