jokingofcourse

May 28, 2020 6:09 pm Calgary James- you should definitely listen to @petergardner and try “Summer Blonde” or “Shortcomings” by Adrian Tomine, (These are collected editions from his mid/late 90s periodical comic Optic Nerve) both have excellent cartooning and deserve their praise. The tone may be a bit more detached or cynical than something like “Blankets”, but you may find them more thought provoking for that reason. Please ignore Josh until he has a more valid critique than “ I kinda don’t like it” Check your library apps, they probably have them to check out as the books are a critical favorite. It will only cost you an hour or so of your life. What’s not to lose? ...unless you’re currently finding the cure for COVID-19, than please don’t read these and get back to work.

May 21, 2020 6:33 pm Just an FYI to those who don't already own New Frontier but do own a library card... check the Hoopla app which has the Deluxe Edition to read for free. Not every library participates.

May 19, 2020 1:28 am tis a sad time indeed, when the simple notion of equality amongst people is considered "politics". nearly a decade later, re-read New Frontier to play along, and was continuously surprised by the serious moral and societal topics included that slipped my memory. Hal killing the Korean soldier...rough. Straight out of a Kurtzman EC "Corpse on the Imjin" war comic.

April 16, 2020 1:28 pm it feels so indulgently unimportant to type a comment today, on a weeks old review of a decades old comic book during these once in a century times... ...dang it would have been much funnier to not finish this post, but alas, I am weak. So in a The More You Know tidbit, Didio was born in ‘59. During his prime tween-teen reading years, Dick Grayson would’ve been in Hudson University, Ra’s al Ghul would’ve been the villain du jour and the decades long attempt to distance the comic from the tv show would have been underway. Didio would’ve been 23 when Wolfman/Perez the New Teen Titans came out. Other than that I cannot speak to what goes on in a man’s heart.

January 16, 2020 9:24 am Meant “Talksplode” of course. These colds got everyone thinking slow.

January 16, 2020 12:04 am Not one to advocate multiple blunt force avian-cide, however Josh could rattle off an hours worth of answers to the slush email file and call it a year’s end “Booksplode”...problems solved. R.I.P. birds. Mend well.

December 23, 2019 12:33 pm Porg bashing?! Really? You guys need to unclench your fist of hatred you have for Last Jedi to single out Porgs from the endless pointless product placement characters from the Disney/Star Wars film canon to pick on those lil’ guys. Really just redirect threat anger to double down on the new force powers created...physical objects moving through space? Or just back to more rainbow lightsabers....So much hate to go around My favorite part of the film was going to the 9am Fri show and having no one sit on either side of us...otherwise it was an enjoyable enough crammed mess. Once you survived the prequels, the bar for how bad a Star Wars film needs to be in order to be upsetting is quite high. The C3PO memory resurrection was unnecessary. He still had his personality for future capitalist exploitation and it undid any aspect of sacrifice. But maybe now that I’m older I identifying with him more, it’s my lot in life to suffer... And if you guys were old enough to have seen Original Trilogy in the theaters, Empire would be number one on your list. That movie blew my almost seven year old mind...it had to be equivalent to Gwen Stacy’s death in Amazing to readers at that time. Unprecedented...well maybe Watership Down...shudder. Also I would love to see someone’s proposed outline to the latest trilogy that they think was set up by Force Awakens had there been no Rian Johnson...Not sure how interesting these mythical films were going to be with such a rehashed set up. Cripes, I must really want to avoid Xmas gift prep to be writing this long. Thanks for another year of shows, good health and happiness to most of you...ok fine, all of you...it’s the holidays after all.

November 15, 2019 11:41 am Thanks to having to exist in the world as an actual human being, I'm falling down on my iFanperson-ness duties, so this posting is too late to matter, but...fun fact: electrical outlets were installed upside down to designate that they were connected to a light switch. Did everyone already know that?...well everyone does now...and by everyone I mean the future people who instead of downloading episode 708 of a weekly comic book podcast on a phone app use the internet to call up the website and then scroll down to look over old comments.

July 12, 2019 1:45 am ...if I weren't born broken hearted, a tear would form in my eye, over how well the internet has worked out here. I was hoping for exactly this reply. Thanks much for the suggestions. (And as a sign of how grateful I am I won't even quibble about the one's I'm familiar with) Also to avoid your necessity for any self promotion I'll commend the work at PanelxPanel and also tell ever ifanboyer to immediately stop reading my ramblings and you-tube the PanelxPanel adjacent videos at Strip Panel Naked & just watch all of them on endless repeat. If you find everything I've written here annoying, you'll love Strip Panel Naked. Approachable, thoughtful analysis about why the comics you actually read are so great. and its Thursday night on last weeks show comments, so that's more like a shout into the abyss than a plug. But I try.

July 9, 2019 2:26 pm As embarrassing as it is to keep posting large comments of text, two final points: You guys had a liberal arts education, remember back to film appreciation or art history survey course. Look back at the texts used in those classes (Film Art, an introduction or Gardner’s Art History or whatever is being used nowadays) and compare those to “Understanding Comics” and tell me they’re the same. Of course they aren’t. No comparison. and Mcloud wasn’t even trying to be like them. And that’s my point. By fans, for fans. Then think about why film makers like Orson Welles or Hitchcock and /or artists like Picasso or Cezanne (to name old agreed upon folks) are considered important. You instantly think about their innovations compared to their contemporaries and then place them in a line with past artists. We don’t have ten different names to explain the fracturing of the picture plane in cubism or the camera angles and cutting in film. And people just coming to these art forms have scholarly texts to refer. OK. Dones for reals now. No one has solved comics yet and it sure as heck ain’t going to be me.