Anyone here read American or European comics?

Non-anime/manga-related TV, movies, books, and comics, especially but not limited to pre-2000 titles
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llj
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Re: Anyone here read American or European comics?

Post by llj »

Well, someone apparently did buy a copy of the NES Stadium Events for about $8 at Goodwill last year, so they sometimes make up for their occasional rip offs with stupidly dumb bargains like this. She eventually sold it for about $17,000... :shock:
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Re: Anyone here read American or European comics?

Post by usamimi »

Haha, that's true! I've definitely found my share of things at Goodwill that were basically a steal. (Nothing THAT good, but still!)
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Re: Anyone here read American or European comics?

Post by danth »

I've recently gotten comics for $2 that I've seen for sale elsewhere for hundreds of dollars. There are some crazy people out there that really want to believe they are sitting on treasure and just can't accept the truth. Things are only worth what people will pay.

Usamimi, I see that kind of thing all the time! Especially in antique stores. I see nasty-ass action figures all scratched up and missing all of their accessories, but oh no it's Star Wars so it's worth $20. Hahaha no. Or some old completely rusty bicycle missing parts but it's old so $200! I've seen these same items in antique stores for YEARS. They never sell. And it's the same with all of their junk. The don't realize that condition and completeness are king.

The reason these antique stores stay in business is because they have multiple sellers who lease space from the store owner. So the sellers come and go but the store stays around even if nothing sells.

I also think Buy It Now has ruined eBay for the same reason. About half of the things I want are Buy It Now items that are priced at 4 times the price the item sells for at auction.
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Re: Anyone here read American or European comics?

Post by yusaku »

A comic book store owner friend of mine told me only collect the stuff you like. I am a strong believer in that philosophy. If you focus on buying only the stuff you are really into you are very likely to find stuff really cheap. People sell nice trade paperbacks wholesale just to make a few dollars. You must be always looking to take advantage. You can then sit on the item forever until you get the price you want for it. When an otaku sees what he wants he or she buys it. There are things I hunt continually. I have found several identical copies of rare out of print anime soundtracks for three dollars! I have seen the same soundtrack posted for not less than thirty dollars on ebay. So should I decide to sell it I am going to make five times what I paid.
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Re: Anyone here read American or European comics?

Post by davemerrill »

The Wiseman/Toole Dennis The Menace comics are some of the best American comics ever made, in my opinion. If there's a better depiction of American life circa 1959-1963 I've yet to see it - cars, cities, suburbs, children, adults, Hawaii, Hollywood, Mexico, if you can name it they put it in the comic, and most of 'em still make me laugh.

Dave Sim is a certain kind of self-taught autodidact who knows he's smarter than everybody else and has had just enough success doing his own thing to confirm all his biases. I think his advice to small-press comics in the 80s, that everybody should do what he did, start their own publishing company to publish their own direct market comics, was perhaps not the best advice. His off-the rails gender commentary, in that Women are the great void and that the homosexualist/feminist axis is conspiring to enslave men and destroy civilization, is amusing at best and destructive at worst. Last year, before Kim Thompson died, there was a long online discussion between Sim and Thompson concerning Fantagraphics possibly reprinting all of Cerebus. Thompson came into the discussion in good faith- Fantagraphics has had tremendous success reprinting Peanuts, Dennis the Menace, and other classic strips in deluxe editions, and would love to publish Cerebus - but Sim treated the whole conversation as a soapbox to air decades-old grievances. It was an amazing display of contempt on his part. More recently I read a statement from Sim about the troubles he's having trying to get original Cerebus artwork scanned in at the correct DPI to avoid moire patterns in the printing process - apparently 300dpi isn't cutting it, which is something that anybody with any printing experience would have told him, except I believe he's driven away everyone around him who would lift a finger to assist. It's a shame; when Cerebus was "on" it was a tremendously entertaining book. That was sometime in 1986, I believe.

I do enjoy seeing the crazy grandma prices at the antique malls, it's a constant source of amusement. All it takes is one feature article in the local newspaper about Action Comics #1 selling for a million dollars, and suddenly all comics everywhere are a gold mine.
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Re: Anyone here read American or European comics?

Post by greg »

usamimi wrote:Sam & Max comics,
Oh YES! I love Sam & Max! I have the first omnibus that went OOP and became expensive, and IIRC, another was re-issued and that one to is now OOP and expensive. Steve Purcell's humor is so funny. They'd be pursuing a criminal, shooting their guns at him. "Stop! We won't hurt you! We just want to ask you some questions!" I loved the ones he did for Lucasfilm Games, especially the Star Wars ones. Sam was the X-Wing pilot and Max was stuck outside in the R2 droid socket. "Sam, it's cold out here and I'm having trouble breathing." "You're a real downer today, aren't you?" Or when they are in the Death Star and piles of dead stormtroopers lay in their wake. "How many more of them must we kill before they learn our peaceful ways?" I met Steve Purcell a few times at the San Diego Comic Con and had him make sketches of Sam&Max for my journals. I told him that I laughed so hard reading his comics that I injured myself and couldn't breathe. The short-lived cartoon was fairly neat, too. I told him that the show would have worked better if it aired on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim instead of at a syndicated kids' show timeslot. That way, the cartoon could've been more violent like the comics.

I'd collected a few classic Uncanny X-Men omnibus releases, particularly the black & white reissued fat omnibuses. The one comic I used to collect single issues of each month was Futurama, but I lost track of that one when my favorite comic book store disappeared. I was pseudo-friends with the owner because we'd taken a few Japanese classes together at Phoenix Community College. He had Tokyo Pop's very last, extremely low-print run Sgt. Frog and Fate/Stay Night issues on hold for me, but when I went there, the landlord had changed the locks and claimed the store's contents because he hadn't been paying his rent. NUTS.

The Tick comics by Ben Edlund were great fun, too. I almost got to meet him at the '07 SDCC, but it would've required waiting around for him at his table for an hour or so.
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Re: Anyone here read American or European comics?

Post by yusaku »

I want to say how refreshing it is to find that you guys have a very well-rounded exposure to comics of the world. I think that is the one major difference between the older and newer anime fans. I remember that it took "forever" for the new manga trade paper backs, anime DVD's, and anime/manga fanzines to come out. Anime and manga was not sitting on the shelf in most places. There was no anime at Border's , Walmart, Barnes and Nobles, or the now defunct Suncoast Video until around 2000. You had to go online or a comic book store to order a lot of anime or manga stuff. I remember waiting week after week then month after month for my anime manga trades to come into the store. So, the store owner would turn me onto Aria, Gloom Cookie, or an Asia Pulp Cinema film here and there. I got exposed to American comics because of the anime lull that was ongoing.

Now anime is cheap and plentiful. The only problem is that whoever is picking what to publish has a tendency to pick the wrong stuff. This was a problem back in the day also. There was no way to preview titles until you bought them. I got stuck with a lot of anime I thought was just trash. Anime such as Maison Ikkou went out of print because of extremely poor marketing. I managed to get the entire series on DVD but I cannot find a second copy of the series for sale. The poor marketing of the good stuff and the overpromotion of the crappy anime and manga has caused a glut in the industry and anime stopped being profitable for comic store owners around 2005. None of the stores i go to order anime as part of their regular shipment. You must special order stuff now. The stuff at the Big Box distributors have gotten rid of popular titles like Utena and keep the anime trash stuff for some reason. I get all my stuff online now.
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Re: Anyone here read American or European comics?

Post by greg »

Unfortunately, Borders is gone too. They went bankrupt in 2010 or so. I was so very sad because that was my favorite bookstore. I would buy manga, SF books, and all sorts of stuff. When my daughter was a toddler, she was a night owl, and after her afternoon nap, she couldn't fall asleep until around 11pm each night. We would take her to Borders at night because they would be open late, and we'd take her to the children's department to read books to her and let her play with the stuffed dolls. We had some fond memories of that store, but they disappeared. The last manga I bought there was a volume of Haruhi. I stocked up on SF books during their bankruptcy sale too, and those will last me a long time now that I live in Japan and don't have fast access to peruse English language books.
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Re: Anyone here read American or European comics?

Post by Animusubi »

American Comics: Right before I really got into anime, I was a fan of X-men. I still love X-men for coolness factor (90's X-men mostly) but I don't read the comics anymore, I find them incredibly boring and bland. I started collecting Kubert's 90's X-men run, and will probably collect Jim Lee's afterwards. I also collected Generation X, since I loved Bachalo's artwork then. I was a huge fan of the Sonic the Hedgehog comics up until about issue 150, where I stopped. I love love loved the comics of the 90's. I still go to the comic shop regularly, since my best friend goes there almost every Wednesday, but I never find anything. I usually will only buy Joe Madueira comics (when he does them).

One recommendation I do have is Battle Chasers. That thing POURS love for the first 3-4 issues, before you know it's gonna end soon because it starts to get rushed. I read it recently alongside my best friend, and it's amazing how much influence from anime you see in the comic. It was probably the most enjoyable American comic I've ever read. If more comics were made with such love, I'd probably read them. It's a shame it was never continued.

I like some of the indie comics too, like Lackadaisy Cats. I also like Scott Pilgrim, TMNT, and Usagi Yojimbo.

European Comics: I wish they'd translate more of them. I read Sky Doll, because of the artwork, but it's super religiousness kind of turns me off a bit. The artwork and flow of the work though is amazing on it's own, so I can overlook the story a bit. But the best one I've read so far HAS TO BE BLACKSAD. That is one damn good comic.
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llj
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Re: Anyone here read American or European comics?

Post by llj »

Ah yes, Joe Madureira's Battle Chasers. He was a very vocal fan of anime back in the 90s. I think he used to say he watched Giant Robo to get inspiration. But he was lazy when it came to schedules. I think I remember hearing that he often got sidetracked playing video games instead of doing work. :lol:

I should maybe start a blog someday focusing on European comics and artists. There's just not a lot out of bloggers out there profiling them. I'm currently reading Jodorowsky and Moebius' "Madwoman of the Sacred Heart." Friggin hilarious comic.
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