Whats everyone reading?

[Dandontdare]

Vol.2 of Sex Criminals - the continuing adventures of Jon & Suzie who freeze time when they orgasm - in vol.2 they track down others with the gift and plan their revenge on the self-appointed sex Police - filthy and hilarious

[Colin YNWA]

In terms of Guys I might need to give it another go. When I first read it (around 2000ish I think) I really enjoyed it.I was therefore looking forward to getting to it in my last Cerebus read. Not so. Firstly I too found the dialogue a little too stylised. While normally I'd be more than happy working with this, in this case I couldn't get my head into it. The efforts I might otherwise have made were getting sidetracked by my inability not to see misogyny everywhere. Possibly being over senstive. Now while in reads and other volumes around that time Sim's ability to relate very human conditions seemed to trump his hatred. So while he might have been trying to communicate some pretty harsh messages, my reading saw through his desire and found some very hinest interactions well rendered. Not with the intent Sim how but it made for some incredibly interesting reading.

With Guys the dialogue combined with this just threw me off track and I really didn't enjoy it. Read it until the end but decided to stop there given to all my understanding 'Rick's Story'is even more hate filled?

That said I've kept my copy of Guys and fully intend to read it again one day.

[TordelBack]

Please don't let me mislead you - Guys is chock-full of misogyny, and yes, Rick's Story is (probably) worse (and I don't like that one at all). However, with Guys it's at least CLEVER misogyny. The men of the tavern are the victims of a fascinatingly cruel matriarchy, despite superficially being given all they supposedly want (food, shelter, free drink, no last orders, endless time to chat and play games) so it works for me on the level of speculative fiction, even if the underlying polemic is vile..

[Skullmo]

Please don't let me mislead you - Guys is chock-full of misogyny, and yes, Rick's Story is (probably) worse (and I don't like that one at all). However, with Guys it's at least CLEVER misogyny. The men of the tavern are the victims of a fascinatingly cruel matriarchy, despite superficially being given all they supposedly want (food, shelter, free drink, no last orders, endless time to chat and play games) so it works for me on the level of speculative fiction, even if the underlying polemic is vile..

Yeah skip it if you are strugging with trying to rationalise it morally, you wont enjoy it.

[Hawkmumbler]

The more and more I read second hand the more and more tempted I am to just leave my Cerebus adventure at Church and State II...

[Fungus]

Not read all of Cerebus but did definitely enjoy Guys and grew to appreciate the mangled speech patterns and style adopted. Never did it occur to me to be offended at the 'misogyny'... what colourful characters - including parodies - say and do in a largely fun story isn't really a treatise on anything. It's entertainment. You couldn't pay me to read the interminable back matter of most issues...

I'd recommend getting past Church and State though. My hazy memory is telling me that Melmoth and Jaka's Story at least were just great. I think.

[Colin YNWA]

I'd recommend getting past Church and State though. My hazy memory is telling me that Melmoth and Jaka's Story at least were just great. I think.

Yeah absolutely this. There is much to enjoy way up to issue 200. Jaka's Story and Melmoth though are particularly good.

Never did it occur to me to be offended at the 'misogyny'... what colourful characters - including parodies - say and do in a largely fun story isn't really a treatise on anything. I

The trouble is in the case of Cerebus it very much is and the more you know that, the harder it can become ignoring it, well in my case at least. That's not to say its bad comics, its so often not. Its not to say as a reader that you can make a different reading of the work that the author apparently intended. Just that it became hard to shake and is very definately there. In Guys I just couldn't find my own reading as I had with the stories prior to that.

[TordelBack]

Never did it occur to me to be offended at the 'misogyny'... what colourful characters - including parodies - say and do in a largely fun story isn't really a treatise on anything. It's entertainment.

Well I love Cerebus, one of my all-time favourite works and a big part of my life at the time, but from 150 on its explicit purpose is to show how women existing as anything other than decoration will destroy all art, culture and grossly offend God.  Dave spends a whole book excoriating Hemingway, apparently mainly because he concludes that Ernest liked his missus to stick things up his bum bum on occasion, which makes him basically a woman himself and thus incapable of producing any work of value. So separating the evangelical misogyny (largely a product of Dave's worsening schizophrenia, I suspect) from the entertainment isn't a matter of just avoiding the tiny type.

[Skullmo]

Never did it occur to me to be offended at the 'misogyny'... what colourful characters - including parodies - say and do in a largely fun story isn't really a treatise on anything. It's entertainment.

Well I love Cerebus, one of my all-time favourite works and a big part of my life at the time, but from 150 on its explicit purpose is to show how women existing as anything other than decoration will destroy all art, culture and grossly offend God.  Dave spends a whole book excoriating Hemingway, apparently mainly because he concludes that Ernest liked his missus to stick things up his bum bum on occasion, which makes him basically a woman himself and thus incapable of producing any work of value. So separating the evangelical misogyny (largely a product of Dave's worsening schizophrenia, I suspect) from the entertainment isn't a matter of just avoiding the tiny type.

Curiously by the time I got to this book I had stopped reading anyting Dave wrote as Dave*, so I avoided the extensive notes.  Read as part of the story I took this as an affront to Cerebus' fragile concept of masculinity. I also thoughtt he character of Mary was very sympathetic. I think that Dave's work is more ambiguious than maybe he even intended.


*Because it was annoying.

[TordelBack]

I think that Dave's work is more ambiguious than maybe he even intended.

A thousand times this.  There so much going on in Cerebus between what's on the page and what's in Dave's head and what Dave thinks is in Dave's head that it's endlessly fascinating - his ability to write and draw compelling, convincing and sympathetic female characters, even as his story (sometimes literally) demonizes the entire gender, being one of the great mysteries. That's why I hold it to be a really great work of art, the equal of anything that has been achieved in the medium to date. 

[Fungus]

I take that to mean it ultimately doesn't read as a grim polemic against women. There's more going on, and I can enjoy the sweep of it, rather than hand-wringing over perceived (perhaps-real-enough) misogyny.

So, it's not just black and white (... sorry).

[TordelBack]

I take that to mean it ultimately doesn't read as a grim polemic against women. There's more going on, and I can enjoy the sweep of it, rather than hand-wringing over perceived (perhaps-real-enough) misogyny.

Mmm-hmmm.  The misogyny is definitely real, Dave really does use Cerebus to put forward his view that the shallowness of women and their material and emotional demands drag men down and away from the true path of creativity and spiritual enlightenment that is their sole preserve.

That there is so very much more there, both said and unsaid, intentional and unintenional, is what makes it worthwhile, and not just one more hateful screed that was cut and paste from a sub-reddit.  It's the product of a great but flawed mind, like all great art.  But to dodge, ignore or forgive the core message would be a mistake, and even a disservice.

[Dark Jimbo]

Slowly but surely I'm catching up with Alan Moore's ABC line from a decade ago. One of the last significant gaps to plug was Terra Obscura, a spin-off from Tom Strong (and necessary reading before the most recent TS story from last year).

Written by Peter Hogan of former 2000AD pedigree, it picks up the story of the titular duplicate Earth from an early Tom Strong story - an Earth populated by old-timey 1940s superheroes who, in a neat twist, are actual real-life public domain superheroes from that era. Some of these guys are decidedly second-string, but that's precisely what gives them their charm - a talking ape, a crime-fighting mummy, a jungle adventuress in leopard-print bikini and other such endearingly goofy characters.

Hogan really mines the kitsch value where appropriate as these guys try to readjust to life after 30 years in suspended animation, finding their old-timey values sometimes in conflict with a more complicated modern world. To my knowledge I've not read any of Hogan's Tooth stuff so I've no idea how this compares, but he writes great, snappy dialogue. The first series in particular has a huge cast of characters but they all emerge as distinct and interesting personalities who could support years' worth of stories. There's not much subtlety or depth here but the two series are great fun, and the art (by Swamp Thing artist Yanick Paquette) is dynamic, bright and breezy... with plenty of his trademark, ahem, 'pneumatic' ladies. Enjoyable fluff.

[Link Prime]

To my knowledge I've not read any of Hogan's Tooth stuff so I've no idea how this compares, but he writes great, snappy dialogue.

I don't think I've read anything by Hogan that I didn't like (including his commonly derided tenure on Strontium Dogs / Durham Red).
I'd also highly recommend his stint on Vertigo's The Dreaming and The Sandman Presents: Love Street mini.

[Dark Jimbo]

I think I've only read the various collaborations and fill-ins he did for Moore's ABC line, but it's all cracking good fun - head and shoulders over even Steve Moore's contributions. The gorilla-heavy 'Many Worlds of Tesla' one-shot was particularly good - one for ColinYNWA's radar!