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Graphic Novels

Kondoru said:
No Manga?

Both volumes of A Distant Neighborhood by Jiro Taniguchi are worth a look. I think someone already mentioned the Barefoot Gen series. If you want odd, disturbing manga, try Hideshi Hino's Panorama of Hell...
 
Well, no luck at the library today.

Not that the don't have any of the suggestions, but that the library epos gun was broken. So having had to go back to the old fashioned way of doing things, the young guy behind the counter refused point blank to check, tsk!

Oh well, try again when the world gets back to normal next week. :roll:
 
Not a graphic novel, but I can recommend the latest issue of Journey Into Mystery (#639) for a good mix of folklore, industrial revolution and socialism. It's ostensibly a Thor/Loki title but this is set in Captain Britain's otherworld and features a god of steam and iron called 'Manchester' representing its Victorian industrial heritage, supported by flying, mechanised 'Engels' in a war against the otherfolk.

Maybe similar-ish to Gaiman's American Gods but here rather than in the US.
 
Well, the library finally came through today, I've got V for Vendetta in my sweaty little paws.

I figure it's going to be the complete antithesis to the last GN I read, add to that the fact I've seen the film lots of times and I'm not sure this will give me any better clue as to whether the last GN I read was crap or ground breaking.

But hey, looking forward to bedtime already! :)
 
Try and pretend that you've never seen the film - that's what I try to do as much as possible ;) Joking aside, the film is really an adapted sketch of the story and events, so hopefully the GN will give you a better idea of what Moore had in mind.

Incidentally, you can buy every copy of Warrior - in which V For Vendetta was first published - as a job lot via an Ebay shop called 'Sesdez'. I dunno if this actually run by Dez Skinn tho' ;)
 
Jerry_B said:
Try and pretend that you've never seen the film - that's what I try to do as much as possible ;) Joking aside, the film is really an adapted sketch of the story and events, so hopefully the GN will give you a better idea of what Moore had in mind.

Hey the film isn't that bad, at least they kept the broad strokes of the characters the same and just updated bits to a more modern time. Not the hack and slash job they did with LXG.

True they did had to cut out some bits to make it fit the film narrative and time length but unlike LXG now I have read the graphic I can still appreciate the film for what it is.
 
Well, personally I think the film is awful. Very, very awful indeed ;) It's not as if the original strip isn't something that could've gone to film pretty much as is. Moore's work from the period in which it was written is quite filmic anyway. The problem is that some people think that they can top Moore in terms of storytelling, and thus far this hasn't proven to be the case with film 'adaptions' of his work.
 
Jerry_B said:
Well, personally I think the film is awful. Very, very awful indeed ;) It's not as if the original strip isn't something that could've gone to film pretty much as is. Moore's work from the period in which it was written is quite filmic anyway. The problem is that some people think that they can top Moore in terms of storytelling, and thus far this hasn't proven to be the case with film 'adaptions' of his work.

Yes, I didn't like the film adaptation very much either. I haven't read the graphic novel, so I'm not comparing it. I just think it rapidly turned into nonsense.
 
To say that i never cared much for Alan Moore, there are some deliciously clever bits in the book that never made it to the movie... will not spoiler but you will know them when you come to them.
 
Emil Ferris' My Favorite Thing Is Monsters is an amazing tour de force - run not walk to check it out!

http://www.fantagraphics.com/myfavoritethingismonsters/
Set against the tumultuous political backdrop of late ’60s Chicago, My Favorite Thing Is Monsters is the fictional graphic diary of 10-year-old Karen Reyes, filled with B-movie horror and pulp monster magazines iconography. Karen Reyes tries to solve the murder of her enigmatic upstairs neighbor, Anka Silverberg, a holocaust survivor, while the interconnected stories of those around her unfold. When Karen’s investigation takes us back to Anka’s life in Nazi Germany, the reader discovers how the personal, the political, the past, and the present converge. Full-color illustrations throughout.Rendered in a kaleidoscopically and breathtakingly virtuosic visual style that combines panel sequences and montage, Emil Ferris’ draftsmanship echoes the drawing of Otto Dix, George Grosz, and Robert Crumb. My Favorite Thing Is Monsters is a revelatory work of striking originality and will undoubtedly be greeted as the debut graphic novel of the year.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/17/...-paralyzed-then-her-book-got-lost-at-sea.html
 
I used to like the Zenith stories (young British superhero/pop star: Grant Morrison/Steve Yeowell) in 2000AD comic, but missed out on the graphic novels in the late 80's. Heard they were being re-printed and rushed down to Forbidden Planet (New Oxford Street) but false alarm. Every attempt to re-print classic graphic novels seemed to get bogged down in a swamp of legal battles over publishing rights ownership. The moment passed.
In 2013 I again heard a rumour that Rebellion were re-printing the Zenith saga for sale on the 2000AD online shop. I found the site, put the item in the basket, was about to check out when I noticed the price - £100, which was quite a lot of money for a new comic. What I was buying was a hard-back limited edition (1000, all numbered) of all the stories, but wouldn't have bothered if I'd known it was a pre-order with a 5 month wait. Come December and the book hadn't arrived, apparently the courier couldn't deliver and it had gone back to 2000AD (yeah right), did I still want it ?
By the time I got my Precious, the first mint Complete Zeniths were appearing on ebay - £500, £600, £999 (Crouch End Oxfam shop). Bugger, I wanted to re-read the stories but didn't want to unwrap my book if it commanded that price. There was a second-hand read copy on ebay for £76.00, I thought about buying that and not touching my copy but then I would have spent £176 on a comic. The graphic novels 1-5 have been reprinted again recently, but slowly I've been buying the original novels from 1988-1990 from ebay (which have costed a lot more than £76.00). I then found there was still a story from 2000AD not in the 5 novels. Went on the Rebellion site, popped it my basket without realising it was a digital download - no worries, story complete. Hoping my Complete Zenith made the move from my old house.

zenith5.jpg
 
Not sure how that would work, given how reliant it was on visuals to convey other worlds and other worldly beings alongside the real world and real people.

Theatre of the mind. Radio has sucesfully done LOTR and Hitchhiker's Guide.
 
Theatre of the mind. Radio has sucesfully done LOTR and Hitchhiker's Guide.

LOTR is nowhere near as out there or varied as world(s) of Sandman, it's very conservative and grounded by comparison. Hitchhiker's was initially created as a radio series. I dare say it works but am somewhat taken aback. It's certainly quicker and, most importantly, cheaper, than doing it as a film or TV.
 
In case anyone's interested, there's a whole load of 2000AD content available as digital downloads from Humble Bundle just now: https://www.humblebundle.com/books/judge-dredd-2000-ad-more-books
There are three price tiers: $1, $8, and $15 (what happened to the beat-the-average tier?). I make it to be 39 volumes in total, which seems pretty keen value. This assumes you don't mind reading digital comics: I had a good experience with the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen on tablet, so I'm on board for this.

I'm actually quite excited: 2000AD was the comic I read as a kid. I bailed out around the time of the raggedy-man saga, which I think was the prelude to another epic Dredd storyline. Looking forward to seeing what I make of it 30 years down the line.
 
In case anyone's interested, there's a whole load of 2000AD content available as digital downloads from Humble Bundle just now: https://www.humblebundle.com/books/judge-dredd-2000-ad-more-books
There are three price tiers: $1, $8, and $15 (what happened to the beat-the-average tier?). I make it to be 39 volumes in total, which seems pretty keen value. This assumes you don't mind reading digital comics: I had a good experience with the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen on tablet, so I'm on board for this.

I'm actually quite excited: 2000AD was the comic I read as a kid. I bailed out around the time of the raggedy-man saga, which I think was the prelude to another epic Dredd storyline. Looking forward to seeing what I make of it 30 years down the line.

Did you enjoy the humble bundle, Krepostnoi? I forget what was in it, but I too enjoy reading comics on a tablet. That's my favoured method now, to be honest.

Also, I've been luckily enough to actually become an artist for 2000AD over the last few years. Nothing too ground-breaking, I'm a newb so am fighting for crumbs near the bottom of the pile, but I just submitted my fourth cover for the weekly prog a day or two ago.
 
Also, I've been luckily enough to actually become an artist for 2000AD over the last few years. Nothing too ground-breaking, I'm a newb so am fighting for crumbs near the bottom of the pile, but I just submitted my fourth cover for the weekly prog a day or two ago.

oh WOW!!!!!!! :oldm:
 
The movie adaptation of the Mythos Comics graphic novel "Samaritan" (2022) has just made it onto Sky Movies.
Starring Sylvester Stallone, it is a very dark twist on the heavily over-subscribed superhero genre.
Dark in every sense - set in a grimy, graffiti-covered, rain-swept Granite City, where violent crime is endemic, Sly plays Joe Smith - a grizzled refuse collector - but a young neighbour suspects he is something more.
I'm not really a fan of the whole superhero genre and I cannot comment on the authenticity or otherwise to the graphic novel, but I found the movie quite watchable, with some intriguing Biblical references (and a cheeky background hat-tip to Robocop). There's a major twist too, which I didn't see coming.

sam.png


This YouTube video exposes some of the movie's hidden (and not so hidden) imagery:

 
Emil Ferris' My Favorite Thing Is Monsters is an amazing tour de force - run not walk to check it out!

http://www.fantagraphics.com/myfavoritethingismonsters/


https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/17/...-paralyzed-then-her-book-got-lost-at-sea.html
I just stumbled onto this thread. Yes, the Monsters book is incredible! I ran across it in a local library, where it had been misfiled. I checked it out, read it, and immediately purchased a copy. The author was raised close to my childhood home, and our experiences are very similar. It was just fucking eerie to read and view the graphics which so closely matched my oddball childhood. It was like reading parts of my own biography.

My husband as a child was given a small stuffed toy, handmade, odd and unique. He still has it and "he" has now evolved into a part of our fantasy family life (although "he" demurs and states that it is just his luck that his imaginary friends are both idiots). I assume it was a very small production and only distributed locally in the Chicago area. Well, that exact same toy features in the novel. Coincidence after coincidence...

Anyone who was raised poor in or near big cities in the US Midwest after WWII will find much that rings true. Emil Ferris is an amazing author and artist.
 
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