So, which comics do you like?
I'm also enjoying, somewhat to my surprise, the first bound collection of Chew. That acclaimed series is about as high as high-concept gets: Detective hero can learn anything there is to learn about any person or thing by eating it. He's cibopathic, that is, and I assume the book's creator, John Layman, invented the word.
On the one hand, the opening stories (the series is up to about 40 issues by now) are cheekily arch and jokey. The first bound collection of the book is called Taster's Choice, for example, and the series' protagonist is named Tony Chu (say it out loud, then remember his cibopathic power). On the other, the jokiness and genre self-awareness somehow work nicely with the story's dystopian universe, in which chicken and other poultry are illegal.
Finally, I browsed a bound volume of World's Finest Comics that collected issues from my day, when a copy cost 12 cents. Man, that stuff was for kids!
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Which comics, or graphic novels, do you like, and why? What do they give you that movies or television or books can't?© Peter Rozovsky 2014
Labels: Chew, comics, graphic novels, Jason Aaron, John Layman, R. M. Guéra, Scalped, World's Finest Comics
posted by Peter Rozovsky at 11:51 PM
19 Comments:
I am OLD . . . I like best Donald Duck comics . . . Okay . . . Correction . . . I am ancient.
I was lukewarm on Disney even I was still in short pants. Superman could kick Donald Duck's ass, though the Beagle Boys might have tested him.
I was also a huge fan of Classics Illustrated....that should have been a warning to my parents that I was doomed to be an impoverished English teacher.....which I finally became after 25 years in the Navy (dressed for a while like..you guessed it . . .Donald Duck)
I would read those when no DCs were available. I was narrow-minded in the matter of comics. I didn't read Marvel Comics, either, unless I had read all the Supermans and Batmans that were to be had.
You dressed like Donald Duck in the Navy: A blue jacket, a little hat, and no pants?
It was an ugly 25 years.
Great time for the post, because National Comic Book Day is the first Saturday in May and they give away a lot of free comics. I got on to this from younger friends working at the bookstore. I am not a comic book aficionado in any true sense, but I've come to appreciate the form, and I have to say that I love going to the two comic book stores in town and grabbing up the free ones. It's just really fun to immerse yourself in graphic representation of tales.
I've enjoyed John Lewis's March lately and I picked up one that I haven't gotten to yet called Line of Fire, which renders the Diary of an Unknown Soldier, August to September, 1914.
Dang, I saw a notice for National Comic Book Day when I was in South Philly Comics buying the Scalped and Chew books. I should have mentioned that. Doing so will be good excuse for another post, especially if the book I ordered arrived in time. And I'll try to remember to get to the store early this year, so I can get some good stuff,
In re graphic representation: I read the other day that Scalped was under consideration for a television adaptation. The books are so rich visually, the faces of almost all the characters so striking, that a faithful transfer to the screen might be overwhelming. If it becomes a movie or a television show, I hope the cast is packed not with stars, but with superb character actors.
I had not heard of the John Lewis book, but I just found what looks like an interesting article about it here.
Stephane Heuet's Proust Series which hopefully he will complete. Maybe the illustrations aren't that great but after slogging through the novel it's delightful to have the BD as a recap . . .
Proust in a comic. Who would have thought it? I can imagine an illustrator having fun with the madeleine scene.
Here’s a sample of Heuet’s Proust. I wonder if a BD version might draw readers to the novel.
There is also Posy Simmonds rather delightful Gemma Bovery
I hope the comic lives up to the title.
Comic--an odd word for some of the stories under discussion here, but English has none better. The French have the right ides with bandes dessinées (BD).
Yes, graphic novel doesn't sound quite right, especially as some of the best are pieces of history or biography.
Not to mention that is sounds pretentious. BD described perfectly any sequential, graphic story in a comic strip format, whether comic, romantic, fantasy, history, biography, or what have you. Why didn't we English speakers come up with something similar?
Well, because we don't the form as seriously as the French traditionally have.
You're on to something with the word "comics" being an unusual label for the genre. Perhaps some research into the history of "comics" -- newspaper variety, newsstand variety, and modern variety (i.e, the last twenty-five years) -- deserves your considerable sleuthing attention.
I wait for the solution to the mystery.
I don't think there's any mystery to why Americans use the terms "comics" and "funnies": It comes from strips that appeared in newspapers. Other cultures derived their names for "comics" from different aspects of the form. I've always liked the Italian term "fumetti," or little puffs of smoke, that it, thought balloons.
I found discussions of the subject here and here. I warn you that the second example is academic writing. Despite that, its enumeration of terms for “comics” is interesting.
Oh, goodness . . . academic! And to think my forced retirement from academia does not spare me the pain of reading academic writing. Egads!
Yeah, I knew you might be particularly sensitive on this point. You should be all right if you stop reading after the first paragraph, though.
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