Comments on: Flippin’ through Previews – August 2009

By: tk.

tk. — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 16:44:57 +0000

Coming back to this thread a bit late; I haven’t checked out Steampunk, but I adore the bulk of Bachalo’s work on Uncanny. Steampunk may be up my alley after all…

By: FunkyGreenJerusalem

FunkyGreenJerusalem — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 05:34:23 +0000

but when did Bachalo get incomprehensible, outside of… well, okay, maybe Sinister Spider-Man is a bit.

His style started to shift during Generation Next, the second Death mini, and the return to Generation X.
However, when he went to SteamPunk, he let loose with his new style, and never really came back down.
He has gotten a little more readable since his return to Marvel, but back in the day you could actually tell what was going on in a panel on first read.

By: Greg Burgas

Greg Burgas — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 14:40:37 +0000

tk: Read Bachalo’s Steampunk. “Incomprehensible” might be too kind a word

Well, I liked Life on Mars. It’s certainly not as good as the original, but it was still better than every reality show.

Good to know about Ghost in the Shell, Dave. I enjoyed the movie and didn’t know much about the manga. To the library!

Well, I probably wasn’t going to make a trip just to see the Winchester House, but that’s still good to know in case I’m near it some day!

By: Keith

Keith — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 13:48:32 +0000

Trust me. As somebody who has been there, you do NOT need to see the Winchester Mystery house. It’s mostly just a dusty old unfurnished house with an extremely random and haphazard layout. You certainly don’t need to travel from afar to see it…

By: Andrew Collins

Andrew Collins — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 11:21:19 +0000

Oh, I’m very interested in that new Jon Sable series. One of my all-time favorite comics from one of my all-time favorite creators. I’ve already read it over at ComicMix’s website, and it’s a fantastic story. Highly recommended. Same with the new Grimjack series, Manx Cat.

I’m trying to save money right now, and yet there are so many tempting things coming out, like that Rocketeer HC, the new Shade TPB, the newest Nexus Archive, another Jesse Marsh Tarzan collection…ugh…my poor wallet…

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 10:55:27 +0000

“Second, not to be a continuity nerd, but hasn’t Superman met Thanagarians like, dozens of times?”

Hasn’t DC rebooted continuty three times in the past decade?

By: Matt K

Matt K — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 05:44:27 +0000

Thanks for pointing out Rocketeer. It was on my list of comics to track down. Additionally, on the next page there is The Talisman #0 which happens to be one of my favorite Stephen King books so I’m going to look into that one. I don’t usually check out the other comic section as I can’t really afford to so thanks for pointing it out.

By: Scavenger

Scavenger — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 05:40:09 +0000

One point for anyone looking at Bloom County who didn’t read it at the time or is ..young….it’s very 80′s.
The satire and all is very much of it’s time. Brilliant, but very topical, and that might not translate.

By: Matt Bird

Matt Bird — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 05:23:04 +0000

Thanks, Dave, for convincing me I’m not crazy. Just today I finally read Shirow’s Appleseed. You described its flaws exactly.

By: Dave

Dave — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 04:19:50 +0000

Also Greg, Ghost in the Shell (and by extension everything Masamune Shirow has ever made,) is really a super-acquired taste. I’m a big fan of the entire Ghost in the Shell franchise, but honestly the source manga is probably my least favorite of the material.

In my view, Shirow’s way too prone to abandoning characterization or story in favor of huge multi-page metaphysical/technobabble tangents that largely make sense only to him. He’s great on concepts and worldbuilding, but when it comes to actually structuring a coherent and compelling storyline, not so much. GiTS is probably the worst offender on this front, although I vaguely remember Orion being exceedingly incomprehensible and having a far thinner plot than anything in Ghost. Anyway, compared to either Oshii’s movies or the Stand Alone Complex TV show, the story and characters are exceedingly flimsy. The artwork is absolutely gorgeous, don’t get me wrong, but the writing leaves a lot to be desired on a lot of fronts.

My recommendation would be to check if your local library has any copies of the Dark Horse printing in circulation before you buy, because while it does look great, it’s not exactly “well written” and I can’t say I’ve had the desire to reread it anywhere near as much as something like Akira, Pluto or Berserk.

By: Dave

Dave — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 03:59:44 +0000

Sorry Ian, the only thing I’m taking away from that is that Ellis has apparently written Fell #10 and is going to continue not writing Desolation Jones and newuniversal for the foreseeable future because apparently it’s impossible to rewrite something once your computer crashes (also the concept of backing up files does not exist in warren ellis’s world).

By: Bill Reed

Bill Reed — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 02:27:51 +0000

The original, British version of Life on Mars is sooooooo vastly superior to the crappy American one. Phil Glenister forever!

By: Joe

Joe — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 01:38:50 +0000

I’m glad Kodansha is reprinting Akira. That means I won’t have to pay over $40 for volume 6 on Amazon.

By: Ted

Ted — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 01:38:11 +0000

Life on Mars? Really? I wouldn’t have thought that it getting cancelled was anyone’s fault but their own.

By: tk.

tk. — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 00:09:53 +0000

The McFarlane thing does seem a bit cheaty, but when did Bachalo get incomprehensible, outside of… well, okay, maybe Sinister Spider-Man is a bit.

I love the REH Solomon Kane stories, I might have to check out that reprint.

By: Greg Hatcher

Greg Hatcher — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 22:50:30 +0000

The Solomon Kane reprint is definitely on my shopping list. That was some good stuff there, especially the Savage Sword short stories. I prefer Kane to Conan most of the time anyway, so it’s nice to see these collected.

By: Nitz the Bloody

Nitz the Bloody — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 22:25:12 +0000

Michael, you really think Bill was the downfall of Breathed’s comics? Admittedly there were limits to the jokes that could be made with ” hideous, diseased Garfield analogue “, but the comics didn’t stop being funny when Breathed went into long, convoluted plots. In fact, I think that those plots were what made the strips; kind of mixture between Doonesbury’s satire and Fantasia’s trippiness.

When Breathed moved to just doing Sunday strips, the limits to how effective the satire was became immediately obvious

By: Dan Felty

Dan Felty — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 22:05:03 +0000

Hooray, it did!

By: Dan Felty

Dan Felty — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 22:04:42 +0000

Bloom County is hilarious. I love it when I was a little kid; I love it even more now that I have any idea what happened in the eighties. There's tons of stuff that didn't make it into the existing Bloom County collections that should be in the IDW volumes. Check out this site! (Oh, God, please work html code!)

By: Bill Reed

Bill Reed — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 21:33:45 +0000

I hated Opus. Is Bloom County any better?

Yay for Magnum, PI.