@connrrr @yeso Thanks so much! It really means a lot to me coming from you both.
I wish I had bought that Kramer's Ergot too. Couldn't afford it then, and definitely can't now. I loved number 6.
@safety_lite, thank you so much for sharing your zines. They are incredible.
I love comics too! There‘s a couple of great shops in my little town. I’m subscribed to around 8 books at a time. Mostly Image and other non DC/Marvel stuff (superheroes aren‘t really my thing, but it’s always fun to hear people who love em talk about em.)
I like books with fantastical elements, crime books, and books with whimsy. Monstress is great, and confusing and sometimes overcrowded, but I appreciate it‘s sweeping dark-romance narrative style (and that art!!) Another currently running book I’ve been into is Newburn, written by Chip Zdaraky.
Back in 2019 there was a short 5 issue book called Euthenauts that I think is absolutely brilliant.
I‘m a big G. Willow Wilson fan as well. Check out Invisible Kingdom if you haven’t!
Something I‘d like to return to is Low. I haven’t read beyond the third volume. Has anyone else read it?
Oh, another recommendation I had to look up because my comics are all in storage right now: Mamo by Sas Milledge. It‘s YA, which I usually don’t go for, but found it thoughtful and honest.
Sorry for triple posting but I keep thinking of stuff. Have y‘all read My Favorite Thing is Monsters? I can’t bring myself to write anything deep about it rn, but it's brilliant and wonderful and idiosyncratic in such a way that feels richly alive.
@safety_lite ahahah hell yeah
@RubySunrise I've heard of Low! Those colours are really something. Was what you read of it any good?
My brother has a big DC comics collection but on the side we had a few graphic novels in the house and some that weren‘t superheroes. I read Maus when I was little and………….. maybe that’s it lol. That and DKR were the house graphic novels.
—HOLD IT!! Ok, I‘m only mentioning DKR so I can point out that it lead me to Miller’s non-superhero work like Sin City and Ronin. Sin City I‘ve fallen off of but I still think Ronin is cool and it’s one of the oldest books I still have in my collection after shedding numerous others. (Also, I‘ve held off long enough I’m going to break the silence: the best thing about DK2 is Lynn Varley‘s crazy photoshop colours, there I said it. She doesn’t get enough respect for her contributions to Miller's work.)
Here are a few comics I want to shout out for whatever mark they've left on me:
Corto Maltese by Hugo Pratt. I haven‘t read a lot of this series. I tried getting into the first story but I had a lot of trouble getting past the scratchy art. Then I readUnder the Sign of Capricorn and loved it a lot. I’d like to start taking these out of the library again soon. On a whim I took out the prequelEarly Years, which isn‘t a very compelling story but his art had grown so much by then and I loved looking at it so much that I ordered a copy for myself. I got the wrong edition though: the ones they have at the library include forwards by people like Umberto Eco with pages of preliminary studies by Pratt. Mine doesn’t have that despite their both being published by Casterman. Beware!The Moomins by Tove Janssen. My ex made me a Moomin fan. Love the Janssen comics and the novels and the anime adaptation.Popbot by Ashley Wood. I can‘t argue that this is even good because it kind of isn’t lmao. The premise is cool and the art is still striking but that‘s about it. The characters are little more than visual gimmicks and the story is just spectacles and nonsense. He never finished it, I imagine that has something to do with the art getting more and more interesting while the writing wasn’t. The only “work” of his I own is theSymbolic Machine Code/A collection of all but one of the 7-issue run. Everything else I have by him is art books. I still have a fondness for his robot designs and erotic stuff and mixing of paintings with graphics and would love to get ahold ofTre Tarino just to complete the set I started.De concert by Jimmy Beaulieu, Sophie Bédard, Vincent Giard and Singeon. A real gem of a BD about four strangers who go to the same show one night. Every two pages are drawn by one of the four artists using the same colour palette. Really cool book. You can download the whole thing as a pdfhere, under “livres” (only in French to my knowledge)!Naja by Bengal & Jean-David Morvan. I only have the first two volumes and have forgotten what happens in them. Mostly got into this for Bengal.Bone by Jeff Smith. I got the one volume edition when I was in high school and devoured it. I haven't read it since then but I remember being fully engrossed in it and awed by its scale
There are many other artists I've admired from afar whether just peeping excerpts from their work online or flipping through something of theirs in a bookstore but haven't really absorbed yet: Mœbius, Sarah Horrocks, Bastien Vivès, Valentin Seiche, Linnea Sterte, Claire Wendling. Likely more!!!
I've found it harder to keep up with comics than with video games because I much prefer to hold the pages in my hands while I'm reading. For a long time I didn't have a device with a screen dense enough in pixels to substitute for a physical edition if I couldn't find a copy at the library. Recently though I discovered the magic of downloading an author's comic as a pdf from itch.io to my iPad and opening it in the Books app, so a world has potentially opened up to me.
I love reading this thread because I got that curse of having worked on enough comics that it's hard for me to just enjoy reading them. Love this excitement. Takes me back.
My student's work is generally pretty great though, and I certainly like my own, but well, it is very much made for me.
Here are a bunch of smaller books I liked enough to write about critically for a spell
On Bluesky, I’ve been posting a short comic review every day. Look me up there
@whatsarobot Hey just want to thank you for putting me on to Ducks I finished it today, have been reading it for the last couple of weeks since I saw this thread. I like how the comic embraces the complicated relationships that entail migrating to another country/town/city as a way to improve you and your family‘s lot. Not to get too personal but this comic made me understand a lot of things about how I felt when I did the same thing, except I was much younger and not of working age. Even aside from that, there’s so much else to grab on to in that comic, if I read it again I am sure something else would pop up.
I'm pretty new to comics in general so Thank You to the ppl on this thread for being a goldmine of recommendations. Also, the Libby app is very good for checking and reading comics without breaking the bank. Long live libraries.
@Bonsai Relevant to all of this post, my partner signed Ducks out of the library recently, and I'm gonna read it soon… hell yeah. My partner also read it in one sitting and said it was really good.
We also signed out The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book by Gord Hill and I want to read that first. I started it and it‘s, well, it’s informative alright!
In a kinda weird half intersection between these two books and also with CANADALAND, I've also wanted to read Paying the Land by Joe Sacco.
I got this cute little tin box for my partner at the Moomin Store in Helsinki:
She stores her weed paraphernalia in it lol
I bought a copy of Ducks last week and started reading it today!
All I know about comics I learned from
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLksubP8_o5Hy8xyJGZFxvyA3X1DNHB29q&si=s8JFl13CtvysT20M
@Bonsai Awesome to hear. Glad you enjoyed it. I found it relatable in the same kind of way as well.
Welcome to the world of comics. You’ve got so much amazing stuff to discover.
LLL!
(Long live libraries indeed.)
I have put Ducks on hold for myself at the library. Excited for that to come in. I currently have Sex Criminals checked out but am reading the 6 volumes of Alan Moore's Saga of the Swamp Thing before getting to that.
I just finished reading the paperback version of KC Green‘s adaptation of Pinocchio. I really enjoyed it. The art is great and Pinocchio is a wild story. If you’re like me and only had exposure to the Disney version of Pinocchio, check out the original in some form or other.
Finished Ducks yesterday. Really funny and really harrowing. Nuanced and raw. To think she was going through the tail end of this when I discovered her comics. Anyway, now I have a swell gift to give to a friend.
@tomjonjon omg I loved what I read of Moore's Swamp Thing.
I wanted to share my absolute favorite series of zines. It's called Drop Target and its all about pinball!
Back in the mid 2010‘s I went to the Chicago Alternative Comics Expo (CAKE) for the first time. I was walking through the crowd and I came up to Alec Longsteth’s booth. He asked “Do you like pinball?” and I responded “Uhh.. yea, I guess.” and he finished “…'cause, I LOVE pinball.”
He was really nice and we talked for a bit. He told me about his zine that he'd been doing with his friend Jon Chad, I think they had 3 at the time. I picked up a copy of each and went through them all that weekend, and continued to pick them up as they released — There is so much love in these.
Each issue has a different focus: Intro, Community, Moves, DIY, Classics, Future… etc. These are where I first learned about terminology, technique, mechanics, Portlands‘ pinball clubs and Tina Fey’s voicework on Medieval Madness.
Inside there are pinball related autobio comics, interviews, reviews of machines, mechanic breakdowns, guest contributors, and “Dream Machines” where they have different artists design and render there own machines — like Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, Lawrence of Arabia, Portal, Troll 2, King Cat Comics, and (imo, too many) Harry Potters.
So, if you have any interest in pinball, or are looking for a good place to start, check these out — I think they've been compiled into a book at this point.
It rules and it got me super into pinball.
Great short documentary from the NFB on Canadian cartoonist Seth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJMKBiJuO6I
Beloved indie publisher Peow is relaunching!!
Dear Friends of Peow,
As you might have heard, we just announced Peow2! Peow2 is a sequel, more graphics, more open world, more sidequests, and more exciting, and more books. Stay tuned for more updates (and a big trailer tomorrow!) but for now, we would like to announce our first release as Peow2, an artbook from one of the first Peow artists,Natalie Andrewson! This is her first book with us since Lemon & Ketwas released 9 years ago! We are funding Natalie’s book via Kickstarter, which you can back right now!
You can check out the kickstarter here.
2 Likes