Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Czarjorge]

There are all kinds of threads on music and film, but I couldn't find any on comics. Based on the nerdy hobby thread there are more than a few comics fans on this board.

So, a comics thread is now here.

What is everyone reading? Are you downloading? On zcult?

Can you actually find english language book in SK? I'm assuming manga is more available, but I could be wrong about that. Am I?

I'm about halfway through the Marvel Civil war event from last year. I'm both annoyed and happy with the way it's going so far. It was ballsy for comics to take on a complex political allegory, but it's also infuriatingly simplistic. I wish they would have made it a little more dense. Once again low expectations are the element that prevent genius from coming out in comics form.

I also read all of the Fables books up to the last one. Also a good book, though the BBW seems a little too Wolverine.

Runaways is great too. I'm glad someone finally started a book where superheroes are in neither spandex nor black leather.

I've been away from comics for about eight years now. I'm glad to see some progress has been made in the quality of the big two, though Vertigo is clearly the best imprint out there. I haven't been disappointed by it yet.

[BreakfastInBed]

I'm a little behind the times with a lot of comics, but I ordered the whole Sandman set from Amazon over the course of the past year because I'd never finished it. If anyone's interested in loaning some stuff back and forth I'd be game. I'd really like to finish the Cerebus series, I'm about halfway through. I also enjoy reading Brian Michael Bendis books, particularly his crime stuff, Torso, Jinx, etc... But I'll give most anything a shot. Not so keen on the super hero books though, unless they're like that brilliant change-up that happened with X-Force where the whole thing changed overnight into a wicked satire of super hero groups, sports teams, the media... man that was funny.

[Underwaterbob]

The only place I've seen any comics was at the big Kyobo in Seoul and the selection wasn't exactly diverse.

I don't read anything current right now except for Berserk! and that's just being re-released in English through Darkhorse.

I read a pile of comics when I was a kid but didn't get back into it until a few years ago after discovering some old Alan Moore stuff (V for Vendetta and Watchmen, where was I to have missed these?). I also enjoy "the Goon", "Reid Fleming: World's Toughest Milkman" and Frank Miller's Batman books (Batman taking on Superman! Definitely a definitive comic moment! Read it before you make snarky jokes about it.)

Oh and Transmetropolitan kicked ass.

Yeah, my brain is a jumble and so is this post. I blame it on Monday.

[Craven Moorehead]

Except for the collector stuff I continually pick up on eBay, I am also quite out of touch with the newer stuff. I am intrigued by the premise of Marvel Zombies, and 30 Days of Night, but I think the last stuff I actively collected by visiting my local comic store was Preacher and Hellblazer. I had a complete run of Hellblazer up to issue 145, but quit collecting because of budget restraints etc. Speaking of Alan Moore, something also worthwhile checking out would be his run on Swamp Thing. The Dark Knight and Watchmen were definitely the high water mark of comic storytelling in the 80s, but I'm not up to snuff as to what that would be for the 90s.

[Underwaterbob]

Yeah, Watchmen and The Dark Knight amazing stuff.

Mainstream comics went all flashy-mindless T & A in the nineties, but a lot of new, great independent stuff popped up too. Or at least did by the 00s.

Another one I like is "Soulwind" by Scott Morse. Good stuff.

[blurgalurgalurga]

I wish Dan Clowes did more. I miss the semi-annual Eightball comics. Guess he's all movies these days...

I liked the Preacher, and some of the Brian Azzarello Vertigo (Hellblazer, 100 Bullets) stuff was quite good, but I haven't kept up on any of it. The last few things I read by Garth Ennis were incredibly stupid...he did some really great scripts in the early Preacher run, and the Hitman series was at times very funny, but I wasn't impressed by much else.

Although the movie was abysmal, the Alan Moore "From Hell" was amazing. The art is super scratchy and disturbed and certainly will put off a lot of people, but I thought it some of the best writing in comics.

Another good old one was 'Akira.' Great stuff; the movie was classic of course, but amputated to the point of incoherence. Can't really blame the director though--trying to stuff a 2000 page manga into a two hour movie, with a nervous studio breathing down his neck, was an impossible task, and I consider it a great success despite it being so very confusing and truncated. The manga is definitely worth a read; very ambitious, sprawling story, and beautifully drawn. The characters are often very different from those in the movie.

[Young FRANKenstein]

[Czarjorge]

I'm going to check out "Reid Fleming: World's Toughest Milkman." Sounds like Flaming Carrot or Mystery Men books, and I love those.

I buy mostly trades and graphic novels as I have no patience for collecting 20 pages of a story at a time. So, I'm not a complete leech, but...

Those of you without access to a comic store check out...

www.zcultfm.com

The forum has a torrent tracker once you've joined. You can also find lots of comics, even complete collections like all the civil war, planet and world war hulk, ultimate marvel, and america's best comics on trackers like pirate bay, mininova and isohunt.

I'm not suggesting you stop buying books altogether, and you won 't find everything online by any means, but I don't get the big two's opposition to downloading. I think "pirating" is an overrated threat for all media, but especially for comics. Comics are something people collect. Not just to read but to have, hold, own, compile. Noone wants to just have a comic in their computer. The only justification for not wanting comics downloaded is the fear that if people see and read the work they'll decide it's not worth buying. If that's the case why not spend more time making better work. When will the media/entertainment companies get their heads out of their bottoms?

[Craven Moorehead]

Milk and Cheese (what happens when dairy products go bad) was quite comical from what I remember. The Tick was also well within the realm of the absurd, extremely funny. I liked Hate a lot, Peter Bagge had a great twisted perspective of Gen X. Unfortunately, I am a superhero geek when it comes to the stuff I collect avidly and rabidly, mostly silver age Spiderman, X-men, Fantastic Four et al. I also have an extremely soft spot for the EC horror/ sci fi titles from the early fifties. A great documentary about the history of comics up to the late eighties is Comic Book Confidential. Scanty in terms of history at times, but still an entertaining watch.

[blurgalurgalurga]

I used to read superhero comics too, and though I've long since sold them all, I still get the urge to re-read some of my old favourites.

The one that really stands out, and really stands up to my current standards, is the old Frank Miller run of Daredevil, especially issues 170-180 or so, and also his second kick at the can circa issues 222-227 ("Born Again" it was called). The David Mazuchelli art is really good--none of that 'greased cauliflower' steroid-monkeys in spandex garbage that's become so ubiquitous since then.

The art was pretty terrible, I think, with the early Miller stuff, but the writing was great. The guy's become of a bit of a crackpot IMHO (Batman vs Al Qaeda? WTFE) but those early ninja stories he did--back before ninjas had been done to death--were, and are, definitely worth a download.

Buying them won't help Miller much, and he's blind rich now anyway, and Marvel surely doesn't deserve your money. I recommend stealing them from the internet.

Edit: downloading a good little packet of Miller stuff off Piratebay.org right now, and I forgot to mention 'hard boiled.' Geoff Darrow is a madman; the detail in his splash pages is INSANE. Kind of a silly story, and ridiculously over the top, but still: wow. So completely opposite Miller's style...wonder what Darrow's doing now?

[Craven Moorehead]

One of my biggest regrets (comic related regrets) is that I never got onboard when Miller started DD. Issue 158, I believe? I did like the Wolverine miniseries he did with Klaus Janson doing the artwork. Yeah Miller really has strayed, ever since he wrote the screenplays for Robocop 2 and 3 he really hasn't been the same. I must say the Byrne run on the Xmen stands as one of my favorite superhero story arcs of all time. The Dark Phoenix Saga was cutting edge stuff.

[Young FRANKenstein]

[blurgalurgalurga]

As for selling comics--I sometimes regret it. It was a loss, financially, overall, as one would expect. But the logistics of living overseas and storing boxes and boxes of stuff back home was daunting, so I figured they had to go. I still have a very few, and wish I'd kept maybe a few more--those old Byrne X-men, for example, and some of my old silver age stuff--but mostly I'm glad to be rid of it.

What about you all? Did those who sold their comics regret it, or are you glad to be out?

Most of my comics were in pretty bad shape, anyway. Glad I got out before the whole slabbing epidemic...what I thought was nm was probably vf, most of the years I was collecting. Oh well...at least I read them and got a kick out of them.

Did any of you guys 'slab' anything? You know, the CGC grading thing where you mail in your comic and pay ten or twenty bucks to get it encapsulated in hardshell so it can't be read ever again? I can see the appeal when dealing with really really valuable comics, or when buying stuff sight unseen through the internet, but it seems to me an exercise in sheer covetousness...a tendency I have myself, but also the one I hated the most about the whole collecting game. What's the point of owning a book if you can't read it? Seems counter-intuitive.

[Captain Corea]

I had all but given up reading comics 10 years ago, but have recently gotten back into them.

The latest Civil War run and Planet Hulk caught my interest. And I'm in the midst of trying to catch up a bit with my x-titles.

Also of note, I really enjoy Invincible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invincible_(comic)

If you spot it somewhere, it's worth picking up.

[blurgalurgalurga]

I'm fully geekin' out here but hey! Why not? It's the internet, right?

Right?

Right?

Um...guys..? Hey, where'd everybody go?

Anyway, back when Garth Ennis was good, when Preacher was still going fairly strong, he did an unpopular little series for DC called 'Hitman.'

In the series there was a group of recurring 'superheroes' with dubious powers who called themselves 'Section 8.' My favourite was 'the Defenstrator,' a big guy who carried around windows to beat people over the head with.

Not sure if they ever got reprinted or not. Good stuff though!

From wikipedia...
* Sixpack: Team leader, whose special ability is grotesque drunkenness and beating villains with broken-off liquor bottles.

* Bueno Excelente: An obese, sweaty, and bald Latino in an overcoat who "defeats evil with the power of perversion." Generally, the only thing he says will be "Bueno", often preceded by a creepy chuckle. It is strongly implied that he violated Kyle Rayner in some way [1].

* The Defenestrator: A large, burly man in a denim jacket, black sunglasses, with black hair who obsessively carries around a window through which he forcefully throws criminals and the occasional unlucky policeman.

* Dogwelder: A thin, silent man in a welder's mask who spot welds dead canines to evildoers, resulting in extreme burns and general horror. The question of how exactly one can weld a flesh and blood animal to a person is not answered by the series.

* Friendly Fire: A large, hapless man in a red cowl, he would easily be the most powerful of Section 8's heroes if he were to shoot anything other than allies with the potent bolts of energy he fires from his hands.

* Jean de Baton-Baton: A bizarrely gaunt walking French caricature who defeats enemies with "the power of Frenchness," as expressed by savage beatings with a baton and occasionally blinding others with rings of garlic and onions.

* Phlegm-Gem: A sickly, thin, bald man in a green suit and a purple domino mask who has the ability to produce and expel large volumes of phlegm, which blind, suffocate, or simply gross out evildoers.

* Shakes: A thin, hairy vagrant who upsets people through stutters and an overall shaking palsy; frequent target of Friendly Fire.

awww....pic edited cause it was too big. bummer.

but wait, here's one.