The Comic Book Thread

[lhb412]

^Whoa! Impressive, but I've never been a fan of them trying to play the design realistic (except for Robin Williams). I've got quite a few Popeye knick-knacks already.

[tbeasley]

[lhb412]

^It was only a matter of time. Along with Gotham by Gaslight and that one Batman issue that was basically a pilot for Hellboy the Dracula adaptation is the top-tier of pre-Hellboy Mignola.

[lhb412]

After several years with only a one-shot issue or short story here and there we finally have a new Beasts of Burden miniseries on the horizon!



https://www.avclub.com/beasts-of-burden ... 1825321899

Co-creator and artist Jill Thompson will be back for the next series, Benjamin Dewey takes over on this one. There was a bit of a dust up a few years ago when Evan Dorkin publicly called out Thompson for being slow and holding up the creation of this series just as it was becoming popular. Their relationship is apparently back to amicability, with this compromise being a new artist for the second big miniseries. The change in style being justified by the fact that this more of a side story following the Wise Dog Society instead of the titular dogs (and one cat!) from the neighborhood of Burden Hill.

Beasts of Burden is a great comic, and I'd recommend it to all animal lovers with the caveat that sometimes deadly harm comes to said animals and younger readers may find some other moments of horror (and gore!) to be too much.

[lhb412]

Whoa. Comics for young people has been the rapidly growing part of the market for some years now. Kids comics regularly blast everything else out of the water sales-wise, but in most places kids comics are simply shelved with the kids books. Now Barnes & Noble is going to add a section of their stores specifically for kids comics!

https://the-digital-reader.com/2018/04/ ... l-section/

[mbozzo]

I have gotten issue 4 of Doomsday Clock. It's a crossover between Watchmen and DC heroes. I also got issue 18 of Star Trek: Go Boldly, issue 26 of Mighty Morphing Power Rangers, the 2018 Annual of that comic, issue 5 of Marvel-In-One, issue 3 of BSG Versus BSG, and issue 44 of Flash. I hope to get some more in the future.

[mr.negativity]

[lhb412]

Woohoo! I'm a big fan of E.C. Segar's original Popeye comics, but have held off on getting the last two of the six volumes to Fantagraphics hardcover set simply because Volume 5 fell out of print a few years ago and is going for exorbitant prices. I've been waiting for Fanta to do another print run for these things, but have worried that the next run will be paperback or something so the new volumes wouldn't match the spines to my Volumes 1 - 4. You see, the spines are clever: each one has a letter on the bottom that will spell out 'Popeye' when all six are placed together, and I've had to suffer the indignity of 'Pope' for a couple of years now.

But I just came back from my local 2nd and Charles (a Books A Million offshoot that sells new stock as well as used trade-ins and carries books, music, movies, comics, and collectables - you guys should get one) and got Volume 5 for only $8! I'm very happy about this. I'll go order Vol 6 right now...



I also got the TMNT 'Visual History' (a combo of art book and history and BTS look at the franchise from inception to 2014, when the book came out) and the oversized hardcover of Godzilla: Half Century War! I didn't even know Half Century War had an oversized hardcover release, and with IDW's material going out of print I was happy to get this.

[lhb412]

[klen7]

Apparently there is a new Getter Robo manga from the creative team behind the new Ultraman manga. Apparently its getting US distribution

[lhb412]

^It's being published by Seven Seas! Same folks who're doing all this Leiji Matsumoto and Go Nagai related stuff.

[mr.negativity]

[klen7]

"Kill or Be Killed" (my favorite series over the past two years) ended this past week, but Chad Stahelski of John Wick fame is working on the film adaptation. I really hope they keep the narrator like the book. Ed Brubaker has a new graphic novel in the fall and is returning to the world of "The Fade Out" next, but I am probably most interested in his upcoming Amazon series that he is wrote for Nicolas Winding Refn, Too Old to Die Young.

[lhb412]

Just read that Steve Ditko has died, age 90.

What an incredible, unique talent. No one draws like Ditko: his work fulfils the splashy excitement of a superhero story, but has this weird, nervous intensity, an uneasiness. His are my favorite Marvel comic books.

[mr.negativity]

[lhb412]

^ The whole 'comic adaptation of unproduced screenplay' thing is pretty cool. So many what-ifs would be interesting to see in a slightly more corporeal version. Of course, there are probably over a dozen Kaiju movies that were almost made that we'd like to 'see.'

One of the first times I saw the practice was when Paul Chadwick adapted an unproduced script for a movie starring his comic book character Concrete into a comic book miniseries. He had worked so hard on the adaptation that when the plug was pulled on the movie he must have felt compelled to make use of the work so Concrete was a comic that was almost a movie and that unmade movie was then made into another comic. Confusing, eh? Funnily enough, that was probably my least favorite Concrete comic. Even when drawn and written by the original creator the story just felt a little too... Hollywood.

It just so happened that a nice piece on io9 about Concrete was published today. It's quite the overlooked gem:

https://io9.gizmodo.com/concrete-hits-h ... 1829076696

You know what sucks? 15 years ago Viz published two volumes of Taiyo Matsumoto's manga Number 5. It didn't sell well, so the rest of the series wasn't translated and those initial two volumes are long out of print. I found the first volume at the used bookstore last week and, knowing I would be frustrated that I wouldn't be able to have the conclusion, I bought it anyway, read it, and indeed am disappointed because it is a very cool comic! Well, I have no one to blame but myself.

[tbeasley]

I need to play catchup bigtime, but BPRD will be coming to an end with BPRD The Devil You Know #15, although Hellboy and the BPRD will continue.

[lhb412]

^Indeed. I have a bit of catching up, too.

I wonder if it's intentional that the series will be ending just as the new Hellboy movie (which Mignola has been very involved in) is coming out?

[lhb412]

This image is an update of the one from Seed of Destruction Issue #1! Apparently, it'll be the cover to a new reprint of that issue #1 that'll be giving away a comic shops.



The clearest visual aid ever devised of showing the evolution of Mignola's style over the years!

[tbeasley]

[canofhumdingers]

I’ve been reading this volume of Usagi Yojimbo:



I’ve only had it for a couple of days and I’m already half-way through it. It’s fantastic! I can see why the fans of this series are so passionate about it. The art is deceptively simple. But the amount of extreme care in both overall composition as well as what details to include and what details to exclude exposes the true mastery and thoughtfulness with which each image is created. This is seriously high quality craftsmanship.

And the stories are splendid! Sakai clearly draws some heavy inspiration from the mythical version of Musashi Miyamoto’s history (which is not a criticism, if you’re going to draw inspiration from somewhere, it might as well be the very best!). But he also seems well versed in classic Samurai film (or maybe the stories they’re based on? I’m not as familiar with Japanese literature outside Musashi). And the end result is an original story steeped in the very best of Samurai fiction. This stuff can stand toe to toe with the likes of Seven Samurai (or any of Kurosawa’s Samurai films) and The Samurai Trilogy.

Finally, I’m really digging the martial arts aspect. I’m rather out of practice since having kids, but I spent 10 years studying Kendo and I also investigated and trained a little bit (whenever I found an opportunity) in Iaido, Battojutsu, Judo, Kyudo, and Olympic Fencing. I don’t know if Stan Sakai was or is a martial artist, but he clearly knows the technical and the cultural language of them. When reading the combat panels, he gets it right (yes there are artistic liberties taken for dramatic impact, but they are generally not egregious liberties and are typically well thought out and acceptable for the narrative). And he also gets the attitude, comraderie, competitiveness, and general atmosphere of martial arts practice just spot on. It’s really great.

I’m definitely going to keep going with this series after I finish this book.

[lhb412]

^ I'm so glad you're enjoying it! I've made it known time and again that Usagi Yojimbo is quite possibly my favorite comic book, and I can rattle off facts and observations about it for hours but I'll try to keep my comments concise (ha!) and helpful...

Stan Sakai is third-generation Japanese-American and grew up in Hawaii, where he was exposed to plenty of Japanese pop culture in addition to the influence of his family. His initial plans for a comic series were based on Western fantasy, him being a big Lord of the Rings devotee. Nilsson Groundthumper was a cartoon rabbit who fought wizards, partook in dungeon crawls and the like, and Usagi was going to be a supporting character, introduced in his own Japanese set stories but eventually crossing over with the other, European style story. Usagi was created when Stan was humoring the idea of doing a Miyamoto Musashi comic and doodled a rabbit with his ears tied in a top knot! Stan started drawing short stories with Nilsson and ones with Usagi, but it was the Usagi ones that really took off and eventually the other rabbit became a footnote! After a few years of doing short stories and building up a cast of characters Usagi became an ongoing series.

Stan is a nut for research, and often uses the back pages of the comics to list sources and go into more detail about the subject at hand. Often this is detail about Japanese history, martial arts, fashion and architecture , and other obvious sources you need to draw on for a story of this type, but often he becomes engrossed in researching a particular thing and we end up with these neat little educational stories in the comic where Usagi meets up with seaweed farmers or kite makers and we get to learn in detail about their jobs, their craft, their place in society. Of course, Stan also draws heavily on that pop culture he was introduced to as a boy; many characters and several stories are based off classic samurai movies, and there's even a Godzilla reference early on which presages an all-out Kaiju story several years in featuring similar but non copyright violating versions of Toho and Daiei kaiju!

And finally: a guide for how to navigate the various volumes.

For the first several years Usagi was published by Fantagraphics, who still publish the first seven volumes. Fantagraphics has also collected those seven volumes into a two volume slipcase set called Usagi Yojimbo: The Special Edition. Fantagraphics likes to keep both the collected edition and the seven individual volumes in print.

Starting with volume 8 to today the series is published by Dark Horse Comics. However, they've recently been collecting those individual volumes into omnibus editions called Usagi Yojimbo Saga which collect what were originally three volumes. So, Usagi Yojimbo Saga 1 collects what were originally volumes 8, 9, and 10. Usagi Yojimbo Saga 2 collects 11, 12, and 13 and so on and so forth. With the publication of the Saga editions Dark Horse has been letting their single volumes go out of print, meaning if one were to desire collecting them anything past the most recent volumes might be a bit tricky.

In addition to the Saga volumes there are two additional volumes published by Dark Horse Comics which are in the same style: Usagi Yojimbo Legends, which collects stories set outside of the main series continuity (sorta) and Usagi Yojimbo/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which collects every team-up between the two properties, including the most recent one done in cooperation with IDW Publishing that's not available in any other collected volume.

The single volumes are printed in that slightly smaller format you can see from your copy of volume 2, but both Fantagraphics' Special Edition as well as Dark Horse Comics' Saga editions are published in the bigger, standard comic book size.

[canofhumdingers]

Cool, thanks for the info. The guide on how the various volumes are collected is very helpful!

[Tom R VanSlambrouck]

Oops put this in the wrong thread

[mr.negativity]

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