General omnibus & hardcover discussion vol. II

[lvizzz]

Yeah, binding is really awful in this edition.

BTW, wow, 96th copy of Akira! Congratulations! Do you want to collect all of them?

These Akira HCs are one of the most valuables books in my collection but I would like to upgrade them to the AP copies.

Depends how much it would cost me vol 2 is like a grand .

[lvizzz]

I'm a huge Brubaker mark...I think all the majority of his work at Marvel is amazing (Captain America, Daredevil, Books of Doom and Iron Fist) with his only mediocre stuff being Secret Avengers and Uncanny X-Men. He works much better with solo characters. And of couse all of his creator owned stuff has been brilliant in no small part thanks to Phillips and his other art collaborators. I aslo read that he was writing for the upcoming HBO show called Westworld which I thought looked pretty interesting in the teaser trailer. Unfortunately I also here it's been delayed so I hope that clears up.

Anyhoo, has Savage Dragon EVER been published in some nice editions? IIRC, the only collections out are black and white. Erik Larsen being on Spawn has also got me wanted some nice collected editions of the current run becuase the art looks stellar.

HC was announced years ago, still hasn't been published, it's even on my Amazon wishlist.

[downinthezero]

Man, I love getting surprises in the mail.

Back in September of 2014 I had pledged to a kickstarter for hardcover versions of Christopher Moellers “Iron Empires” series. Today, they finally showed up, and look beautiful. They’re standard sized hardcovers, and seem really well put together. Good paper stock, sewn bindings, and the pages lie flat with zero effort. I'm not sure if the publisher will be selling these once the kickstarter pledges are fulfilled, but I'd definitely recommend them.

Pardon the cruddy cellphone pics.
Ironempires1.jpgIronempires2.jpgIronempires3.jpg

[LordJulius]

Are American Western genre comics (cowboys, wild west, etc.) really popular in Europe? It seems like quite a few of you are buying non-American collected editions from that realm.

Yes, absolutely. Since the 1960s (in some instances even before that), some of the biggest names in Euro-comics have worked on this type of comic because it was and still is quite popular: Giraud (Moebius), Charlier, Goscinny (writer of Asterix), Hermann and many others have written and sometimes first come to fame with Westerns. It partly has to do with the (unfortunatelly named) Spaghetti Westerns, I think, which rose to fame at the end of the 1960s over here. And same as with the films, some of the best work in that genre has strangely come from Europe: films like the Sergio Leone Westerns are regularly mentioned among the top three to ten of all time, and the same goes for comics: Comanche, Buddy Longway, Durango, Lucky Luke, Tex, Cartland, Jerry Spring and particularly Blueberry are among the finest Western books one can find (actually, I have yet to see an American Western comic that is as good or even better than Blueberry or some of the other European Western books I listed). But why exactly there is this fascination over here with this so inherently American genre, be it film or comic, I seriously do not know.

[Mix_Masta_Micah]

HC was announced years ago, still hasn't been published, it's even on my Amazon wishlist.

Yeah I had heard about this. I'd say it won't ever be released given how long it has been sitting in limbo. Which is a shame because I'd love to try the series out.

[kodave]

Yes, absolutely. Since the 1960s (in some instances even before that), some of the biggest names in Euro-comics have worked on this type of comic because it was and still is quite popular: Giraud (Moebius), Charlier, Goscinny (writer of Asterix), Hermann and many others have written and sometimes first come to fame with Westerns. It partly has to do with the (unfortunatelly named) Spaghetti Westerns, I think, which rose to fame at the end of the 1960s over here. And same as with the films, some of the best work in that genre has strangely come from Europe: films like the Sergio Leone Westerns are regularly mentioned among the top three to ten of all time, and the same goes for comics: Comanche, Buddy Longway, Durango, Lucky Luke, Tex, Cartland, Jerry Spring and particularly Blueberry are among the finest Western books one can find (actually, I have yet to see an American Western comic that is as good or even better than Blueberry or some of the other European Western books I listed). But why exactly there is this fascination over here with this so inherently American genre, be it film or comic, I seriously do not know.

That's really interesting. It seems like there is very little interest in western themed books in America, whether or not they're connected to Big Two characters or independent works. But there's also not a whole lot of interest in the western genre in general in America these days. Every now and then something on film or TV will catch on with mild success, like Deadwood or Hell on Wheels or the 3:10 to Yuma or the True Grit remake or I guess recently the Hateful Eight and the Revenant (though the latter seems like more of a frontier type story than cowboys). But it's never anything that rekindles the genre completely or brings it back to the days when westerns were so popular. I guess that's sort of been taken over by superhero films. In the comics realm DC had mild success with Jonah Hex/All-Star Western in modern times. Marvels' modern westerns seem to have flopped. There are some hybrid stories like BOOM's Six-Gun Gorilla. Guns of Shadow Valley had Kickstarter success but I don't think it did too well after Dark Horse picked it up for another release. I can't give away the graphic novel adaptation I have of The Law of the Desert Born.

I would assume European interest is probably because the genre is something somewhat uniquely foreign with American Manifest Destiny, the frontier and wild west, lawlessness and peril. Whereas Europeans have known all about their own continent for a very long time.

[Brewman]

Yeah I had heard about this. I'd say it won't ever be released given how long it has been sitting in limbo. Which is a shame because I'd love to try the series out.

This came up awhile ago and IIRC it was said that chunks of the original art/files were lost or destroyed so the restoration and resizing is more than Larsen is willing or able to overcome. Savage Dragon was easily my favorite ongoing from Images launch.

[TomSlick]

Depends how much it would cost me vol 2 is like a grand .

I saw the "absolute" Martha Washington you got and it's still wrapped! Nice. That one is a thing of beauty. It took me forever to track one down that was under/near $80 and that was a couple years ago. Not sure if it's gone up or down but it should be on every collector's shelf.

[pud333]

Latest. Don't usually get TPBs but I really enjoy this new rendition of Batgirl. Too bad v2 isn't in HC.

[Balakin]

That's really interesting. It seems like there is very little interest in western themed books in America, whether or not they're connected to Big Two characters or independent works. But there's also not a whole lot of interest in the western genre in general in America these days. Every now and then something on film or TV will catch on with mild success, like Deadwood or Hell on Wheels or the 3:10 to Yuma or the True Grit remake or I guess recently the Hateful Eight and the Revenant (though the latter seems like more of a frontier type story than cowboys). But it's never anything that rekindles the genre completely or brings it back to the days when westerns were so popular. I guess that's sort of been taken over by superhero films. In the comics realm DC had mild success with Jonah Hex/All-Star Western in modern times. Marvels' modern westerns seem to have flopped. There are some hybrid stories like BOOM's Six-Gun Gorilla. Guns of Shadow Valley had Kickstarter success but I don't think it did too well after Dark Horse picked it up for another release. I can't give away the graphic novel adaptation I have of The Law of the Desert Born.

I would assume European interest is probably because the genre is something somewhat uniquely foreign with American Manifest Destiny, the frontier and wild west, lawlessness and peril. Whereas Europeans have known all about their own continent for a very long time.

I think you are right about that it's somewhat exotic for europeans. It's a setting that's hard to recreate here, although there were some attempts but I can't recall anything that set a standard for euro westerns.
As for Hollywood, everything has it's era when it's popular then it kinda disappears and pops up sporadically.
Noir was popular in the 40's but then people got tired of the tone and nobody made noirs again, except for a few cases.
Gangster movies were the bees knees in the 30's than noir took over but they came back with new Hollywood in the 70's and 80's but then disappeared again.
70's seen a short period of disaster movies which Hollywood tried to revive from time to time without real success.
Western survived the longest maybe along with the action movie genre but the later change a lot from Dr. No through Dirty Harry to the 80's action orgies then it kinda slowly lost steam in the 90's to morph into the sci-fi/superhero sub genre.
Western was somewhat alive until the 80's so that's a really long period since people were making western from the beginning of the century.
While nowadays we don't get many westerns and they don't make much money (except I guess when it's made by Tarantino) at least mostly the ones that get made are quite good films (Unforgiven is one of my all time favourites, Yuma, True Grit, Bone Tomahawk, Proposition, Slow West).

[aaltomuoto]

Yeah, binding is really awful in this edition.

BTW, wow, 96th copy of Akira! Congratulations! Do you want to collect all of them?

These Akira HCs are one of the most valuables books in my collection but I would like to upgrade them to the AP copies.

I have an AP copy of The Incal and there's no real difference between the numbered and the AP copies, besides the numbering. Seems like a lot of trouble (and expense) to go through for something that doesn't really matter that much.

[maeda]

Yes, absolutely. Since the 1960s (in some instances even before that), some of the biggest names in Euro-comics have worked on this type of comic because it was and still is quite popular: Giraud (Moebius), Charlier, Goscinny (writer of Asterix), Hermann and many others have written and sometimes first come to fame with Westerns. It partly has to do with the (unfortunatelly named) Spaghetti Westerns, I think, which rose to fame at the end of the 1960s over here. And same as with the films, some of the best work in that genre has strangely come from Europe: films like the Sergio Leone Westerns are regularly mentioned among the top three to ten of all time, and the same goes for comics: Comanche, Buddy Longway, Durango, Lucky Luke, Tex, Cartland, Jerry Spring and particularly Blueberry are among the finest Western books one can find (actually, I have yet to see an American Western comic that is as good or even better than Blueberry or some of the other European Western books I listed). But why exactly there is this fascination over here with this so inherently American genre, be it film or comic, I seriously do not know.

Apart from those you mentioned, i must add Ken Parker by Berardi and Milazzo, it was such unusual and progressive comic strip for that time, one of my favorites.
It would be great to see reissue in English language.

OT, Yes, western was big here in those times, it dealt with basic human conditions, and i guess we were curious about your explorations and adventures, since we explored everything we could over here
But apart from that, i could say that American culture was a big influence in general back than.

[LordJulius]

I think you are right about that it's somewhat exotic for europeans. It's a setting that's hard to recreate here, although there were some attempts but I can't recall anything that set a standard for euro westerns.

Without wanting to derail the thread too much, but: Holy heck. Are you serious? Sergio Leone's Dollar-Trilogy redefined the whole genre, up until today (and not only because Tarantino is heavily influenced by him and keeps citing Leone films in at least his last four to five movies, including taking parts of these films' soundtracks). Eastwood got his career kick-started by the films while his first films as a director were Westerns and at first also strongly influenced by Leone. Scorcese mentions Leone as a major influence on his work as well (particularly the morally ambiguous protagonists which Eastwood's character in the Dollar-Trilogy introduced to a world-wide audience).

Then there's Once upon a time in the West by Leone, the Django films with Franco Nero (who appeared in the last couple of Tarantino films as well), the Trinity films which introduced the comedy Westerns etc. etc.

That's really interesting. It seems like there is very little interest in western themed books in America, whether or not they're connected to Big Two characters or independent works. But there's also not a whole lot of interest in the western genre in general in America these days. Every now and then something on film or TV will catch on with mild success, like Deadwood or Hell on Wheels or the 3:10 to Yuma or the True Grit remake or I guess recently the Hateful Eight and the Revenant (though the latter seems like more of a frontier type story than cowboys). But it's never anything that rekindles the genre completely or brings it back to the days when westerns were so popular. I guess that's sort of been taken over by superhero films. In the comics realm DC had mild success with Jonah Hex/All-Star Western in modern times. Marvels' modern westerns seem to have flopped. There are some hybrid stories like BOOM's Six-Gun Gorilla. Guns of Shadow Valley had Kickstarter success but I don't think it did too well after Dark Horse picked it up for another release. I can't give away the graphic novel adaptation I have of The Law of the Desert Born.

I would assume European interest is probably because the genre is something somewhat uniquely foreign with American Manifest Destiny, the frontier and wild west, lawlessness and peril. Whereas Europeans have known all about their own continent for a very long time.

Interesting point. Since the genre became popular during the 1960s over here, it being exotic might for many have been what made it interesting (similar to the Bond films whose popularity lay, at least as I see it, also in their exotic locales).

The interest in the genre has declined in Europe as well over the last twenty years or so. There are still excellent Western comics being published here, but nothing as popular as Blueberry, Comanche etc. (whose popularity might also have had something to do with the fact that they were originally published in installments of a couple of pages in the highly popular semi-monthly magazines Spirou or Tintin). A lot of the books you see in this thread are recent collected editions of these older works that are mostly aimed at people who read these books as a child, but usually not at actual children and teens (similar to the Marvel Masterworks or IDW Library of American Comics strip collections; also because kids can't really afford these books).

But that these books are produced and selling well shows that there still is a huge market for Western comics in Europe, much bigger than in the US. This leads to some rather bizarre situations where e.g. Warren Tuft's classic strips (Lance, Casey Ruggles) have been collected in Germany, but not in the US (much to the chagrin of some American board members especially in the MMW boards

As for me, I only recently discovered these books for myself. Although having grown up in Europe, I mostly read US books (mainly superheros) for most of my life. Only about a decade or so ago did I really realise what I was missing out on by neglecting the whole Franco-Belgian (and other European) comic works.

[Balakin]

Without wanting to derail the thread too much, but: Holy heck. Are you serious? Sergio Leone's Dollar-Trilogy redefined the whole genre, up until today (and not only because Tarantino is heavily influenced by him and keeps citing Leone films in at least his last four to five movies, including taking parts of these films' soundtracks). Eastwood got his career kick-started by the films while his first films as a director were Westerns and at first also strongly influenced by Leone. Scorcese mentions Leone as a major influence on his work as well (particularly the morally ambiguous protagonists which Eastwood's character in the Dollar-Trilogy introduced to a world-wide audience).

Then there's Once upon a time in the West by Leone, the Django films with Franco Nero (who appeared in the last couple of Tarantino films as well), the Trinity films which introduced the comedy Westerns etc. etc.

I should have express myself a bit better, I meant westerns set in Europe, which is a bit of a paradox given the name of the genre, but what I meant by setting is the whole frontier thing or how people lived, the isolated towns and gangs and stuff that created those scenarios we see in westerns.
I've seen the dollar trilogy and Once upon a time on the West but all of them set in America IIRC. Have't seen many of the "avarage" spagetthi westerns (I'm pretty sure the dollar trilogy qualifies as such but it's the cream of the crop) but even though they were probably shot in europe or somewhere near and affordable the stories took place in America.

[aaltomuoto]

New this week.

Sadly, the Spirou book collects the last Franquin stories. But he sure as hell went out on a high note. QRN sur Bretzelburg and Bravo Les Brothers are among the top two or three funny books I've ever read. My gf kept saying "I've never heard you laugh so hard when reading a comic."

Have you seen the stand-alone volume they did of Bravo les Brothers a few years ago? It has the story rescanned and recoloured (which i suppose they're using in these new integrales as well) and all the original pages in facscimile with a lot of background information about the story. There's probably some overlap with the special features in the new integrales but if you love Bravo les Brothers (and who doesn't ) it's definitely worth checking out.