Coward (Criminal Vol. 1) - Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips

Posting in my anticipation of Brubaker and Phillip's forthcoming Incognito and second Criminal hardbacks.  Described as "a meditation on the clichés of the crime genre while remaining realistic and believable", Criminal is gripping and well developed crime noir with the incredible artwork of Sean Phillips.  This is the first volume, Coward.

Coward (CBR)

Jason - I Killed Adolf Hitler (2007)

I still have no idea how Jason managed to capture the sweet naivety, dark coming-of-age-ness, and timelessness of childhood in the first part of Hey, Wait given his spare, minimalist style. It suited the rushed fragmentedness of the second part (adult life), but the fact that the story was sentimental (if nihilistic) made it a triumph of style and storytelling

I Killed Adolf Hitler seems perfect for his style- set in an alternate universe in which hired guns are legal, his matter-of-fact minimalism makes the story strange, funny, and noir-ish where an expressive artist would render things grotesque. As the story progresses, however, the oddball premise- time-travel, legal murder- becomes secondary to Jason's concern with human relationships. The final page makes all else deviation, albeit enjoyable and confusing deviation, and says more about love, time, forgiveness, and regret in one simple exchange than your average book/film/whatever in its whole duration

A+

buy
sample it, but for real you should buy it

Grant Morrison & Steve Yeowell - The New Adventures of Hitler [CBZ]

I wish I could have found a better scan for this, but after a lot of searching I'm fairly certain that there isn't one. It's still readable and enjoyable.

Download

If you don't know what .CBZ is, just open the file as a .ZIP (rename the file extension if needed).

Shintaro Kago - Dance! Kremlin Palace! & more [NSFW]

A warning! When you read anything by Shintaro Kago, you are likely to encounter the following: nudity, defecation, graphic acts of violence and gore, fetishization of tragic medical conditions and bizarre sexual acts including necrophilia. The stuff I'm linking to is comparatively tame (only featuring the first few things from this list) but don't blame me should you choose to further investigate his work.

(These comics read from right to left)

Dance! Kremlin Palace! is a surreal alternate history of Russia seemingly based on clichés of Russian culture and elaborate puns. Some of it is pretty messed up, but I feel I can safely recommend the first chapter, which revolves around Russian roulette and is fairly devoid of gross imagery. The rest you can find here. The English translation is a work in progress, going up to chapter 8.

For further Shintaro Kago, Same Hat is the place to go. Some of what I consider the best comics by Shintaro Kago are posted there. Check them out below, but once again be aware that they feature sex, nudity and disturbing imagery prominently.

Abstraction [download] - A must-read. A simple comic is progressively mapped onto three-dimensional space. That in itself is pretty strange, but believe me it gets stranger.

Blow-Up [download] - Along the same lines as Abstraction. I feel this would be better to read in print, but it's still pretty amazing.

Multiplication [download] - "Like Abstraction and Blow-Up before it, Multiplication dissects, digests and smears the constraints of sequential art across the walls."

Labyrinth [download] - A story about mazes that is at several points told using mazes. I believe drawing the correct path through some of the mazes reveals pictures (mostly pornography) but I haven't tried it myself.

Jason - Kill the Cat [PNG]

Some of us have been talking about this for a while, and I've decided to take the first step in adding comics sharing posts to this blog. To kick this thing off, I'm posting a short story by Norwegian indie comics darling Jason called Kill the Cat which I scanned myself from the collection Pocket Full of Rain. As it's only 3 pages long, I hope you wont mind that I've just posted them directly on the blog.

I guess what I'd like to know is what sort of comics you'd like to see? I've been thinking of putting up The New Adventures of Hitler, but I've never been able to find a good enough scan. Does anyone here have a strong opinion on Shintaro Kago? I like him, but his stuff can be ultra-disturbing, plus it already gets posted around blogs quite a bit...

Preferred formats would also be good to know. Do you guys like the CBZ/CBR format? PDF? Just zipped or rarred image files? Do you want lossy JPGs or lossless PNGs? Both?

For those of you who really love the music aspects of the blog, have no fear! Most of us will continue to post music instead of comics, just not me, nostalghia, naguine or Lazzarus.