They’re still out there. Just search for “EC Archives 90s TPB newsprint”. I saw some on eBay just now going for $10-20.
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Ahhh maybe I just got to untangle the publication history of this a bit more.
It’s tiring! I’ve been trying to do this with Concrete lately as well.
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I thought it was great. Not sure why some people decided this season was bad all of a sudden. I’m excited for season 5.
EC has a lot of influence on comics going forward for obvious reasons.
It’s really cool how you’re digging in and finding those connections though.
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Totally adding the newsprints EC collections to my list of stuff to hunt for.
Did anyone pick up that EC relaunch book this week? Seemed kind of a weird project since the talent from the old days was the star attraction but I did hear good things
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I never! I too have always stanned (same brain)
complwtely inconsistent writing. it had amazing build up in the first half and spun it’s wheels in the second. also it’s getting way too lib brained
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I really and truly disagree. Also, lib brained?
Really now?
So these are normal comics in comic book shops? I have not bought an individual issue of a comic since maybe 1995 but I think I need to take a chance on this one and support it just in case it’s good.
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Yeah, I figure as an anthology with people doing their own thing, it’s probably going to have at least something good, and it’s cheaper than an issue of Heavy Metal.
Not sure if they’re keeping the old mechanical lettering.
Hoping to hit my favorite store to investigate this week.
yeah. like it’s a hundred percent a ‘parody’ of real life and they had to HAMMER the lib stuff home to get right wingers to stop liking the show and it took them cringe lines like ‘make the white man suffer by donating to BLACK LIVES MATTER’ and they won’t say concentration camps they keep saying internment camps and there’s just so much floppy liberal DID YOU CATCH TAHT WE’RE ON YOUR SIDE shit that just grated and grated and I was done with it
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except hughie gets sexually assaulted twice and they don’t give a fuck and starlight victim blames him so uh. not really consistent on that one! butchers brain worm story gets resolved but he’s still hallucinating when he’s alone because they don’t have anything else to write about
also all the starr shit with the woman who played mauve leaving the industry put me off as well
the gore stays good and there’s funny moments but it really is just spinning it’s wheels at this point but I quit so I’m free. maybe watching it on mute is an option I dunno man, the story fell the fuck apart for me
i do REALLY want an adaptation of the filth into a miniseries and have the max hardcore character be even more blatant. or to modernize it and make it that asshole behind the camera for facial abuse
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OR OH MY GOD THAT GUY THAT STRAIGHT WOMEN LOVED FOR A FEW YEARS CUZ HE WAS A SOFT BOY WHO TURNED OUT TO BE ABUSIVE AND HORRIBLE. what’s his name JAMES DEEN but that’s kinda old at this point too. I want a super villians show where they’re all based on problematic porn actors. I want someone to make fun of nachos tiny balls like they would homelanders mommy’s milkers habit
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If you think that’s a pivot for the show, then I’m wondering why you didn’t think that prior.
You’re essentially arguing seasons 1-3 were subtle with its politics which is… wild to me. But if it crossed a line for you, it did. To each their own.
no it’s not subtle they just ramped it up so hard (like I said, they did it to repel right wingers who were into the show) that I can’t take it anymore
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I read that first issue of Epitaphs from the Abyss last night. Unfortunately, it’s not so great. The stories have pretty banal twist endings. Some of them are trying to be topical, but they don’t do it in a way that’s particularly clever. I like that each story has a different art style, and that if anything would be what keeps my interest. I still see potential and may pick up the second issue as well.
That said, I think the other title, Cruel Universe, will be more to my taste, and I’m looking forward to its publication next month. Art depicting alien landscapes is going to be inherently more compelling to me than art that’s mostly people standing around talking (though of course people standing around talking in a comic is okay if the writing is good).
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Yeah I feel like those twists are more forgivable in the old comics. So much of that seems like it’d feel old hat now but I guess that’s the project. Glad to hear the art is good though. That’s where I thought they’d blow it
Pro-tip: if you want to find those 90s color newspaper comic-sized reissues of EC comics that I think @Mr_Mechanical has been referring to the keywords to search for are “[series] EC Comics Gemstone Annual”
They are fairly affordable and don’t seem highly coveted by collectors, compared to the big format Rus Cochran books.
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In the Al Williamson book I mentioned above there’s an early story about a rocket mission to space. It’s 8 pages long but because it was written in the 40s/50s when the science of rocketry was still so new and unproven they spend a full 4 pages on two characters having the most contrived conversation with each other that serves to basically explain to the reader how the science of rocketry theoretically works so that the premise of the story isn’t dismissed outright as unbelievable fantasy by the presumably hard nosed audience of whatever science themed magazine in which the story appeared.
That was probably the only story that was like that in the book but I found it very amusing that they went to such efforts to convince the reader that sending a fueled rocket into space was not only possible but achievable with current technology. Apparently at the time there was a lot skepticism among scientists and the scientifically interested general public about whether or not that was even feasible and the magazine this story appeared in was just one of the many fronts that particular battle was being waged.
Seeing that story made me wish people were doing that work today with other subjects that are more contemporary, like AI or something. Where is the comic book story where they spend half the page count just explaining exactly what AI is in the current context of today and how it works and how it’s going to be able to do stuff that people are saying it’s going to do etc. and then that’s the basis for a simple story about people using AI to do something interesting and novel and game changing? Maybe the times really are different these days.
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I think part of the issue with AI is the baggage that already exists in science fiction and having a general purpose name that includes newer technologies.
Kinda reminds me of ‘The Machine Stops’ as being so prescient about the atomisation that comes with the internet that the fantasy it would’ve seemed to be in 1909 (i think) may not even have needed to be explained technologically.
I think there is a big problem with the general death of public information campaigns even though they are sometimes propagandistic af. Having more of it in fiction wouldn’t hurt but can’t think of many recent examples where the fiction and the new tech are contemporaneous
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