Heavy Metal Magazine

[feather]

Re: Heavy Metal Magazine

Yeah that has received good reviews and is basically a coming of age story. Some might find it too sweet though. I'd recommend checking out Dave McKean's Cages, and his works with Neil Gaiman on Violent Cases (a kid's encounter with some gangster) and Signal To Noise (a director who finds out he has cancer, and will never be able to shoot the last film he's working on, but he continues 'shooting' it in his head).

[res0nat0r]

Re: Heavy Metal Magazine

Cages does look actually very cool, and it is huge, ~500 pages! Too bad it is out of print, the lowest I see it on amazon for is $100 Are you reading thru this? Know where to get it cheaper?

Also have you read Preacher or Bone? I know Bone will be a huge undertaking if I read it, the single collected volume of the whole series is like 1300 pages, but I hear the series was very good.

Also I was thinking of checking out the first installment of Preacher which looks interesting:

http://www.grovel.org.uk/preacher-1-gone-to-texas/

Also the link above is from a graphic novel review site google found for me. Doesnt have a huge ton of stuff, but worth looking thru.

http://www.grovel.org.uk

[feather]

Re: Heavy Metal Magazine

Yup I've read bits of Cages but never completed it 'cos it's so huge.

Ellis' Preacher is recommended. Violence, action, story, and interesting characters .. like the Saint of Killers, Jesse the preacher who has the Word, and Arseface. Definitely a colorful cast of characters.

[res0nat0r]

Re: Heavy Metal Magazine

just purchased via amazon:

black hole
preacher vol 1: gone to texas
the arrival
blankets
violent cases


woop woop woop

[feather]

Re: Heavy Metal Magazine

Good job, hope you enjoy them.

[res0nat0r]

Re: Heavy Metal Magazine

yes, lots of reading ahead. i need to quit buying books and actually catch up and read all of the stuff i already own.

[threehills]

Re: Heavy Metal Magazine

Question: So these graphic novels seem kinda interesting, but I have never read one. Don't you just kinda blow through them though in one sitting? Are they something you typically read more than once?

[res0nat0r]

Re: Heavy Metal Magazine

I have Watchmen which I think has a stamp on the front cover that says something like "voted one of the top 100 novels of all time by the new york times" so it is just like a book.

i dont have all of the Cerebus trilogy but it is many phonebooks in size, the first installment is ~500 pages, and the Blankets book I mentioned above is about 600 pages so alot of these are like real novels. Large and meant for more than one sitting.

[res0nat0r]

Re: Heavy Metal Magazine

found this review site too. lots of reviews but no longer updated:

http://artbomb.net

[feather]

Re: Heavy Metal Magazine

Question: So these graphic novels seem kinda interesting, but I have never read one. Don't you just kinda blow through them though in one sitting? Are they something you typically read more than once?

I was just reading an interview with Moore who wrote Watchmen who mentioned the book was meant for repeated readings, 4-5 times. Not just the thickness of the book, but the density of information in it, and the nuances in each panel. Of course you can read it at one go, but like any literary text, you begin to appreciate it on different levels on repeated readings.

Gaiman's Sandman: Midsummer Night's Dream was voted best short story, the first for a comic. Subsequently they banned comics from entering.

[res0nat0r]

Re: Heavy Metal Magazine

I've always heard huge praises about Sandman since the 90's when it was still being written but never ventured to try and tackle it. feather have you read much of this? i am sure sometime i will get to it, but i dont want to spend the 100$ for each absolute sandman volume which is out, but i know one day down the line i will want to check this storyline out that ive heard is so great. any experience with it?

[feather]

Re: Heavy Metal Magazine

Big big fan of Sandman here. It's what got me into Gaiman's writings. Whole series ran 75 issues (which is short for a comic) and it was to Gaiman's credit that he wrote it with an ending in mind, and DC actually went along with it instead of milking the series. I collected the singles and trades, thinking about the absolute editions now. I pretty much stopped collecting comics regularly when this ended, and only pick up graphic novels.

The Sandman was a Silver Age superhero that Gaiman reinvented into an archetype that's bigger than gods. Sandman = Dream which is part of the family of Endless, all their titles beginning with D, such as Destiny, Death (whom Gaiman modelled after Tori Amos and became the coolest Death character ever), Desire, Delerium, Destruction, Despair. They're the archetypes of human existence and emotions.

The artwork (especially the early issues) probably look a bit dated now. But the Sandman is a story about stories, a lot of mini-stories with overarching repercussions, characters that might be protagonists in one arch and then make subsequent cameos throughout the series. So in the early issues, you'll find Gaiman exploring the horror and superhero genre before exploring more hmmmm interesting topics like Lucifer quitting hell and ceding the metaphysical real estate to the Sandman, the Sandman's hand in Shakespeare's rise, Sandman and a story about Ramadan, Sandman and Julis Ceasar.

The mini-stories are all tied up in the main story of Sandman and how he unwittingly changed (which he was adamantly against since the Endless are unchanging) in the course of time and interacting with people. And how he finally deals with the change.

If you get into the Sandman, I'd recommend Mike Carey's Lucifer which spins off from when Lucifer abdicated, and the stuff he was up to after.

Whew that was a lot of geekery.

[feather]

Re: Heavy Metal Magazine

Crazy ... dropped by the store to get The Arrival, they have a back order on it which never arrived, and it's gonna cost me USD34. I'm better off ordering from Amazon.

[res0nat0r]

Re: Heavy Metal Magazine

yeah its a steal on amazon, only 13.59$