#Brian Fies

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Marvel Super Stories Amazing Adventures Vol. 2 is an anthology with adventures for young readers

Marvel Super Stories Amazing Adventures Vol. 2 is an anthology with adventures for young readers #comics #graphicnovel #ncbd

The second volume in a brand-new middle-grade anthology series with Marvel Comics, edited by John Jennings. Featuring 15 all-new six-page stories written and illustrated by some of the biggest names in comics for young readers, this all-star lineup features original stand-alone stories featuring Spider-Man, Captain America, The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, the Incredible Hulk, Doctor…

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EL DIARIO MONTAÑÉS

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Flash Gordon soundtrack promotional poster (1980)

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Star Wars: The Book of Boba Fett - Boba Fett Concept Art by Brian Matyas

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Just saw your post about graphic novels that intrigued you and it intrigued me too. Would you mind sharing which graphic novels have you read that you'd recommend or that affected you in interesting ways? Thank you!

When it comes to graphic novels, I tend to prefer the slightly idiosyncratic, and definitely adult. While I did like The Night Eaters, and Something Is Killing the Children (my first experience really dipping my toe in...) I learned very quickly that (a) I can't do anything with even a whiff of YA, and (b) series are not my forte. But that's okay, because this space also has a lot of artists writing and illustrating for adults, really putting the "novel" in "graphic novel."

I've talked before about Junji Ito and Alison Bechdel, so I won't repeat myself---though I do still love Bechdel's work with the unspoken, prickly edges of things; I think very fondly of that weekend I spent reading badly-translated jpegs of Ito's work, the sense of destabilization and disorientation it left me with.

A list of some other works that stand out, in no particular order:

The Third Person, by Emma Grove, which delves into the experience of someone with multiple identities, each with its own relationship to gender. Especially if you're about to read Catriona Ward's The Last House on Needless Street for book club, I think this should be a required pairing.

If you're looking for something that captures the mundane struggle of making a life (similar to Will McPhail’s In.) there are lots of options! I'd recommend Roaming, by Jillian and Mariko Tamaki, or maybe It's Lonely at the Centre of the Earth, by Zoe Thorogood. I think Roaming might be stronger as a narrative, but It's Lonely is an imaginal and imaginative chronicle of that struggle to make a life, make art---though it didn't work for me as a narrative, the visuals stand out to me as beautiful, surreal in exactly the way I like.

I liked The Underwater Welder, by Jeff Lemire, for very similar reasons---the bits about a son trying to grapple with the legacy his alcoholic, semi-neglectful father didn't land, but when the narrator dives deep into the bay and encounters an abandoned ghost town where his own used to be? That was haunting.

If you enjoy Bechdel and Grove's work, then Julia Wertz's Impossible People is similarly a delight, and grapples thoughtfully with the narrator's alcoholism; it just didn't quite land for me in the way I wanted it to.

(Is this where I admit that I did like Blink, by Christopher Sebela et al? It's very old school scifi and almost cinematic in its approach, makes very few apologies for it, but the art is so, so divine.)

One of the most idiosyncratic was Paying for It by Chester Brown; an illustrated manifesto about the values of paying for sex, and the lives of the sex workers the narrator encounters. Honestly the most interesting part of this one was the fact that Brown has clearly thought about this subject a lot, and talked to everyone in his life about it. Some of the afterwords aren't from him---they're from his friends, who watched this from the outside, and share their perspective on how Brown has chosen or defends his approach to sex.

The even better news is that there are lots of DIY artists in this space as well! I have my own favorites close to home, plus I bought multiple copies of the Kentucky Route Zero fanzine, and I was lucky enough to snag some of the work offered as part of the Shortbox Comics Fair.

In particular I loved Stevie B.'s Dr. Limos Plays God (I'm a sucker for a clone identity crisis!), Otava Heikkila's Home by the Rotting Sea (which has some very fun Octavia Butler echoes), Narsid's Last Crane (lovely, and quite sad), and also Ver's Sacred Bodies, which has the dubious distinction of making me think "this better not awaken anything in me" for the first time since Crimes of the Future.

All this to say...graphic novels are neat, I enjoy them, but it's a bit like watching a movie with subtitles. I mostly understand what's going on, but I think I'm missing some of the finer shades and nuances that would take my experience to the next level.

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Brian Bennett - Voyage (A Journey Into Discoid Funk) (1978)

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hot take: a starstruck odyssey is much more stressful than acoc

sure, acoc murdered main characters and was emotional torture but starstruck has money and as someone who currently has 20 cents in my account its literally raising my cortisol

gunnie and barry stop gambling pls youre lowering my life expectency

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Quatermass 2 (1957)

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NO ONE WILL SAVE YOU (2023)

Director: Brian Duffield Cinematography: Aaron Morton

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Longlegs by Brian Sum

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Lexx

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Flash Gordon - art by John Bolton (1980)

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Main D20 Seasons Ultimate Ranking: part 3

Bonus: did I get any genres wrong?

(Part I, Part II, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, Part VIII, Part IX, Part X, Part XI)

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Death to the Xenos! by Brian Valeza

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Placebo patch commission for @wastingstarsss

[countesspetofi]

More from the Department of Before They Were Star Trek Stars: DeForest Kelley in "Duel at Shiloh," episode 15 of season 1 of THE VIRGINIAN (original airdate January 2, 1963). Kelley has a small role as a cowboy on the other side of a range war, who gets into a personal conflict with Gary Clarke's character. Brian Keith also guest stars.