Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Comic books!

When was the last time I bought a comic book? It must be years. Graphic novels look better on the shelf, but still... I spent some of the weekend looking through some of my old comics that have been gathering dust, reading a bit here and a bit there, and enjoyed a lot of it. The New Mutants by Sienkiewicz, Swamp Thing by Alan Moore, Shade The Changing Man by Milligan, the Daredevils Mazzucchelli did before Born Again. Flex Mentallo by Morrison held up pretty good, and with the original colours, thank you very much - a superhero version of The Singing Detective.

And re-reading the Sin City: Hell And Back issues, I had forgotten how fun Frank Miller could be. He seems to have lost interest in a Gordon character, like in Batman Year One, grounding it in anything resembling reality. Now it's all tough guys and babes. Which can be okay as well, particulary with the cartoonier style he applies here - the big hands and feet he gives everyone. I especially enjoyed the colour issue, no 7, when the hero hallucinates and sees all kinds of pop culture characters from Miller's past. And this is probably the last good thing he did. Dark Knight 2 was kind of a mess, I haven't bothered checking out Holy Terror and let's not speak about The Spirit.

5 comments:

  1. Let's remember Frank Miller for the good books he used to make and never speak again of this crazy man who doesn't know what he's doing or talking about anymore. It's better this way.

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  2. I don't really care about Frank Miller's political views. He can be a rightwing nut as much as he wants, if only he made good comics. In his Comics Journal interview he talks about wanting to do a Western. I would love to see that from his hand.

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  3. I don't know what happened to Miller. Somewhere along the way, he lost the plot completely. I don't care about his politics either, but Holy Terror was still really, really, hard to swallow, even for me who's not very leftie.

    I still enjoy his old work, though, pulling out both TDK Returns and Daredevil from time to time.

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  4. I haven't bought any comics in years either, but have picked up more graphic novels in the last 2 years than ever. I think largely I like to get a complete story from cover to cover rather than follow an ongoing piece.

    I would like to see a Frank Miller western, particularly if its not a big epic. Epics are stale.

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  5. I thought DK2 was messy in a good way.

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