What Ya Reading in 2022?

[odessasteps]

Generally speaking, almost all of Al Ewing’s marvel writing is worth reading.

[madl]

8 hours ago, odessasteps said:

Generally speaking, almost all of Al Ewing’s marvel writing is worth reading.

Wanna recommend anything in particular?  I read Ewing’s Ultimates series last week.  Got Loki: Agent of Asgard and Immortal Hulk on my reading pile.

in general. I’m looking for mostly serious and less jokey.  Some of his other Marvel books look kinda lighthearted.

[odessasteps]

Defenders is good but very meta. 

Sword was good, as is his current X book. 

Avengers was good but more light hearted. 

I think he was starting Guardians when he was on the podcast years ago. 

[Curt McGirt]

Due to @odessasteps posting that Hernandez Bros. documentary I went down to the library and checked out the ginormous Locas book focusing on Maggie and Hopey from Love and Rockets. The last book by David Schow that I've had sitting here for months is mad at me but I had to do it. The thing costs OVER A HUNDRED online which is absurd, but probably about right since you could probably murder someone with the size of the thing. Because of that I'm probably not gonna finish the whole thing; are there any specific storylines I should skip to? 

[onelegbrynn]

I’m currently reading “Twelve Nights at Rotter House” by JW Ocker. It’s like my fifth read through and it gets better every time. Fantastic haunted house story that’s told from the first person perspective. Really makes you feel like your in the abandoned house with the dude in the book!

I also recommend his book “The Smashed Man of Dread End”. Ultra creepy middle grade, teen monster book. Has a bit of a Goosebumps vibe to it.

[JLSigman]

Unfortunately, due to life being life, I'm'a have to take back Fairy Tale unfinished for now. It was on a specific shelf of new(er) books that couldn't be reserved or renewed. Normally I'd get through 600 pages in 3 weeks, but I just have not had the time to read more than a bit here and there. I'll definitely look into getting a copy once they release it. This is King's best world building in decades.

[Lawful Metal]

still reading my signed copy of The Great and Secret Show.  Love the mythology, storyline, maybe not so much the men writing women crap that we really shouldn't be getting with Clive Barker.  Isn't he gay?  So cringey.

[madl]

3 minutes ago, Lawful Metal said:

still reading my signed copy of The Great and Secret Show.  Love the mythology, storyline, maybe not so much the men writing women crap that we really shouldn't be getting with Clive Barker.  Isn't he gay?  So cringey.

So you don’t think men should write women characters or am i misunderstanding?

[CSC]

On 10/24/2022 at 5:48 AM, JLSigman said:

Unfortunately, due to life being life, I'm'a have to take back Fairy Tale unfinished for now. It was on a specific shelf of new(er) books that couldn't be reserved or renewed. Normally I'd get through 600 pages in 3 weeks, but I just have not had the time to read more than a bit here and there. I'll definitely look into getting a copy once they release it. This is King's best world building in decades.

I'm about halfway through and the only thing slowing me down is having had a pet die less than 6 months ago and every time he's describing little things that are happening to Radar as he starts to break down makes me want to burst into tears.  

Other than that, it's been fantastic.  

Edited October 25, 2022 by CSC

[Lawful Metal]

5 minutes ago, madl said:

So you don’t think men should write women characters or am i misunderstanding?

men writing women meaning something like "She looked into the mirror and admired her breasts" type of stuff. 

[J.T.]

If you've ever been curious about what the fuck The King in Yellow is all about....

[madl]

Been on a Wildstorm kick lately.  Should have read more of it at the time.  Lately, I’ve read Ellis & Millar Authority, Ex Machina, Planetary, Brubaker Authority, Top 10, Wildcats 3.0 and seven or eight other good books.  A god Somewhere and Steampunk trades are in the mail.  Going to buy Moore’s Wildcats trades today.  Have about 3/4 of Astro City so will read that after I pick up last couple trades. Highly recommend Wildstorm.  It’s the ECW of comics.  There’s a lot that’s skippable (early Lee/Choi) but the good stuff is so, so good.  Planetary and Ex Machina are both in my top 20 series ever.

eh, on second thought, maybe Image is ECW of comics.  

Also getting into Ultimate Marvel and really loving it.  Still have a lot of it to buy.  Planning to drop a few hundred or a thousand early next month fo fill in holes, mostly the Parker/Morales Ultimate Spidey titles.  End of Ultimate imprint looks underwhelming and lacks big names that will sell me trade collections, but first several years were great.

Also, finding out that Joe Casey is a helluva comic writer.  American Grant Morrison in a sense.  Six months ago, I knew him mostly as Ben 10 co-creator and average work-for-hire gigs on Cable, X-men, etc. back in early 2000’s.  Had no idea until recently that he’s done a lot of weird, experimental creator-owned books.  Lot of out there, sorta subversive takes on super-heroes.  Sex was fascinating,  catalyst Comix was a lot of fun, Automatic Kafka and The Intimates (both from WildStorm) were really ambitious and interesting, Godland was better Kirby than Kirby.  lol, even his Final Crisis tie-in was pretty different.

Not a fans of the artists he works with, but an awful lot of his books are delivering imo.

 

 

[JLSigman]

Read Reign of X 4, 5, and 6. My biggest complaint is that they drop in a couple issues about the planet being Venom'd in the middle of the story, then suddenly it's over with no explanation anywhere. If you're gathering these issues after the fact it costs you nothing to add a page or two about what happened, maybe list the comics involved, etc.

However, I LOVE Manifold, I want 20,000 more issues about him. And while I have no idea what the Children of the Vault are supposed to be, I loved the story and how they told it.

[JLSigman]

Read Reign of X #7. Good lord the art for the X-Force was complete ass. The New Mutants stuff was good. Children of the Atom is growing on me.

[JLSigman]

Whoops! Forgot to catch up on this.

I'm up to Reign of X #12. The Hellfire Gala was yawn-tastic. I had to go look up who the hell Onslaught was to see why it's such a big deal he's the latest shadowy bad guy. I'm definitely losing interest in big swaths of this story.

Arrowsmith vol 2 came out, and I hope to hell it's not the last one (the artist died). This is a great reworking on World War I, with a well thought out magic system.

 

Depending on how many more comic collections I read this month, I'm on track to have read 80 things this year according to Goodreads. I definitely need to add more books to that, but I also need better bifocals.

[RIPPA]

This is a giant thread so its really long and confusing to get through but A LOT of authors tweeted support.

Neil Gaiman saying that he and Terry Pratchett did a book signing in Manhattan for Good Omens and only one person showed is mind blowing

[Matt D]

I have a friend who managed to launch two books through Tor during the pandemic. She'd sold short stories before but these were her first actual novels that got picked up by a publisher, and it's been pretty brutal to hear second hand just how hard it is to get traction, make a mark, etc. in the current environment.  She's looking at picking up work in school administration to help support her family since it's just not working out even though she "made it."

[ohtani's jacket]

I finished Charles Burns’ Black Hole, which was published over a lengthy period of time from 1995 to 2005, first by Kitchen Sink Press, and then when they went out of business, picked up by Fantagraphics. Darker in tone than a lot of Burns’ early work, it retains the elements of surrealism you’d expect from Burns’ work but without the quirky, offbeat humour. Set in the 70s, it tells the story of a group of teenagers who catch a mysterious STD that causes strange mutations. It’s basically a metaphor for adolescence, sexual awakening, and coming of age, and largely focused on atmospherics over plot. The most striking feature of the book is the black and white art. Burns won the Harvey Award for Best Inker several times during the book’s publication, which is impressive given the black and white work of other artists during the time frame. The story isn’t as weird as it may seem at a glance, and the topic isn’t as weighty as a lot of other graphic novels at the time, but as a feat of cartooning, it rates as a seminal work among 80s and 90s cartoonists. Definitely worth a read for people who enjoy 90s comics as much as Ido. Burns, like many of his contemporaries, shifted to graphic novels after Black Hole was completed, and thus it represents one of the last floppy series of perhaps my favorite era of alternative comics.

Paul Pope's Batman: Year 100 is okay. I prefer the projects Pope did for Vertigo (Heavy Liquid and 100%), and I actually kind of like the Batman stories he did in his issue of Solo more. Year 100 was all right as far as alternative cartoonist doing a mainstream superhero goes, but it didn't really add much to the Batman experience. Personally, I'm not that interested in seeing Batman in the future. I prefer modern reworkings of old Golden Age stories to future, Elseworlds stories. Pope draws a very distinctive Batman, though. He really plays up the bat element. He even has Batman use fake teeth to make himself look like more of a creature. I can understand why the series has its fans, but I'm far more interested in hunting down THB. 

I haven't read enough from this century to tell whether Asterios Polyp is the best work that's been produced thus far, but it's a major feat in cartooning. I think I may have mentioned that I was disappointed when David Mazzucchelli ditched penciling mainstream superhero comics to become an alternative cartoonist, largely because the change in style was so drastic, but it led a masterpiece. Mazzucchelli is one of the few artists who can claim to have created important works at both ends of the spectrum.

[ohtani's jacket]

I also finished X-Statix. The series never really lived up to that incredible first issue of X-Force, but it was still a lot of fun and a fairly daring thing for Marvel to publish. The best thing about it was that it allowed Mike Allred to play around with the Marvel characters. The series had a Giffen/DeMatteis feel to it at times, which I liked, but it was a bit too "on the nose" with its satire at times. That, and the fact that I don't really give a crap about celebrity culture, so it didn't really wow me in that respect. But mostly it was really hard to top that debut issue.   

[odessasteps]

6 minutes ago, ohtani's jacket said:

I finished Charles Burns’ Black Hole, which was published over a lengthy period of time from 1995 to 2005, first by Kitchen Sink Press, and then when they went out of business, picked up by Fantagraphics. Darker in tone than a lot of Burns’ early work, it retains the elements of surrealism you’d expect from Burns’ work but without the quirky, offbeat humour. Set in the 70s, it tells the story of a group of teenagers who catch a mysterious STD that causes strange mutations. It’s basically a metaphor for adolescence, sexual awakening, and coming of age, and largely focused on atmospherics over plot. The most striking feature of the book is the black and white art. Burns won the Harvey Award for Best Inker several times during the book’s publication, which is impressive given the black and white work of other artists during the time frame. The story isn’t as weird as it may seem at a glance, and the topic isn’t as weighty as a lot of other graphic novels at the time, but as a feat of cartooning, it rates as a seminal work among 80s and 90s cartoonists. Definitely worth a read for people who enjoy 90s comics as much as Ido. Burns, like many of his contemporaries, shifted to graphic novels after Black Hole was completed, and thus it represents one of the last floppy series of perhaps my favorite era of alternative comics.

Paul Pope's Batman: Year 100 is okay. I prefer the projects Pope did for Vertigo (Heavy Liquid and 100%), and I actually kind of like the Batman stories he did in his issue of Solo more. Year 100 was all right as far as alternative cartoonist doing a mainstream superhero goes, but it didn't really add much to the Batman experience. Personally, I'm not that interested in seeing Batman in the future. I prefer modern reworkings of old Golden Age stories to future, Elseworlds stories. Pope draws a very distinctive Batman, though. He really plays up the bat element. He even has Batman use fake teeth to make himself look like more of a creature. I can understand why the series has its fans, but I'm far more interested in hunting down THB. 

I haven't read enough from this century to tell whether Asterios Polyp is the best work that's been produced thus far, but it's a major feat in cartooning. I think I may have mentioned that I was disappointed when David Mazzucchelli ditched penciling mainstream superhero comics to become an alternative cartoonist, largely because the change in style was so drastic, but it led a masterpiece. Mazzucchelli is one of the few artists who can claim to have created important works at both ends of the spectrum.

I’d have to sit down and try and even remember what came out the last 20 years. For capes, maybe all Star Superman or the vision. Seven soldiers as a whole? For non capes, gut answer is Love Bunglars.

[Curt McGirt]

Well, Barker has always been very sexual...

There's a new NWOBHM book out from Bazillion Points. And I'm getting Locas! For less than $100 at that!

EDIT: Here's the link DENIM AND LEATHER: The Rise and Fall of the NWOBHM, by Michael Hann » Bazillion Points Books

Edited December 7, 2022 by Curt McGirt

[JLSigman]

I'm done through Reign of X 14, and I'm not sure how much more my library has available at this point. It looks like the Trial of Magneto is collected, but that only seems to be 5 issues of X-Men and nothing more. I'll have to look up what the next batch of story is called.

Meanwhile, I had borrowed a copy of the Mahabharata, translated by Carole Satyamurti, for Mom from the library with the thought she'd be reading it. However it turned out that her vision problems aren't because of her 3 year old glasses, but because she's got cataracts. I'm reading it for now, it's in blank verse and flows really well so far.

[odessasteps]

Don't know when you might get them, but the X books currently written by Al Ewing and Kieron Gillen are good. 

[ohtani's jacket]

I'm almost two years in Mike Baron's Punisher run and it's just so... episodic. There's no overarching storyline. Nothing of consequence seems to happen. Even Microchip's kid dying didn't have any long term ramifications. And for a title that was presumably hot at the time, they didn't seem to give two craps about who was drawing it, handing out assignments to young talent like Whilce Portacio and Erik Larsen. I'll tell you one other thing: Jim Shooter may have been the guy who created the mandate about characters re-introducing themselves to the reader each issue, but Tom DeFalco continued to fly the banner high. It amuses me at times the parts of the story where Baron slots it in. I do kind of dig reading a comic from 1989, though, which was my first full year of reading comics. And I laughed at the issue where the Punisher goes to Australia and Baron tries to paint King's Cross as the most deadly place on earth. 

[ohtani's jacket]

I reached the end of the line for Ms. Tree, IMO one of the best characters of the 1980s and one of the best female characters in the history of comics. I'll admit that I preferred the stories where she fought the Muerta family more than the stories taken from the lastest issue of Newsweek magazine, but it was a tremendous run right up until the end. I'm feeling a bit wistful wondering what happened to the characters in their lives after the final special.