Comic Books, Graphic Novels, Sequential Art, & you

[smbhax]

I love these photos of E. C. Segar:

(Segar’s son was apparently still interested in his dad’s work. ; )

Segar died in 1938, at age 43, of leukemia and liver disease. He’d been born in the small town of Chester, Illinois, and moved to Chicago to make it in comics.

“The Thimble Theatre strip made its debut on December 19, 1919, featuring the characters Olive Oyl, Castor Oyl and Harold Hamgravy, whose name was quickly shortened in the strip to simply ‘Ham Gravy.’” Popeye showed up in the strip in 1929. I liked the one below, thinking “Midway” referred to the old Chicago Midway, where my art studio was in college. They didn’t have giant nude woman statues or fancy outdoor dining cafes there then. : P

But they probably didn’t either in '33 or '34 when this strip was probably drawn, because the fair it refers to was that “Century of Progress International Exposition,” not the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, which the Midway Park hosted; the '33 Fair was on Chicago’s lakefront, with an exhibit named “The Midway” “filled with nightclubs such as the Old Morocco, where future stars Judy Garland, The Cook Family Singers, and The Andrews Sisters performed.”

(And I love Olive’s “YES” in that last panel. ^ _^)

'34 was also the year the King Features syndicate, having noticed kids were reading the comic, told Segar to tone down the swearing and brawling.

Popeye’s dad’s name was Poopdeck Pappy:

Thimble Theatre - final strip - Oct 2 1938

(Olive’s mother is Nana Oyl, ‘after “banana oil,” a mild slang phrase of the time used in the same way as “horsefeathers,” i.e. “nonsense”.’ Her brother is Castor Oyl. And since we’re here, Olive’s father is Cole Oyl.)

Names! An early, short-lived 1917 strip was Barry the Boob:

sources

E. C. Segar - Wikipedia
Elzie Segar inducted into The Randolph Society – The Randolph Society
E. C. Segar - Lambiek Comiclopedia
Chicago World's Fair - Wikipedia
https://comicskingdom.com/trending/blog/2013/11/13/ask-the-archivist-the-last-of-e-c-segar
This Week in Illinois History: Popeye creator E. C. Segar born (December 8, 1894) | Northern Public Radio: WNIJ and WNIU
Oyl Family | Popeye the Sailor Wiki | Fandom

[VastleCania]

I read almost all of Preacher, something like 35/50, in two days. I’m feeling poisoned. I actually really like it but it’s really awful too?

i really really really like the edgelord conceit of “priest who’s out to kill god because he was possessed by the child of an angel and a demon.” It’s so god damned stupid, but it’s also portraying god as a pathetic coward?? which the 12 year old in me really likes. Fuck that guy.

I like that his girlfriend has like, agency and shit? And that she gets killed in such a way it seems like a fridging, but literally resurrected by god just a few pages later. And it’s a great moment for her character to challenge god to his face and figure out that he arranged this whole thing just to make a point.

(I don’t like that she’s used as a constant foil for the main character’s worst traits and arguments in a way that validates shitty beliefs like “therapy is for idiots” and “men are just like, one way, okay?” It’s clear that she exists primarily as a way to bounce off what the author thinks is actually correct but in a way that gives him an out for any criticism.)

I like that the vampire guy is an idiot - he’s the kind of idiot I would befriend as well. It seems like he’s maybe the most fleshed out character in terms of being complicated - he’s brave, weak, loyal, traitorous, etc. He’s fun.

The action is gory and stupid and people get shot in the face constantly, it rules. It’s an easy read, I guess. And there’s a lot of real satisfaction in watching good guys essentially beat the shit out of shitty people with little effort.

On the other hand…it’s one of the most transcendently homophobic things I’ve seen in a while.

notable homophobia

So far the named gay men (gay women don’t exist) have all been (in order of appearance) a closeted homophobic racist cop, a serial killer, a rapist, another rapist, a pedophile rapist, and a pope-like figure in charge of a genocidal secret government church cabal thing. I hate it. I hate it so much.

There are occasionally motions to “oh it doesn’t matter as long as they’re not hurting anyone” and then every gay man is hurting someone, usually horribly. Pathetic and unfunny.

One lesbian has shown up actually, and she’s used as a comparison to a guy who we would now call a Men’s Rights Activist to show that maybe both sides are full of shit (she’s like a vegetarian lesbian who says we’re all responsible for a nuclear bomb that lands in a reservation, don’t get me started on this either)

There’s a bit where the main character talks about meeting Bill Hicks once and it includes large parts of Hicks’ standup and many illustrations of Hicks and it’s hilariously jerkoffy. Just waiting for him to start talking Ayn Rand or something.

If it’s not clear, I despise Bill Hicks.

What else is bad…well, most everything I guess. But I’ll be damned if I’m not invested in the outcome of this dumbass comic. I’m gonna power through the rest tomorrow and then I can spend the rest of the week shaking off the poison somehow.

[Tulpa]

you should treat yourself to good comics

[VastleCania]

i only like trash

[Tulpa]

you should read good trash

[HOBO]

Preacher is very readable in a way corporate Western comics rarely are. Clearly told and consistently dumb and gross, never attempts anything fancy, you get the same thing from beginning to end with no real digressions, fuck, it actually has an ending and it gets there relatively quickly.

Now that I think about it it may best long running Vertigo book

That’s not in any way meant as a compliment

Swamp Thing wasn’t Vertigo.

The fact that I can’t point to hundreds of Western comic series that meet that baseline of craftsmanship is a real indictment of the “industry”, there really should be way more trash – be it good or bad – for adults but there isn’t, there’s plenty of manga that hits that mark but acquiring it takes more effort than such work usually deserves.

You could come over my place I guess, I have all the good stuff, wanna read Wounded Man with me

[Tulpa]

@HOBO

Now that I think about it it may best long running Vertigo book

Lucifer was better

[smbhax]

Amazon’s Comixology has added in a “Comics Beta” (enable/disable-able from the three-dot menu in the upper right corner of the reader) that kind of restores the functionality of the old reader.

That’s good.

On the other hand, their Library view still hasn’t got back displaying the completion percentage of each comic, and I can’t remember, for the most part, which one’s I’ve already read, and which ones I hadn’t read yet, or where I might have been in them. And the reading position in all of them is set back to page “zero.”

How do you run a cloud reader business and not display or save your readers’ progress?

Anyway they have a feedback link in the menu that is just a mailto shortcut to kindle-wr-feedback@amazon.co.jp , so I sent them an email.

Maybe in another few years I’ll be able to get back and finish reading the comics I bought there. Like a sap.

[username]

I signed up for a free month of comixology and it functioned so poorly on my kindle that I just canceled said month and torrented the comic I was gonna check out. How does it not function as well as random comic pdf readers already out there?

[smbhax]

They had a perfectly good comic reader. Then they removed it and replaced it with a non-comics reader. They never said why; I guess they must’ve had a good reason or something–like they were having to pay license fees to someone because of it, or they no longer had coders familiar with it, or oh lots of crummy technical/money reasons I suppose–because wow, way to just dump your comics biz. I’m actually a little surprised they’ve now shown up with a–aside from not displaying or being able to filter by your reading progress–seemingly reasonably competent “beta” reader, I thought maybe they’d just counted the beans and decided comics weren’t worth the effort anymore. (I wouldn’t be too surprised if they really aren’t a money-maker, but that Amazon saw/sees this as a toe into the million times more lucrative movie/licensing side of the biz.)

Also interesting the feedback goes to Amazon JP.

Hm okay they announced this “beta” on July 6th

Comixology

They say they’re working on getting Guided View (panel-by-panel reading, not my thing ever) back. : P

No mention of showing / sorting by reading progress, jeez.

They have not, of course, been transparent about any of this, because they’re a big company and that means staying in “cover your own ass” mode until absolutely forced out of it somehow.

Comixology’s twitter keeps tweeting the usual marketing gibberish about the latest releases and the only replies they get are “fix the app.” ‘p’

Oh also I should have specified, this Beta thingy is the web reader, dunno about mobile reader status.

[HOBO]

I’ve never read it, does anyone talk about anal in it

[smbhax]

@smbhax

Anyway they have a feedback link in the menu that is just a mailto shortcut to kindle-wr-feedback@amazon.co.jp , so I sent them an email.

Got an auto-reply back saying I have to switch my account registration to Amazon JP. = P Sooo I sent feedback to their Twitter account saying their Beta’s feedback mechanism is broken. ‘p’ The good show continues.

[km]

@smbhax

I guess they must’ve had a good reason or something

I would bet you money the real answer is “nobody gets promoted by maintaining a working thing”

[Mikey]

[aislesgrises]

i read the entirety of chobits in a day.

whatever anyone has told you about chobits, it’s probably all true.
like, i just laughed so much at stuff that’s pretty fucked up and/or dumb. also cried a couple times cause i’m a huge baby and apparently clamp knows how to easily get to me. one time it was just the drawings. like, there’s this one frame with an embrace that absolutely destroys me and i feel silly about that but it’s how it is.
zero regrets, had a good time

[aislesgrises]

like, every once in a while i had to stand up and start pacing around the living room repeating “what the fuck” to myself while processing what i’ve just read

[MintyJuffowup]

Have you ever read Yotsuba? It’s got some really great joke set-ups and frames. I meant to ask this earlier when you brought up Azumanga Daioh. Never is too late, so I’m asking now!

[HOBO]

It’s been over a decade and I’m still fucking pissed ADV went out of business and I never got all of Cromartie and the publisher who picked up Yotsuba spoiled it with one of those “faithful” translations that are always the death of comedy

THE CARDBOARD BOX ROBOT SHOULD BE NAMED CARDBO

Great comic before that though

[aislesgrises]

i haven’t yet!
i actually had a few volumes in swedish that i ended up never reading. had gotten so used to reading manga in english that there was just something uncomfortable about imagining the cadence of swedish talking characters there

on the other hand scrooge mcduck comics would be wrong in any language but swedish

edit: and moomin has gotta be in finnish

[MintyJuffowup]

The first one has arrived! Flipping through, I’m noticing lots of unique layouts and everyone has a springlike, elastic energy. It even comes with a miniature preview! I can’t wait for the Judo Manga Revolution coming right around the corner.