Comic Books Comic Book • Page 464

I don't do the actual physical action of buying a comic book and reading it, no.

 

Oh, I don’t care about “physical” (even though that’s easily my preferred method). And I’m also definitely not a cop about reading Big 2 comics legally; that’s entirely up to you to navigate yourself.

But, what you described there does not sound like actually “reading comics to me,” lol.

 

Scans Daily posts excerpts from various comics. They limit the number of pages they post, so it's not like it's the whole comic, but is this relevant to the current conversation?

 

I did not know THAT was a thing lol.

So, they just scan a portion of each comic and post them online?

 

Pretty much. A poster makes a thread about a comic, posts what relevant pages they want, and it can only be a certain number of pages, and dependent on what's already been posted. Older comics are allowed more pages, of course.

Caught up on quite a few runs that way.

 

Example page, about the latest issue of Spider-Man.

https://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/10198757.html#cutid1

 

I generally don't believe in gatekeeping. I do, however, feel comfortable saying that, if you're just reading about what happened in various comics and looking at excerpts, you are not actually reading comics. That's like watching a movie trailer and a couple clips online, and reading about what happened in the movie, and saying you've seen the movie.

If you wanna use that as a tool to decide what you do and don't want to read (and/or buy), that makes sense. It's not that different from how I decided that this week's Hellfire Gala wasn't for me. But, if you don't actually then go and read full comics, then... idk, maybe the comics medium isn't actually what you're a fan of?

(Also, wow... not a Scans Daily post to a Zeb Wells Amazing Spider-Man comic. I cannot imagine reading what people on a site like that think about this run, which a lot of fandom is bizarrely incapable of being normal about, lol.)

 

i mean, i get it, one of the friends i'm doing the horror movie club with doesn't typically enjoy watching horror by himself but has a morbid fascination with reading horror movie synopses (which is why i left out part of the schedule to keep it a mystery hah)

 

Why does this matter?

 

Because it's super weird to spend time talking about a medium you're not actually reading? lol, come on.

 

it doesn't really. it's a distinction between being a reader of comics and a fan of comics. like, if you play games, you're a gamer, but if you're just watching twitch streams, well, you're still a fan of games. and i think that's fine! I saw a few tiktok recaps of Knight Terrors before I ever saw them at the comics shop. you're still welcome to talk about comics with whatever limited knowledge you may have. i may have a pretty decent collection but i'm no expert myself

 

It's super weird for you to care this much about this. Also, you clearly do believe in gatekeeping, because for some reason, you're like this.

 

Gatekeeping would be if I thought you had to read a lot of comics to be a fan, or had to know a lot of trivia or to have been doing it for a while, etc. I love new readers and recommendations and the like. And, I think there's value in using excerpts and the like to discern what to read, or to get groundwork for jumping into something that's building off a less appealing prior work.

But, if you do happen to, currently, do all your comics engagement through the means you've described. Then, you are, definitionally, not a comics reader (but fully capable of becoming one, or re-becoming one).

 

And again, I'm asking why this is important, because it doesn't seem relevant to what we were talking about before, and feels just very much like you wanting to pick a fight.

 

So I have a comic I've been loving!

By all means am I Chip Zdarsky stan. He can do no wrong in my eyes as a creator. I loved Failsafe and can't wait for The Bat-Man of Gotham to come out in HC in a few weeks.

The one that's really standing out to me, though, is Batman: The Knight. I was skeptical that a book about Batman without, er, Batman in it would be great--but it is! Filling in the gaps of Bruce's time away from Gotham to train is ingenious. One of those, "wow, I can't believe I didn't think of that" ideas. But what's really blowing me away is Carmine Di Giandomenico's art. I remember thinking it was cool when he was on The Flash, but I fell off that run. Years later, he's leveled up on this. Frankly the story so far is secondary to the art for me. That being said, it's a great story in and of itself.

Iirc, Zdarsky once said in an interview/tweet/Substack post how comic writers' goals should be to create evergreen stories so that their work can always be picked up off the shelves. It feels like everything in Batman by him (that I've read) seeks to be perennial.

 

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The Knight was great. It's kind of a little crazy that we don't have more stories from that time, since he traveled the world and trained for years, seems like there'd be all sorts of stories to tell in there. That was one of the reasons I really liked Tynions Ghostmaker arc.

Failsafe was perfect, what an arc to start with. The Bat-man of Gotham is also great and introduces a couple things that seem like they'll be paramount to his run. You'll have a great time with that.

 

Decided to get into Tynion. Ordered all 6 TPBs of Something is Killing the Children, both TPBs of it's spinoff, and both TPBs of The Nice House of the Lake.

Once a year I splurge and spend $100+ on comics at once, last year it was BKV.

 

That is an excellent haul. You made a good choice.

 

Not sure why this was deleted and reposted, dunno what wording changed, but it was this:

Hate to see Brandon Graham continue to be supported in the industry.

Splurging on a single writer is wild to me, as someone who prefers variety lol, but I imagine there’s also something cool about diving in like that.

Never read SIKTC, but Nice House fucking rules! You’re in for a treat there.

 

idk about splurge but if anything has the name Walden or Tamaki attached to it I'm more likely to buy it

 

Finally got up to volume 10 of Saga. I need it to be October so I can read 11 right now.