Tezuka In English Discussion Forums

As comics (and not only manga) are my passion, and I didn't find any other topic about this wide subject on this forum(excuse me if there was already one, I missed it ^^'), I'd like to ask: what are your favorite comic books? What would you like to share or to recommend us?
And I would like to start with a very important comic in the history of the 9th Art: MAUS by Art Spiegelman. For those who don't know, I'll make it short: Spiegelman's father, survivor of Auschwitz, tells his son how it was for him during the WWII... not a very cheerful subject, but Spiegelman has humour, and tries to be as close to reality as possible( as much for the documentation about the war as for his special relationship with his father). You add to that a very expressive graphic style and the choice to represent humans into animals, and you obtain the first (and only) comic that has ever received the Pullitzer Price.

Deadpool
The Disney Comics (I love em)
Archie Digests - jughead, archie, betty and veronica, etc..
Doctor WHO
The Tick (but it seems to have ended)
Hell Boy (I buy the trades)
B.P.R.D. (ditto on trades)
Zorro (it's fun)
Street Fighter (Udon Comics) - REALLY great comic series. Despite the awful history SF has with productions this series is just awesome.
Conan

Most of my other favorite comics have been long gone Howard the Duck. The way DC Comics used to be such as Shadow of the Bat (etc... before Dan DiDiot ruined DC Comics).


For comic strips:
Alley Oop
Garfield
Get Fuzzy

I like most comics on the comic page


I also love anything done by Alex Ross. He's literally as great as Michelangelo. The man is just awesome.

I had a tough time with Marvel comics years ago; I had become nearly obsessed with them to the point of acquiring 3 comic boxes full of them in about 1 year. Marvel had a sneaky way of expanding peoples' interests: it would frequently bring guest stars into other comics, and make a reference to an adventure the guest had. An asterisk showed the details, * See SUB MARINER #NNN. So, I bought a copy from the local comics shop, and the next thing I knew, I was reading SUB MARINER regularly. I actually had subscriptions through that comics shop, and every week, I went to pick up those titles that came in that week, which the shop's employees had already pulled and reserved for me.

Since then, I have avoided American comic books altogether. I have been collecting Tezuka manga, but as the titles are much fewer, I am not worried about going nuts over them. I also have about 6 issues of DR. SLUMP, and 9 of HELLSING, which is so slow to release new issues, that I have lost interest & have not even read #9.

As for the newspaper's comics, until 3 years ago, I lived in the Washington DC area, & read those in the Washington Post. I read nearly everything except the soap opera comics, Garfield & Peanuts, these latter two, I thought had long ago exhausted anything resembling originality. Currently, I do not even bother with the local comics pages, as my brother had been bringing the Post's comics with him when he came to watch videos with me.

... o_O...
I have to admit that I don't know much about Marvel and most of the american comics. I'm more interested by underground comics (Crumb, Spiegelman, Chris Ware...) but that's not an excuse anyway. I think I'm a bit scared by Marvel because super-heroes stories have the reputation of being very twisted, because of the changes of authors... but I may be wrong. I'll take interest in it ... someday ^^'.
But I've tried to follow HellBoy! ^^ I've bought a book, and I even read it and found it good... But since Mignola is not in my top ten at this moment, I don't make it a priority (unlike Tezuka .

Setting manga aside for the moment, I'm currently re-reading, and enjoying as if for the first time, the line of EC comics from the 50s, mainly Weird Fantasy and Weird Science Fiction, but also the Horror mags

I was also a big fan of Spiegelman's Maus, and the anthology magazine RAW, that he produced and edited in the 80's.

RAW introduced me to many of my favorite Euro artists;
Tardi
Jooste Swarte
Masse
Loustal


as well as Americans

Mark Beyer
Charles Burns
Ben Katchor
Jerry Moriarty
Chris Ware
Kim Deitch

I also can't do without the newspaper/magazine cartoonists;
Tom Tomorrow
Lynda Barry
Roz Chast

other fav Euros;

Schuiten & Peeters
Hugo Pratt (the Corto Maltese stories)
Mercenary by Vicente Segrelles
Daniel Torres

Finally, the incomparable Moebius, and his alter ego, Jean Giraud.

David

Waow, so many prestigious names!
About Chris Ware, I think his work is very strange. It has got lots of qualities, and it is very innovating... but it's quite hard to read. I think it is because he is experimenting new narrative ways... at least, that will join Scott MacCloud's theories (a choice between the shape and the contents... excuse my english, in french I would have said "le fond et la forme", I don't know if it's correct).

And for Tardi and Pratt, they're just excellent.
I like your tastes, David ^^

By the way, have you seen the animation "Peur(s) du Noir" (Fear(s) of the Dark)? Burns and many comics authors collabored on it, such as Blutch, who is this year president of the Angoul

It's wonderful to think about Moebius and Tezuka having met. I'd strongly recommend Moebius to any Tezuka fans - if you're skeptical, taste a variety of his works before you make up your mind.

Arzak (wordless short stories)
The Incal
The Airtight Garage (his epic)
a plethora of masterful short stories; some absurd, some political, some erotic
Blueberry (the Western saga under his alter ego Giraud)
even a Silver Surfer story.

David

From what I know, Moebius is one the most (and one of the only ones with Enki Bilal) european comics authors known in Japan. It is surely thanks to Tezuka, but also to Miyazaki, who is a great fan and a friend of him. A few years ago, there was an exhibition in France comparing their works.
Here is a link =)
http://www.miyazaki-moebius.com/