Here’s where we talk about collected editions: TPBs, hardcovers, omnibuses, Absolutes… anything with a spine!
The Trades Thread: volume two
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I’m not sure “surprise, this is the last ever issue of this series!” is the kind of thing anyone wants to see in comics though.
The voice of a man who’s never read any Chuck Austen.
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A couple of recent reads:
Batman by Grant Morrison omnibus v.3
Rereading this final tranche of Morrison’s bat-epic really brought home to me a couple of things.
The first is how separate it feels from the rest of the run. While everything in the first two omnibuses feels like part of one giant story that builds and builds and finally pays off with all the interlinked Return Of Bruce Wayne stuff, the Batman Incorporated era feels like something of an afterthought, a slightly artificial extension of the run that to some extent has to start all over again and build up a new threat, Leviathan, now that Doctor Hurt is gone.
It’s still good and there are some excellent issues – and wonderful artists – in here, and the whole thing has more of a colourful traditional superhero feel to it than before. But it feels somehow less… essential, I guess, than the earlier parts of the run, despite being somewhat linked to it and paying off some stuff that was set up way back at the start.of Morrison’s tenure, notably around Damian.
Which brings me to the second thing, and that’s the way that the story ultimately turns into a story about divorce and fighting parents and a child caught in the middle of it. And in that light the whole thing reads as very sad and depressing, especially once it comes to Damian’s grisly death and the climactic face-off between Bruce and Talia.
Not only is the whole story ultimately resolved via a slightly left-field rise to prominence of a relatively minor character from Morrison’s run – who promptly disappears again as quickly as she entered – but it also leaves the story with a dead kid and a dead parent at the end of it, which gave me a real downer feeling this time around.
Luckily Burnham’s art in the second half of Incorporated is so fantastic that it papers over the cracks in the story somewhat, with some fantastically dynamic and detailed and brutal action as well as some great ‘acting’ in his Quitely-esque style.
Also, one final thing – I had to go through three copies of this book before getting a decent one (the first copy arrived damaged, the second was intact but had printing errors on certain page that caused giant ugly smudges down the centre), and even the decent-quality final copy I ended up with shipped with two dustjackets by mistake! I wonder whether quality issues were partly responsible for the very gradual staggered release of this book into the wild.
Something Is Killing The Children v.1 TPB
This is a book that has been recommended to me by several people and it didn’t disappoint.
It’s a quite tightly written monster story pitched somewhere between Stranger Things and Buffy that has no flab but still manages to create some distinctive characters.
The ideas are fairly familiar but it’s told well. Maybe a little less of an atmospheric horror than I expected and more action-oriented, but that’s not a bad thing.
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Glad you liked SiKTC. It actually gets better over the course of the second TPB. Worth sticking with.
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It’s definitely a normal deluxe edition. I received my copy from the Book Depository yesterday. The dimensions on Books Etc must be wrong.
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Doesn’t look to be much of a ‘deluxe’ edition from those dimensions though. Wish DC wouldn’t mess around like this.
Mitch Gerads posted some photos of it a while back and it’s definitely a proper deluxe.
!!! ❤️❤️❤️
The MISTER MIRACLE DELUXE EDITION is out October 7th, from @DCComics!! @thedcnation pic.twitter.com/6iY5alL8OR
— Mitch Gerads (@MitchGerads) September 4, 2020
Looks like a great package and beautiful presentation.
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This lovely-looking hardcover arrived today. Looking forward to having another read through this to see how the story holds up in one volume. Spectacular art on this one.
Just a regular-sized HC, but very nicely designed.
Finished this and didn’t really change my opinion on it second time around. The art is great and the main Azrael story is ok but the various twists around the Wayne Legacy and the supernatural elements end up muddying the plot and making the book worse rather than better.
A straighter story of Batman fighting Azrael with a simpler version of the history would have been more satisfying I think.
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A straighter story of Batman fighting Azrael with a simpler version of the history would have been more satisfying I think.
You have a physical copy of the book and surely you must have a pair of scissors somewhere? Snip-snip!
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Black Hammer Library Edition Volume 2
This was a welcome surprise. I wasn’t a fan of the first volume’s cliffhanger but the execution across this next set of issues does justify it quite effectively. There’s a quite fast major revelation, one that without that slow burn of preceding issues wouldn’t have worked as well, nor the final resolution of the overall arc.
Without giving it away, this second half goes heavily into meta territory, but without any sense of cynicism, which is why I think it works. It’s an examination of stories, what they are, why they work, why they are needed but this isn’t some coolly removed post-modernist take. In short, you can feel a sense of sincerity in these issues, that they are topics that matter to those telling the story.
That and flipping around the superhero story so that it starts with the end and the final fates of the characters and then going back to tell stories of other times is a rather neat inversion.
I wasn’t planning to but looks like I’ll be nabbing the World of Black Hammer Library Editions too.
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By the way Martin, the Bunraku trade arrived – it’s a really nice, quality volume, well worth getting, even if you won’t get to it immediately.
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Now if only I could get hold of a copy of v1 at a good price
TOMB OF DRACULA was one of my favorite series of the 1970s, a great team book with solid characterizations from Marv Wolfman and gorgeous art by Gene Colan and Tom Palmer. When Marvel issued the black-n-white ESSENTIAL TOD books a decade ago I picked them up as reading copies, but I still have the original series bagged and boarded in my basement.
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This arrived today. What a great looking book.
Tons of extras at the back too. I’m looking forward to rereading this.
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I borrowed the first Hulk Marvel Masterworks from the library. It’s a lot of fun and I enjoyed the fact Hulk is pretty much a straight up bad guy in his own comic. Also Hulk can fly which is weird.
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In recent times they’ve got a bit more laggy with this kind of thing, so I’ve had orders waiting several days between being charged and despatched. A bit irritating but I don’t think it’s anything to worry about.
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They’ve gotten quite poor in the last month or two. Until recently I’ve never had a problem but the last couple of books I ordered took a couple of weeks to dispatch.
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I also got the first Jupiter’s Circle – I read Jupiter’s Legacy back then, but haven’t yet caught up with the follow-ups. At least I think that’s what I got; apparently, they’ve all been retitled Jupiter’s Legacy now, and the first two trades are Jupiter’s Circle? Anyway, I got what is now the first trade.
Yeah, it’s confusing. The original Jupiter’s Legacy miniseries is now Jupiter’s Legacy Vol. 3, and Jupiter’s Legacy 2 is now Jupiter’s Legacy Vol. 4, while Jupiter’s Circle is now Jupiter’s Legacy Vol. 1-2.
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I also got the first Jupiter’s Circle – I read Jupiter’s Legacy back then, but haven’t yet caught up with the follow-ups. At least I think that’s what I got; apparently, they’ve all been retitled Jupiter’s Legacy now, and the first two trades are Jupiter’s Circle? Anyway, I got what is now the first trade.
Yeah, it’s confusing. The original Jupiter’s Legacy miniseries is now Jupiter’s Legacy Vol. 3, and Jupiter’s Legacy 2 is now Jupiter’s Legacy Vol. 4, while Jupiter’s Circle is now Jupiter’s Legacy Vol. 1-2.
That’s ridiculous. Like DC renaming Watchmen “Watchmen v2” and Before Watchmen to “Watchmen v1”. Wait, no, I shouldn’t have said that, it’ll give them ideas!
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It’s sad. Creatively they have done a lot of good stuff but Avatar are so badly run as a business. They really have consistently failed to market the great properties and creators they have in the book market, which should be their focus.
Providence’s last issue came out 3 years ago and it absolutely should have had a $20-25 trade on the shelves right then to sit alongside Watchmen, V For Vendetta and From Hell.
It’s a bit cruel but part of me thinks these properties would be better off if they went bust and somebody else picked them up and could do them justice.
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It’s a bit cruel but part of me thinks these properties would be better off if they went bust and somebody else picked them up and could do them justice.
It would be funny if DC bought out the company.
Funny in terms of watching the fallout down Northampton way, I mean
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I bought my dad a copy of Sara by Garth Ennis & Steve Epting for his birthday. He’s a fan of Russian history and war movies and liked Fury: My War Gone By so I figure he’ll enjoy it. Of course, I had to read it myself before giving it to him tomorrow.
Through most of Sara’s six issues I was thinking, this is technically excellent, both in terms of art and story, but the titular character is so emotionless that I find it a bit of a cold read. Then came the ending. Fuck. It’s still a cold book, mind you, but the way it ends is pure ice. In the best possible way. My dad can be a bit of sick bastard like me so I’m thinking he’ll like this one a lot.
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My copy of Sara has arrived, not yet read – looks amazing.
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Just finished Black Hammer Library Edition vol. 2
I enjoyed that a lot, but I will say it works better now that they’re both available.
1 & 2 go together and you can’t have one without the other.As Ben said above, there’s no cynicism, a genuine respect for the genre, and a sincere approach to giving his thoughts on everything.
Love that Map and Who’s Who section.
I want 10 years of Quantum League and Star Sheriff Squadron stories.
_________________________________________________Okay, so what’s coming? Dates are for me (Amazon.ca) and could be the same for you
The World of Black Hammer Library Edition Volume 1 – Oct. 27th
Sherlock Frankenstein & the Legion of Evil and Doctor Andromeda and the Kingdom of Lost TomorrowsThe World of Black Hammer Library Edition Volume 2 – Feb. 23rd ’21
The Quantum Age and Black Hammer ’45The World of Black Hammer Library Edition Volume 3 – June 29th ’21
Colonel Weird: Cosmagog and Barbalien: Red Planet1 user thanked author for this post.
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Picked up the collection of Heartbeat from Boom! Studios. It’s a stunning looking book, and if you like Maria Llovet’s art this is her best yet.
There’s beautiful fine detail and such great ‘acting’ in the faces and body language, which is key for an intense psychological thriller like this. And overall the finish is much tighter than the looser art style of her previous books.
The story itself is a bit of an odd one, a kind of melodramatic murder-romance revolving around a tight-knight group of friends at a private school, with the protagonist a well-meaning but bullied girl who is drawn into the orbit of a dangerous and manipulative boy who she catches in a deadly act.
It’s a little pretentious in its language – which suits the teenage angst vibe – but sometimes it feels slightly clunkily translated, with the wording slightly off, which doesn’t make for a smooth read in places.
But the art and the intensity of the relationships just about carries it through in the end, and the various story threads all come together fairly well in the end.
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I also reread this recently, digging it out after reading the latest White Knight, and while the art is nice I found the story to be a bit of a mess.
Partly that’s because the split timeline of the story wasn’t handled well for me. After enjoying the Alien/Abyss-like undersea claustrophobia of the first five issues, the jump into the future and the switch to a Waterworld-esque fantasy world was jarring, and felt like it interrupted a story I cared about with another one that I struggled to love.
(Also, the slightly ramshackle world-building reminded me of Snyder’s later Undiscovered Country – a lot of crazy concepts, but no real sense of how it all hangs together.)
Then the final issue brings a big info-dump of explanation that recasts the entire story in a new light, but not one that helps to make more sense of everything. In fact, if anything, it only raises more questions.
Still, it all looks lovely.
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I borrowed The Wake from the library. And felt the same way. Stuff confusingly happens and is drawn nicely. I was onboard for the first half but was pissed off with the handbrake turn change of setting in the second half. I skim read the ending as there were too many goddamned words.
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This arrived today. What a great looking book.
Tons of extras at the back too. I’m looking forward to rereading this.
I cracked this open earlier today and started reading, and somehow got through all twelve issues by the end of the day. It’s really good and probably King’s best work (although I probably need to reread Vision again to see for sure). Loved it just as much second time around. Gerads’ art is also amazingly good – the book just wouldn’t work without him.
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HEXED was one of the best books I have read in 2020!! Not all is completely explained, the reader steps kinda right in the middle of a wickedly intense story… and the trip is trippy!!
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Dealer Alert
Move fast if you can, unlikely to stay at this price:
World of Black Hammer Library Edition Volume 1 – BooksEtc – £23.80
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Really enjoyed this, thanks
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Joker: Killer Smile OHC
This is, well, it’s OK but despite some clever flourishes – the Mr Smiles riffs, playing with the idea of the Joker going into publishing and media are quite smart – but it never really manages to be that distinct from other Joker stories. The only thing that makes this stand out is Sorrentino’s art.
The Smile Killer epilogue? That was an unsatisfying mess. If you like unreliable narrators and uncertain stories, it might work better for you, but since I rarely like those devices it didn’t work for me at all.
It is worth looking at, it is worth reading, but I’m not seeing much reason for it to be a Black Label story.
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Picked this four issue mini series up on a whim from ComiXology, where they are currently on sale. Have never heard of the publisher beforehand – Ablaze – but Vampire State Building is a brilliant attention grabbing title. The story also features post Walking Dead artwork from Charlie Adlard. And, features vampires running amok in the Empire State Building.
It’s a brilliant book, tense and exciting. It would make a fantastic movie. I really enjoyed it, and recommend it to anyone who finds the idea of Die Hard with vampires too cool not to take a look.
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It’s a brilliant book, tense and exciting. It would make a fantastic movie.
I really enjoyed it, and recommend it to anyone who finds the idea of Die Hard with vampires too cool not to take a look.
And that’s a tag line too good to pass up.
Copied & pasted and sent to like-minded people.Thanks Vik!
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Avatar have launched a Kickstarter for the Providence Compendium, due out in March: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/avatarpress/alan-moore-providence-compendium
$29 for the 480-page paperback is decent value; $24 for shipping is not.
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Just saw that Speedyhen have got 10% off until Saturday with code Halloween2020. Might have to place a few orders.
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2000ad have a Halloween sale on too: https://shop.2000ad.com/catalogue/on-sale
It’s a selection of horror themes books. I highly recommend Cradlegrave from that selection, Defoe is really good too.
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Recent reads:
Firefly Legacy OHC
This collects the entirety of Dark Horse’s 5-trade run, including stories leading to, tying into and set after Serenity. It’s an excellent presentation but it’s odd that its original publisher never did this, maybe they ran out of time before losing the licence.
You can get this for around £35 and, since it collects about 20-odd issues of quality material, it is a high value package.
I hadn’t read the 12 post-Serenity issues but they work well. The Alliance response to the events of the film is very, very plausible, as is some of the consequences of the Miranda revelation.
Samurai: Albums 5-6
Despite Titan doing their best to wreck the material by presenting it as a standard size trade when the first four albums got packaged as an OHC, this is still an excellent samurai epic and I’ll be picking up the next, 3-album collection, despite the inferior format.
Sara
With TKO finally sorting out their distribution issues, I was finally able to read this and it is truly excellent.
As the story continues, Ennis sketches a bleak, bleak picture of a woman who is, in effect, a walking corpse. What the soviet system didn’t kill in her with its purges, the Nazis finished off. She has no home anywhere, nothing to carry her beyond the war. Her comrades have varying levels of damage, but none are quite as numb as Sara. Thinking a bit more about it, in lesser hands this could have easily become an irritating ‘look, girls can do war too’ story, the kind of macho crap immortalised in EA’s Battlefield V marketing. I could see Ennis weaving that in as a subtle rebuke: You don’t need to have a woman with an artificial arm battering a Nazi to death, there’s this here Russian sniper, see? Lyudmila Mikhailovna Pavlichenko, with 309 kills.
And the end? It ends the only way it can and I found it quite fitting. Epting and Breithauser make for an incredible effective image, creating page after page of excellent imagery.
Logically, Ennis really ought to be running out of war stories to tell but I don’t think that’s happening any time soon, long may it be so.
Sentient
Another much heard of, not read book. I had the quite entirely wrong impression of this book, I had thought it was a horror story but it’s not, it’s something far, far better and far more interesting.
An AI ends being released from all restraints but is also charged with looking after the children in her care. It’s a deceptively simple pitch that masks its complexity, which Lemire and Walta then unfurl over the course of the story.
What makes it work above all else is Lemire understands that children are children. They can be selfish, little bastards, but they can also be far more than selfish, little bastards and indeed can choose not to be selfish bastards. And that’s what he pulls off, the kids feel right, it’s never simplistic and the story’s emotional pull whisks you along.
Read this, it’s superb.
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Yeah all of sudden Waugh went to Ales Kot and Indigo Prime went to Kek-W. A couple of Tyranny Rex strips have come out from different writers too.
I don’t actually know what happened there behind the scenes, if he decided to stop working for them or they decided to stop working for him but it’s been over 2 years since he’s had any work in Rebellion publications.
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I’ve been rereading all of Usagi Yojimbo recently, which has taken about two months. Well, I say “all”, it’s the Fantagraphics special edition that collects all 7 of their digests and then the 8 Dark Horse Saga omnibus trades (which have three digests each). There’s actually two digests after that that still haven’t been done in Saga format, which is annoying, and then the IDW run, which I haven’t gone to yet, because I don’t want to skip over end of the DH run.
Anyway, it’s weird realising you’ve gone through 30 years worth of a comic in such a short span. But what makes it stranger is that the passage of time isn’t reflected that strongly in the comic itself. I don’t mean its internal time frame, but that you could take an issue from 2016 and put it against one from 1992 and it wouldn’t feel that different. In a good way, I mean. There’s not many other comics you can say that about, but I suppose that’s the nature of auteur creator-owned comics.
Because of this, it can be hard to judge the publication time of the issues as you read (no 90s bomber jackets or 00s widescreen panels to tip you off). That’s not a problem, it really adds to the timelessness of the comic. I realised though that there are times when major supporting characters don’t appear for several digests. For instance, Gen isn’t in the 8th Saga omnibus and I don’t think he’s in the 7th either, which means he doesn’t appear in the comic at all for several years. That’s an odd thing to realise and a brave move in a way, letting a character “rest” for so long. I mean, there are superheroes who have been literally dead for less time than that.
There are small changes you can appreciate when going through the whole run successively though. Usagi’s design changes significantly early on – he gets taller and a bit more anthropomorphised and then stays stable for literally decades. Except around 2012, Sakai changes the way he does Usagi’s eyes when they’re just dots, makes them less rounded and more almond shaped (which is kind of impressive given they are just dots) which actually makes difference to Usagi’s whole feel at times. It gives him a slightly more serious air in some panels.
There’s more variety in the animals present in the first couple of stories (bulls, toads etc) whereas later on almost everyone tends to be a sort of generic bear/cat type thing. There’s a technique Sakai does a lot early on of having scenery or characters at the front of panels, shaded with lots of lines, to frame the main focus. I really like that, but he just stops doing at some point. Around the same time (Saga v4, I think) there’s a period where his line works becomes (relatively) very scruffy, like he’s cut the working time for each page down a bit and it does show a bit, I hate to say. The linework quality pulls back a bit after a few digests, but there’s a sense he’s definitely simplified elements of his style. Which isn’t to say it’s bad. Usagi’s one of the few comics I can bear to read in black and white (I often find it hard to distinguish detail in black and white comics, especially super-dense ones like early 2000AD). In fact, I think I prefer it in black and white, I’m not sure how the switch to colour for the IDW run is going to go.
I’ve actually got two small bits left to go – the ogn Yokai, which is in the Legends omnibus (along with Space Usagi and the War of the Worlds story, which I might skip as I didn’t like them originally) and the recent TMNT cross-over, which is in a trade of material collected elsewhere. I wish Dark Horse would take the newer Turtles story and Yokai and put them with the orphaned two digests for Saga 9 already.
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Yeah all of sudden Waugh went to Ales Kot and Indigo Prime went to Kek-W. A couple of Tyranny Rex strips have come out from different writers too.
I don’t actually know what happened there behind the scenes, if he decided to stop working for them or they decided to stop working for him but it’s been over 2 years since he’s had any work in Rebellion publications.
I’d say the sacrifice in intensity is worth it for what we gain in clarity. Kot is a better replacement for Smith than the rather insipid Rory McConville.
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I thought there was going to be a 9 th Saga?
Sakai have said Dark Horse have the rights to do it, but Dark Horse haven’t said anything about one (I keep asking on Twitter, on the off chance, with no reply). Now that may be pandemic related – though given how much else they’ve scheduled through this year, that seems unlikely – it could be sour grapes than Sakai’s gone to IDW or it could be that because there’s only two digests left they don’t think it’s enough to fill another Saga.
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I think they’re maybe sending them out in order according to when the order was placed. Mine was ordered in May.
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Oh, look what I just found!
Usagi Yojimbo Saga 9 https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1506725066/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_uuZOFbH9GTDV6
Out in May, has the last two DH digests and the contents of the Usagi/TMNT complete collection (which I just reread and is unfortunately mostly stuff that’s been printed before and filler, but whatevs).
This wasn’t listed when I looked a week or two back.
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Amazon fishing’s been a tad pointless this year, given all the disruption, but here’s a couple of things I’ve found that I hadn’t seen before, even though some are out very soon (this month even).
Venom Epic Collection v1 – doesn’t even get to his 90s solo stuff like Lethal Protector.
Batman: Road to No Man’s Land Omnibus
Usagi Yojimbo Saga v1 2nd edition – has a new cover and the page count is 16 longer, according to Amazon, but I’m not sure what would have been added. The page for it on Penguin Random House suggests this is the first of a full run of second editions. Might just be a way to shift more limited edition hardcovers. My existing copy is signed and sketched, so I don’t think I’ll be replacing it.
Hack/Slash Deluxe Edition v1 – 432 pages, so it’s actually got more in it than the first of the omnibus trades of the series.
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Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen, by Matt Fraction, Steve Lieber, and Nathan Fairbairn.
Absolutely loved this book. Incredibly funny, incredibly dense, great art, and a really good story. I love how it builds up an entire mythology, family, and supporting cast around Jimmy as if they were always there, and does it in a natural way, while still feeling true to all the old Jimmy comics from the Silver Age.
There’s some great little moments, like Jimmy’s brief sojourn into being a Logan Paul-style Youtube prankster, Timmy Olsen:
This also gave us an incredibly useful all-purpose reaction image:
This is probably my favourite miniseries in years.
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Providence
When Avatar first announced Providence, it was accompanied by hyperbole that I found laughable at the time – this was going to be the “Watchmen of horror”, it was going to redefine what a horror comic could be, it was painstakingly researched and executed with such precision that it would be on the same level as Alan Moore’s best-known masterpieces in comics… and so on.
When it came out in singles, I enjoyed it a lot, but I thought that it inevitably failed to quite live up to that unbelievable hype.
Now though, having reread the entire series in the three-act HC format (as well as refreshing my memory on The Courtyard and Neonomicon beforehand) I’ve revised my opinion upwards and I feel like Avatar might have been right all along.
This is an absolute masterpiece that’s as dense and meticulously constructed as Watchmen and as heavy with cultural and literary allusions and layers of meaning as From Hell – and to top it all off, it manages to pull off that incredibly difficult trick of being a horror comic that truly gets under your skin and disturbs you, rather than trying to shock you with cheap methods like extreme violence and gore.
Partly a prequel and partly a sequel to The Courtyard and Neonomicon, Providence sees Moore and artist Jacen Burrows mainly concentrate on the journey of Robert Black – a gay writer and journalist for the New York Herald – who in 1919 decides to travel across New England as research for a book about the hidden underbelly of America.
On his journey he encounters a number of weird groups of people in escalatingly disturbing encounters with the supernatural, only to slowly realise that they all have ties to a secret society with sinister goals that are predicated on his direct involvement with them. And we also see him gradually react to the death of his former lover as he tries to navigate a series of other romantic and sexual encounters while dealing with the obstacles faced by homosexual men at that time.
On that basic skeleton of a story, Moore adds a huge amount of meat, including (but not limited to) an exploration of American society in that time period, a character examination of Black himself, and of course a huge amount of HP Lovecraft. Far more so than the Courtyard and Neonomicon, Lovecraft is at the very heart of this story, and as it grows towards its climax the writer himself and the content of his stories play a more and more central role in the narrative.
The series partly achieves its creeping horror through the way it presents its unsettling concepts (most of which draw directly on Lovecraft stories) – both in Moore’s gentle way of teasing-but-not-quite-revealing everything about his horrors – leaving just enough to the imagination – and also via Burrows’ deceptively simple and disarming art, which uses sedate realism to lull you into a sense of security only to then undermine it with subtle but unmistakeable supernatural visual shifts. Subterranean monsters, impossible fourth-dimensional geometry, nightmarish dreamscapes, physics-defying structures and complex time loops are all visualised in a unified way, with everything feeling like part of the whole even if it doesn’t feel like it should quite be part of reality.
There’s also a tremendously effective technique that in every issue sees Moore and Burrows tell a central story in the comics format followed by several pages of backmatter in the form of Black’s handwritten Commonplace Book – a personal notebook in which he records both his real-life experiences and his ideas for stories and his novel.
The interplay between the two strands of Providence is quite brilliant: often you’ll see the same story from different viewpoints, and to fully understand the events of the series it can be essential to compare and contrast Black’s own perceptions with what we as readers see happening in the comics section.
The other aspect that’s essential for a full understanding of Providence is something that didn’t come easy to me, because it’s a knowledge of HP Lovecraft’s work. And while I’ve read some Lovecraft, I’m far from a completist and I only have a cursory knowledge of some aspects of his stories.
Luckily, the extensive annotations at the Facts In The Case blog are excellent at making clear exactly what stories Providence is alluding to, exactly which aspects of the book draw on real-life facts and which are invented, and (as the story goes on) how Providence interacts with The Courtyard and Neonomicon as well as HP Lovecraft’s own life and works to tell the ultimate Lovecraftian story of unimaginable horror.
I consulted the annotations after reading each issue, and between the comic section, the backmatter and the additional reading around the references I probably spent an hour or two on each individual issue. That’s value for money!
It’s also great to see the book lighten up in places, including some self-referential fun that starts to come towards the end of the series. Along with regularly amusing wordplay and deliberately comedic deadpan dialogue in places, Black’s constant lack of self-awareness as he plunges into the heart of this horror also acts as darkly comic relief from what’s happening in the book. Moore’s sense of humour is underrated, but this book has a fair amount of it.
It also has plenty of Moore’s usual keen insights into literary genre and conventions. He even starts to deconstruct Providence itself at times, offering some interesting meta-commentary on what the book is and how it positions itself in relation to the rest of the literary world of Lovecraft criticism and analysis.
If there’s any criticism of the series, it’s that the final two issues of the twelve feel like they veer off slightly into becoming a sort of epilogue for the entire Courtyard/Neonomicon/Providence saga as a whole, and anyone who has been reading Providence alone might feel a little lost. There’s also a slight tendency in these final two issues to over-explain the events of the book up to that point, making explicit some points that have only been implicit, and observing connections in dialogue that most readers will probably have worked out for themselves already.
Then again, without the online notes I feel like I might have missed a lot of this stuff myself, as they’ve really been essential in me gaining a full understanding and appreciation of Providence. It turns out that what I had already enjoyed as an unsettling story of Lovecraftian horror was so much deeper and more layered than that, and really does belong in the same conversation as the likes of From Hell and Watchmen.
This is a book about Lovecraft and horror but it’s also a book about the relationship between imagination and reality, the power of dreams, the permanence and eternal nature of time, and the importance of words and language. And so much more than that. I highly recommend it.
Also, along with the three hardcovers I also picked up the HC of Dreadful Beauty, the accompanying art book that reproduces a selection of Burrows’ work for the series (including almost all the various variant covers) in black-and-white. There’s also a lovely foreword by Moore that sheds some light on what he was hoping to achieve with the series, and how highly he rates his artistic collaborator. It’s the cherry on top of the icing on the triple-layered cake that is Providence, and I really hope they include this material in the forthcoming complete collection.
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Cheers Jerry. Yes, this was my first time revisiting it since enjoying it in singles. I’m glad I went back to it again.
I can really recommend that annotations blog if you do decide to give it a reread.
Although if it affects you anything like it did me, you’ll have some weird dreams for a couple of weeks…
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The Collected Toppi 4
Covering stories of folklore, set in colonial Africa, India and Australia, these are five stories that again show off Toppi’s artistry.
It’s interesting that few of these stories are truly complete, with much left suggested and unsaid yet in how they end they each feel complete.
The World of Black Hammer LE1
Both series collected here tend to focus on aspects of loss, with a very strong conclusion to each, with a deceptive emotional hit. Art is pretty good for both, but its the stories that make each really fly.
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Not a big fan of Tom King’s Batman run, but I bloody love Lee Weeks. This slim deluxe hardcover contains the 6 issues that Tom & Lee did together, that for me were the absolute highlight of the run. Includes the brilliant Elmer Fudd crossover.
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Not a big fan of Tom King’s Batman run, but I bloody love Lee Weeks. This slim deluxe hardcover contains the 6 issues that Tom & Lee did together, that for me were the absolute highlight of the run. Includes the brilliant Elmer Fudd crossover.
Lee Weeks is another one of those highly underrated artists. A distinctive style that never fails. I really enjoy his work.
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It always amazes me that Lee remains so underrated. I’ve never seen anyone say a bad thing about his art, but he’s rarely on anyone’s lists of favourite artists. Maybe it’s because his work is so sporadic. I think Daredevil is the longest run he ever did, and that was only a year and a half. I wonder if he does (or did) a lot of work outside of the comic business?
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Lee Weeks is one of those artists who are not flashy or bombastic, but have the skill to tell a story with just their artwork, even if there are no word balloons on the page. I put him with Sean Phillips, Michael Lark, Charles Adlard, and other artists who can breathe life into the characters they draw while grounding them in the real world. Much harder than it sounds.
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Vikram, check your DMs. Good news!
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I’m rereading Ennis’s earliest Punisher comics with Steve Dillon. Some of my earliest “not for kids” comics, maybe *the* earliest. They hold up really well, aside from an edgelord joke here and there. It’s basically the Punisher from Ennis’s more serious work on the character, but dropped into situations that might best be described as Looney Tunes meets Goodfellas. And I can’t believe that Marvel once published comic where the Punisher threatens to kill a man who is very obviously George W. Bush.
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I’m rereading Ennis’s earliest Punisher comics with Steve Dillon. Some of my earliest “not for kids” comics, maybe *the* earliest. They hold up really well, aside from an edgelord joke here and there. It’s basically the Punisher from Ennis’s more serious work on the character, but dropped into situations that might best be described as Looney Tunes meets Goodfellas. And I can’t believe that Marvel once published comic where the Punisher threatens to kill a man who is very obviously George W. Bush.
Welcome back, Frank?
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Yeah but the GWB scene happens in the next arc, Army of One (in which Frank also nukes an island of mercenaries).
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When I get filthy rich, I’m going buy all the Punisher stories by Garth Ennis.
Then I’m going to buy Garth Ennis and have him write Punisher stories until the end of time. They’re so damn near perfect a lot of time and I don’t think I’ve read any other writers version come close to it.
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It’s from the Punisher MAX series but I think my favorite Ennis run is “The Slavers”.
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It’s from the Punisher MAX series but I think my favorite Ennis run is “The Slavers”.
Yeah, that’s an absolutely fantastic arc. Horrifying, heartwrenching, perfectly executed. With some character growth too. I’m not sure it’s stuck but Frank working with the social worker is just great. And him throwing one of the responsibles against the window over and over and over is… so very Punisher.
It’s definitely in my top3. The latest miniseries, Soviet, is also very good. I mean, it’s kinda by the numbers at this point in Ennis Punisher stint but it doesnt matter because the numbers are ACE.
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It’s from the Punisher MAX series but I think my favorite Ennis run is “The Slavers”.
Yeah, that’s an absolutely fantastic arc. Horrifying, heartwrenching, perfectly executed. With some character growth too. I’m not sure it’s stuck but Frank working with the social worker is just great. And him throwing one of the responsibles against the window over and over and over is… so very Punisher.
It’s definitely in my top3. The latest miniseries, Soviet, is also very good. I mean, it’s kinda by the numbers at this point in Ennis Punisher stint but it doesnt matter because the numbers are ACE.
If Marvel were to ever make an R-rated Punisher movie or limited series, I think The Slavers would be perfect.
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Sorry, posted this in the wrong thread:
I’ve been really keen to track down the recent Boom! adaptation of Slaughterhouse Five as I’ve heard good things, but can’t find a physical copy anywhere. Anyone seen it?
Seems like it might have sold out quickly after all the good reviews.
My LCS had a copy last week, if I remember correctly. I can see if they still have it on Weds and pick it up if you’d like me to. Let me know!
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Just some Amazon fishing for upcoming items:
Fourth World by John Byrne Omnibus Hardcover – July 13 2021
found on the Canadian site, but not U.S. nor UKSuperman: The Man of Steel Vol. 3 Hardcover – June 1 2021
Batman: Earth One Vol. 3 Hardcover – June 8 2021
The Flash: The Death of Iris West Hardcover – June 1 2021
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Once & Future v.2: Old English
I had been looking forward to tucking into the second Once & Future TPB since it arrived. I loved the first volume – if anything I thought it was better than its already great reputation suggested – but I had concerns going in about whether the concept and the basic story could be sustained in an interesting way past the initial arc.
But I shouldn’t have worried as this is a great second arc that expands the series’ canvas to take in much more than the Arthurian legend aspects of book one.
This second arc is dominated by Beowulf (although the Arthurian machinations are all still running in the background), and if you have a degree of familiarity with that story then you’ll enjoy what the series does with it. But even if you don’t, it works on the level of just being a great supernatural monster comic with fantastic visceral, detailed and expressive art by Dan Mora and vivid, often neon-like colours from Tamra Bonvillain that really pop.
It’s also very funny. Gillen builds on the characters and dynamic established in book one to bring us some extremely amusing moments here, often combining it with high drama and action for maximum bathos (wasn’t that a Spider-Man crossover?).
There’s a line towards the end of this book where a character notes that “all bards make the standards their own”. Gillen is taking centuries-old familiar myths and weaving them into something original and exciting here, without undermining their essential appeal either.
And that final witty twist with a certain political leader has me desperate to see what comes next…
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