Frog Talk 004
bronze age reprints, budget graphic novels, and genuinely rare collectors items. this one has it all
Well folks, better late than never am I right?
The reasons why I’m late this time are manifest but boil down to, I have a lot of other things going on that demand my attention. Since my last email my day job of the past ten years ended and I have become a full time student again. August found me in a transitional period between the job ending and school starting up. An opportunity that I took to work on some personal projects and read A LOT of comic books. The fruits of that latter endeavor can be seen below, but that barely scratches the surface of what is newly available in the shop.
Programming notes:
-Coupon code for 10% off any order is SCHOOL
-to see all images of a book check the shop. I’m trying out just running one image that is most descriptive to my writing per entry
So, with all that out of the way, the answer to the question “what comics have you been reading Ry?” starts with (for no reason at all) vintage Kirby and Lee Fantastic Four reprints.
I understand there’s some hubbub right now about a new movie featuring Marvel’s First Family but I don’t know much about that. I’ve been saving a short box worth of (mostly) Bronze Age Marvel reprints for a time when I could read through them all more or less at once. Like a period of unemployment before school starts up. Naturally I started with the FF, and while the characters did not grab me as a child and still don’t really today, looking up close at all that Kirby art made in his first prime is worth it.
The majority of these books are low grade readers. However, they are all complete. A lot of these reprints were glued square bound books, but for some mystifying reason, they would staple through the book block before gluing the cover wrap on. These extra staples pretty much break the book on default over time, so understand that going in. There are also some very low grade original issues up for grabs. I’ve grouped those all together under one listing HERE.
In other unrelated reasons for reading a comic, I recently sat down with Alan Moore and Curt Swan’s classic Superman tale “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?” What can I say? I’m shameless.
Joking aside there’s a reason this comic is still talked about and persists in reprints of varying quality;like this pretty okay 1997 TPB (a very thin one but still!) package that recolors things bland but not the worst bland I’ve seen. It really is perfect. A damn shame that they show how good the original cover colors were in the backmatter, just to rub in your face the new colors chosen.
Meanwhile, and parallel to this excessive superhero revelry, I also read Rusty Brown Chris Ware’s most recent work, and his best. Actually I would go a step further, this is one of the all time great comics (or graphic novels, whateveryouwannacallit). A perfect synthesis of Ware’s formalism with his talent for storytelling that balances multiple storylines to talk about and explore a particular theme. My copy is remaindered, so extra cheap!
Back in the shop is another chance at Scene of the Crime, Brubaker and Lark’s first collaboration, the first time Brubaker wrote for someone else? Maybe I have that wrong. Anyway it’s EARLY days for both careers. I had the hardcover collection in the shop a few months back but that went real quick. This is your chance to snag the story as it originally came out in single issue form for waaaay cheaper!
Notably the first and last appearance of a character named Bullseye (no relation to the Colin Farrell character in Daredevil [2003]) as well as being the final issue of new material for the series, after which the title abruptly shifted to reprint material.
As if all that weren't enough, Bullseye tries to assassinate the hapless secret agent as he attends a Country Joe and the Fish concert, and they appear on the page!
Gimmicks aside, this issue also features some simply incredible Trimpe/Ayers page design. The entire issue feels as though they were told to emulate the Steranko High Design style that inaugurated the series--and they do a pretty good job from the film strip title page to the bland version of the Steranko love scene used here. But what I really love is when they try something new, like the page above. It shouldn't work, and I'm not convinced that it does, but it's sure interesting to look at. I could stay on that page alone forever, it's completely open ended how to read, yet strikingly clear. It's ugly, a little unbalanced, and everything fits in place. I think this is helped by the extreme angle of the establishing shot that gives a diegetic justification for the panels below it--they're the rungs of the ladder that Bullseye is perched upon. Later artists like JH Williams might literally incorporate the rungs of the ladder into the panel design, but Trimpe and Ayers had deadlines to meet, so this is what we get. And I love it for that reason, you can feel the craft and intention while still appreciating the economy of energy used.
Ah Richard Sala. His work is quite simply sublime. This is a Fanta collection of a storyline that originally ran in Evil Eye, his version of the one-man comics anthology. Clocking in at just over 200 pages this must be one of his longer works, yet is still unmistakably Sala. It’s a fantastic pastiche of all his interests, set in an indescribable historical moment at “Black Mountain College” though I would lay odds that the school is a stand-in for Sala’s neighboring UC Berkeley and their iconic clocktower, rather than the idyllic arts enclave that was the real Black Mountain College.
I held off reading this volume for a long time, but with the recent publication of volume 2 I figured I would give it a shot. Readers, get this book! Cotter’s work is so full of potential and self-assured craft it is simply dizzying! The book starts with an extended semiotic sequence of letters and words morphing into people before the traditional narrative starts. Cotter does not shy away from the sci-fi setting either, rather, it has the lived in feeling that I look for in the beset sci-fi, yet informed by an understanding of the genre and medium that is frequently unequaled. This is the closest I have felt to the kind of speculative sci-fi written by Butler or Le Guin or Gibson or Lem in a long time and it feels GOOD.
Batman: GOTHAM KNIGHTS 23
I did not get this for the main story. I got it for the Batman Black and White feature. I don’t get every issue for the backup, just the ones that are really special. This is a really special one because it’s Darwyn Cooke drawing a story written by Paul Grist. The only flaw is that the story is too short. It should be longer. Grist and Cooke should have had a Batman anthology series, but if they did that we probably wouldn’t have all the great work they made on their own. Rather than worry about what if let’s focus on what we have. Which is this story and it’s gorgeous.
Our old friend the Phantom Stranger Vertigo one shot. Gorgeous Guy Davis art and Alisa Kwitney story. She was an excellent and under appreciated writer in this Vertigo era. One of the many many problems with Gaiman is that so much of the work of other talented writers and artists is now compromised by his horrible actions. Don’t let Kwitney’s work disappear because of him. This is a few degrees adjacent to the Sandman, but not that far, and again, at this point in history Vertigo ran an entire cottage publishing industry of Sandman proximal stories, this just happens to be one of the best ones.
Just the first issue of the Wolverton reprint series I have featured before! This one fucks. Amazing reproductions of his end of the world illustrations made for a bible pamphlet in the 70s!
That’s probably enough yapping from me. But don’t think the books I have mentioned here are the only shop updates! I just didn’t have time to mention some of the other greats like Atomic City Tales, or Asylum, or Herbie, or Toxic Gumbo, or Bloodstrike Brutalists, or the dang New Mutants (watch this space for more NM books very soon). The point is, there is a lot available right now that’s worth a browse.
Until next time (soon? hopefully!)
Ry
to purchase these books and more, visit me online at https://mostlyfrogs.bigcartel.com/