Lurker > Juhanor

On a completely different note, recently read Black Hammer. I was familiar with it as a "new" comic...that began publication 9 years ago...

Anyway I wasn't incredibly impressed with it. The characters felt very derivative of older works. Some interesting designs but the plot wasn't strong enough to carry them, or vice versa. Not sure what I'll read next.

Read the quite bittersweet and beautiful Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms earlier. This is one of the "atypical" art style manga I've been pursuing after reading...well, who knows, it seems I read more alt manga these days than regular. I guess Her Frankenstein back in June really kicked things off for this year.

Regardless, bittersweet and beautiful can be applied to the plot and the art of Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms.
https://i.vgy.me/oDAibC.jpg
I don't have the right words to express my sorrow and anger at the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. All I can really do is cry.

cuh posted...

^^^I think the top review on Amazon has an image of that rainbow spreadits beautiful!

Im intrigued! It looks like an amazing collectors edition

It does look really good!! Now I've seen it on Amazon before in person...<_< lol

Antiyonder posted...

You wouldn't like me when I'm hungry:

Oh, you! Hulk's expressions are hilarious. I needed that.

suchiuomizu posted...

Let him take another decade, I am not optimistic about what the next Elder Scrolls game will look like.

Honestly, me neither - my favorite is Morrowind and I've joked to my friend that six is probably just going to be Warrior/Mage/Thief perk trees.

Ok I'm back.

TES is one of the most fascinating series to me.

It's an RPG series that has gotten less RPG and more action-y (not necessarily a bad thing), as time goes by. The hype machine is consistent from Todd, not just with TES but with every game Bethesda produces (Fallout, Starfield). The final products never live up to what he goes on stage and talks about - yet people seem to love these little failings and the jankiness of the games more than if what he promised HAD come true (see the channels of Bacon_, Elder Mer, and young scrolls on youtube, as well as Crowbcat's "sweet little lies"). At least, this seems to be the case with Elder Scrolls - I think by Starfield people were basically sick of the jank and had taken on a more critical attitude.

Anyway, what really fascinates me about TES is the lore. Half-truths filtered down through time and across cultures make for incredible realism, at least in terms of how folklore and myth works in real life. There's all kinds of crazy esoteric stuff that Bethesda would never be able to properly depict in a game - CHIM, mantling, Dragon Breaks both large and small and the time stuff that goes with them (the "future" knowledge and being of Pelinal (who might be more machine than man), The Dragon Break Re-Examined referring to future events, the Warp in the West, and the disappearance of the Dwemer), Anu and Padomay, C0DA...

The two sides of the coin that is TES, how on the surface it's this popular, foundational RPG game series for people, yet when digging even a little deeper into the background, it becomes a "what the hell am I reading" experience, just amazes me.

Anyway, post over. Having to wait longer for TESVI kinda stinks, but I guess that just gives us all more time to read the lore on UESP.

Tag for later, I have a slightly longer post I want to write.

Finished Mushishi, it was a solid manga. Though the vignettes did feel a bit similar aside from one or two WTF O_O stand outs, I don't really have any complaints - it was a comfortable read. Funnily enough...it's being re-released with the color pages that the first batch of volumes didn't have over here (but were referred to as having color in the author notes for the Japanese release). I actually ordered v1 since it just released last week and have it sitting in the mailer on my bookshelf - there was a scene with a rainbow that I needed to see in color, lol.

cuh posted...

The art looks so good, woah

Agreed, some top notch nature scenes and "ephemera" in that manga. Your example probably isn't too spoilery - the plot is very loose in substance.

Also holy moly, talk about imagery - "Syllables of velvet - Sentences of Plush" - Emily continually wins at writing. I bet she caused more than a few ladies to blush lol. "Had a letter from Emily Dickinson!!!!" is a perfect reaction, too.

So close to finishing Mushishi, just two volumes to go...

cuh posted...

Cool! I always leaf through Parasyte when I see them at the manga section of bookstores
Those eyes on the cover intrigue me

It's a really great series. The gradual change in tone from V1 to V2 is excellent.

cuh posted...

How was I even supposed to read the bottom quote lol
I couldnt even find it online and oops I guess Google Translate doesnt have Old English

What the heck, it seems like the quirkiness? novelty? of Old English would be right up their alley.

Full color edition of Parasyte arrived, it's very nice. Although I generally prefer black & white manga, the spine art for the full color is incredibly snazzy - it spells out the title in big letters and stark tones.

I also got the OG B+W last week and I believe I heard Kodansha is doing an updated TL soon...how many copies of the same series is too many, LOL.

^holy moly, that sparkly outfit

Halfway through Mushishi.
My main midpoint thought is that there's too much "body horror", for lack of a better term. It's not exactly gross-out or shock value material, but I feel as though a good fifty or sixty percent of what I've read so far involves the mushi interfering with human body functions negatively. In a sense, the core argument of "let the mushi live, given they are as much a part of nature as we are" is impeded by their very virus-like actions.

One follow up thought - I have a sense that the creator is going for a chill/calm feeling to the work, but I also can't help but feel the falling action of many of these stories just kinda results in missed opportunity. One example - the chapter about twin sisters. The younger loses her elder sister, accidentally, inside the pathways a mushi makes. Five years pass. Main character shows up, they discuss closure, main character moves on. A few more years pass - elder sister returns, only time hasn't passed for her, so now the younger sister would be physically older and probably a young adult. The lost elder sister is returned to the younger (now older) sister due to the latter's having sent letters through the mushi's pathways (they have the younger sister's name on them). Story just ends there.

Now this is a more cathartic ending than having to live with grief forever, or having to move on - it gives them a second chance. But again, the story just ends there! It seems difficult for the creator to explore what this would mean for their relationship - the change in family dynamic and responsibility, even for a few pages, would be interesting material!

On the other hand, going back to my first point - maybe it's better not to proceed past these endings, as a good chunk of the stories just have a very miserable conclusion - people dying, sacrificing themselves for no good reason, losing their homes or family members. Hopefully the second half presents more variety in the endings and tellings.

cuh posted...

Sorry for not having posted in a while, life has been busy.

No problem, Anti and I have been keeping the thread warm for you <3 I hope nothing too troublesome has arisen.

I'm surprised to hear that the last bit isn't about Genji!! I wonder if that's commonplace in older Asian literature - Romance of the Three Kingdoms had a similar happening with the last chunk being about Jin, maybe as a transitional thing...

https://i.vgy.me/wzjqMO.png

We need an underground library, everyone.

Started reading Mushishi, not too bad so far.

Literally ends with GL just leaving, lol ^

I've just been going back over this year's reading so far, this was a pretty good year tbh. I actually should compare my starred material over the years and maybe re-read it all for next year, lol.

Finished Hyaku Monogatari. Overall, a pretty good manga when read through the aforementioned lens. In particular, I thought Sugiura's use of negative space, and the few stories she did with a very sumi-e/ink heavy style, were quite impressive.

https://i.vgy.me/gYmSDq.png

Reading Hyaku Monogatari again. At a surface level, many of these Edo period ghost stories are, of course, not that frightening by modern standards, and many have really awful twist endings (think of the worst episode of Twilight Zone)...
But reading into them a bit deeper - on the level of say, myths or fairy tales - they do prove to be a fascinating subject. Rather than the stories themselves, their subjects - death, illness, re-marriage, child birth, to name a few examples - offer insight into what might have concerned a person living in that time period, and become the core fear for a ghost story. About 82 stories to go.

Antiyonder posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/b/b125970b.jpg

Oh that's a good one, I love weird comic ads.

https://i.vgy.me/mLAB3I.jpg

Finally finished The Ancient Engineers. Overall, it was interesting, but I think a tad bit too long. Highlights were the Zhuge Liang reference, and some of the Venetian naval battles detailed were neat.

One chapter left of Ancient Engineers. Also my boy Zhuge Liang got name-dropped for the wheelbarrow (as Jugo Lyang)!!!!

Still plugging away at de Camp's Ancient Engineers. Early Rome seems 2x as long as the other chapters - I thought the plates in the center of the book would shorten it overall but nope, they didn't contribute to the page count <_<

Lorkhan

Read Gerry Finley-Day + Carlos Ezquerra's Fiends of the Eastern Front; it was pretty cool. Basically a German soldier in WWII discovers a group of his Romanian allies are actually VAMPIRES, which becomes something of a problem in the later part of the war when the latter changes sides. It was a fine/tightly plotted story with great art. There's more by other creative teams later but honestly, I'm satisfied with what I've read, short though it was!

https://i.vgy.me/RjN6hg.png

Read Scarlet Traces today, a British comic based on the question of "what would happen after HG Wells' War of the Worlds?" It was pretty interesting but...CLIFFHANGER FOR AN ENDING. I did like the use of Phaeton and the developing mysteries of the plot - but it sure went from 0 to 200 quick.

Leafed through Dan Nadel's Art Out of Time; I say leafed because unfortunately, the bulk of it was strip material very roughly reproduced and basically unreadable. One cool page:
https://i.vgy.me/5zDAhf.jpg

Also for one highlight, had a few pages of Cecil Jensen's excellent "Elmo" strip - I was glad to see that chowderhead again. One more book for the donation pile!

Finished the first two years of Bringing Up Father. Not much to say, really - the annotations at the end and obviously some of the contents of the strip offered fascinating insight into pre-Prohibition America (filling a pail with beer was a regular occurrence, for example - bottled was more expensive) but the strip itself ended up feeling very formulaic (Jiggs wants to hang out with his pre-wealth friends->Maggie says no! we have a high society function->Jiggs causes a faux pas at the high society function->Maggie says horrors! and faints, repeat with minor variations ad infinitum). For better or worse, I wouldn't be surprised if we could trace a lot of American situation comedy back to Bringing Up Father - if you squint, you can probably see echoes of Jiggs and Maggie in Fred and Wilma, Archie and Edith, Homer and Marge etc etc etc. In the same field, there's even Popeye and Olive! At any rate, I look forward to reading Eike Exner's revisionist manga history - the reason why I picked up the B.U.F. collection in the first place...

cuh posted... Damn. How bittersweet, to lose one love but in some way gain another. I'm glad he didn't return the cat!!!

cuh posted...

First of all, those Peanuts books I ordered arrived in perfect condition! I ordered two so I could gift to friends (I already have my first printing edition!)

Yay!

cuh posted...

This recent chapter had some funny cat antics

Go on...

cuh posted...

which one? Do you have a pic or listing? :)

I still have my Krazy Kat Sundays book which I pull out to read every so often (on Sunday mornings, in fact!)

Yes, this one:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D2DLY8M3

Indie published, the quality is somewhat rough, but otherwise it's worthy to see what Geo. did humor-wise for the dailies compared to the sundays. There's not as much beautiful grandeur but some very funny moments.

Finished the book of Krazy Kat dailies I had picked up, then re-arranged my main bookshelf so I'd have easier access to my unread stuff.

CastletonSnob1 posted...

How would you rank the Elder Scrolls games, from best to worst?

CRON nailed it for me.

Morrowind (strongest lore and good sense of progression from weak to god-like, can also break the game positively in numerous ways)
Oblivion (plot was solid, gameplay was janky, but overall fun; IIRC the enemies end up too strong if you don't level carefully? Not as broken positively as Morrowind)
Skyrim (RPG elements are weak, no Acrobatics or H2H is sad. Some interesting subsystems (housebuilding). Cooldown on Shouts was awful.)
Daggerfall (not much to say, played it decades ago. Impressive world scale. It will be interesting to see how that game Julian LeFay (RIP) was working on as a spiritual successor turns out.)
Arena (again not much to say, played it decades ago.)

For TES6, Hammerfell or a new Ra Gada to Summerset Isle would be cool. I would like sword-singing but I have my doubts Bethesda could pull it off without just making it Thu'um 3.0.

Finished Taschen's Frazetta book, eh it was OK. Not a whole lot of works I hadn't seen yet, and eh he was comfortable in his subject matter so many of them had a similar feel. Honestly, I probably liked his work better before I read that book, lol.

Continuing with Mills/O'Neill, I then read their Marshal Law. Fascinating series; the first two entries were the most solidly written, very punchy humor amidst the bleaker aspects of the setting, and excellent art. Effective use of graffiti by O'Neill as well. Highly recommended.

cuh posted...

EDIT: Amazons stock may be water damaged >_>

Ooof, well that explains the price...
I saw The Essential on there too, very tempting.

I'll post about my recent readings in the morning, need sleep!

cuh posted...

Random but for some reason this really cool Peanuts (Snoopy, Charlie Brown) hardcover book designed by Chip Kidd is just $5.08 ($4.31 with a coupon on the site) on Amazon right now

That's wicked cheap, I might have to pick a copy up. Maybe in celebration of the 75th anni from a few days ago?

Started Taschen's Frazetta book. It's crazy how prolific he was in the 60s. I think the cover piece for ERB's Land of Terror might be my favorite so far; actually kind of unique to see a less curvaceous female figure on his art, and the dinosaurs/prehistoric creatures all look cool.
https://i.vgy.me/L1vWvc.jpg

Also ugggh that book is so ungainly and heavy, I need a reading podium lol.

Read Metalzoic, fittingly enough by Pat Mills and Kevin O'Neill...the last Euro comic I read was also by them, the great Nemesis the Warlock lol.

Anyway Metalzoic was rad. Robot animals rove the ravaged Earth, etc etc etc. Of course it looked a lot like Nemesis. I'll leave the opening page here. I might track down the progs it re-ran in (I read the DC GN version) because I bet it would look just as cool in black n white.
https://i.vgy.me/GDU2as.jpg

Read Steinbeck's The Red Pony. Like most of his writing I've read, it was both depressing and enlightening. "Don't leave your precious things in the hands of careless people" is a good way to sum it up.

Also could not escape the very blatant patriarchy/toxic masculinity on display from nearly all of the male characters. I guess this will be the lens I read books through now for awhile

Also just zipped through the follow up, Death of a Universe. Gruenwald's writing definitely improved; the art was solid all around, from Ryan's pencils, to the Al Williamson's masterful inks, and very pleasant colors by Paul Becton. The shock! gasp! of multiple characters dying quite nasty deaths was a bit tasteless IMO, but I did enjoy the universal threat bringing the various characters together. It was a good follow up to the limited series and in many ways, more tightly plotted and a better read than the main twelve issues.

Re-read Gruenwald's Squadron Supreme. The concept boiled down is "Marvel's not!Justice League attempt to create a utopia, consequences follow"; interestingly, as a limited series with proxy characters, that didn't have to worry about stepping on any kind of enforced image...the majority of the characters kinda come off as jackasses, easily abusing their powers and having rude personalities, committing casual acts of sexual harassment and engaging in ableism without a second thought.

Did Gruenwald get the point across, that the ends don't justify the means? I'm not sure. The system that Nighthawk (the Batman proxy) claims is reliant on the Squadron's power (and questionable moral standing, with maybe three members acting fairly close to their more perfect Justice League counterparts) to function had largely transferred into the hands of the American public by the final issue. Job placement, food security, personal defense, non-lethal weaponry, even the choice of a potential "life after death" all appear to be preferable to unemployment, starvation, violent crime and lives cut short. The linchpin of the story is the use of a "brain modification device" to replace the naughty thoughts in imprisoned criminals with positive ones - without this infringement of free will, I don't think Nighthawk would have had much of an argument at all, and the story of course fails to take into account that not every criminal is a mustache twirling villain (your Jean Valjeans and Robin Hoods, for example) and that many would have no reason to be repeat offenders with proper job placement and food security...

Other than that, Gruenwald's writing was fine, if a bit too soap-opera-y at times. So many thought bubbles wondering about interpersonal relationships...does this character love me? Do they hate me? Was I being too harsh or too kind? Do I really have to ask myself these questions after every other interaction? Apparently so.

The art by Hall and Ryan was solid. I rather liked the Whizzer's (the Flash proxy's) look; shades and a flattop work well:
https://i.vgy.me/SA3cBd.jpg
https://i.vgy.me/DEStCc.jpg

Overall I think it was a solid attempt at telling a story "the other guys" couldn't tell, though even with twelve issues, still a bit rushed.

Also it's been quite a long time since I last read a comic. Not as neglected as European offerings on my reading list, but still...

Antiyonder posted... Nice, loved that system. Great port of R-Type.

cuh posted...

Love how diversely and widely read you are

I try! That Mark Twain piece about travel being fatal to narrow-mindedness and prejudice, I think it applies to literature as well. Spreading out one's interests makes for a more lovely "tree".

cuh posted...

What did he mean by this?

Blake is unfortunately a gap in my reading his paintings definitely have the dark Gothic edge compared to the idealized beauty a lot of Ancient Greek art has. I wonder if it was controversial opinion at the time?

cuh posted...

>_> is that true?

With a cursory search it does seem like there were only a few notable mathematicians during Ancient Rome compared to Ancient Greece. I haven't summoned anyone in awhile so lemme give it a try: @HannibalBarca3 , do you have any insight on the subject?

Read The Will to Change by bell hooks on my sister's recommendation. It was quite good in handling a number of sensitive topics regarding masculinity and patriarchy. Also scarily accurate to much of how our society functions today, despite being published in 2004. Highly recommended.

Antiyonder posted... Those last two panels with the flag are honestly such a great visual gag.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJep75q0TN4&t=28s

Still haven't picked up the next Dougal book, been working on The Ancient Engineers by L. Sprague de Camp

Kiwami is incredibly similar to Yakuza 0 in terms of combat styles, so if you enjoyed 0's combat system you should like Kiwami's.

Kiwami 2 has different combat from 0/Kiwami so it might be jarring if you play K->K2 back to back.

I don't think I posted it yet, but I read Dinosaurs by Design by Gish - it wasn't very good...though I do think Gish's (fire-breathing) Parasaur is interesting.

For something completely different from creationist paleontology, I then read After Man by Dougal Dixon - a book about speculative evolution. Tons of fascinating yet familiar animals packed in that relatively short text. The hypothesis is basically, how would the world evolve after the Age of Man? Dixon posits that without humans, most domesticated species reliant on us (cows, sheep, horses etc) would eventually die off; rabbits and rats would evolve to fill the niches of major herbivores/carnivores (rabbits taking on ungulate shapes, while rats become more dog-like and pack predators); various rodents become more specialized (some squirrels lengthen while others gain defensive traits like porcupine-esque tails); but the most "WOAH" moment for me was reading the page about the vortex.
https://i.vgy.me/iIDFIt.png
Penguins evolve to fill the whale niche, giving pseudo-live birth by carrying an egg internally before hatching it.
Fascinating stuff. I'll leave the rest unspoken, though - it's definitely worth a read. Up next I'll probably check out his The New Dinosaurs - the set-up is "what if the K-Pg extinction event hadn't happened and dinosaurs continued to dominate the Earth?"

Antiyonder posted...

I can't shake the feeling that some writer up in Heaven just hated this version of Aquaman. I mean no amount of living underwater can heal that burn.

For sure lol. Aquaman gets so much disrespect but he's cool in my view.

cuh posted...

Genji is such a creep omg

Genji.... He needs help, I don't know WHO could help him, but holy cow, does he need it...

Finished Riki-Oh, what a wild ride.

Started reading Riki-Oh. Some similarity to Fist of the North Star, but I would say wastes a LOT less time in having stuff happen. Excellent art and in some cases, the plot is strangely predictive of our current reality (corporations and wealth have extreme influence over the government, the environment is at the mercy of those who want to take more and more resources, space is seen as a refuge or future place to exploit by the wealthy etc).

cuh posted...

(also I did mistake her as a boy at first!)

That's so funny, it happens all the time in the various story incarnations as well.

cuh posted...

I have been very near the Gates of Death & have returned very weak & an Old Man feeble & tottering, but not in Spirit & Life not in The Real Man The Imagination which Liveth for Ever.

If this isn't one of the most perfect descriptions of the human condition, I don't know what is. When your mind and soul are willing but your body still needs to heal..

Finished Patlabor.

Positives: I enjoyed the "real" feeling of the setting. The robots frequently had to be repaired, corporate espionage was a constant concern, the main two cast members had personal troubles and had to work to overcome them, and the use of a child pilot wasn't hand-waved but treated seriously by the police (as in, this is wrong and the kid needs to be protected from the people who bought him and made him believe piloting a dangerous machine was just a game). As mentioned above, a robot-sized shotgun was actually treated as a serious upgrade. Art had some really nice shading, too.
https://i.vgy.me/e3YxAg.jpg

Negatives, I would say the action scenes were a bit difficult to parse at times, and the writing relied a bit too heavily on proverbs that didn't always translate well to English. Some of the elements were narrative dead-ends as well, for better or worse - firearms (like that shotgun) didn't see much use by the end.

Neutral: the initial plot also dominated most of the narrative. Not necessarily a bad thing, of course, but I do find police stories more enjoyable when the characters find themselves handling a wider variety of crimes. Perhaps more of a positive than a neutral feeling: some of the characters from the OVA that had strong depictions there, didn't stand out so much in the manga, and vice versa.

At any rate, a good, fairly consistent manga. I'm not sure what I'll read next.

cuh posted...

I love you William Blake but Im not reading that
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/0/07d5be5f.jpg

LOL
The eyestrain is real

^ I was thinking about picking up Thorn, always good to see more strip collections.

On a whim grabbed + finished 50 Things to do with a Penknife earlier, largely concerning whittling projects and techniques. Certainly informative, and I thought the section on cork was particularly creative. Cutting a flat section into a cork+then cutting a slot into the rounded part to make photo stands would, in particular, work really well for my polaroids...I need to lay hands on some crafting supply cork and see how well it works.

Also have been reading the Patlabor manga, currently on volume 7 I think? Its familiar to the animation but of course bears a lot of Yuki's "voice" as a manga artist, similar to Tetsuwan Birdy in some respects. One thing I appreciate is the relatively realistic feeling of the setting. For example, a robot-sized shotgun is stored separately from the other equipment under lock and key - because a robot-sized shotgun is realistically a huge combat upgrade and incredibly dangerous to be firing in populated areas, basically like a ship cannon loaded with grapeshot. I'm looking forward to reading more and seeing how it differs from the animated versions I've seen.

cuh posted...

^that first spread is gorgeous, wow!

Indeed, the number of lines on page brings to mind a Lynd Ward woodcut almost more than a manga! I wonder how long it would take from start to finish.
Another great spread:
https://i.vgy.me/XIAneB.jpg

Dropped Kamuy and picked up/finished Gon in an evening. Really detailed and impressive art. I don't think it was star material, not compared to Samurai Daibouken, but Tanaka is one hell of an artist. The relatively peaceful narratives - largely focused on Gon eating, encountering various familiar creatures, and usually ending with him running into the sunset or taking a nap - were very pleasant to read.

First link is a highly detailed spread, second is a funny reaction image.
https://i.vgy.me/Z7CRKi.jpg
https://i.vgy.me/4Jcrne.jpg