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 1-volume comics. Thanks again, everyone! Now I'd like to recap with a list of my current favorites before moving on to the new comments:

• Solanin by Asano Inio
• I Die at Midnight by Kyle Baker
• Orange by Benjamin
• Kwaïdan by Jung and Jee-Yun
• Incognegro written by Mat Johnson and drawn by Warren Pleece
• Lost Girl by N. Kanan
• 2 Sisters : A Super-Spy Graphic Novel by Matt Kindt
• Fax from Sarajevo : A Story of Survival by Joe Kubert
• Ultra : Seven Days by the Luna Brothers
• Exit Wounds by Rutu Modan
• Umbra written by Murphy and drawn by Mike Hawthorne
• Love Song by Nishi Keiko
• Domu : A Child's Dream by Otomo Katsuhiro
• Too Long by Park Hee Jung
• Streak of Chalk by M. Prado
• Total Whiteout written by Greg Rucka and drawn by Steve Lieber
• Nothing but Loving You by Sakurazawa Erica
• Chicken with Plums by Marjane Satrapi
• Maus : A Survivor's Tale by Art Spiegelman
• Déogratias : A Tale of Rwanda by J.P. Stassen
• Walking Man by Taniguchi Jiro
• Pride of Baghdad written by Brian K. Vaughan and drawn by Niko Henrichon
• 9 Faces of Love by Wann
• Déjà-Vu : Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter written by Youn In-Wan and drawn by several people

Johnny Utah, thanks for recommending The One Trick Rip Off! It reminded me more of 100% than Heavy Liquid apart from all the telepathy. The Vim/Tubby love story part is sad and sweet. The heist gone wrong in a dystopian future Los Angeles was unpredictable, and the story moving to the desert was a nice contrasting change of scenery.

Capntightpants, thanks for recommending Siglo! Siglo : Passion is a really good mix of variations on the theme, from full-color panels with speech bubbles to monochromatic color visuals, illustrations alongside poetry and prose, and paint/photo collage. The 12 stories themselves ranging from romance to family to other passions and from realism to science fiction and fantasy was also very cool. Out of these, my favorites were "1913 Manila," "1944 Palawan," "1988 Makati," and "2222 Philippines."

The New York Four, written by Brian Wood and drawn by Ryan Kelly, is one more from the Minx imprint recommended in another thread and the same team who made Local. It's part bittersweet bildungsroman about a neurotypical NYU freshwoman learning to make friends despite being raised to be autistic savant, and part tour guide to NYC (check out Wood's notes).

Wimbledon Green : The Greatest Comic Book Collector in the World by Seth is good too. It reminds me of It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken with the comic-about-comics story (this time about a collector instead of an artist) and with more color (still only 3 colors per page, though). This book also has a pretty retro feel even though it's set in the present day, so that's another nice change of pace.

Meanwhile...

Billi 99 written by Sarah E. Byam and drawn by Tim Sale is a well-done near-future dystopian story. Byam twists the usual amoral megacorps vs. desperate outcasts premise by putting the conflict in the boardrooms (execs vs. execs) as much as in the barrios. The main character is also a superhero of sorts, coping with how she inherited a legacy role from her father. It's from 1991 so it might be set in what Byam thought now could be like, and that's another interesting layer of meaning.

Devil in the Water by Hatsu Akiko is a collection of suspenseful ghost, horror, and and slice-of-life stories. The drawings are way less "cartoony" than the manga popular these days, so if that bugs you this is a good alternative. I also like the book's moodiness and the way the supernatural parts aren't the horrific ones.

Dragonslippers : This Is What an Abusive Relationship Looks Like by Rosalind B. Penfold is autobiographical, and goes from when Roz first met Brian to when she escaped. One of Penfold's points is that someone abused in a relationship didn't always see it coming*. However, when I read the happy beginning scenes I already looked for trouble before Brian got pushy, since the subtitle mentions abuse. Hmm.

The Eternal Smile by Gene Luen Yang and by Derek Kirk Kim is a full-color set of 3 poignant stories about escapism. "Duncan's Kingdom" is a medieval-style fantasy in which the princess herself promises her hand in marriage to whoever does a certain heroic deed and then things get surreal. With frogs. "Gran'pa Greenbax" seems modeled after old-school Gold Key Tv spinoff comics, until the show's director steps in. "Urgent Request" has an unappreciated call center worker who responds to a 419 emailer, and then tracks him down...

The Gentleman and the Lady by Tohno Kazumi is an interesting mix of short stories, from slice-of-life to magic realism to science fiction. Some of the translation is messed up, though ("I feel the way Noburo must have felt after inventing dynamite..."? Was the translator afraid of otaku no Japan complaining about spelling his name "Nobel" not being "authentic" enough?).

The Golden Vine, written by Jai Sen and drawn by Mizu Seijuro, Asayuki Umeka, and Yotsumoto Shino, is an alternate history tale about Alexander the Great and set in 297 b.C. What if he went native instead of sacking Persepolis? There's some good extrapolation here, but then things get contrived. Meanwhile, it's in color instead of B&W, with all the gold parts in metallic ink. Be careful - the copy I read is a library book from 2003 and some of that ink had already worn off.

Pistolwhip by Matt Kindt and Jason Hall is a neat Jazz Age noir involving a radio serial writer, a femme fatale, a hotel busboy, and a singer. The first chapter seems pretty straightforward but then the next chapters are all flashbacks filling in what really happened. To say more might be a spoiler.

Pixu : The Mark of Evil by Gabriel Bá, Becky Cloonan, Vasilis Lolos, and Fábio Moon is a very atmospheric suspense story about a haunted apartment building and 5 tenants who batten down the hatches...against each other. After I finished reading this, the neighbor-inflicted stains on and leaks in my ceiling IRL didn't seem so bad anymore.

Slow Storm by Danica Novgorodoff is a magic-realist slice-of-life story about firefighter Ursa and stableman Rafi in rural Kentucky during tornado season, while she fights fires and harassment at work and he has Dali-like visions and fears la migra. Both the plot and the watercolors are moody and subtle. The visuals also remind me a bit of Exit Wounds.

Solanin by Asano Inio is a good nouvelle manga. It focuses on two new college grads, live-in boyfriend and girlfriend Natuo and Meiko, and their friends while she jobhunts and hates being an office lady and he starts a rock band and illustrates for a day job. Asano also highlights the grieving process, but it would be a spoiler to say how...

Déjà-Vu : Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, Jamilti and Other Stories, Mijeong, Orange, and Tangents are also good and I'll cover them in the manhwa, BD, etc. thread.


* The ones who don't see it coming are no stupider than the ones who do! It's just that potential abuse is probably less obvious to a a 35-year-old asked out on a romantic first date than to a 10-year-old bride or groom forced into a wedding.

Wow, how awesome that you sought out the book! Sorry I didn't comment on this earlier, as I just graze over the forums with my oh-so-busy-I'm-so popular time (/sarcasm). But it's really great that you gave that a shot. I'm still working on mine, actually, and I'll give you an update when it's done (I grabbed a ton of comics at this year's Comic Con, so I have a lot work through). There was a story, I remember that was done mostly in Filipino (the language formerly known as Tagalog). It was pretty deep (older, less used words) language, so I had trouble understanding it myself. I could get it translated for you if you hadn't done it already yourself.

It's harder to find and may be more expensive, but since Siglo is a series and you enjoyed Passion, you might wanna try looking for Siglo: Freedom as well. And alert me when you find a reasonably priced one, because I had trouble finding it while I was in the Philippines myself.

Another recommendation that could be also placed in the "manhwa" thread is Mythology Class by Arnold Arre. If you can find it anywhere, it's a great read. It's about students called upon to capture escaped creatures of Filipino mythology. Since I'm an avid fan of mythologies from all cultures, this book really hit the right spot.

Crecy by warren Ellis is a good read

Thanks! Also, you deserve the credit for actually seeking it out and letting me know it was at PullboxOnline.

Hold it, I was a week late getting to the new forum in the first place because I didn't even check my Yahoo email often enough and you're apologizing to me for taking less time than that to merely respond to 1 post?

That one was "1935 Batangas."

Thanks for the kind offer!

I didn't translate and just tried to get the gist of it from the visual context and the English dialogue context. Now I realize that I should have checked to see if InterTran was back up (it was like WorldLingo but with even more languages). Lemme go check now...InterTran is up and some languages from last time like Chinese are missing but Filipino's back...and it works!

...well, sort of. Clicking the "Translate!" button did something this time, which is better than last time I checked. It translated "Sigaw na bumasag sa aming kathaimikan taong nagdala ng salot sa aming daigdig." to "Yell na read toward ours kathaimikan year nagdala of epidemic toward ours universe.", and "Maging ang kabataan na pag-asa namin." to "Become the young na pag asa yam." Yam?

Anyway, thanks for reminding me!

Would the PullBox Online e-version count?

Yeah! I thought the way Ellis broke the fourth wall this time was pretty original and educational.

Daniel Morales, thanks for recommending Filthy Rich in this thread! It reminded me a lot of 100 Bullets apart from being B&W and seemingly set anywhere from the 1960s to today. The who's-really-scheming-what plot twists were surprising. It was also interesting to see the new intrigue in Junk's life come from his car sales day job instead of his pro football past.

Adam M, thanks for recommending Shockrockets in this other thread!

I watched Inspector Gadget, Jem, etc. instead in the 1980s and I still enjoyed this book. The storytelling is pretty mature (not just action but family, romance, politics, etc. too) and the characterization is realistic. My only nitpick was with energy somehow still being "solar," and not in the green marketing sense, after stored in injectable form. As for the ending, I'd like to read the sequel - does one exist?

Meanwhile...

Frankenstein's Womb, written by Warren Ellis and drawn by Marek Oleksicki, is as different from Ellis's other one-shot books as they are different from each other. This one starts off with Mary Wollestonecraft Godwin and her fiancé Percy Bysshe Shelley on the way to the vacation where she came up with the idea for Frankenstein IRL, and then a tour guide takes her from watching her own birth to the Petronas towers to more...

I, Paparazzi is definitely a change of pace - this one was written by Pat McGreal, photographed by Stephen John Philips, and digitally collaged by Steven Parke. It's dimly-lit noir about a papparazzo who's stalking as usual one day and digs up more dirt than he can deal with, and then veers into historical fiction and horror...

"The Leviathan" by Wesley Allsbrook is a very short and very moody single issue up at Tor. I like the combo of an indie drawing style, color-coded scenes, and a marine research sub instead of a hipster scene.

Mourning of Autumn Rain by Hatsu Akiko is another moody short story collection a la Devil in the Water. In addition, "Diva's Cat" reminded me of Tramps Like Us. "Burial of Snow" was very creepy, and then "Sleeping Flower" was horrific, so I'd count the book in the horror genre this time.

Nebuli by Vasilis Lolos and Becky Cloonan is about the length of an album - twice as long as a usual floppy, shorter than a typical graphic novel, etc. It's a series of B&W slice-of-life vignettes about a couple from Nebulon 7 exploring the universe. Each one is set on a different planet and ends with a few tour-guide style notes too. It's really sweet without being cloying.

Rapunzel's Revenge, written by Shannon and Dean Hale and drawn by Nathan Hale, moves the fairy tale to the Wild West and then features Rapunzel's outlaw life after she rappels herself out of the tower. She teams up with the guy who has the goose who lays the golden eggs, so it reminded me just a bit of Fables too (but it's better!).

War-Fix, written by David Axe and drawn by Steven Olexa, is a B & W & slate-blue slice of life about a reporter who demands that his boss send him to Iraq because he's a "war junkie" who wants a better view than watching TV provides. The voyeurism is pretty haunting, and feels like an inverse of DMZ.

A.L.I.E.E.E.N., Burma Chronicles, Garage Band, and Glacial Period are also good and I'll cover them in the manhwa, BD, etc. thread.

Sadly, no. It was supposedly an ongoing, but poor sales put an end to any chance of a sequel, much like Busiek's other non-superhero work at the time, Arrowsmith. The comics-buying public? I hate them.

ILEscudero, thanks for recommending Samurai Executioner. Vol. 1 is an interesting period piece, and I didn't find it naïve at all. I like the drawing style - it's well-done and a good change of pace. The trouble is, the ratio of romanji to English was higher than I'm used to even for manga and there often wasn't enough translated stuff between the transliterated stuff for me to figure out much more from context than which words meant some rank, which meant some move, etc. (apart from some bits like the one-night stand and the metallurgy tangent).

Clubbing, written by Andi Watson and drawn by Josh Howard, is in the Minx imprint that was also recommended back on Ships & Giggles 1.0. The heroine's been "exiled" to her grandparents' place in the countryside by her parents after getting busted for using a fake ID. I like the way the culture clash isn't polarized between Lottie the urban Goth dance clubber and her grandparents' country club set but also includes the local loner, the farmer teens who challege her Goth cred with their livestock-bloody hands, etc. Then there's a murder mystery, and things escalate into way more twists than I expected.

In addition...

Flower and Fade by Jesse Lonergan is a slice of life about Kyle, who's new to his city and job, and his drifting into a relationship with his next-door neighbor Erika. It beings with a nihilistic stream of consciousness and then settles down while Kyle and Erika settle in several ways...

From the Ashes by Bob Fingerman is a post-apocalyptic love story and "speculative memoir" in which Bob imagines what he and his wife Michele would do after a nuclear holocaust. The visuals are good, with scenes brown & white, blue & white, and full color. Bob's writing is good and kinda deadpan too. It's a graphic novel, but released as a miniseries first because IDW says so.

Moving Pictures by Kathryn & Stuart Immonen is a B&W story of a young woman in WWII Europe with alternating present and flashback scenes, so I'd recommend it to anyone who likes 2 Sisters : A Super-Spy Graphic Novel. This time she's Canadian and a curator in France facing looters from the German army. It's smaller-scale than 2 Sisters, not spanning centuries and continents, but still interesting and horrifying in its own right.

Noir : A Collection of Crime Comics, edited by Diana Schutz, has 13 stories, many shades of gray, and extra genres too. "Blood on My Hands" is suburban horror, "The New Me" is SF, and "Fracture" would be alternate history if its points of departure weren't all tied up in the same scene. Meanwhile, "The Last Hit" was more modern than I expected and "Tru$tworthy" is prose with illustrations instead of comics. However, it's not as standalone as I expected since it has Stray Bullets, Mister X, Kane, and Criminal episodes.

From Wonderland with Love and How to Love are also good, and I'll cover them in the BD, manhwa, etc..

Red by Warren Ellis

Punisher: The Cell by Garth Ennis

Thanks for the reminders, especially since the previous two forums this thread ran in are now offline so earlier recommendations (like the last time you suggested these two) aren't available anymore.

However, I kept a text file list of the titles recommended in those threads, and proofread my mini-reviewey responses in the file before posting them. Do you think it would be useful or overkill to post that info here again?

I was unaware you kept such thorough documentation of your threads. I don't see the harm in adding it. I just really like my two suggestions because I feel like they are truly short stories.