It’s been a crazy, eventful couple of weeks since we got back from APE. Chock-full of real-life dreariness. Pleasantly, life-threatening medical issues are now behind us, as well as legal lawsuit issues. It’s nice to feel like I’ve suddenly got a normal life back again. Natalie and I enjoyed a wonderfully tasty celebratory dinner at the very recommendable Cucina Toscana.
With said garbage behinf us, I’m now starting on the second half of MOONSHINE. IT’s taken me WAY to long to get this far, and I’m looking forward to really moving through the second half much faster. I’m doing a photo-shoot for references later this week for the next big chunk, and there’s going to be a lot of fun stuff to draw coming up…
Not much here–I still need to go through and review all the books I bought at APE–but I did pick up three things this week:
Ex Machina #10
A world where the only ex-superhero is now the mayor of New York–why didn’t I think of that? This book’s always fabulous. If you’re looking for something a little different from the norm, yet still with solid, fairly traditional storytelling, I strongly recommend this. The art’s great, and the writing’s even better. The best monthly comic about local politics coming out from one of the big publishers.
Solo: Howard Chaykin
SOLO is a great idea for a series: Each issue, you get one top-notch creator filling the entire issue with whatever they want. So far, (I think) there’s been Richard Corben, Tim Sale, and Paul Pope. I picked up the Corben and Pope issues (I’m not a big Sale fan), and they were excellent. The Chaykin issue’s just as good, especially the first story, detailing a jazz saxophonists escape attempt from Paris during the first days of the Nazi occupation. Chaykin’s art keeps growing on me, and I really like some of the parallel storytelling he uses in things such as the industrial espionage story in the issue.
100% TPB
YEAH! Paul Pope rocks! After picking up HEAVY LIQUID a few months ago, I’ve been looking forward to finding some more Pope stuff to check out. He’s great. He’s so good at so many different elements of comic art that so many others don’t even bother with–atmospheric panels and sequences, non-verbal sommunication, characters that are manage to become real people in only a couple of panels.
Like HEAVY LIQUID, by the time I finished 100%, the actual plot itself didn’t just blow me away (I thought they both could have used stronger endings…) but it didn’t really matter–both books are much more about the characters in them than they are about any complicated plot devices. And the visuals are just so cool.
I think Paul Pope is now on the list of creators (like Mignola or hmmm… um, Mignola) whose stuff I will always buy whenever I see it.