Comments on: Comics You Should Own – The Intimates

By: Chad Nevett

Chad Nevett — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 17:31:05 +0000

I’m very conflicted when it comes to The Intimates, because it’s not a good book if you’re looking for a strong plot of any kind — even the characters aren’t as well developed as I’d like. But, on a stylistic level, I love it. Casey’s storytelling, pacing, and technique are all in top form. More than that, he captures the feeling of being a teenager just about as well as anyone could ever hope to. I’ve tried to see the lack of strong plotting as coming out of that: nothing really happens when you’re a teenager. It may SEEM like things happen and are important, but they never really are. A big dance is the most important thing to ever happen until it’s a week later and you’ve completely forgotten about it. He can’t help but present that sense of unimportance throughout because… well, most of this stuff doesn’t matter. Of course, that answers the question of why the book never caught on: who wants to read about a bunch of stories that don’t matter? (Well, this guy… but… yeah…)

I still love ‘The Kafka Gambit’ — take YOUR characters off the board so they don’t wind up in some shitty comic three years down the line, written by someone who claims to LOVE them but obviously doesn’t understand anything about them (how DOES that work? anyone?)… oh, I could go on and on and on…

By: Ryan

Ryan — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:59:51 +0000

Yes, but wasn’t Tony Millionaire doing the same kind of thing in his strips before the intimates came out?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 16:32:03 +0000

And one should note that Casey’s running commentary on the bottom of the pages presaged FB/Twitter status updates.

By: Neal K

Neal K — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:02:33 +0000

I’ll have to track this down. I also need to track down a run of Automatic Kafka, as I was forced to jettison it (and a lot of other comics from that period) a few years back, and now am starting to miss them mightily. I do wish Wildstorm would release some trades of this stuff, but for now I guess back-issue hunting is the way to go.

By: Greg Burgas

Greg Burgas — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 14:55:08 +0000

Ryan: I didn’t speak too much about the art because Camuncoli left and the art went way downhill (D’Anda’s wasn’t bad, but other than that, it wasn’t good). Camuncoli did a nice job with the art, but to me, it was just good superheroic art and not something to spend too much time on. I do wish he had done the entire series, though.

By: wwk5d

wwk5d — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 09:26:03 +0000

Casey is hit or miss for me. He does have interesting ideas sometimes, but I’d like to see him focus on just telling a good story than trying to re-invent the wheel.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 06:26:06 +0000

This series was fantastic. The final issue made me so sad. I do wish your review spoke a bit more about the Camuncoli (sp?) artwork. That stuff was great. I’m interested by some of the comments here. I think some of the people poo-pooing this series probably just have bad taste. By the way, Casey’s uncanny stuff benefits greatly from a reread. I think Uncanny was maligned a bit excessively because people compared it to the fantastic stuff in the other X-book of the time, written by the God of All Comics as it was.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 03:01:14 +0000

The Intimates, one of the many reasons Joe Casey is a far better writer than people give him credit for. His stuff for Wildstorm was always of exceptional quality.

By: Dean

Dean — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 01:56:09 +0000

I really liked this. It’s a shame it never got released in trade.

By: Greg Burgas

Greg Burgas — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 01:51:43 +0000

Well, I love Godland. And Zodiac was very good. And some of his graphic novels – Nixon’s Pals, for instance – have been good. I do wish his experimental stuff had sold better, though. Maybe he’ll go back to it some day!

By: Ian A.

Ian A. — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:13:04 +0000

Casey used to do some good stuff. Now, we get Final Crisis Aftermath: Dance. Heavens.

its a shame Joe Casey has not done anything interesting after this.

So, no one's reading Dark Reign: Zodiac, then?

By: rodney

rodney — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 23:22:18 +0000

its a shame Joe Casey has not done anything interesting after this. its like he gave up. godland fun and all but i would rather have the old Joe Casey back.

By: MarkAndrew

MarkAndrew — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 22:59:28 +0000

I really liked this one. I liked the tone, and it’s so rare to get this kinda formalistic/structural experimentation from superhero books.

I’d SO much rather have more of this than Godland.

By: agent_torpor

agent_torpor — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 22:02:50 +0000

Casey used to do some good stuff.

Now, we get Final Crisis Aftermath: Dance. Heavens.

By: Alan Coil

Alan Coil — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 20:44:47 +0000

I’m not sure I got what Intimates was supposed to be, but I sure enjoyed the novelty of it. It’s the only comic of its type.

By: J.R. LeMar

J.R. LeMar — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 20:25:42 +0000

Got the whole series when it came out. I loved it! But I’m also not surprised that it didn’t succeed in the current marketplace.

By: DanLarkin

DanLarkin — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 19:48:42 +0000

I wanted to like this book, but I really hated the art. It was just too hard to look at.

By: Grico

Grico — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 19:46:34 +0000

I picked up the middle of the run in a cheap bin but it never really did anything for me. I do thing the basic idea has potential and the market could use an updated series like this now buidling more on the twitter/facebook ascetic for the runing info streams.

By: Greg Burgas

Greg Burgas — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 18:53:35 +0000

Tom: Of course I did, as it was earlier in the alphabet than this! Sadly, it was been lost to the dust bins of the Internet, but I still have it on my computer, so I will have a Comics You Should Own Flashback fairly soon where I will ruminate on the wackiness that is Automatic Kafka!

By: Tom Fitzpatrick

Tom Fitzpatrick — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 18:51:17 +0000

Has anyone done a review of Casey & Wood’s Automatic Kafka?
Now, that was fun to read.