Western comics

Took a sudden notion to pick up Punisher Noir through Comixology. It was a decent enough read, but I don't feel transposing the action to the 1930s really added much beyond what you'd expect of any other Punisher story - only the finale seemed to have any real spark to it.
 
Finally got around to reading a bit of Richard Stark's Parker, which I picked up on sale last year sometime. It's a decent enough slab of early 60s crime fiction, but I think the art is trying a little too hard to have a quirky, period look (akin to advertising caricatures of the time) that I'm not entirely sure fits the subject matter. It also feels a bit discomfortingly mysogenistic in places - certainly more so than the film adaptation, Point Blank.

On the whole, I think I'd actually just rather watch Point Blank again instead.
 
Professor Irony said:
Having been playing Arkham City recently, I decided to finally pick up The Killing Joke through comixology. It was good and all, but I think the funniest part was when I realised I'd paid £8.99 for 50 pages...
Click to expand...
Ha! I paid £10 for the deluxe hard-cover edition thinking blimey this is cheap for a deluxe and then I saw how thin it was like was like "oh..." Still though great great book. I hope they animate it well I am kind of scared about it, DC's animated movies are usually 1hr10mins there isn't enough material here, we shall see I guess.
 
Due to being stuck in planes, trains, buses and motorway services for the past few days I've read through about the first 20 issues of Cerebus the Aardvark. It's proving quite the trip as well. Whether it's having to deal with send-ups of popular fantasy and comic characters, working for a ruler who is for all intents and purposes Groucho Marx or simply trying to find his place in a complicated and crazy world, Cerebus does it all with an (increasingly) world-weary bluntness, cynicism and calculation which is just a joy to read. He does and says a great many things other "heroes" don't but I've oh-so-often wished they would. I get the feeling watching him "mature" (or attempt to resist doing so) is going to be very interesting indeed. Watching Sim's art mature and improve significantly even over these few issues has already been a great ride, maybe there's hope for amateurs like me after all.

I'm aware of how controversial the comic became in later issues (and how much more controversial Sim still is as a person - Although he does at least have what I consider a very reasonable view on piracy which is what's enabling me to read his work) but whatever my final verdict on what's to come I expect at the very least to be thoroughly fascinated by Cerebus, and in many ways I already am.
 
Dead thread but hey, time to continue. I gotta put this **** somewhere.

Occasionally, I'll experience something and come out of it thinking "If I had died yesterday, I would never have had that experience" and I'm thankful that I lived to have it. Today I'm thankful for Cerebus the Aardvark, for making me feel angry, and sad, and a terrible person. But at least alive.

Almost 80 issues in, I can say this of Cerebus. He's a base individual. He values and expends his effort on all the wrong things. He treats people as disposable. He ruins anything he achieves for himself and his relationships with others time and time again. He has an ego roughly the size of a continent. But for the only major character who is not human, he still manages to be the most human of all. Yet as his wealth and status grow, I'm no longer rooting so much for Cerebus to succeed (those he comes up against are still invariably worse - If not more vile or corrupt then at least more stupid and undeserving) rather I'm screaming internally at the pages and wanting to smack some sense into the stubborn, oblivious Aardvark.

Then issue 75 happened, and Cerebus got his revenge by smashing me in the chest with a lump hammer. Despite having almost everything he thought he wanted (although not really knowing why he wanted any of it) Cerebus has a sudden moment of realisation of what he really wants and could have had long ago, but it's far, far too late. I've never seen those desperate and then resigned feelings of regret and lost opportunities summed up quite so poignantly as in the pages of this comic. The dawning realisation by Cerebus of what he's done, how permanent it is and how it didn't have to be this way are conveyed so gut-wrenchingly in Sim's layouts that I slammed the cover to my tablet shut and issued an audible "f*ck my life" to the heavens from the station platform I was sat on as I read it. Identifying to that extent with such an emotionally unstable borderline psychopath is probably not that healthy, but he certainly had his revenge for me thinking I was in any position to judge.

But would he have been happy? Can he ever be? Cerebus looks to be headed into darker territory from here...
 
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