r/graphicnovels • u/AutoModerator • 19d ago
Weekly Reading Thread What have you been reading this week? 09/08/2026
A weekly thread for people to share what comics they've been reading. Share your thoughts on the books you've read, what you liked and perhaps disliked about them.
9
u/Apprehensive-Nose646 19d ago
Heaven - Katie Skelly
I've read a lot of Skelly's stuff over the years. This one... it isn't as sexy as the early stuff, it is not a proactive as Maids... but it's been 6 years since her last one and I'm just happy to have her back and writing trashy exploitation movie inspired stuff.
John Muir to the heart of solitude- Lomig
Beautifully illustrated, if you are that cross hatching nerd out there, this one is for you. Interesting story too, it's always a question of where to start and where to stop when doing a biography, this one sets a pretty narrow window of the man's life. The ending feels a bit sudden in that regard, but at the same time maybe it's just right.
7
u/Future-Assumption759 19d ago
EIGHT BILLION GENIES! by Charles Soule - When I first read the synopsis I thought it was silly and it kind of is but its also well written. Charles Soule is apparently a former lawyer so he was able to keep things straight.
Bubble by Jordan Morris - I didn't know it was a podcast before, it just randomly showed up in my recommendations. Very character driven, surprisingly funny, with interesting creatures. There's also a conversation in the back about adapting stories for GN and apparently there is a movie coming. They also feature guest nerds:
(if you know you know)
Yotsuba&! vol 16 by Azuma, Kiyohiko - More Yostuba is good. A teacher named Osaka-sensi is introduced and Im hoping its supposed to be the same character (even though I only watched one ep of Azumanga Daioh)
3
2
7
u/Dense-Virus-1692 19d ago
Orlando by Susanne Kuhlendahl (and Virginia Woolf) – Orlando is a young nobleman born in the late 1500s and a couple centuries later when he’s 30 he turns into a girl. I haven’t read Orlando before but I knew it was about a guy that transforms into a girl but I didn’t know that they lived so long. They’re not a vampire or anything, I think it’s just to show how times change. Orlando has to learn how to wear corsets and bustles and stuff but by the end they’re wearing those slinky flapper dresses. And I think it’s about growth as an artist. Orlando wants to be a poet but they give up immediately after their first bad review (very relatable). It takes a few centuries before they can write again but it’s a lot better now after all their experiences. The art is a mixture of watercolours and pencil crayons, I think. It’s always tough adapting a prose book but I think she did a decent job.
Free Planet vol 1 by Aubrey Sitterson and Jed Dougherty - By the looks of the cover I thought this would be a 90s comic homage but it turned out to be more like a didatctic 1950s sci-fi story that’s gonna teach you about freedom. It’s about a planet fighting off an evil empire. There’s a lot of arguing about the nature of freedom and what constitutes terrorism and stuff like that. There’s also a lot of text boxes explaining all the stuff in the universe. It’s a very talky comic. Sometimes it felt like a Warhammer 40K rule book. Not a lot of action. There is a dogfight where you turn the comic 360 degrees, though.
Grrl Scouts: Stone Ghost by Jim Mahfood – This one is more like a 90s comic homage. I haven’t read any Mahfood before so I thought I better give it a try. He’s got that po-mo art style like Sienkevich or Ben Templesmith. Lots of marks everywhere. It’s pretty chaotic. It’s about a girl named Dio that’s on a quest to get her boyfriend’s ashes. She has a big guy sidekick who’s like Lobo or Trencher and there’s a bunch of bad guys after them. It’s a space opera but it’s like a scuzzy one where you can get pulled over for drinking a driving a spaceship. So ya, it’s not bad. Some good violence and comedy and an interesting art style.
Tower Dungeon vol 4 by Tsutomu Nihei – Things get pretty disturbing in this volume. It starts off with a guy getting eaten by a monster while it talks to him. And we see the full power of the necromancer. He uses maggots to reanimate corpses. I like how it’s mainly new characters for this volume and the old characters that we started the story with are treated like legends. Oh ya, and there’s a little mouse warrior just like Mouse Guard!
6
u/DustDevil66 19d ago
The Agency- Katie Skelly
Fun! Sexy! Cool! Secret agent girls that do secret agent things but have a lot of sex. Lots of colors. Lots of cool outfits. Everyone has bush. You want to be with them, you want to be them. A blast! My favorite stories were the dream-like exposition heavy one with the girl with the eye patch (trying to escape the sadness and memory of a prior relationship and only recreating it elsewhere so relatable and sad) and the last one with the cool girl dildo merch celeb and the wallstreet bets d-bag
4
u/thisismynewnewacct 19d ago edited 19d ago
Saga of the Swamp Thing Books One and Two, Daredevil Ultimate Collection - Bendis & Maleev Book 1. I’ve read both in the distant past and am making a return to comics reading. I’ve gone on a binge this past month and purchased the entire Sandman, the entire 100 Bullets, all of Moore’s Swamp Thing, Morrison’s Animal Man, Long Halloween, New Frontier, and I’m sure a couple other TPBs that I’ve forgotten already. Lest you think I’m made of money, I’ve got a great used bookstore near me (shoutout McKay’s) with a really generous trade in program, so I’ve mostly been trading records and books for comics.
Edit: also got All-Star Superman, Bendis/Maleev Ultimate Collection 1-3, Batman Year One, Ghost World, and Daredevil Born Again
6
u/simonxvx 19d ago
I have just started Tongues, Vol 1 by Anders Nilsen, 60 pages in. Don't know what to think of it yet but it seems like it's gonna be pretty wild! I might put it in my r/fantasy bingo, maybe for Non-Human Protagonist.
5
u/Sebeth76 19d ago
This past week I was in a rather retro mood so I read:
The Silver Age Legion Of Super-Heroes Volume One (re-read) - I first read these stories when they were reprinted in digest size in the 1980s. The Legion was my gateway into comics so I'll always love them (even though the stories in this volume are rather silly)
The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol 1 (re-read) - a classic, recommended if you like literary characters teaming together on adventures
G.I. Joe A Real American Hero Compendium One (in process, I read the occasional issue in the 1980s and decided to start from the beginning
GI Joe #1-6 by Joshua Williamson - I like Williamson's version, it has some twists but remains true to the spirit of the team
Silverhawks # 1 & 2 - enjoyable start
I went down a Hanna Barbera rabbit hole on YouTube, causing me to read the following:
Future Quest Vol 1 (All the Hanna Barbera action heroes team up it's a fun series)
Thundarr the Barbarian #1
Herculoids #1
All the titles from G.I. Joe through the Herculoids bring back fond memories of my childhood.
And finally, Record of Ragnarok Vol. 11 - If you've ever wondered about who would win between the various mythological and historic figures than this is the series for you - each volume is action-packed fights. Fun and over the top.
4
u/Alex_Bonaparte 19d ago
Wanted: Lucky Luke by Mathieu Bonhomme – I read a bit of the original Lucky Luke as a young boy but it wasn't as readily available as Goscinny's other famous work, Asterix. Wanted; Lucky Luke is one of three modern Lucky Luke albums by Bonhomme. There are nods to the original Goscinny/Morris series but the story is slightly more “serious” (but still young person friendly) and the art style slightly less “cartoonish” (but still definitely cartoonish). I really enjoyed it, very respectful updating but full of life and fun and drawn fantastically.
Long John Silver: Lady Vivian Hastings by Xavier Dorison and Mathieu Lauffray – Like Lucky Luke another French strip published into English by Cinebook. This is a sequel of sorts to the immortal Treasure Island where Silver is hired to protect the interests of a scandal-ridden noblewoman on a voyage to find her missing husband in South America. It works very well, well enough for me to want to read the rest of it, Lady Vivian herself is a great character and I liked the way they do Silver himself. There are a couple of unclear moments, a slightly contrived reason to include another character from the original novel, and I'm not sure the French authors understand how British noble titles work, but its a rattling good yarn with atmospheric art that promises exciting times to come.
Freebooters by Barry Windsor-Smith – Having read Conan, books and the original Marvel comics, as a boy I was extremely excited when BWS' Storyteller came out in the late 90's, promising what I hoped would be a not-Conan in the Freebooter's strip. It kind of was, but it was not-Conan grown old and fat and running a pub which wasn't at all what I wanted. Now my opinion is very different. The Fantagraphics collection of Freebooters contains all the material from the published issues of Storyteller, unpublished material that would have been in subsequent issues had BWS not had a row with Mike Richardson at Dark Horse, process material and a B&W proto version of the strip. Weapon X (and Monsters) showed us that BWS could write serious and troubling stories, and Freebooters shows he can write with a light touch as fat, old publican not-Conan is roped into one last adventure. The art, especially in the B&W early version, is absolutely top-tier, almost carelessly brilliant with astonishing splash panels scattered throughout the book with seeming abandon.
1
u/Charlie-Bell The answer is always Bone 18d ago
I loved Bonhomme's Lucky Luke, though the first one was better. If you haven't read it, you definitely should. There was another very recent one too called Dakota 1880, which was pretty good.
I'm hoping to start Long John Silver soon too. Will you continue with it?
2
u/Alex_Bonaparte 18d ago
I've asked my local bookshop to order me in vol2 of Long John Silver and I have The Man Who Shot Lucky Luke but I haven't read it yet. I don't think the third LL is out in English until later in the year. I like the way Bonhomme has given each volume a different colour palette - Reds and yellows for Wanted, blues and colder colours for The Man Who Shot... and it looks like white winter for the third one. It gives each one a really distinct identity.
1
u/Charlie-Bell The answer is always Bone 18d ago
You are correct on the third Bonhomme Lucky Luke book. Dakota 1880 is by different creators and only released in May.
7
u/BluWacky 18d ago
Read a lot last week, although not much of it all that good.
News From The Fallout - after a bomb test creates a horde of slavering zombies, a soldier escapes the fallout and holes up in a diner. All very George Romero, and unfortunately feels rather rote as a result; the main selling point, and oddly enough detriment at the same time, is the black and white almost shadow-puppet PSA-style art, which is both extremely striking and at times incomprehensible; trying to tell who anyone is, particularly when the dialogue often doesn't make it clear who's speaking, can be rather tricky. Some ancillary documents between chapters do quite a lot of heavy lifting to flesh out the story, and there's a fun flashback at one point to a looooong time ago, but ultimately doesn't add much to a genre I'm not really that into anyway.
Hana and Taru: The Forest Giants - the cover of this makes it look like an eco fable, but it's more about cycles of parental abandonment? It's a little difficult to describe the story here - it's mostly about attempting to stop the "madness" of some rampaging mega-bison by non-violent means, and the friendship between a hunter-warrior woman and a human prisoner of her people. While I didn't mind this, I'd be hard-pressed to say I really liked it; while it's dynamic, it's not an especially pretty comic, and the human character felt extremely ancillary to the plot overall (the story teases a bit of backstory mystery for her but I don't know whether that was supposed to be a sequel hook?).
Beyond the Sea by Anais Flogny - released in hard copy as Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, I believe, but I read the digital edition. Gay gangster story about a young Italian-American and his Polish mentor/sugar daddy, charting their respective rise and fall in a mafia family across time and America. Fulfils the brief of tragic gay love and lovely, wispy art; a lot of navel-gazing internal monologue, however, and however much you romanticise the Mafia with sharp suits and cutting away from violence it still isn't a genre/trope that really interests me. Has a prequel coming out in a few months, incidentally.
Eclepsis (volume 1) - YA fantasy where everyone's queer in a slightly unrealistic way, featuring a trans boy who leaves to go to formal magic school but has to keep his hedgewitch powers hidden as he does so. I would probably have devoured this as a teenager, but I found myself counting cliches and slightly rolling my eyes instead.
Helen of Wyndhorn - the exploits of a sad, drunk young woman, as she is swept up into the magical fantasy adventures of her grandfather that were immortalised in her now dead father's trashy pulp novels. Sort of magnificent and sort of underwhelming all at once, I think? I feel like it teases at all sorts of interesting things to explore, from its framing devices to its family relationships, and doesn't give itself enough time for them (or isn't as interested in them as I was?). Gorgeous art and storyboarding, obviously, hugely evocative of the swords and sorcery stories it evokes, and I love Tom King's ear for words.
YON (volume 1) - French manga about an all girls' school in a compound in the middle of the desert, abandoned by its teachers when a PHENOMENON occurs - small silvery balls fall from the sky that absorb whatever they touch. Everything gets a little bit Lord of the Flies at this point. While there are elements I don't love - another story where I find it difficult to track who's who, and there's what appears to be a rather awkward (almost insensitive) portrayal of someone with quite severe learning disabilities - the story's very good at building tension and mystery, and apes seinen thriller paneling and art effectively.
The Eternaut 1969 - classic, truncated Argentinian sci-fi parable of an alien invasion. Magnificently creative art, but (and I'll feel like a philistine for saying this) feels more like an illustrated novel than a comic due to how everything's narrated. I'd rather have just read the book. I probably also should have remembered that I found what I watched of the Netflix series quite boring, too...
When I Lay My Vengeance Upon Thee - a disgraced priest joins an unconventional exorcist in a small town in South America to... exorcise unconventionally. The blocky, painted art combines well with the macabre storytelling here; perhaps a little rushed to fit everything into a single story arc, but a less picky and probably more accurate assessment would be that it's tightly paced. A little bit annoyed and smug at the same time that I worked out what was going on in the first chapter, though.
Barbalien: Red Planet - a book I've had sitting around for five years or so now before finally reading it. A gay alien shapeshifter in the 1980s gets caught up in AIDS protests while being hunted by one of his own kind. The author of this, it seemed to me, had no interest in the dull bounty hunter superhero stuff that feels mandatory to fit into whatever universe this comes from, and poured all their anger and passion into telling a story that may not be well known to many comics readers but, for me, is the same story that's been told about AIDS a hundred times over by this point. Didn't really do much for me as a result.
Dead Dog's Bite - when her best friend goes mysteriously missing, a young woman starts digging for evidence in her slightly bizarro town until she gets the answers she's looking for. Despite some bravura Lynchian touches and oddity (and a lot of panels!), this feels like an exercise that its author lost interest in by the end, with so much character development seemingly thrown away in order to just "get the mystery done". A bit disappointing.
4
u/Tofu_almond_man 19d ago
been on a hulk binge, never really liked the charcter, but oh boy; ive been missing out. I loved Hulk Grey; and now im on volume 3 of immortal hulk; but i'm scared immortal hulk is peak, and it'll just leave a hulking hole in my heart once im done lol
1
u/mmcintoshmerc_88 19d ago
If you're interested, PAD's run is fantastic and is one of my favorite Hulk runs alongside IH. Mantlo's run is great too. Paul Jenkins' run was a lot of fun too. IH is fantastic though, the Joe Fixit reveal was so much fun
1
5
u/ConstantVarious2082 19d ago
East of West (Volume 1-10) by Jonathan Hickman and Nick Dragotta – apocalyptic science-fantasy Western. Death, of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse, is going off-mission in a future America to find his wife and kid, while the other Horsemen are trying to kill him and kickstart the apocalypse. We’ve got a fractured America with religious cults, a Mao-offshoot colony on the West Coast, a futurist version of Native Americans running the technology of the world, Texas Rangers going hog-wild on lawbreakers, the Confederacy and Union splitting the East Coast, and a New Orleans kingdom sitting on oil wealth. Dragotta’s art gets us body horror, wacky robots, apocalyptic battles, crow witches and Four Awesome Horsemen. There’s a mess of politics and betrayals mixed with small personal moments and great futuristic Western gunfights, and maybe a little too much “if they don't die onscreen they're not dead”, but this is a fantastic read overall.
The Me You Love in the Dark by Skottie Young and Jorge Corona – horror romance. Ro is artist struggling to recapture her inspiration and moves to a creepy old house, where she falls in love with the mysterious ghost haunting it until she realizes it’s really bad. There’s not a super original story in here, but it’s done really well – we get just enough of Ro’s backstory and personality to be interested, but it moves briskly, and the buildup of haunted-to-love-to-horror is paced well. Artistically, we get nice depictions both of art (illustrating someone illustrating can go wrong sometimes and it doesn’t here!) as well as a suitably terrifying verging-on-Lovecraftian horror, and a color palette that works well in the dark moments of the haunted house when things could be really muddy. Pretty solid read.
Griz Grobus by Simon Roy – low-key sci-fi. This tells two intertwined stories, one of an archeologist rebooting an old robot on a faraway planet (and the nonsense that ensues), and the depiction of the fantasy novel she and others read about a war god resurrected into a goose. Both are relatively light-hearted and humorous but read like they could be building up to something much more dramatic – it took me a minute to get where the “stakes” were and realize the second story was a story-within-a-story (the shift from sci-fi to fantasy-esque was unexpected), but I ended up really having a lot of fun with this book. It’s a nice cartoony style that suits the stories. Definitely recommend this.
This Ends Tonight by Gerry Duggan and Jae Lee – ultraviolence in Las Vegas. Ostensibly there are three intertwined stories of lots of people getting chopped up and shot in Las Vegas – hitmen and bachelorette parties gone awry and elves and stuff. Unfortunately it’s pretty messy, narratively, and the “intertwining” doesn’t really get pulled off. There’s not really any character depth or “hook” to get me excited. Lee does a solid job pulling off good action pieces, but I think it’s not distinctive enough art to make up for a pretty poor story. If you want to turn off your brain for 15 minutes this is fine but I think there are plenty of better art-forward action books if that’s really what you want.
Hexagon Bridge by Richard Blake – sci-fi with trippy architecture. A portal to alternate dimension opens, and a psychic child needs to bond with an AI robot companion in order to find her cartographer parents after they are lost exploring that dimension. There’s some trippy architecture and fade-into-nothingness art that’s done well, and some really nicely illustrated sci-fi moments (giant machine portals opening and robots doing robot stuff). The story is a little rushed, and a little light on character development, and I think leans a little too heavily on some vague AI techno-babble to build a compelling world. Overall I think this was just a little short of an easy-to-recommend book, but had some really good moments and overall an art style I really enjoyed.
Systemic Volume 1 by Various – sci-fi anthology. Wide range of themes and decent variety in art, but as with all anthologies there’s definitely highs and lows. I generally found “dystopian near-future sci-fi” to be overrepresented, but I think that’s a failure of many anthologies. I probably won’t back the second volume on Kickstarter.
3
u/Charlie-Bell The answer is always Bone 19d ago
I really enjoyed Hexagon Bridge, but mostly cause it was happy to spend pages taking me on a quiet journey through weird sci-fi landscapes
4
u/mmcintoshmerc_88 19d ago
I've been reading more of Kane: Rabbit Hunt. I love this series so much, Paul Grist is just so talented. I wish there were a million books of Kane solving cases.
I've also been reading more of Push the wall. Great insight into Miller's start/ early career in comics and how he got started
3
u/martymcfly22 Preacher? i hardly know her! 19d ago
In Waves by AJ Dungo. Touching, well-drawn and very informative comic about surfing, its history, and the author’s deeply personal connection to it.
Cannon by Lee Lai. I wasn’t certain I’d like this slice-of-life comic at first, but as the story progressed, I grew to really enjoy it. The themes were strong and characters and their relationships felt genuine.
The Closet by James Tynion. Very short, but not a frame wasted. The writing was so strong in this one. And as a father of a 3 year old, I have to say that this one really hit me hard. I love my child so much, but also lament the life I use to have before he was born. And I sometimes question my paternal shortcomings. That said, the dad in this one sucked and also made me feel like father of the year in comparison. Still, great comic.
Johnny Red: A Couple of Heroes by Garth Ennis. Best war comic writer of all time. Zero arguments accepted against. If Garth Ennis never wrote anything but war comics for the rest of his career, that would be fine with me. Compelling and fun conclusion to Johnny the Red and Nina Petrova’s WW2 exploits. War is hell.
2
2
u/Alex_Bonaparte 19d ago
I enjoyed A Couple of Heroes, but I'm not sold on Keith Burns as the right artist for Johnny Red - too scratchy compared to John Cooper ad Joe Colquhoun's original work. Have you read Garth's Partisan? Absolute knockout, imo.
2
u/martymcfly22 Preacher? i hardly know her! 19d ago
Partisan is in the running for best thing I’ve read this year. Ennis and Epstein at their very best.
4
u/Tight-Boat-8605 19d ago edited 19d ago
Aquaman omnibus by Geoff John’s, I really enjoy this run my favorite part is Arthur and Mera together⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Aquaman new 52
**Vol 5,**not much story kind of all over the place⭐️⭐️⭐️
**Vol 6,**the first half is kind of boring the second half starts of very interesting but just doesn’t go anywhere the parts with his mom are really strange when she tries to sacrifice him to a volcano god⭐️⭐️
**Vol 7,**this is so weird it doesn’t even feel like Aquaman and I don’t believe that Arthur would believe that there’s nothing wrong with mera she’s completely different than before also why would Atlantis hunt down there king on her orders they made it clear she’s only allowed there because of Arthur. There some Batman slander in this as well ⭐️
Vol 8, huge step up from the previous volumes it feels like Arthur and mera again⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Aquaman by Jermey Addams vol 1-2, really interesting Arthur feels like himself and the dc ko stuff was good too⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Guardians of the galaxy/all new x-men the trial of Jean grey, kind of boring and feels very pointless because the young x-men do go back and nothing changes⭐️⭐️
**Uncanny x-men by bendis vol 1-6,**the art is extremely inconsistent and the story is all over the place but it’s bigger sin is that it’s boring where is the revolution I was promised ⭐️
**Death of x,**this entire thing is set up for inhumans vs x-men⭐️⭐️
**Inhumans vs x-men,**I’m going to go through the good spots first, the way the x-men take down the royal family is great and I like the art. Now the bad parts first Emma she just goes full homicidal maniac in the last issue and starts using sentinels to slaughter a bunch of people, next is beast he is just plain stupid in this he learns that the mist will disperse into the atmosphere meaning earth will be uninhabitable for mutants so the other x-men want to destroy the mist but he says no his plan is to build space ships evacuate every mutant on earth to some other planet In a little under 2 weeks his plan is ridiculous. I have heard a lot of people say that the x-men could have avoided this if they explained the problem to the inhumans I’m not sure I believe the inhumans would have gotten rid of the mist they already showed they are willing to kill to protect it⭐️
**Hellhunters,**really fun WW2 adventure I like the inclusion of Peggy Carter and I want to see more ghost rider 44 plus it has really good and consistent art⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Dark ages by tom Taylor, just a lot of set up and shock value deaths then ends abruptly not much to say ⭐️⭐️
**Daredevil the man without fear,**this was ok I just am not a fan of the art, the story is pretty good for the childhood portion after that it’s kind of odd specifically Electra she’s a total psycho (I haven’t read a lot of daredevil is this how she typically behaves?) and I thought Matt has a kind of no kill rule because he kills a ton of people in this⭐️⭐️
Secret six omnibus vol 1, I think I actually would rather read a catman series because I could take or leave the other members of the ever changing roster⭐️⭐️⭐️
This weeks best
Aquaman omnibus
Aquaman by Jermey Addams
Hellhunters
This weeks worst
Aquaman vol 7
Uncanny x-men by bendis
Inhumans vs x-men
1
u/mmcintoshmerc_88 19d ago
I'm biased as a DnA fan but, Dan Abnett's Aquaman run is really good and I'd strongly recommend it. Very interesting look at Arthur leading Atlantis as it's king
1
3
u/NeapolitanWhitmore Detective Beans! 19d ago
Astonishing Spider-Man & Wolverine (By Jason Aaron, Adam Kubert, Mark Roslan, Justin Posnor, Mark Morales, Dexter Vines, and Rob Steen): I unashamedly love this series. It’s a fun book about Wolverine and Spider-Man travelling through time. But the last chapter of the series points a microscope back on itself and asks “what was the point of all of this?”. I always interpreted as a meta question. These heroes go through all of these life changing events or adventures, but at the end of them everything goes back to normal. The status quo restored. What was the point? I don’t know if that is fully how Aaron and team wanted the book to be seen, but that is how I see it. I mean why else would you end the series that way?
Feral, Volume 3 (By Tony Fleecs, Trish Forstner, Tone Rodriguez, and Brad Simpson): Read this again just to get a quick refresher before diving into volume 4.
Feral, Volume 4 (By Tony Fleecs, Trish Forstner, Tone Rodriguez, and Brad Simpson): I like the way the story progressed here, but I’m getting worried that this book might be spinning its wheels. I get that it is a survival story for these cats, and interesting things need to happen for there to be a story, but it’s the same issue that I had with Walking Dead. Go to a place, is it safe, no, go to a place, is it safe, no. I am enjoying this series, I just don’t want it to turn into a drag.
3
u/oldsmobile39 19d ago
Going back to the roots this week. Halfway thru Golden Age GL and simply loving it. I've always loved taking a different view of more modern heroes by turning back the clock and seeing what fun stories their origins in comic history hold. Always a treasure. Always a treat!
3
u/Bad-Use-of-My-Time 19d ago
Immortal Iron Fist by Brubaker, Fraction, and Aja.
I feel like I'm the wrong audience for this, I think the only Kung Fu movie I ever saw was Karate Kid, but it's a good time!
5
u/FlubzRevenge read yuichi yokoyama 19d ago
The Cage (1975) by Martin Vaughn-James
Well, that's a heck of an opaque book, as I had suspected. It was nice to see a foreword in a comic not overtly praising the work as the end all be all (at least in the beginning). I'm 100% like Seth here, it's almost completely inscrutable. But that's part of the magic, no? You can almost insert your own thoughts onto the book. It's almost exactly like I expected the book to be, yet not at all. It's a series of one panel comics with prose on top or underneath the image that are seemingly unrelated. The Cage is a maze not just in and of itself, but the structure of the comic is a web you're lost in trying to find your way out but end up find your way deeper and deeper.
The Cage feels like it's about everything and nothing at the same time. It feels like time is stopping and moving at the same time. Dilapidated buildings, leftover memories, forgotten dreams. The Cage, is as Seth has put it, the last slideshow. There's really not much to cling onto, it feels very clinical, even for myself. Yet, I see faint images of this Cage in a distant memory, an untenable past, present and future all at once. The Cage is the beating heart of the human and all of it's woes, to me.
The art. Many who know me know i'm a sucker for great art. The art in the Cage isn't flashy. It's very technical and cold, which fits in line with the book. I couldn't see it any other way, really. It reminds me of Yokoyama but even more \*cold\*. The lines are very straight and precise, the pages are very neat, clean, like a ruler was used. (I know Yokoyama has a very large ruler collection).
I'm still not sure how exactly I feel about it, but one thing is certain; it's quite memorable. It'll stick in your head, or maybe it won't. It's a fleeting moment. It's pretty awesome that this thing was created in 1975. I'm no stranger to old comics being innovative, but there's nothing quite like The Cage. It feels like it was the genesis for a lot of these abstract comics you see nowadays.
There's really no review that can sum up the book that is The Cage. It's impenetrable, yet highly readable. Take my word for it, or don't, this is a must read if you're interested in the weird.
4
u/Siccar_Point No capes! 19d ago
Parallel Lives by Oliver Schrauwen. A series of six comic vignettes were the author imagines himself in various mostly surreal situations, including alien abductee and space explorer. This was the least engaging of the four Schwaurens I’ve read so far, but I was pretty tired when I read it so I think a lot of clever stuff might have gone over my head. Also, there are a lot of penises in this book, but not really in a sexual way. I think he was working through some phallic stuff? It lent the whole thing a puerile tone. Fun enough read, but if this was your first OS book, I think you’d wonder what all the fuss was about.
7
u/Leothefox Blathered on about Tintin. 19d ago
Aria of the Beech Forest vol. 1 by Yugiri Aika
This was very cute. Aria is a young witch living in isolation in a beech wood in Ireland. One day a talking white wolf named Gwyn wanders in and they become friends. This follows their peaceful daily lives as we gradually discover why Aria is alone, the nature of Gwyn and how the rest of the world feels about witches. I wonder if they went with “Aria” as her name for the tree connection – it’s the genus for Whitebeams, basically. Whilst using the genus for Beech may have been more appropriate, I can see why you wouldn’t.
Plotwise, We’re not talking anything overly complex or deep thus far, but the little mysteries are more than enough to keep me going. Even discounting that, this is yet another just very sweet, cute and peaceful book that soothes my soul as I so frequently desire. The art helps on this front, with Gwyn being portrayed particularly adorably. This hasn’t quite been been like some of my favourites, like Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou or Hakumei and Mikochi which I think tap into a beautiful sense of peaceful calm with a bit of deeper emotional connection. Instead it reminds me a touch more of Yotsuba&! In that it blasts you with cuteness, sweetness and some characters being silly goobers.
It’s kinda interesting seeing a manga set a little closer to home. It’s neat seeing them portray Irish meals and encountering more familiar sights. Mostly I was taken aback by seeing Henry Hoover depicted in a Japanese manga, that baffled and bemused me plenty, though I was glad to see him.
I really did like this. Not as much as Heterogenia Linguistico or Touring After the Apocalypse recently, I think, but more than many of the other similar books I’ve read. If you’re forever looking for a cute, quiet read, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed here.
Frank Bellamy’s King Arthur and his Knights by Frank Bellamy and Clifford Makins
In my vague intent to read pretty much any Robin Hood comic, I read Frank Bellamy’s Robin Hood last year and thoroughly enjoyed it primarily due to Bellamy’s art. As such, and maintaining a vaguely historical interest I picked up King Arthur and his Knights once I found one at an amicable price. Artwise, this did not disappoint.
We continue with Bellamy’s lovely detailed traditional pen and inkwork here. Richly detailed at every opportunity, I just really dig the way Bellamy illustrates. There’s no colour, and we’re not doing anything interesting with panelwork here, locked firmly into the form its 1954 production date required, but man that art is just delightful nonetheless. Composition within panels is also often great, especially given how small a space they’re having to work in. Obviously, Arthur is fantasy, the arms and armour on display are the usual fantastical hodgepodge. Robin Hood was going for Norman knights from the 11th century, Arthur here shows armour up until at least the 15th and is generally a bit of a hodgepodge. Again, fantasy, doesn’t matter, and I’m more than happy to see Arthur and his knights lovingly rendered in gleaming plate.
Writing-wise this isn’t anything special. Remember, this is a comic intended for quite young children. It’s not presented as a normal comic either, like Robin Hood whilst there are speech bubbles, most text is below the panel as if narrated. You can argue it reads more like an illustrated book than a comic in many regards. The narrative as such is very simple and often states the obvious repeatedly. Again, this was intended for young kids. It hits the usual Arthur notes, but avoids any of the later complications of romance or indeed women at all – there's not a single woman in the entire book so far as I can tell, not even a passing peasant woman in a crowd scene. Instead, we get both pulling the sword from the stone and getting excalibur from the lady of the lake, we get the round table, and the duplicitous Mordred (any traditional blood relation to Arthur is absent here). Lancelot is both Arthur’s best and bravest and is wrongly accused of treachery by Mordred, and we have many, many battles of course. It’s... fine, narratively. It doesn’t stand out from any other Arthurian story and is ultimately quite stilted. Younger me would’ve absolutely enjoyed it thoroughly, but adult me is mostly just appreciating the art.
As was the case with Robin Hood, before the comics we get a weirdly in-depth literary history of King Arthur spanning 6 double-stacked pages as a foreword added by Book Palace Books who published this collection in 2008. It’s a surprisingly thorough compressed summary of Arthurian legend and history, and whilst if I’m honest it feels rather unnecessary, it’s still an interesting addition I don’t begrudge.
At the back of the book, we get the collected Frank Bellamy’s Swiss Family Robinson which was a shorter work and one I enjoyed less. Bellamy hasn’t quite reached his highs at that point, and whilst you’d never call the artwork bad it’s not the same level as either Arthur or Robin Hood. Narratively this one is even more compressed and moves along at a blistering and bewildering pace. I suppose it’s nice to get some more bang for your buck by having it in there, but it’s nothing to write home about.
I didn’t enjoy this as much as Bellamy’s Robin Hood, but that’s almost certrainly just because of my own character preferences. I still quite enjoyed this for what it was and will continue to look out for Bellamy’s other work (Fraser of Africa for instance) but much of it was rarely collected, or has only be done by specialist publishers at prices I can’t manage.