Did we restart this thread? Merge if so!
Just bought the complete Bone for a fiver in my local comic book shop. I've never read it but I've always heard good things, so I was excited to find a nice, heavy, well-presented collection for so little.
I also picked up the scraps from free comic day – an Avengers, some 25p Marvel thing, and something about teen girl superheroes. I doubt the last one is aimed at me. But, y'know, free.
I've been reading a lot fewer comics lately, but that seems to be a result of publishing schedules as much as anything; can't reneger the last time they put out an issue of Velvet.
About the only thing I still keep up with is Saga, which is somehow still exciting and surprising, over fifty issues in.
Bone for a fiver is an absolute steal.
The only book I read with any enthusiasm monthly is Ms. Marvel. Invincible Iron Man is okay, but Spoiler - click to showthey're looking like they're going to reinstate Tony Stark again, so that'll be much less interesting. Hopefully Riri sticks around in some capacity, but the last few issues have pulled up a lot of minor characters from various places in continuity (Blade showed up for… some reason, and Tony has a brother?), so I'm not really invested in it. I was also reading The Mighty Thor, but that arc ended pretty cleanly, and I don't have an urge to carry on, particularly. Spoiler - click to showAgain, reinstating the Odinson as Thor just feels lazy and uninteresting. I wish they'd make a change to a major character that actually stuck for once. The comic book obsession with the status quo (seriously, Tony Stark is about 90 and still looks like 2008 RDJ) is really fucking dull, and I'm hoping that the MCU is going to have to make this shit matter once contracts start expiring in a couple movies' time. Replace, don't recast!
I've not bothered with the super hero stuff. Picked up Barriers and Relay on FCBD, the former is getting alot of positive noise but I preferred the latter but maybe not enough to continue with further issues. I have been buying Robert Kirkman's new book Oblivion Song which I'm intrigued by, likewise Highest House (which has the added benefit of being utterly gorgeous). I've given Isola a go too and the back of the guys at my local comic shop suggesting it based on my love of Ghibli and Princess Mononoke in particular and this week I've read Death or Glory which I think I'm gonna add to my pull list.
I'm stuck in Manga land forever. T_T
What's good in manga these days? I'm more interested in stuff that isn't a thousand volumes of teenagers punching each other.
Errr, I'm not really the right person to ask, the last manga I bought were either the Monster Hunter one (which is scarily true to the game, I like it) or romance(/drama) which I…don't think anyone here would like. I also bought Kakegurui which is technically a manga about gambling but it's really about a compulsive gambler who goes to a school where you gamble (and getting into debt is pretty dire) for status I guess, the fun comes from seeing people throw ludicrous amounts of money on the table and it basically devolves into Yumeko deducing how her opponent is cheating while still winning, also the stakes are usually something painful.
I dunno' what people are talking about that is actually good nowadays either, I only really go full sheep for anime.
And remember when I used to read shonen stuff, those were the days.
or romance(/drama) which I…don't think anyone here would like
The only two manga I'm certain I've finished are Kare Kano and Marmalade Boy, so fear not.
Everything is downhill from White Album 2 tbqh. Which isn't a manga but still.
Spoiler - click to showAgain, reinstating the Odinson as Thor just feels lazy and uninteresting. I wish they'd make a change to a major character that actually stuck for once. The comic book obsession with the status quo (seriously, Tony Stark is about 90 and still looks like 2008 RDJ) is really fucking dull, and I'm hoping that the MCU is going to have to make this shit matter once contracts start expiring in a couple movies' time. Replace, don't recast!
Didn't they go back to the status quo because the new diverse heroes weren't selling? Or is that just internet rumour nonsense? (I hope it is…)
Marvel has pointed the finger at diversity being a sales problem, but I've seen a bunch of articles that lay the blame on, variously:
Here's a New York Times article that goes into some of this stuff, but a google for 'Marvel sales diversity' will pull up a bunch more.
And here's a quote from G. Willow Wilson, the author of the excellent Kamala Khan Ms. Marvel series:
On a practical level, this is not really a story about “diversity” at all. It’s a story about the rise of YA comics. If you look at it that way, the things that sell and don’t sell (AND THE MARKETS THEY SELL IN VS THE MARKETS THEY DON’T SELL IN) start to make a different kind of sense.
DC apparently isn't seeing as big a slump as Marvel, even though they have pretty diverse books - they just have fewer titles and have a lighter hand with regards to sales.
I'm about 150 pages (of 1200 total) into Bone, and it's flipping brilliant.
Apparently it gets better/more serious later (not that those two things have to go together), so I'm interested to see how the weird moomin things cope with that transition.
There's something about the black and white panels that is endlessly appealing. I got a bit exhausted by the Walking Dead's monochrome, but here it's just a joy. It's all so clean, and the way he plays with contrasts is fantastic.
I really want to read it again now.
So, a quick note re: diversity in comics not shifting units.
That's kind of true and also total bollocks. Because the brick-and-mortar approach that Diamond (the single, monopolistic distributor of DC and Marvel comics - Diamond have done some incredibly shady shit in the past) take when doing distribution, they have something of a refuse to show off digital sales. They also show tend to ignore collected issues when they talk about sales figures. The guy at Marvel that said "What we heard was that people didn’t want any more diversity. They didn’t want female characters out there. I don’t know that that’s really true, but that’s what we saw in sales" is someone that worked at Diamond and has a pretty vested interest in keeping the status quo as it is right now, especially given the context of being at a vendor led discussion panel.
For the last few decades, single issues have been the deciding metric for how well your comic is doing. The top 10 is dominated by the heavy hitters. Batman and The Avengers usually squabble over #1, Spider-Man, X-Men, Justice League and an Event Book filling in the rest of it. These figures only take into account single issues, though. (sidenote: expecting Squirrel Girl to do as well as X-Men is kind of bonkers, which is something that I've seen used as a metric: 'how many batmans did you do in a month') These figures are also pretty fuckin' unhelpful at the best of times, because they're based on how many copies a store ordered via Diamond. What leaves the comic book shop shelves isn't important in this discussion.
As soon as you start looking at collected issues you see very different buying habits.
Collected editions are dominated by Saga, The Wicked and the Divine, PaperGirls, and Monstress. Of the titles that do well in single issues, only Batman shows up in collected edition. The rest of that list is fucking jammed full with titles like this: Wonder Woman, Captain Phasma, Rat Queens, Harley Quinn, DC SuperHero Girls, Paper Girls, Thor. Ms Marvel reached the top of the New York Times best seller list. No one does that anymore.
It's almost like an environment setup and operated by nerd blokes for nerd blokes tends to be exclusionary to people that aren't nerd blokes, so they just order collected editions off amazon instead where they don't get called a fake geek girl or whatever the fuck. Despite the fact that there are just as many female comic book fans as male ones (based on comic con attendance figures and theater audiences), comics are still often seen as a male pursuit, and bricks-and-mortar comic book shops are often intimidating places for minority geeks. Geekdom is filled with stories of minorities being made to feel uncomfortable or unwelcome in a traditional comic book retailer. Comic book stores can also be confusing for newer fans - unlike bookstores and libraries, single issues aren't simply lined up on a shelf in alphabetical order, and finding what they want can be a daunting prospect for newbies. Even if someone is aware of the concept of a pull-list, finding the confidence to ask a surly store owner about setting one up can simply be too intimidating.
Single Issues are what keeps specialist retailers alive, and they're what keep Diamond going even though the vast majority of the industry is moving harder towards European style collected edition releases. Retailers are in a panic and Diamond are banging the drum to keep their monopoly alive and well. Last year, collected editions saw sales rise by about 15% even as single issues continued to die on their arse.
All of this (literally all of this) ignores digital sales. Comixology and Marvel Unlimited are fuckin' ignored in all of these conversations. Digital comic purchasing isn't taken into proper consideration when seeing how well something's sold in a month. The way people buy comics has changed, but the company that reports these figures hasn't and risks losing their mealticket if this change continues to happen.
Now that you mention it, I don't think I've ever bought a single issue in a store. The monthly books I do buy, I get digitally, and the vast majority of all the comic books I own are TPBs.
Thanks luscan, very informative. 
I bought a few single issues a couple of months ago – got the first issues of Maestros (which is brilliant) and Ice Cream Man, as well as some Batman and Star Wars stuff. But then I stopped, because it's just too expensive for the amount of time you spend reading them.
I'd be spending under 10 minutes on something that cost 3 quid, and then it'd just take up space in the house. The trades are cheaper, more convenient and look better on a bookcase. I know that sort of thinking will be the death of trades, but whaddyagonnado.
Carlos Ezquerra has died. :-(
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/oct/01/judge-dredd-co-creator-carlos-ezquerra-dies-aged-70
Yeah, I saw that. Very sad. He was one of the all-time greats.
My comic book shop started a book club 18 months ago (as they also sell books, but they're primarily a comics shop), they've also now started a comic book club, first month we did V for Vendetta, last month we did volume 1 of Akira (and will be doing a volume of that every other month). This month we read a book I've never heard of, We3 by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely, it's quite good. I wrote about it (as I do all the books we read for both book clubs):
Basically, it's about 3 pets that have been turned into weapons by the US military who escape and everything turns ultra violent as they try to evade their captors and return "home". It's pretty violent but what I liked about it was that it does some cool stuff with its panels that you see more often in Manga.
Popping in to recommend a short 4 Volume Manga series called 'Our Dreams at Dusk'.Lst volume came out like a week ago, It's really good pls read it ty.
There are much nicer panels than this but it's a pain in the ass to copy images from google atm for some reason. Have a nice day.
I kept hearing the awful ads for Locke and Key on every podcast (the new Netflix thing), and assumed it was some sort of half arsed Harry Potter knock off.
Read the first graphic novel. Wow. Yes. Blimey. A bit grim.
Also, very interesting how much they changed "The Boys" from the comic. For the better in nearly every sense.
My friend Matt is a massive fan of Locke & Key but I never go around to reading them myself.
I couldn't get along with the art style. I've read the first 6-issue omnibus, but had to push myself through it.
Written by Joe Hill, isn’t it? His novels are great.
The art style is a little odd. But the story was very bleak and grim and I enjoyed it.
I might have to see if the Netflix series captures that, but I can't imagine it'll be as extreme.
I watched the first episode and they've gone for more of a Goonies family romp vibe. Definitely not the same tone as the books.
Written by Joe Hill, isn’t it? His novels are great.
It is! Haven't read any of his stuff yet.
Aha! Start with NOS4R2, it’s amazing. But all four of his books are great.
Guys, get ahold of These Savage Shores, it's a really great vampire tale set both in London and India, I read it last year but am re-reading right now as I'm hopefully meeting its author Ram V later on today
I read The Colony by Nicolas Debon last week, I got a PDF of it from NetGalley and wrote a review of you guys don't mind giving it a read
Aw man, was waiting for the turnaround but I guess it's a pretty sad story huh. And short, which I'm all for tbh, I read a short Light Novel recently and it was great.
I've never read any 2000AD but as this is free it's definetly worth a go
https://2000ad.com/news/free-to-download-400-pages-of-epic-judge-dredd/
TVM for this.
Yep, Dredd was absolutely on top form right then. Enjoy!
Still need to get round to reading that, got so many things waiting to be read (many of which I also need to write about) it's ridiculous.
One of those was Asterix in Britain, not the longest of books, but it's great fun
I got an advance copy of The Kingdom of the Gods to review for my blog, it's the Manwha (Korean manga/comic) they used to make the Kingdom series that's on Netflix
I've been burned by highly-recommended and -regarded comics before (most recently by All-Star Superman, which was a frustrating slog through rewritten(?) canon that nevertheless suffered greatly from my unfamiliarity with the minutiae of the DC universe), but the House of X/Powers of X reboot-of-sorts of the X-Men universe totally blew me away.
Initially bordering on impenetrable, thanks to a story that weaves together four or five different time periods in at least a half-dozen timelines, there comes a point about half- to two-thirds of the way through that it all clicks. I cannot imagine how bewildering this would have been to read issue to issue, and even collected into this intimidating trade paperback (it's a solid inch thick; by comparison my copy of Watchmen is just over half that) it's a tough start.
There's an uncomfortable tone to a lot of the book that I'm not sure was intended; the methods and arguments used and the alliances between traditional heroes and traditional villains for "the greater good" left me feeling faintly uneasy. It's all a bit "the ends justify the means", which was an unexpected approach from Charles "protect a world that hates and fears us" Xavier.
Despite the foreword's assurance that this is a good jumping-on point for new readers, I think a familiarity with the X-Men's comic history is kind of necessary to get the most out of it; there's a bunch of cameos and references to characters and events that benefit from at least passing knowledge, if only to give you enough of a foundation to accept some of the ludicrous names, convenient superpowers and weird plot points.
I'd highly recommend it, though. If you're interested in the X-Men (or non-linear storytelling), you're gonna get a lot out of it.
I've been meaning to try it, just not been managing to read much lately, weirdly.
I'm partly interested because I've heard good things, partly because I am quite interested in the X-Men, but also just because it's Jonathan Hickman, as I've enjoyed previous things of his that I've read at least some of (East of West, Manhattan Projects, etc).
Hickman has a real hardon for the greater good, the ends justifying the means, and tough men in tough times making tough decisions.
Hickman has a real hardon for the greater good, the ends justifying the means, and tough men in tough times making tough decisions.
I can't tell if this is praise or a damning indictment.
Hickman has a real hardon for the greater good, the ends justifying the means, and tough men in tough times making tough decisions.
I can't tell if this is praise or a damning indictment.
When you read his stuff monthly it's a pretty damning indictment of things. His Infinity story arc had the 'heroes' commiting planet-scale genocides. When you read it in TPB it's pretty 'whatever, none of this matters'
I guess it'll be interesting to see where it goes from here, then; at the end of the book it definitely feels like there's still another shoe to drop with the consequences of what they've done so far. Hopefully there will be some fallout to deal with, though what you've said doesn't give me a whole lot of optimism.
I guess it'll be interesting to see where [X-Men] goes from here, then
Welp, so much for that. I suppose I was expecting too much for the ongoing series to keep up the exciting parts of House of X/Powers of X – namely the multi-linear storytelling – but I wasn't expecting Dawn of X to hit the brakes quite so hard.
I guess it's inevitable that the limited-run miniseries, a revolution that's been planned and plotted carefully to reach a particular conclusion, could be so relatively ambitious, but there's just no energy to the follow-up trades. It doesn't help, probably, that each of these books collects the like-numbered issues of the six individual titles (X-Men, Marauders, Excalibur, New Mutants, X-Force and Fallen Angels), meaning that when a significant plot development does happen, it's more or less forgotten about until you get back to the next issue of that particular title.
It feels like it's laying a lot of groundwork for ongoing conflicts, but a lot of these characters (and their relationships) are pretty new to me, and it feels much more reliant on historical knowledge of those minutiae than House/Powers was. As a result, I'm finding it much harder to buy into the fight brewing between Apocalypse, Captain Britain and Morgan Le Fay in Excalibur, or Emma Frost and Sebastian Shaw in Marauders (though I'm kinda digging pirate captain Kitty Pryde), or literally anything happening with the New Mutants (despite its excellent art).
I don't trust that these storylines are going to reach a satisfying conclusion – assuming they have a conclusion at all.
Yeah, pretty much.
There's an incredible bundle of 2000AD books is up just now including the first five years of judge Dredd, All of Halo Jones, four books of Zenith, the start of Slaine and the first book or two of most of their biggest stories from the last 15 years.
Yoink!
A year of Marvel Unlimited is currently 40 quid so I've dived back in.
Anyone have any Star Wars Legends recommendations?
The entire Vader run by Keiron Gillen is extremely good if that's there? is that a star war?
It is there and it is very good.
Yeah I loved the Vader run. I've really enjoyed a lot of the new stuff, aside from some dodgy art in the main Star Wars comic.
I've started reading some Legends stuff - the now non-canon expanded universe. It's weirdly comforting knowing that a not-entirely-tragic version of Luke et al exist.