Saturday, November 5, 2011

Some comics I've read

Love And Rockets, no. 4 by the Hernandez brothers:
Another great issue, with the continuation and ending of The Love Bunglers, from Jaime Hernandez. It's a real knockout and quite touching for those that have followed the strip and these characters since the eighties. You almost have to remind yourself that, yes, these are characters, not real people! Apparently, nobody told Jaime that the quality of one's work is supposed to go down after working on a strip that long. I look forward to, in twenty years time, reading about a sixty years old Maggie.

Prince Valiant Volume 4, 1943-44 by Hal Foster:
Again, stunning drawings. And quite bloody! Valiant is being tortured, people are killed left and right. There's a strange sequence in the book involving another knight, Tristram, who I don't think has been introduced earlier, that looks like a double of Valiant, but with a mustache! He is killed by a jealous king, but instead of Valiant and Gawain, who are there, seeking vengeance they just ride off. Not quite sure what was going on in Foster's mind there.

Tarzan, The Joe Kubert Years, Volume 3:
I remember the Kubert Tarzan stories from when I was a kid. There were some translations into Norwegian. Kubert was the perfect Tarzan artist, in my mind, his brushstrokes matching the savageness of both Tarzan and the jungle landscape where the stories take place. Still waiting for Volume 1.

Hellboy, The Bride of Hell And Others, The Troll Witch and Others, The Crooked Man And Others:
Usually I find the Hellboy stories not drawn by Mignola less appealing. No matter how good the cartoonists are, it's just not the same. An interesting exception is Richard Corben - his style is almost completely the opposite of Mignola, but somehow it works perfectly for the Hellboy universe. One thing, though: I miss the handlettering by Pat Brosseau from the early books. That handlettering had a lot of character, the square A's and so on, and the computer font from the newer books doesn't fit as well.

Our Little Kat King by Patrick McDonnell:
This is the latest of the yearly Mutts Treasury books. Is Mutts the last good newspaperstrip? It has a Peanuts quality, even if maybe it doesn't reach quite the genius of that strip. It's very inventive in its variations of the recurring setups; the hibernation strips, the singing birds, the squirrel throwing nuts and so on . Sometimes a little too cute-ish, but there are worse crimes.

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