What did you read - May 2014

New month, new forum, new thread....

Please join in and say what you've read recently. (not just this month - that's just to avoid having one really really long thread).

[B]Justice League Dark v1: In the Dark [/B]- Fun, but far from vintage Milligan. Lovely art though.

[B]Fatale v2: The Devil's Business[/B] - I'm still enjoying this, but I'm not sure this basic formula could go on for too long without getting repetitive. Hopefully Brubaker has an ending in mind.

[B]The Boys v9: The Big Ride[/B] - Very exposition heavy volume this one. Having read the volumes over the several years it's been coming out I probably missed the context of a lot of the exposition and so wasn't completely grabbed. There's still good stuff here and one of the artists (there's no breakdown of who did what - but I'm pretty sure it wasn't John McCrea) did a really good job. (though I do like John McCrea too).

[B]The Boys v10: Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker[/B] - Billy Butcher's back story. I enjoyed this volume a lot more - and it had Darick Robertson back on the art!

[B]Daredevil (Brubaker) v6: Lady Bullseye[/B] and [B]v7: Return of the King[/B] - Good stuff and a mostly satisfying conclusion. Between Miller, Bendis and now Milligan it seems to be the done thing now for a writer leaving the book to set up a new status quo and then leave the following writer to clean up the mess. I like that. I hope it continues.

[B]The Walking Dead v16: A Larger World[/B] and [B]v17: Something to Fear[/B] - Oh, boy. Now I really need the next volume now. That final panel of volume 17 was great!

[B]Hitman v1[/B], [B]Hitman v2: 10,000 Bullets[/B], [B]Hitman v3: Local Heroes[/B] - Good stuff so far. Ennis really rips into poor Kyle Ranor though. I wish they'd included the issues of The Demon that had Hitman - especially as volume 4 (which I'm reading at the moment) follows on from that story.

Well, my first post in the new digs! Good call, Jonah. Anyone who complains is someone we don't want around.

[b]Atomic Robo Real Science Adventures vol. 2 TP[/b]--Volume 1 of this spin-off series was the very first Atomic Robo book to...disappoint me. Thankfully, this volume was terrific, so volume 1 remains an outlier, and not a trend. The art styles all blend nicely and I like that each artist got a full issue, making this volume far less (visually) chaotic than vol. 1. Add to that a great story and this is was a fun read.

[b]One Soul OGN/HC[/b]--by Ray Fawkes, published by Oni Press. A fascinating exploration of form. The entire story is told in two-page spreads, set to 18-panel grids. It is a story about eighteen individuals, throughout history, and what makes this fascinating to me, is that all eighteen lives are told simultaneously. Each of the eighteen panels corresponds to one person. So panel 1 in the double page spread is always the same character (prehistoric hunter) just as panel 18 is always the same character (80s punk girl in the UK). As individuals die, their panels go black, and not all at the same time (one dies as a child and one lives to old age). There is a lot of philosophical questioning that goes on as each character dies, e.g. 'Is there a God?', 'What does it all mean?', which is less interesting to me. But that said, the brilliance of the concept and the amount of work it took to pull this off really outweighs my non-spiritual leanings.

I have more to post, but running out of time before my meeting.

EM

I really must try Atomic Robo at some point.

Some re-reads, some first times.

Cursed Pirate Girl Vol. 1 - Jeremy Bastian
Blankets - Craig Thompson
Eternals - Gaiman and Romita Jr.
Essex County - Jeff Lemire

[QUOTE=dancj;46074]I really must try Atomic Robo at some point.[/QUOTE]
I did not read the series from the start and can not kick myself hard enough for that mistake. Greg Rucka summarizes my feelings perfectly:
"I talk about this comic, [...] and I always risk turning into a sugared-up six year-old in Disneyland."
He says things far more eloquently than I could here:
[URL="http://www.ineffableaether.com/2011/11/01/the-good-stuff-atomic-robo/"]http://www.ineffableaether.com/2011/11/01/the-good-stuff-atomic-robo/[/URL]

So far each Atomic Robo volume is self-contained, so you can start anywhere. Robo's history is that he was created by Tesla in 1923, so stories take place anywhere from that year up to today.
Volume 1--Nice assortment of standalones and two-parters, across different decades. You'll never see Stephen Hawking the same way again. ;)
Volume 2--Adventures in WWII.
Volume 3--Time traveling monster fights Robo in four different decades. Guest appearance by Carl Sagan. My personal favorite.
Volume 4--More standalone issues, plus the 2009 FCBD issue introducing Dr. Dinosaur (fan favorite nemesis of Robo)!
Volume 5--1930s "teenaged" Robo begins his training as an adventurer. Comes very close to being my personal favorite.
Volume 6-- Modern day Robo adventure with a mysterious enemy trying to kill him.
Volume 7-- 1951 aerial battle in the South Pacific
Volume 8--Arrived in today's mail and I'm going to finish this post so I can go read it now! It has Dr. Dinosaur (who has made two more FCBD appearances, but this is his first mini-series)!!!

EM

I've been reading a lot lately, most of which hasn't gone into the column for various reasons (or, at least, not yet):

[B]Deadly Class #1-3 (or is it #4 now?): [/B]This is Rick Remender's new Image title. Nice art, but I'm not getting into it entirely. It also appears that 2014 is Remender's year to take swipes at Ronald Reagan. Weirdly timed.

[B]Formerly Known as The Justice League #1-6[/B]: So much fun. So many laughs. Still love it, ten years later.

[B]The Walking Dead: [/B] Next week's issue. I lost that stack of comics in here somewhere, so I forget the issue number. Sorry. Nice new start. Lots of good questions to be asked here.

[B]Manifest Destiny #1-4:[/B] The TPB just came in, so I'll be caught up with #5 and #6 shortly. Loving this book. Beautifully rendered, in both line art and colors.

[B]The Art of MillarWorld: [/B] Bad art book, and I might go into detail on why in the next Pipeline. Basically, none of the art looks new. I want my art books to be bigger than a comic. Maybe I'm just a snob. But in a world of Artist's Editions, art books at comic size look lame.

A few more...

[B]Hitman v4: Ace of Killers[/B] and [B]v5: Tommy's Heroes[/B] - Hitman started off fun, but - particularly in Tommy's Heroes - the book is getting darker and darker - and it's better for it. I really need to get some more volumes (and I really like these big fat TPBs DC are producing of older work).

[B]Ultimate Spider-Man v21: War of the Symbiotes[/B], [B]Ultimatum: Spider-Man[/B], [B]Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man v1: The World According to Peter Parker[/B] and [B]v2: Chameleons[/B] - These Ultimate Sider-Man stories can be so slight - often consisting of Spidey meeting a villain a couple of times, but not catching them or finding out who they are and then ending without being resolved at all. It would frustrate the hell out of me to read one TPB at a time of this, but reading four in a row I really enjoyed it. Thought it is slightly annoying to realise (after looking it up on Wikipedia) that I'm missing two issues because I haven't got Ultimatum: Requiem.

I'm also halfway through Greek Street, but I'll save talking about that until I've read the lot.