The Wolverine / Kitty Pride Miniseries. I have not read this republished 80s story yet, but it is all part of my plan to read all of Claremont's X-Men. I have like 100 issues left on the core title to go.
The Collected Popbot. I love Ashley Wood and I am pretty sure this is his magnum opus. There is not really much of a story here. Word bubbles and a very loose narrative are strung over each page, but Wood would never allow the bubbles to interfere with the images. What narrative is there is aggressively weird in the way Morrison is, but without the charm -- except for a brief sequence in which the MAXX shows up for no reason. Each page is basically a painting, complete with the kind of signature you would find on any comic book cover image. As a book, it has much more in common with the compete paintings of Turner than it does with Casanova. Style varies wonderfully, but for no narrative reason: rough drawings in both black and white and color jostle with paintings, computer images, and pure graphic design. Looking for reviews, I stumbled on one by Matt Fraction before he was Matt Fraction, if you know what I mean. This is what he had to say: "If one were to take all of the pop culture components necessary to make great comic books with a bit of alchemy and a bit of luck and put them into a great big cauldron, POPBOT would be goo scraped off of the sides of that cauldron, cut with Dran-O, and sold to kids in schoolyards as the next big high." The pop culture components Fraction is talking about here are pinup lipstick lesbians (often in X-rated poses), hip urban samurais, killer robots, and creepy bad-ass soldiers with huge guns. The images are appallingly mesmerizing, and the book is pretty well awesome. Some images of Wood's work if you are not familiar. Don't get the book if you are not 100% sold on the art because the art is all there is.
I have said this before but here is something I cannot get out of my head: Casanova, as drawn by Ashley Wood.
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8 comments:
Oh man! Now I can't get it out of my head. Cass by Fraction/Wood would be amazing.
I can't believe you're really going to read ALL of Claremont's X-Men. You are a trooper, Doc. (I still plan to read Millar's Ultimate X-Men. It's the prize waiting for me at the end of the Claremont blog series.)
Is this '70s/'80s/'90s Claremont only or does this include his second and third runs on Uncanny and his X-Treme X-Men work?
Jason,
I got my Essential X-men collection vol 4... (apparently I didn't get the 'direct edition' which also includes 'God Loves, Man Kills') So I'll be right with you in a few issues (although I have read quite a few of the upcoming issues as well... but it's been years).
Geoff,
Since you're not picking up as many titles weekly anymore, this might be a good place for people to volunteer some guest-bloggery!
THe only thing I'm picking up issue by issue is AS Batman and Robin (which btw has been pushed back to August 27th).
Paul: First run only. I have to draw a line somewhere.
That's definitely the place to draw it.
Even *I* never read that X-Treme stuff.
Scott, awesome that you're going to be following along on the Claremont stuff. I hope to see you commenting as well -- the more comments the merrier!
Jason,
Indeed I shall... of course I've even been commenting on the ones I haven't read when the mood so strikes me... hopefully I'll have some more useful input with those upcoming issues.
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