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Every year it's like Virginia gets exposed to more and more twisted poo poo, at this rate she'll be in a psych ward by the time she's 25. Orson is one of my favorite characters so I'm excited for the next arc. The idea of a nebbish dude getting manipulated into taking on the most dangerous guy in the series sounds really fun even though we already know how it'll go down in the end.
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Oct 25, 2014 06:46
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Michel Fiffe just announced Copra Round Two. While Copra Round One was this wonderfully driven and frenetic revenge story focused mostly on Benny, the issues collected in Round Two really opens up the scope and scale of the world and its characters. I was already sold on Copra within the first arc but every subsequent issue has reaffirmed my love for it. Expected release for Round Two is January 15 and it looks like the trades will catch up to the current issues in no time at this rate.
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Nov 3, 2014 21:54
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AmericanBarbarian posted:Has anyone else read the Wrenchies yet? It is super high quality, Farel Dalrymple blew me away. Most likely you'd be familiar with his work on Prophet, but Wrenchies is a much more mature solo effort. He also posts his project "It will all hurt" on Study Group comics website, so if you're interested go read it here http://studygroupcomics.com/main/category/title/it-will-all-hurt/ I finished this today. I think the one downside for me was how its metatextual elements became a bit strained and frayed near the end. The narrative muddiness sort of reflects the overall thematic murkiness of growing up in a hellbent, decaying world but then I feel that the metafictional trappings doesn't entirely serve those aims. There is a moment of hypostasis that sort of transforms the story for the worse, in my opinion, where the characters I was mainly invested in took a backseat to this one character who is pivotal to the plot. Hinging everything on this figure puts a damper on the rest of this cast, who are so vibrant and interesting in their own right, and who perhaps convey the coming of age struggles of the book more articulately in their own particular stories. It's a real shame that Chapter Six almost feels like a bad trade off because it is perhaps the most personal and autobiographical part of The Wrenchies yet doesn't really hold a candle to the earlier parts of the story for me. Despite this flaw, I still enjoyed The Wrenchies immensely. It apparently took five years to create and the artwork within its ~300 pages shows this effort. In the same way that I feel about Paul Pope's Battling Boy, I wish First Second would publish a super large version just to showcase the gorgeous art. There's a lot of fun cutaways of sprawling hamster cage-like underground bases that are filled with intricate details. Dalrymple also has this wonderful ability to paint and draw these evocative establishing shots that convey sheer desolation. There's this one particularly captivating scene where the group stumbles across a skeletal corpse watching the last scene of The Little Princess on a rundown television set in the middle of a crossroads, and something about this image just fills me with profound melancholy, especially in context with everything else that is happening in the story.
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Nov 9, 2014 22:50
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You know, looking back on what I wrote and having had time for the work to sink in, I want to take back my earlier criticism. Going "Oh, the metafictional parts didn't work" was uncritical and just lazy of me, especially since those elements are huge chunks of the story that underpin practically everything. I also probably shouldn't have assumed something is autobiographical or judged whether it was successful under those merits because I don't know what's in the heart of the author to dismiss a big portion of his work like that. I actually felt the opposite of you concerning Hollis, fatherboxx. He was the standout character of The Wrenchies for me because he fulfills so many important roles in it. His chapter is this nice bildungsroman in brief that illustratively lays out the thesis of the story. When he's brought into the world of The Wrenchies, he acts as an everyman narrator that identifies the emotional resonance of events when the rest of the cast is too accustomed or jaded by their world to acknowledge the impact of its many horrors. And most importantly, he serves as a direct foil for Sherwood. I think I was so down on Sherwood's chapter because he's meant to be a darkened reflection of Hollis; Dalrymple deliberately sets him up as a fallen character in his chapter so it is hard to find him likable with that onus hanging over him. If you look at both of their backgrounds, these two character are coming from the same place: youths who are want to grow up and do great but who are at the same time consumed and held back by their religious worries, self-doubt, and the weight of the outside world. The only difference is that we get to see Sherwood grow up and fall short of the promise of his younger years. His worse sin is growing older, letting time pass him by and forgetting his gifts and talents until they are used against him to corrupt the world. On the other hand, I felt that Hollis's story was actually earnest and sweet, not the parody that you felt it to be, and the book actually celebrates him sincerely. It's ironic that while Sherwood spends all his time creating the Wrenchies to ensure his later redemption, it is Hollis, the overlooked boy next door in the neighborhood, who serves as the catalyst for everything, which sort of highlights his actual status in the story. The Wrenchies are interesting in their own right but I think the true heart and dimension of the story is actually being told through Hollis and Sherwood, which makes it a more substantive tale than just some punks living in an apocalyptic world.
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Nov 19, 2014 04:45
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Apparently a lot of Baltimore's side matter stuff was introduced in Christopher Golden's novel. The comic gives a briefing on characters like Thomas, the doctor, and Demetrius, but I still had the feeling I was missing out on something essential by not reading the book.
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Nov 29, 2014 01:36
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Reminder that the first volume of Corto Maltese is being released this week. I'm personally waiting for Ballad of the Salt Sea to come out before plunging into it, but my completionist urge is tempting me to get this right away. Does anyone who's read this series before know if these early stories set up a lot of important things?
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Jan 4, 2015 23:54
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Cool, I might have to check it out sooner rather than later. Speaking of adventure serials, I received a couple of Moebius's Blueberry trades this Christmas and they've been immensely enjoyable. It's stuff prior to his turn as science fiction auteur but there's still a bunch of his recognizable trademarks present such as some really clean, crisp linework. You can sort of trace the evolution of his style as the series goes on and the art becomes drastically different. I think as a Franco-Western it also has its own interesting take on old west America. While I'll sometimes recognize familiar cues from some of the more famous contemporary Western films of the time, I think Moebius and Charlier still produce some fresh and distinct stories.
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Jan 5, 2015 07:36
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I just finished David Lapham's Murder Me Dead, his other big El Capitan re-release that kinda got overshadowed by the excitement of Stray Bullet's return. I remember seeing the ad for it in the back of Stray Bullets (along with previews of Lapham's sci-fi comic that ended up being a nonstarter) a long time ago and being really intrigued, but it was really hard to track down until now, thanks to a new printing by Image Comics. The subtitle, "A Harrowing Tale of Love and Murder", is really fitting. Murder Me Dead is a crime story in the mode of James Cain and Jim Thompson, filled with unpleasant and oftentimes irredeemable characters. I actually stalled out around page 100 and had to take a break from it for a while because things were so brutal. Whereas Stray Bullets will have stories of young, star-crossed lovers set against the world, Murder Me Dead's central couple is faced with the same external hurdles yet are unable to rely on even their love for each other. Disaster seems to follow Steven, the main character, from the very start of the story, and looms large even during the all too brief moments of reprieve and honeymoon love. It's just one of those stories where you know calamity is the foregone conclusion and you're really just waiting for the hammer to fall. It kinda then becomes an exercise in frustration as you watch Steven ignoring all sense and just self-destructively stumbling towards ruin throughout the story. I'm not sure I enjoyed Murder Me Dead as much as Stray Bullets. Lapham's artwork is very strong here and he uses his inks to good effect by painting faces with moody contrast or surrounding characters in the literal and figurative pitch darkness of prison cells and hostile city streets. But as an attempt at a full-blown noir story, I actually think Stray Bullets does a better job at noir within certain issues than this entire miniseries put together. For example, I think the genre explorations of the Amy Racecar issues in SB are Lapham at his most ingenious. Even though he's playing with the conventions of a genre like the Yojimbo story or a noir detective tale in a facetious way with his Amy Racecar issues, he still demonstrates a keen handle on the genre hallmarks in a much less by-the-numbers take than what you'll find in Murder Me Dead. I even think the moral of how love can be ruinous and self-destructive is told in a much more gripping and concise manner in just one issue of Stray Bullets (#20, "Hotel"). All in all, I'd say you could check out Murder Me Dead if you wanted more of the same but it's hardly essential in Lapham's overall body of work.
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Feb 19, 2015 03:32
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 Copra Round 2 is now up for preorder!!
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Feb 26, 2015 19:50
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TheQat posted:is it? I don't see a way to add to cart Sorry, I jumped the gun by about an hour, the online link is live now.
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Feb 27, 2015 02:52
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bairfanx posted:So, Fantasy Sports #1 by Sam Bosma is coming out from Nobrow this spring. It's a bit expensive, but it's a ton of fun and definitely worth picking up if you like fantasy/adventure stores/teen coming of age stories/sports. I grabbed Fantasy Basketball off his site back when he was offering it digitally for ~$2 and had fun with it. Bosma's new coloring and added pages in Fantasy Sports look slick but I'm personally going to wait on the next installment if he's planning it as a continuing series. EDIT: Looks like the digital copy of FB is still on sale if you guys wanted to check it out moot the hopple fucked around with this message at 06:41 on Mar 1, 2015 |
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Mar 1, 2015 04:13
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Lapham's art has markedly tightened up since the last series, it's as good as it's ever been now.
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Mar 20, 2015 05:15
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