What comics are you reading?

[paw broon]

Re. Mr. Bolland and his notorious slowness. You will all remember Camelot 3000 and the year long gap between the last 2 issues. Lonely man, excellent comics artist, just a tad tardy.
Colin, I have to disagree on G. Morrison esq. I just can't read his stuff. Invisibles turned my stomach and I find a lot of his work is simply controversial for controversies sake. Only my opinion, obviously. Well, actually, there are others who feel the same way. There is so much else to read that I feel I can nowadays ignore the dross he turns out. Controversial, moi?

[philcom55]

I tend to agree about Morrison Paw. There's no doubt that he's capable of turning out the odd gem but I'm afraid my dross threshold has fallen so low in recent years that I just don't have the patience to put up with his self indulgent nonsense any more. My loss I'm sure!

On the plus side I picked up a nice copy of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis #2 this afternoon! It might not be great literature but Bob Oksner sure could draw pretty girls!

(Incidentally, in case anybody gets the wrong impression I'm sure you meant to say Mr. Bolland is a lovely man - not a lonely one! ...At least I think I'm sure! )

[starscape]

Well, I'll partially disagree. Morrison has certainly produced some dross 52 being awful) but a large part has been a work of sheer genius. I'd include the Invisibles in that. Despite them hating each other, Morrison and Moore are two quite incredible writers who have produced some of my most favourite pieces of work.

[paw broon]

OOOOPPS, another foxes paw with the keyboard. Yes Phil I did mean LOVELY!
Starscape, There seems to be a small but growing body of opinion that Mr. Moore's work, or a part of it at least, hasn't held up over the years and some people are now seeing it as not quite the quality they thought it was - or in some cases, that they were told it was. While I loved League of Extraordinary etc., the follow up stories went increasingly over the top in nastiness and were it not for Kev's art, I wouldn't have looked at them. V for Vendetta I still find enjoyable but From Hell is even more of a chore now than when I read it originally. I often ponder that if I want some of that esoteric, magicky, weird, green type work, I'd prefer to go to Arthur Brown, if only because he's also funny and odd and has the added advantage of his musical accompaniment include Vincent Crane and The Pretty Things. He just doesn't write many comics.
G. Morrison's writing always seems to me to trying to outrage or offend and his cavalier treatment of older characters I find Byrne like in it's change for change sake look.
We should arrange to have a coffee one morning and chat about comics, amicably of course. We're both local and my wife lets me out on my own from time to time.
As I wrote a couple of notes previously, there is so much else to read that I feel I can nowadays ignore the dross he turns out. And that good stuff also includes the Dobie Gillis Phil picked up. Now that's entertainment.

[starscape]

Yeah, that'd be fun. We could argue about KeV O'Neill's art for a start.not a fan I'm afraid.

[ISPYSHHHGUY]

I am afraid that Mr Moore has never done a great deal for me, and I remember him in his early days, when he actually done the drawings for ROSCOE MOSCOW and STARS MY DEGRADATION for SOUNDS magazine eons ago--very subversive stuff, I actually enjoyed that better than his later FUTURE SHOCKS stuff.

I have tried getting into his material, but for me it is just a regurgitated mish-mash of already-existing scenarios, however I do admire his insistance in getting his name removed from 'lowly' big-budget screen adaptations of his output.


Post-Modern comics are just not my scene, but clearly folks like me are not his target readership.

[paw broon]

Ah, there you go, see. I've always enjoyed it and not only because he visited us up here a lot and we got on well together. I admit it is a bit of an acquired taste, but I acquired it. Whereas, with McMahon's Dredd, I was a fan right from the start and most of my favourite Dredd stories were illustratd by M. McM. Another strip and comic I no longer read, I'm afraid.

[colcool007]

For me, this has been my only foray into the world of Morrison apart from whatever strips he wrote for 2000AD that I read eons ago.

I'll be honest and say that The Invisibles feels like someone has regurgitated some of the weirder bits of the 70's. As I said, it was always the Bolland covers that drew me to them and while I may not follow or like what Grant has done, I'll give him his due in writing something that is a bit more work than the usual bland pap that many superhero comics can appear to be.

Will I read them again? Probably at some point, but it will probably be five years or more before I do. Has it recommended Morrison to me? Now that's an interesting point for discussion upon which my intellectual jury is still out. But to see some lovely art by the assorted contributors, then it has been worthwhile. Now once I finish Countdown to the Millenium, I'll be back to reading the pile of Commandos that I still haven't finished reading!

[ISPYSHHHGUY]

Funny thing, Col,

--I read my first COMMANDO for many years just t'other night: it was a 1967 effort about two pilots who were bitter enemies---very good stuff and I will be reading more. This story got my full attention and I read it all in one sitting [68 pages?]


Love the fully painted covers on most of these.

[paw broon]

Ken Barr who did many Commando covers, used to turn up to the Kelvin Hall, Glasgow marts. He's a quiet spoken, nice bloke and had time to chat to and answer questions. But I'm still not a fan of war comics, so don't read many. My pal Wee John has an almost complete collection of one of the early war picture libraries. Nice art in lots of them but I just can't get into them.

[philcom55]

Ken was interesting in that he was one of the first artists to make a name for himself on both sides of the Atlantic (not many people realize that he drew Bob Kanigher's first 'Losers' story in Our Fighting Forces!).