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 already own the 6 individual issues, but for $9.99 I couldn’t resist picking up the TPB of THAT TEXAS BLOOD just for the convenience of re-reading it. One thing that Image Comics does right is releasing the first volume of most titles at that $10 price point to make it more attractive to a casual reader; that, and keeping the first volume in print constantly.
Of course, the TPB does not include the text pieces that the individual issues have. On the other hand, it does include the variant covers, so that’s something new for me.
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I wish I enjoyed Question: The Deaths of Vic Sage more. I liked the art, especially Sienkiewicz’s inks, although some panels were a little bare.
I liked the surreal aspects of the plot but I felt the political points Lemire was trying to make didn’t really work. Partly because the world he created and the people in it besides Vic Sage are so vague and partly because the points themselves are surface level. I think if you’re gonna write about Black Lives Matter and suggest that part of the solution is more good cops then you haven’t really been paying attention to what’s wrong with policing in America. That’s just one example but I felt like none of the politics in the comic delved below the surface, whether it was about race or police or union-busting.
I did really like issue 3, the noir issue. I’d have enjoyed a whole mini-series about that version of the Question.
One recent DC book I did enjoy is Wonder Woman: The True Amazon by Jill Thompson. It’s written in the style of an old legend, with omniscient narration pulling the weight of the story, and really does feel like a myth. There are no references to the DCU and Thompson mostly borrows from Greek mythology to fill out her world.
Thompson pulls off something many Wonder Woman writers struggle with and that’s how to make the perfect woman interesting and relatable. Thompson’s solution is to rework the origin, coming up with an angle that I’m not sure anyone’s done before. If Diana was the sole child on Themyscira, and the daughter of the Queen, then the whole island would have doted on her–and that would mean she’d be pretty spoiled, right? Thompson’s Diana is a brat used to getting her way and fond of playing mean pranks on her caretakers. She charms her way out of consequences and grows up to be a self-centered young woman who expects everyone to worship her. When she finally meets someone who doesn’t grovel at her feet, the humble and kind-hearted stable worker Alethea, she drives herself crazy trying to win Alethea’s affection, not-so-subtly falling in love with her along the way. From Alethea, Diana learns humility, but not before her arrogance exacts a terrible price.
Thompson’s painted artwork is stunning and vibrant and her re-design of Wonder Woman’s costume is one of my favorites.
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My copy of That Texas Blood has arrived. A good looking book.
Edit – SpeedyHen now have copies of The Seeds TPB for £12.18
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While I didn’t like the Question mini, Gideon Falls is freaking brilliant. This is what I go to Lemire for, horror stories about depressed people with a heavy element of mystery. Sorrentino’s art is amazing, incorporating bizarre page layouts and perspective shifts to great effect. He reminds me a bit of CP Smith, the artist from Peter Milligan’s The Programme, although he doesn’t have Smith’s weakness of details getting lost in heavy shadow.
I was hooked from the early pages of Vol 1, especially by the co-protagonist Norton, an obsessive-compulsive who hunts through trash for pieces of the demonic Black Barn, a place of evil unfixed in time and space. The series has a heavy Twin Peaks influence–Lemire has acknowledged David Lynch’s impact on his work–although its approach is totally different, having more in common with the dark, serious tone of The Exorcist. That’s a mashup made in heaven as far as I’m concerned.
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It doesn’t seem to be as present later but the start of Gideon Falls has this weird, grain effect on the art that’s really un-nerving.
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I also read Wonder Woman: Dead Earth which is every bit the masterpiece everyone says it is. It makes me so happy that a Big Two publisher has published a book like this. DWJ’s style draws from manga and Eurocomics and to find those kinds of styles in American comics you usually have to go to indie publishers like Image (artists I have in mind are James Stokoe, Brandon Graham, Emma Rios, Sloane Leong, Rafael Grampa, Paul Pope, etc). Those artists have been published at DC and Marvel before but never in album format which best showcases this kind of sprawling style of comics storytelling that utilizes fewer panels and words to better focus on landscapes and action. This is the kind of thing I’d like to see from the album-formatted Black Label books, not just original takes on characters but diverse styles of art that provide something different than what we’re used to.
DWJ’s art style is like Paul Pope crossed with Tsutomu Nihei of BLAME, while still being wholly his own. He draws with a loose, thick brush line that makes his kinetic action scenes feel almost unhinged, as if the page can barely contain the violence happening on its surface. He also draws his own sound effects, which is something I always like to see (copy-pasted fx never look right to me). The effects leap off the page and feel part of the action just like they do in manga.
As for the story itself, it’s one of the most exciting comics I’ve read in a long time. Reading it I had a light, nervous feeling in my chest which I usually only feel when I’m watching a really exciting movie. I literally had no idea where it was heading. It could have gone anywhere. While the apocalyptic future setting brings to mind DKR, what I was most reminded of while reading this was Fury Road.
DWJ’s take on Wonder Woman is a radical departure from previous stories. This is a Diana who has failed, who has left great destruction in her wake. But her failures, while coming close to destroying her soul, ultimately make her more committed to her principles of peace, healing, and faith in human goodness.
This deserves to be remembered as one of the great works in American comics and I hope DWJ returns one day to the fertile world he’s created here.
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Glad you enjoyed Dead Earth. I think it’s brilliant.
Thanks for putting it on my radar!
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One down, four to go but there is going to be OHCs too.
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So, about the variant cover for That Texas Blood? The one that suggests it’s going to be a vampire tale? That’s a load of hooey.
What it really is? An excellent crime book that lived up to the numerous recommendations here.
Survivors – Episodes 1-5
Part of Leo’s Aldebaran series, this set of albums spins a very smart parallel tale. It also has a very interesting take on the concepts of time travel and first contact. All while depicting a world both familiar and alien.
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TMNT Artisan Edition
I’m a sucker for these scanned original art books from IDW, and when I saw this on sale for just over a tenner I jumped on it as I’ve been meaning to pick it up for a while now.
This giant hardback collects all 40 pages of the seminal TMNT #1 three times over: first as the pencil breakdowns, then as the inked pages, then as the final pages with the Duo Shade effects applied.
It’s a really interesting way of showing how the art evolved throughout the creative process. As with a lot of the IDW Artist Editions you can see notes and placeholder dialogue on the pencil layouts; then refinement and sometimes significant changes at the inking stage; and then a quite significant shift in the look and feel of the pages once the Duo Tone effects are added.
Along with some interesting commentary from Kevin Eastman and some additional art from the time around the release of issue #1, this is a nice book that feels like it captures a real moment in comics history.
The initial RRP of $40 is maybe a little steep for what it is – ultimately it’s still one comic book, three times over in different ways – but if you can get it at a decent discount it’s well worth a look.
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So, The Seeds, a story I thought might fall into the ‘never completed’ hole is now done.
The trade itself is top-notch. Do production values aid the perception and reading of a work? Yes they do and here the quality papers shows off Aja’s monochrome art to maximum effect.
A dense, knowing and quite downbeat story of dystopia and failure, this is set in a scarily plausible future. Gail, perhaps more than any other character, embodies the don’t-give-a-shit nature of the world, not caring if a story is true or false, having jaded herself by inventing stories. It’s never made that clear as to what the benefit of the “seeds” are, beyond some sort of vague economy where scarcity determines value. Nor are the aliens of one outlook, instead having differences of opinion while being challenged by a world of more complex life than they are used to dealing with.
I’m not really sure what to make of it in the end, but it is definitely a story that deserves to be read.
Changing tack, Distant Worlds is a 5-album story that sees Leo on familiar ground, exploring how humanity, on a world other than ours, responds to aliens that are either as smart or smarter than us. Set up as a son’s search for his wayward father, the structure allows the story to explore the anarchic world of Altair-3. A suspiciously open and available world but, humans being humans, no one spotted or cared to notice it was so. It was very much the Earther view summarised by Belters in The Expanse: As soon as it was found, the thought was “Mine”.
What follows is a smart and ambitious tale best read as a 5-album set which makes it quite an expensive gamble. If you want a more compact way to try out Leo’s style, the Trent series is a better place to start. If you know you like Leo’s style – and I do – it’s well worth a look.
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Yeah, but next time? Don’t piss up-wind.
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Did you ever look at Welcome to Tranquility?
Great book, not what you would expect from WildStorm (although they also released books like Automatic Kafka and Wildcats 3.0, so I shouldn’t have been too surprised).
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really good but prematurely axed
How unprecedented for a Wildstorm comic
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You are up where I am now, vol5 runs up to issue 26, there is actually only one issue left but it’s an 80 page thing so I’m assuming they’ll just release that as a mini trade to finish it off. I’m just waiting for the Comixology price drop to finish the series.
On the guy on the last page – my reading was that’s the real and original Norton Sinclair, out of his guise as the smiley guy
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It’s explained more in #27, but he’s actually one of the characters from early on in the series.
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I finished The Seeds tonight and enjoyed it quite a bit.
It’s a pretty unique book that deals with some big, intriguing ideas and looks great thanks to David Aja’s fantastic art.
But at the same time it feels a little bit unfocused, a bit of a hodgepodge of ideas without a really strong through-line to tie it all together (and the afterwords at the back confirm that impression).
Luckily the concepts it deals with are all interesting enough that the slightly shapeless story and the sense that its reach exceeds its grasp aren’t too much of a problem. There are some favourite Nocenti themes here but it’s all presented in a way that feels fairly fresh and original.
In particular, the two-tone art creates a really distinctive mood that sticks with you after you put the book down.
As pretentious as it sounds it feels like more of a book to experience than to really enjoy like you would a conventional comic, almost like a concept album or an arthouse film.
It doesn’t all completely hang together, but what it has to offer is still well worth seeing.
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Oh, and I also worked through the remaining Zdarsky Daredevil collections that are currently available.
Volume three, “Through Hell”, sees Checchetto return and the book immediately feels like itself again, regaining that grittier and more realistic vibe.
While Daredevil continue to grapple with his guilt over his past actions and a looming gang war (isn’t that every DD story?) there’s also that great Kingpin subplot that Gar mentioned earlier with him trying to climb up through the ranks of “legitimate” big business.
It’s a great character study of Kingpin (and we also get to see just why he keeps Wesley around) and feels like the kind of thing that would work well in a longer-running DD television series.
Then the fourth volume, “End of Hell” sees the book go all-out with a big supervillain plot at the same time all the gang war stuff comes to a head.
Fornes returns to fill in on the art (after turning in that solid issue earlier in the run) and does a similarly good job, and then Checchetto returns for the big finale.
It feels like a decent end to the first “Act” of Zdarsky’s Daredevil, and one that pays off a few seeds sown earlier in the run while setting up some interesting changes to come.
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It’s a great character study of Kingpin (and we also get to see just why he keeps Wesley around)
That issue was the highlight of the run for me. Masterfully done and really emphasises the ‘shades of grey’ approach to Zdarsky’s run. I was on his side at times when I shouldn’t be, sympathetic to his humiliation when really he deserves it.
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I love it when Kingpin is handled sympathetically and becomes the anti-hero of the book.
There’s an issue of Brubaker’s DD (I want to say #116?) that’s one of the character-focused one-shots from that run (and features David Aja on art) and it’s about the Kingpin being dragged back out of his quiet life where he has found love, back into the criminal underworld. And it’s absolutely brilliant, one of the best things Brubaker has ever written (and I know he feels the same).
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Excalibur Epic Collection 1: The Sword Is Drawn
The sword is drawn. The heroes are drawn. Everything is drawn – it’s a comic.
You know, I’ve not read any of Excalibur before. I’ve wanted to, but it was out of print and not collected for ages, then the last abortive attempt to collect it went out of print pretty quickly (IIRC). Mind you, I’ve had this sitting and waiting since July maybe, so maybe it’s as much me not being that keen.
I think maybe I was a little apprehensive of how Claremont would handle writing the UK. His Anglophilia can be a bit much at times and the danger of that is that instead of a comic that’s wildly inaccurate you can end up with something that feels a bit touristy, you know? And Claremont maybe falls into that trap a little here. Ripping off UNIT from Doctor Who is a decent idea. Calling them WHO and having them led by a pseudo-Brigadier and pseudo-Doctor – who are then twins both named after the Brigadier – is pushing it a bit. And having them based in the Tower of London rather than somewhere practical is also pushing it. Generally though, it doesn’t get too bad and mostly works. It’s on a par with most of Claremont’s other x-book work and feels like an extension of that. (If anything, Claremont’s self-indulgence is worse with the repeated appearances of some band which, looking them up online, turn out to be a real band made up science-fiction writers, who Kitty is a superfan of. ::eyeroll::)
I was surprised by how much the comic feels like a Marvel UK book at times. That’s almost entirely down to Alan Davies though and specifically his covers, which often being sarcastic and featuring speech bubbles feel more like something you’d find on Transformers or Death’s Head than a comic from the US office. Davis’ art is typically great and it’s stark how much the book suffers for not having it. There’s a fill-in issue by Ron Lim that’s fine (fittingly it’s of the team in New York) but my heart really sank when I turned the page from the cliffhanger at the end of one issue only to find the next had art by Marshall Rogers. If it had been Marshall Rogers as he was when he did Batman with Steve Englehart, that’d be great, but it was 80s Marshall Rogers, whose work was far less impressive.
Strangest of all about this volume is that it’s only 11 issues of the main series. Ok, there’s a prelude special before that and a thuddingly mediocre X-Babies special after (which even Art Adams doesn’t seem that enthused about, judging by his art) but then it’s onto filler. First is a multi-part story from Marvel Comics Present. Ok, I suppose that’s not filler and it fits the Epic Collection’s MO to include it. It is weird though, because there’s a note before it saying that “though this is set between issues 34-36 it was published at this point so is collected here”. I’d have thought reading order would have trumped publication order, but it’s strange to me that they knew enough about what was going to be happening two years down the line to do a side-story that fits in ahead of that. And it’s not like they’re fudging that placement – it has Captain Britain in a new costume, that he refers to as being new, and references back to him becoming sober, which hasn’t explicitly happened in the main series yet.
Issues of placement aside, the MCP story is utter dreck. Poorly paced and with no real point to it beyond having Excalibur thrown into hectic homages of various (American!) TV shows by analogues of the Looney Tunes. It would work if it was doing something about Meggan’s obsession with TV maybe – but then it would need to be from a British perspective rather than old US staples like the Beverly Hillbillies – but that seems not even incidental to the plot. It just feels like Higgins knew Excalibur as being a team that do odd things and decided to throw them into a random string of TV references that maybe becomes a coherent story if you squint generously.
The art doesn’t help much either. I don’t know if Erik Larsen was confined by the script to this mess or just was too inexperienced at the time to make it readable, but his decision to do everything as double page layouts helps nothing (so much gutter loss here) and everything is cramped, confused and chaotic. There’s one moment where Meggan meets a dragon claiming to be her mother and is forced to change into a dragon like it. That’s communicated by Larsen just drawing the dragon again with a few triangles around it as if they’re the universal symbol for “someone just turned into this”.
And then the volume is rounded out by some early solo appearances of Captain Britain, which… why? Surely they’re better suited for some Captain Britain solo collection (Epic or otherwise)? And if they can be placed in out of chronological order, why couldn’t the MCP story have been delayed to when it fits and this trade have had more of the main series? It all seems a bit self-contradictory. I guess there’s maybe a large story coming up that they don’t want to split between volumes (as I said, I’ve not read Excalibur before), but there’s a point at which you have to question whether holding to that is undermining the entire point of the exercise. And if they’re going to pad out the volume with potentially repeated material, something showing how/when/why Rachel ended up in contract to Mojo would have been nice.
Anyway, the main material is fun and I’m looking forward to future volumes.
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Excalibur of that era is a really good book emphasised by how terrible anything in the run not involving CC, Davis and later Warren Ellis is. The fill in material is absolute shite, to the degree that when Davis comes back as writer/artist he retcons pretty much all of it.
I don’t know how they will collect it in the Epic volumes but if there’s one that doesn’t include those 3 creators somewhere just don’t buy it.
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I guess there’s maybe a large story coming up that they don’t want to split between volumes
It could be that actually – there was a long story called the Cross-Time Caper that if memory serves probably does start around issue 12 or so.
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Does anyone know when the first tdb of Black Widow’s new series comes out?
Five issue trade out in March, according to Amazon.
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Excalibur of that era is a really good book emphasised by how terrible anything in the run not involving CC, Davis and later Warren Ellis is. The fill in material is absolute shite, to the degree that when Davis comes back as writer/artist he retcons pretty much all of it.
I don’t know how they will collect it in the Epic volumes but if there’s one that doesn’t include those 3 creators somewhere just don’t buy it.
A cursory glance at the next three volumes suggests that the Lobdell run (and others?) between Claremont and Davis is spread across the two volumes that have the end of the former and start of the latter. But, I mean, it’s 90s Scott Lobdell X-Men, how bad could it be?
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I really loved Excalibur at the time – but thinking back, it was a really messy book – they had Alan Davis on art – it should have been a premier book, but if recall right they double shipped and got really bad fill ins; it seem to loose the literal plot a few times. There were specials by authors who clearly had done no reading. Its a shame they can’t find a way to condense it down to the good bits?
Who was the editor?
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Who was the editor?
I think Terry Kavanagh was involved as assistant editor, who coincidentally wrote a lot of the worst material. The stuff retconned as a dream by Davis was by another editor – Ryan Higgins. It was an era at Marvel where they had editorial staff write a lot of material, almost all of it awful.
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IIRC it was that period of editors doing abysmal writing work for each other’s books that led to the Quesada era rule of editors not being allowed to freelance, which is why CB Cebulski pretended to be a Japanese man to write terrible comics while on staff.
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Yeah and Quesada has the right idea. It didn’t happen during the Shooter era – Ann Nocenti, Chistopher Priest (Jim Owsley as he was known then) and Louise Simonson had to to quit their editing roles to become freelance writers and all three put out strong work.
It was that last couple of years of the 80s it crept in when DeFalco took over. Kavanagh and Higgins were two I noticed starting to appear on various books and all of them were really bad, I can’t imagine they’d have got anywhere near a book if they’d pitched their work as freelancers.
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Yeah and Quesada has the right idea. It didn’t happen during the Shooter era – Ann Nocenti, Chistopher Priest (Jim Owsley as he was known then) and Louise Simonson had to to quit their editing roles to become freelance writers and all three put out strong work.
It was that last couple of years of the 80s it crept in when DeFalco took over. Kavanagh and Higgins were two I noticed starting to appear on various books and all of them were really bad, I can’t imagine they’d have got anywhere near a book if they’d pitched their work as freelancers.
Yeah, it was a definite jobs for the boys mentality (as was Mike Marts going along with Cebulski’s deception) and nothing particularly good came of it apart from Fabian Niciezia maybe.
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@MartinSmith Rachel ends up in Mojoworld mostly off-panel. After the Uncanny 3-parter where Wolverine stabs her before she can murder Selene, she runs away and then Spiral convinces her to come with her up magic staircase to another dimension. I think it’s just a page or two. As far as I know there are no appearances from her between then and Excalibur: The Sword Is Drawn.
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(If anything, Claremont’s self-indulgence is worse with the repeated appearances of some band which, looking them up online, turn out to be a real band made up science-fiction writers, who Kitty is a superfan of. ::eyeroll::)
Cats Laughing, isn’t it?
I remember reading those books at the time, and since I’d had never heard of that band and it kept popping up in Claremont’s work — he even had Captain Kirk listening to the group in a Star Trek comic he wrote — that they were likely friends of Claremont in real life. This was 1990 or so, and very much pre-word wide web, so information on obscure bands wasn’t readily available.
I think he even gives a shout out to the singer, who’s called Emma Bull if I remember.
While using a band he knows is a bit self-indulgent the general concept is something I miss from big 2 comics. That his characters may have a religion or a favourite band or TV star or hobbies. Kitty takes a dance class, Rhane watches Magnum, Roberto plays football, Peter paints, Ororo keeps pot plants in her attic. Even the best stuff post 2000 is very plot driven. Maybe that’s a consequence of the events cycle and the loss of thought balloons but it did add an extra layer to these characters being so popular in the 80s.
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My copy of the delayed 36th instalment of the Judge Dredd Complete Case Files arrived yesterday. looking forward to this as it contains the Dredd vs Aliens storyline which is a whole lot of fun.
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Just saw that Speedyhen have got a 10%-off code, STAYHOME, live at the moment, so I’ve used it to save a chunk off some upcoming pre-orders.
(It’s a one-use code so make sure to stack up everything you want in one basket.)
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Ohhhhh – is there an expiry date?
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4 new orders to replace preorders, 3 new ones – a very nifty bargain
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I was determined not to write it off after the first volume, I gave Bitter Root volume 2 a try, but to no avail.
Great art, some decent world building but it’s basically people fighting monsters with a bit of subtext tacked on. I can’t get invested in it all. It’s just ……fine.
I won’t extend my determination to volume 3.
one for eBay
king of nowhere was alright. Again it didn’t really reel me in. I bought it for the Jenkins art and to give W Maxwell Prince another shot, but it was a bit messy, despite having a few good moments here and there.
Another one for eBay.
jla Deluxe Volume 2
huge Morrison fan but I found myself getting pretty restless throughout this volume and I couldn’t wait for it to be finished. I don’t think it has aged well, a lot of that is down to Porter’s art, but Morrison’s dialogue is a surprisingly chore at times throughout this run.
starman omnibus volume 4
pretty great in places and very good in others. The opening crossover with Jerry Ordway’s Shazam was my favourite story of this volume though. Brilliant old school comics with a strong plot and good steady pacing.
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I was determined not to write it off after the first volume, I gave Bitter Root volume 2 a try, but to no avail.
You’re a better man than me; I gave up after the first arc.
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Chu Volume 1
A fun prequel tale to Chew, this is a good return to the mad world of it. It is still very much a bad taste comedy, with all kinds of riffs on food.
The art is good too. I’ll be back for the next course.
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Maybe not a surprise to some, but just found the news that came out at the end of December that there will be Phase 3 OHCs to finish IDW’s Transformers epic.
The first is due September:
Phase 3 wasn’t as large as its predecessor, reckon it’ll be in the region of 5-6 OHCs.
Bad news is the Parker: Last Call – Martini Edition has been bumped to May 2021. Fine, so be it, I’ll bag it when I bag it.
Couple of recent acquisitions have made it through the post – Klaus: The Life and Times of Santa Claus aka OHC3, which looks every bit as good as the previous two volumes – Boom does a great job on these. Plus I, Rene Tardi – Prisoner of Stalag IIB Volume 3: After the War – a big, deluxe hardback that concludes Tardi’s biography of his father.
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Klaus: The Life and Times of Santa Claus aka OHC3
This remains Morrison’s best work of recent years by far. There’s none of the stuff that they became known for in previous works, reality warps, conspiracy bollocks, instead Morrison focuses on telling a damn good story that riffs on the ideas around Santa Claus.
Morrison is helped greatly by Mora’s wonderful art that brings each story to life, with the second, The Life and Times of Joe Christmas, relying on it entirely – as it’s told by a series of double page spreads that rely the story in reverse.
That’s not to suggest the other story here, Klaus and the Crying Snowman, is lacking though, far from it. This sees a smart reworking of a mythological tale into a new form that fits perfectly.
If you are going to issue a two story OHC volume, the stories have to merit it – and these do.
I, Rene Tardi – Prisoner of Stalag IIB Volume 3: After the War
Concluding Tardi’s biography of his father, this volume looks at a period rarely talked about, especially in comparison to the period that preceded it – post World War Two.
At the same time Tardi’s sharp account sets fire to numerous sacred cows – like the idea of World War Two being any kind of “good” war; of there being any kind of virtue demonstrated by anyone, to invoke two examples there is the puncturing of the Dambusters by showing what that actually entailed in full; along with the casual use of rape by just about every military going. There is the denial of the Holocaust in the face of all evidence to the contrary, along with all manner of escape for individuals of dubious natures, be they ex-Nazi or collaborator or just plain vengeance seeking on soft targets.
So no, it’s not an easy read, but it is a very worthwhile and necessary one, particularly as the generation that lived it start to pass from living memory.
Tardi’s regular page structure of three long, horizontal panels allows far more visual variety than you might expect and all manner of visuals.
This is not a “glorious” war story, but it is a very well-told account of the era, of the war yes, but also before and after.
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Ascender volume 3
This is still a joy to read each time a new volume appears. It now feels like the pieces are just starting to be moved into a position to take us towards an endgame, I’m assuming in 4 volumes time. At least I hope we get 4 more volumes minimum.
Lemire and Nygen have done such a terrific job keeping this book fresh and interesting, it’s a truly epic saga and I’ve grown invested in so many of the characters. As always there’s a few key reveals here and it never feels like filler; always pushing the plot, relationships or character development forward . Just a nice, steady and constant pacing. The watercolour art is a treat, still. Lovely series.
8/10
Ringside volume 1-3
Joe Keatinge & Nick Barber
Id read and enjoyed volume 1 & 2 previously, and as it had been a while ago, a re-read was much needed before Volume 3.
This is a enjoyable crime book. It has been sold and often spoken about as a wrestling series with some drama and crime elements, I actually think the wrestling angle is quite minimal and just acts as an interesting backstory which aids character development. You don’t have to have any sort of interest in wrestling to enjoy it (which is good because I have zero) The parallels can be used for any walk of life which chews people up and spits them out.
i think this would go down well with fans of series like Criminal, but it’s nowhere near that quality.
It’s a page turner, with a few questionable plot turns that don’t quite work for me. Sadly, just as it really finds its stride it feels like it has been cut short due to poor sales. The last volume starts at a far different pace than it ends and the ending is particularly abrupt and does not do the characters justice. In fact in some cases there are big leaps that we have to fill in the gaps on and it really does impact how the whole series hangs together.
There’s some decent dialogue and also some that feels a bit forced, especially when characters talk tough. I think many people may see the art as being rough; it’s the artist’s first published work and it’s very minimal, but I was really impressed with how it still manages to convey everything you need to know and some of the panel layouts are really great, especially the first double page splash which I posted on here years ago.
Overall it was an engaging enough read but not enough that I want to keep it on my shelves, which I’m in the ongoing process of trying to clear. Once for eBay if I can get it sold, but definitely worth a read if it’s something you had been interested in previously.
7/10
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Mesmo Delivery
by Rafael Grampa
Finally got round to this and it’s a special book. Every so often we stumble across these books in the industry that really stand out because of the way they make you feel when reading them. A bit like watching a David Lynch movie.
To summarise the plot would be to give away the entire story, it’s very light. However, that not to say that it doesn’t work or that there isn’t one at all; Grampa cites the Twilight Zone as an influence and that gives a fair idea here what to expect, to a degree anyway, it’s way more unhinged.
This is of course mostly about the art; it’s a ballet of violence in a seedy, offbeat world, filled by horrible characters. There’s so much depth to the art and design that it makes up for the lack of storyline or emotional anchor.
Its clear Grampa spent a lot of time creating this, even without the backmatter to underline that.
It’s a unique book by a massive talent.
9/10
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Yeah I really liked Mesmo Delivery. One of those books where it’s all about the style and how the story is told. Some of the visuals in there are just tremendous.
I’d love to see more sequentials from him but it looks very labour-intensive! The DKR book he did with Miller was good but not as wild as Mesmo Delivery.
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Grampa had a really good Batman Black and White strip too that he wrote and drew. It features a pretty ingenious use of Alfred.
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Wow. BD took the Batman Dini omnibus down to around £55, nabbed it, it’s now already gone back up to £61!
If they ever get stock of it, BooksEtc may go lower to the £51-52 mark. I don’t mind paying a little more for Dini’s stories.
Moral of the tale? Have items in wishlists and price drop notifications active.
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Si Spurrier’s Hellblazer Vol1 really is great. It feels very much like a return to the Delano days in many ways, chiefly of course in the ground level politics of it.
I know Spurrier’s run has been cut short, but there’s a volume two coming that at least wraps up this storyline, yeah?
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I read Spurrier talking about it at the time, he wasn’t best pleased with the cancellation and while issue 12 was an end to a planned arc he refused to change anything and let whatever other plots dangling.
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Really annoying move, restarting Hellblazer and great book and then cancelling it even before the trades are out (in a section of the DC world that mostly relies on trade readers, I’ll asume). So much for that whole attempt to re-start Vertigo as the Sandman Universe, I suppose. Fuck it all.
I do love how angry Spurrier himself was at this.
This has broken me because… ah, fuck. ..
Because it’s 2020 and the bastards are in charge and the world’s on fire and goddam it we’ve tried — haven’t we? — giving the heroes a chance to stand up and lead the way and show us how it’s done, on the page and on the screen and at the debating lectern, and all it’s got us is an argument over what it means to be a hero, and shouting matches between this lot’s notion of a good person versus that lot’s notion of a good person, and they’re all filthy rich and dead in the heart, and the shadows are oozing with unrealised myth and the workers are hoodwinked by the lords and ladies to misdirect their hatred towards anyone Different, and there’s unfairness in every life, real or imagined, injustice that you can’t fix with laserbeams or super-punching, and fuck! me! these are NOT the stories that get told about capes and science-wizards and rolemodels, they’re the stories that get told about real people, the people who know what it’s like to have nothing but your wits and your words, what it’s like to be selfish and scared but still do the right fucking thing, what it’s like to live with monsters in your mind and in your home, and I thought, I really thought, we were tuning-in to those vibrations with every word and every panel, and you’ll forgive me indulging a moment’s breathless black bitterness to discover that these are the stories that get culled, these are the extremities of the great pop-culture I.P. emanation-factories which are the first to be tossed overboard when the storm rises on the horizon.
We are the lizard’s tail.
It didn’t make enough money. It didn’t make enough money.
[…]
Blame Covid, blame preservative risk aversion, blame the algorithm. For the first time in my professional career I was writing a book that I could truly imagine continuing forever. No hint of the creeping boredom. No danger of the ideas running dry.
https://www.simonspurrier.com/blog/hellblazertheend
And would’ve been happy to be along for the ride. I’ve been waiting for over twenty years for another truly great Hellblazer book, and here it was and now it’s gone again. Fuck it.
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People need to buy the books though.
How many of us who were enjoying this were preordering and picking this up monthly to support it?
Apply that ratio to the rest of the potential readership and we have the answer as to why it was cancelled.
Now, DC must carry part of the blame because they should have known how good the book was that they had in their hands and marketed the hell out of it and gave some time for the trade sales and word of mouth to filter through – but the fans know how the business operates by now.
If a book doesn’t sell enough it gets cancelled, that’s been the case for a long time now.
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It came and went, if you looked at the right time it’d be there but if you missed the window….
Ah fair enough, I guess that is the problem with Books Etc.!
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If it’s between blaming readers or blaming DC for being dicks and not supporting a title or being able to do collected editions competently, I’ll blame DC all day long.
I don’t think the Hellblazer stuff is anything to do with DC’s competence at putting together collected editions, which is a whole different can of worms.
I think it’s more to do with the first point, with them basing decisions about the future of a book like that on floppy sales. I assume that a lot of people either waited for the trade or (like me) bought the trade on the back of positive buzz for the floppies.
Cancelling the book before those sales even register seems like a bit of a short-sighted decision. It’ll be interesting to hear how the book does in trade.
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How many of us who were enjoying this were preordering and picking this up monthly to support it?
I was
unfortunately it probably just makes the cancellation even more annoying. I do the right thing, putting my money where my mouth is, but good quality books like this still don’t last. Not at the big two at least. I imagine it would probably still be going if it was at Image, but it wouldn’t be John Constantine then would it. -
If it’s between blaming readers or blaming DC for being dicks and not supporting a title or being able to do collected editions competently, I’ll blame DC all day long.
I don’t think the Hellblazer stuff is anything to do with DC’s competence at putting together collected editions, which is a whole different can of worms.
I think it’s more to do with the first point, with them basing decisions about the future of a book like that on floppy sales. I assume that a lot of people either waited for the trade or (like me) bought the trade on the back of positive buzz for the floppies.
Cancelling the book before those sales even register seems like a bit of a short-sighted decision. It’ll be interesting to hear how the book does in trade.
I would say the fact they’ve created a needless Catch-22 where they claim they’ll only continue a trade series if it has enough sales, but nearly everyone is wary of buying their trades because they always get dropped before completion, so no-one buys them and they never get finished, is a form of incompetence.
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If it’s between blaming readers or blaming DC for being dicks and not supporting a title or being able to do collected editions competently, I’ll blame DC all day long.
I think it’s a bit of both, although I’m not really blaming as such.
We, as the potential audience know the score by now – a lot of creators really try their best to emphasise how important it is to support a book monthly – I think only creators who are really well established in their guarantee of trade sales (eg Rick Remender) will get that time to see trade sales factor in.
Its not a model I’m fond of, but I knew as soon as this book came out it would be on a shoogley peg, and as a big Hellblazer fan I thought this was one I’d need to support in single issues and hope others were doing the same. I generally buy trades, other then the odd book I really want to do well and think needs that extra support.
I don’t know it would be as good as it turned out, although Spurrier seemed like a really good choice.
I think the bigger problem is if the number of people who read these books illegally supported them with their wallet then we wouldn’t be in this position and Spurriers long term plan would have been allowed to come to fruition. That’s really the only people I blame at this stage. DC are frustrating but this has been the game for years now, so we know what to expect.
I’ve checked one single illegal website just as an example, and without a word of a lie, there has been JUST short of half a million views of the Si Spurrier Hellblazer book. Specifically that book, not the Hellblazer that ran for 300 issues.
Loads of people are reading comics and not paying for them. They are to blame for the mess the industry is in, why the talent pool is poorer than it should be and why we have to pay $3.99 an issue.
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I’ve checked one single illegal website just as an example, and without a word of a lie, there has been JUST short of half a million views of the Si Spurrier Hellblazer book. Specifically that book, not the Hellblazer that ran for 300 issues.
How many of those half a million supposed people lived in a place where they could pay for the book? How many would afford it if it was available? Are all those views unique users? How many of those views were garnered before the book was cancelled? Does the website inflate their numbers to get users to stay on the site and be subjected to ads?
If the answer to any of those questions isn’t “I don’t know” you’re either running the website or, more likely, wrong.
I don’t know why other people turn to piracy, but for me and the very short list of friends I have that do it’s never really been a matter of not wanting to pay for them but rather not being able to buy them. Digital distribution does change that availability issue, but it’s hard to justify paying for something you can get for free in virtually the same format if you’re as poor as I am. If I couldn’t pirate the comics I’m reading, it wouldn’t make me buy them. It would just make me read less.
When I lived in Cork, I bought singles every wednesday. When I lived in Stockholm I bought a lot of trades. I still buy a lot of comics for how much money I have, just not digitally. Will probably get the DC subscription service if it’s available when I’ve landed a job.
Now, I’m definitely not claiming that most other pirates are in the same situation as me in regards to geography and economy (or even legality, seeing as describing what I’m doing as illegal would be untrue), or that my position is morally defensible. I’m just saying that it’s hard to know exactly how much piracy contributes to the problem. Or if it does.
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Problem is that this isn’t new – see Unfollow and Clean Room – but it is being done with an imprint that has historically cleaned up on trade sales, with the result that the audience likely will wait for the trade so going with the traditional monthly sales feels an out of sync way to go about it.
The other thing it did, in the case of Hellblazer, is my interest went down, not up. Why check out a series when the publisher has pulled the rug out from under it so badly it cannot conclude well?
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They are to blame for the mess the industry is in, why the talent pool is poorer than it should be and why we have to pay $3.99 an issue.
Yeah, it’s definitely the readers’ fault and not a series of atrocious business decisions that killed almost 80% of the direct market.
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I don’t know why other people turn to piracy, but for me and the very short list of friends I have that do it’s never really been a matter of not wanting to pay for them but rather not being able to buy them. Digital distribution does change that availability issue, but it’s hard to justify paying for something you can get for free in virtually the same format
I think the second statement here puts the lie to the first one.
Digital distribution has been great in terms of providing access to most new comics, on day of release, at cover price. Far more so than TV and movies even, it means that everyone has the option to buy on the same terms.
So I think it’s very hard now to make the argument that you’re not buying comics legally because you don’t have the option to do so. The truth is that some people will always go for the free, illegal option over the paid, legal option.
You can obviously argue the reasons around all of that, and I don’t think it’s the comics industry’s only problem, but it is a problem.
What I’ve always found intriguing about piracy is that it suggests that the interest in comics is there, in far greater numbers than print and legal digital sales might suggest. I think at some point there will be a reckoning over digital pricing and we will see lower prices for digital books, and some of those readers may move from piracy to legitimate purchasing.
But even if digital comics cost a penny, some people would still choose to read them illegally for free.
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I’m calling out the impact it has on the industry
I’ve checked one single illegal website just as an example, and without a word of a lie, there has been JUST short of half a million views of the Si Spurrier Hellblazer book. Specifically that book, not the Hellblazer that ran for 300 issues.
How many of those half a million supposed people lived in a place where they could pay for the book? How many would afford it if it was available? Are all those views unique users? How many of those views were garnered before the book was cancelled? Does the website inflate their numbers to get users to stay on the site and be subjected to ads?
If the answer to any of those questions isn’t “I don’t know” you’re either running the website or, more likely, wrong.
I don’t know why other people turn to piracy, but for me and the very short list of friends I have that do it’s never really been a matter of not wanting to pay for them but rather not being able to buy them. Digital distribution does change that availability issue, but it’s hard to justify paying for something you can get for free in virtually the same format if you’re as poor as I am. If I couldn’t pirate the comics I’m reading, it wouldn’t make me buy them. It would just make me read less.
When I lived in Cork, I bought singles every wednesday. When I lived in Stockholm I bought a lot of trades. I still buy a lot of comics for how much money I have, just not digitally. Will probably get the DC subscription service if it’s available when I’ve landed a job.
Now, I’m definitely not claiming that most other pirates are in the same situation as me in regards to geography and economy (or even legality, seeing as describing what I’m doing as illegal would be untrue), or that my position is morally defensible. I’m just saying that it’s hard to know exactly how much piracy contributes to the problem. Or if it does.
I’ll keep it as objective as I can, I know you are doing the same. However, it doesn’t feel like a good thing for the industry to me. It doesn’t feel fair on the creators or the publishers. However, I’m not judging you Anders, just the act. I’m the last cunt who can get on a high horse with the decisions I make and have made in life, so just want to make it 100% clear.
I 100% agree that the digital model needs to change, to try and shift those stealing comics into paying for them. The price for digital books is absolutely ridiculous and I don’t pay it either. The stuff I keep up to date on I preorder it in physical copies for a 25% discount then I sell about 75% of it again on eBay. It’s the only way I can really justify the hobby to the extent I involve myself in it. Although comics are the thing I enjoy most in life in terms of entertainment, besides maybe football.
So, perhaps the moral decision to pay for a book digitally is easier to do the right thing when it is 50p a book, rather than £3. Maybe this helps turn some decent sized proportion of those reading for free to paying and generating income.
I don’t agree with your availability point though. As point out, if you have the internet connection to read the books illegally you have the internet connection to pay for them. This brings it back round to affordability and willingness, for the most part.
Now, if 2% of that 500,000 illegal readers pay for the book, that extra 10,000 readers keeps the book from being cancelled.
Comics is too niche a market for piracy to be anything other than a negative impact, unless there’s a portion of readers who are reading for free then buying what they like afterwards.
Im also not a fan of people stealing books then slaying them online.
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The price for digital books is absolutely ridiculous and I don’t pay it either. The stuff I keep up to date on I preorder it in physical copies for a 25% discount then I sell about 75% of it again on eBay. It’s the only way I can really justify the hobby to the extent I involve myself in it. Although comics are the thing I enjoy most in life in terms of entertainment, besides maybe football. So, perhaps the moral decision to pay for a book digitally is easier to do the right thing when it is 50p a book, rather than £3. Maybe this helps turn some decent sized proportion of those reading for free to paying and generating income.
Yeah, this is kind of what I was getting at earlier. I think the cost of new digital comics is still unreasonably high, which means that someone without the option to buy floppies physically has the option of paying $4-$5 for a 20-30 page digital ebook, or get it for free through piracy channels. So while the availability/access issue is solved with digital, it’s not that surprising that some people still turn to the free, piracy option.
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I am not entirely sure what this means and thus what you mean by it, but I’m not lying when I say I turned to piracy because of lack of availability.
No, I’m not denying that. Just saying that when a legal digital option is available (like it is now but wasn’t then) and you still choose piracy, then it’s about more than availability, it’s also about cost.
Like I say, I think the cost of new digital comics being set at the same as physical books is unreasonable, and it’s understandable why someone would choose not to pay it and choose piracy instead. But we have to acknowledge that now that digital has solved the access issue, it’s really about what a reasonable price is. And that is obviously subjective to some extent.
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I’ll keep it as objective as I can, I know you are doing the same. However, it doesn’t feel like a good thing for the industry to me. It doesn’t feel fair on the creators or the publishers. However, I’m not judging you Anders, just the act. I’m the last cunt who can get on a high horse with the decisions I make and have made in life, so just want to make it 100% clear.
Thanks, Chris!
My original point wasn’t to get into my own reading habits, of which I am not ashamed, but rather to state that I think it’s hard to blame piracy as the sole or biggest or a contributor of any size to the problems the industry are facing simply because it’s really hard for us to measure the impact of piracy.
My own piracy habits have seen me read comics for free that I would’ve most likely paid for otherwise, but it has at the same time not stopped me from buying comics in the whole and it has even led me to buy comics I hardly would’ve come around to wanting to buy without having read them first. If digital comics cost less, I would probably turn away from piracy altogether. And I think a LOT of other pirates would to.
With that said, I’m not at all contesting that some people will always lean towards piracy, no matter how low the actual prices go. Piracy is subject to a lot of hoarding too, piracy for piracys sake. I’ve seen that A LOT throughout all the piracy communities I’ve been in.
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But we have to acknowledge that now that digital has solved the access issue, it’s really about what a reasonable price is.
I disagree. And agree. Somehow.
What I disagree with is unequivocally saying the availability issue is solved. That, to me, is like saying that reading digitally is the same as reading a physical copy. That reading experience isn’t available.
Then again I do agree that pricing in regard to digital sales deals with that. If the digital prices were a lot lower, it would compensate for the lack of reading/collecting experience that comes with a physical copy.
But even if they were lower I would still walk down the street to my local whatever-shop and buy the physical copies in original english at cover price, if that kind of outlet had been… hrm… available. At least the issues that I like the most and or could afford.
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