ALL
STAR RECOMMENDS: 2020 COMIC BOOK FORECAST EDITION!
by
Cameron Ashley
There is no intro I could write to
kick off the year that would not come off as possibly glib or just plain stupid
considering everything that's happening. What I can do is present to you a list
of upcoming 2020 releases comics that will function as a reminder that there is
a lot to look forward to. Even if it's just silly old comic books, that's a
start. Okay, let's get to it and please stay safe and well in the year ahead.
Kodansha
Due ??
Coming maybe, possibly, this year is this ongoing collection
of every single page of Otomo comics going all the way back to his 1971 debut. Wowzah.
Honestly, Kodansha's upcoming Complete Works of Katsuhiro Otomo project is
probably about as important as comics reprints get considering not only just
how out of print some of Otomo's translated work is (you will finally be able
to read Domu!) but also the shadow that Otomo casts over manga as a totality. A
master amongst an industry of masters, this publishing effort is up there with
recent Moebius, Kirby and Barks efforts in its relevance. Now if only someone
could do the same with Tezuka....
CANKOR
Matthew Allison
AdHouse Books
Due January
If slightly demented takes on the
ol' superhero are your bag, Matthew Allison is the creator for you. The
solicits for AdHouse's collected edition of Allison's Cankor (originally
CCCANKORRR) read, "Michael DeForge meets Frank Quitely," and from
what I've seen of Allison's work (he really is worth an Instagram follow) this
seems fairly apt but doesn't quite capture just how skewed Allison’s vision of
capes comics is. I don't know quite what it is - Allison’s an artist who could
easily slip into a mainstream title. His art is hyper-detailed, energetic, just
generally appealing in that Art Adams and, yes, Quitely way. Yet Cankor, with
its "sad sack Cyborg" protagonist and "bubbling flesh and the towering
corpses of superheroes" is just flat out so bizarre and singular a comic,
it's kind of like a Frank Quitely Flex Mentallo comic had a nightmare. I mean,
look at this preview
- faceless punk rockers, mountainous thorny Bat-things. It's Silver Age
weirdness spiked and gone bad trip. Dose me up, I say.
DOWNFALL
Inio Asano
Viz
Due February
Asano is the creator of some of
the all time great comics. I'd put Goodnight Punpun up there with anything you
care to name and other beautiful, painful creations like Nijigahara Holograph
and Girl On The Shore not too far behind. Never content to sit in the same
place twice, Asano constantly pushes forward into new creative spaces. Even
though his Dead Dead Demon's Dededede Destruction hasn't quite wrapped up yet,
Viz gives us an Asano double whammy as early 2020 also brings us his latest
work, Downfall. Concerning a manga artist trying to cook up a new hit as his
life crumbles around him, you should bring your tissues for Downfall; this one
is bound to engross you then give you a heart-punch.
ED LEFFINGWELL'S LITTLE JOE
Harold Gray
Sunday Press
Due April
Little Joe was a Western comics strip originally created by
Ed Leffingwell in 1933. In 1936, Leffingwell died of a burst appendix and his
cousin, Harold Gray, stepped in to fill his late relative's shoes. Gray, for
those who do not know, was the creator of Little Orphan Annie, one of the all
time great comic strips. This forthcoming collection showcases the best of
Gray's efforts from 1937-1942, some beautiful cartooning that sort of recalls
Herge by way of Gilbert Hernandez. This is sumptuous stuff, sure to be given
the deluxe Sunday Press treatment (I was given Sunday Press' White Boy in Skull
Valley for Christmas - it is a gorgeous book). Capping it all off, this
collection of the "seminal Western comic strip," which features way
more thrills and spills than its title hints at, is co-edited by one of the
great modern day cartoonists and editor of Kramer's Ergot, Sammy Harkham.
Harkham has the touch of gold as far as I'm concerned, and his involvement
raises this from being a "this looks great," to a "this needs to
be on my shelf."
FANTASTIC FOUR: GRAND DESIGN TREASURY EDITION (Marvel, Due February)
& KIRBY: KING OF COMICS (Ten Speed Press, Due July)
& KIRBY: KING OF COMICS (Ten Speed Press, Due July)
Tom Scioli
Galactus bless the triumphant return of the Treasury Edition
(go get that Silver Surfer: Black and Piskor's X-Men: Grand Design in that format) and
Galactus also bless Tom Scioli for not only his remix/retelling of and homage
to the unsurpassable Jack Kirby/Stan Lee Fantastic Four run but also for
labouring largely in secret over a comics biography of Kirby himself. Many of
you may have read FF: Grand Design in its serialised form but Scioli's Fantastic
Four story could well lay claim to the most densely constructed shortform
mainstream comic ever and the oversized Treasury Edition will surely serve his
intricate pages far more greatly. It's heartening also to see Scioli tackle The
King's real life alongside those of his fictional creations - Kirby's influence
cannot be overstated but particularly when it comes to Scioli's own body of
work and artistic style and The King's actual existence was full of as much
adventure, triumph, battle and heartbreak as any of those that live on the
page. This is a fascinating pairing of comics by a real Pop Art auteur. They
would make an excellent back-to-back read, I'm sure. That's how I'm planning to
do it.
GO TO SLEEP (I MISS YOU): CARTOONS FROM THE FOG OF PARENTHOOD
Lucy Knisley
FirstSecond
Due February
Almost 200 pages of Lucy Knisley's
"spontaneous" post-pregnancy cartoons are collected here for either
you or your exhausted new parent friend to totally relate to. New parents need
a laugh. Trust me. Knisley's strips (originally posted on her Instagram
account) range from the humorous to the observational. These are stripped-back,
intimate little comics, perfect for capturing the often solitary, quiet
developmental leaps and ever-increasing bonding that occurs between parent and
child. Comics. What can't they do?
GOBLIN GIRL
Moa Romanova
Fantagraphics
Due February
Debut time! Swiss artist Moa
Romanova's Goblin Girl (formerly titled "Father Boy," not sure what
happened there) arrives next month and she's clearly a talent to watch. This is
a semi-autobiographical affair about a young artist named Moa who, amidst
crisis and panic attacks, finds emotional and financial support from an
"older man online," a fairly well known celebrity. Clearly, this is
not going to end well, although Fantagraphics promises this autobiography,
"upends expectations at every turn." It feels like 2020's most 2020
book, if that makes any sense and the arrival of a new strong, unique and
talented creator is always reason to celebrate.
GRIP: THE COLLECTED EDITION
Lale Westvind
Perfectly Acceptable Press
Due March
Batten down the hatches, there's raw comics power coming our
way in March! If you're not familiar with Lale Westvind's comics, I daresay it
won't take too much longer. Having self-published much of her work and been
included in Kramer's Ergot and Best American Comics, 2020 is her year.
Possessed of the kind of energy most artists wish they could pack into any
given square inch of comics page, Westvind is poised to be the breakout Art
comics creator of the next few years, if not the decade. Grip is a "heavy
handed homage to women in the trades..."and centres on a young woman whose
hands can never be still after a "strange incident." Originally
published in two sold-out risographed editions by Perfectly Acceptable,
hopefully, the print count is raised significantly for the collection, as this
has breakout hit of the year written all over it. Westvind is so loud, her
comics go up to eleven and she's most original, striking and vibrant talent to
emerge in quite some time. Hunt this down.
J+K
John Pham
Fantagraphics
Due April
It wouldn't be one of these forecast columns without a
holdover or two from the previous year. J+K is the first of these this year.
Here's what I said a year ago:
Concerning two pop culture-obsessed morons trying to make
their way in the world, John Pham’s J+K may in fact end up being regarded as
2019s ultimate comics art object. As the titular duo throw away reference after
reference to all manner of pop culture ephemera existing in their world, Pham
dutifully and creatively actualises it all by including, among other things,
posters, stickers, an issue of “Cool Magazine” and, yes, even playable vinyl.
It’s playful world-building to an extent not really seen in comics before that
I can recall. Making the feat even more impressive, Pham has the cartooning
chops to back it all up. Ostensibly a series of short gag strips (“Peanuts
meets Seinfeld,” Fantagraphics informs us), the totality does in fact cohere
into a whole. “Like it’s not a collection but one long story that makes sense
even if it reads like individual puzzle pieces in places,” Frank Santoro wrote
in his review of
the original Spanish edition, later adding, “It’s a feat to put it all together
and serve it up in a smooth package like this. I’ve never seen anything like
it…”
LUPUS
Frederik Peeters
Top Shelf
Due February
These columns of mine might be thinning faster than my hair
at this point, but the name Frederik Peeters is scattered throughout many past
instalments. February is shaping up to be a massive month of releases and
Peeters' latest work, the near 400-page Lupus, may well get lost in the crowd,
a tragedy for a comic that won the Essential award at Angouleme. Lupus is
Peeters' return to straight-ahead SF, well as straight ahead as the Swiss
writer-artist gets. Like with many books on this year's forecast, character
comes well ahead of genre trapping and Peeters is a creator of remarkable skill
at building real emotion no matter how mind-bending the plot machination. Lupus
is on the run, looking for ways to disappear. The entrance of Sanaa, "a
beautiful runaway" complicates things and as each new world offers a
multitude of escape methods, Lupus might just have to face up to the fact that
there are some things you just can't run from.
American publishers Top Shelf have a preview here. It shows
Peeters returning to an inky, stripped back black and white that recalls the
work of Moon and Ba. Don't sleep on this.
THE MAN WITHOUT TALENT (NYRC, DUE FEBRUARY)
& THE SWAMP (D+Q, DUE APRIL)
Yoshiharu Tsuge
Lumping two books by legendary gekiga master, Yoshiharu
Tsuge, together here as they both are of great importance. Both are translated
(with essays) by Ryan Holmberg and they both are essential to your manga
library. NYRC beats D+Q to the punch by bringing us The Man Without Talent,
"the first full-length work ...available in the English language."
It's also one of 2020's most essential pieces of comics autobiography as The
Man Without Talent is about Tsuge's own attempts to quit trying to make comics
and find a more economically stable profession with which to support his
family.
The Swamp follows from Drawn and Quarterly in April and is
the first volume in a library of Tsuge works. A collection of three stand-alone
comics that, in true gekiga style, eschew genre trappings for quiet but impactful
stories that focus on the lives of everyday folk, it's a volume that will
likely prove once and for all the extent of the beauty and artfulness that can
be found in comics. Compare Tsuge's comics to those produced at the same time
in the USA and your head will spin at just how complex and cinematic and
beautiful they are.
MY FAVORITE THING IS MONSTERS VOLUME 2
Emil Ferris
Fantagraphics
Due October
Our other 2019 holdover is actually also a holdover from 2018,
giving the second and concluding volume of My Favorite Thing is Monsters the
dubious honour of being the only comic to ever appear three times in this column.
However, as I wrote last year (and maybe the year before that), we should all
be content to just sit tight and wait until creator Emil Ferris is good and
ready to put down her coloured biros. This is not a project to be rushed: the
second volume of Ferris’ saga could well cement My Favorite Thing Is Monsters
legacy as an all-time great comic book. In my opinion, the first volume alone
was not only the comic of 2016, but also the decade.
A spoiler-free synopsis for the newbie:
It's Chicago, 1968. A young misfit of a girl named Karen
Reyes loves art, but her absolute favourite thing is monsters. Karen identifies
with monsters on a deep level, she's able to distinguish between the good
monsters and the bad, and the freak-loser-misfit tag she's saddled with
socially gives her a degree of empathy for beings such as the Frankenstein
Monster that others her age likely do not possess. She desperately wants to be
turned into a literal monster, making her outsider status complete and giving
her the power and strength she struggles to find day-to-day. She scribbles away
in her notebooks, copying the covers to monster magazines of the period, and is
taught to draw by her elder brother, Diego "Deeze" Reyes. Deeze is
himself something of an outcast with his heavily tattooed skin and constant
drinking, yet he easily maintains his status as the local heartthrob. He's an
incessant womaniser, stringing along a parade of local women with his handsome
features and "bad guy" rebel attitude. The Reyes siblings are raised
by a single parent, a mother who is superstitious to the point of obsession,
heavily religious, but also deeply loving. They are a weird but obviously
tight-knit little family but there is secret, hidden family tragedy waiting to
fracture their closeness.
Karen is not shown much kindness in her life outside of her
little family. Her best friend (who she deeply loves) has turned her back on
her in a quest for popularity and peer acceptance and her bullying is near
constant. What little kindness there is comes in the form of her upstairs
neighbour, the eccentric Anka Silverberg, a Jewish WWII survivor who nurtures
Karen's artistic streak and gives her odd gifts such as balled up pieces of
bread. When Anka is brutally murdered, Karen is determined to solve the mystery.
She begins keeping the company of Anka's stern, elderly husband, Sam. Drunk and
grief-stricken, Sam Silverberg pulls out a cassette tape on which Anka reveals
her incredible life story, in which clues to her gruesome death abound.
My Favorite Thing Is Monsters is told in the form of Karen's
scribbled notebooks. The vast majority of it is drawn in biro, and pretty much
the rest of it in fineliner, with the odd excursion into brush, wash and
(possibly) colour pencil. Every page looks as though it's come from an A4 lined
notepad, complete with red margin line running vertically down the page, evenly
spaced blue lines horizontally and even faux hole punch marks and a spiral
binding. There's urgency on the pages, but Ferris maintains deep control of her
images throughout. Ferris is fond of cross-hatching a fine lattice of
multi-coloured biro lines on her characters, creating soft yet striking
contours and textures and depths. Karen herself is drawn almost totally
throughout as a little werewolf girl, almost like something from Maurice
Sendak's Where The Wild Things Are gone mystery-solver, her diminished,
devolved image of herself near total even as she wears her
"monstrous" outsider status as something of a badge of pride. Anka's
story is engrossing, cutting across decades, and it's a testament to Ferris'
writing skills just how easily her story flips between coming of age drama to
mystery to horror and back again so seamlessly, never losing sight of her
characters' humanity and keeping her story firmly on the tracks. My
Favorite Thing Is Monsters is an absolute, top-of-the-list must-read. I can't
really say any more about this masterpiece than that.
ORIGINAL ART: THE DANIEL CLOWES STUDIO EDITION
Daniel Clowes
Fantagraphics
Due February
Your high roller item of 2020 to be sure, but what an item
this is. Elevating the Artist/Studio format to new heights is the forthcoming
Daniel Clowes edition. Meticulously detailed and beautifully designed, Original
Art showcases a wide selection of original Clowes art from right through his
long career. It's the inclusion of acetate colour overlay sheets that puts this
book over the top, however, an inclusion so obvious yet somehow never done in
one of these books before. Originally due around last Christmas, one look at
the finished product explains its lateness - this is a carefully,
lovingly-constructed, enormously proportioned book. Ed Piskor (who has an
Studio Edition of his due shortly that's sure to be well worth a look) and Jim
Rugg went through Clowes' Original Art page by page on their Cartoonist Kayfabe
YouTube channel recently and both the curious and the impatient can find that here.
SPORTS IS HELL
Ben Passmore
Koyama
Due February
Passmore, artist of 2019 highlight BTTM FDRS returns and
very soon at that with a new solo project, Sports Is Hell. "Some wars are
for religion and some are for political belief but this one is for
football," reads the tagline. A young girl named Tea is witness to her city
winning its first superbowl but has to fight her way through groups of
"armed football fanatics to meet a star receiver that might just end the
civil war or become the city's new leader."
Passmore's a savvy creator, his debut solo work Your Black
Friend marked the arrival of a terrific new talent. BTTM FDRS was haunted house
turned hipster gentrification horror. With projects like those behind him and a
belter of a high concept, Sports Is Hell promises to be politically savvy,
cheekily funny and energetically drawn. Canada's Koyama Press is sadly closing
its doors in 2021 for reasons that are a little mysterious, certainly not from
a lack of successful titles of which Sports Is Hell is likely to be one.
STREETS OF PARIS, STREETS OF MURDER: THE COMPLETE NOIR
STORIES OF MANCHETTE & TARDI
Jacques Tardi & Jean-Patrick Manchette
Fantagraphics
Volume 1 (of 2) due April
This right here, this is the business. Finally, *all* of Jacques
Tardi's adaptations of Jean-Patrick Manchette's crime novels are to be
collected in two massively oversized editions. For my money, Manchette is one
of the few absolutely, truly essential crime writers and paired with Tardi's
dense yet beautifully detailed pages with his rubbery characters and period
authenticity, they were the French Brubaker and Phillips. Hell, they might have
been even better. Here's Brubaker himself on Tardi: "Tardi brings a rough
and gritty reality and an existential strangeness that makes his crime stories
different than anyone else's."
In this first volume, the never before translated Griffu
debuts, paired with the superlative West Coast Blues (from Manchette's novel 3
to Kill) and a 21 page uncompleted story which surely has to be Tardi's sadly
never finished adaptation of Fatale and yet another incomplete story. If you
read Criminal, or Stray Bullets or, hell, if you read genre comics of any sort
at all - this is about as important a release as you'll find this calendar
year. Vital.
STARSEEDS VOLUME 3
Charles Glaubitz
Fantagraphics
Due "hopefully" this year (according to its author)
The second volume of Tijuana-based creator Charles Glaubitz's
Starseeds was pipped at the post in my own 2019 Best Of by none other than
Chris Ware's Rusty Brown, a book nineteen years in the making. Kind of unfair,
really, as Glaubitz is working hard and fast on his Starseeds series, the kind
of Kirby meets Campbell meets shamanism meets conspiracy meets alchemy meets
archetype meets psychedelia mash-up fans of mind-melting comics dream of.
Volume Two showed Glaubitz stretching both artistic and narrative potential and
honestly I cannot wait to see how much further this can be pushed. An
incredible marriage between beauty and bombast, philosophy and fisticuffs,
delirium and design, it's high time the series received more love, acclaim and,
probably most importantly, publicity. Honestly it's the heir to all the great
'70s Marvel cosmic comics; Englehart, Starlin, it outdoes all those dudes. With
Glaubitz telling me he's hopeful volume 3 appears this year, let's hope 2020 is
the breakthrough year for this astonishingly talented artist and his menagerie
of cosmic creations.
EDIT: Charles Glaubitz just got in touch: "No wait! I
made a mistake. It's coming out in 2021!" Oh well, let's just call this an
extended forecast...
STRANGE ADVENTURES
Tom King, Mitch Gerads & Evan "Doc" Shaner
DC Comics
Due March
Easily the title I need to alert readers to the least, Tom
King and Mitch Gerads' follow up to Mister Miracle will likely outsell
everything else on this list combined and multiple times at that. Here's the
thing, even I, All Star's resident snob, have to admit that King and Gerads'
multiple-award winning Mister Miracle was actually pretty great. The team's
much-anticipated follow-up is an examination of colonialism through the
character of Adam Strange, the man who periodically travels between Earth and
the planet Rann via the Zeta Beam. The great Evan "Doc" Shaner is
along for the ride as co-artist, and I'm betting he's drawing some Silver Age
style cleanliness, all utopia and sunshine, while Gerads brings the gritty
realism to a pessimistic, downbeat current world. It's a story that's been
cooking for quite some time and I appreciate these 12 issue, easily contained,
novelistic runs. Eh, you're buying it anyway, let's end the hype and move on.
THIRD WORLD WAR
Pat Mills, Carlos Ezquerra & Others
Rebellion (Out NOW!!)
Finally, oh finally, Rebellion has gotten around to reprinting Pat Mills' political epic. Originally serialised in late '80s anthology magazine Crisis (kind of 2000AD for grown ups), Third World War's anti-capitalist theme only rings more loudly in 2020. Conscripted as a soldier for a corporation, Eve uncovers the corruption inherent in South American food production designed, of course, to maximise profit for those at the top. Way ahead of its time, Third World War also features rare painted colours by the late Carlos Ezquerra. This is another long-lost gem of British comics returned to life by publishers Rebellion and it's out as of January 7.
VISION
Julia Gfrorer
Fantagraphics
Due August
Black is The Color and Laid Waste signalled that Julia
Gfrorer was a storyteller of uncommon delicacy whose fine lines heightened
moments of warm, necessary contact between humans amidst backdrops of horror.
She's the Gothic Inio Asano in a weird way, with genre playing a very quiet
second fiddle as the emotional pain of her protagonists screams way up front.
Vision is Gfrorer's latest work and seemingly her most intentionally Gothic,
with a blind Victorian spinster as its protagonist who engages in "a
sexual relationship with a haunted mirror" whilst caring for her
"invalid sister-in-law and investigating her brother's mysterious night-time
activities." It might sound pretty bonkers, and it will be. It's also likely
to be as deeply human as comics get in 2020.
Minetaro Mochizuki
Dark Horse
Due February
Wait, what??!!! For years I've been banging on to any poor
soul who would listen that we needed Minetaro Mochizuki comics in English and
we needed them now. The last volume of Dragon Head, Mochizuki's disaster-horror
epic was published by TokyoPop in 2001 - it has remained the only Mochizuki
printed in English. Since then, Mochizuki has flown under the radar as equally
talented and singular creators such as Inio Asano and Taiyo Matsumoto have found
regular publication in the West. It befuddled me. Well, strap in kids because
this book is an under the radar landmark event and hopefully is the gateway
book to break Mochizuki into English for good. Oh, it's also his take on Wes
Anderson's Isle of Dogs, which was really great and all, but come for Minetaro,
stay for the dogs. This is excellent news. Hugs all round. C'mere, you.
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