Per request, I'm starting a thread about stuff I'm currently reading for discussion. I don't know how interesting it will end up being, because with a new baby, I don't have a ton of spare time or cash for comics, so I can never read everything I want to...but there are a few things I am picking up regularly.

From Dark Horse:

-Buffy and Angel & Faith. As a die hard Whedon/Buffy fan, I can't not get these books. I also will grab any Serenity and Doll House minis/one-shots that come around. I pick up the occasional Hellboy one-shot, or issue of Creepy or DHP.

From Image:
-The Walking Dead and Saga. Saga has just started, 3 issues in, and it’s already one of my favorite books ever. Brian K. Vaughan obviously rules, and Y was one of my favorite books, so…no-brainer with this one. Great art too. TWD, well everyone knows about that book, and is interested or not. I love it. I loved zombies before they were the hot thing, and I still love them now that everyone else is getting tired of them. I also love Elpehantmen, but don't get to pick it up all the time. I plan to catch up on comixology.

The only other monthly book I am buying right now is Avengers vs. X-Men, but that is about to get cut. It’s pretty lackluster. I’ve actually enjoyed a good lot of the big Marvel stories over the last several years that people complained about, particularly House of M and Civil War, but I’m not really feeling this one. I don't buy all the tie-ins/spin-offs, just the main series.

From DC, I did pick up the first issue of The Minutemen mini series…but I will buy most anything that Darwyn Cooke draws. I really don’t care what it is. I was also picking up Swamp Thing and Frankenstein Agent of Shade, and really enjoying them. But comics beget comics, and the more I read, the more I want to read. I just had to make some cuts and stick with only what I really, really wanted to read. For most of my comic buying life I’ve read Batman, but I find it uninteresting now, starting with Grant Morrison’s run.

And then I will grab any indie books or OGNs that look really interesting to me.

AvX does not look interesting at all to me. These big clashes between the superheroes seemed forced to me, just like Civil War.

I was going to check out Before Watchmen just to flip through but it was sold out. I saw some slight previews online though, and the art is nice, but the coloring is kind of drab and it doesn't seemt that interesting.

What I'm reading:

IDW's Rocketeer
The first two issues were okay, but it gets old after awhile. Dave Stevens really caputred the essence of that era with the short chapters like movie serials, not to mention his ability to capture expressions and Bettie Page's sauciness was a big draw as well. Thinking about dropping it.

Flaming Carrot
Buying some back issues and this comic never disappoints. The black and white took a little getting used to but truly a brillaint comic.

Green Lantern
It's good when Sinestro is the main feature. Hal Jordan and his supporting cast are totally uninteresting. The "mystery" of Abin Sur and the Indigo Tribe isn't keeping me in though. I'm just waiting to read more Sinestro moments.

Shinku
Lee Moder (Wonder Woman) and Ron Marz' take on a modern Japanese vampire story, featuring a vampire killing heroine. Nice art, and the main pull for me is the locale and how the Japanese mafia vampire clans function.

Alien Worlds, Twisted Tales
More back issues. These are two anthology series put out by Pacific with Bruce Jones writing the majority of the stories with different artists. I find the stories much more memorable and entertaining than Heavy Metal.

I'm re-reading Powers and have just finished the Image issues. I much preferred it the 2nd time around.

New stuff I'm reading:

Justice League, Justice League Dark, Justice League International, Action Comics, Superman, StormWatch, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, All-Star Western, Suicide Squad, Earth-2, Night Force, World's Finest, Shade, New Deadwardians, Saucer Country, and of course, Before Watchmen.

Old stuff I'm reading:

Essential Spider-Man Vol. 2, Showcase Presents World's Finest Vol. 1, and Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus Vol. 2.

Checked the Wolfman/Perez Teen Titans GN ("Games") out of the library the other day and finished it tonight.

I was very pleasantly surprised. While I don't know if it was worth the $24.99 asking price, it was definitely worth a read.

Amazon has the hardback for $13.88 and the paperback for $16.39, with free shipping on $25 or for Prime members. Recommended at that price?

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1401233228

At those prices? I would say yes.

Showcase Presents: Unknown Soldier, Vol. 1

Stories by Joe Kubert, Bob Haney, Frank Robbins, Robert Kanigher, David Michelinie and Archie Goodwin. Art by Kubert, Jack Sparling, Gerry Talaoc and Dan Spiegle. Phonebook-sized collection of 1970s war stories from DC Comics.

That's second to next in my reading pile, really looking forward to it.

I especially liked Michelinie/Talaoc's take on the Unknown Soldier. Hard-edged I suppose but not in a Garth Ennis type of way.

Anyway, I'm re-reading Pluto by Naoki Urasawa. An Astro Boy story - The Greatest Robot in the World - reimagined by the Urasawa. Marvellous art. Urasawa is able to convey so much emotion in a simple drawing of a face. Fantastic.

Only 2 more books of Twentieth Century Boys to come out and then I can read the whole darn thing.

Also been re-reading League of Extraordinary Gentlemen 1 & 2. Again top stuff. Alan Moore, I salute you.

The Unknown Soldier, Vol. 1 Showcase was great fun, I love the original stuff, it was almost as good as The Enemy Ace Showcase.

Still working my way through a huge pile of Usagi Yojimbo trades.

Up next for me is Fear Agent vol. 2 & 3. Then the Spectre Showcase and I found a copy of the Killraven Essential at Half-Price Books. I never read that book as a kid, looks like fun.

UNION STATION

Written by Ande Parks
Drawn by Eduardo Barreto

An enjoyable original graphic novel, published in 2003 by Oni Press.

Set in Kansas City during the Great Depression, it's based on an actual 1933 shootout involving federal agents and gangsters at the city's magnificent train station. Always scheming, J. Edgar Hoover used this massacre to justify the formation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. But as Parks shows us, the federal agents tried to keep secret their culpability in the bloody events of that day. Parks creates a newspaper reporter for the Kansas City Times to act as one of the protagonists, seeking to uncover the truth. In the end, though, the city's corrupt Pendergast political machine did not want anyone asking too many questions.

(Trivia note for U.S. history buffs not mentioned in this book: Harry Truman was placed in elected office by the Pendergast machine and remained loyal to it throughout his life, including his time in the White House. A stain on the reputation of an otherwise decent man.)

My only previous experience with Parks was as an inker, particularly with penciler Phil Hester on GREEN ARROW in the late 1990s. This was his first outing as writer. He turned in a well-crafted tale based on a lot of research in Kansas City, which he meticulously documented in end notes.

The late Barreto produced nice black-and-white artwork here. In hindsight, I think Barreto was a solid artist -- just not necessarily my first choice for a superhero comic. But then, he had the misfortune, in my youthful eyes, of following shortly after George Perez left THE NEW TEEN TITANS in the 1980s, which were impossibly large shoes to fill.

I finished an issue of STORMWATCH. It was pretty cool. Is #11 out?

Scott
@barbariancomic

Just finished Urusawa's Pluto again. Great art all through though the story is not the greatest.

Just started on Crying Freeman again. The art by Ryoichi Ikegami is very (early) Frank Miller-esque but is this because Miller was inspired by Ikegami. I would guess so. Anyway, it's madcap crazy.

PARKER: THE SCORE

Story and art by Darwyn Cooke
(Based on the novel by Donald Westlake writing as "Richard Stark")

After much grumbling, I decided to keep buying Darwyn Cooke's comics outside of BEFORE WATCHMEN. I enjoy Cooke's work; no sense cutting off my nose to spite my own face.

THE SCORE is the third of Cooke's graphic novel adaptations of the crime-noir novels starring the amoral thief known only as Parker. It's as nicely done as the previous two. Stylish retro art. I didn't like the art's bright orange tone as much as I have the darker blue tones of the other books; but much of this book took place in a sandy canyon and/or surrounded by fires, so the color choice made sense.

The story is a great one, one of the more popular Parker novels: A dozen men rob a town. Literally, a whole town -- Copper Canyon, a small mining town in North Dakota. With careful planning, they sneak in at midnight, take over the necessary infrastructure (police station, telephone company), and then go on a quiet robbery spree. It goes exactly as planned, right up to the point that it doesn't, largely because one of the men didn't reveal his real motivation.

This showed up in my downloads last week. Ugh.

There's a group of cartoonists who are mysteriously well-regarded simply because they have the ability to mix-and-match elements from actual innovators. Cooke is obviously one of the imitators, along with Ty Templeton, Kyle Baker and Frank Miller. Here, Cooke starts copying from the copiers. And much like the Xerox variety copies-of-copies, the degradation is apparent.

Free or paid downloads?

I would criticize you for grabbing the man's work for free off the Web rather than paying for it -- if he hadn't surrendered his own moral high ground by cashing in on Alan Moore's hard work, without obtaining Alan Moore's permission.

As it stands, smoke 'em if you got 'em.

That was pretty good!

I read the origin of Bane! It was awesome!

-Scott
@Barbariancomic

Atomic Robo, Vol. 1: Atomic Robo & the Fightin Scientists of Tesladyne

Story by Brian Clevinger
Art by Scott Wegener

What a delightful treat this is! I'd heard of ATOMIC ROBO but never sampled it until now. The premise is that Nikola Tesla invented a self-aware, smart-assed robot in the 1920s -- that would be Robo -- who remains with us today, fighting monsters and leading scientific expeditions and engaging in all sorts of crazy adventures.

The art is clean, cartoony and effective. The writing is snappy and imaginative. ROBO is a satire of all sorts of media -- science-fiction movies and superhero comics among them -- but it's a loving satire, not edgy or mean-spirited. There are moments of poignancy, as well.

Clever cameos by scientists including Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking.

For aging fanboys like me who complain that there aren't enough stand-alone comics titles anymore that are simply creative and fun, ATOMIC ROBO is a great exception.

(This being Comicon, I dread the inevitable put-down as Allen tells me why ATOMIC ROBO sucks and what 1970s Japanese or Swedish cartoonists the creators are shamelessly ripping off, in his view.)

I liked Atomic Robo when it first came out. It didn't really grab me and hold me like Mark Crilley's Akiko, though. I think the main turn-off for me was the continual cycle of new #1's. That's why I can't follow Hellboy.


edit: I see they're putting "Volume" numbers under the issue numbers now. I suppose that would make it easier to follow.

I only buy trades these days, and most publishers dutifully put volume numbers on the spines to help me out.

After seeing the disappointing new Spider-man movie, it inspired me to dig out my old Marvel Tales featuring Spidey. Hey, the art is a bit crude and not helped because they are reprints and Stan Lee is wordy to say the least but they are top stuff compared to most of the other stuff that Marvel was producing.

Atomic Robo is great! Each of the volumes, or mini-series, takes place in a different time period, and each is a complete story. They haven't let me down yet.

Fun Fact: the writer, Brian Clevinger, first came to semi-public awareness writing funny, juvenile web-comics that my kids loved but which I thought were too stupid and juvenile. But he apparently grew up, and is now producing work that appeals to all generations while retaining his sense of humor.

Peter Bagge's "Reset" was quite fun, although I haven't read them together and the fourth issue seemed a little disconnected from the others.

I also have several issues of PAD's "X-Factor" which continues to be entertaining, even if I really don't have much interest or affection left for the characters.

I re-read "Dropsie Avenue" recently. Still arguably the greatest graphic novel ever.

Currently reading the super-serious Crossing Boundaries in Graphic Narrative: Essays on Forms, Series and Genres, Jake Jakaitis and James F. Wurtz (editors). Essentially it's a study of the politics behind some of the events in comic book continuity, as well as how real-world politics have reflected on the comics. Way too much credence is given to Scott McCloud's dopey book(s), but it's an interesting read nonetheless.

Flex Mentallo. I got this from library and it was very, very good. This is Quitely's best art by far, certainly better than All-Star Superman. Even the story is coherent (mostly). One of Morrison's better efforts.

Got a week off work and doing nothing so I read Tintin in Tibet. Lovely art, a joy to behold and the story was ok too.

Punk Rock Jesus 1 & 2. I loved the art and it's quite a clever, crazy idea. I think the title is cool as well.

I re-read Criminal #5 - The Sinners - a day or two ago. Though it's a gritty crime book, it really should be read as a fantasy as it bears no relation to the real world. Still, the story was good and the art by Sean Phillips is top notch. Are Brubaker & Phillips going to anymore of these?

KAMANDI, THE LAST BOY ON EARTH

Story and art by Jack Kirby

Someone knowing my love of Jack Kirby recently gave me a big stack of old KAMANDI comics from the mid-1970s.

Man, this was crazy stuff! The Great Disaster ravaged the Earth at the close of the 20th century, destroying human civilization and bestowing superior intelligence on some of the animal species, such as apes and lions. Humans are now little better than grunting mammals hunted for amusement -- except for Kamandi, who somehow retains all of the brains, guts and beautiful blond hair we associate with humanity.

This is an adventure comic with plenty of action, plenty of explosive splash pages, set against a sad and kooky backdrop of a post-apocalyptic Earth as imagined by Kirby. New York City is flooded to the tops of its skyscrapers, for example, but Chicago remains a gangster's paradise, circa 1930.

A lot of people say this was Kirby's best Bronze Age work at DC, compared to his Fourth World titles, THE DEMON and OMAC. I dunno if that's true, but so far, it's a lot of fun.

Unlike some of Kirby's other DC work, which was short-lived, KAMANDI sold well and evidently continued after he grew irritated with DC and jumped back to Marvel. Paul Levitz, Gerry Conway, Keith Giffin and others cranked out a couple more years of the title before it got axed in the DC Implosion of 1978. I dunno that I'd care to read KAMANDI by anyone other than Kirby, though. It was his baby.

Kamandi was my favourite Kirby work at DC. The best issues were issue 16 "The Hospital" (this would have been a perfect place for the series to end) and issue #23.

I've just read the first episode of Naruto. The art is not the best in the world but it's a good story.

I re-read "Reset" in one sitting, and it worked much better. I just wish Bagge would do an on-going sitcom/soap opera, something that gives the reader characters to come back for each month.

Jason Yungbluth's "Weapon Brown: Blockhead's War" is much better than I had expected, although the first series was better. This one carries the Charlie Brown-as-post-apocalyptic-killer-drawn-like-Sin-City joke a little too far, but includes as many other comic strip characters as possible.

I'm a couple issues behind on "Fables" but I am really getting bored. The cubs are the least interesting part of the main cast to me, and "Cubs in Toyland" is the second long storyline in a row about them. I do love Mark Buckingham's art - and kudos to the coloring, which finally integrates computers in a way that doesn't make the page resemble a plate of hurl - but the series is coming to resemble Claremont's X-Men in a bad way, a constant onslaught of dangling plot ends.

The Infernal Man-Thing "Screenplay of the Living Dead Man" 1 to 3 - a sequel to "Song-cry of the Living Dead Man". I can remember reading the original as 14 year old and not actually getting it at all, though I loved the title and the combination of John Buscema & Klaus Janson was nice. It will be worth a re-read. Crazy stuff.

Due to being off work because of illness, I am doing some extra reading. So ...

Incredible Hulk 102 through to 114 so far. This comic fairly rattles along. Stan Lee could sure right a mean comic. To be Hulkinued.

I recently bought Tezuka's "Messge to Adolf". This is a nice hardback book. The story of three Adolf's - a Jewish boy, a German Boy and Hitler himself. Only read the first four chapters but it is good. Tezuka's art is very cartoony (if that's a word) but very good. I also like the fact that the Japanese seem to be able to do much bigger pieces of work than western comic creators.

Walter Simonson's "The Judas Coin" graphic novel came out this week. It follows a cursed coin down through the centuries, as it interacts with various DC characters in each time period. Simonson uses a variety of art styles and storytelling techniques in each chapter. Good stuff!

With the new Judge Dredd movie out, I thought I buy a copy of 2000AD, issue 1800 to be precise. I haven't read it in years. Anyway, whilst the art of the Dredd Story was nice (Chris Weston), the story (Chris Weston again) itself was a total waste of time, embarrassingly bad. The other stories are not too bad but they are all the first part of their respective stories but I won't bother picking up the next issue to find out what happens.

Another compilation of all the Bolland material is soliciting this month. Or maybe it's the same compilation from a few years ago re-soliciting. Whatever. All of the best Judge Dredd material under one cover.

I read some JUDGE DREDD comics as a kid in the 1980s and thought they were a lot of fun, though I'm surprised it's lasted this long. There's only so many times I need to see a scowling Dredd shoot a hole in some mutant freak.

A collection of the Bolland material sounds worthy. I just tucked a pre-ordered copy into my Amazon shopping cart.

Bolland did very little art for Judge Dredd. Judge Death was great stuff but one creepy story involved a thing called Jigsaw disease drawn by Bolland.


At a convention, I went to back in the 80s, Ron Smith, one of the artists on Dredd, spoke about how he used speed to help him meet deadlines.

Finished the first volume of Message to Adolf by Osamu Tezuka. This is great stuff and I would recommend it. Quite brutal, especially towards the end. I can't wait for volume 2.

Last night, I read Powers Volume 2, issues 1 to 6. This book is much better than I remember. Anyway, Deena Pilgrim is truly an obnoxious character so much so that I feel sorry for Christian Walker. Reading the letters pages, Bendis comes across as a complete twat as well. Still, a good comic.

I'm still checking out iZombie. THE best art, coloring, and covers of any comic I've seen on the shelves. I just don't care too much about the characters or story.

Man, I felt almost the same way about iZombie. I loved to look at it, but I just kept waiting and waiting for the characters to grow on me.

DAYTRIPPER

By Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá

Wow.

Just ... wow.

DAYTRIPPER was a 10-issue mini-series published by DC/Vertigo in 2010. It deservedly won an Eisner Award, a Harvey Award and an Eagle Award.

Now it's collected in trade paperback, and it's beautiful, the story and the art, beautiful, thoughtful, touching, something unique and wonderful in funnybooks.

The story is about Brás de Oliva Domingos of Brazil, the son of an acclaimed novelist who yearns to be a great author himself, though when we meet him, he writes obituaries for a newspaper. As befits an obituary writer, Brás is fascinated by death and life -- legacies -- what we leave behind, what our lives meant in the end.

Most of the chapters focus on one pivotal day in Brás' life, though not always in chronological order -- his first kiss, his first love, the disaster that launched his career, the birth of his son, the publication of his first novel, the fate of his best friend -- and at the end of that day, Brás dies. That's the end; however far he made it, whatever he got to do, that's now his legacy.

But then in the next chapter, he's back, his story advances further. And then he dies.

But then he's back, etc.

This isn't meant to be magic, it's fiction. We're supposed to overlook the concluding page or two of the previous chapter and just move onward.

Does Brás die tragically as a boy? Or an old man, fulfilled by a loving family and satisfying career? Or somewhere in between? We're never entirely sure where he really stepped out of the narrative. We're watching someone else live a Choose Your Own Adventure book. Along the way, though, we wonder, along with Brás, about what's truly important, and what we'll regret or not regret when that final moment comes.

Daytripper was a very good comic with some very nice art indeed. Completely different from most of the stuff out there.

Moonshadow for navel-gazers.

I gave up on Moonshadow. I'll have to try again as I hate having not read something I've bought.

I need to buy it again. I loaned out my copy and read it so many times myself, some of the pages have come loose.

King City. I think it was Dylan Horrocks who once talked about how in Tolkien's books you have the feeling that you could enter the world and wander off from the action over some hill. King City feels just like that in every panel. I'm very happy to finally have gotten the chance to read the whole thing.

Naruto volume Fifty-I-Can't Believe-I've-Bought-So-Many-of-These-Something-or-Other. I don't know if anyone here is reading this series so far in but if so, has anyone else noticed a drop in the script quality for this or other Shonen titles? It seems that over the past several volumes the script has been frequently awkward and borderline incoherent at times like something was lost in translation. It's killing the book for me. Flipping through the credits I noticed that for the bulk of the series they have had separate credits for translation and adaptation and now they just have a translator credit. And that is exactly how it has been reading, like there was no effort to rewrite the script in a way that reads well in English.

Between this and the dumb way Yen Press handles sound effects in Yotsuba it really makes me appreciate the old school effort put into localizing books like Oh My Goddess.

Well said, Teddy. King City is great!

Naruto -- I gave up on this series when Shonen Jump went all-digital, and I had only been skimming it for a while before that. I hope you are right that the translation is responsible for the incoherent writing, since it seemed to go off the rails long ago.

It is pretty amazing how good some of the translation on some manga series used to be. Like, complicated jokes and puns that would have made no sense in a straight word-for-word translation, but the translator/adaptor managed to come up with something that was both funny and still true to the author's intent. This was an area where annotations actually were helpful, at one time.

Come to think of it, the translations on Tintin and Asterix books were brilliant, back in the day. Like remember the jungle tribe Tintin met once that spoke a gibberish language, but when you sounded it out it was all Cockney slang? Apparently that was all some kind of similarly-disguised Belgian street slang in the original French. That's real intellectual work, there, coming up with that kind of thing.

All that said, I don't mind the sound effects technique used in books like Yotsuba and others, where they leave the original Japanese characters and put translations in the margins or nearby. Since the original characters are a graphic part of the image, it makes sense to leave them there in that case.

Well said, Teddy. King City is great!

Naruto -- I gave up on this series when Shonen Jump went all-digital, and I had only been skimming it for a while before that. I hope you are right that the translation is responsible for the incoherent writing, since it seemed to go off the rails long ago.

It is pretty amazing how good some of the translation on some manga series used to be. Like, complicated jokes and puns that would have made no sense in a straight word-for-word translation, but the translator/adaptor managed to come up with something that was both funny and still true to the author's intent. This was an area where annotations actually were helpful, at one time.

Come to think of it, the translations on Tintin and Asterix books were brilliant, back in the day. Like remember the jungle tribe Tintin met once that spoke a gibberish language, but when you sounded it out it was all Cockney slang? Apparently that was all some kind of similarly-disguised Belgian street slang in the original French. That's real intellectual work, there, coming up with that kind of thing.

All that said, I don't mind the sound effects technique used in books like Yotsuba and others, where they leave the original Japanese characters and put translations in the margins or nearby. Since the original characters are a graphic part of the image, it makes sense to leave them there in that case.

Heh, well there's that, too. It's probably a combination of the two.

I read up a bit on this and the particular translation problem I had apparently originates with Naruto's use of the phrase dattebayo which has no real English translation. It's just something he tags his speech with to make himself sound more aggressive or tough. That's where the phrase "believe it" apparently came from as an attempt in localization along with other phrases. In this volume they suddenly decided to translate it as Naruto saying, "ya know" a lot. It's pretty annoying but on top of that the volume starts off with Naruto saying "ya know" once for probably the first time in the series and the character Bee responding, "Man.. ya know, ya know, all the time..shaddup ya know." Which is tough enough to parse but made worse without initial context for the phrase.

So I can see the translation difficulties and continuity problem they presented but the series has had several of these types of moments for me where it seemed like an editor or someone should have stepped in and done a rewrite before sending it off to the printers.



David Brothers blogged about the Yotsuba sound effects a while ago with an interesting comments thread back and forth and since I mostly agree with his take on it I'll just post the link:

http://4thletter.net/2009/09/yotsuba-translation-issues/

Not that a bad retouch job would be better. I'd prefer a skilled retouch but I can live with leaving the effects intact. I just think the small text of romanji and parenthetical translation are distracting and kind of counter to the whole idea of of how graphic elements like sound effects work. It creates too many layers of redundant information on the page.

That 4th Letter post and comments were interesting; thanks for the link. Good points made all around. I think we can agree to disagree on the final verdict.

Tintin - The Castafiore Emerald.

Essentially, Bianca Castafiore, the famous Diva, decides to invite herself to Marlinspike for a holiday and hilarity ensures.

Basically, nothing much happens but it is so well done and funny, I think it's the best Tintin book. The artwork, of course, is fantastic.

10 out of 10.

I tried to read Love & Rockets: Human Diastrophism or parts thereof last night. It's a bit of mess to be honest. It's got nice art and I like the characters but the story telling is all over the shop. Is this a flashback? A flash forward? I found it all a bit confusing. I think Gilbert could have done with an editor to make it more coherent. I'll try again another time and see if I get it then.

The final book of 20th Century Boys turned up today. So for the next week or so that's all I be reading. I've read the first half, which I intend to re-read and then all the way to the end. Urasawa is amazing.

Once this is done, I can then watch the movie trilogy.

So last night, I read volume 1. Who is the friend?

Wait!! I'm several volumes behind but aren't there two more volumes, 21st Century Boys one and two? http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=21st+century+boys

You're right. I originally thought they were 24 volumes but when I checked on Amazon, I could only find 22 and Wikipedia confirmed that as well but now I see there are two extra volumes. Lucky for me you spotted this.

Anyway I am going to read the ones I've got now, it's too good to wait and pre-order 21st Century Boys volumes.

Hopefully, they'll will publish Billy Bat when 20th/21st Century Boys is complete as from the few scanlations I've seen, it looks very interesting.

They solicited for Billy Bat a few years ago and then cancelled it. I'm not sure what happened there. I hope they do release it here eventually.

20th Century Boys - just finished volume 20. 20 books in 11 days. Great stuff. 2 more to go and then I'll have to wait til next year for 21st Century Boys.

The art is fantastic. In my opinion, Urasawa is the best comic book artist in the world. A comic book Messi!!!!

Urasawa does have a great gift, which he shares with a few other manga artists and very few western artists, for making his characters distinctive and recognizable, even at different ages and in different clothing and hairstyles.

I'd love to see his version of the Legion of Super-Heroes! But on the other hand, maybe he's already done that with 20th Century Boys.

I've finished 20th Century Boys but now I have to wait until next year for 21st Century Boys. As I said before it is very, very good.

Re-reading Death Note - nice art and a cracking story. L is my hero.

Just read the first two issues of the new Daredevil. It's okay, art is a bit simplistic. The British reprints of Marvel Comics are top notch - 80 pages of reprints (and mostly new stuff) in glorious colour and only 3 quid which is about 5 dollars. DC also do the same and I pick up the odd one from time to time.

I just got a manga book by that artist. The line work is more simplified than the American superhero art I'm used to, and yet the faces look much more expressive and appealing. I'm going to have to get used to reading from right to left.

A decade or so ago, American editions of Japanese comcs were almost always flipped. Not a big deal since they had to be re-lettered anyway. You want *AUTHENTIC* Japanese comics, learn to read Japanese. But it wasn't "pure" enough for the sensitive little manga kids, so now we're stuck with all this right-to-left stuff.

Learn Japanese? You're having a laugh!

I prefer the right-to-left versions. Just read Tezuka's "Message to Adolf" volume 1 (which I highly recommend) and it had been flipped and it didn't quite look right. Characters were shown shaking hands left handed and the Nazis were doing the salute left handed which is not right. Then again I'm sure Kirby use to have Nazis saluting left handed in Captain America.

There are certainly examples where flipping causes problems. All of which can be easily fixed with Photoshop. Welcome to the west, where we read left-to-right.

I do get the impression that a lot of stuff is lost in the translation of manga just due to differences in how the languages work which seems to be a far more regrettable (and maybe unavoidable) flaw in reading English translations. So it would indeed be nice to read manga in Japanese but I doubt I will.

As to the flipping thing, I don't care one way or the other. Unflipped manga reads fairly easy to me but I was fine with having it flipped. But according to Matt Thorn, the un-flipped movement started with Tokyo Pop as part of a whole slew of corner-cutting measures designed to increase sales volume through cheaper manga. It was they who aggressively pushed the "authenticity" angle to spin it in their advertising and set the trend.

That's what I was thinking. Reversing manga for a western audience for Ranma 1/2 and Crying Freeman would be fine, but since they were bringing in SO many mangas in the 2000s it makes sense to not bother with it.

Wait, what are you recommending here? Flip the panels, but then unflip the characters using the wrong hands within those panels, or what? That sounds like a recipe for disaster. It also sounds like a ton of work for no good reason. So am I misunderstanding what you are saying?

The public has accepted unflipped manga remarkably well. The biggest part of the manga boom occurred AFTER publishers stopped flipping the pages. So unless your photoshopping idea would provide some advantage that current methods don't provide, I can't imagine it ever catching on. But please elaborate, I am curious to hear more details.

You got it. Flip pages to read left-to-right, then re-flip or fix only the elements that cause trouble in the narrative.

Of course there was more stuff dumped into the market when all the publisher has to do is re-letter. But translation alone renders the content non-"100% Authentic."

I used to read a fair amount of material from TokyoPop, which was not only flipped left-to-right but was also printed in the larger American pamphlet format. I tried to keep going after their shift to the backwards digests, but probably haven't bought one in four years now, largely because the format is too annoying to navigate.

Also, the pamphlets came out monthly, whereas it was harder to remember to order books that came out with six months or more between installments. I understand that the digests are sturdier products that have a longer shelf life, but that's not the way I was consuming my comics at the time.

Not been reading many comics lately but I am going through Death Note again. Films are good too.

In terms of real books, I am 3/4's of the way through Jack Vance's Planet of Adventure which I read on the train to work - this is good stuff. I've read a lot of Vance's work but for the first time, I've really got it.

Also, reading A Tale of Two Cities, one chapter a day. Prose can be a bit convoluted to say the least but it seems to help if I read it out loud.

Finish Death Note. Cool book.

Read half of book six of Lone Wolf & Cub. What can one say? Awesome.

Anyway, Punk Rock Jesus (all six issues) is ready & waiting. I would read it today but too much football on the telly (proper football not the American stuff).

Punk Rock Jesus - very good. Art was fantastic. Story is unbelievable but hey, it's a comic but I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to make a movie out of it.

Just finished Alan Moore/ Eddie Campbell's From Hell. Very impressive.

For me it worked wonderfully well as a comic... Eddie Campbell's visuals conjured up Victorian London superbly well, and the black and white scenes worked perfectly for me. ( I found some of the action pretty disturbing even in this format, film/ TV would have been near unbearable for me.)

Shortcomings

Story and art by Adrian Tomine

This falling-out-of-love story is a new graphic novel from Tomine, a popular illustrator at The New Yorker and other magazines.

The protaganist, Ben Tanaka, is a self-loathing jerk with a permanently crabby outlook on life and no social skills (I felt a kinship!) who lives in Berkeley, Calif., with his long-suffering girlfriend, Miko. Ben and Miko are Japanese-American, though Ben couldn't care less about his heritage and actually prefers white women, whereas Miko runs an Asian-American film program and speaks fluent Japanese.

The novel, in three chapters, follows Ben and Miko through the messy end of their relationship and their separate relocation -- her first, then him -- to New York City. Hilariously, Ben uses his new (and unwanted) bachelorhood to chase the great white whale: sex with a white girl! It does not go well for him.

Ben's only friend is a Korean-American lesbian named Alice who gets all the best lines, and she's the only one who gets to tell Ben to go fuck himself when he needs to hear it, which is every few pages.

But is it any good?

Ha! I forgot to say, didn't I.

Yeah, I'm a fan of Tomine's work. I enjoyed it. Good artwork, compelling little personal drama if you like that sort of thing.

Full disclosure: This hardcover retails for $15, and I bought it for half that much at a used bookstore -- about as much as two new comic books cost. So I'd say it was worth my $7. Dunno if I'd drop $15 on it.

I've just read Rasl by Jeff Smith. Interesting stuff about Tesla Cracked have had a number of articles about him.

It was okay, I suppose, but the ending was a bit vague.

Last night, I read Jiro Taniguchi's "A Zoo in Winter". Not your typical manga and well worth a read.

I started to read "Lost Girls" the other week. It's a bit more explicit than I thought.

Book four of Mark Crilley's new digest sized series Brody's Ghost was the only regular comic book in my shipment this month. And frankly, I think I'm going to drop it, too. Great backgrounds would be the only real compliment I have for it. The figures don't look like the Seuss-ish style Crilley is known for, more a generic manga style; and the writing is sagging down excessively into dramatic soap operatics. It's a murder mystery, so hopefully there are only a finite number of episodes planned and Crilley can move on to something better after getting this out of his system.

Reliving the glory days of Marvel with Marvel Essentials volumes, primarily Avengers, Cap, Iron Man, Thor, Amazing Spider-Man and Daredevil. No new stuff to speak of.

Damage Control, Gunfire, Lost Girls

Just picked up the AdHouse print version of Boulet's "The Darkness" retitled The Noirness for publication. http://english.bouletcorp.com/2012/02/01/darkness/

And Children of the Sea vol 4 to get caught up for the conclusion out this summer. Unfortunately it's been so long since I read the previous volumes I sort of lost the thread and I'm going to have to reread once I have them all.

And hey, new Taiyo Matsumoto is coming out soon.

20th Century Boys. I've got the final two volumes so it's back to volume 1 and away we go. Quite possibly, my favourite comic of all time.

Also struggling through The Black Dossier - some nice, clever ideas but not Alan Moore's greatest work.

I've read East of West 1 and 2. Quite good to be honest. I hope it is a finite series as I don't care for reading something that goes on and on.

I really enjoyed Black Dossier! It got so many negative reviews that I didn't buy it. When I read it at the bookstore, I was ecstatic! Lots of fun!