Food and Comics and Comics and Food

brianwood:

You may not have spied this post from Ryan Kelly, but in it he mentions a web comic he is starting called Cocotte.  Which implies food.  And I know for a long time now Ryan’s wanted to do a culinary comic series.  Me too.  But I am not writing Cocotte.

I wish him luck and good fortune.  My own culinary series, called STARVE, is something of a casualty.  Created for Vertigo almost two years ago, it hit too many of the same notes as that Anthony Bourdain book they got going on, and so it was ultimately not approved.  Another publisher, an indie one, also passed for similar reasons.  I guess there is a real glut of food comics coming.  STARVE now sits in limbo.  It may, probably, be heavily modified to be about water scarcity and the politics of food and serve as a sequel to THE MASSIVE.  If THE MASSIVE is a success, that is.

I mourn STARVE.  It was awesome.  It was funny, and really OCD with detail of food prep.  I did a lot of research, like Northlanders-level research.  But that’s the way it goes sometimes and repurposing is all you can do.

Although these days I think about writing STARVE as it was intended, but as a tv pilot.  My agent thinks its an insane concept for a story, though.  Maybe she’s right.

Random end of the year thoughts.  Go read Ryan’s post, its full of info.

I want to see Starve in what ever way possible. A comic would be great as I can sort of already visualise how the panels would work with the food but a tv-show? Damn, I’d watch it. Lots of ideas that sounds insane has worked in tv.

It’s no surprise that I like Ryan’s art — some days I see far too much influence from him in my own things even — so I can’t wait for Cocotte.

Best news! Cinebook in the UK is reprinting and — I hope — translate what those missing since before of Valerian and Laureline by Mézières and Christin. So far they’ve issued the first two and the third comes next year so it’ll be a while before I need to run and buy. (Got the first ones in Swedish already and I can’t understand a word of French so translated into English might be my only option nowadays.)

The lines and colours and the stories? I love. Don’t be scared, French comics are good for you.

I had to resist the impulse to do number one right now. That would have ruined the whole countdown and broken some of the rules which are there for… some reason. I’m toughening it out and do it as one should. Despite that rules can be broken — and I already know I’ll cheat a bit soon anyway.

Top superheroes #3: Starman. 

James Robinson’s remake that is, where he took a character from the 40s and shifted the focus to his antiques-dealing son Jack — who’s forced to pick up the title when his brother is murdered and he barely escapes. It’s very much about trying to escape an inheritance that part of you want, just for the weirdness it brings. The first collected volume has the very fitting name Sins of the Fathers.

Top superheroes #4: Toybox.

Officer Toybox from Top 10. She’s smart, friendly, fearless and she examines crime-scenes with toys. Sadly no legos though, but that might be a licensing thing.

snickr replied to your post: Some of these are pretty hard since I’m more of a…

But you can love heroes conceptually, regardless of writer/artist, yes? Some people like the rich-angry-vengeful & others like the dreamy-nice-death-reaper & some like the ultra-violent-blue-collar. What characters do you like the idea of?

I tend to gravitate towards the human and broken and how that works with their idealism. Chamber, who blew off his torso and lower parts of his face when his power emerged and that put adamper on his social skills. Or when it’s blue-collar comics, it doesn’t get more blue-collar than Hellboy. He’s like a hero made from plumbers.

Or Captain America if we’re talking about high ideals — unlike superman he jumps in front of bullets not because it won’t hurt him but because it’s what a hero do.

And then we have when they quickly twisted Deadpool from an assassin into something more interesting by making him into a very mad man who can break the fourth wall. The meta of that gets to me as I love those things.

But to me, a high concept of powers and origin doesn’t speak to me alone. Sadly. Example. Iron Fist. Originally very boring actually, very much a creation sprung from watching karate movies of the seventies. Despite that the 2006-2009 series The Immortal Iron Fist was amazing. Good storytelling can make anything great, just as bad can sink it.

This is the problem: what I like don’t really come out of the base concept. It’s the details. And this means I probably skim over and ignore things that’s good due to them sounding stupid. (Thank God I never ignored Buffy because of the hideous movie.)

Some of these are pretty hard since I’m more of a writer/artist follower than specific characters. So many of these are based on specific runs, and I think this is based on longest of these. (Number two though covers more comics and creators as a whole though because that’s one that’s not tied as much to fixed points in time.)

Top superheroes #5: Daredevil. 

Do not mention the films — they’re rubbish. However, get the hardcovers written by Bendis and Brubaker, they’re well worth the price. 

I did a list and there were quite a lot of names but I’ll draw the top six plus three can’t be on the list because of X.

Favourite Superheroes #6: Black Widow.

Specifically when written by Greg Rucka or Richard Morgan or Ed Brubaker. Especially Rucka, he know how to do good spy stuff (for fuck sake, read Queen & Country!). And from the image above it should be quite clear that drawing superheroes is not my forté.

@faitherinhicks:

One of the reasons I make my own superhero comics:The Big Sexy Problem w/ Superheroines & Their “Liberated Sexuality” http://aol.it/nRfCgX

Dear lord, it’s 90s superhero comics all over again. I think I’ll stick with non-superhero things from DC and read Faith Erin Hicks’ Superhero Girl instead.

The way I see it, I might be the best or worst kind of comic book reader depending on how you see it. You see, I don’t stick with a comic because of character alone. I read and get excitet depending on who writes and/or draws. Do a creative team swap and I might leave to read something else or read a comic I’m normally very indifferent to.

— We’re rebooting Superman!
— Meh, he’s kind of boring. No, that’s a lie, he’s all boring.
— Grant Morrison’s writing! 
— Fuck yeah! 

This explains why it took me ten minutes to realise that the blog DC Women Kicking Ass was about the characters and not the people working there. I was pretty sad by that.

Grant Morrison in Rolling Stone:

You’re about to relaunch Action Comics, DC Comics’ longest-running title. Will your revamp of Superman be as major as John Byrne’s back in 1986?

Yeah, possibly. Probably as much, although he changed things quite considerably. I’m not using the costumes, just jeans and t-shirt, a Bruce Springsteen Superman. The original champion of the repressed Superman, the socialism and stuff, I wanted a bit of that.

And like that, Grant Morrison once again managed to get me interested in the most boring superhero.