November 10, 2006
And Now A Few Words About Comics, Two of Them Being Holy And Crap
So I'm looking at my inbox about 1:30 this afternoon, and I like anime, and I like a lot of the cartoonists who are going to be making appearances, and I really like con guest lists and support cons in general, and I adore giveaways and babies and TV deals and I even like Spider-Man movies, and I promise they'll all find some room here at the site but HOLY FREAKING CRAP A BUNCH OF GREAT COMICS ARE OUT. Look! Look! Look! Tell me there are three better experiences than going to the store or a web site or your mailbox and having a chance to read the following:
*****
A Super-Classy Presentation of a Top 10 All-Time Comic
Popeye Volume 1: I Yam What I Yam, EC Segar, Fantagraphics, $29.95, 1560977795
On top of the strip's overall awesomeness, Popeye is the third greatest character of all time and Wimpy is the greatest, although I'm not sure Wimpy shows up early enough to make this book.
Thimble Theatre is such a great strip that after reading it you'll distrust all other art forms for hours after you close the book, because surely they cannot be as absorbing and funny and weird and great as
Thimble Theatre.
*****
A Major, Popular Cartoonist Returns With New Work
Elle Humour, Julie Doucet, PictureBox, $39.95, 1584232463
How many questions about today's comics industry and comics community shenanigans can be answered, "I don't care; where's the new Julie Doucet book?" Pretty much all of them.
*****
A Fun Book From Someone You've Never Read Before
The Mourning Star, Kaz Strzepek, Bodega, $13, 0977767914
A
Cobalt 60 for the post-Fort Thunder generation.
*****
It wasn't even five years ago when
one of these experiences in a month or two was a rare enough thing you went to the comic shop the second you heard about any one of them, no matter how tired or poor you were. You just went. Today, you not only have the above, you have substitute examples for each of the above, you have Ignatz books and hand-sewn comics, you have a half-dozen or so decent mainstream serials, you have upscale re-formattings of rock solid mainstream performers, you have people offering up Dick Briefer reprints out of left field, you have a Brian Chippendale comic to go buy, and you have dozens of manga series worth sampling. It's all quite ridiculous, thank you very much. It's all quite wonderful, too.
It's easy to forget that the foundation for everything else that's important about comics are works of art that enlighten and entertain, not simply whatever news makes it to the top of yell-about-it mountain. These are pretty amazing times. Enjoy them. Read a comic!
posted 8:15 am PST |
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