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Talking about comics (mostly)
Mar. 13th, 2021 06:02 pmI know people who meet friends over Zoom for a glass of wine and a chat: I am not one of them. If we can't meet in person, I'm happy to do one-to-one conversation over the phone. But Zooming a group conversation is different. Being able to attend the Graphic Novels Reading Group by Zoom has been a lifeline; we can even show each other the comics we are talking about (admittedly, my eyesight is bad enough that I get only the most general idea of what I am being shown, but it's better than nothing - and I hope others get more benefit from anything I might show them). Tuesday's session was a particularly good one, with interesting conversation about comics, but also - we are notoriously liable to go off topic - not about comics.
We are currently reading Richard Thompson's Cul de Sac. We have been looking at webcomics, and doing our best to have serious discussions about readability, and the potential of the unlimited page, and some of the strips have been quite fun. But Cul de Sac, which is not strictly a webcomic but an archived newpaper strip, is just so good: why have I never come across it before? Nothing revolutionary about the premise: scenes from family life, but beautifully done, and consistently funny. The centre of attention (because she demands to be) is pre-schooler Alice, but how could any bunch of comics geeks resist older brother Petey, who would happily spend his entire life lying on his bed reading his collection of 'Little Neuro' comics? Parents, classmates, teachers all get their moment in the spotlight, but more irresistible even than these star turns is the warmth of the relationships between them.
( Then we went off-topic for a bit... )
S. dragged us back to comics by flourishing his latest purchase: Forbidden Planet are offering Milligan and Fegredo's Girl at a very reasonable price. I was surprised, because I had remembered him as being rather dismissive of it when I contributed it to our discussion of Vertigo titles (funny: it doesn't show up in my post on the subject). But no, he was positive - with reservations - about it, and so was the other person who had read it, and it was a pleasure to share that enthusiasm - so much so, in fact, that here is what I wrote about Girl when it was new (long, long ago, and with page design that is of its time - please make allowances).
We are currently reading Richard Thompson's Cul de Sac. We have been looking at webcomics, and doing our best to have serious discussions about readability, and the potential of the unlimited page, and some of the strips have been quite fun. But Cul de Sac, which is not strictly a webcomic but an archived newpaper strip, is just so good: why have I never come across it before? Nothing revolutionary about the premise: scenes from family life, but beautifully done, and consistently funny. The centre of attention (because she demands to be) is pre-schooler Alice, but how could any bunch of comics geeks resist older brother Petey, who would happily spend his entire life lying on his bed reading his collection of 'Little Neuro' comics? Parents, classmates, teachers all get their moment in the spotlight, but more irresistible even than these star turns is the warmth of the relationships between them.
( Then we went off-topic for a bit... )
S. dragged us back to comics by flourishing his latest purchase: Forbidden Planet are offering Milligan and Fegredo's Girl at a very reasonable price. I was surprised, because I had remembered him as being rather dismissive of it when I contributed it to our discussion of Vertigo titles (funny: it doesn't show up in my post on the subject). But no, he was positive - with reservations - about it, and so was the other person who had read it, and it was a pleasure to share that enthusiasm - so much so, in fact, that here is what I wrote about Girl when it was new (long, long ago, and with page design that is of its time - please make allowances).
