Comics: exploring a more varied diet

It happens every couple of years, this sudden urge to shake up my reading. Recently I've been expanding my pull list beyond my go to superhero series with stuff like Lumberjanes, Bombshells, Mech Cadet Yu and Rat Queens, all series I'm really enjoying for how different they are. Its not even that I'm burnt out on superheroes. Right now DC's in the best place its been creatively in about a decade and Marvel, recent Nazi missteps aside, has some good stuff going on that I hope Legacy isn't going to ruin.

Still, I feel the need to explore a bit so I went into town with a small budget and scoured the shelves of Waterstones and Oxfam Music (strangely, of the two Oxfam stores, the one that displays comics donations) for anything that looked interesting.

I ended up with a decent enough haul that will keep me busy for a couple of weeks.

To start with, Mendoza the Jew: Boxing, Manliness and Nationalism: a graphic history by Ronald Schechter and Liz Clarke. I have to admit, I did not expect to find a graphic novel with an Oxford University Press logo on the back cover. I love historical graphic novels and a biography of an eighteenth century British Jewish boxer is certainly not something I'd ever have thought to look up on my own.

A Contract With God claims to be the first graphic novel and given its written and drawn by Will Eisner I can well believe it. Again, a historical based at least somewhat on the author's own life. I'm always leery about foundational works, they tend to age worse than people give them credit for, but I'm more than willing to give it a shot.

100 Bullets: First Shot, Last Call is the first in Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso classic Vertigo crime series, which is one of those classics I've never got around to. I love Azarello's Wonder Woman and every time I've encountered Risso's... shall we call it “aggressively grotty” style I've been impressed. Plus, Oxfam only wanted £2.99 for it so how bad can it be?

Another classic I've never read, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi is an autobiography of a woman who grew up in Iran during some pretty scary times. It is also something I once promised a friend I would read and review and, decade late or not, I do want to keep to my promises.

The back cover blurb of Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda's Monstress: Awakening promises me both art deco beauty and steampunk horror plus a quick flick through tells me the art is absolutely gorgeous. I know practically nothing about this series, only that I love the aesthetic and the protagonist Maika Halfwolf is looking for answers about her past so I'm very much looking forward to this one.

Finally there's Powers: Who Killed Retro Girl?, the first book in the series that brought Brian Michael Bendis to prominence. I liked the recent Powers revival at Marvel but got burnt out on it because I feel like I was missing a lot of necessary context on the main characters so it might well be worth my while.

Opinions to follow at a later date...

The curious origin of Atomic Blonde

I have to watch Atomic Blonde, if only to work out what the hell is going on.

You see, I was already interested. It looked like a John Wick movie starring Charlize Theron beating up tons of dudes and then kissing ladies on the mouth. I can absolutely get behind all the concepts in that sentence, especially Charlize Theron as a female John Wick.

Then the reviews hit and I discovered it was an adaptation of The Coldest City written by Antony Johnston with art by Sam Hart. That's one of my favourite graphic novels ever. The graphic novel is a John leCarré-style spy thriller set in the last days of partitioned Berlin. The main character, MI6 operative Lorraine Broughton, is tough in a fight and resourceful but she's no John Wick and as for kissing ladies on the mouth... well, its been a couple of years since I last read it but I don't remember it.

I'm not even being a purist here: the film they seem to have made looks like a fun film and if nothing else I am genuinely curious about how they got from this book to the concept I'm seeing in the trailers. Of course, this is assuming the trailers are representative of the finished product which isn't always the case and if you have even a second of Charlize Theron a) fighting a bunch of dudes and b) kissing a lady on the mouth, then you're going to want to put that front and centre of the advertising. I can't blame anyone for that.

Still, an interesting potential case study and also perhaps a limit case scenario for my previous pious insistence that I don't mind changes to the source material if it makes the story a better fit for the medium its being adapted to. 

Revisiting the classics of comics

I need to read more graphic novels.

The other day, for no real reason than there was a new edition that looked pretty, I bought a copy of Will Eisner's graphic novel A Contract With God. I've not read a lot of Eisner, just a few off Spirit reprints, and I don't want to insult the absolutely transformative work he did there but this finally convinced me I need to seek out more of his work.

Not only that but there are a lot of this medium's classics I have just never read.

Perhaps the most significant gap in my knowledge of the classics is Watchmen, which I should probably read before those characters get irretrievably ruined by being bootstrapped into the DCU. So that's practical. There's a lot of Alan Moore I haven't read but that's definitely a place to start.

I've never read Persepolis, though I got a copy for Christmas a couple of years back. Funnily enough, it was originally recommended to me by someone who didn't enjoy it. I don't remember why she didn't enjoy it but she did think it would be more my thing, being an autobiography from a cultural voice you don't hear much in the UK.

On a similar subject, I've often sen Joe Sacco's Palestine on library shelves and I think I should definitely check that out, again more true history of the Middle East.

I love Neil Gaiman's Sandman so it seems strange I've only ever read one collection of John Ney Rieber The Books Of Magic, which is basically the most well-respected spin-off the series ever got. Whilst I'm at it, Preacher is another of the great Vertigo series I've somehow never found time to read.

I've not read either of Frank Miller's Dark Knight series... PUT THE PITCHFORKS DOWN! Sometimes you read a classic because you expect to enjoy it and sometimes you read it just to know you've read it.

I have no idea what Daniel Clowes' Ghost World is about but people tell me it deserves a place on this list.

I'm told the Colin Baker era Doctor Who comics are a high point of the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip. Actually, what I'm told is that they're terrible Doctor Who but great comics.

I think that's enough to be getting on with.