What (comics) are you reading right now?

[Spandex]

For showy art and an intricate plot there's the epic steampunk-fantasy series Monstress by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda, which has been running for 10 years now and still maintaining quality. Maika Halfwolf tries to uncover and understand her past, against backdrop of a war between magic wielding humans and half-animal arcainics in a matriarchal society with ancient gods looming around threateningly. If I'm in the mood for something fantasy this delivers. And it looks amazing.

 

[Spandex]

But I came to post what I've been reading this afternoon... Dark Spaces: Wildfire by Scott Snyder & Hayden Sherman.

A team of women prisoners on work release fighting an out of control forest fire are talked into robbing a mansion in the danger zone by their newest member. Will the simple heist go to plan? Of course not.

Like watching a good film, but in comic form.

 

[tommers]

Love all of those.

I opened my comic shop today. Been sitting up to midnight every night looking through 14,000 line spreadsheets or adding stock to inventory systems, building bookshelves and humping racks up hills. Been non stop for 10 days and I'm so tired. But everybody was so lovely and loads of people said they've been waiting for ages for a shop to open in town and we sold loads of books to loads of different people and people said we had a good range of stuff. So I'm really happy.

Haven't had any time to read any comics.

 

[krtek a houby]

It's not got showy art, it's not got a tight and intricate plot, but sometimes a comic just works and keeps me reading and wanting to know where it's going and then I keep thinking about it afterwards. This is one of them.

View attachment 454882

Looks like Robert Crumb hanging out with Silent Running

 

[krtek a houby]

Love all of those.

I opened my comic shop today. Been sitting up to midnight every night looking through 14,000 line spreadsheets or adding stock to inventory systems, building bookshelves and humping racks up hills. Been non stop for 10 days and I'm so tired. But everybody was so lovely and loads of people said they've been waiting for ages for a shop to open in town and we sold loads of books to loads of different people and people said we had a good range of stuff. So I'm really happy.

Haven't had any time to read any comics.

That's so wonderful, when younger you just couldn't get me out of comic shops. Of course, before FP came to Dublin, the choice wasn't as wide as now.

You'd be buying your comics in Easons, or you'd find the occasional US Marvel in a newsagent, or a DC if you were lucky.

O'Connell St world have the paper stalls selling some of the old horror comics, but your best bet was usually in The Alchemists Head in Temple Bar, or the tiny Twilight Zone in the Ilac.

It's impossible to impart to non comic people the absolute joy of buying the latest issue of your favourite ongoing story.

Wishing you much satisfaction and success.

 

[Spandex]

Good luck tommers

I love browsing comic shops. I love reading a good comic more than watching telly or a film.

I still remember my first comic. My dad was in hospital for a minor operation in about 1980 and I was visiting and obviously looking a bit bored as the bloke in the next bed in the ward gave me Chiller #10, a pocket sized Marvel comic reprinting early 70s Man Thing and The Tomb of Dracula:

I then had to hunt out other copies to meet my need for more, going to the third closest newsagents to where I lived, which had a small and random collection of Marvel comics on the bottom shelf. There was always the question of would they get the next issue in? I got a subscription to Battle purely for Pat Mills' Charley's War strip. Friends at school were buying 2000AD, so I read their copies of that too. I got into buying Amazing Spiderman and then Walt Simonson's run on Thor.

I'd get the train up to central London to go to Forbidden Planet on Denmark Street (I met Stan Lee there once, who signed my copy of Punisher #1, so it must've been in 1987). Then a comic shop opened in a run down building in the town centre and that became a teen hang out, going after school and Saturdays to spend all my money discovering the kind comics that just wouldn't appear in a news agent, like Love & Rockets.

Comics were all I read as a teenager. After a lull reading them in my 20s I got back into them in them one acid comedown day reading Halo Jones and I've loved reading them since.

So I hope your comic shop goes well. They can be so much more than just a business, they can be a focus for a small community.

 

[krtek a houby]

Ah, the pilgrimage to Denmark St. And the cool Brian Bolland bag designs!

 

[Spandex]

Ah, the pilgrimage to Denmark St. And the cool Brian Bolland bag designs!

 

[tommers]

So I hope your comic shop goes well. They can be so much more than just a business, they can be a focus for a small community.

Thank you. A small community is exactly what I want it to be. We've got a basement downstairs so I'm trying to decide what to do with it. Could fill it with back issues (already had two people ask if I want to buy / sell their old collections) or make it into a reading room / library or something. Run events down there. I don't know yet.

I also want to get people in who don't normally read comics and showcase the range of current stuff, and hopefully get them into it. Or at least show people that it's not all Batman and Superman. Most of the stuff we sold yesterday wasn't superheroes, it was biographies and novels and underground stuff from the 60s. It'll be interesting (to me at least) to see how that goes. Yesterday might have just been Xmas presents but I think there's an audience for Pee Pee Poo Poo alongside Hush or Ultimate Spiderman.

And I'm going to resist funko pops until the store is repossessed.

 

[Silas Loom]

Good luck with it tommers! Did you choose an ecommerce platform in the end? Much more interesting than the comics aspect, although I have just bought a set of One Punch Man books for my nephew.

 

[Spandex]

My daughter is the manga fan in our family. Here's her bookshelf to give an idea what a 12 year old manga fan is into:



Demon Slayer is her favourite at the moment. The Promised Neverland was the one I got into.

 

[A380]

Trace my life Story.

Denmark Street
New Oxford Street
Shaftesbury Avenue….



Also been to the New York, Cardiff ( is this closed now? ) and Cambridge ones. There was a chap on YouTube that visited all the UK branches over a weekend, which might be a challenge to replicate…

 

[Buddy Bradley]

Our local place (Peterborough in the 80s) was The House On The Borderland, which was tucked away at the end of a dirty alley and run by a crusty old hippy who also dealt a bit of weed. It had a random selection of clothes, bags, incense and secondhand records as well. My brother and I went most weekends because they got all the American indie comics in, stuff like Fantagraphics titles.

Sadly it went out of business in the 90s I think; the owner switched to eBay but then lost all his stock in a house fire.

Thank you. A small community is exactly what I want it to be. We've got a basement downstairs so I'm trying to decide what to do with it. Could fill it with back issues (already had two people ask if I want to buy / sell their old collections) or make it into a reading room / library or something. Run events down there. I don't know yet.

Whereabouts are you based, UK or elsewhere? And are you doing mail order?

 

[Spandex]

Like all right minded people I love Miyazaki's Ghibli films, but for my birthday I got a box set of the complete Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind manga.

There's so much more to it than the film, which only skips through the first two chapters. The artwork is up to the quality you'd expect from Miyazaki, the story is properly epic, dense and apocalyptic. Need to go back to the beginning and read it all over again.

 

[Buddy Bradley]

Anyone interested in comic book history should definitely subscribe to this guy on YouTube - he's jumped to the top of my favourite channels with his long-form, well-researched video essays on all kinds of comics history:

matttt - comic & manga history

Share your videos with friends, family and the world

www.youtube.com

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

I got a box set of the complete Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind manga.

There's so much more to it than the film, which only skips through the first two chapters. The artwork is up to the quality you'd expect from Miyazaki, the story is properly epic, dense and apocalyptic. Need to go back to the beginning and read it all over again.

It's a fucking journey. If you have only seen the film you basically get the first 5 to 10% of the story with a bit of a tacked on ending.

Similar to comparing the Akira movie and manga but even more so as that move takes the first 25% and a parts of the last 10% to make its story.