Saturday, October 22, 2011

Getting My Read On

I went into something of a reading frenzy on Thursday night. I pulled out a bunch of comics I hadn't yet read, and some books that I'm in the middle of, and stayed up until the wee hours of the night getting my read on. Considering I had to be up at six the next morning, it probably wasn't a wise choice, but I don't have a time machine so, whatever. I then hit the library with my son yesterday with the intention of letting him browse around for some drawing books, and somehow I ended up grabbing a whole schwackload of trades and a Joe Kubert biography which, over the course of the day, I've been having trouble putting down.

I think it is entirely possible that my brain is trying to purge the Star Wars that I've been stuffing into it for two months.

So, with all the new reading material around, I thought I would mention a few of them here, give some thoughts on them, and then be on my merry way.

First up is Simon Oliver and Tony Moore's The Exterminators, which is a strange, disgusting, yet strangely compelling read. I don't know where Oliver got the idea for this one, but I had heard through the grapevine that it was a worthwhile read and I decided to grab it when I saw it. Glad I did, too. It was also a treat to see Tony Moore's stuff in colour. I've only ever seen his stuff on The Walking Dead before this, and it was nice to see another side to Tony's work. Not for the squeemish, though. If you don't like bugs, or exploding organs, stay clear of this one.

I also read Stan Sakai's original GN Usagi Yojimbo: Yokai, which was very nice book to look at (Sakai did it all in watercolour), and a pleasant read, overall, but I think I was expecting something with a little more punch to it since it was a special 25th anniversary book and it just didn't live up to some of the great Usagi stories that have appeared in his monthly book. I'd still pick it up in an instant, and the presentation of it is beautifully done from cover to cover, it just didn't blow me away.

Next up is Harlan Ellison's Dream Corridor, a collection of stories from the five (or six, if you count the special as part of the numbering) issues of the Dark Horse series of the same name. I don't know why this was something I ignored when it first hit the stands in the mid-1990s. Could have been the price point, could have been an ignorance of Harlan's work, or maybe I just wasn't into anthologies. I honestly don't remember, although I distinctly remember seeing these original books on the shelves at the comic shop. Regardless of that, I'm about sixty pages into the first collection and I'm enjoying the heck out of it. The stories are decent, sometimes a little bit on the broad side, but the artwork is quite good, the adaptations are well done and the interstitial bits written by Harlan and illustrated by Eric Shanower are fun to read.

The last one I'm going to get into right now is Man of Rock, the aforementioned biography of comics legend, Joe Kubert, by Bill Schelly. I've only just begun to read this one and am about 60 pages in. From a chronological standpoint, I'm around the early 1940s in Kubert's life and he has just been given the job to do Hawkman under Sheldon Mayer. I'm not a huge fan of the writing style or the organization of the information, but I do love me some Kubert so I am thoroughly enjoying learning more about his life and early works. I wasn't planning on picking up and reading another biography for a bit, but this one has kind of grabbed my attention and refuses to let go.

Anyway, those are a few of the things that on my mind and on my reading table at the moment.

Cheers!

mike

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