What Are You Reading?

[Dr. Insomniac]

Chiaki J. Konaka. Granted, the latter wasn't nearly as prolific and flat-out stopped doing anime after the late 2000's, but I feel similarly about both of them as writers, in that they have some pretty insane stuff out there and I have mixed feelings of them on the whole, but they are consistently pretty weird.

That's still a sore spot for me. Even when he wrote shit, it was interesting shit. Something worth untangling and analyzing than the storm of isekai shows coming out right now (and yeah, I know the irony in Tamers technically being an isekai series). I wish he'd come back and write something like that Tamers 2 outline he's been mentioning on his Twitter. Especially since Urobuchi, who spiritually filled in Konaka's shoes as the weird, dark, Lovecraftian anime writer, has been too busy doing Godzilla and Chinese puppet shows to helm any recent anime.

[Foggle]

Well, saying that you like him for how different he is from other comic book writers but then also wishing that there were more comic book writers like him is a bit of a contradictory statement, isn't it?

Well, you know... I mostly love him because of his creativity and obvious love for comics. But yeah, if every writer was like him, then his work wouldn't be nearly as interesting.

Chiaki Konaka is also the shit. He wrote a live action film directed by Takashi Shimizu (the Ju-On guy) named Marebito and it's one of my favorite horror movies. It wasn't particularly well-received and has many obvious flaws but it's super intriguing and I loved it for that. Also helped me discover The Shaver Mystery, which is also really interesting.

[Dr. Insomniac]

I wouldn't want every writer to be like him. Mark Millar tries to be like Morrison, was even his protege for a while, and his work is awful. I just want more writers to be more experimental and ambitious like Morrison is.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I'd also throw Scott Snyder into that category of Morrison knock-off writers. He can occasionally come up with inventive ideas and pull them off really well, like with The Black Mirror, but his main Batman run feels like it tries too hard to be subversive yet just comes off as either really dumb or an obvious cheap attempt at shock value, sometimes both (like with Death of the Family or his Mr. Freeze one-shot).

[Dr. Insomniac]

For old times' sake, I read Buffy Season 12, what is meant to be the finale to all the Dark Horse comics and the series as a whole if that reboot show stays a reboot (the Boom comics version of Buffy will also be a reboot). I jumped off the Buffy comics early in Season 9 because after how promising the start of Season 8 was, it mutated into the worst traits of tie-in comics. Where characters who were never romantic to each other in the show suddenly hook up, and all the Big Bads are just derivative of show Big Bads with a fraction of what made those villains memorable. As for Season 12? Meh. It's not unreadable, I like all the fanservice going on, and seeing Illyria is always nice, but it's hard to care. Maybe it's because Whedon barely has anything to do with these aside from occasionally giving notes to the writer, but all the characters lack that spark they do in the show and the early Season 8 run. It feels like filler before they get to the real arc, except I know that real arc is never going to happen. Like I said about Morrison, it's possible to write characters who can go on forever as long as you stay innovative. And it's sad a show as innovative as Buffy hasn't found that in its comics. Just the same old "Buffy has a love triangle with Angel and Spike" rabble.

Spoiler

Also, Buffy and Faith become police officers at the end. And that's dumb.

[close]

[Avaitor]

I've been wanting to update with a couple of things I've been reading on and off lately, which on the top of my head includes:

-Akira- I had read a little bit of the manga way back when, but only recently bought all of the volumes and sat the whole thing down. It's a true epic, and I really admire Otomo's scope. Just like Nausicaa, while this helps to fill in some of the cracks of the movie adaptation, it also compliments the movie, and only helps me to like it as much as before, if not ever. Also, Chiyoko is amazing. I wish the movie had more time for her.
-Blame!- A good post-apocalyptic counterpart to Akira, but I don't read it that often because it is not cheap. Whenever my Speedway Rewards card has enough points, I'm able to get a $25 Amazon gift card, and it's then that I order a volume. I do quite like it so far, though. I'm curious to fill in the blanks to how society ended up like this, and I like the characters alright so far. I'm halfway in, and I'm definitely curious to see how it wraps up.
-Dragon Ball- I started a full read of the manga ages ago, but stopped during the first tournament. My current reread has me paused early into the Red Ribbon arc, with Goku recently reuniting with Bulma. As familiar as I am with the story and characters, I like getting to read all of this again with increased knowledge of the development of battle shonen, as it's clear that DB created a good amount of it. I especially like how the early chapters have a certain breeziness to them, that Toriyama is changing the status quo in each chapter, and having a blast. You can see an end game when Pilaf and Shenron arrive, but I'm glad that he didn't end it too soon (not that Jump would have let him, anyway). But yeah, aside from Togashi's stuff, I think this is about as good as you can get shonen wise.
-Yu-Gi-Oh!- You know, for as much as I loved YGO as a kid, I didn't pay much attention to the manga outside of the earliest Jump books I got. For the first couple of years it was on in the states especially, I liked it nearly as much, if not more, than DB and YYH, yet I mostly stuck to its anime and card game. It's probably because the earliest chapters don't really touch on Duel Monsters, which is what I signed up for elsewhere. So reading these earliest chapters now, it's interesting to see what stuck early on, like the core four friends and Yugi's Yami ability, and to see what changes as it went along. What it really reminds me of, though, are oldddd school Marvel comics, back when Stan Lee wrote everything and would reuse plots on the daily. You have the protagonist and his tight-knit group, a threat of the week where he seems powerless, just to wait for the right time to duck out and save the day, and an unrequited crush on a girl who loves his alter ego. It kind of works, but I'm more interested in seeing where things go later on. I think my last chapter introduced Mokuba, who's trying to get revenge on Yugi for how he epically beat Kaiba in proto-Duel Monsters. Not too bad, honestly.

Plus, I'm still reading and rereading Barks' comics, which I think are as close to perfect as they can be. Terrific character writing, great world-building, and solid artwork. He was called the good duck artist for a reason.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Yeah, I've noticed that Blame! is pretty pricey, which much like Berserk is one reason that I've held off on reading it for now.

Also, glad that you're enjoying your re-read of Dragon Ball. For as many faults as the series would acquire in the later years of it's run, not enough people give Toriyama nearly enough credit for the unique balancing of tone and slick pacing of the early portions of Dragon Ball, and even in the later arcs he still had strong enough story-telling capabilities to keep the plot engaging and made you want to keep reading, even if many of his writing decisions didn't quite hold up from a logical standpoint (Mistare Fusion really points out a lot of these very well, even some that I hadn't noticed before).

As for me, I recently received Nekogahara Vol. 4 and Space Pirate Captain Harlock Vol. 2 in the mail earlier this week. Neko has gotten genuinely better in it's story-telling with each volume, but it said in the back description that this was the penultimate volume so I guess the next one is the last one? Seems kind of odd since there seems to be room for a lot more story left.

I only read through a few chapters of Harlock's second volume so far, but it still hasn't failed to impress me, and the simplistic yet nuanced writing sensibilities of Leiji Matsumoto is easily on par with those of Osamu Tezuka, himself.

I also just finished Starman Omnibus 4 and read through the Starman/Batman/Hellboy crossover story. What confuses me is that this story seems to treat Hellboy as existing in the DC Universe, but I've also been reading through the first Hellboy omnibus and I've received no indication of that whatsoever, which is especially the case because it's from a completely different publisher. Just seemed like kind of a weird decision for this crossover story to explain things that way is all.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I bought the third and fourth omnibi of Hellboy for $4 a piece which was one of the many deals going on for Comixology's Halloween sale (that's the same price that I got the first two omnibi for during the Comic-Con sale). I've been reading through the series by a chapter or two a night for a little bit now, and I'm almost done with the first Omnibus. I'll say right off the bat that I really love Mignola's artwork. It may not be for everyone, but something about his simplistic yet incredibly unique designs and style really works for me. Story-wise I've been enjoying the characters but the narrative hasn't really won me over as anything all that special at this point. It's more serviceable stuff for cool monsters and fun exchanges to happen, which is good enough to make the comic an entertaining read but not quite the classic that the series has become known as quite yet. Of course, I still have a lot more material to go through so I won't be surprised to see things pick up in later story arcs, but either way, I am still enjoying this for now.

I will say that while I hear from a lot of comic book fans that the Guillermo del Toro movies are bad compared to the source material, while it takes a lot of liberties (though, to be fair, so do a lot of comic book movies, even a ton of MCU films), I still can't agree that he completely missed the mark. At least so far as the first volume goes, I think that the two movies that del Toro did had a pretty good grasp on the spirit of the source material. I feel as though Hellboy's character is changed a bit to make him sound more like a gruff tough-guy than he does in the comics, and in that regard I can see how it may peeve fans a bit since he comes off at least a little more intellectual in the comics so far, but at the same time I don't feel that the movies ever really went that far with the concept. I still feel that the core concept of him being a demon trying to fit in with humans is still kept central to his character in both versions.

At any rate, I'll be reading through all of the material that I have collected eventually, so perhaps my opinion will sway over time, but I'm perfectly content liking both versions of the IP, myself.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I'm almost done with the second Hellboy Omnibus. I'll move onto The Wild Hunt after that and then take a break from the main series to read through the short story collections. The stories themselves can be hit or miss, but I tend to like Hellboy's interactions with the other BPRD members as opposed to his solo outings (and yes, I plan on reading Hellboy and the BPRD collected editions eventually as well).

So, since I wanted to read the 2008 Guardians of the Galaxy run, I've been reading through Annihilation as a starting point (which I will follow up with Annihilation: Conquest before stating the Guardians run). I'm reading it digitally on Comixology in its three collected volumes (I'm currently on the third and final volume). Overall, as far as event comics go, I really appreciate the structure of this one being so much more concise and easy to follow, with a series of chronologically arranged miniseries leading into the main event rather than having to read random issues here and there from other long-running solo and team titles. It makes the story feel a lot more coherent, and is somewhat like the format of the movies in that you experience a few stand-alone stories before they all tie-into the main event proper. Also, I wish that Spider-Verse's collected edition would have arranged its stories in chronological order rather than the weird structure that they chose to go with for that book. The main event was laid out in a straight six-issues and then all of the tie-in issues followed it, but a lot of those tie-in issues actually contained essential plot points for the main series, which made it super confusing going form issue to issue and feeling that I had missed a lot off-screen. I actually feel like I need to re-read the event at some point just to get a better grasp on the overall layout of the story. I still got the gist of everything going on, but it did feel really disorienting reading it the way the book had laid out rather than in chronological order. Not sure what genius came up with the idea to organize the book that way, but needless to say, I much prefer how Annihilation's collected addition arranges everything.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I've been reading through Annihilation and I love how even in this Marvel cosmic event that barely spends any time on Earth, Nova still finds time to point out how fucking stupid Civil War was. I especially like the comment: "They're split into warring factions down there...of no use to us, to anyone! It's as if they've forgotten how to be heroes!"

The more I read, the more I get the idea that not only was Civil War a divisive event among fans, but even of many of the writers working at Marvel at the time. Granted, I don't know enough behind-the-scenes info to back up that presumption, but it just seems way too obvious unless I'm reading too much into their work.

[Dr. Insomniac]

The more I read, the more I get the idea that not only was Civil War a divisive event among fans, but even of many of the writers working at Marvel at the time. Granted, I don't know enough behind-the-scenes info to back up that presumption, but it just seems way too obvious unless I'm reading too much into their work.

I think so. "Mark Millar licks goats" aside, some of the tie-in comics I read felt annoyed at best in regards to the event. Few of them seemed to like the idea, let alone side with Tony's pro-registration agenda. Even recently, there was a Captain America comic that brought back the reporter who harassed Cap about NASCAR and American Idol, and mocked her. Granted, it was Nick Spencer, so it's a bad event comic looking down on another bad event comic, but it illustrates how much of a pain it could be to do event comics, especially ones like Civil War.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, I ended up buying a bunch of comics on Comixology for their Black Friday sale. A lot of good deals with insanely low prices were there, so I kind of splurged and spent over $100 on titles that I had been planning to read eventually, but collectively I saved over $300 on what I got compared to if I had bought them at their standard price, and it's quite a lot of reading material. I picked up:

Animal Man (1988) Vol. 1-3 (comprising the entire Grant Morrison run)

Flex Mentallo

The Flash (Mark Waid) Vol. 3 & 4

Green Lanterns Vol. 1-6

Crisis on Infinite Earths

Annihilation: Conquest Vol. 1 & 2

Ms. Marvel Vol. 6-9

Avengers (Jonathan Hickman) Vol. 2-6

Hellboy: The Complete Short Stories Collection Vol. 1 & 2

That's a pretty damn good haul, even for a digital sale. And keep in mind, that isn't including the multitude of titles that were newly available as "Borrows" which I could add to my list for free.

[Dr. Insomniac]

I read through Boxers and Saints by Gene Luen Yang, a comic duology showing two perspectives of the Chinese Boxer Rebellion.

[Painted Outlaw]

Picked up the first 3 volumes of Excel Saga at this Newbury Comics I know about in Boston for about 6 dollars a pop last Saturday. No, I don't know how or why they were there - especially for that price - but like heck was I gonna argue against it. I haven't sat down and actually read through them yet but in skimming through them, I thought that a) Viz did a good job here and b) the volumes seemed pretty entertaining. It's got that whole feel of "Everything in Japanese culture is terrible and I will make a chapter out of it" as Zetsubou-sensei had done but, well, as much as I like Szs (and I do!), I assume Excel Saga's characters will be more grounded than SzS' cast. And, I find that refreshing in a sense.

In short, I give it a so far.

[Foggle]

Awesome!!!! I hope you enjoy them and go on to read the later volumes too. I need to give my copies a re-read someday soon.