The Fall 2011 reading list has been released–start your engines! All meetings held at the Washington Park Library. All meetings are from 6:45 to 7:45 and take place in the small meeting room.
You can also find discussions at the Comic Book Panel group on Facebook.
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Tuesday, September 13, 2011 – The Unwritten, Vol. 1: Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity by Mike Carey & Peter Gross
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Tuesday, October 11, 2011 – Batwoman: Elegy by Greg Rucka & J.H. Williams III
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Tuesday, November 8, 2011 – Exit Wounds by Rutu Modan
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Tuesday, December 13, 2011 – Pedro & Me: Friendship, Loss, and What I Learned by Judd Winick
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All meetings are from 6:45 to 7:45 and take place in the small meeting room at Washington Park Library.
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If you’re 18 or older and enjoy reading comic books and graphic novels from publishers like Vertigo and Fantagraphics, come to the next meeting of Not Just for Kids Anymore, the Washington Park Comic Book & Graphic Novel Book Club in the Small Meeting Room at Washington Park Library. Please note: This is not a group for children, as the books that will be read in this group are the equivalent of “Rated R” movies.
Just got the word from Don Leibold about what the Comicbook Reading Club books are for the spring/summer of 2011. All meetings take place at the Washington Park Library in Milwaukee!
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Tuesday, March 8, 2011 – The Walking Dead, Vol. 1: Days Gone By by Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore
Read the “continuing story of survival horror” that inspired the recent hit TV show on AMC. We will discuss Vol. 1, but feel free to read as much of the series as you can before the meeting. The MPL has several collections of this Eisner Award-winning comic.
Contemplate the concept of evil as you read this unsettling childhood memoir. A finalist for the 2009 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature.
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Tuesday, May 10, 2011 – Ghost World by Daniel Clowes
Summer is coming. What better time to read this story of post-graduation ennui! Note: We will discuss Clowe’s graphic novel as well as the 2001 movie adaptation.
In brightest day, in blackest night, no good book shall escape our sight. Let those who worship Hollywood’s might, beware the origin told true and right. In other words, brush up on the adventures of Hal Jordan before they come to a movie theater near you!
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All meetings are from 6:45 to 7:45 and take place in the small meeting room at Washington Park Library.
:: :: ::If you’re 18 or older and enjoy reading comic books and graphic novels from publishers like Vertigo and Fantagraphics, come to the next meeting of Not Just for Kids Anymore, the Washington Park Comic Book & Graphic Novel Book Club in the Small Meeting Room at Washington Park Library. Please note: This is not a group for children, as the books that will be read in this group are the equivalent of “Rated R” movies.
:: :: :: If YOU have suggestions for what we should discuss at the Comicbook Reading Club, please leave a suggestion in the comments!
This post is wayyyyy overdue! I put the photos together in MAY…and then forgot to post! So, here they are now, a mixed bag of comicbook trades I read in the Spring of 2023! All of these were gotten from the wonderful, downtown Central branch of the Milwaukee Public Library!
THE PUNISHER INVADES THE ‘NAM – is an interesting book. Marvel publishes THE PUNISHER character, who has a canon part of his origin based on his experience in the Vietnam War. THE ‘NAM was was Marvel’s realistic-ish war-comic based on the Vietnam War. This collection combines them…and it can be a pretty affecting thing when you have superhero-type character interact with real historical events.
WARZONES: SQUADRON SINISTER is a limited series with a complicated backstory…which you (my reader) doesn’t need to know. All you need to know is that this comic is a mashup that combined three groups of characters (New Universe, Shadowline, and Squadron Supreme) that were near and dear to my heart as a junior high comicbook reader and oh my GOSH, it was neat to see them in action again! 🙂
GRENDEL VS THE SHADOW was FUN. I’ve long been a fan of Matt Wagner, of both his writing and his art, and to see him bring these two characters head-to-head, was a lot of fun.
GREAT LAKES AVENGERS: SAME OLD, SAME OLD…has a mixed history of success/fail with the stories told about them. Naturally, living on Lake Michigan, I will ALWAYS read a GLA story! This one…was weird, had potential, squandered it, started plot-lines/seemed to abandon them, went in weird directions unexpectedly…just..was odd.
X-MEN: NO MORE HUMANS…is a comic that I read, and that’s about all I can say for it. 😦
HARD TIME by Steve Gerber, Mary Skrenes, and Brian Hurtt is pretty impressive. It was published by DC Comics between 2004-06, and tells the story of a young man who goes to prison as a result of a school shooting that he may…or may not have been a part of. I think this was the first book I saw with Brian Hurtt’s artwork, and I’ve been a fan ever since. Gerber is good at bringing social issues/satire into comicbooks. Sadly, he passed away in 2008.
Wow, this summer, I got through a LOT of books and comicbooks. It was really pretty fantastic. 🙂 Let’s dive right in…
AMERICAN GODS by Neil Gaiman. This was a re-read, for a book club, and was just as enjoyable as the first time I read it, years ago. Gaiman does such an excellent job blending fantasy and reality, and packing an emotional punch at just the right moments…
THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WALK IN THE WORLD by John Baxter is basically a guided-tour around Paris. Baxter is a writer with a deep historical knowledge of Paris, and the book is a collection of vignettes, furthering the reader’s knowledge of this great city.
SMILE AT STRANGERS by Susan Schorn is a neat memoir about a self-defense instructor from Texas, talking about many of the lessons she’s learned in her years of studying karate. A darn neat book with a conversational voice to it.
MILES MORALES: SPIDER-MAN by Jason Reynolds. I’ve read many comicbooks over the years, but this is the first comicbook novel that I’ve read! It was a less-traditional superhero story in that the majority of the book was more like a teen drama than a super-story…and that was very good. Reynolds really fleshed out the characters in the story, and made us readers darn invested in them. And the made the stakes even higher when danger DID present itself!
This summer, I also read a lot of comicbooks, but I am only listing the collections/trade-paperbacks that I read…I got cosmic and street in my reading. TALES OF THE NEW GODS and ORION: THE GATES OF APOKOLIPS are both modern works that explore the mythology of Jack “The King” Kirby’s Fourth World characters. John Byrne and Walt Simonson did much of the writing and drawing of these two books, and they definitely have a good understanding of these characters and the themes they’re meant to explore.
CLOAK AND DAGGER: SHADES OF GREY and CAGE both are characters in the Marvel pantheon that are known for their “street-level” adventures…fighting “real” crime, drug dealers, thieves, and more gritty things. I picked up C&D because it was being written by one of my fave comicbook writers, Dennis Hopeless, and he did a good job even though this was his first time writing these characters. I wasn’t familiar with the name “Genndy Tartakovsky”, but after reading this CAGE limited-series that he wrote and drew, I realized what an important figure he is – particularly in animation – and what a “catch” it was for Marvel, to get Gendy for a project.
And now a few more comicbook trades, but these I read electronically. Naomi and I went to visit Colorado, and while I still wanted to keep my bedtime reading habit going, I didn’t want to bring along a bunch of hardcopies…so my tablet worked great! And thanks to Milwaukee Public Library and the Hoopla app, I was able to read a bunch of comics while traveling! 🙂
BATWING: Good writing and neat to see what an “Batman From Africa” could be like.
ALI: Great bio-comicbook told in a very interesting style Would recommend.
THE LONE RANGER: Good looking book, but eh, the story was only OK.
ICOGNEGRO: Very good, and interesting to see a different kind of noir story, dealing with a difficult part of American history.
BATMAN: BRIDE OR BURGLAR: Good writing, good art from the modern arc that delved into the “Cat and the Bat” relationship.
THE DEATH-DEFYING DEVIL: not really good, sorry.
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN Vol 5: Nick Spencer is a hella solid writer, and I’ll give most of his projects a shot. I’ve never been a big Spider-fan, but Spencer and the artists did tell some neat stories here.
Three entries for this post…a couple years ago, a friend and I went out to Spring Green to visit the legendary home of Frank Lloyd Wright, Taliesin. Well, as it worked out, we didn’t actually get to see the house, but we DID get to see his school, theatre, and another building or two. Was beautiful and inspiring, and while there I picked up this biography because I definitely wanted to learn more about Frank!
This book was written by Ada Louise Huxtable, a well-known and respected architecture critic. The book moves along pretty quickly, and you can tell that the intention was to make a biography that respected Wright’s life, but also wasn’t toooooo long of a read. What I found most interesting about the book was how the author pointed out that there are often (at least) two “truths” to many parts of Frank Lloyd Wright’s life: there is the way Wright tells the story…and there’s the a bit less subjective/bit more objective version of the story. As the reader comes to learn, one of Frank’s most deep skills is his ability to self-justify his actions and behaviors. He was a genius, yes, but he was also someone who believed that his skills set him “above” all the “ordinary” people. It’s no surprise that he thoroughly absorbed his Welsh family’s motto into his life: “truth against the world.” The trouble is that a person’s believed truth might not always be the most objective. Like I said, this is a pretty quick and interesting read, and I know there is much more to a life that is this full of tragedy and triumph, scandal and success. For those who want to start learning more about Wright, this is a good start!
Next up are two comicbooks – one that was new to me (ROCKETEER ADVENTURES) and one that was a re-read (SKYBOURNE)! Both are similar in that they are not the most complex of stories.
ROCKETEER is a collection of shorts about this popular adventurer set in the WWII-era, so, most of the stories revolve around stopping some Nazi plot and saving the girl.
The world of SKYBOURNE would make a few great action movies, but this script…could be better. I mainly got this comic because it is by Frank Cho, a very popular artist, but in this case, he provides the script AND the art. I recalled reading this comic a year or so ago, and not being impressed, so now I re-read it to see if my opinion had changed at all, and unfortunately, it has not. A fantastic, beautiful comicbook…which Cho should have collaborated on with a more experienced writer.
Wow, I have read a LOT in the past 4-6 weeks! 3 Comicbook collections, and 3 books! The books were an interesting mix: “an urban erotic tale”, an anthology of film noir-ish short stories all set in present-day Milwaukee, and a retrospective of the films of Steven Spielberg!
For the comicbooks, there was a story about a super-powered bail bondsman, a magician who might be a con-man, a one-man judge/jury/executioner from the future, and a collection a futuristic “twist” short-stories. Oh yeah, and there were two movies that had to be rewatched, in conjunction with the read-through of that “judge/jury/executioner” story…
1. G-SPOT by Noire is a trashy novel. Well…actually, well, it is sorta that, but it also is sorta isn’t. At a white-elephant gift party, pre-pandemic, a different book by this author was one of the gifts exchanged, and it prompted some on-the-spot readings of the more…descriptive passages…to much laughter…“oh my gosh, so dirty, so trashy!”…“It’s like a bodice-ripper but set in the inner city!” And now, my wonderful girlfriend had gifted me a different book from this author. And heck yes, I planned to read it cover-to-cover and get some chuckles out of it…but as I read it, and after having read recently finished reading a Charles Dickens biography, I came to decidedly different conclusions about this book.
Juicy, the main character, grew up in poverty, and was forced, through no choice of her own, to mature far too rapidly. Charles Dickens grew up in poverty, saw his father jailed for unpaid bills, and was forced to leave school at age 12 and start working.
These experiences of Dickens’ followed him for the rest of his life, shaping his writing and his living. He wrote characters that often fought against the conditions they found themselves in, trying to be happy, and trying to rise above those situations, too.
Noire, with her journey of Juicy, a 19-year old “sweet thing” to a 40-something bar owner/drug dealer, was telling a story that I soon saw to be Dickens-esque. G-SPOT has sex in it, sure, but that’s hardly the point. It’s the story of a young woman trying to thrive and find happiness, despite the rotten hand she has been dealt.
2. MILWAUKEE NOIR, edited by Tim Hennessy, is part of a nation-wide series of “noir” books, wherein various local writers bring a modern angle on short stories with classic film noir “beats”, and have all the stories set within a particular geographic region. I found MKE NOIR at Boswell Books, in their nicely-stocked “local authors” section, and being a fan of the classic, morally/ethically-questionable films, had to pick it up.
Like you would expect in an anthology, it’s a mixed-bag. Some stories I liked and wished they’d go on on longer, some I couldn’t read through fast enough. All of them were interesting, though, and many presented viewpoints that were different than my own background. So, it was time well spent, and has made me look at my city in a different light, wondering what dark stories lurk inside the Great City on a Great Lake!
3. SPIELBERG: A RETROSPECTIVE, by Richard Schickel, is a fast read, and a fun one for any fan of film, in general, and this filmmaker, in specific. Going into this book, I already knew that Spielberg was a renowned director, but couldn’t pin him down on what kinda movies he makes – is he an action director? A drama director? Period pieces? And after reading the book, I know the answer – he is ALL those things! He’s a director who takes on projects that interest him – whether it’s the whip-wielding Indiana Jones of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK fame, or the terrible T-rex of JURASSIC PARK, or meditations on race in THE COLOR PURPLE and AMISTAD. The book moves through his films rapidly, devoting a few pages to each film with many photos, quotes from Spielberg, and writings from Schickel. It was neat to read, and makes me want to schedule my own at-home retrospective of Spielberg’s films!
Onto the comicbooks!
4. MYSTERIUS THE UNFATHOMABLE by Jeff Parker and Tom Fowler, is a comicbook about a magician/psychic/spiritualist who is available for hire, and travels around with his assistant, Delphi. Mysterius is sort of like Houdini, but less fit; he’s sort of like the comicbook character, John Constantine, but less charming.
Jeff Parker, like Joe Casey is a comicbook writer that I will almost always pick up. I wasn’t familiar with Tom Fowler’s art before this, but am a fan now.
He had talked about the discipline that came in writing a sci-fi story with a twist ending that could only last MAYBE three pages! What a writing challenge! So, when I saw this collection at my library, I had to check it out, despite Mr. Ewing not being in this collection. You can tell a lot about a society by examining its sci-fi stories and this collection can tell you something about the state of mind in the UK, in the late 1970s-early 1980s – lotssssss of fear of nuclear war, for instance.
6. JUDGE DREDD THE COMPLETE CASE FILES 06: is also from the pages of 2000 AD. I am part of a Facebook group called The Comicbook Panel, and each month we have a Zoom discussion about a certain comicbook topic…this month was JUDGE DREDD, the most famous character from 2000 AD. Prior to this month, I was familiar with DREDD the character, but had not read any of his stories. Now though, I’ve chewed through this volume, and have a good sense of his life in Mega City One.
Dredd is a lawman in a dystopic American future. Imagine a city that stretches from Washington D.C. to New York City…this is Mega City One, and where Dredd lives and works. Volume 06 picks up after the significant Dredd storyline, “The Apocalypse War”, wherein a large percentage of the city is destroyed in a nuclear war with Russia. There is crime a’plenty, masterless robots, radiation-mutants, and plenty of satire and humor.
6a. Because I was reading JUDGE DREDD, I had to re-watch the two movie versions of DREDD that have been produced – in 1995, with Sylvester Stallone, and in 2012, with Karl Urban. The 1995 version looks good, but is not good. To me, it seems like it has a pretty weak script and tried to cram in every reference that it could. The 2012 version is a very good action movie, has a tight plot and script, and tells a pretty straight-forward story. If you can only watch one, watch DREDD.
This book, a detailed telling of the very history behind the creation of the iconic comic book character, Wonder Woman, …should have been a page-turner…but for me, it was more of a “turn a few pages every week or two.” The story of the man and women behind WW’s creation is unusual and intriguing and very “non-standard” in terms of relationships. And I read it, and it was neat…and the book should have been better. That’s all I got.
The past year or two have been … …difficult for me. Depression over a lack of a relationship, some missing motivation in business due to some lost clients, and a general sense of “meh” have dogged me. At a friend’s suggestion, I picked up this book, recognizing that the way things were going was NOT productive and I needed to do something about it.
Jen Sincero’s book, with a full title of “YOU are a BADASS: How to stop doubting your greatness and start living an awesome life” sounded like the sorta thing I needed.
Depending on your own acceptances of how the world and Universe work, and your own belief-structures, this could be a really excellent inspiring book, or it could turn you off quickly. As things are, my response was something in between. There was much I liked, a few quibbles I had with her approach to things, but overall, I really liked much of what she had to say.
If you are “stuck” and trying to create some momentum, some change, in your life, you may want to check this book out. I >did< find it helpful. Now, I gotta go erase my whiteboard and get some new ideas up on that thing.
This book, by David Lynch, the famous filmmaker, is a good one for most creative people, or for those trying to bring more creativity into their lives. The full title of the book is actually, “Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity”. The entire book is comprised of 1-3 page “meditations” by Lynch on his own creativity and how he “dives deep”, using meditation, to try and solve creative problems. Pretty interesting and an easy read.
Two books to briefly write up: Maya Angelou’s “Wouldn’t Take Nothing For My Journey Now” and the compendium of “Just Imagine: Stan Lee Creating the DC Universe”. Both were interesting reads as they were each authors that I was well-acquainted with as personalities, but hadn’t read much of their books before.
Maya Angelou, was a modern Renaissance woman – spending her 50+ year career writing (poetry, memoirs, and scripts for plays, movies, and TV), dancing, and being an activist. While her name is usually associated with “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings”, her first of seven memoirs, “Wouldn’t Take…” was written later in her years. It’s an easy read, filled with 2-4 page short essays on various thoughts and ideas she’s come up with over the years – relating her “wisdom of the ages.” It was a fun way to be introduced to her and to get a sense of who she was. What an amazing woman!
Stan Lee, is one of the biggest personalities associated with Modern American comicbooks. He shares credit for creating many of most famous Marvel comicbook characters in the late 1950s/1960s – Spider-man, the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk, and many others. It has been quite awhile since he was a regular writer on any book, and “Just Imagine…” was an interesting project that threw him back into the role of comicbook writer. Stan has >always< been associated with Marvel Comics, but for this project, he was writing DC Comics’ characters! Marvel and DC are consider “The Big Two” of comics, so to see Stan re-create iconic DC characters was pretty fun. What made it particularly interesting is that Stan was paired up, mostly, with modern artists, but his writing style still had his classic 1960s flavor. Made for some very interesting comicbook stories. For instance, Batman, we all know, is Bruce Wayne, a millionaire whose parents were murdered when he was a child. Stan’s Batman is a black man framed for a murder he didn’t commit, who serves his time, becomes an all-star wrestler, and eventually a night-time vigilante! So, I won’t say the writing was “great”, but it was pretty fun, and it was really neat to see what Stan’s scripting is like and how various artists interpreted his ideas. Good stuff!
If you’d like to read these books, too, check them out from the Milwaukee Public Library, or find them at Boswell Books – Maya, Stan!
Oh yeah, and over a year ago, I read a neat book by Nick Hornby, where he talked about a really great biography of Charles Dickens. I’ve gotten that book now, too, and added it to my read-pile! It’s a ways down the list, but I WILL get to it! 🙂
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