Rather than dump nearly a dozen new reviews into my blog stream, I’ve opted to back dump them. When I’m on a tear of focusing on one topic, I get all self-conscious, especially with comic book reviews as I can only imagine that the tiniest fraction of my regular readership cares about comic book review. So rather than give two weeks of blog space to reviews, I’ve backdated them so that it doesn’t necessarily look like I took nearly two months off from blogging regularly. (This is me thinking too hard about this and being too clever by half.)
Anyway, click on whatever reviews you are interested in:
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I care! I do care about your long-time interest, Maurice! Even if I don’t appreciate modern mainstream Transatlantic comics, bcos not to put too fine a point on it, so many are reactionary, unamusing trash.
If the above-defined comics industry *wants* the “majority” to care about it anyway, why doesn’t it do anything to reach out to the majority? Like extend its reach of themes and topics and styles; get away from the ubiquitous & over-done superhero obsession? Not everybody likes superheroes; some do. It’s all a little male-oriented and “lockerroom”, don’t you think??
(As Alan Moore said in an interview: in the 1950s they had all sorts of comics comprising a much wider selection: cowboy, crime, horror, romance, “funny animal” stories.. most of it pretty good entertainment. Oddly enough, at the precise same time that Dr Wertham was inveighing against them, American comics were really at their height: certainly in terms of choice, *and* of female readership: statistics say the greatest no. of girl/women..
..readers were achieved at this time. 50s reactionary? I don’t know what AM thinks but I know what I think thereon: that it was the heyday of American pop culture, and that today y’all are in a deep decline..
Anyway: so which of the above are the Grant Morrisons? (Since you promised some? And are there any – have you SEEN any – truly *fresh* comics, by a new voice/a woman/a person of colour? THAT would interest me: when you find some and tell me, it will be like a bored weary traveller, being woken up from a long nap to alight at the right stop! Thanks!
i will be looking around. i’m not much of a manga reader, but i hear that has a huge female following (and sells the most here in the states). i suspect more of what you are interested in will be found among the independent comic book ranks.
I look forward to the results of your reconnaissance. You inhabit the right country and sphere to find out about these things long before I do – plus companies still sometimes send you freebies, don’t they?! Manga/Japanese comics have been looking pretty good to me for quite a while. There is another avenue which also may prove worth a look for fun: Disney Europe have been quite active in the teen sphere in recent years I understand: with comics like W.I.T.C.H. which eventally made it onto the American market in the form of graphic novels. Disney comics of all types have long been popular in Europe. (Wasn’t I myself weaned on them?!) I’ll say this for the Italian Disney employees (for it is them who I believe are responsible): at least they’re prepared to get a clue and actually find out what teens might want to read. The US monoliths DC and Marvel often seen so out of touch it’s painful. What is this monomaniacal obsession with wall-to-wall superheroes anyway? You want *some* superheroes(& preferably super..
..in character and not just a bunch of moaning minnies in tights!) But not *all* superheroes.. Then to make it look like they’re doing sth different, they try yet another variation on Superheroes With Problems – which is about all they’ve been doing for the last 30 years! What is the MATTER with these writers – they’re the ones with the problems!
Yes: I know manga have been developing quite some following, in GB too, since the 1990s. Only trouble is, they’re still hard to lay hands on outside the major centres. Course one can buy them on Amazon; trouble is, Amazon doesn’t lend itself to browsing, unless you know what you’re looking for and the names to type in! I’m gravitating towards manga, slowly. I think I might ask couple of my young Brit friends I made on Twitter. (I also know there are things to avoid in this genre, such as the notorious “tentacle rape” comics. However, the good thing about the Japanese is that I think they have a great sense of formalism; they arrange everything in genres; so I am..
..not likely to open a Batman comic from over there, or a piece of Victoriana, and find out that it’s someone’s (Alan Moore’s) rape fantasy. I trust the courteous Japanese to give me better warning! (Oh and I’ve been a Hayao Miyazake fan for about 7 years, so fire away on that front! Hauru no ugoku shiru: when I had the computing power I downloaded the original-language version, which sounded a lot better than Christian Bale! (Though I liked Lauren Bacall on the English version!) I rather enjoy the sound of spoken Japanese: it can be cute: I like the way they tried to say “Calcifer”: it came out “Calucifer”! My favourite of his must be however the unashamedly animist Princess Mononoke! Animist anime: there you go! Those tree spirits – sent a shiver down one’s spine!)
Alan Moore again: you know, he and I don’t (dis)agree on everything; but at least some of the things he writes really make me wonder if he is seriously disturbed; enough to make him a predatory danger to women and children walking down the..
..street, is what I mean! You really will have to do a review of Batman: The Killing Joke one day: and then I will inveigh &say what trash I think it is! Surely one of the most gratuitous comics ever written! And the most out-of-character: why would the Joker do all or any of that: it isn’t funny! &it doesn’t “prove” anything! (If Joker wanted to make Gordon “like him”, *why* wouldn’t he subject the Commish to the same disfigurement – for example!) &if he *did* do anything like that, the *last* thing Bats would do at the end is *laugh* – I promise you that! Anyway: in all honesty it can’t be regarded as canonical, whatever they say now: because Moore wrote it to be outside of canon: that’s what he was promised! DC are a bad joke and someone should lock the whole lot of them up. Moore isn’t much better: years later he confessed: “it is very far from my best work” and that it was “nasty” – but if so, why did he write the trash in the first place, and why is he still accepting money for it?*Those* are the comics
..questions I want answered!
Hmph! But not even all modern superhero comics need be like that! They can and should aspire higher than torture porn!
So: there’s the Japanese (and some Western) manga with its myriad genres: think I might start with that Loki “yaoi” that *you* didn’t like the sound of!
We pagans must have our fun – and I don’t look to AM to provide it! Do you know, for a Brit, he’s got a terribly underdeveloped sense of humour? (And do you know that I’ve got a terribly traditional one: when in jesting mode, my sallies, when not stemming from my own absurdity, are based on trad British sitcoms &comedy going back to the music hall? I’m not terribly “alternative”: well, unless I’m going absurd!)
Don’t like unfunny Brits: they’re like fish without scales. Yanks I suppose are naturally earnest – you’re more like what the English think of Germans: they should be thinking of U.S.!
Anyway:u’ve got access 2the industry:so any further pointers will be appreciated!If I find any on my own I’ll tell u!