What are you reading in Comics/Manga/etc?

Saga of the Swamp Thing, Volume 1 - Alan Moore, Stephen Bissette, John Totleben (1984)

First time with this Moore. Great reset of the title character using the planarian worm as the transfer mechanism. Excellent and compelling villain in Jason Woodrue. Jason Blood characterisation made me want to read the Kirby books.

Away to the library to grab volume 2.

Saga of the Swamp Thing, Volume 3 - Alan Moore, Stephen Bisette, John Totleben (1985)

NUKEFACE! And a series of enmeshed existential treatises excellently written and portrayed by those mentioned along with some others.

Saga of the Swamp Thing, Volume 5 - Alan Moore, Rick Veitch, John Totleben (1987)

The Abby Cable focus doesn't diminish Swampy's disintegration. Amazing to consider Moore's simultaneously writing Miracleman and Watchmen while producing this.

In Real Life, Cory Doctorow and Jen Wang (2014)

From Doctorow's Salon serial Anda's Game, a graphic novel emerges from EFF's proud, public defender. Touching on labour rights, equality in gaming, and the politics of gaming this YA book asks a lot of questions and has a few positivist answers.

Accidental Czar: The Life and Lies of Vladimir Putin, Andrew S. Weiss and Box Brown (2022)

Originally a long read in some American periodical, an astute investigator hailing from sunny L.A. explores the rise of Vladdy the Baddie. I suppose this is girding to Curtis's TraumaZone for my experience with absorbing the tales of a country somehow more strangled by greed and national pride than the US. Box Brown is a US comics' artist who's done his own books about Andy Kaufman and the history of Tetris. 

Gon, Masahi Tanaka

This is the first manga I ever read, back in the late 90s. Paradox Press (an imprint of DC comics) put them out, flipping to read left to right, though it didn't matter much because there's no dialogue or sound effects, so I didn't realize there had been any localization at all until years later. It's a story of a little (maybe a couple feet high) chibi dinosaur and his adventures in nature, usually defending the gentler animals from the meaner ones. The artwork is absolutely gorgeous, and it's not mangafied like I might expect something like that to be now, with most of the animals that aren't Gon drawn fairly realistically (aside from some more human facial expressions).

I had been looking for these for a while, and finally dug them out of one of the boxes that had been buried in storage for years. I've started rereading them to see if they hold up and they do; there's a really simple little environmental message there. And I also found that I apparently never picked up the last two volumes, so I've ordered them (one cost more than I would have liked to spend but less than it was listed anywhere else). I'm a little annoyed that the series appears to have somewhat dropped off the face of the earth, though - there are no reprints that I can find, it's not available electronically, and little discussion of it online. There was an anime about ten years back I need to look up, now, though, and if it's faithful to the manga, I don't even need to worry about if there's translation available.

The Birth of Kitaro, Shigeru Mizuki (2016)

Collecting Mizuki's 9-panel manga comics from the late 1960s regarding famed yokai Kitaro, this isn't the same rush as Showa, but I'm respecting Mizuki's work nonetheless. 

Syllabus: Notes from an Accidental Professor, Lynda Barry (2014)

I picked this up in hopes of marshalling my own will to produce something material from my creative wellspring. She's a marvel. I've thoroughly enjoyed Ernie Pook since the late 80s. I've read Cruddy (1999) about three times. I had a many-times-read copy of The Good Times Are Killing Me (1988). I love her Lynda Barry Experience (1993) spoken-word, storylogue, whatever.

MARS (#1 - 1984) 

Pretty wild haul I made from the Comic Book Shop I go to infrequently. Got $10 store credit and filled my quota with $1 comics. Primarily for my children, I bagged a few Golden Key Disney objects, a Speed Buggy comic, Tom Strong ish 35, some various Marvel and DC, and this number one from First Comics.

I muse that Elon Musk had access to this comics' series as a late teen to twentysomething. Written by Mark Wheatley and illustrated by Marc Hempel, this initially comes across with a Heavy Metal-lite vibe but moves into an interesting story of a Neuralink and an unsuccessful Mars mission. Female protagonist with a surprising resilience. I would probably enjoy reading the whole series; however, I'm grateful for finding something that looked different to the usual Bronze Age stuff in the $1 section. 

Mighty Marvel Masterworks: The Incredible Hulk, Volume 2 (2022)


Alright, alright, alright. I keep getting more silver, and these comics stay the same Silver Age. I assert that Ditko Hulk might be the worst Hulk - Silver to Bronze Age. The Stan Lee Cliff Notes', hyper-verbalised stories reveal superficiality in their ad-copy candour. Introduction of the Leader was decent and gave me nostalgia feels, remembering when I plowed through these Tales to Astonish via the Marvel Comics Series Digests from long ago. 

Accidents and Old Lace and Other Stories, Graham Ingels (2020)

I've pushed back to the end of the Golden Age, beginning of the Silver Age in comics. Haunt of Fear, Tales from the Crypt, Crime Suspenstories among others lurked in the racks of dimestores in the 1950s. They contained gruesome ghouls and venal vipers looking to rip the flesh and taint the commerce. Ingels was a leading light of this charge. Fun stuff.

Ducks, Kate Beaton (2022)

I have passing awareness of Hark! A Vagrant. This recollection of times past is her story. Its pain and loss shrouded in "gotta get that dollar to pay your debts" immense as the oil sands' camps she worked in. Her work in this is astounding. Her losses also equally astounding. 

Light It, Shoot It, Graham Chaffee (2024)

Oh Fantagraphics! You dastardly siren. I'd picked up and read Chaffee's prior noir work two years back, To Have and To Hold, published by Groth and Co. I saw this bait dangling at the library and grabbed it. The samey but different story told previous; only this time using character references from Cassavetes films. Examples are: Ben Gazzara from The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, Seymour Cassel from the same film, Timothy Carey - also from Bookie. The women, one of whom becomes the central heroine, also have Cassavetes' references, but are less clear to my eyes. 

I mean, it's real neat that this artist moves through different media seeking their ideal: tattoo artist, curator of tiki art, gritty children's books, noirish graphic novels. It's also kind of "squicky" to see and know the reference material, then try to enjoy a different medium's use of those references in the same context they were known in the other medium. Is there such a thing as too much post-modernism? Has some recentish academic published papers named Beyond Hyperreality - The Pastiche Volumes?