longboxd

[longboxd]

Miyazaki writing about animation here but me, I’m thinking about comics🧐

[longboxd]

2022 comics reading log

In the early days of last year, I was inspired by some twitter mutuals to post my comics reading in the new year and kept it up from Jan 1 2022 till just about the bitter end. Something about it really helped keep me invigorated by the medium even in some pretty bleak times, so I’m going to keep it going this year, but here at Longboxd instead of on twitter, which I’m trying to spend less time at. Before I can do that though, I want to archive the 2022 entries in a spot that’s more permanent/less twitter-iffic, so here we go—pretty much every comic I read in 2022! (As transcribed from here)

Part 4: 84-101 (of 387)  

(I can “only” post 30 images at a time here, so that’ll dictate the length of these catch-up posts)

84) X-Force #11 - Not great, pretty nonsensical—you don’t even get the dubious pleasures of Rob L’s art from this era, it’s just some dude aping him. 

85) ROM #67 - However, Ditko inked by P. Craig Russell is delightful!

86) Detective Comics: The Neighborhood tpb

87) The Grande Odalesque - Very nice cartooning and coloring elevates what is essentially a dumb, fun, trifle.

88) HELLBOY: Buster Oakley Gets His Wish - Kevin Nowlan pencils inks colors and letters 😍

89) MARVEL SUPER HEROES Featuring The Incredible Hulk #91 - This coulda been 4 whole issues. I really like the Trimpe/Grainger art—has an almost cut paper quality to the brushwork, like a Nikki McClure illo

90) Jungle Action Featuring The Black Panther #16 - Wonky primal 70s superhero comics. As beautiful as it is wildly verbose, thanks to artist Billy Graham and colorist Glynis Wein.

91) Star Wars Annual #1 - This pre-Empire SW comic reads like a Heavy Metal backup (both in terms of the incest quotient and the Moebius influence)

92) Conan #152 - Buscema & Chan 

93) Swords Of Texas #1 - well, it’s no SCOUT😏

94) The Thing #5 - hat on a hat

95) X-Men #9 - Some people are apparently hating this run, but I a simple man who loves hijinx (and Nimrod)

96) Nice House On The Lake #7 -

97) Step By Bloody Step #1 - Green Knight by Joe Mad & Moebius, chock full of great drawings. 

98) One-Star Squadron #4 - I legit lol’d at that panel.

99) Human Target #5 - This didn't sit well on first read.

100) Love & Rockets #11 - talk about twists and turns!

101) 7174 Annual 2022 - I will be honest, I stopped reading the words about halfway through, but I’m always stoked to get a new one of Wood’s vibes-first comics and graphic design packages.

To be continued! Read Part 1 here

[longboxd]

Join host Zack Soto—cartoonist, editor and bin crawler—for In This Issue… a podcast about formative comics reading experiences, with a focus on the single issue format. Every episode finds Zack and a special guest doing a close reading of a comic book (IE not a graphic novel!) and havin’ a lively chat about it.

THE ISSUE:

Teenagers From Mars #1 By Rick Spears and Rob G

Published 2001 by Rick Spears and Rob G

THE GUEST: Dave Baker

It’s a New Year, and a new In This Issue…! Dave Baker (Halloween Boy, Everyone Is Tulip) joins us to talk about the turn of the 21st century and one of his biggest influences from that time: Teenagers From Mars #1, by Rick Spears and Rob G.  Tune in next time for another close read with In This Issue…

[longboxd]

2022 comics reading log

In the early days of last year, I was inspired by some twitter mutuals to post my comics reading in the new year and kept it up from Jan 1 2022 till just about the bitter end. Something about it really helped keep me invigorated by the medium even in some pretty bleak times, so I’m going to keep it going this year, but here at Longboxd instead of on twitter, which I’m trying to spend less time at. Before I can do that though, I want to archive the 2022 entries in a spot that’s more permanent/less twitter-iffic, so here we go—pretty much every comic I read in 2022! (As transcribed from here)

Part 4: 60-83 (of 387)  

(I can “only” post 30 images at a time here, so that’ll dictate the length of these catch-up posts)

60) Avengers Forever #2 

61) Avengers Forever #3 - Kangtown, USA

62) Moon Knight #7 - the way Moench writes the multiple personality stuff Is so camp

63) Moon Knight #8 - Frank Giacola on early Bill Sienkiewicz kinda feels like Ken Landgraf, I dig it.

64) The Silver Coin Vol. 1 - “Not since the days of Pat Moriarty’s BIG MOUTH have we seen…” 🤪 This was a fun inversion of the power dynamics of the “art showcase anthology” being driven by the artist-as-auteur rather than the other way around.

65) X-Men #7 - Duggan is really working hard to make a case for Cyclops and I’m starting to feel it just a bit.

66) Human Target #4 - What I was initially buying for the art has served me up a lot of nice JLI moments.

67) Grrrl Scouts Stone Ghost # 3 - probably the funniest thing I've seen in a while is some poor soul complaining that Mahfood's art doesn't look as good as it did in the Clerks Special.

68) She Hulk #1 - I would like more big 2 comics to realize that "some random person shows up" is not a good cliffhanger.

69) Monkey Prince #1 - haha, okay now THAT is a cliffhanger!

70) Super Sentai Himitsu Sentai Gorenger - I wish I could make comics this pure, brainless, and good.

71) Aposimz vol 7 - More oddly compelling, elliptical, atmospheric, sketchy wasteland and tunnel comics broken up by biopunk tokusatu battles 

72) Aposimz vol 8 - Interesting thing in this & the last volume is how the art has actually gotten more solid, maybe for speed, w/Nihei finding a new balance between his normal style and the super airy drawings of the first few volumes. (personally I like it better when it's less solid but 🤷🏽‍♂️)

73) Batman and Robin and Howard - A very fun, breezy bedtime read with my son. (He quickly asked about the existence of a follow up book as we finished, so hopefully there’s more) A large part of the book’s charm is the positive examples of social communication between kids that don’t immediately get along.

74) 2000AD Prog 387 (1984) - I got a short stack of newsprint 2000ADs. Look at this beautiful shit. I know “the best Kev O’Neill is his b/w work” but anytime he breaks out the dyes and markers I am so on board.

Inside cover, love the newspaper photo style on the Tharg illo. Cool Cam Kennedy and Ortiz pages.  Wagner/Grant and Ron Smith (who does lovely work here) truly doing the work to make sure people know that the Judges are the bad guys.

75) The X-Cellent #1 - Not exactly sure how I felt about this but it’s got enough of that old juice that I thought about picking up the next one (but didn't).

76) The Thing #4

77) One-Star Squadron #3 - Giffen & DeMatteis’ How To Get Ahead In Advertising wasn’t on my bingo card but here we are.

78) Dead Dog's Bite #1 - Stylish, but this kinda felt like if they’d roped Adrian Tomine into one of the waves of Vertigo comebacks that didn’t work.

79) Future State: Gotham #10

80) The Jam: Super Cool Color Injected Turbo Adventure From Hell #2 - A thin POD book of *mostly* new BEM, I'll take it however. Forever missing his ink on paper era, but I guess that's long gone—& “A Secret Bowman” looks about as good as anything he's done since going digital.(prints a little dark) The extra material is variable but fun enough.

81) X-Men #8 - MODOK makes sense as an X-Men foil. I like the soapy stuff with Synch.

82) Venom #5 - The way Venom is now Elric...

83) Marauders #21

To be continued! Read Part 1 here

[longboxd]

2022 comics reading log

In the early days of last year, I was inspired by some twitter mutuals to post my comics reading in the new year and kept it up from Jan 1 2022 till just about the bitter end. Something about it really helped keep me invigorated by the medium even in some pretty bleak times, so I’m going to keep it going this year, but here at Longboxd instead of on twitter, which I'm trying to spend less time at. Before I can do that though, I want to archive the 2022 entries in a spot that’s more permanent/less twitter-iffic, so here we go—pretty much every comic I read in 2022! (As transcribed from here)

Part 3: 39-59 (of 387)  

(I can "only" post 30 images at a time here, so that’ll dictate the length of these catch-up posts)

39) New Teen Titans Annual #3 -  this BLEW my 8 year old mind.

40) One-Star Squadron #2

41) Grrrl Scouts Stone Ghost #2

42) Avengers #99 - Starting to think I’m maybe just not a Roy Thomas guy.

43 Avengers #100 - Okay actually this one works pretty well! Raid on Olympus, all hands on deck, Hulk gets the best lines.

44) Giant-Size Marvel Triple Action #2 - one of the best ways to read comics reprints is a slapped together chunky floppy that’s just barely older than you and totally falling apart. Dig that Romita Doc Strange on the cover! 

45) Goiter Comics #6 - Tales of woe and existential dread, told as you like it (ie with definite 90s/early aughts alt comics vibes)

46) Tales of Evil #2 - Grotty little 70s antho. Essentially nonexistent stories with artwork from Jack Sparling (aiight) Jerry Grandenetti (interesting) and Tom Sutton (slickest).

These Grandenetti pages are neat—feels like there’s some Kreigstein/Master Race homaging going on here, but his bouncy line work and appealing forms remind me more of something like Jucika.

47) The Good Asian Vol. 1

48) Twisted Tales # 4 - Another Bruce Jones joint with art from John Bolton, Don Lomax, and Jones himself on art.

49) Twisted Tales #1 - More tales of horny horror from Bruce Jones, Richard Corben, Alfredo Alcala, Brett Blevins, & Tim Conrad

50) Defenders #5 - I will admit to kinda being like 🧐 with any of the explanations of the twist (bc quantum physics or whatever) but (a) I had figured it out regardless, & (b) it's all so beautifully done.

51) Eternals #9

52) The Thing #3 - Walter Mosely writing Thing comics with a delightfully non-committal connection to continuity. Tom Reilly is stepping way up on this series, and Bellaire continues to prove she’s on another level w/color.

53) The Savage Dragon #261 - This one feels kinda like running a CHAMPIONS game in the time of covid, as we find out multiple members of my beloved Freak Force are anti-vaxxers.😂

54) Venom #4 

55) Jonna vol 2

56) Future State Gotham #9

57) Moon Knight #5 (1980)

58) The Many Deaths Of Laila Starr #1

59) Avengers Forever #1 - (far far) wordier than I remember (and the art files on Hoopla look like ass?). I’m gonna keep going because I have been wanting to re-read, but this one might need to be on paper.

To be continued! Read Part 1 here

[longboxd]

2022 comics reading log

In the early days of last year, I was inspired by some twitter mutuals to post my comics reading in the new year and kept it up from Jan 1 2022 till just about the bitter end. Something about it really helped keep me invigorated by the medium even in some pretty bleak times, so I’m going to keep it going this year, but here at Longboxd instead of on twitter, which I'm trying to spend less time at. Before I can do that though, I want to archive the 2022 entries in a spot that’s more permanent/less twitter-iffic, so here we go—pretty much every comic I read in 2022! (As transcribed from here)

Part 2: 22-38 (of 387)

(I can "only" post 30 images at a time here, so that’ll dictate the length of these catch-up posts)

22) Silver Star #1 by Jack Kirby & Mike Royer - Kirby’s Blubber? Very Beto vibes—very Lynchian, held together by spit and nonsense.

23) Shattered Earth #1 - The best story in this anthology has a horny dog that gets cucked by a wandering wasteland hippie.

24) Sun Runners #2

25) Shade, The Changing Man #50

26) True Lives Of The Fabulous Killjoys: NATIONAL ANTHEM - Narratively, it’s firmly in the "halcyon days of vertigo" mold, and that’s cool, but between Romero and Bellaire this is one of the more stunning art showcases I’ve seen in a while. God-tier coloring, IMO!

27) The Terminator #1 (1990) - Chris Warner tha gawd with nice chunky inks from Paul Guinan, and a script by DH genre MVP John Arcudi that swings between terse and pleasantly purple. This and the Predator series the year before (also drawn by Warner) set the mold for decades of movie tie-in books.

28 & 29) Blood n’ Guts #1 & 2 - These are very bad comics by a weird, probably bad dude who's weird & not always bad comics I grew up with. Not much to them (this is from one of Blair's big firehose-of-comics periods) other than a *great* logo I assume was made by Dave Cooper.

30) Alien Worlds #7 - I loved this series as a kid—it's mostly an art showcase (Corben, Morrow, Anderson & Perez in this issue!) but Bruce Jones' short stories are trashy scifi paperback anthology style fun, routinely see-sawing btwn kind of hokey & total bleak nihilism, often on the same page. one story, theoretically concerned w/recreating The Thing inside an implied sketch of a Wally Wood/EC planet setting, mostly actually focuses on infidelity leading to murder (a common Jones trope). In the end everyone dies after the revelation that their parkas are hungry aliens. 

31) Eclipse Monthly #2 by various

32) Sensation Comics #6 - This is the pure, uncut shit.

33) Head Lopper #15

34) Marvel Team-Up #101 - Robot hippies and Peter Parker favorably compares the trauma of Nighthawk killing his girlfriend in a drunk driving incident to Uncle Ben’s death.

35) The Swamp Thing: Becoming TPB

36) Head Lopper #16

37) Skull, The Slayer #1 - Sorta standard Th’unda etc white adventure guy thrown into a prehistoric setting to fight dinosaurs kinda thing, (the twist being that this guy? He’s a real piece of shit!) but Steve Gan does impressive work, and Marv Wolfman’s colors are surprisingly effective.

38) The Man-Thing #8 - I haven’t read many of these. Pacing is slow if not deliberate, vampy gothic vibes. With Ploog’s squishy art, it kinda reads like a Golden Age Underground. 

_______

To be continued! Read Part 1 here

[longboxd]

2022 comics reading log

In the early days of last year, I was inspired by some twitter mutuals to post my comics reading in the new year and kept it up from Jan 1 2022 till just about the bitter end. Something about it really helped keep me invigorated by the medium even in some pretty bleak times, so I’m going to keep it going this year, but here at Longboxd instead of on twitter, which I'm trying to spend less time at. Before I can do that though, I want to archive the 2022 entries in a spot that’s more permanent/less twitter-iffic, so here we go—pretty much every comic I read in 2022! (As transcribed from here)

Part 1: 1-21 (of 387)

(I can "only" post 30 images at a time here, so that’ll dictate the length of these catch-up posts)

1) Timeless #1 - I mean, Lol at that final page reveal but this was a fun comic. I like Kang stories and this is good Kang.

2)  Service Industry by T Edward Bak

3) Human Target #2

4) Grrrl Scouts Stone Ghost #1

5) Krania #1 by Brian McCray - “I will unmake you” - I sorta wish this was hornier?

6) God Bless The Machine by Connor McCann - A messy dystopian exploration of tech and social media etc that trucks along efficiently, wraps up nicely. Definitely some JTHM energy in the drawings that is chunkily satisfying.

7) Reckless: Friend Of The Devil - A fun read, but didn’t work for me as well as the first. Less "badass/men’s adventure magazine moments"  than in vol one, maybe.

8) Cult Of The Ibis by Daria Tessler - Like Tove Jansson designed the "oh fuck I’m losing it" nightlife montage from your favorite noir movie.

9) Firepower #18

10) Future State: Gotham #7

11) Future State: Gotham #8

12) Rust Belt Review #3 - Very solid anthology that seems firmly targeted at the more "literary" side of alt-comics (though of course there are some rowdy exceptions). 2-3 cartoonists clearly influenced by Sammy H, lots of humanity in the stories. 

13) Tuki vol 1 - It's nice to have a new Jeff Smith comic to enjoy—he's great at this (this being funny/intense/heartfelt adventure comics), it's easy to sorta forget just *how good* until a new book comes out. Glad it's in B/W too.

14) Crisis #53 - The late 80s/early 90s was the best time for big format anthology magazines, great for just flipping through. Random issue of CRISIS has Sean Phillips doing his best McKean/Fregredo, & Steve Whittaker’s colors(!) on these Munoz SINNER pages are interesting (but print muddy).

15) Crisis #54 - This one has a Paul Grist/Mark Millar prison comic.

16) Avengers #98 - They don’t make ‘em like they used to (kind of bad, chaotic, and hard to read)

17) Nightwing: Leaping into the light TPB

18) X-Men #6

19) Human Target #3

20) Boy Maximortal #3 by Rick Veitch - Veitch found a new life in POD publishing in a way that feels like it’s a spiritual sibling to those Ditko/Snyder joints, & we are richer for it. These are uncut Metaphysical Boomer Cape Comics & I love them unreservedly (also the indicia warmed this slow cartoonist’s heart)

21) Ninja Funnies #1 

To be continued!

[longboxd]

In a fit of restlessness, I went around and pulled all/most of my mainline marvel/dc collections from the various creator-centric locations they were in my library. consolidating everything that isn’t super oversized (so not counting artist editions) or things that aren’t really in this category for one reason or another (like New Gods, Losers, omac etc all have their own shelf, Ironwolf is in the Mignola section but Dr.Strange/Dr. Doom is here, DP7 didn’t make the marvel shelf, etc). A decent amount of stuff that I culled for Frankenstein's Comic Swap and am keeping those boxes ready for the next show.

I probably missed a few things but it’s kind of interesting/reassuring that I still have a whole big-ass library of books that are outside of this target area…but somehow, looking at it I also find myself wanting to get more Epic collections 🙃

-z

[longboxd]

Moving all my comics musings over here going forward, as the Ink Logging had it's last real post in 2019, and it's better to just let that be what it is! I plan to continue my comics logging/reading list over here instead of on Twitter, because while logging things there kept me invigorated (and revitalized my delusions of blogging) I'm trying to spend less time there in the future. I had tried to move these vague ideas over to IG under this same name but it's not really a great platform for posting comics images to (bc of the limitations of the default square or whatever).

So, tumblr. Again! We shall see. Expect a big post or two on the 2022 reading list before I get going on 2023.

-z

Random ads from late-80s issues of Amazing Heroes

-z