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Post by Action Ace on Dec 20, 2015 18:31:35 GMT -5
#5 Darwyn Cooke
Toss another vote on the pile for a man who gave us a great love letter to Silver Age DC. His vision of DC Comics stands up there with Alex Ross and Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez. However, unlike those two gentlemen, he did all the "heavy lifting." He recently returned to do covers and I hope he's got another story to tell in the DCU someday.
up next at #4...it's all humor strips to the top, but this one I only read in superhero comics
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Post by foxley on Dec 21, 2015 2:11:29 GMT -5
Time for some funnies (and some more smut): #5. Phil Foglio
These days Phil co-writes with his wife Kaja, but before he married he was very much a one-man band (which would probably work as the name of a XXXenophile story  ). I love Phil for his quirky art style, his off-the-wall humour, his clever (if, at time, painful) wordplay, his fourth wall jokes, the quirky jokes he plants in the background of his scenes (such as the mad scientist's lab with a complex piece of electrical apparatus with a sign reading 'Do Not Place Tongue Here. Again.'), and especially for the love he shows for any topic he tackles, even when he is making fun of it ( What's New?, with Phil & Dixie could not have been written by someone who did not love gaming). Plenty of excellent work that falls in our time period: What's New?, with Phil & Dixie (from Dragon Magazine) ; Buck Godot, Zap Gun for Hire; the Stanley and His Monster and Angel and the Ape mini-series for DC; XXXenophile (the funniest pornography you're ever going to read)...     |
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Post by Prince Hal on Dec 21, 2015 8:18:56 GMT -5
5. Charles SchultzI’m no expert on Charles Shultz , but I don’t know anyone who’s never heard of Charlie Brown. I was first introduced to the Peanuts in the Animated Christmas special ” A Charle Brown Christmas”. I have seen some of the strips and find that entire world charming ,and that world has a special place in my heart.  I love the reference to the final play of the 1962 World Series   An excellent choice. Kids finally get their due in the comics. (BTW, what do Ghandi, Dr. Suess and Charles Schultz have in common?) |
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Post by Icctrombone on Dec 21, 2015 9:09:24 GMT -5
5. Charles SchultzI’m no expert on Charles Shultz , but I don’t know anyone who’s never heard of Charlie Brown. I was first introduced to the Peanuts in the Animated Christmas special ” A Charle Brown Christmas”. I have seen some of the strips and find that entire world charming ,and that world has a special place in my heart. I love the reference to the final play of the 1962 World Series An excellent choice. Kids finally get their due in the comics. (BTW, what do Ghandi, Dr. Suess and Charles Schultz have in common?) Maybe they all had different names they were born with ? |
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Post by Prince Hal on Dec 21, 2015 9:41:29 GMT -5
An excellent choice. Kids finally get their due in the comics. (BTW, what do Ghandi, Dr. Suess and Charles Schultz have in common?) Maybe they all had different names they were born with ? No, the names Gandhi, Seuss and Schulz are all frequently misspelled.  |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Dec 21, 2015 11:45:47 GMT -5
Maybe they all had different names they were born with ? No, the names Gandhi, Seuss and Schulz are all frequently misspelled. Unlike Sienkiewicz, strangely enough! |
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Post by Prince Hal on Dec 21, 2015 13:46:08 GMT -5
No, the names Gandhi, Seuss and Schulz are all frequently misspelled. Unlike Sienkiewicz, strangely enough! That one I wouldn't know without checking! |
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Dec 21, 2015 14:24:18 GMT -5
Wait, wait.. am I the first list to have... # 5 Gilbert Hernandez for Human Diastrophism
And call this a sideways vote for Jaime, too - But I only got so much space on the list.  What I like about Gilbert is the scope of his work. There are A LOT of characters running around multiple countries, and his Palomar cycle of stories has been going for decades - both real time AND fictional time. And he did Blood of Palomar, which is basically my favorite fictional comics story. There's a serial killer running around the Mexican village of Palomar, see... but instead of a plot-driven police procedural, this is - basically - a series of characters having transformative events in their lives. It's subtle, epic, funny and scary as $%^^. And it shows us that monkeys can be terrifying. |
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Post by DubipR on Dec 21, 2015 21:07:54 GMT -5
Wait, wait.. am I the first list to have... # 5 Gilbert Hernandez for Human Diastrophism
And call this a sideways vote for Jaime, too - But I only got so much space on the list. What I like about Gilbert is the scope of his work. There are A LOT of characters running around multiple countries, and his Palomar cycle of stories has been going for decades - both real time AND fictional time. And he did Blood of Palomar, which is basically my favorite fictional comics story. There's a serial killer running around the Mexican village of Palomar, see... but instead of a plot-driven police procedural, this is - basically - a series of characters having transformative events in their lives. It's subtle, epic, funny and scary as $%^^. And it shows us that monkeys can be terrifying. No, someone else had Beto, on the 10th Day or something. He'll be popping up again, don't you worry |
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Post by Cei-U! on Dec 21, 2015 23:05:52 GMT -5
Indeed he will. Tomorrow, in fact.
Cei-U!
I summon the sneak preview!
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Post by Pól Rua on Dec 22, 2015 1:06:01 GMT -5
I ended up having to not include Los Bros Hernandez, because I couldn't decide. I give Beto the edge on story, but Jaime's one of those guys who, if I was offered some sort of Satanic bargain - murder someone or eat a heart or something - in exchange for his artistic talent... I'd have to seriously consider it for at least a second.
He vexes me with how freaking good he is.
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Post by Pól Rua on Dec 22, 2015 2:24:06 GMT -5
And we're back to the idiosyncratic choices. This creator has made at least one previous appearance in this year's event, and she's responsible for one of my favourite comics. There are a lot of reasons why we like a series. Some series are like a roller coaster - full of thrills and excitement, and others are like a maze - full of mystery where you can't wait to see what surprises await around the next corner... but for me, there's one series which feels like coming home to a nice comfy chair and warm, friendly company, and I get that feeling every time I go back and re-read it. That series is 'Castle Waiting', by my #5 choice. #5. LYNDA MEDLEY The key word when I think of Lynda Medley's work is 'immersive'. You don't feel like you're reading 'Castle Waiting', you feel like you're experiencing it. Her world feels so real that you feel that you can reach out and touch it, She builds environments which feel like you could step inside the comic and wander around in them, and the characters feel almost like people that you could conceivably meet... and that you'd WANT to meet. She has an incredible gift for dialogue, character, body language, pacing. There is seriously, so much going on in this comic that you just don't see because she's not calling attention to it. If you're not paying attention, you don't even notice it... but when you do, it's astounding the virtuosity with which she engineers these stories and characters. It's just so damn charming, and it means that a reader can be just as riveted and invested in a story about a young man trying to figure out how to keep a goat from straying from its pen, as they would with yet another headlong action story about saving the world from destruction.    Unfortunately, creator owned, self-published comics is a harsh mistress and the series is currently on hiatus, but I hold out hope that one day, the world will become a better, more just place, and I'll be able to return to Castle Waiting and see these beloved and much missed characters again. |
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Post by berkley on Dec 22, 2015 3:37:00 GMT -5
5. Daniel ClowesAt one time I would have ranked Clowes even higher but I've lost touch with his recent work. Still Eightball was probably my favourite comic in the early 90s - well, my favourite comic that wasn't called Love and Rockets, at least - and I absolutely loved Lloyd Llewellyn in the 80s - perhaps the first independent comic I really fell in love with. And I thought Ice Haven was a return to form after the disappointing David Boring, but for some reason haven't gotten round to looking at anything he's done since then. Perhaps unfairly, there may be some half-conscious feeling that he's run into a bit of a dead end but I should really give some of his recent stuff a chance before passing judgement. Anyway, here's the cover of Lloyd Lewellyn #4 to cheer us all up: 
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Post by Icctrombone on Dec 22, 2015 6:14:01 GMT -5
It did.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 22, 2015 6:27:02 GMT -5
Daniel Clowes - I totally forgot about Lloyd Lewellyn and I do have a limited run of this series and I hope to add more of Daniel Cloves in 2016. Berk, thanks for jarring my memory and I had to check my database to see if I read any of LL.
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).
