New Comic Book Day Megathread

[Apestrife]

Batman Damned #3 by Brian Azzarello Lee Bermejo
I won't say "hot damn" when it comes to this 3 part, but I really enjoyed it. Feels like it'll grow more on to me as I'll let it sink in. At the moment I feel it's a bit too pulpy to reach the same heights as Azz and Bermejo's Luthor and Joker.

Otherwise not what I expected, in a really cool and good way. Lots of celibration of Bat-mythology wrapped up in what feels like a David Lynch-esque take on a Justice League DARK meets Dante's inferno. Has some really interesting moments which really grabbed me, especially the way Batman fights to gain control and ironically because of it loosing it. Especially when it comes to his fear and shame.

Overall. A worthy semi-sequel to Joker. A book I'll soon reread followed by Batman Damned #1-3

[Colin YNWA]

Nice haul finally getting around to reviewing.

Only Assassin Nation 4 is anything like a let down and thats only cos its not as great as the other things I've read by Kyle Starks. Still its pretty good.

Some new comics starting well. Lois Lane 1 doesn't quite get going but it sets enough but to colour me interested. The Weather Man 1 gets us back up to speed and into something new. Glad to have this back.

James Bond 8 gets the story moving on well. Immortal Hulk 20 is great and has a great ending. Heaven to hell in this one. Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur 44 is a fantastic one shot story and Dick Tracey Forever 3 moves us to modern day really well and then teases us quite brillantly with a future to come.

Pick of the bunch is almost Black Hammer -Age of Doom 11, ably backed up by The World of Black Hammer Encyclopedia which is just glorious BUT not quite as good as the hilarious and wonderful The Goon 3. Eric Powell is just on fire these days and this is so much fun.

[Apestrife]

The league of extraordinary gentlemen: The tempest #6 by Al and Kev. Anyone else who read this? Feels like they snuck each issue out as quietly one could.

I read it as a little good bye letter from Alan. I'm still lost on the english super hero stuff, but I think I understood most of the main yarn. Had a couple of good moments. A bit of an experience in itself having to google the endings song lyrics only to find they came from [spoiler]the vinyl record Moore wanted released with the black dossier[/spoiler].

Looking forward for a re read once Tempest is collected as a book

[Frank]

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Tempest #6 by Al and Kev.

Nice to know the greats still occasionally think of us, even if the supposed 2000ad theme of the issue only really found expression in the funny credit card spoofs*, reflecting O'Neill's disruptive influence on the UK comic industry and maybe that the Galaxy's Greatest exercises more of a hold on the imagination of one half of the partnership than the other.




Laughin' Al's latest retirement earned a (deserved) eulogy in The Guardian but even if this really was the Magus's last wave of the wand the much more certain prospect that this is the last time Kev O'Neill will draw one picture that's followed by another picture seems more of a loss, to me.

There are lots of people pretending to be Alan Moore, but O'Neill's decomposing corpus leaves only a faint whiff. Although I enjoyed every panel, The League was an odd way for Moore to spend the latter half of his career. For me, it made most sense as a way of keeping the Kev coming once Marshal Law dried up.

Interesting that Moore seemed to end on a similar conclusion to the one his nemesis, Morrison, reached in the nineties - that there's no money to be made in comics that aren't American and don't feature superheroes**

That one genius surrendered to reality and the other found the only creator more inimical to the US comic industry than him then spent two decades making a comic whose thesis was that almost everything that's ever seen print is more interesting than US superhero comics says much about all three. Bye, lads.


* Anal Romeo and Evil Ink (LON)

** Morrison framed it as superhero comics just being somehow more interesting, but I'm pretty sure he'd still be writing The Invisibles and The Filth today if DC were offering the same money he gets for wracking his brain to find anything else to do with Bruce Wayne

[dweezil2]

You've got me thinking there Frank and I think you've hit the nail on the head why I dislike, and by extension resent, our great UK artists and writers working on superhero comics.

Being forced to work on bland, culturally imperialistic dreck and prostrate themselves to Marvel and DC because there isn't an appetite for anything that doesn't wear a cape has never say easy with me.

At least we have the likes of Pat Mills and other 2000AD alumni sticking there fingers up to the establishment and the big two. 

[Frank]

Interesting that Moore seemed to end on a similar conclusion to the one his nemesis, Morrison, reached in the nineties - that there's no money to be made in comics that aren't American and don't feature superheroes

Being forced to work on bland, culturally imperialistic dreck and prostrate themselves to Marvel and DC because there isn't an appetite for anything that doesn't wear a cape has never sat easy with me.

Just to forestall any drama, yes, of course there are lots of very good superhero comics - especially the ones you really like. Moore clearly thinks so too, or he wouldn't have imitated so many of them.

Moore tells the same story as every other nerd a decade or two older than us, of discovering Marvel comics just as familiarity was breeding disinterest in the antics of the Bash St Kids and having his brain reconfigured while it was still in the plastic state of adolescence.

He thinks those comics are literally Fantastic. What gets his formidable goat is the monoculture created A/ AS AN INEVITABLE CONSEQUENCE OF THE SHRINKING READERSHIP   or  B/ BY THE SELF-DEFEATING ACTIONS OF LAZY, CYNICAL PUBLISHERS   (delete as applicable)

[TordelBack]

There are lots of people pretending to be Alan Moore, but O'Neill's decomposing corpus leaves only a faint whiff. Although I enjoyed every panel, The League was an odd way for Moore to spend the latter half of his career. For me, it made most sense as a way of keeping the Kev coming once Marshal Law dried up.

I think this is a canny analysis - Moore actually spent most of the latter part of his career writing Jerusalem, for which I am very grateful - and while he has quite a bit of interest on display in LoEG, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Kev drove the partnership. It's certainly a different beast to other late Moore comics like Neoomicon and Crossed 100.

And yeah, while Big Hairy Al is the main reason I fell in love with 2000AD, bought my first DC comic, and innumerable comics since, the idea of no more Kevin O'Neill is hard to face. They only made one of that guy: one of vanishingly few artists that i can hinestly say I would instantly buy any book with his name on the cover.

[The Adventurer]

When two of the best selling comics of the last 20 years are Walking Dead and Saga I'm not sure I buy into the conclusion that the money is at Marvel and DC. The money is finding something an audience wants to read.

[Frank]

When two of the best selling comics of the last 20 years are Walking Dead and Saga I'm not sure I buy into the conclusion that the money is at Marvel and DC

For 'hard' read exceptional: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_cases_make_bad_law*

I'm not really validating Morrison's conclusion and I imagine Moore putting his words in the mouth of Captain Universe is probably more about being too old to keep making a passive-aggressive point to DC about WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU F*** A STRANGER IN THE ASS than money, for which he seems to be doing alright, thank you very much.


* I've been told, more than once, that most indie comic creators struggle to make what Grant Morrison would term a decent living.

That isn't peculiar to comics, though. It's the standard model of any industry that exploits the desire of those who see themselves as creative - music, film, prose fiction, visual arts, games - to valorise and promote the success of a tiny percentage of successful participants while the vast majority of hopefuls fall at the first hurdle or labour for decades making less than if they'd taken up their dad's offer to put in a word for them at the council.

The same is true of sports, modelling and even boring stuff like high-end finance and entrepreneurship. Even those who aware of the stats are driven by the certainty that they're the ones who'll be the exception to the rule, that there's something special in themselves that will allow them to beat the odds and make it big. Most human systems are Ponzi schemes or Multi-level marketing scams

[Frank]

A visit to FP yesterday left me empty handed... so splashed out on a GN:

Which won the Best Original Novel Eisner Award

Because of an often misplaced trust in the wisdom of crowds and respect for authority, I'm the kind of consumer who feels the need to experience music, films and books if they're either very popular or win awards. I know Phillips, of course, but I haven't read any of his other work with Brubaker.

Technically, this is very well put together. Phillips' spare, elegant line is complemented by similarly economic soft pastels that leave lots of white space open to reflect the pure light and airiness of dayrooms in expensive private retreats and windblown Northern beaches.

Brubaker handles the central trick of the narrative* well enough, even if the James Gunn gambit of a middle-aged creator gifting their character anachronistic taste in music with which the creator has a facility and emotional connection doesn't work quite as well when the character's a teenage girl**

It's very talky, though. Not so much for the reader, but it makes me wonder what Phillips is getting out of work like this - apart from a stellar career and glittering prizes, obviously. There's one scene where the endless talking heads give way to a Van Gogh sunset and it's like an explosion in terms of the rhythm your eye settles into when scanning the pages.

If Phillips is sacrificing his ego for the sake of the story and atmosphere he and Brubaker have created, that's admirable, but he must look back at Danzig's Inferno and think it'd be nice to stretch his legs once in a while. I love US indie confessional comics where writer-artists tell personal stories where nothing Earth-shattering happens, but this felt more like someone discussing themes they've thought a lot about.





* The old Future Shock conceit of characters apparently [spoiler]sharing their thoughts with you on one topic while actually describing another[/spoiler]

** She even has a cassette mix-tape from her mom and a Walkman. You'd be embarrassed to lift a narrative device so completely, wouldn't you?

[13school]

I'm sure someone can point me directly to a half-dozen quotes where O'Neill himself says "I'm outta here" with regards to comics, but most of the stories I've seen (and all of the ones I can remember) were more about Moore loudly quitting comics with O'Neill being mentioned as an afterthought.

Personally I desperately hope that in O'Neill's case "quitting comics" means "quitting 32-page American format comics". Considering the time frame he requires to create (though he's no doubt slowed by Affable Al's lengthy and detailed scripts), another six issues may well have seen him pushing 70 by the end of things.

[TordelBack]

If Phillips is sacrificing his ego for the sake of the story and atmosphere he and Brubaker have created, that's admirable, but he must look back at Danzig's Inferno and think it'd be nice to stretch his legs once in a while.

I get that you're just reviewing the one book (which I haven't read), but Philips has done some visually incredible work over Brubkaer's typing, on Fatale, Incognito, The Fade Out, and other bits of Criminal itself. They aren't the incoherent madness of Danzig's Inferno to be sure, but thank feck for that.

I think you're perhaps looking at one moment in one of the great creative partnerships, and it just happens to be a quiet talky bit.

[Theblazeuk]

Was there every any more Incognito after volume 2? I liked that weird, dark and pulpy 'verse.

[Frank]

I get that you're just reviewing the one book (which I haven't read), but Philips has done some visually incredible work over Brubaker's typing, on Fatale, Incognito, The Fade Out, and other bits of Criminal itself. They aren't the incoherent madness of Danzig's Inferno to be sure, but thank feck for that.

That looks like exactly my kind of thing. The algorithm I wrote and fed into the massive, liquid-cooled server farm beneath the east-wing tells me that's from Fatale. I love The Last Seduction, so I'm prepared to overlook mention of the L******** word in its synopsis and give the first volume a go.

Incognito, I can only assume, is the origin story of Guy.


******** Seriously, get his estate an A-grade asshole of a copyright attorney and stop letting the dullest minds in Anglo-Saxon fiction (and Alan Moore) treat his crypto-fascist wank as open-source software for creating apps called SEND ME TO SLEEP and BORE ME TO TEARS. If you find yourself using the word 'Lovecraftian' in your plot summary or pitch, do the world a favour and set fire to your head, so it can do no more damage, then use the spluttering wick of your spinal column to torch the wretched manuscript too.

[Colin YNWA]

I get that you're just reviewing the one book (which I haven't read), but Philips has done some visually incredible work over Brubkaer's typing, on Fatale, Incognito, The Fade Out, and other bits of Criminal itself. They aren't the incoherent madness of Danzig's Inferno to be sure, but thank feck for that.

All this talk of Brubaker and Phillips is well timed. I'm about to finish my latest haul and aside from a wonderous array of great first issues (so far) the over riding take home is alas I think I'll end up dropping Criminal, which is... well... Criminal. I've spent the best part of the last 7 years buying their stuff month to month, jumping onboard with Fatale and its been fantastic. Fatale, The Fade Out and Kill or be Killed have been delights, and I've dipped into previous stuff like Sleeper and loved that too - must catch up with Incognito. Alas there's something about the short form stuff in Criminal that's leaving me so cold.

The downtrodden, world weary folks from the fringes just don't seem fresh and don't say anything that I've not seen before. It all feels so tired. Such a shame. It might be as simple as his longer form stuff has more space to explore different areas, I'm not sure. Phillips' art is uniformly fantastic as he constantly finds fresh and interesting ways to present characters who inhabit the gritty and dark world he casts them into. No need for theatrics, its just sublime storytelling and glorious acting, enough to keep any artist happy, or at least this one it would seem. This however is not enough to keep me with the series. I found myself struggling to retain interest with issue 6 last night and suspect I'm just getting it out of habit now... time for a break maybe.