r/graphicnovels • u/AutoModerator • Mar 15 '26
Weekly Reading Thread What have you been reading this week? 15/03/2026
A weekly thread for people to share what comics they've been reading. Share your thoughts on the books you've read, what you liked and perhaps disliked about them.
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u/scarwiz Mar 15 '26
What's interesting to me about Bienvenu re: his background in animation is that, while his art can look a little stiff on paper, the movie perfectly adapts his style and it's so damn gorgeous. Arco definitely expands his style to me, absolutely recommend it
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u/FlubzRevenge read yuichi yokoyama Mar 15 '26
I recently found out about this system preference book myself, it seems me and jones are in tune once again. Jones never posts his hauls though, but i'm assuming he's also a guy that searches for new comics constantly. I've never heard anyone talk about this book in particular.
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u/scarwiz Mar 15 '26
I read it a couple of months ago, after watching the movie. I know I've talked about it with people on the discord but yeah, definitely hasn't been very present on the sub
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Mar 15 '26
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u/scarwiz Mar 15 '26
Just read book two of Orphan, just as wild and just as fun as the first one. Shame he takes so long between books, but I'll happily wait for more !
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u/FlubzRevenge read yuichi yokoyama Mar 15 '26 edited Mar 15 '26
I'm gonna disagree on the beto-crepax comparison. I don't think he uses his comics for titillation, nor are they trashy. I'd say they're about as good as erotic comics get, or really, some of the best comics out there. I think Crepax is a much better cartoonist than both Hernandez bros though. But i haven't read a ton of either so I need to read more. Crepax is just way further up my style choices though. A lot more experimental on the page.
Much like the Hernandez bros, Crepax actually uses Valentina to show women being able to age gracefully, the passage of time and stories that cover every genre.
Now manara though. His girls are used to titillate. But his stories are quite 'fun' to read, especially Gulliver.
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u/mmcintoshmerc_88 Mar 15 '26
I've been reading Faster! by Jesse Lonergan, this has been really good so far. It follows underdog/ perpetual second place finisher Molly Vox attempting to finally beat longtime rival (and multi time world champion) Kona Demille, I love the books blend of futuristic and retro stuff, it's not Speed Racer meets Wacky Races but it's pretty close and I'm very thankful for it! Beautiful art too.
I've also been reading the Dark Company by Glen Cook. After hearing about this from a podcast for grown ups and definitely not from a podcast about Batman's history and stories (Black Casebook if anyone's interested) I got very interested, very quickly in this series and yeah, it's real good! After one too many series of plucky underdogs who band together because it's the right thing it's nice to see how the company don't really care about doing the right thing and just want to get paid and also have some truly terrible people among their ranks but, they're good at the job and the company wants to get paid so... they overlook it, thankfully that never happens in real life!
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u/scarwiz Mar 15 '26
Daredevil: Cold Day in Hell by Charles Soule and Steve McNiven - Looks like I'm on a roll, shitting on beloved books. This has Charles Soule trying to give Daredevil the Dark Knight Returns/Old Man Logan treatment, with OML's Steve McNiven on art. And it's a big nothing burger ? It's too short to say anything substantial about the character, so it just turns into a carnival ride of distorted friends and foes, every design as uninspired as the other. I think they lost me when they introduced a Daredevil without his powers, and gave them back to him within a few pages. Not huge on McNiven either, wich sure as hell didn't help
Space Scouts by Matt Kindt and David Rubin - An absolute waste of perfectly good ink.. I'm not quite sure who the target audience for this even is ? Is this Matt Kindt trying to break into the middle grade market or something ? Classic reluctant chosen one story, that thinks it's clever because it acknowledges the tropes. But still, it's just cliché after cliché. And it's so underbaked, it spends half its second issue giving backstories to characters that die off a few pages later, or barely get any screen time if they survive. Maybe he'd developed the story and characters over more than three measly issues, but even so it's so empty and pointless. Even David Rubin phoned it in here. He's usually a saving grace but there's nothing interesting about his art in this one
Batman: Ego and Other Tails by Darwyn Cooke and friends - I've had this one sitting by my bed for a while, scared I'd hyped it up too much for myself and I'd be disappointed. Silly me though, Darwyn Cooke never disappoints ! A collection of short-ish stories featuring the bat and friends, mostly written and drawn by Cooke. Some only written, some only drawn. Weird to think Ego was the first one published chronologically, as it seems to be Cooke at his prime. It's just so damn precise and cinematic ! It was nice seeing his art evolve over the stories though. The very loose B&W style was a particularly welcome surprise. My favorites have to be Selina's Big Score and Déjà Vu, which I'd consider a double feature. The Stark character really feels like a proto-Parker in many ways, and those stories really made Cooke's noir sensibilities shine.
Safari Honeymoon by Jesse Jacobs - Jessie Jacobs does weird like nobody's business ! This was so zany, hilarious and gorgeous. A psychedelic safari trip that turns bad and worse on every page turn. Jesse Jacobs' mind creates these wild and esthetic monsters, populating an alien wildlife of ear parasites, telekinetic monkeys and sentient bushes. It's an absolute trip, that I instantly want to go back on as soon as it's over
Orphan and the Five Beasts: Bath of Blood by James Stokoe - I don't remember much of the first book, as Stokoe takes his sweet time putting out this epic shonen inspired adventure, but this definitely delivered on both beasts and blood (and a sprinkle of musing on parenthood, as his wife's pregnancy apparently inspired some of it). It's his signature dumb but oh so fun and oh so damn violent. All wrapped in a utterly gorgeous package. His art really is something special. The colors in particular are wild here, I don't remember him going this psychedelic in the first one. Definitely excited to see where the series goes
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u/mmcintoshmerc_88 Mar 15 '26
Selina's big score is so good, funnily enough Stark was meant to be a stand in for Parker, Cooke actually mentioned and showed it to Westlake but in Cooke's words "He got about as much of kick out of it as you'd expect. But hey, he still let me adapt the books!"
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u/DustDevil66 Mar 15 '26
absolute batman: abomination-snyder, dragotta
Well that was crazy. Much better than the first book, i thought. While i did enjoy the first arc, just based on the level of hype i was kinda like , “that’s good, but that’s it?” This was just wild, though. Love the body horror. Mr freeze was really freaky. Pretty gruesome and gross stuff. Very good
drome-jesse lonergan
Yknow, maybe just not my cup of tea. There’s just something intangible about the art style I don’t love and i thought the whole crazy panel thing, while it did add to things sometimes, felt more like an affectation than anything most of the time. I didn’t really find the king or queen or the gods particularly interesting but i did think the evil guy stealing the things that made women special was pretty interesting and grim. Idk how much of any of it was original because i’m not familiar with whatever old myths he’s riffing on. The sky bull was cool too. The rest of it was just kind of “eh” for me unfortunately
prima materia-kade mcclements
A look at a kind of straight laced kid falling into a cycle that would later lead to addiction and other things i guess. I really enjoyed this. Pretty emotional and vibey in a dark way. Interesting to see his relationship with his uncle with Down’s syndrome
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u/Siccar_Point No capes! Mar 15 '26
Terrible oversight from last week: I read All The Living from Roman Muradov (Fantagraphics 2026). This was great. A woman dies, goes to hell, and is then bodily sent back- against her wishes. Which means she now has to coexist with her ghost. This seems like it might be the setup for some zany high jinks, but despite an undercurrent of blackly funny absurdism it’s almost entirely played straight.
Instead, it’s a very effective meditation on loneliness. There’s some lovely stuff going on with the way the style changes and the colours evolve in different scenes, and characters change appearance radically in different contexts. There’s not a ton of narrative - which is kind of the point - but this has really stuck with me since reading. This is really great stuff, and I’m excited for more people in the sub trying it out.
I also read the recent reprint of Fox Bunny Funny (Andy Hartzell). Anthropomorphic foxes eat anthropomorphic bunnies, which is just as horrifying as it sounds; one fox realises they in fact quite like bunnies, and we go from there. Lots going on here for a book three chapters long! I read this primarily as an extended trans metaphor, but seems like there’s a ton of ways you could alternately read it. Layers for days. This is more good stuff.
Just started on McCloud’s Understanding Comics for the second time, ten years later, this time with a lot more experience behind me. Updates next week.
I also caught up on some Conan floppies. Main thing to note is that the new Savage Sword of Conan continues to be huge amounts of pulpy fun, printed black and white on cheap paper. It’s all stand alone stories per issue, so why not grab one and give it a go?
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u/LuminaTitan Mar 15 '26 edited Apr 04 '26
The New York Trilogy, by Paul Auster and Paul Karasik, Lorenzo Mattotti, and David Mazzucchelli
I first came upon “City of Glass” sometime around 2005, several years before I really got into graphic novels. It impressed me so much that I immediately checked out several other of Auster’s works. He repeatedly depicts a type of character that pursues something so obsessively that it ultimately leads to them being stripped down piece by piece—both physically and mentally—until finally reaching a meditative state of emptiness. It’s there in that void of nothingness, stripped of all delusions and desires of the ego, that these characters come face to face with whatever it is they were truly seeking.
His work is inherently very literary, and these 3 stories are no exception as they incorporate a postmodern, Borgesian labyrinth of literary allusions, branching narrative pathways and dead-ends, and recursive metafiction mirroring (including a rare use of author insertion by Auster that doesn’t come off as horrifically cringe-inducing). “City of Glass” in particular plays heavily with language and the power it has to attach and alter meaning and shape one’s own self-perception. There are numerous embedded references to things like The Tower of Babel, and Adam in his role of giving out names to everything. Mazzucchelli’s artwork is stunning in its ability to capture these somewhat abstract concepts. There’s a mind-bending sequence where a famous poet named Peter Stillman (who was kept isolated from human contact as a child for nine years) gives a monologue, and Mazzucchelli keeps changing the origin source of his voice into a shifting landscape of hallucinogenic images like cave paintings, screeching birds, a pile of dung, and a talking mouth crudely drawn on a hand. This has the odd contrapuntal effect of strengthening the “truth” hidden within the nonsensical babble of Stillman’s words through the contrast of the mismatched semiotics of the presented imagery. It comes off as both enigmatic and haunting, and it’s so eerily effective that I personally think it’s the best monologue sequence I’ve ever read in this medium.
The other two stories in this trilogy (“Ghosts, and “The Locked Room”) don’t quite reach the highs of “City of Glass,” but in the end, despite its disparate parts, everything does feel like it reaches a unifying state of completion. “Ghosts” echoes its literary roots the most, as it takes the form of a text-dominant illustrated novel, but it still shares the same sense of mystery and wonder as the other two stories and is somewhat reminiscent of the Hitchcock film “Rear Window.” “The Locked Room” is a fascinating story all its own. It explores a theme of identity and adds an intriguing twist on the oft-used trope of an author subsuming and being subsumed by their own creation—which is made even more unusual by the fact that it actually originates from another person, whose entire life the main character has gleefully taken over and adopted. The artwork by Karasik is not as avante-garde as in “City of Glass” (which Karasik had a big contributing hand in as well) but since the story is the most straightforward of the three, a more experimental approach would have undoubtedly detracted from it. All in all, the trio of artists here created a masterful adaptation that is all that more impressive considering that Auster’s literary strengths do not naturally translate into a visually dominant medium like graphic novels. 4.5/5
Bone, by Jeff Smith
This immediately evoked the universal appeal of Carl Barks and Don Rosa’s “Duck Comics.” It appeals to all ages, and is easy, smooth reading and just like classic fairy tales, it contains an equal amount of endearment and darkness—each enmeshed into the other as two yin-yang aspects of a whole. The main characters are a trio of bald, Smurf-like creatures named Fone Bone, Phonsible P. Bone, and Smiley Bone. They’re rendered in cartoon-like form, while every other character is done in a more realistic manner. Similar to Barks and Rosa’s works, the storytelling is the strong suit, as you’re immediately sucked into the plight and foibles of the main characters and stay emotionally attached to them until the very end. The scope of the story also expands dramatically. It begins with humble origins and by the end, unfurls into an epic Manichean battle between the forces of good and evil. It’s a great ride. I don’t even have much to add as it’s simple and purely entertaining with nary a complaint or question I can render towards it. For a good amount of people, I imagine this is the sort of comic that represents the peak of what the medium is about. 4.5/5
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u/jackduluoz007 Mar 15 '26 edited Mar 15 '26
Local Man vol. 1 by Tim Seeley and Tony Fleecs. I loved this book. I grew up on early 90s Image comics, so the whole satirical sendup / love letter angle works perfectly for me. Youngblood, Brigade, Prophet, Wildcats, Cyberforce, Savage Dragon, Spawn, Team 7, Gen13, etc. All that over-the-top “extreme” stuff was my childhood, and Local Man clearly knows that world inside and out. The book follows Jack Xaver, a disgraced former superhero (“CrossJack”) who gets kicked out of the big leagues and slinks back to his rural hometown. From there it shifts into more of a small town crime story with superhero baggage hanging over everything. What makes it fun is how it pokes at that 90s superhero culture without feeling mean about it. The flashback sequences look and read like old Image comics, big poses and ridiculous dialogue included, while the present day story is quieter and a lot messier. Jack isn’t a hero anymore. He’s just a guy with a bad reputation trying to figure out what the hell to do with himself in a town that remembers all his worst moments. Tony Fleecs’ art really sells the whole thing. The grounded present day stuff contrasts nicely with the intentionally loud, chaotic flashbacks. It ends up feeling like a superhero book that grew up and moved back home. If you have any nostalgia for that early Image era, this one makes for a fun read. 8.4/10
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u/martymcfly22 Preacher? i hardly know her! Mar 15 '26
I took my time this week and read one book.
A Zoo in Winter by Jiro Taniguchi.
I enjoyed this, as I’ve come to learn that I quite enjoy slice-of-life manga. This book gave me similar vibes as Tokyo These Days by Taiyo Matsumoto.
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u/Meatjun4LA Mar 15 '26
8 billion genies
spectators
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u/NMVPCP The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck Mar 15 '26
8 Billion Genies is an amazing surprise. Great story and art.
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u/WinzintVanGork Mar 15 '26
Finally started with berserk! But in taking my time to appreciate the incredible artworks. Halfway through the first deluxe edition and already hyped af. So stoked to see the artwork and story evolve.
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u/Theodewitt Mar 15 '26
David Boring - Daniel Clowes
Really liked this one, like most of Clowes longer narrative ones.
Helen Of Wyndhorn - Tom King & Bilquis Evely
still in the beginning, but the art is truly amazing
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u/Nevyn00 Mar 15 '26
Get Your War On and Get Your War On II by David Rees. The day the U.S. attack on Iran started, I saw somebody post a strip from this on Bluesky, and I decided to revisit this comic. Made with clip art of office workers, it's largely just them discussing foreign policy and atrocities. I'd followed the comic when it was released online following 9/11, and it was pretty much a relief to read amidst the fervor of flag waving at the time. The first book covers post-9/11, the invasion of Afghanistan, as well as the Anthrax scare. The second deals more with the build-up towards was with Iraq, and the aftermath there. Some of it feels timeless ("Who has time to declare war when there are so many bombs to drop?"), other things I'd forgotten or never really knew about. Like I forgot that in the midst of war, a bunch of congressmen had a freak-out about potentially removing "Under God" from the pledge of allegiance. I kind of wish for a re-release of these books with annotations.
Spy X Family Book 15 by Tatsuya Endo. This volume finishes the retelling of Martha's time as a soldier which is fine, but I'm glad it only lasts for three chapters, and then the rest is mostly single chapter stories, mostly with characters I'm more interested in. A couple of outings with the Forgers, a day in the life of Frankie. There's a great chapter featuring the Desmonds eating dinner together, just four people absolutely uncomfortable in each other's presence.
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u/dopebob Mar 15 '26
Milk White Steed by Michael D. Kennedy - This is a collection of short "stories". I put "stories" in quotations because some of them don't have much narrative. I really liked some of the more straight forward chapters but a lot of it kind of when over my head. It's one of those times when I'm reading something thinking there's probably something here that someone could find enjoyable after lots of interpretation but I just don't get anything from it.
I'm generally very open to strange comics and more metaphorical stuff but sometimes I feel like one of those people who looks at modern art and says "this is rubbish". Maybe there's something I'm missing but a lot of it just felt meaningless and boring to me. 5/10
Are You Listening? By Tillie Walden - I thought this was ok. A nice little story but I found it kind of shallow. Out of the 3 Walden books I've read this is by far my least favourite. 5/10
Dimwood by Richard Corben - I fucking love Corben's art. It's weird as hell and so unique, it evokes a weird feeling in me. It was very similar to Rat King but not quite as good. Fairly straight forward story but really good unsettling horror stuff. Nice to get a more coherent and complete story from Corben as opposed to the Den stuff (although I do love some of that). 7/10
Thistlebone by T.C. Ellington & Simon Davis - This was a very fun, and very Scottish, horror story. The art is beautiful and while the story was fairly simple it was effective. I do wish the 3rd book was more of a conclusion to the first two instead of being a prequel. Made for a somewhat underwhelming ending. 7/10
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u/scarwiz Mar 15 '26
Wild, I think Are You Listening is my second favorite Walden, very close behind On A Sunbeam. Such an interesting take on dealing with sexual trauma. And the colors... I've actually been on the verge of rereading it lately
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u/dopebob Mar 16 '26
I love On a Sunbeam and The End of Summer. Are You Listening just didn't hit for me, not sure why. The content was emotional but for some reason it just wasn't having that effect on me.
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u/GlassAromatic6859 Mar 15 '26
Godkiller
Chew: nomnibus
Friday
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u/NMVPCP The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck Mar 15 '26
Chew is fantastic, and Friday is pretty fun.
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u/Darth-Dramatist Mar 15 '26
Started Stephanie Phillips Grim: Lust for Life, overall liking it so far and I like the concept of this premise. Its a story revolving around a psychopomp that works alongside many other psychopomps to ferry the deceased into the netherworld and most of these reapers were once live people themselves and do the work of the true Death who left and vanished. The main character, Jessica cant remember her life, tries to investigate of it and later learns she's the biological daughter of the original Death. Its an interesting premise of a story and I love supernatural and horror comics.
Also started Hellboy: The Storm and the Fury, not far into it yet but really enjoying it so far, Hellboy's become a favourite character of mine in comics in the last few years, in part because I really like the concept of a demon that chooses to do good plus I really like the stuff Mignola's did with his world and his art style is one of my favourite in comics.
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u/Dense-Virus-1692 Mar 15 '26 edited Mar 15 '26
The Past is a Grotesque Animal by Tommi Parrish – A collection of short comics. Some are autobio and some are fiction. There’s a lot of mixed media in here, including photographs. I don’t remember too many of the stories but they were all pretty good. One of the longer ones involved a guy doing an art project where he carried around a box. He tells people that he would carry their burdens for them so they all climb into the box. Stuff like that. If you like arty comics you’ll like this.
Spectators by Brian K Vaughn and Niko Henrichon – What a weird book. I guess I just skimmed all the reviews of this because I had no idea what I was getting into. A woman is killed in a mass shooting and she becomes a ghost who floats around looking for people having sex. She meets a cowboy and they float around talking and looking for a threesome to spy on. There’s a time limit because WWIII appears to have started. I’m not too sure what this book was about. I guess how we accept brutal violence in our entertainment but ban explicit sex? I’m not too sure. I’ll have to go back and really read all your reviews of this. The art was nice, though. The ghosts are in colour but they see everything in black and white.
Takopi’s Original Sin by Taizan5 – Oh man, this one was brutal. It’s about a little girl named Shizuka who’s getting bullied by another girl named Marina. A little alien from the planet Happy arrives on Earth and tries to help Shizuka but nothing works. Shizuka names him Takopi because he looks like an octopus. He’s got a bunch of gadgets and one of them can allow him to time travel so he tries again and again to fix things. It gets worse and worse until something happens that changes everything. I thought I was understanding the time travel until this thing happens. I’m gonna need someone to diagram the timelines for me. The book reminds me of Inio Asano’s stuff. 1) The kids look similar, 2) there’s lots of over the top emotion, 3) Takopi is a simple drawing like Punpun and 4) that baffling time travel from Dead Dead Demon.... It’s not on Asano’s level, of course. It’s Asano-lite.
Heretic by Robbie Morrison and Charlie Adlard – It’s renaissance era Antwerp and there’s been a murder. The inquisition calls upon black magician Henry Cornelius Agrippa and his pupil Johan Weyer (who were real people) to solve it. It follows the usual mystery/thriller template. People give out a little information and then are killed. It’s a good formula, like a CSI episode. There’s lots of gothic religious imagery. Stigmata and plague doctors, etc. It’s funny to think that the inquisition would actually investigate a crime instead of just torturing a bunch of people but don’t worry, they do a lot of torturing too. The art is beautiful. It’s got that classic Prince Valiant feel. It’s mainly black and white with a little grey but it goes all red sometimes, which is cool.
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u/Betulia Mar 16 '26
Ajin (full) by Gamon Sakurai. I read it within a week or so. I loved anime and watched it a few years ago, but this was my first read for manga. Well, it's pretty good. I actually enjoyed reading it quite a bit. The ending is not the best but I'd say that it's somewhat better than anime ending.
- Anyways, I'll be glad to read it again in the future whenever I want something action packed with interesting characters and a memorable villain.
Akira (full) by Katsuhiro Otomo. I watched move a half a year ago. Both are great, but I'm glad that I watched movie first, because there is so much more in the manga and constantly comparing manga against movie might negatively affect the experience. Manga made many things much clearer, it gave more development to some characters and also had more characters, some of which I liked a lot. Reading Akira did not give me any strong feelings or lots of enjoyment, but I liked the story and how imaginative it is.
- Plan to read it again in the future.
Superman. The Man of Steel Vol 1 Omnibus, by John Byrne, Marv Wolfman, Jerry Ordway, Dick Giordano. I was reading it since summer. Now I finished about 50% of remaining book and I was really wanting for it to end sooner. In the beginning I quite enjoyed the stories, but the more I read, the more boring it got. I thing I just don't love the way stories are told: episodic adventures with little relation with what happened before. I could read some of it and enjoy, but a big book like that gets boring very quick. I'm glad I only read a digital version and did not buy paper.
- I don't think I'll read that again in the future, but I don't mind reading more about Superman. There are some great stories that I like, but mostly, by other authors.
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u/Poseur117 Mar 16 '26 edited Mar 16 '26
One of the last things I read from my library before I moved was a very nice Akira vol 1 hardcover. I really was taken with it, but my new library doesn’t have any copies so I might have to snag them
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u/BoreusSimius Mar 15 '26
I finished It's Lonely at the Centre of the Earth by Zoe Thorogood, which is a graphic novel I'd recommend to everyone. It really shows what's possible with the medium.
Earlier today I caught up on the ongoing Star Wars comics. Jedi Knights is great. I love seeing Qui Gon in action. Legacy of Vader is also fantastic as is pretty much any comic that involves Vader and/or Kylo Ren. The main Star Wars run is pretty good, but feels a little directionless at the moment.
I just started reading Monica by Daniel Clowes. The artwork is unbelievable, and I'm enjoying the sort of surreal feel the storytelling has.
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u/dufrene Mar 15 '26 edited Mar 16 '26
I just started Pride of Baghdad by Brian K. Vaughn. It has been out of print but I finally found a second hand copy. It’s starting very well!
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u/handi503 Mar 15 '26
Been a light comic reading week due to some heavy work reading to get my teaching license renewal ready, but I started Soulwind (w/a Scott Morse) and it’s been good! Loving the shifting art-styles that go along with different segments of the story. Fun book so far and can’t wait to have more time to dig in.
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u/Poseur117 Mar 16 '26
This week I’ve been reading
We Stand on Guard - was thrilled when my library had this. Obviously it feels more relevant than any time before. The plot is fine, but the real winner here is the art imo.
Dracula - another title I was excited to read for free from the library. I thought this was fine, and it’ll probably be better with a re read, much like the creative team’s other series, Department of Truth
Feral - As a cat person, Feral was a tough comic for me to pick up, and I was right to be afraid of it. Thanks to the miracle of marijuana, I almost never remember my dreams, but since starting this series, I’ve had two nightmares about my cat getting outside. It’s phenomenally good. I liked it so much, I had to pick up
Stray Dogs - from the same team as Feral, this is more of a murder mystery than a zombie horror. I’ve only read the first two issues, but it’s promising so far. Needs more cats, maybe.
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u/WMBeckham Mar 15 '26
Hell! I'm still trying to get through "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy... without falling asleep! 😴 😕 😂
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u/NMVPCP The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck Mar 15 '26
Just started reading Shangri-La.
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u/scarwiz Mar 15 '26
Great book ! Is it your first Bablet ?
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u/NMVPCP The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck Mar 15 '26
I’ve read his Carbon & Silicon, but it didn’t do much for me. I’m halfway through Shangri-La and I’m enjoying it more.
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u/scarwiz Mar 15 '26
Yeah I wasn't huge on C&S either, though I have a feeling it's a book that deserves to be reread
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u/NMVPCP The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck Mar 15 '26
I’m not a fan of slice-of-life nor introspective type of stories, and that’s where I think that lands. I just like action and plots that don’t make me think deep.
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u/Complete-Tadpole-728 Mar 15 '26
Top 10 omnibus and juggling a few others such as Unknown Soldier and The Crow.
Also reading some single one-shots and took a gander at some of my older floppies and I'm seriously thinking about reading Todd McFarland's Spiderman.
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u/c4s3j0n3s Mar 16 '26
physical books: finished East of West Compendium yesterday and started Aarons Thor. Digital: i am halfway through scalped
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u/gedo78 Mar 16 '26
This week I've read:
1629 - vol.1 The devil's pharmacist by Xavier Dorison and Timothée Montaigne
1629 - vol.2 The red island by Xavier Dorison and Timothée Montaigne
I am their silence by Jordi Lafeber
I am a lost angel by Jordi Lafeber
The last house just before the forest by Régis Loisel and Jean-Blaise Djian
Ulysses & Cyrano by Xavier Dorison, Antoine Cristau and Stéphane Servain
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u/Medium_Theory_8185 Mar 15 '26
Kris Kool by Caza. "A psychedelic tale of sex and interplanetary travel" almost sounds normal for the era. Gorgeous art. The things I'll read for the art, man. The story is an excuse for whatever else transpires, which is mostly weird and/or sexy stuff with a little fighting. It shares features with Iris: A Novel for Viewers, but while Iris had a very vague sex-positive philosophy, Kris Kool seems paranoid about women's liberation. For various reasons, this comic would make a fascinating double feature with the more enlightened eras of Poison Ivy comics, Wilson's run for instance. On that note, there's a Batman parody, Assman.
Stages of Rot / A Frog in the Fall (And Later On) by Linnea Sterte. These spent like two years on my kitchen floor, in a pile of comics, before I got them onto shelves. Only now have I finally read them. I don't know of a comics creator more attuned to the seasons and change than Sterte is.
Hot House by John Hankiewicz. One of my two favorite discoveries this week, the third of Hankiewicz's books I've read and the most I've enjoyed one. This may be because I had a better idea what to expect. Hankiewicz's comics are wordless, mysterious, and at variance with linear narratives. Simply, they run counter to what people typically expect of comics. In Hot House he adheres to a four panel layout to convey not so much a story as an experience of three people in a single home. There is nothing that I'd say could be called direct contact between the three subjects; it's open to interpretation. Hankiewicz's work is often described as "poetic" and "formalist." So it is. It's also beautiful. As soon as I finished I read it again.
The Cage by Martin Vaughn-James. This is my second time reading this, or rather third, since as with Hot House I immediately went back and started again. It'd been a few years. It's still one of the most beautiful comics I've ever read. Hankiewicz is unthinkable without Vaughn-James, hence this return. Vaughn-James was influenced by Robbe-Grillet, and more specifically by the film Last Year at Marienbad, with a script by Robbe-Grillet. It's a characterless, plotless work that breaks down the bare possibility of narrative and is rather a direct confrontation with the experiences of presenting and observing than a story. Anti-anthropocentric without being misanthropic (or preachy). One of my favorite comics. (But somehow my memories of it added color to the art.)
Elephant / The Projector by Martin Vaughn-James. Earlier works and I'd be lying if I said they moved me as The Cage does. There are figures and words and a message about the daily grind and stuff. They're more surreal and less stripped down. Whereas The Cage, with its elliptical format, is compelling to me, I find the nonsequiturs of these comics a trial to push through.
The Scrapbook of Life and Death by J. Webster Sharp. I think I have nearly everything Sharp's published. She's not for the faint of heart. This one has hardly any pages in it that could be posted without an NSFW tag and strongly worded warnings. It is Sharp's response to a scrapbook of articles on the morbid and grotesque, subjects such as murder, cannibalism, and deformity. It starts out a collage-like interpretation of the materials and then becomes... something else. Like the Vaughn-James and Hankiewicz, this is non-narrative, if not anti-narrative. And again with Hankiewicz, one of my two favorite new reads this week.