Tops and Bottoms 14/2/2024

Evening.

Little later than usual. Hope you’re having a romantic night in/out with your respective loved/liked/hated partner/person/stranger?

Never go in dry.

It’s been a pretty busy week as usual. I met up with some buddies in Chinatown last night and fitted a quick visit in at Gosh.

Today I received the first batch of copies of the collected Cockney Kung- Fu by myself and Nick Prolix on art and lettering. This is a single comic that collects the four main parts that ran in the Awesome Comics Anthology 1-4 back in 2018. Along with a one-pager that people may not have seen and the brilliant cover featuring Soho Red and Sid James by Marvel storyboard artist Ed Traquino.

I’m going to be checking it over and then selling it through the Big Cartel. All profits after payment to the artist/print costs will be going straight to the Mental Health charity MIND. Nick absolutely killed on the art on this series and he was an absolute pleasure to work with. (Design on this issue is by Paul Sausage our new signing over at Tribute Press).

I’ll get to it quickly as I’m sure we all have ‘business’ to be getting on with. Well most of us anyway.

Tops.

Another easy choice and its second appearance on the list. This is the last issue in the current arc and it is now taking a break and issue 7 will be coming our way in the Summer.

This leaves you on a more introspective note than we have seen in earlier issues and focuses on a single character of the cast. It remains to be seen if she’ll survive her journey home. The writing gets you into the minds of the players, but it’s the art that has the wow factor. Hoping that this gets a nice hardback treatment.

How great does this image combine almost counter intuitively with the poetic writing. Every page is a pleasure.

Bottoms.

Expectation is a strange cat. Not sure how you lot feel about it but if I buy a Captain Marvel/Batman/Spider-man/Bananaman, comic then I’d like something from that character inside. Something of actual substance. This issue sure pissed me off. If I hadn’t got it on the app and had to fork out £4.85 on it I would not be a happy chap.

The cover, however, is glorious. Shame it doesn’t reflect the interiors.

Inside that striking image is the story of a cool goth girl who looks like she was traced from a Gaiman comic. Page after page about her with the Mad Titan appearing on only three pages and almost the same number of panels. And, fuck me, this is some boring nonsense.

If it was an indie book just about her then fine. But this is billed as a Thanos comic. This dynamic seems to be happening a lot, especially at Marvel. If you can’t write about the character then don’t. It seems that writers are worried about a lack of knowledge of the main character or their ability to write them that they take an easy opt out and focus on a person of their invention, often a hugely uninteresting one. That makes it easy right? They don’t even have to do research. It’s also dishonest to the customer who nearly always has to order on the basis of the cover.

Please stop it. Editorial, try and sort yourselves out.

Many thanks for reading.