Category: comics

sick days and comic books

I came down with a cold on Easter Sunday, and took a sick day on Monday. I felt good enough to go back into work on Tuesday, and made it through Wednesday and Thursday too. But things started going downhill on Thursday and I called in sick again today (Friday). I went to a doctor, and there’s nothing horribly wrong with me as far as he can tell, so I’m just resting and taking a (hopefully) stronger decongestant.

So this week has been good for comic book reading. On Sunday, I read B.P.R.D.: The Dead Remembered. On Monday, I got through B.P.R.D: King of Fear, and some other miscellaneous comics. Today, I read Baltimore: The Plague Ships and a bunch of DC Rebirth issues. Somewhere in there, I also managed to finish the Star Wars Omnibus that reprinted the first couple of dozen issues of Marvel’s Star Wars comic from the 70s, and start into the hardback collecting Paul Pope’s One Trick Rip-Off and some of his other stuff.

So, yeah, I read a lot of comics. I’m enjoying getting back into Mignola’s universe, but I’m not sure how far I’m going to go with that. On the B.P.R.D. side, I’m done with the “War on Frogs” story now, and “Hell on Earth” would be next, if I decide to go on with it. Hell on Earth runs through 15 trades, so it would be a pretty big commitment. (I think I have the equivalent of the first volume in individual issues, but that still leaves 14 more.) Baltimore runs through seven trades and a prose novel, so that’s a little less daunting, but still a pretty big story (and I’m not sure it’s done yet). And I’ve got a handful of random Hellboy comics to read too, plus the full Hellboy in Hell series.

On the DC front, I’m still enjoying Rebirth, but I also still have some mixed feelings about it. I have the first issue of The Button crossover, but I haven’t read it yet. I was at one point thinking that it might actually be a good point for jumping ship on the whole rebirth thing, but I’ll at least give this particular story a chance. If it looks like it’s leading into something horrible, I’m more than ready to drop it all. I’ve found the current DC books to be nice escapism, but I probably wouldn’t miss them if I stopped reading them.

I was kind of planning on going into New York tomorrow for the NYC version of the March For Science, but I’m clearly in no shape for that. So I guess my support for the march will have to come from my living room couch, in the form of supportive retweets and good thoughts.

no SDCC again

Much like last year, I gave the SDCC open registration system a shot, but failed again to get tickets.

I could have gone to WonderCon last weekend, if I’d really wanted to. I’d done some research on it a few months back, but didn’t really like the airfare and hotel costs, so I decided to punt on it.

It’s not a bad day out today, so maybe I should stop sitting in front of the computer now, and go out for a walk.

The Laundry Files, the Library, and Modesty Blaise

After taking a fairly long break from reading Charles Stross’ Laundry Files series, I picked up The Apocalypse Codex a few weeks ago. I just finished reading it this week. It’s not quite as funny as I remember the earlier books being, but it’s still very good. It includes two characters who are based on Modesty Blaise and Willie Garvin. Modesty Blaise was a British comic strip that ran for many years, starting in the sixties. I became familiar with it through reprints published in a magazine called Comics Revue, which I used to read regularly.

Here’s an article about the strip’s creator, Peter O’Donnell, from The Comics Journal, published just after he died. And here’s a more recent article, also from TCJ. Both are written by R. C. Harvey, who knows a lot about comics and who I should really read more often. (In fact, I haven’t actually read these articles yet, just bookmarked them to read later. I’ve been doing that a lot lately…) I stopped buying Comics Revue back in 2008 or so, when I stopped buying comics altogether. (Or at least mostly stopped buying them.) Now that I’ve started up again, I’ve been thinking about picking up on Comics Revue again too. But I still have a couple of unread Modesty Blaise books from the Titan Books reprint series, so I should probably read those before I start buying more issues of Comics Revue.

On a somewhat related subject, I did some spring cleaning last weekend, throwing out some old computer books and getting together some old novels to donate to an upcoming library book sale. I dropped the novels off today, and decided to have a look around the library while I was there. This book sale is not for my local library, rather for the neighboring town of Bridgewater. I’ve always known that Bridgewater’s library was bigger than ours, but I’d never really had any reason to go over there and visit it. Well, I was pretty impressed. It’s much larger than Somerville’s library, and they have quite a lot of books. I browsed through the comics section and the SF section, and found a few things there that I’d like to read. Bringing this back around to the original subject, they have most of the Laundry Files books, in hardcover. So I checked out the next one in the series, The Rhesus Chart. Now I have three weeks to read it. (I’ll have to check and see if I can renew it online, if I don’t get it finished on time. I don’t really know how all this modern library stuff works…)

A busy day in New York

I took a trip into New York City today to see a few things. First, an overdue trip to the Met to check out Seurat’s Circus Sideshow. As a young computer nerd, I was always fascinated by Seurat, as his method seemed particularly relevant and even prescient: putting images together pixel by pixel. The exhibit isn’t a general Seurat exhibit, rather it’s an exhibit of one particular painting, and a bunch of related material, some by Seurat and some by other artists. The Times has a good overview article on the exhibit.

I then walked up to the Guggenheim. I wanted to see Jackson Pollock’s Alchemy, and the little exhibit they have related to its restoration. The painting itself is at the very top of their main rotunda. The exhibit about the restoration is hidden away in the basement, and a bit hard to find. But it’s worth seeing, if you’re a Pollock nerd like me. The main exhibit in the rotunda is called Creating a Modern Guggenheim, and is kind of a catch-all exhibit of miscellaneous works from the Guggenheim’s collection. Aside from the Pollock, there’s a bunch of other interesting stuff, though there’s no real theme, other than “look at all this stuff we’ve got.”

Finally, I went to MoCCA Fest. I’d thought about going to MoCCA Fest before, but never quite managed it. I wasn’t really even aware of it this year, until I saw a mention of it yesterday, so I figured I’d stop by. MoCCA Fest is basically a comic con, but without all the low-brow superhero stuff. (I don’t say that judgmentally. I love the low-brow superhero stuff.) So it’s all indie comics and weird artsy stuff. They had a nice little exhibit of Drew Friedman’s art from his Heroes of the Comics books, and Friedman himself was there. I really love his work on those books, but I can never talk myself into buying them. Cliff Chiang was at the CBLDF booth while I was there. The Wonder Woman books he was signing were probably the most mainstream thing at the show. I’m honestly not that familiar with his work, but it does look interesting now that I’m poking around on the internet learning a bit about him. There were a couple of other guests I would have liked to have seen, David Lloyd and Gene Luen Yang, but neither one was around while I was there. I feel a little guilty that I left the show without having bought any books, but I didn’t see anything that I really wanted. I feel like I should be reading and supporting more indie comics, but there hasn’t really been much of interest to me lately outside the mainstream. Anyway, it was a fun little show, so maybe I’ll go back next year.

Overall, a good day, with decent spring-like weather and a fair bit of walking. Now I’m tired and need a nap.

thinking about comics again

I’ve gotten back into the habit of buying comics regularly again, as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. A couple of articles I’ve read recently have gotten me thinking a bit more deeply about whether or not I want to continue picking up books weekly from my local comic shop. I thought it might be useful to list out all of my options here. (I don’t know if this will be an interesting blog post or not, but it might help me make up my mind.)

First, there’s the option of continuing to pick up books off the rack, weekly, from my local comic shop. Advantages to this approach:

  1. Convenience. (The shop is practically right across the street from my apartment.)
  2. Flexibility. (I can choose whether or not to buy a particular book right in the store.)
  3. I’m supporting my local comic shop, and that’s a nice thing to do.

Disadvantages include:

  1. I have to go the shop every week, or I risk missing a book if it sells out.
  2. My local shop doesn’t have a good selection of independent comics. They mostly just stock Marvel, DC, and Image.

So my next option would be to keep using my local shop, but switch over to a pull list. The main advantage here is that I don’t necessarily have to come in every Wednesday, and there’s less risk that I’ll miss a book if I do. But managing a pull list can be a hassle, and there’s no guarantee that the store will actually pull the books I ask them to. And I lose some flexibility; if I decide to drop a book, I really need to tell them in advance.

Another option is to switch back to Westfield, or a similar mail-order subscription service. Advantages:

  1. Convenience. (Place one monthly order. Books show up at my apartment.)
  2. Selection. (Westfield has a pretty good selection of independent comics in addition to the stuff from the bigger publishers.)

The main disadvantage is that I’d be ordering stuff a few months in advance of release. So if I realize that I don’t like a book, I’ll already have the next two or three issues on order, and I’ll be stuck with them. The other disadvantage is that I’m no longer supporting my local shop. (Oh, and another problem is that Westfield is realy only cost-effective if you’re buying a fair number of books. Right now, I am. But if I wanted to cut back, I’d probably have to quit Westfield again.)

Yet another option would be to switch to digital, and buy all my books from Comixology. That’s quite convenient, since I don’t have to order in advance, I don’t have to worry about books selling out, and I don’t have a bunch of physical comic books piling up in my apartment. The downside is, again, that I’m not supporting my local store. (Instead, I’m supporting Amazon, and honestly they’re already getting plenty of my money.) And also I’d be paying full-price for DRM-locked copies of my books.

And of course, I can just stop buying the regular monthly books altogether, and go back to what I’ve been doing for the last few years: buying stuff from Comixology when it’s on sale, and buying trade paperbacks (also when they’re on sale, usually). There are a lot of advantages to going this way:

  1. Cost. I can save a lot of money buying books only when I can get them for 99 cents on Comixology, and only buying trades when I can get a discount on them.
  2. Easier to keep things organized.
  3. A better reading experience. (I’m buying stuff in large chunks, getting a whole story at once, and generally only buying stuff that got good reviews, and that I know I’ll like.)

So I guess that writing all this down helped a bit, but I still haven’t made up my mind. I want to support my local shop, but I don’t think it’s a moral imperative that I do so. And I like the ritual of going in once a week, saying hi ot the owner, scanning the racks, and all that stuff.

It’s possible that I’ll lose interest in the DC universe, once this whole Batman/Flash/Watchmen thing kicks in. If that happens, then this whole problem sorts itself out naturally, since I’m really only buying DC books right now. So maybe I should keep to my current habits for a few more months and see what happens.

Goodreads reading challenge

I set a goal of 50 books in my Goodreads reading challenge last year, and read 79 total. A lot of them were comics, and some of the non-comics stuff wasn’t exactly novel-length though. But it’s still a good amount of reading.

I set this year’s goal at 50 books again. My main purpose in reading this year will, I think, be “brief distraction from feelings of impending doom.”

I actually haven’t read a regular old novel in a while, possibly since October. I’ve been reading a lot of comics over the past few months. I’m not quite sure what I want to read next. One of my friends has recommended Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline, which I’d heard about before and have been meaning to pick up. So that’s a possibility. I also have three unread Star Trek novels on my Kindle, though, so maybe that would make a good start for 2017.

buying and reading comics

As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, I stopped buying comics regularly in 2009. I’d built up a backlog of unread books that was large enough that, even now, I still have some stuff from 2008-2009 in my “to be read” pile. Basically, I was buying a few more books every month than I was reading, so I just got farther and farther behind.

Since then, I’ve been buying stuff occasionally, usually as trade paperbacks or in digital form from Comixology. But this summer, I decided to dip my toes back into the world of regular comic-buying again. I started with Marvel’s Civil War II and some of DC’s Rebirth titles. And I’ve been buying them from my local  comic shop, and actually going into the store every Wednesday and buying them off the racks. That’s something I haven’t done in a very long time. (I’d previously been buying my books mail-order from Westfield Comics, so I wasn’t actually venturing into a comic shop too often.)

I really didn’t think this habit would last too long, but here it is the end of the year, and I’m still stopping by the comic shop after work every Wednesday. I’m thinking about whether or not I want to keep this up in 2017, or quit, or maybe even switch back to using Westfield. I really don’t want to accumulate a lot of comic books again, after giving away most of my collection in 2015. And I definitely don’t want to get back to having a “to be read” pile that’s almost as tall as I am.

On the Marvel side, I only ever picked up Civil War II, which just ended, and the Civil War II: Choosing Sides mini-series, which ended a while back. Looking at the stuff that Marvel has coming up over the next few months, I don’t think I’ll be tempted to start picking up any new books from them.

On the DC side, I’m currently buying a number of the Rebirth titles: Batman, Detective, Nightwing, All-Star Batman, Deathstroke, Justice League, Trinity, and Titans. (That’s a fair number of books, considering that some of them are twice-monthly.) They’re all pretty good. So I don’t see any good reason to stop buying and reading them any time soon. I may give up on Justice League soon; I’m not too enthusiastic about the book, or about the JL vs Suicide Squad mini-series, so now might be a good point to drop that. And I’ve got mixed feelings about Titans, so I could stand to drop that too. I actually haven’t read much of Deathstroke yet; I like Christopher Priest and I’ve heard nothing but good things about it. But, if I’m just going to let it pile up (I have, I think, nine issues waiting to be read), I’d probably be better off waiting on the trade instead of buying the individual issues. (And I haven’t read Trinity at all yet; those issues are just piling up too.) I’m sure I could wait on the trades with the Batman family books that I’m reading too. So that would take care of that, and I’d have no further regular books to buy.

One thing that I feel a little guilty about is that I’m not buying any indie titles at all. If I want to get back into that, I think I’d have to switch back to mail order, since my local shop doesn’t bother stocking many indies. But many of those books are a lot easier to pick up as trades anyway. (That’s what I’ve been doing with Usagi Yojimbo.)

So, in a nutshell, I haven’t quite talked myself into dropping everything and going cold turkey, or into switching to mail order. So I’ll probably keep going over to the comic book store every week. But I might drop a few titles, especially if I see that I’m getting to the point where I’ve got more than ten issues piled up, unread, of anything.

Cyber Monday

I couldn’t quite talk myself into signing up for a Pluralsight subscription today, even at the $200 Black Friday rate, but I did convince myself to plunk down $15 for the Humble / O’Reilly Unix bundle that’s running right now. (Not technically a Black Friday or Cyber Monday deal, but it’s in the right date range.)

Over a dozen classic O’Reilly books for $15: not a bad deal. Most of the books are pretty old, but many of them are still useful. I’m not sure if the sed & awk book or the lex & yacc book are of any use at this point, but the vi/Vim and Emacs books could be. And bash is still useful. I have a few of these in hard copy form, but it’ll be nice to have PDF copies of them. I imagine I could actually throw out some of my older O’Reilly books at this point. I think I have a first edition of the Unix Power Tools book floating around here somewhere, for instance. That’s a pretty thick book, and there’s really no reason I need it anymore, except maybe as a doorstop. (Thinking about it a bit more, I guess most of these books are available through the Safari subscription I get through ACM, but it can’t hurt to have offline, DRM-free, copies.)

I also convinced myself to buy a few comics from Dark Horse, from their Black Friday sale (most books for 99 cents), and a few collections from Comixology (from DC’s buy one get one free sale). In both cases, I was buying stuff that I missed from the period where I’d pretty much stopped buying comics (2009-2015, roughly).

I should probably be slightly embarrassed that I only bought stuff for myself this weekend, but I don’t really have any need to do any significant Christmas shopping for anyone else. And that can all get done online, whenever.

Doctor Strange

One of the nice things that usually happens whenever Marvel or DC release a new superhero movie is that they reprint some old comics featuring that particular hero. Also, Comixology generally runs a sale discounting some old books featuring that hero. I’m a fan of Doctor Strange, so I’ve been keeping an eye on this.

Marvel has recently released a gigantic Doctor Strange Omnibus: impressive, but expensive. It’s a hardcover reprint of the original Lee/Ditko run. Then there’s a new Doctor Strange Epic Collection. This volume collects some of the comics from the late sixties and early seventies, including work by Barry Windsor-Smith. I haven’t bought either of these, but I might pick up the Epic Collection.

The book I’m most excited about, though, is a new collection of P. Craig Russell’s Doctor Strange work, Dr. Strange: What Is It That Disturbs You, Stephen?. Russell has long been my favorite comic book artist. This book includes the 1996 one-shot that shares the same unwieldy title as this collection. I think I still have a copy of it, but it’s nice to have it in a collection too. It’s a really good story with great art by Russell. It also includes Russell’s 1976 Doctor Strange Annual, which I used to have a copy of, but probably donated when I was getting rid of most of my collection. The 1996 story is basically a reworked version of the 1976 Annual, but really it’s a whole different thing. It started out, I think, as a project to reprint the Annual with some additional pages, but it wound up being a whole new story with completely new art and a new script. So both stories are interesting to read. The rest of the book reprints a hodgepodge of stories that were either penciled or inked by Russell. They’re a mixed bag, but a few of them are interesting, including one with art by Russell and Marshall Rogers, one of my other favorite artists. I bought this book at my local comic shop, for the full $30 cover price, as soon as I saw it. (It turns out that I could have gotten the Comixology version for only $15, but it’s nice to have the hard-copy version.)

Meanwhile, Comixology is running two Doctor Strange sales this weekend, one on single issues and one on collections. I’ll probably pick up two or three of the collections that I don’t already have.

Oh, and hey, the movie seems to be doing well on Rotten Tomatoes, so I should probably go see it. Maybe tomorrow, if I can talk myself into leaving the apartment.

 

Veep Head Writer David Mandel Builds a Private Museum

Mr. Mandel […] now has two homes in Los Angeles: one where he lives with his wife and two children; and another, his former bachelor’s apartment, that houses his extensive collection of comic-book and “Star Wars” memorabilia.

Source: The ‘Veep’ Head Writer David Mandel Builds a Private Museum – The New York Times

I read this article, and now I’m super-jealous of this guy. He has the best of both worlds: a nice house, with a wife and kids, and a spare apartment on the side, filled with comic books and toys! Meanwhile, I’ve still got just the apartment: no house, no wife, no kids. And I donated most of my comics to charity, so I don’t even have them to keep me warm at night.

I’m also jealous of his original art collection, which he started putting together in the 90s, at San Diego cons, when prices were (relatively) low. I, too, spent some time at those cons, but, for me, original art was always outside my budget. He was writing for Seinfeld at the time, so his budget at SDCC was likely a bit larger than mine. He talks about spending $5000 at the show on art; my budget for a given con was never more than $500. (I usually came home with a big bag full of discount trade paperbacks and random single issues out of the dollar bins.) Of course, if I knew how much some of that art would appreciate in value, I would have taken a loan against my 401(k) and bought a bunch of it. I’d be selling it about now, and taking early retirement.

I get a kick out of the fact that this was published in the “Men’s Style” section of the Times. (Not a section I would normally read; it only surfaced for me due to my keyword search on “comics.”) I’m not sure when having a spare apartment full of comics and toys went from “disreputable eccentricity” to “admirable lifestyle choice,” but I’m glad it did.