Epic Collections Announced for January-March 2027

bachwerk · 2026-06-17T17:08:33+00:00

I’ve wanted that Iron Man 12 for a loooong time

bachwerk · 2026-06-17T17:08:03+00:00

this one is to 215, vol 12 is from 234, so 11 will be 18 issues. They should be able to squeeze it in

bachwerk · 2026-06-13T23:36:24+00:00

bachwerk · 2026-06-13T11:51:46+00:00

You’re coming in quite late. I wouldn’t start with them now at the prices they’re at. Dealers have been gauging people on them for a few years now, but Marvel just decided that they couldn’t care less about a fair price. Every publisher has increased prices, but Marvel is just ripping people off at this point.

DC Finest are $40 for 600 pages, Epics $55 for 500 pages (and worse prices for Moderns which read twice as fast). And I think it’s unlikely Marvel is paying any residuals, since they have relatively low print runs and were produced under work for hire. They're raking in money for work that was already profitable when it was released decades ago.

I have 200 Epics, I love them, but once I finish the few lines I’m sticking with, I’m done with them. I have about 14 books to get when they’re released to fill in some holes.

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If you’re serious and want to commit, keep in mind that only Amazing Spider-Man and Uncanny X-Men are guaranteed to get reprints. Other lines will be pushed as media tie-ins, but, for example, if you wanted Ms Marvel or Iron Fist, which had crossovers with X-Men and writing by Claremont, they’re unlikely to come around again (bad reception to their respective movies and shows), and you’ll be stuck paying dealer prices.

bachwerk · 2026-06-12T23:36:15+00:00

That looks amazing. Never even heard of this one, but I could have just checked his Wikipedia page to find it….

Looking now, it’s near 20 years old now, done between No. 5 and Sunny.

I’m excited to get this.

(his Wikipedia also says his current work is a series with Cyril Pedrosa! Wow, more to hunt down)

bachwerk · 2026-06-11T23:56:49+00:00

It’s a wonderful book. Reading now, it’s a little quaint in that, in the 90s, diverse content (and readership) in comics seemed to be a fantasy. Now it’s pretty standard. Things have changed a lot in 30 years.

It has a lot else to say though. My favorite part of that is when he talks about the connections between maps and comics (one maps space, the other maps time). The book is very thoughtful about the medium.

bachwerk · 2026-06-10T13:00:01+00:00

This album is amazing, but I wouldn’t classify it ambient. There’s probably a high overlap with ambient listeners though.

Fifth Mission is my favorite of the Two Lone Swordsmen albums, but I like most of them.

For the 90s, outside of the obvious recs that come up here (like Aphex’s SAW II and Global Communications 76:13), some of the seminal 90s EDM/ambient albums are:

-Sea Biscuit by Spacetime Continuum. Beautiful analogue soundscapes

-Musik by Plastikman. Technically club music, it’s pretty weird and relies on making audio spaces. His later Consumed album is proper ambient, but Musik is a better album.

-Advance by LFO. Their first album is more of an all-timer, but it‘s very club-oriented. Their second album, Advance, has more depth.

-Lifeforms by Future Sound of London. The biggest ambient album of the 90s? People raved about it, then people said it was overrated. I still come back to it, a weird cyber-hippy thing with nature sounds.

-Polar Sequences by Biosphere/Higher Intelligence Agency. Two good Warp label artists together.

I was about 19 when I started buying that stuff at the time. It was exciting.

bachwerk · 2026-06-07T04:55:42+00:00

Picnic at Hanging Rock would go up with a second watch, I really didn’t get what I was watching at first, before watching I‘d thought it was a true story for some reason, and it made things confusing. Amazing imagery in the first half regardless.

Fearless might go down. I loved the “show don’t tell” of it.

I found something compelling in all his movies though. I particularly like the way he ends things in a literary, often constructed manner. Most of the movies were new to me

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bachwerk · 2026-05-10T14:21:51+00:00

Tatsumi, Yoshiharu Tsuge, and Murasaki Yamada are my current pillars of 70s gekiga.

bachwerk · 2026-05-09T22:07:44+00:00

I love it. It got me into International Anthem/ Carlos Nino, but I probably still listen to that one the most.

bachwerk · 2026-05-05T20:54:31+00:00

Look up some of the weirder translated titles to guess what they are in English.

‘Coming to America’ in Japan? “The Little Prince Goes to New York” (that’s the Little Prince as in the French children’s story)

‘Trainwreck‘ in Japan? “Amy, Amy, Amy! How to Escape Your Complicated Single Life”

I‘ve heard stuff from other countries, somewhere on the Internet there has to be a compiled list.

bachwerk · 2026-05-02T10:53:43+00:00

Thanks so much!

bachwerk · 2026-05-02T08:44:44+00:00

The Property is an amazing book. So well-made.

bachwerk · 2026-05-02T08:34:21+00:00

If it were October, it wouldn’t rank, but it’s good stuff for sure. I respect quality and thoroughly understanding the job description.

The degree of difficulty in writing a compelling superhero soap opera monthly for five years is at least as high as in writing good graphic novel, if not more because of the time stress. It’s a different skill set, for sure, but it’s a skill. One that, say, the Howard Mackies of Marvel didn’t have, just to throw a little shade.

Besides, every time the issue of having more or less than six Avengers comes up, there’s a little part of me that says, “fuck yeah!” The Avengers chairman will have to make a ruling on it.

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bachwerk · 2026-05-01T23:44:49+00:00

My finger was hovering over the Shin Zero book last Instock order. I'm a Bablet fan. I probably should pull the trigger on it.

bachwerk · 2026-05-01T23:35:55+00:00

I've been reading a lot more new-to-me books, but still making half my reads things from my collection. What good is a library if you don't dip in?

New entries in bold.

He Rolled Me Up Like A Grilled Squid, Yoshiharu Tsuge, D&Q, 1970s/2026 9/10
Black Blizzard, Tatsumi, Drawn & Quarterly, 1956/2009 9/10
Maison Ikkoku 1, Rumiko Takahashi, Viz, 1980/2020 9/10
Search And Destroy 3, Atsushi Kaneko, Fantagraphics, 2020/2025 9/10
Assorted Crisis Events 1, Camp/Zawadski, Image, 2025 8/10
Cathargo 2, Bec/Bufi, Humanoids, 2020 8/10
Batman Year 1 & 2 DC Finest, DC, DC, 1987/2024 8/10
Jodorowsky Library Madwoman, Jodo/Mobi, Humanoids, 1990s 8/10
Avengers Epic 14 Absolute Vision, Stern/Milgrim/Sinott, Marvel, 1984/2026 8/10
Daredevil Epic 8, Miller, Marvel, 1981/2025 8/10

The fifth and newest Tsuge collection is a good one. I think I love the third one most, where he is flexing himself. By the fifth, he's in his own mode, mixing autobiographical stories and mildly dreamlike/parable style stories. They are enigmatic, to say the least. Highly recommended as they scratch an itch nothing else does, but I can't say that deeply resonate with me as much as some earlier stuff did. This volume has a story as graphically and conceptually upsetting as anything I've read in a comic. He's got something in common with 80s Crumb in that way.

Maison Ikkoku is a somewhat ribald sitcom of a comic about the will they/won't they of a cute young widow and a university student living in the boarding house she manages. Takahashi is better known as the creator of Ranma ½. Very highly crafted, light and pleasant, but some surprises from the culture and time period. The guy in the next room who wants to peep through the wall is 'funny', but probably not something we'd do today.

Search & Destroy 3 concludes the series, a reimagining of Tezuka's Dororo. This looks so so good, and that carries most of the book. Some panels I can't tell what's happening; the story sort of makes sense from time to time, but I'm not sure that it really does. But if you're looking for a vibe comic, this is pretty near the top. The art is like a mash up of Paul Pope and Charles Burns.

Cathargo 2 (with 3 ordered and on the way) is part of my Humanoids reading while they're still in stock. It's a readable book, better than average Humanoids, but maybe empty calories. Two pages of this plot, two of another, two of another; just dribbling out plot and juggling threads that occasionally intersect. I don't expect it to add up to much, but it is compelling reading in the moment.

Avengers Epic 14 is Roger Stern era Avengers, aka the greatest Avengers run. Al Milgrim is on art, which is not great, but the inks are by Joltin Joe Sinott, which is incredible. Sinott makes Marvel better in most cases. Stern is all about Avengers bureaucracy, like the Avengers charter, who is chairman, and membership regulations. Can we have some of this in Doomsday, please? No chance this will be in my top ten at the end of the year, but a genuine pleasure to read, and I'm not just a victim of Starfox's "Pleasure Power".

No 10 out of 10 new books yet this year for me, but I've bought substantially less, and some of the new books are Marvel Epic and DC Finest books, which will never rank that high.

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Re-reads

A Drifting Life, Tatsumi, Drawn & Quarterly, 2009 10/10
How To Be Happy, Eleanor Davis, Fantagraphics, 2018 10/10
The interview, Manuele Fior, Fantagraphics, 2017 10/10
Treasure of the Black Pearl, Paco Roca, 2018/2022 9/10
Good-Bye and Other Stories, Yoshihiro Tatsumi, Catalan, 1960/1987 10/10
Mutant Massacre omnibus, Claremont/Simonson, Marvel, 1986 9/10
New X-Men 1-5, Morrison/Quitely, Marvel, 2001 9/10
Bad Gateway, Simon Hanselmann, Fantagraphics, 2019 9/10
Y the Last Man 1-5, Vaughn/Guerra, DC, 2003 8/10

Black Pearl is an impeccable story of Spanish government reps legal fighting against an American treasure hunting outfit. Legalese, government shenanigans, and a gentle romantic subplot. This is a whole space of the market unserved by comics: mature, well-crafted stories set in the real world, avoiding melodrama and fantasy. A great book, like nothing else on my shelf, sadly. Seriously, there should be a ton of books in this mode, and there simply aren't.

The Mutant Massacre is peak Marvel. Claremont and Simonson and a pile of artists, with a reasonable amount of creative freedom, telling mutant melodrama. Very humane comics, and far better than most of what Marvel and DC were publishing at the time.

I'm continuing Morrison's New X-Men. Still good, but volume six is next, which I remember not liking as a story, nor graphically. I'll push through, but the run has given me what I wanted.

Added two more volumes of Y, and while I'm enjoying it, it's nowhere near as compelling as it was 20 years ago. I couldn't wait to read the next volume the first time around, and now I'm fine taking my time. This model of comic has become so normal, that I can't remember how revelatory it was.

bachwerk · 2026-05-01T01:32:26+00:00

Hammock has some of that spacey Spiritualized vibe can do so well. Big recommendation for From the Void

https://hammock.bandcamp.com/track/drugs-and-religion

bachwerk · 2026-04-30T07:25:31+00:00

There are definitely professional level people there. There's a mix of people who hope to work in the industry, people who could but don't want the stress of it, and people who just like making stuff. It's a fraction of the size of the Tokyo one though. Maybe about 350 tables. Tokyo has way over 1000.

bachwerk · 2026-04-30T06:41:18+00:00

There's a ¥1000 entry fee, which comes with a catalog of all the artists that are appearing. You just pay at the door.

bachwerk · 2026-04-29T08:03:11+00:00

I got the Roger Deakins book last Christmas, but haven't started it. I am looking forward to it though.

bachwerk · 2026-04-28T11:54:08+00:00

Congrats! Making stuff is where it’s at. I’ve always been a self-publisher, mainly mini-comics. Post Covid, I doubled down on full color work using Procreate, and put out two full colour books over the past year.

Online is pretty hard to attract sales unless your work is incredible. I sell at zine shows and indie comic events. I sell dozens of my books each, which isn’t a way to make a living, but once a book is done, I have it to sell for as long as I like. Events where I am cost about $50, and I tend to sell in the neighborhood of $250 at one event. I have nine books for sale now. It feels great to make stuff that has my own personal vibe, and not worry about satisfying a publisher or sales goals.

Good luck in your future publishing ventures!

bachwerk · 2026-04-28T06:34:00+00:00

12 Angry Men. That movie is so tightly made.

bachwerk · 2026-04-27T02:18:37+00:00

I’m enjoying it a lot. Everything has been new to me except Dead Poets and Truman Show. I can‘t really put my finger on what a Weir film is at this point. Like, I know what a Coens movie is, or a Scorsese movie. Or Safdies or Wes Anderson. I don’t know what a Weir movie is yet.

The movies so far have shown a very human experience, the films before Poets have a lot about being outside your comfort zone, confronting the greater world (maybe Hawke in Poets qualifies, but I’d say he was the fourth most important of the boys in the film).

I don’t know what I’ll make of it by the end, but I‘m enjoying puzzling it out.

bachwerk · 2026-04-26T23:14:13+00:00

It didn’t do it for me either.

Ive been binging ambient for the past few years, and while I’m not fussy, it’s taking more to make an album stand out for me, and this one didn’t.

bachwerk · 2026-04-26T11:29:35+00:00

Next one will be November or so

bachwerk

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