The Comic Book Thread

[heroforhirerob]

[lhb412]

[The Real McCoy]

[MekaGojira3k]

Just read Transformers Spotlight Galvatron, Blaster, and Arcee. Arcee was my favorite of these. I still want to know wayy more about Galvatron and what Jhiaxus is up to.

Next up Transformers/New Avengers crossover.

[lhb412]

[mr.negativity]

[The Real McCoy]

[lhb412]

^Your very welcome! Here's a bit more info as to what you get from each individual title:

Hellboy is, well, Hellboy, a part of the 'occult detective' genre. It started out as all gothic horror and Lovecraft/pulp homages, but as time has gone by the series has become more and more about mythology and the occult.

BPRD is like a paramilitary X-Files. Once the Lovecraftian elements became rarer in Hellboy they surfaced here to an even greater degree. The BPRD flashback stores (most set in the '40s) show a more low-tech version of the same, sometimes involving Hellboy back when he was a member.

Witchfinder is a Victorian era occult investigator. Gothic horror abounds.

Lobster Johnson is a '30s-'40s pulp hero who fought both gangsters and the paranormal.

Abe Sapien books are a bit like early Hellboy stories (so far), except that Hellboy is sarcastic and just about indestructible, so these stories have a different feel with a more cerebral and vulnerable protagonist.

[lhb412]

Just read Atomic Robo and the Dogs of War. This book is exactly what superhero books should be but rarely are these days. If you love silver age comics and don't read Robo you're missing out.

[MekaGojira3k]

[lhb412]

[lhb412]

Watching the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon awakened certain reptilian martial arts parts of my brain that had laid dormant for several years. I was a huge TMNT fan from childhood to teen years, but got burned out in the mid-'00s with the variable quality of the comics at the time as well as the variable quality of the cartoon at the time. Anyway, my impossible dream in those days was to have all those original, Mirage issues - and IDW, along with publishing their current, rebooted series, is deluging the market with reprints and since I got the hankering I started at the beginning with the first of five hardcovers reprinting the core issues that Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird collaborated on:



It's crazy to finally read all these issues (in this case, the first as I spent a whole lot of my preteen and teen years searching back issue bins for them. I had a pitiable, paltry patchwork of the original series which I had to pair with online synopsis to make sense of the story: issues 1, 2, 8, 12, ect. ect. Kevin and Peter would go on to be better writers and artists then they are in these early stories, but there's an undeniable energy and fun with these messy, fan-zine production value issues. The TMNT was a rollicking garage-rock band of a comic book and I imagine the roughness was one of things that made it so appealing initially. In fact, I remember reading a letter in one of those old issues' letter columns in which a fan complained that the book was becoming too polished and thus losing it's uniqueness.

I'll be adding these IDW Turtle reprints to my regular comics intake.

[jellydonut25]

[klen7]

[lhb412]

Had a real comic-booky weekend.

I read Dream Sequence, a storyline from Carla Speed McNeil's incredible comic Finder ( and available in The Finder Library vol. 2 - almost all of the series is available in two brick-sized but reasonably priced paperbacks. For the love of all that is good read Finder!).

Also finished my re-read of Usagi Yojimbo vol. 18, which I mentioned way back in the mists of this thread's time but I bring up again. It features a storyline that's an homage to kaiju films, featuring creatures that look a lot like (but aren't) Mothra, King Ghidorah, Godzilla, and Daimajin! It's just so very cool to see Stan Sakai (sort of) draw these characters. If IDW does another Godzilla Legends series I hope they could get Stan for an issue.

...and I bought Atomic Robo and The Shadow From Beyond Time (love those titles!) and vol. 1 of Bone.

[MekaGojira3k]

[The Real McCoy]

[MekaGojira3k]

I read Superman: Earth One volume 1 yesterday. I actually liked it a great deal, except for the main villain who seemed kind of weirdly out of place design-wise. I kind of don't like that the whole "AVENGE YOUR PLANET" but I feel like that'll be the ship doing something later on. Who knows. Gonna try to read Batman: Earth One and the next Superman volume soon.

[Garasharp K7]

I'm reading Kamandi The Last Boy on Earth at the moment. I've had the two archive collections for years, but it's only in the last few months I've managed to sit down and read them. I'm almost done with the archives before moving on to the second omnibus. I love Kirby's '70s stuff. I've also got OMAC, The Demon and his Captain America omnibus in the pile too. I need to get back to those.

Having said all that, as much as I love Kirby's stuff in general I'm finding it hard to get into the Fourth World books. I've read one of the earlier New Gods collections years ago and I enjoyed that, along as the '90s comics as well, but any time I try to read the first volume (with all the Jimmy Olsen stuff) I get distracted by something else and move on to that.
I do want to finish it eventually - there's some really good stuff in there - but I've enough to get through as it is.

Truth be told, I've a lot of books to get through. I'm also halfway through the Man-Thing omnibus as well, plus some older Swamp Thing, Doom Patrol, Mars Attacks and Tomb of Dracula books too.

[king_ghidorah]

Swamp Thing!!!!


That is all.

[Garasharp K7]

I'm reading 'The Roots of the Swamp Thing' which collects the first few issues of the original comic. I'd wondered how they compared to the Man-Thing series from the same time, as I'm really enjoying that one.
It's good stuff - it's got a bit of a Universal horror vibe to it - but right now I prefer the Man-Thing's more eerie, Twilight Zone-style tone.

I know Swamp Thing does get pretty weird later on. I plan to get those Alan Moore books at some stage. Not sure when I'll get 'round to that, though.

[lhb412]

I've been meaning to get those original Swamp Thing comics ever since I read the Moore version. I really should get on that.

Been investigating Euro comics recently, and Dark Horse translated a few stories (we'd call 'em short graphic novels) of Italian horror/comedy comic Dylan Dog several years ago. The paperback collection is apparently out of print, but somehow my Books-a-Million had a copy. Front and back covers were all bent to hell, but I bought it anyway. It's a really fun book, definitely in the spirit of Evil Dead and American Werewolf in London (in the first book Dylan even claims to have seen AWiL 14 times!). The front cover has a blurb from ultra-genius author, philosopher, semiotician Umberto Eco. That's pretty much the coolest person you could have a blurb from on the cover to your horror comic.

[lhb412]

In the process of reading Osamu Tezuka's Dororo. Just starting, but I love the premise and I can finally get a sense of Tezuka's superb cartooning (darn those Astro Boy books being so small!).

Also picked up an old DC comics collection from the early '90s: The Greatest Joker Stories Ever Told (leather bound - purple leather!). I knew I had to get it because it had 'The Laughing Fish,' which was famously adapted into a Batman TAS episode. Anyway, the stories are chronological and I'm just out of the '50s and I have to say I'm digging the camp, Dick Sprang versions of Batman and Robin. Actually, I think I find this version of Batman more terrifying than any darker, brooding version! He's this grinning, unstoppable, daredevil maniac!

[lhb412]

You've heard me yammer on about how Scrooge McDuck comics are so great, and Carl Barks (working from the '40s into the '60s) is the big reason for that. While lots of people continued doing duck stories, only Don Rosa (working from the '80s into the '00s) came close to the quality of Barks and truly revived the series. Well, Rosa retired a few years ago and finally we get the whole picture why:

http://www.comicsalliance.com/2013/02/1 ... om-comics/

Bittersweet, to be sure - but Don seems to accept his fate and says he's happy in his lot in life.

Anyway, I've been reading more European comic albums recently. I read the first Yoko Tsuno story and enjoyed it. It's kinda like Nancy Drew if she was a few years older and dealt with aliens and sci-fi plots instead of solving common, garden-variety mysteries. If you want to introduce a young girl to comics then this is a pretty good candidate (though people of all ages and genders can enjoy it). I also read the fourth volume of Valerian and Laureline, which is a hugely influential space opera - fans to this day claim the entire visual aesthetic of Star Wars rips offs this series, and judging from this one book there is certainly an argument to be made for that. Story and characterization were strong with this one, but the real kicker for this title seems to be the incredible art, and with those big, over-sized pages of the typical Euro comic it just swallows you up and you get lost in the drawings.

[lhb412]