Monday 12 October 2015

Atoll Comics Round 24

Or changes to my Top-Ten comics

Due to having an entertainment budget and an urge to buy better comics, I have decided to be selective about which superhero comics I read. Harnessing the Awesome Power of Maths, I have determined that I can afford to read 10 ongoing titles. So I get to read 10, and only 10, titles published by either Marvel or DC as well as one trade paperback a week of my choosing.

A complication of this is that I am forced to drop an on-going title if I want to try reading a new on-going title, an act of very tough love. Being financially responsible is the worst.

I will be adding Giant Days and dropping Bucky Barnes: The Winter Solder.


Why Giant Days: Giant Days is a direct market, paper comic that spun out of the Giant Days webcomic, a periodically recurring storyline/sub-universe of the Bad Machinery/Scary Go Round world of John Allison. While the overall fictional universe of John Allison's comics is pretty vast and convoluted, Giant Days is pretty easy to get into: it features one of my favourite Scary Go Round stars gone off to college with a new cast of shiny oddballs as they have undergraduate hijinks. Giant Days is written by John Allison and drawn by the very talented Lissa Treiman and coloured by Whitney Cogar and features the trademark wit, sitcommery, and endearing characters that has had me reading the Allison webcomics for years (and years... and years...). Giant Days is just endlessly charming and funny, both in the haha and the oh... way. It's a nice, fun breath in any pull list. 

I've actually been reading Giant Days for a while now on what is basically the down low. It was originally slated to be a six issue mini-series and I thought I would just happily dabble with the series in issues a bit before deciding to review the entire thing as a trade paperback. Fortunately, Giant Days seems to have evolved to a bigger limited series and then again into a full ongoing, which is great and means I need to stop lying to myself and my wife and admit that it's one of my ten, and only ten ongoing comics.


Why not Bucky Barnes: The Winter Soldier:  This is another comic that has recently ended. The comic which featured Bucky Barnes as an Earth defending space assassin who fell into a psychedelic love and drug and interdimensional plot on an alien world was pretty fun. The story was weird and interesting, maybe a bit trite at times, and searingly, gloriously earnest. BB:TWS also featured some truly remarkable artwork. I am not someone prone to putting up comic or sci-fi art on walls, but if I were going to put up a poster it would be interior art from this comic. (Or I guess, paint the side of a sweet van, BB:TWS art would also be really great for that.)  It's totally beautiful and rad. It's also a great example of just how smart and and animated painted artwork can be when coupled to innovative layouts. It's technically a very interesting comic. Ales Kot and Marco Rudy really delivered a funky comic experience, and I'm glad I read it.

Previously
AC Round 23: Mockingbird in and Secret Six out
AC Round 22: Hank Johnson AOH in and Black Widow out
Atoll Comics Round 21: Black Canary in and Hawkeye out
Atoll Comics Round 18: Secret Six in and Wonder Woman out
Atoll Comics Round 17: Batgirl in and Batman out
Atoll Comics Round 16: Bucky Barnes: The Winter Soldier in and Rocket Raccoon out
Atoll Comics Round 15: Rocket Raccoon in and Moon Knight out
Atoll Comics Round 14: Secret Avengers in and Avengers Assemble Out
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