Category: comics

New York Comic Con

I had pretty much decided not to go to NYCC this year. I wasn’t really that enthusiastic about it earlier this year, so I didn’t get around to checking on tickets until after they’d sold out on every day except Thursday. So I said “oh well” and forgot about it. But then a friend at work mentioned recently that he might be able to get me a free ticket, so that got me interested again. Well, that didn’t work out either, but I noticed that tickets would be going on sale at some comic books stores today, so I thought I’d give that a try.

I headed over to The Fallout Shelter in Highland Park today at lunch time to see if I could get tickets. They open at noon, and I got there just after noon, maybe 12:02. There was a long line out the door and down the street. Apparently, a number of people got there early and lined up! I didn’t really want to get in line, so I decided to wander around a bit, then come back. Highland Park had a farmers market going on, so I stopped by there and got some fresh peaches and bread, then went back to the comic shop. I got back there at 12:10. The line was gone, but they’d just sold out on tickets! So I picked up Sandman Overture #1-3 and headed back to work.

So I’m still not going to NYCC, and I probably missed my last chance to get tickets, but I’ve got a few good comics, and a handful of fresh peaches and fresh bread, so it wasn’t a wasted trip!

Not at Comic-Con

I didn’t manage to get to San Diego this year. I tried, but just didn’t manage to win the “ticket lottery.” I’m holding out hope for next year! As usual, though, I’m following the news on Twitter, The Beat, and other sources.

I haven’t seen any really amazing news yet, but it’s only Thursday. And there have been a few interesting things, such as Comixology announcing DRM-free backups, which is quite nice (though it doesn’t cover Marvel or DC books, predictably).

The Ten Doctors

I just finished reading The Ten Doctors. I started reading this on the advice of a friend who is a huge, long-time, Doctor Who fan. There are many references in this comic that I don’t get, since my knowledge of the Doctor prior to the Russell T Davies reboot is spotty at best. But, even if you don’t know all the characters and continuity, this is a fun story. It’s always cool to see someone with some talent and a lot of enthusiasm do something like this, purely for fun. Fan fiction like this is usually pretty bad, but this guy is a pretty talented cartoonist and a good storyteller.

This weekend’s comic book reading

This weekend, I’ve been reading random stuff on Comixology. Mostly stuff I got for free some time ago, and never got around to reading.

A bunch of the stuff I read would fall into the “chaff” category, but a few things might qualify as “wheat,” or were at least interesting enough for me to look into maybe reading more.

I enjoyed Multiple Warheads: Alphabet to Infinity #1, by Brandon Graham. It was a weird story, with very imaginative art. It reminded me a bit of some of Paul Pope’s work. There’s a good review of it on CBR.

I also enjoyed Elephantmen #1. I may buy more of that series on Comixology, since it’s currently on sale. When this series (and the related “Hip Flask”) first came out, I avoided them, thinking that they were probably just a gimmick, and not really something that would have any substance. This issue, though, was actually quite engaging. It introduces the (somewhat monstrous) main character and his world and history via the trope of having him engage in a conversation with an innocent little girl. (I’m calling this a trope, since I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it used before, but I can’t remember specifically where.) It’s done effectively, with nice art and good storytelling.

I also read a number of the free Marvel #1s that they gave away as part of a promotion some time ago. Today, I read through a bunch of Ultimate Universe stuff. Some of it was pretty good, and some of it I’d read before, in TPB format. Nothing in particular stood out enough for me to want to buy any back issues or new TPBs though. The last thing I read was the first issue of Ultimatum. I was curious about it, as it was a really big event, basically doing a “reset” on the Ultimate Universe, if I understand correctly. The first issue was interesting, with some really nice art from David Finch, but when I sought out reviews of the series, I decided that I definitely didn’t want to buy the rest of it. The reviews were almost universally bad, with Comics Alliance putting it in the “Worst of the Worst” category, and a couple of bloggers (here and here) writing interesting but not exactly positive reviews. So, in a nutshell, it really doesn’t sound like the kind of thing I’d enjoy.

In general, lately, when I dip my toes into any recent Marvel or DC stuff, I’m usually not finding it to be terribly interesting. I’ve stumbled on some good independent stuff though, like the Brandon Graham and Elephantmen stuff.

[Edit: When I was trying to remember an example of the “monster and innocent little girl” trope, clearly I was thinking about Frankenstein. Or maybe Young Frankenstein. Though in this case, the girl doesn’t get thrown in a pond. Or launched through a window.]

Sebastian O

One more comics-related post for today, this time on Sebastian O, another Grant Morrison mini-series. I’ve posted a short review on Goodreads. This one goes back to 1993, so it was probably one of his earliest works for Vertigo.

It’s also got me wondering about Morrison and Yeowell’s earlier collaboration, Zenith, which is apparently going to be reprinted later this year.

Vimanarama

One more comic book post for today. (Probably the last, but maybe not.) I just finished reading Vimanarama, by Grant Morrison and Philip Bond. This is one of two Morrison mini-series that I picked up at a con a few years back. I posted a short review on Goodreads. There’s one more thing I wanted to post though: I just found Philip Bond’s Flickr page. Wow. Lots of cool stuff!

random comic book reading

I’m trying to heal up after getting a bit too much sun last weekend, so, even though it’s very nice out, I’m spending the weekend indoors. So I’m catching up on some comic book reading! I’ve also been experimenting with posting reviews over on Goodreads. It’s fairly easy to re-post the reviews here, but rather than do that, I’ll just link to them. I posted short reviews of Criminal, Superman: Kryptonite and Flash: The Wild Wests this weekend. I’m gradually working my way through the last of my slush pile of regular-format comics. I stopped buying them in 2008, so they’re all over five years old now. Eventually, I will reach the bottom of this pile. 🙂

Criminal

So, after having some thoughts about doing something interesting this weekend, I seem to have wound up doing very little today. I went out for a walk in the morning, and then spent some time installing Windows 8.1 Update 1 (or whatever it’s called) on my ThinkPad, and reading comics.

Specifically, I’ve been reading Ed Brubaker’s Criminal. I read the first series, with “Coward” and “Lawless”, a few weeks ago, and now I’m reading volume 2. I have V2 #1-7 in single issues, which I bought when they first came out. (They’ve been in my to-be-read pile for quite a while.) I stopped buying new comics not long after they came out, so I’ll need to pick up the rest in trades or hardcover, or on Comixology or something. (The series is definitely good enough that I will be reading the rest of it!)

I remember reading some of Brubaker’s early work in Dark Horse Presents, years ago, and really loving it. This series reminds me of that stuff, but a lot more mature. (Not that his Captain America work wasn’t great too, but that’s a very different kind of thing.) And the essays on film noir in the back of each issue are pretty cool; I’ve added several books & movies to my Amazon wish list based on recommendations found in those essays. The artwork by Sean Phillips is also great; just perfect for this kind of story.

a little more on digital comics

As a follow-up to my post earlier today, I spent some time today looking through my e-mail receipts for Comixology and Dark Horse Digital purchases, and made lists in Evernote for stuff I’ve read and stuff I haven’t read yet. First, let me say that I was surprised to see how much stuff I’ve bought, in both apps, but haven’t actually read yet. But now that I have decent lists to start from, I should be able to keep track of it all, going forward.

Thoughts on digital comics

OK, this is going to be my obligatory post on Amazon’s purchase of Comixology, and possibly some related topics, depending on whether or not I run out of steam before I get to all the stuff that’s in my head right now. 🙂

First, let me say that I have hundreds of books in my Comixology library. I can’t tell you how many, because Comixology’s web interface for browsing your library really doesn’t tell you much. (OK, picking up my iPad and looking at the app, I can see that it’s apparently 635. But there’s no way to see that on the web, as far as I can tell.) This is the main beef I have with Comixology, both with their web interface and their apps. Since their books are DRM’d, I can only store them and read them in the Comixology apps (and site), and they really haven’t put much work into making any of their interfaces really useful for people with more than a handful of books. Even something as simple as keeping track of read vs unread status across devices would be nice. They have said that they’re “working on it” and “we need to do this“, but they really haven’t done it. The iPad app will mark as “new” stuff that you’ve just downloaded and haven’t read yet. But that’s only tracked in the app itself. The “cloud” view doesn’t track when or if you’ve read something. And since they just replaced their apps with new versions, all that info from the old app is effectively gone now.

I’ve recently started using Goodreads to keep track of my reading for dead-tree and Kindle books, and I’m thinking that maybe I should use it for Comixology too. Though single-issue comics don’t fit well into Goodread’s model, really. Maybe I should just track them in Evernote? The thing that really clutters up Comixology is all the free comics. Not that I’m complaining about all the free comics I’ve downloaded from Comixology, but it can make it hard to find the stuff I’ve actually paid for. Even just having a simple user-contolled tagging system or folder system would solve this problem. How hard would that be to implement? 

Moving on to the subject of Amazon’s purchase of Comixology, this could be good or bad. Removing the in-app purchasing option wasn’t a big surprise. You can’t do in-app purchase in the Kindle iPad app either. I want to say that Amazon’s purchase might let them spend more money on both the web and app interfaces, and maybe implement some of the stuff I’d like to see there, but then I remember what the interface looks like in the Kindle app, and on the Kindle itself, and I laugh at the idea that Amazon might implement nested folders or useful tagging in the Comixology app. (Not that I’m bitter or anything..)

Meanwhile, I just recently bought Comic Zeal for my iPad, so I can have a nice interface for managing and reading my DRM-free comics. Previously, I’d used Goodreader to read some comics I had in PDF format. Goodreader is a pretty great piece of software, and it works OK for comics, but it’s not perfect for them. So I looked around at comics readers, and Comic Zeal seemed to have the best reviews. I’ve loaded a bunch of stuff into it, including comics I’ve bought from Matt Howarth and some stuff from Drive-Thru Comics. I really like the ability to organize stuff. It’s quite easy to put stuff in folders by series, to tag books, and to reorder the list of books. The software does keep track of your reading progress in individual books, but I haven’t found any option to, for instance, show only unread books. But really, since I’m only using it for DRM-free books, I can just delete stuff that I’ve already read, and just keep that stuff on my PC. In terms of the actual reading experience, I’ve found it to be a bit slow on page-turning for some PDF comics. I really haven’t used it enough to have formed much of an overall opinion yet though.

I’m thinking about picking up the Image Comics bundle that Humble has on sale right now, so that would give me a bunch of new stuff to load into Comic Zeal and enjoy. If I do that, and actually get around to reading some of it, then I’ll probably post a follow-up with more thoughts on how well Comic Zeal works in practice.