While Ships & Giggles was down, I caught up with some other recommendations from the Cabal and S&G versions of the thread I started in search of good comics not originally in English or Japanese. Thanks again, everyone! Now I'd like to recap with a list of my current faves before moving on to the new comments:

• Aya and Aya of Yop City [French] written by Marguerite Abouet and drawn by Clément Oubreri
• Sky Doll [Italian] vol. 1-3 by Alessandro Barbucci and Barbara Canepa
• Orange [Chinese] by Benjamin
• The Keepers of the Maser [French] vol. 1-7 by Massimiliano Frezzato
• Kwaïdan [French] by Jung and Jee-Yun
• Real Lies [Korean] vol. 1 by Lee Si Young
• Exit Wounds [Hebrew] by Rutu Modan
• Wake [French] vol. 1-7 written by Jean-David Morvan and drawn by Philippe Buchet
• Too Long [Korean] by Park Hee Jung
• Streak of Chalk [Spanish] by M. Prado
• Chicken with Plums [French] by Marjane Satrapi
• Déogratias : A Tale of Rwanda [French] by J.P. Stassen
• Chicanos [Spanish] vol. 1-2 written by Carlos Trillo and drawn by Eduardo Risso
• Forest of Gray City [Korean] vol. 1-2 by Uhm JungHyum
• 9 Faces of Love [Korean] by Wann
• Déjà-Vu : Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter [Korean] written by Youn In-Wan and drawn by several people

ILEscudero, thanks again for recommending The Scorpion! Vol. 1, "The Devil's Mark," and Vol. 2, "The Devil in the Vatican," are finally out in English. The opening scene of the series reminded me of 100 Bullets and Pax Romana a bit, and then the series gets even better. It was also neat to see the Pope be so mellow himself in contrast to Trebaldi, Majai's gradually switching sides, the spoiler reunion before the last minute, and the plot thickening with the flashbacks in vol. 2.

Meanwhile...

Déjà-Vu : Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter written by Youn In-Wan, is a manhwa collection of 4 love stories each with a different artist so it's even more of a mix than usual. I'd especially recommend it for historical fiction and SF/fantasy fans, since all 4 stories star the same couple but set their incarnations in 673 Korea, 1945 Japan, 1995 San Francisco, and the 23rd century. The book also includes a couple of unrelated stories, "Utility" and "The Ocean."

Forest of Gray City vol. 2 is the second half of this manhwa series. It's got a calmer pace than most comics I'm used to, which works well. Without spoiling anything, let's just say the landlady-tenant tension is now landlady-tenant-houseguest tension. It stays below the surface but changes and gets resolved without people exploding at each other or confusing the reader.

I Am Legion : The Dancing Faun #1-4, written by Fabien Nury and drawn by John Cassaday, are in a 6-part mystery and horror BD miniseries set in 1942-3 in England and Romania. At the beginning it hints at vampires or zombies or something in addition to the psychic girl and the Nazis using her, but this gradual unveiling of what's going on builds the suspense...

Jamilti and Other Stories by Rutu Modan is a collection of her pre-Exit Wounds short stories. Most are in full color but "Bygone" is B & W & very, very indie-style pencil. The stories are slice-of-life with a touch of the surreal in the everyday, and often a sharp twist too. BTW, even though Hebrew is written right-to-left like Japanese is, the art got flipped here.

Lady S. vol. 1, "Here's to Suzie!," written by J. Van Hamme and drawn by Philippe Aymond, starts another interesting BD series. This time it's set during and after the Cold War. The story focuses on the adoptive daughter of an American ambassador, her double life as a spy, and her past in Estonia and France coming back to haunt them.

Byun Byung-Jun's Mijeong is a good short story collection. The B&W drawing style is much more realistic than most manhwa I've seen, and one of the stories is painted in color instead. Some of the stories are part slice-of-life, part looking at what happens to people when others have no ethical backbone. Another reminded me of Death Note a bit, but is surrealist with no supernatural characters. One more is sweet and magic realism.

Orange is a full-color manhua written, drawn, and painted by Benjamin. It's a slice-of-life piece about an honor student who stays out all night, disappointed with her friends and boyfriends, and scared but intrigued by an older neighbor. The plot revolves around teen ennui, adult complacency, and some startling role reversal. The colors are much more vivid than in any other painted comic I've seen and the book includes some art pages after the story itself.

The Other Side of the Mirror vol. 1-2 is a B&W manhua both drawn by Jo Chen and written by her in 1999 in Chinese. It's about Lou and Sunny who'd left South Carolina to seek their fortunes, struggle in NYC (gambling and turning tricks for a living), meet, and try starting over in a small town. Vol. 1 actually works as a stand-alone too - its ending wraps up enough and then there's the unrelated story "99 Roses" which is also good. That's handy since the continuation in vol. 2 is more cliché and takes up only half the book (the rest are the unrelated and very good "Peggy" and "Funeral Procession of the Stars").

Talking About..., complete in 3 volumes, by Wann would be josei if it wasn't a B&W&blue&red manhwa instead of manga (what is Korean for "josei," anyway?). It's about 3 women and their love lives. Sarah's an event planner and 30-year-old frustrated virgin, her friend Gang-e's a manhwaga whose younger apprentice/fanboy wants her, and their neighbor Amber's a businesswoman who's a player but struggles to make friends. Vol. 2 gets a bit meta when Wann writes herself in too.

Tangents by M. Prado is a mostly-sepia-toned collection of slice-of-life stories about lovers being connected and estranged from each other at the same time. The couples are all pretty different and the moodiness varies, though. Meanwhile, the nudity's not gratuitous and gets full-frontal on occasion for both sexes.

Also, this time I'd like to mention 3 of the Soleil series Marvel's releasing lately. All of these are full-color spaceships-and-aliens science fiction, and they're pretty different from each other.

Sky Doll vol. 1-3, by Alessandro Barbucci and Barbara Canepa, stars a gynoid at the mercy of a wind-up key who escapes her owner who runs a starship-wash, gets caught between rival non-Catholic non-Earthling Popes and between missionaries and a New-Agey hippie planet, finds herself, and finds out what's behind the scenes. This was also released in Heavy Metal's Summer 2006 issue. There's more to come but vol. 4 isn't even out in Italian yet.

Scourge of the Gods, vol. 1-4 (Scourge of the Gods vol. 1-3 and Scourge of the Gods : The Fall vol. 1 according to Marvel), written by Valérie Mangin and drawn by Aleksa Gajić, is kinda retro. The people on the planets at war style themselves after the Huns and Romans (but still use machine guns). Then things get weird - a new Attila planning a coup d'etat, Huns worshipping the Roman Flavia after she survives a mass sacrifice, spies out for FTL navigation tech, Luddites wanting to stick with lightspeed travel, etc.

Ythaq vol. 1-6 (Ythaq : The Forsaken World vol. 1-3 and Ythaq : No Escape vol. 1-3 according to Marvel), written by Christophe Arleston and drawn by Adrien Floch, is about a cruise (star)ship officer, technician, and passenger who crash-land on an uncharted planet. They join forces with a nomadic scholar, run away and join a circus, and more. It's kind of fantasy-flavored science fiction this time since the planet's societies look medievalish...until the castaways scratch the surface and the plot thickens. Their unrequited love triangle (with all 3 sides!) is another neat twist.

Siglo : Passion is also good and I'll cover it in the short comics thread since it was originally in English.

Read "La quête de l'oiseau du temps" (The Quest for the Time Bird). It's wonderful.

Thanks for the rec! I checked, and Roxana and the Quest for the Time-Bird vol. 1, "Ramor's Conch," is available in English.

You're welcome!
It's weird that "The Devil in the Vatican" is volume 4 here. Maybe the English edition contains two or three European volumes. It really is an amazing adventures comic.

By the way, in European comics they usually write the name of the artist before the name of the writer. It's kind of a logical decission if you come to think about that, as the work of the artist (who pencils, inks and colors every page) is way harder than the writer's.

An example, the cover of Le Scorpion volume 8:

Yeah, the English volumes each have 2 of the French volumes. Maybe someone at Cinebook thinks longer books will sell better in the Anglosphere?

That's cool.

Is it, though? Not to belittle an artist's efforts, but is the writer's part in the production of a comic book really all that much easier? By that logic, the Asterix volumes Uderzo produced after Goscinny passed away should be equally good, if not better than the earlier episodes. But compared to the subtle wit of the previous adventures, most of Uderzo's solo volumes suck harder than a 20$ hooker in a swinger club.

What's the best work Dave Gibbons ever did? David Lloyd? Chris Sprouse? All of them are absolutely brilliant masters of their craft, and yet Alan Moore is the common link between Watchmen, V for Vendetta and Tom Strong. That shouldn't be the case if writing is that easy.

I know it is probably insolent to say this on an artist studio's message board, but with the right amount of training (which is what most are too lazy to get), the right photo reference (which most don't even bother to take), the right amount of passion they put into a page (which clearly, not even all professional artists in the industry today can muster up) and the right inkers and colorists (who have to get every single one of these steps right as well), pretty much everybody could be a professional and successful comic book artist. But writing the damn thing? That is fucking hard.

Considerations about whose work is more important (writer's or artist's) is like trying to decide whose role is more important when having a baby, the mother's or the father's. But the procees is clearly harder for the mother than the father. That's just what I meant. A writer can write many scripts in a year, but in that same time an artist can only pencil, ink and color one volume. So yeah, I really think the artist's work may not be more important than the writer's, but it really is harder. Or, if you want to put it that way, it's more time-consuming.




First of all, BD artists don't have inkers or colorists to rely on. They do all the work.
And second, you also mentioned training, photo reference and passion as a way everybody can turn into a good artist. But just as not everybody can write a great script (which, by the way, also needs training, passion and some other stuff I won't judge now), nobody has the skills to walk that how-to-become-an-artist path you described. Don't you think writers would love to be able to draw their own stories? Sure they would! Ah, but the majority of them can't or won't. What do you think is the reason for that?
Again, I'm not saying the art is more important than the script (I myself would usually buy a bad-artist-good-writer comic before a good-artist-bad-writer one) but I have no doubt the work of the artist is funcking harder.

More time-consuming? Definitely, no doubt about that. But I still wouldn't say that it's harder. Hmm... Maybe we should move this discussion to a new thread?

Okay.

The skill? Or the patience? Hmm... I smell a bet coming. But maybe we should really move this to a new thread.

Now how do we get back to the original topic? Uhm... Has anyone else read the Bird of Time?

Everybody? I mean, Hellen Keller wrote some books and a whole bunch of articles. OTOH I bet people today in situations like hers wouldn't be successful as professional comic book visual artists (I say "visual artists" instead of just "artists" here because writing literature is an art too!).

Now I have the mental image of a straight couple trying to have a baby by brainstorming to help the man get over a sperm-making block, a la the block artists IRL sometimes have when facing a blank page.

Hmm...how would history have happened differently if making sperm and/or eggs took conscious effort?

And then you got some of the mangaka (and maybe some of the manhwaga?), who write their stories, draw the stuff in the foreground, and delegate the background details to their assistants.


Maybe, and in the meantime I learned more about how the creation of some of the comics I'm looking for here tends to differ from the creation of the comics I'm more accustomed to. Interesting stuff!

If you can imagine a mix between Tintin and James Bond, and like it, you may also like LARGO WINCH.