Comics/Graphic novels

[Isagel]

Anyone else here that is interested in comics as art and literature?

Right now I´m reading Cages by Dave McKean, a mixture of paintings, poetry and classic comicbook style. Dave McKean is the artist that makes the cover of the Sandman albums. Is anyone else familiar with his works?

[Shea]

Not familar with that, but have you ever seen any of William Blake's stuff? Personally, I think his art is more interesting than his poety, but the fact that he could carve his words in metal plates backwards was pretty fasinating.
http://www.blakearchive.org/

[crisaor]

I am.
Comic books can be a great source of literature. Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore have certainly proved so.
I love the Sandman series, and that's were I know Dave McKean from. I've no knowledge of his other works, though.

[Stanislaw]

I enjoy the odd comic. Personally I enjoy the Predator, Alien series, some of the art is fantastic, and incredibly detailed. However, my favorite type of cartooning as an art piece is the fantasy/science fiction cartoonists, I love the back grounds. If we are talking about animation, the backgrounds in the old disney movies, Sleeping Beuty, is beutifle.

[B-Mental]

I hereby declare this thread REVIVED in the name of MTPSPUR!


Ahh comics, what would we do without em.

[mtpspur]

Now this is embarassing. On the other hand why not throw in a few items. I believe Alan Moore should be recognized for his major contributions to comics, for me saving Swamp Thing from being just another slime monster--ignore the dreadful movies. He has a gift for an epic view with a keen insight to what makes a character unique. (On the other making Adam Strange over as a mating experiment did not and has never pleased me--Champion of Rann indeed!!) His Watchmen (movie any year now was great only, to me, marred by the 12th issue reveal of the master plan--no spoilers--just thought it ho hum-- was that it?? V for Vendetta was entralling start to finish.

I gave up on Sandman shortly after the Julius Cesar episode. Was hoping the 'problem' would relate to Cesar's epilesy not erotic urges. That plus Dream was getting on my last nerve with his amoral behavior evidenced in his treatment of Fury and the 'other Sandman and their child. In fairness DC has pretty must destroyed the original Infinity Inc. anyhoo. This in no way means that Sandman is NOT worthy of a read just not my cup of tea after awhile.

The less said about Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen the better as an Allan Quartermain fan I was outraged at his portrayal in that series as when Howard Chaykin did a retake on the Shadow--which I read but refuse to keep in my colllections.

For great runs of art/story look no further then Tomb of Dracula with Marv Wolfman/Gene Colan and watch Dracula evolve as a fascinating mix of nobility, madness, and evil and a cast that you never know if they'll make it out at the end of the day. 70 issues and hardly a bad one in the bunch.

Master of Kung Fu lasted over 100 issues and Paul Gulacy and Gene Day are a feast for eyes and Doug Moench made the series his own.

Jim Starlin's Warlock from the 80s seems to be the struggle to prevent your ultimate destiny from happening--30 years later still trying to figure it out.

Lastly Don MacGregor and Craig Russell on War of the Worlds with Killraven based on H. G. Wells . A much overlooked series that still reads with keen insight after 30 years--Marvel was terrific in the 70s with their approach to character and storytelling that made the 80s and 90s seem tame after umpteen X-Men/Wolverine issues. And yes even my beloved Avengers had a VERY long dry spell.

Hope this helps.

[Lily Adams]

Only one I'm interested in reading:

"Here Come the Big People".



http://www.geocities.com/opheliaskis.../MSTBooks.html
(It's a ways down.)

I'm so going to write Trace this summer...I want my autographed copies!



I really haven't had the chance to look at comic books much. I want to, though. I only heard about this one because it's by Trace Beaulieu. (Aka underrated comedian GOD.)

Giant PINK mommies!

[Scheherazade]

Grew up reading Mandrake the Magician:



Phantom:



Zagor:



And, needless to say, Superman!



But my true love has always been Peanuts, which I still read ('Hahaha! Scher reads Peanuts!' Now that that's out of our system, let's move on, please! )

[Turk]

I personally prefer Italian comics in general, such as Capitan Mickey or Zagor, but probably most favorite comis for me is;



Because of it's perfect drawings and original stories.

[RobinHood3000]

Working my way through Watchmen, and rather enthralled both by the novel itself and its upcoming movie (WHOO!!). As you can probably tell from my avatar, comic books and graphic novels in general are well within my literary comfort zone.

[Bakiryu]

I like most manga (comics): My favoirtes are Fullmoon wo Sagashaite, Inmortal Rain, Naruto, Kami-Kaze and Chobits.

[Scharphedin2]

I personally prefer Italian comics in general, such as Capitan Mickey or Zagor, but probably most favorite comis for me is;



Because of it's perfect drawings and original stories.

This cover was painted by the king himself - Frank Frazetta. I am not sure, if he actually pencilled many comics (with or without Conan), but he certainly did beautiful covers, and then moved on to do a million covers in oil to science fiction and fantasy novels that are classic today. Somewhere on the internet there is a huge galary of his paintings and drawings. I will post the link, if I can find it again.

Just slightly down a rung from Frazetta is Barry Windsor-Smith, who did a long stint on the Marvel Conan series. Not only is the art great, but the stories were excellent too for a standard monthly comicbook.

Frank Miller has not been mentioned. I have not read any of his recent work, but in the early '80s, he did a six-part book called "Ronin," in which he combined the Samurai universe a la "Lone Wolf and Cub" with the budding genre of Cyberpunk. It was a beautifully drawn and very well thought out series. A couple of years later he transformed Batman into The Dark Knight, and the rest is history.

Some other great favorites of mine are the science fiction "art" comics of Moebius (whose alter ego is Jean Giroud, the artist of the also excellent western comic - Lt. Blueberry). Moebius even did a collaboration with the legendary psychedelic filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky. These kinds of "comics" will seriously do things to your head as a pre-teenager. Others artists working in this general neck of the woods, and also highly recommended, are Richard Corben, Phillipe Druillet, Enki Bilal and Tardi -- all old friends of my adolescence, and things I would like to go back and look at again one of these days.

Finally, possibly my very favorite, would have to be "Moonshadow," another limited series of 12 issues (later published in one book), drawn and painted by the lovely Jon J. Muth, who has also illustrated many childrens' books, and written by J.M. DeMatheis. Together they truly exploded the envelope of how a Marvel comic book should look and read in the late eighties. Flowerchild maiden gives birth to child conceived with an alien -- he is named Moonshadow, and together with a fuzzy-bear-type-character, he goes on a strange adventure in time and the cosmos. As I remember it, there is a lot of literary allusions and quotes thrown into the mix, and in the latter issues, there are drawings of Moonshadow modelled on rock musicians David Bowie and David Sylvian.

MntSpur -- I second all your recommendations. Warlock was a trip, and in fact Starlin should be on my above list. His Dreadlock saga was another tour-de-force!

[Scharphedin2]

I did some searching last night, and found the Frazetta gallery mentioned above. It is located on the unofficial site -- hundreds of great reproductions of Frazettas paintings (people offended by the female body be forewarned, some of his models are in the nude).

The official site is also nice and provides interesting background on the artist.

Official Frazetta site

Unofficial Frazetta Gallery


Scheherazade -- With respect to the comics you grew up with. If you have not read it already, you may enjoy Umberto Eco's latest novel -- The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana (an illustrated novel). The story concerns a man, who has lost his memory. He goes back to the mansion in which he grew up before/during the world war. He finds the library he had as a child, and dives into his lost/hidden memories through the re-experience of his comics/children's books. The book is illustrated with a lot of images from vintage comics. Lots of fun to look through, and a splendid read to boot!

[Scharphedin2]

After posting in this thread a couple of weeks ago, I have caught myself going back over some of these comicbooks in my mind, and so, when mntspur send me an im with some notes on comic artists of the past, I suggested to him that we turn this thread into a running intro thread to excellent comics and the artists who create(d) them.

I already mentioned Jon J Muth above, and as mentioned it made a big impact on me, when I read it as a 16-17 old. When sitting down to write this, I did not realise that Muth and Matheis had done published an epilogue to the series. Needless to say, I have placed the book on my wishlist at Amazon, and will include it next time I order some books from there.

For a general appreciation and explanation of the story that is Moonshadow, a review can be found here.

In the interest of giving an impression of the atmosphere of the comic, and Muth's qualities as an artist, I have gathered a couple of images from the internet:







Jon J Muth went on to do half a dozen other projects for Marvel, amongst them a mini-series with Wolverine and Havoc of X-Men fame. Then, when his daughter was born, he increasingly turned his attention to illustrating children's books, and has been very successful at that as well.

The information on the internet is not as plentiful, as I had expected, and there are very few examples of Muth's paintings and drawings to be found.

[stlukesguild]

Not familar with that, but have you ever seen any of William Blake's stuff? Personally, I think his art is more interesting than his poety, but the fact that he could carve his words in metal plates backwards was pretty fasinating.

Shea;

As an artist with a deep passion for the book arts (Illuminated Manuscripts, livres artistes, etc...) I've always loved Blake's work (although I would include his poetry as well as his art). I will note that with the exception of a few late wood engravings...:



...Blake did not actually "carve" his words or images. He utilized a variety of etching including some self-developed relief etching and color etching techniques. My understanding was that he utilized something akin to a negative, drawing the image out first forward and then tranferring it in reverse upon the plate which was to be etched which would then return to the correct order when printed. These finished prints were then touched up or embellished through hand painting undertaken by both himself and his wife (whom he trained as something of an assistant.apprentice). The artistic quality of these works is still wonderful (and in actuality some of his techniques are far more demanding that the mere need to carve an image in reverse. For some wonderful examples of wood-engraving in which the letters were carved in reverse you might look to Blake's fan William Morris... especially his Kelmscott Chaucer:







As for actual comics... I'm not a big fan outside of some of the work by R. Crumb and Spiegelman's Maus.