On a whim I went to go see LES MISÉRABLES today (am I the only one who always wants to translate that and call it THE MISERABLES).
I'm not really big on musicals. I think the only ones on my list of favourite movies would be THE WIZARD OF OZ, WEST SIDE STORY (the bits without Tony and Maria whining) and WILLY WONKA. And I suppose THE MUPPET MOVIE would qualify. Other than those, I would re-watch stuff like BRIGADOON, THE MUSIC MAN, LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, MARY POPPINS or SWEENEY TODD if they were on. That's actually more musicals I like than I was expecting, especially considering I haven't actually tried to watch most of the others considered classics... But still, not a whole lot of heavy dramatic stuff there.
Anyway, I'm trying to watch more movies in the theatre, especially things that look like they'd benefit from the experience, and the trailer for LES MISÉRABLES looked pretty good. And I missed the start time of DJANGO UNCHAINED. My relative lack of experience with musicals and not overly great hearing means I sometimes have trouble picking up all the words in musicals, which is why I prefer to watch them at home, where subtitles and rewinding are an option, but I figured I'd take a chance. If I ever read the original Victor Hugo novel it was long ago that I forgot, but I know enough of the story from cultural osmosis that I was sure I could follow it even if I missed some words.
I liked it quite a bit more than I was expecting to. I don't know if I'll ever watch the whole 2 1/2 hour thing again, since it did drag in bits, but I'll definitely take a look when I can watch it at home and revisit some of the good bits. It took some getting used to just how much singing there was, compared to most of the musicals I like, but by about half-way through it began to seem odd when there were brief bits of spoken dialogue, like, "why didn't he sing that bit?" or something. And I did end up missing a fair bit of the dialogue, but it was worth it to see some of those visuals on the big screen. And a lot of the performers did a great job, with Anne Hathaway on the top of that list, and Hugh Jackman not that far behind, and those aren't two actors I've been that impressed with before. Not as convinced by Russell Crowe, but its kind of a complex role and I'd have to see it again before being too critical.
So that was a Sunday afternoon well spent.
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Friday, January 11, 2013
On the BONE hardcover trilogy...
 |
| Jeff Smith's BONE in convenient colour hardcover trilogy form |
A few people have asked me about the three volume BONE collection I mentioned in my year in review post, so I figured I'd post a bit more about it. You can also check out this post from two years ago when I got the first volume.
First off, that's red foil on the cover logos, so the books look much nicer than the scan.
Here's how the various editions look side by side, with copies of the Graphix hardcovers borrowed from the library:
And here's a comparison of the same page in each edition:
And the reading experience is generally better. The paper quality and binding is the same as the Graphix edition. I love the ONE VOLUME version, but the thin paper required to make a 1300+ page book practical means I have to constantly check that I didn't flip two pages at a time. The individual books are also lighter than the ONE VOLUME version, and lay open on a table better.
And the best part is probably the price. At $40 cover price, and often heavily discounted, the ONE VOLUME b&w softcover is still the cheapest way to read the series. The "Trilogy" versions are $27 dollars each, discounted to about $17 on major Canadian retail websites, so you can probably get the set for $51. The Graphix editions look like they're $13 softcover, $23 hardcover now, so a set of those would be $117 or $207, minus whatever discount you'd get. On Comixology the series would cost $86 for the nine collections, or $108 if you got the 55 individual issues for some reason (that might be the only way to get the original Cartoon Books covers, but you can find scans of those on-line pretty easily). And the colour ONE VOLUME is $150, sometimes discounted to as low as $90. So the "Trilogy" version, in addition to being the best way to read the series in colour, is also the cheapest.
So, bottom line, very highly recommended set if you want to read BONE in colour. The ISBN of the first book is 1443104809, you can get it at Amazon Canada or Chapters and should be able to find the other two there easily enough. Looks like shipping to the US would be about $14 for the set on either of those sites, which still makes it only $65 total. Or urge your local branch of Scholastic to release the books in this format.
Thursday, January 10, 2013
State of My Digital Comics Union, January 2013
So, as I mentioned, last year was the year I really got into digital comics. So some rambling thoughts on that.
Now, I've been reading comics on a screen for a long time. Mostly public domain stuff from before 1960, found in places like this, where among other things I read almost every non-Marvel story Steve Ditko drew in the 1950s. And I've even bought a few items as DRM-free PDF files. But I never found the experience very satisfying, more of a necessary evil to read some interesting stuff I either could not find or could not afford in print. The resolution of my computer screen (800 pixels vertical) was such that the only thing to do was constantly switch back and forth between a full-page view so I could properly read the art and a zoomed view so I could read the script and somewhat appreciate the linework. I also read some webcomics, which were designed for the screen and worked better, but didn't really keep up with any of them for that long.
Getting an Ipad last spring changed that. Reading a comic page in portrait orientation gives a vertical resolution of 2048 pixels, so over 2.5 times what I got on my computer, and the full image has over 6 times as many pixels. That makes it readable. Not quite print quality, except in the case of some especially poorly printed comics, but good enough for 2012, higher than the resolution most of the stuff was scanned at, and enough that some of the other advantages of digital start to weigh in. Having over 15000 comics and related publications, bringing more paper into the house is something to avoid.
So, first order of business was finding the right reader on the Ipad for those public domain comics, most of which are just image files bundled together into RAR or ZIP format archives. For the laptop, I mostly used a program called CDisplay, which has always worked pretty well, even with no updates in about a decade. And writing this post has paid off, since I just found out there's a newer program called CDisplayEX, which has most of the same features and some new ones. Have to try that out. But back to the Ipad, I still haven't settled on a single program. There are three of them I like, ComicBookLover (free), iComix (free) and Bookman ($3). Each has some features I like, but none has everything I want. I tried most of the other free programs and found them inferior to those alternatives. There are a lot of paid programs, but none seem that much better than what I'm using. Anyway, all three of those I have do the job, and provided they're well scanned the public domain stuff looks great on them, very easy to read. It helps that double page spreads, one of the big problems I don't think anyone has found an elegant solution for in digital comics, are rarely a consideration in those older comics.
So that provides me with some great reading, and a whole lot of entertainingly awful reading, on my screen. Let's go on to the paid stuff. I wrote a bit about the reading interfaces of the major platforms (Comixology, iVerse and Dark Horse) a few months back, and that pretty much stands. Comixology is serviceable, especially for shorter works, Dark Horse isn't quite as polished, but mostly the same in fundamentals, and iVerse is pretty awful. Still haven't found anything to buy on the Kindle or iBooks apps to test them out.
I'm still hopeful that the future, at least for major works, will be standalone apps, like the Eddie Campbell, David Lloyd and Hunt Emerson books published by Panel Nine. That structure just gives more flexibility to tailor the reading experience to the material, to include special features and to properly navigate something longer than 25 pages. Other than the Panel Nine stuff, the only standalone app I've really liked is for Eric Shanower's AGE OF BRONZE, with the first four issues up, in colour for the first time ever, and extensive historical and cultural notes for every page. The interface could use a bit of work, but it's functional, and $1 an issue for full colour Eric Shanower is a bargain. Unfortunately updates appear to be almost as infrequent as new issues of the print comic.
On the major platforms, a lot of publishers have embraced the "first taste free" model, either permanently or as a series of limited time offers. So I've gotten a lot first issues. Reading them has mostly been good practice at reading on the tablet, very few of them have interested me in going on and reading the whole series. Part of the problem is that the pricing still seems a bit out of whack to me. I tend to think a fair price for digital content, especially stuff you don't really "buy", meaning you're at the whim of a company staying in business and being able to provide continued access, is in the range of one-third to one-half of the cover price for a quality print edition. That takes into account that I expect to be able to get most wide-release print books with a discount of 20% to 40% off cover price. In practice, that means I'm not paying more than $1 for a standard single issue, and probably never much more than $10 for anything. Most publishers haven't really embraced a pricing paradigm compatible with my views, so mostly I'm only buying stuff on sale, which usually drops them down to the range I'm comfortable with.
I've still found about 50 items to buy, at a total cost of just under $100. About half of that is stuff which I already owned in some print edition, but liked enough to want a more portable version. That includes some Eddie Campbell stuff from Top Shelf, some of Larry Marder's Beanworld from Dark Horse and some Bissette/Moore/Totleben era Swamp Thing from DC. And when they've been on sale I've picked up a handful of older books I was mildly interested in but were either too pricey or too hard to find.
I did buy two books which were newly released in 2012 at their regular non-sale price, both from Top Shelf, one of the few companies that seems to share my ideas on digital vs. print pricing.
BLUE by Pat Grant is a bargain at $2 digital, compared to $15 for the hardcover. It's an entertaining first book from the Australian artist, with a strange story about aliens and growing up, plus a lengthy essay in the back detailing the history of Australian comics. It worked really well on the screen for the most part, as you'd expect for something that started as a webcomic, with a few awkward bits where there were double page spreads.
And Eddie Campbell's THE LOVELY HORRIBLE STUFF, in 2011 I would have definitely bought in print, but in 2012 I decided to try digitally instead. The $5 price felt right, compared to the $15 print cover price. It was a pleasant reading experience for an enjoyable book, although the 100-page length is outside of what works well on Comixology's navigation system. I didn't like it as much as some earlier Campbell work, but I think that had less to do with the delivery system than it did Campbell's heavy use of photographs and sometimes bizarre computer colouring.
Meanwhile, on the webcomic front, most of them do look better on the Ipad, so that's nice, but the real breakthrough for me will probably come from the introduction of Comic Rocket, a webcomic navigation service which makes it easier to keep your place on any number of comics you're reading and navigate them in a consistent way, while still maintaining the page format of the original site. I still haven't gotten around to exploring all the stuff I might want to read, but I'm much more likely to do so when I have the time than I would be without it.
So, that's the state of the union on digital comics for me. It looks like they'll definitely be a part of my comics reading going forward, though there's still a lot of paper coming into the house (currently in the mail, the second POGO strip collection by Walt Kelly and the third and final NEMESIS book by Pat Mills and various artists). There's still a lot of room for improvement in the general presentation, which I expect will continue to improve, and the pricing, which I doubt will improve.
Now, I've been reading comics on a screen for a long time. Mostly public domain stuff from before 1960, found in places like this, where among other things I read almost every non-Marvel story Steve Ditko drew in the 1950s. And I've even bought a few items as DRM-free PDF files. But I never found the experience very satisfying, more of a necessary evil to read some interesting stuff I either could not find or could not afford in print. The resolution of my computer screen (800 pixels vertical) was such that the only thing to do was constantly switch back and forth between a full-page view so I could properly read the art and a zoomed view so I could read the script and somewhat appreciate the linework. I also read some webcomics, which were designed for the screen and worked better, but didn't really keep up with any of them for that long.
Getting an Ipad last spring changed that. Reading a comic page in portrait orientation gives a vertical resolution of 2048 pixels, so over 2.5 times what I got on my computer, and the full image has over 6 times as many pixels. That makes it readable. Not quite print quality, except in the case of some especially poorly printed comics, but good enough for 2012, higher than the resolution most of the stuff was scanned at, and enough that some of the other advantages of digital start to weigh in. Having over 15000 comics and related publications, bringing more paper into the house is something to avoid.
So, first order of business was finding the right reader on the Ipad for those public domain comics, most of which are just image files bundled together into RAR or ZIP format archives. For the laptop, I mostly used a program called CDisplay, which has always worked pretty well, even with no updates in about a decade. And writing this post has paid off, since I just found out there's a newer program called CDisplayEX, which has most of the same features and some new ones. Have to try that out. But back to the Ipad, I still haven't settled on a single program. There are three of them I like, ComicBookLover (free), iComix (free) and Bookman ($3). Each has some features I like, but none has everything I want. I tried most of the other free programs and found them inferior to those alternatives. There are a lot of paid programs, but none seem that much better than what I'm using. Anyway, all three of those I have do the job, and provided they're well scanned the public domain stuff looks great on them, very easy to read. It helps that double page spreads, one of the big problems I don't think anyone has found an elegant solution for in digital comics, are rarely a consideration in those older comics.
So that provides me with some great reading, and a whole lot of entertainingly awful reading, on my screen. Let's go on to the paid stuff. I wrote a bit about the reading interfaces of the major platforms (Comixology, iVerse and Dark Horse) a few months back, and that pretty much stands. Comixology is serviceable, especially for shorter works, Dark Horse isn't quite as polished, but mostly the same in fundamentals, and iVerse is pretty awful. Still haven't found anything to buy on the Kindle or iBooks apps to test them out.
I'm still hopeful that the future, at least for major works, will be standalone apps, like the Eddie Campbell, David Lloyd and Hunt Emerson books published by Panel Nine. That structure just gives more flexibility to tailor the reading experience to the material, to include special features and to properly navigate something longer than 25 pages. Other than the Panel Nine stuff, the only standalone app I've really liked is for Eric Shanower's AGE OF BRONZE, with the first four issues up, in colour for the first time ever, and extensive historical and cultural notes for every page. The interface could use a bit of work, but it's functional, and $1 an issue for full colour Eric Shanower is a bargain. Unfortunately updates appear to be almost as infrequent as new issues of the print comic.
On the major platforms, a lot of publishers have embraced the "first taste free" model, either permanently or as a series of limited time offers. So I've gotten a lot first issues. Reading them has mostly been good practice at reading on the tablet, very few of them have interested me in going on and reading the whole series. Part of the problem is that the pricing still seems a bit out of whack to me. I tend to think a fair price for digital content, especially stuff you don't really "buy", meaning you're at the whim of a company staying in business and being able to provide continued access, is in the range of one-third to one-half of the cover price for a quality print edition. That takes into account that I expect to be able to get most wide-release print books with a discount of 20% to 40% off cover price. In practice, that means I'm not paying more than $1 for a standard single issue, and probably never much more than $10 for anything. Most publishers haven't really embraced a pricing paradigm compatible with my views, so mostly I'm only buying stuff on sale, which usually drops them down to the range I'm comfortable with.
I've still found about 50 items to buy, at a total cost of just under $100. About half of that is stuff which I already owned in some print edition, but liked enough to want a more portable version. That includes some Eddie Campbell stuff from Top Shelf, some of Larry Marder's Beanworld from Dark Horse and some Bissette/Moore/Totleben era Swamp Thing from DC. And when they've been on sale I've picked up a handful of older books I was mildly interested in but were either too pricey or too hard to find.
I did buy two books which were newly released in 2012 at their regular non-sale price, both from Top Shelf, one of the few companies that seems to share my ideas on digital vs. print pricing.
BLUE by Pat Grant is a bargain at $2 digital, compared to $15 for the hardcover. It's an entertaining first book from the Australian artist, with a strange story about aliens and growing up, plus a lengthy essay in the back detailing the history of Australian comics. It worked really well on the screen for the most part, as you'd expect for something that started as a webcomic, with a few awkward bits where there were double page spreads.
And Eddie Campbell's THE LOVELY HORRIBLE STUFF, in 2011 I would have definitely bought in print, but in 2012 I decided to try digitally instead. The $5 price felt right, compared to the $15 print cover price. It was a pleasant reading experience for an enjoyable book, although the 100-page length is outside of what works well on Comixology's navigation system. I didn't like it as much as some earlier Campbell work, but I think that had less to do with the delivery system than it did Campbell's heavy use of photographs and sometimes bizarre computer colouring.
Meanwhile, on the webcomic front, most of them do look better on the Ipad, so that's nice, but the real breakthrough for me will probably come from the introduction of Comic Rocket, a webcomic navigation service which makes it easier to keep your place on any number of comics you're reading and navigate them in a consistent way, while still maintaining the page format of the original site. I still haven't gotten around to exploring all the stuff I might want to read, but I'm much more likely to do so when I have the time than I would be without it.
So, that's the state of the union on digital comics for me. It looks like they'll definitely be a part of my comics reading going forward, though there's still a lot of paper coming into the house (currently in the mail, the second POGO strip collection by Walt Kelly and the third and final NEMESIS book by Pat Mills and various artists). There's still a lot of room for improvement in the general presentation, which I expect will continue to improve, and the pricing, which I doubt will improve.
Sunday, January 06, 2013
Looking back on 2012
Couple of days late, but year in review time, I guess. As usual, here for the Ditko and here for the Kirby.
Other than that, kind of a slow year for me in terms of new comics. It was the year I really went digital, after getting an Ipad. Print first, though...
USAGI YOJIMBO only had two issues before it went on hiatus so Stan Sakai could draw 47 RONIN. I'm not too interested in the latter, might pick it up when it's collected, and might take this opportunity to switch to either collections or digital for USAGI when it comes back. Not an easy decision to make, since I've been reading the book for over 20 years, and with back issue purchases have 198 consecutive issues, plus specials and such, and it's not a matter of quality since the book is still top notch. We'll see, still a few months before I have to decide.
ROB HANES ADVENTURES #13 came out, the first issue in three years, which was a pleasant surprise. Enjoyable issue with two complete stories by creator Randy Reynaldo.
Only one issue of SERGIO ARAGONES FUNNIES came out from Bongo, and the planned GROO/CONAN series didn't come out. Hopefully Aragones' health problems are all in the past and he can get those back on the schedule for 2013.
Picked up a couple of issues of Paul Grist's MUDMAN, and they were enjoyable enough, though I prefer JACK STAFF and KANE. Unfortunately, like just about every Grist project, it's fallen into a black hole of lateness, so I think I'm definitely going to digital or collections for that one.
Mark Crilley got out one book of his BRODY'S GHOST series. Good stuff, but I do wish it was coming out a bit faster. That really does seem to be a common problem with just about every new serialized comic book I'm interested in.
Alison Bechdel's ARE YOU MY MOTHER?, the long-awaited follow-up to her 2006 book FUN HOME, was pretty good. Maybe a bit too much about the process of writing, too "meta" as the kids say (do they still say that? Did they ever?). I want to re-read the two books sometime to fully form an opinion on them.
The only other new thing I've picked up is Hunt Emerson's adaptation of DANTE'S INFERNO, but I haven't gotten around to reading that yet.
Couple of new things I'd probably be buying if I went to a comic shop more often (I think I made fewer visits to comic shops in 2012 than in any year since I started going to them in 1988). Linda Medley made a surprise return to CASTLE WAITING and had three issues wrapping up the second book. I kind of want to get them, but at this point I'll just wait for the revised second book with the whole story. JOE KUBERT PRESENTS has some nice looking work from the man in the title, plus some new USS Stevens work by Sam Glanzman. If I was seeing it that would be hard to resist, but as it is I'm hoping for a nice collected edition. Ideally one of the Kubert material, along with more of his later work not available in other books, and the Glanzman stuff as the ending for a complete USS Stevens book. But I'd take just a collection of the anthology. And ADVENTURES OF AUGUSTA WIND is a pretty intriguing looking book from J.M. DeMatteis, which I'm sure I'll buy in some form eventually.
Spent a lot more on reprints, as usual.
CORPSE ON THE IMJIN AND OTHER STORIES BY HARVEY KURTZMAN, I just got and haven't had a chance to read, but just a gorgeous looking book. It's good that someone finally cracked the code on how to do a proper EC reprint series. Who knew you needed an Enigma Machine to figure out "creator themed collections, split by genre for the more prolific creators". I'm definitely going to pick up the Wallace Wood suspense story book. And I'm disappointed to find out, according to what I just checked, that the Al Williamson book that was supposed to come out last month is delayed a few months.
TALES OF THE BEANWORLD (BOOK 3.5) is a nice little collection of some of Larry Marder's colour stories to prepare for Book 4: Something More, coming... eventually.
It was pretty nice to see a reprint of the Goodwin/Simonson ALIEN - THE ILLUSTRATED STORY movie adaptation. I'd found a copy of the original a few years ago, but it was a bit fragile, so the fresh edition is welcome, and it's good that new people get a chance to discover it.
BONE - THE EPIC CONCLUSION is the third and last of Scholastic Canada's three volume colour hardcover reprint of Jeff Smith's comic. This is my favourite way to read the story now. Nice large pages, good paper, good binding, comfortable in the hand. And a really good story.
I need to catch up on some Osamu Tezuka. I got BARBARA a few weeks ago, but haven't got around to reading it. I think both volumes of the new edition of ADOLF are out, and I'll have to see if I want to replace my old 5 volume version.
I picked up GRENDEL OMNIBUS #1, which has all the Hunter Rose solo stuff by Matt Wagner and various artists, all in black, white and red. I think I prefer the colour version of DEVIL BY THE DEED, but the other stuff, most of which is new to me, has been pretty good, as I work my way through. Haven't decided if I'll pick up the later books.
DOUG WILDEY'S RIO - THE COMPLETE SAGA might be the book of the year. All of Wildey's published Rio stories, with as much as possible newly shot from the original artwork, plus two unpublished stories, one finished and one pretty far along but never completed, which means you get some nice looks at Wildey's pencils and work process. He seemed to work really out of order, with the ending of the story fully done while earlier stuff is still just sketched out, sometimes sketched panels on the same page as finished panels.
SHOWCASE PRESENTS SEA DEVILS #1 and SHOWCASE PRESENTS THE LOSERS #1 are two welcome big thick black and white reprints from DC, with a lot of Russ Heath in the first, and John Severin in the second.
And it was good to see DC reprint THE BIBLE by Sheldon Mayer, Nester Redondo and Joe Kubert.
And, somehow I missed this, the second POGO comic strip collection by Walt Kelly came out, and a copy is now on its way to me. A lot of other good comic strip reprints came out, but I'm way behind on almost everything.
I guess that's enough on comics. I'll get to the digital stuff in another post.
In movies, I've mostly been trying to make time to re-watch some old favourites and stuff that I should have watched years ago but somehow missed. I mean, re-watching THE USUAL SUSPECTS, FIELD OF DREAMS, WEST SIDE STORY, THE GODFATHER, WILLY WONKA, TIME BANDITS, THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION and THAT THING YOU DO (that was just December) makes me wonder why I'd ever want to see a new movie again. But I did see a few.
LOOPER was a nice diversion, with a few clever bits, all of which completely fall apart once you start thinking about what's going on, even more than most time travel stories, but pretty good as long as you can avoid that trap.
RED TAILS had some decent bits, enough to be worth seeing, but was a pretty uneven movie overall. A shame, as the Tuskegee Airmen story is pretty interesting, and could have led to a much better movie. Not that I think very many more people would have seen it if it had been a better film.
CHRONICLE wasn't too bad. The "found footage" conceit was kind of strained, especially in the early going, but it led to some pretty clever visuals in the second half. Some very good effects in the super-powers and their "real-world" consequences.
THE DARK KNIGHT RISES wasn't, I guess, a bad movie, but it wasn't a very good Batman movie. A shame, as I thought Nolan had a pretty valid interpretation of Batman from the first two movies, but after this I think I was reading in some things that weren't there and ignoring some things that were. Glad to see the end of this version of the character.
When I saw THE HOBBIT a few weeks ago, I walked out of the theater thinking it was one of the worst movies I ever saw. I've softened a bit on that, but I still think it's far from good, and is so far inferior to the LORD OF THE RINGS movies that it's hard to believe most of the same people are involved. Won't be going to see the next two (at least not in theaters), and overall I'm just confused that most people seem to like it as much as they do.
On the other hand, I've been hearing for months that JOHN CARTER is really good, but Disney screwed up the marketing (deliberately or otherwise), and dismissed that. I've now seen it on DVD, and I'll say now that I was wrong. I thought it was a great movie, something I'd never expect from the handful of ads I saw, and now really wish I'd seen it on the big screen with an audience. I can't remember the last new action/adventure movie I saw that worked as well as this, with good pacing, a plot reasonably faithful to the source, if I remember correctly (it's been a while since I read Burroughs), with changes that made sense, rather than being gratuitous, funny bits that were actually funny (as opposed to every attempt at humour in THE HOBBIT), solid special effects, mostly good acting. The movie they put out clearly was not the movie they were selling. No clue if that was deliberate or just run-of-the-mill incompetence, but I'm kind of upset now that the chance of a sequel seems remote.
On TV, I think KEY AND PEELE is a pretty great sketch comedy show, and may be my favourite show now. I liked the final season of COMMUNITY for the most part, uneven but more good than bad, and always watchable and re-watchable. I liked some of the episodes of LOUIE a lot this year, in particular the story with Robin Williams (as a character) and the one with Marc Maron (as himself), and parts of the "Late Night" plot. Almost caught up on BREAKING BAD, which has been pretty spectacular. MAD MEN is still good, but not as good as it was. DEXTER, already on a long downward spiral since the Trinity Killer season, went right down the drain, so I think I'm done with it. Still enjoy THE COLBERT REPORT and THE DAILY SHOW, though I skip over huge chunks of both (about half the interviews, and most of the field pieces on THE DAILY SHOW). I watch THE LATE SHOW WITH CRAIG FERGUSON sometimes, and mostly enjoy what I see.
The only music I bought this year was the new Bob Dylan album, TEMPEST. And that was the first time I bought an album digitally, which makes sense since I don't think I've touched any of my CDs in over a year. A couple of good songs on there, but that title song, a 14 minute song about the Titanic, is kind of ridiculous. If Dylan of old did an epic song about the Titanic, it might be about hubris, or class, or something bigger than a boat sinking. This is a song about a boat sinking.
Other than that, kind of a slow year for me in terms of new comics. It was the year I really went digital, after getting an Ipad. Print first, though...
USAGI YOJIMBO only had two issues before it went on hiatus so Stan Sakai could draw 47 RONIN. I'm not too interested in the latter, might pick it up when it's collected, and might take this opportunity to switch to either collections or digital for USAGI when it comes back. Not an easy decision to make, since I've been reading the book for over 20 years, and with back issue purchases have 198 consecutive issues, plus specials and such, and it's not a matter of quality since the book is still top notch. We'll see, still a few months before I have to decide.
ROB HANES ADVENTURES #13 came out, the first issue in three years, which was a pleasant surprise. Enjoyable issue with two complete stories by creator Randy Reynaldo.
Only one issue of SERGIO ARAGONES FUNNIES came out from Bongo, and the planned GROO/CONAN series didn't come out. Hopefully Aragones' health problems are all in the past and he can get those back on the schedule for 2013.
Picked up a couple of issues of Paul Grist's MUDMAN, and they were enjoyable enough, though I prefer JACK STAFF and KANE. Unfortunately, like just about every Grist project, it's fallen into a black hole of lateness, so I think I'm definitely going to digital or collections for that one.
Mark Crilley got out one book of his BRODY'S GHOST series. Good stuff, but I do wish it was coming out a bit faster. That really does seem to be a common problem with just about every new serialized comic book I'm interested in.
Alison Bechdel's ARE YOU MY MOTHER?, the long-awaited follow-up to her 2006 book FUN HOME, was pretty good. Maybe a bit too much about the process of writing, too "meta" as the kids say (do they still say that? Did they ever?). I want to re-read the two books sometime to fully form an opinion on them.
DOTTER OF HER FATHER'S EYES by Mary Talbot and her husband Bryan was entertaining, about the relationships between James Joyce and his daughter and between Mary Talbot and her father, a Joycean scholar. Still, I keep hoping every new Bryan Talbot book will live up to SUNDERLAND or ONE BAD RAT or ARKWRIGHT, and so far the last few haven't. I guess that's the problem when a creator has set the bar so high with earlier projects that just "very good" becomes a letdown.
The only other new thing I've picked up is Hunt Emerson's adaptation of DANTE'S INFERNO, but I haven't gotten around to reading that yet.
Couple of new things I'd probably be buying if I went to a comic shop more often (I think I made fewer visits to comic shops in 2012 than in any year since I started going to them in 1988). Linda Medley made a surprise return to CASTLE WAITING and had three issues wrapping up the second book. I kind of want to get them, but at this point I'll just wait for the revised second book with the whole story. JOE KUBERT PRESENTS has some nice looking work from the man in the title, plus some new USS Stevens work by Sam Glanzman. If I was seeing it that would be hard to resist, but as it is I'm hoping for a nice collected edition. Ideally one of the Kubert material, along with more of his later work not available in other books, and the Glanzman stuff as the ending for a complete USS Stevens book. But I'd take just a collection of the anthology. And ADVENTURES OF AUGUSTA WIND is a pretty intriguing looking book from J.M. DeMatteis, which I'm sure I'll buy in some form eventually.
Spent a lot more on reprints, as usual.
CORPSE ON THE IMJIN AND OTHER STORIES BY HARVEY KURTZMAN, I just got and haven't had a chance to read, but just a gorgeous looking book. It's good that someone finally cracked the code on how to do a proper EC reprint series. Who knew you needed an Enigma Machine to figure out "creator themed collections, split by genre for the more prolific creators". I'm definitely going to pick up the Wallace Wood suspense story book. And I'm disappointed to find out, according to what I just checked, that the Al Williamson book that was supposed to come out last month is delayed a few months.
TALES OF THE BEANWORLD (BOOK 3.5) is a nice little collection of some of Larry Marder's colour stories to prepare for Book 4: Something More, coming... eventually.
It was pretty nice to see a reprint of the Goodwin/Simonson ALIEN - THE ILLUSTRATED STORY movie adaptation. I'd found a copy of the original a few years ago, but it was a bit fragile, so the fresh edition is welcome, and it's good that new people get a chance to discover it.
BONE - THE EPIC CONCLUSION is the third and last of Scholastic Canada's three volume colour hardcover reprint of Jeff Smith's comic. This is my favourite way to read the story now. Nice large pages, good paper, good binding, comfortable in the hand. And a really good story.
I need to catch up on some Osamu Tezuka. I got BARBARA a few weeks ago, but haven't got around to reading it. I think both volumes of the new edition of ADOLF are out, and I'll have to see if I want to replace my old 5 volume version.
I picked up GRENDEL OMNIBUS #1, which has all the Hunter Rose solo stuff by Matt Wagner and various artists, all in black, white and red. I think I prefer the colour version of DEVIL BY THE DEED, but the other stuff, most of which is new to me, has been pretty good, as I work my way through. Haven't decided if I'll pick up the later books.
DOUG WILDEY'S RIO - THE COMPLETE SAGA might be the book of the year. All of Wildey's published Rio stories, with as much as possible newly shot from the original artwork, plus two unpublished stories, one finished and one pretty far along but never completed, which means you get some nice looks at Wildey's pencils and work process. He seemed to work really out of order, with the ending of the story fully done while earlier stuff is still just sketched out, sometimes sketched panels on the same page as finished panels.
SHOWCASE PRESENTS SEA DEVILS #1 and SHOWCASE PRESENTS THE LOSERS #1 are two welcome big thick black and white reprints from DC, with a lot of Russ Heath in the first, and John Severin in the second.
And it was good to see DC reprint THE BIBLE by Sheldon Mayer, Nester Redondo and Joe Kubert.
I guess that's enough on comics. I'll get to the digital stuff in another post.
In movies, I've mostly been trying to make time to re-watch some old favourites and stuff that I should have watched years ago but somehow missed. I mean, re-watching THE USUAL SUSPECTS, FIELD OF DREAMS, WEST SIDE STORY, THE GODFATHER, WILLY WONKA, TIME BANDITS, THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION and THAT THING YOU DO (that was just December) makes me wonder why I'd ever want to see a new movie again. But I did see a few.
LOOPER was a nice diversion, with a few clever bits, all of which completely fall apart once you start thinking about what's going on, even more than most time travel stories, but pretty good as long as you can avoid that trap.
RED TAILS had some decent bits, enough to be worth seeing, but was a pretty uneven movie overall. A shame, as the Tuskegee Airmen story is pretty interesting, and could have led to a much better movie. Not that I think very many more people would have seen it if it had been a better film.
CHRONICLE wasn't too bad. The "found footage" conceit was kind of strained, especially in the early going, but it led to some pretty clever visuals in the second half. Some very good effects in the super-powers and their "real-world" consequences.
THE DARK KNIGHT RISES wasn't, I guess, a bad movie, but it wasn't a very good Batman movie. A shame, as I thought Nolan had a pretty valid interpretation of Batman from the first two movies, but after this I think I was reading in some things that weren't there and ignoring some things that were. Glad to see the end of this version of the character.
When I saw THE HOBBIT a few weeks ago, I walked out of the theater thinking it was one of the worst movies I ever saw. I've softened a bit on that, but I still think it's far from good, and is so far inferior to the LORD OF THE RINGS movies that it's hard to believe most of the same people are involved. Won't be going to see the next two (at least not in theaters), and overall I'm just confused that most people seem to like it as much as they do.
On the other hand, I've been hearing for months that JOHN CARTER is really good, but Disney screwed up the marketing (deliberately or otherwise), and dismissed that. I've now seen it on DVD, and I'll say now that I was wrong. I thought it was a great movie, something I'd never expect from the handful of ads I saw, and now really wish I'd seen it on the big screen with an audience. I can't remember the last new action/adventure movie I saw that worked as well as this, with good pacing, a plot reasonably faithful to the source, if I remember correctly (it's been a while since I read Burroughs), with changes that made sense, rather than being gratuitous, funny bits that were actually funny (as opposed to every attempt at humour in THE HOBBIT), solid special effects, mostly good acting. The movie they put out clearly was not the movie they were selling. No clue if that was deliberate or just run-of-the-mill incompetence, but I'm kind of upset now that the chance of a sequel seems remote.
On TV, I think KEY AND PEELE is a pretty great sketch comedy show, and may be my favourite show now. I liked the final season of COMMUNITY for the most part, uneven but more good than bad, and always watchable and re-watchable. I liked some of the episodes of LOUIE a lot this year, in particular the story with Robin Williams (as a character) and the one with Marc Maron (as himself), and parts of the "Late Night" plot. Almost caught up on BREAKING BAD, which has been pretty spectacular. MAD MEN is still good, but not as good as it was. DEXTER, already on a long downward spiral since the Trinity Killer season, went right down the drain, so I think I'm done with it. Still enjoy THE COLBERT REPORT and THE DAILY SHOW, though I skip over huge chunks of both (about half the interviews, and most of the field pieces on THE DAILY SHOW). I watch THE LATE SHOW WITH CRAIG FERGUSON sometimes, and mostly enjoy what I see.
The only music I bought this year was the new Bob Dylan album, TEMPEST. And that was the first time I bought an album digitally, which makes sense since I don't think I've touched any of my CDs in over a year. A couple of good songs on there, but that title song, a 14 minute song about the Titanic, is kind of ridiculous. If Dylan of old did an epic song about the Titanic, it might be about hubris, or class, or something bigger than a boat sinking. This is a song about a boat sinking.
Monday, December 31, 2012
State of Comics "Journalism", 2012
It is now a full week since Frederik Schodt posted about the passing of Keiji Nakazawa five days earlier.
Of seven major English language comic book news websites, including six which have been nominated for the Eisner Award for Journalism, four appear not to have mentioned it at all. Of those, only one has been completely absent of updates since Schodt's posting. The others have all maintained regular posting, including numerous articles which could not have been written in advance for holiday posting.
Of seven major English language comic book news websites, including six which have been nominated for the Eisner Award for Journalism, four appear not to have mentioned it at all. Of those, only one has been completely absent of updates since Schodt's posting. The others have all maintained regular posting, including numerous articles which could not have been written in advance for holiday posting.
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Keiji Nakazawa, R.I.P.
I don't really have much to add right now beyond what I've previously posted on this weblog. In fact, one minor reason for the lack of posting on this site over the last little while was my complete inability to adequately write about Nakazawa's work, with three different unfinished posts still sitting in my drafts folder. It's been over two decades since I first read his work, and it still has some of the most touching and heartbreaking scenes I've ever encountered in any work of art.
Here's a collection of covers from Nakazawa's work as translated into English. If you've never read his work, find some of these and read them.
In addition, artist Raina (SMILE, DRAMA) Telgemeier has a short comic about reading GEN at age 9, which everyone should read if they're curious about the power of Nakazawa's work and the importance of comics.
Friday, December 07, 2012
GodCorp revisited
In honour of the incident, some images from Steve Gerber and Jack Kirby's DESTROYER DUCK #1 (1982), that strike a resonant chord now more than ever. Gerber and Kirby were always among the most prescient of creators to work in corporate American comics, and prominent on the long list of creators to feel the sting of the corporate policies.
We're long overdue for a reprint of DESTROYER DUCK, aren't we? Hopefully soon. A new generation deserves to be introduced to Booster Cogburn...
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