Comic Book Resources

A book about typography for beginners by my design teacher and Palestina, by Joe Sacco.

I’m reading student papers. I *wish* I was reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. And comics. of course.

I’m about midway through Scalped, vol. 4: The Gravel in Your Gut, which is, of course, fantastic. The wait for vol. 5 is gonna be a pain, though. Maybe I’ll switch to singles, but it reads so damn well in collected form.

Anyway, yeah, after Gravel in Your Gut, I’ll tear into the first volume of Anna Mercury.

I’ve also got a handful of miscellaneous singles to read that I picked up Saturday (none of which were freebies), so I’ll probably read those tomorrow.

Starting in on Blaze, a light Stephen King novel he wrote under the Richard Bachman pseudonym. I’m just cracking the cover now, so no word on whether it is any good.

Comics-wise, working my way through a pile of FCBD offerings, and getting set to read the first Criminal trade — I’m a relative newcomer to the series, and I’m now kicking myself for not picking up the singles from day one.

I just finished Roberto Bolaño’s 2666, which I would definitely recommend to anyone with the time and attention to devote to reading it. It’s an incredibly dense, sprawling work, and I wish I could have devoted closer attention to some of the symbolism and recurring motifs in it, but by the time I finished it was already overdue at the library. I’ll probably buy a copy in a few months or so in order to reread it when I have more free time.

I’m about to start reading Charlie Huston’s The Mystic Art of Erasing All Signs of Death, which I’m looking forward to. I’ve found that I enjoy Huston’s vampire novels more than his crime work, but given the offbeat premise of this one, I’m optimistic about it being slightly less formulaic than A Dangerous Man or The Shotgun Rule.

On the comic side, I’ve got a gigantic stack of Free Comic Book Day stuff to read through (as far as I can tell, my store gave me everything except the Bendis/Cheung Avengers issue, which they didn’t get a shipment of,) and I’m also managed to pick up the complete series of Kazuo Koike and Ryoichi Ikegami’s Offered for a dollar. It’s basically completely batshit insane, which starts out fairly early when it’s revealed that the main character’s mother was artificially impregnated with Gilgamesh’s sperm (the sperm was frozen in a glacier in a goat milk solution that kept it alive,) and then is hypnotized into impregnating Adolf Hitler’s illegitimate granddaughter. This is one the more believable plotlines in this comic.

Like Danielle, I’m reading drafts of student essays while looking longingly at Rex Stout’s The League of Frightened Men sitting on my nightstand. I’ve also got 2 volumes of Simonson’s Thor Visionaries to get to, along with re reading Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven for a paper I owe one of my professors.

Too much to do & not enough time to do it in…

REAL TALK: When you said “a book about a voyeur Superman,” I thought you were referring to a novelization of Superman Returns.

I’m almost done reading Supermen! Once I’m done with that, it’s on to Was Superman a Spy? And yet I’ve almost never read a Superman comic book.

I finally read Zot! this week and I’m left with some mixed feelings. I know the “earth stories” were McCloud’s efforts at more mature storytelling but I preferred the earlier stories. They used the maturing nature of comics in the 1980′s within the context of a superhero in a way that just isn’t done while I’ve seen stuff like the later stories dozens of times (it wasn’t even that original when they were first published). I’d much rather have stories about a happy-go-lucky superhero in a life that’s more complicated than he realizes than another mopey group of misfit teenagers. There’s subtle layers to the earlier stories that are lost when the themes become more overt.

It’s all good stuff, I just think that McCloud did a better job when he let the dreary reality be the undertone.

Oh and he completely got me with the fake ending.

In the middle of rereading Hard-Boiled Wonderland & The End of the World by Haruki Murakami. Also, just reread Batman: The Long Halloween for this week’s Reread Review.

Bullfinch’s Greek and Roman mythology this week. It’s sort of like the edited for television version of all the drinkin’ and whorin’ the Greek gods really got up to.

In comics, working through the Zenith books from forever ago.

More old Doom Patrol from Drake and Premiani, Hewson’s The Sacred Cut, and also just finished Valerie d’Orazio’s Memoirs of an Occasional Superheroine.

Now that Julie’s working and I’m a bus commuter again I should be able to put a bigger dent in the pile.

Just finished the showcase Doom Patrol, next im onto Scalped vol.4 and Green Lantern Sinistro Corps v.1. Nothing but qualtiy at the Brown household. Oooh I also have that showcase Ambush Bug just calling my name…

recent Superman comics- I got a bunch at FCBD for half off- and they range from okay to good. Renato Guedes, however, is fantastic! His inker & colorist are top-notch. How come more people aren’t writing about the art in Superman?

About to tackle the two most recent collections in Dark Horse’s Chronicles Of Conan trade series. Especially looking forward to the all Gil Kane volume.

On the ‘real book’ front, I’m also about to start Let The Right One In from John Lindqvist. Saw the movie a couple weeks ago and fell in love with it. Now I want to read the source material, which supposedly features a more expansive back story to Eli…

School books unfortunately.

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century “1910″ Just the prose bit at the back left…

Then probably going to hunt down Jess Nevins’ annotations if they’re up yet…

Looks like I’ll probably finally have to buy From Hell too…

Just finished Astro City: Confession and ARKealogy the comic detailing the publishing history of The Adventures of Luther Arkwright…

Still waiting on the Royal Mail for Brian’s book.

I’m a lucky guy.

I had dinner with Brian Saturday night – picked up his book Sunday, finished it yesterday. It was awesome – I was very impressed.

Just about finished P&P and Zombies and am 10% of the way through a 1000 page tome on the end of the British Empire (the name escapes me).

Oh yeah – also making my way through Starman Omnibus 2.

Life is good.

Organic Chemistry flashcards for a few more hours, then I’m rereading “Anathem” by Neal Stephenson. The man is a sci-fi writing god.

Ref Beevor; Paul Preston is a far better historian of the Spanish Civil War. Beevor lets his political prejudices intervene too much, I find.

Mike: Yeah, I’ve noticed that. Thanks for the tip about Preston!