and Dead Tree Comics

[Thad]

Sure, but I'm not talking about the in-universe reason why it happened, I'm talking about how it feels weird and squicky and jarring in a way that a little girl not wearing clothes or people constantly casually propositioning each other for sex don't.

And I would say that knowing that the guy who wrote it has (among other, worse things) been accused of unwanted kissing by multiple women who met him as young fans and looked up to him and his reaction appears to have been "oh dear I feel awful, clearly it was a terrible misunderstanding" explains some things.

[Thad]

Groo: Minstrel Melodies #1 has a 6-page sequence that made me literally gasp. Evanier says "Sergio did something amazing, even for him" and on the one hand he's biased but on the other, he knows what he's talking about.

I'm reluctant to throw out superlatives like "one of the best sequences I've ever seen in a comic book" or "maybe the most impressive thing Sergio Aragones has ever done" but I'm honestly tempted to go even farther and compare it to the likes of Krigstein in "Master Race", Kurtzman in "3-Dimensions", and Ditko in Amazing Spider-Man #33. That's the kind of praise where I feel like maybe I should wait and see if I still feel that way a month from now, but my immediate reaction is that this is really something special and I hope they release it as a print because I want to hang it on my wall. (Or at least see the whole thing at once without having to flip pages back and forth.)

[Mongrel]

You had me at "New Groo" as it is.

[Thad]

It did distract me a little bit when I realized that all the songs match the beat of Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard.

[Thad]

Cartoonists for Kamala auction at eBay, fundraising for Harris/Walz. Features original art by the likes of Aragones, Allred, and Timm, most of it way too rich for my blood.

It's pretty flippin' wild that there's only one bid on the Floyd Norman original from 1967. (Warning: the image itself is SFW but I'm seeing some hentai under the "similar items" header underneath.)

[Thad]

GlobalComix looks to be the closest thing we've got now to what Comixology used to be like before Amazon ruined it. It's not nearly as comprehensive; it doesn't look like it's focused on current runs or single issues (though it has some), and there's no Marvel, but it's got most of the other major publishers -- DC, Image, Dark Horse, Dynamite, Archaia, Vault, Oni, Valiant, Humanoids, Boom, and Tokyopop, at a glance -- and seems to have a lot of the most popular books of the last few decades (Scott Pilgrim, All-Star Superman, Walking Dead, Saga, The Boys, Watchmen, Sandman, Hellboy, Astro City, Invincible, American Vampire...). It's also got some self-published stuff that looks like it's probably porn?

And I think it's all DRM-free PDFs? That seems like a brobdingnagian deal from publishers like DC and Dark Horse that haven't done DRM-free releases in the past.

And they've got the Usagi Yojimbo phonebooks for less than half what they cost at the comic shop; I'm tempted, though I think I'll probably keep buying the dead-tree editions.

(No Milestone Compendium, which is a shame because that thing is too heavy to hold comfortably without a table to set it on. It'd be an excellent candidate for a digital version.)

[Thad]

Preview: Godzilla: Monsterpiece Theatre #1

Godzilla takes on his greatest foe yet-The Great Gatsby! The year is 1922. Mysterious man of luxury Jay Gatsby throws lavish parties from his palatial Long Island estate, all in hopes of attracting the attention of his love, Daisy Buchanan. But his affair is interrupted as his party attracts the one thing more dangerous than love: Godzilla. Now, Gatsby has no choice but to turn his undying will away from his love of Daisy and onto revenge against the monster who destroyed his home. Green lights will be broken. Boats will beat back ceaselessly against the current. Join Gatsby on the journey of a lifetime in three oversized issues as he combines forces with the greatest men of the 20th century to stop its greatest monster-written and drawn by cult favorite comics creator Tom Scioli (Fantastic Four: Grand Design, Jack Kirby: The Epic Life of the King of Comics)!

I chuckled at the premise, but Tom Scioli? Sold. CHOMP CHOMP

[Thad]

The Horizon Experiment sounds interesting.

The Good Asian and Infidel creator Pornsak Pichetshote has announced his latest endeavor: The Horizon Experiment. This “publishing and incubation program” will debut five one-shot comics from five all-star creator lineups.

The hook? Each story pairs a protagonist from a marginalized background with a popular genre. Furthermore, for each story, the characters’ respective backgrounds are inextricable from the story being told. Read on to learn everything we know about The Horizon Experiment so far.

[...]

The five one-shots are:

The Manchurian by Pichetshote, Terry Dodson, Rachel Dodson & Jeff Powell: “a hapa (half-English/half Chinese) James Bond running covert missions in America for China.”

That one's out and it's quite good! What makes it different from other stories in the genre is its emphasis on how Chinese spycraft is different from the western version; it's primarily industrial espionage, and rather than trying to turn people to intentionally give up secrets, the focus is more on getting people talking and waiting for them to say more than they should.

It's a good, exciting spy story (and the art's great; it's the flippin' Dodsons) and it manages to balance the familiar tropes with a different perspective. I hope we get more.

[Thad]

Preview: Godzilla: Monsterpiece Theatre #1

It's a lot of fun. The first half leans pretty hard into the mashup, with Nick narrating. I haven't read The Great Gatsby in close to 30 years and I probably would have enjoyed it more if I'd better been able to detect which narration was lifted straight from the book and which was Scioli's own embellishment (I recognize the "boats against the current" line but not much else). The second half has more of a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen vibe, with Nick absent and Gatsby recruiting a team.

It's breezy and takes itself about as seriously as is appropriate for the premise. Scioli's work always impresses and he does some really cool shit with a limited color palette in this one.

[KingRoyal]

Catching up with X-Men and I gotta say, the X-Men need to sit Xavier down and have him tell them about everyone he may have met, talked to, looked at or just brushed against on the sidewalk during college. Every person Xavier shared air with when he was younger seems to want to come for him later in life

[Friday]

I mean yeah he's kind of a dick

[Thad]

Catching up with X-Men and I gotta say, the X-Men need to sit Xavier down and have him tell them about everyone he may have met, talked to, looked at or just brushed against on the sidewalk during college. Every person Xavier shared air with when he was younger seems to want to come for him later in life

No wonder Scott Pilgrim is an X-Men fan. They fight more evil exes than he does.

[Thad]

GlobalComix looks to be the closest thing we've got now to what Comixology used to be like before Amazon ruined it. It's not nearly as comprehensive; it doesn't look like it's focused on current runs or single issues (though it has some), and there's no Marvel, but it's got most of the other major publishers -- DC, Image, Dark Horse, Dynamite, Archaia, Vault, Oni, Valiant, Humanoids, Boom, and Tokyopop, at a glance -- and seems to have a lot of the most popular books of the last few decades (Scott Pilgrim, All-Star Superman, Walking Dead, Saga, The Boys, Watchmen, Sandman, Hellboy, Astro City, Invincible, American Vampire...). It's also got some self-published stuff that looks like it's probably porn?

And I think it's all DRM-free PDFs? That seems like a brobdingnagian deal from publishers like DC and Dark Horse that haven't done DRM-free releases in the past.

I went to check and see if they had any good Black Friday deals on and wow this site sure speed-ran enshittification.

The DRM-free PDFs aren't entirely gone but all the DC and Dark Horse ones are; now they're pushing a subscription service hard. (In what appears to be their only Black Friday deal, the subscription is currently 50% off, in case you're into that sort of thing. I am, as I may have occasionally mentioned, more of a DRM-free download kind of a guy.)

And they've got the Usagi Yojimbo phonebooks for less than half what they cost at the comic shop; I'm tempted, though I think I'll probably keep buying the dead-tree editions.

Welp looks like they made my mind up for me; the Usagi books don't have a purchase option at all anymore; they're all subscription-only. (And for some reason are labeled "NSFW". Possibly someone confused them with all the self-published softcore furry porn on the site; I don't know.)

[Thad]

‘Screw the industry, we’re in it for the art form’: An interview with Shelly and Philip Bond (warning: image at the top of the article has some potentially-NSFW anime girls in the background)

I fucking love Shelly Bond. No disrespect to Philip, he's cool too, but Shelly's one of the greatest living comic book editors. (I'd be tempted to say the greatest, but I think I gotta give that one to her old boss, Karen Berger.)

They talk about DC/Vertigo, IDW/Black Crown, and their own publisher, Off Register Press. They've got some interesting stuff cooking, including a Kickstarter for i-DOPPELGäNGER: Portrait of the Comic Book Editor in the 21st Century, a third entry in her part-memoir/part-how-to-guide series (with artist Imogen Mangle).

[Thad]

Oh hey, Jimmy Palmiotti's writing a cowboy version of Spawn (with artist Patric Reynolds)?

I don't think I've ever read a Spawn comic in my life, but this might be my first; Palmiotti's run on Jonah Hex (with co-writer Justin Gray) is the only western comic I've ever bought on the regular.

[Thad]

Deadpool #9: You know, as nice as it is to see Valentine Vuong again, it's especially vexing to see the old brobdingnagian tits/tiny waist generic comic book lady shape on a character whose defining attribute is supposed to be androgyny.

[Thad]

Diamond files for chapter 11