Anyway, back to books.
- 32 Stories: the Complete Optic Nerve Mini-Comics by Adrian Tomine. Tomine seems to be one of the indie comics scene's darlings, but his stuff doesn't really grab me. I can tell it's good, but I just don't like it well enough to buy. (Checked out of the library.)
- Pet Shop of Horrors, vol. 1 Matsuri Akino. The premise sounds pretty cheesy: people buy strange & unusual pets from an odd pet shop in Chinatown & end up with more than they bargained for. But the execution is pretty good. (Library.)
- Alice by Lewis Carroll & Lela Dowling. This adaptation of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland first appeared in The Dreamery, an anthology comic where I first encountered Donna Barr's work.
- Wolverine: Blood Hungry by Peter David & Sam Keith. Strange as this story is, it's pretty straight-forward when compared to Keith's The Maxx.
- Terra Obscura, vol. 2 by Alan Moore, Peter Hogan, & Yanick Paquette. Another volume of the series spun-off of Moore's Tom Strong. I enjoyed this well enough, but I suspect Moore's involvement was minimal; the writing just doesn't have the same feel that Moore's stuff does.
- In the Floyd Archives: A Psycho-Bestiary by Sarah Boxer. I suspect I would have enjoyed this book about animals visiting a psychiatrist more if I knew more about Freud. (Library.)
- Naruto, vol. 5: The Challengers by Masashi Kishimoto. The majority of this volume is about the characters taking a written examination, but it's still filled with tension & excitement. I was uncertain about this at first (and still have some difficulty interpreting the art during action sequences), but it has really grown on me. It may overtake One Piece as my favorite manga from Shonen Jump.
- Ultimate X-Men, vol. 4 by Brian Michael Bendis & David Finch. I've read most of Millar's run on Ultimate X-Men, and it didn't grab me, but I liked this quite a bit. And I'm looking forward to volume 5, since that'll be the first part of Brian K. Vaughan's run on the book (I haven't read any of the individual issues, but I like his work elsewhere).
- Bughouse, vol. 3: Scalawag by Steve Lafler. Lafler's stories about anthropomorphic bug jazz musicians are odd but quite human. (Library.)
- Superman, The Man of Steel, vol. 3 by John Byrne, Marv Wolfman, & Jerry Ordway. It's nice to have books collecting the early issues of Superman comics after Byrne's reboot, but I'm not quite willing to pay $20 each for them, so I keep an eye out for used copies.
- Poodle: The Other White Meat by Jim Toomey. This is another "Sherman's Lagoon" collection. One thing I like about this daily strip about a shark is that the artist is unafraid to have the main character eat humans (or poodles). (Teena's book.)
- Concrete, vol. 1: Depths by Paul Chadwick. I am very happy that Dark Horse is reprinting the full run of Concrete stories. There were a few short stories here & there that got missed in previous collections. It'll be nice to have them all in a series. And at a consistant size, too; some previous collections were regular comics size while others were magazine sized. Comic publishers should know that comics fans like consistancy & order; there's a reason we have the reputation we do.
- The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck by Don Rosa. Wow, it only took 10 years to collect this great series that depicts how Scrooge grew from a humble shoe-shine duck to a bitter old miser. Now if only there were affordable reprints of Carl Barks' stories. Barks was the grandmaster of duck artists. He created Uncle Scrooge, Gyro Gearloose, and the Junior Woodchucks. He was responsible for an amazing number of fantastic stories, but the comprehensive collection of his stories was way too expensive for the average collector (and is now out of print anyway).
- Naruto, vol. 6: The Forest of Death by Masashi Kishimoto. More testing, but this test is a practical application of the students' ninja skills. Much more action than in the previous volume.
- Megatokyo, vol. 2 by Fred Gallagher. This is growing on me. Gallagher seems to be finding his footing and getting a handle on what he wants to do with the strip. It still feels pretty self-indulgent, but I'm beginning to like the characters. (Library.)
- Daredevil, vol. 4 by Brian Michael Bendis & Alex Maleev. I don't know that I'd enjoy these stories as much if I were reading them one chapter at a time in the monthly comic, but gethered together like this, they make for a great read. (And a guest-starring Spider-Man gets some fantastic lines.)
- Batman: No Man's Land, vol 5 by various. The wrap-up volume of a Batman cross-over event. Do they even make Batman comics that don't cross-over to half a dozen or more comics anymore? (Library.)
- Van Helsing's Night Off by Nicolas Mahler. Wordless comics about monsters & monster hunters. (Library.)
- Spike: Old Times by Peter David & Fernando Goni. David wraps up a loose plot thread from the Angel TV show and does a good job of capturing Spike's voice.
- Fullmetal Alchemist, vol. 3 by Hiromu Arakawa. Oddly enough, the stories in this volume are the same ones Teena & I have recently been watching in the anime version. What makes it especially odd is that we're a week or two behind in watching the anime episodes. Weird little coincidence.
- FLCL, vol. 1 by Gainax & Hajime Ueda. Adult Swim recently finished showing all 6 episodes of the strangest anime series I've ever seen (and that's saying something). I thought the manga version might provide some enlightenment as to what the hell was going on (and I've seen the anime version two or three times). Unfortunately, the manga version is even stranger. (Library.)
- FLCL, vol. 2 by Gainax & Hajime Ueda. And as the comic continues, it diverges more & more from the animated version. As you may have gathered, I like strange stories, but this may be a little too much even for me.
And with that, I am caught up on books. Let's see if I can stay on top of things.
1 comment:
"And that reminds me, one of these days I need to write about going to see an advance screening of Serenity."
yes, yes! -before- sept30, please! ;)
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