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Adi Granov
05-13-2005, 03:26 AM
In the spirit of puting this board Brian gave me to good use I thought to start a weekly highlights kinda thing. Not just of brand new comics but just stuff that I happen to read that week, new or old, that leaves an impression on me. I read a bunch of stuff but I'll try to focus only on particular highlights of the week.

I am not sure if I will start a new thread every time or keep updating this one. I guess I'll have to see how it goes.

So the notable things of this week:

Desolation Jones #1 My man Ellis at it again with J H Williams III on art. Great start. Fucked up, intriguing, weird as hell, and beautiful. The art is great, gritty yet precise. Kind of a marriage of European (particularly Italian) style with Bill Sienkievicz kind of edge. Very very competent and solid. The colors compliment it perfectly, particularly this nuclear yellow that really adds to the toxic feel of the city. I don't want to spoil anything for anyone but all you need to know is that it's about a real hard, ugly, ex-british secret agent doing odd shady jobs in the LA underground involving Nazi porn. Oh yeah, it's a mature kinda thing, not for kids I must say. Seriously, no disappointments here, a solid first issue all the way through.

Fourth Power 1 and 2 by Juan Gimenez. This being a collection of the previously released book 1 and, never before published in english, book 2 of the original creation by the art half of the Metabarons team. Gimenez is hands down the best sci-fi comic artist ever, or at least sharing the spot with Moebius and Bilal. This guy is so good some of his pages literally take my breath away. And this happens to be one of his most competent books, at least art wise, even more so than the Metabarons. The amount of detail, thought, and sheer work put into his technical designs, space battles, cityscapes, and everything else down to gravity boots, is just staggering. This book makes every other comic out there look like poop. It's a fully painted book but in the old school way of watercolor over inked linework. Super dynamic. Unfortunatelly it seems that all of the work has gone into the art because the story is so convoluted and weird that it seems like it was written on the spot as the pages were being painted, like there was absolutelly no plan as to where it was headed. Basically the book is about an ultimate psychic weapon being created by joining the minds of four women and a whole load of really weird stuff that happens around that. But still, the art alone is such a tour-de-force I kept flipping through the book over and over long after I had read it. Amazing.

chrismarker
05-13-2005, 06:20 AM
Thanks for the tips. What's so interesting to me is how you describe the function of art here: I've studied film a lot more than comics (though these days the distinction is so blurred, to say nothing of the fact that story-boards are really just forms of comics) but your observations on what art can do in a comic really relates to what mise-en-scene should bring to film. There's the famous take on the films of Sirk, where people have argued that the art/composition of his shots/scenes undercuts the spoken dialogue of his characters, or contradicts the narrative itself. That's why I think Todd Haynes is a genius: his breakthrough film -- "Superstar --the Karen Carpenter Story" -- is shot entirely with Barbie Dolls and he's able to use their cold inanimate form to mirror/contradict a lot of what's going on historically during her career (e.g, Nixon inviting the Carpenters to the Whitehouse/Vietnam/the parasites of the music industry/anorexia and celebrity itself). Is there a book out there that does this with art? I mean, where the art doesn't just reflect or comment on the writing, but, say contradicts a characters' point of view, if not the narrative itself? I've seen some pretty interesting stuff, though rare, that some artists have done with panels, introducing a kind of wild geometry that's really effective. But I have to say -- if you can handle more compliments (ha!)-- that you've nailed the milieu Tony, Maya, et al (that includes us) inhabit. The precision and realism (hyper-realism?) of your work creates a pretty austere and isolated mood: it's hardened and not hopeful, where even love has become a privilege no one really has anymore?

JABSEN
05-13-2005, 07:26 AM
Sweet.I get Desolation Jones on Monday

madmartigan
05-13-2005, 08:41 AM
The highlights for me were both Punisher titles that came out this week. Just fucking brutal stuff. As for the art, would love to see Dillon back on, nobody does headshots like him. But both Larosa and Fernandez, do good stuff.

Criden
05-13-2005, 07:20 PM
The highlights for me were both Punisher titles that came out this week. Just fucking brutal stuff. As for the art, would love to see Dillon back on, nobody does headshots like him. But both Larosa and Fernandez, do good stuff.

I concur, martigan. While Desolation Jones was pretty fucking great, I was blown away by the one-two punch of Punisher #21 and Punisher: The Cell. I think The Cell will go down--along with The End--as the two defining Punisher stories. I passed The Cell along to my Dad to check out, and I think it's going to wow him.

Adi Granov
05-13-2005, 09:44 PM
Who did Punisher: the Cell? I must say I haven't heard about that one before.

Criden
05-13-2005, 10:01 PM
Adi, it was done by the team that handled the first Punisher MAX arc--Ennis and LaRosa.