European Comic, I wish I could read you. I admire your nonrealistic yet exciting art style. I like your method of telling stories with a beginning, a middle and an end. I don't even have to "wait for the trade" because your print quality is as glossy as a book. I also wish your name was "Tintin" so an English translation of you would already exist, but alas, it does not. I'll never know what the whole Death Star thing is about, or why football players with spiked shoulder pads are emerging from portals.
Maybe what's keeping European comics off American shelves is the fact that almost every single one of them has a nude shot somewhere. "Big deal," you might be thinking, "all they have to do is put 'For Mature Readers' on the cover and they can sell it in America." Well....the French sure love their privates. I've seen a comic (clearly intended for children) where a 5-year-old took off his pants and left nothing to the imagination.
Dark Horse couldn't sell this without facing prison time.
It's not like non-superhero graphic novels aren't published in America....technically. They're just much harder to find. Good ones are even harder. Most of the GNs I've found in the boxes are dry hipster bait. It's a mystery to me how Powells couldn't move these off the shelf, considering Portland has so many hipsters they can barely fit into our 2,500 coffee bars.
The book on the lower left is by James Kochalka, a god among hipsters for his character Magic Boy -- an autobiographical elfish version of himself. Occasionally his books take a turn to the fantastical, but mostly, they're about a long-eared whiner with lots of minute problems. It turns out there's a lot about Kochalka I don't want to know, including his reason for this book's title.
I don't think I have what it takes to be a hipster. I don't like the smell of coffee, my eyesight is fine, and I prefer my comic book plots to be about something other than skin problems.
I couldn't find much on Michael Dougan, but "I Can't Tell You Anything" does include this:
Now we're talking in my language.
Blue Monday is about
Bleu L. Finnegan, a teenager growing up in England California during the
early 90's whose fondest desire is to meet Adam Ant, and spends
much of the book trying to do so. I give it a C...it's not
terrible, but it didn't impress me either. The main problem is
that Bleu doesn't blow up her school at the end.
These are two printings of the same book. The only differences are the covers and the fact that the first edition is written by "Chynna Clugston-Major" and the second edition is written by "Chynna Clugston." I know it's none of my business, but when I notice things like this, I always think "Uh-oh, trouble in paradise?"
This one was destined for the bin. Why would anyone spend so much time filling in the little details of a graphic novel that'll become dated and unsellable the moment it's released? The only portion remotely relevant to today is the part about Mitt Romney.
As disenchanted as people are with Obama right now, Mitt doesn't stand much of a chance and he's the best idea the Republican Party has. That is to say, he's the only one left in the old candidate pool they haven't disinfected in over a decade. The only fresh meat they can get are the crazy soccer moms of the Tea Party, so....might as well let Brock run unopposed and save some dough.
I know what you want a bigger image of, so here it is.
There you go.
Angry Little Girls is a webcomic that's been around for some time now. A select few cartoons were published in hardcover in 2005. They reached Powells Throwout Bin stardom in 2011.
Heeheeheeheehee..........I'm a bad person.