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THE BLOG AT THE CROSSROADS
Article: PG Preview June 2013
Posted: April 27, 2013
June is busting out all over with top-notch, class-act comics, once you’ve hunted down deep for those sparkling needles through the teetering haystack of product on offer. Old and new, reprints and debuts, English-language and translations from The Netherlands (SelfMadeHero’s graphic biography of Rembrandt by the underappreciated Dutch virtuoso Typex, above), Italy, France and Quebec, plus some actually interesting Superman products, all sit side-by-side in this shortlist of my top tips.
As part of his promotion for his new series Lazarus for Image Comics, American writer Greg Rucka calls for “more books about more things, not the same books about the same things with a new coat of paint.” Spot on. It is encouraging to see creators like Rucka break away from ‘legacy characters’ and branch out to originate projects of their own. The only snag is that ‘creator-owned’ does not always equal ‘creative’. All too often these scenarios sound a lot like familiar genre fare or wannabe movies or TV series. In North American comics, spectacular leaps in ambition and achievement have been made by former mainstream artists-turned-complete authors - like Seth, David Mazzucchelli or David Lapham. Whereas these sorts of leaps don’t seem to happen quite so often, when it comes to mainstream writers ‘breaking free’ to pursue their dreams. They may be subject to publishers’ demands for commercial fan-pleasing material, and of course the need to pay those bills, but perhaps sometimes they also set limits themselves on their own creative liberty. Dream braver and bolder please and really deliver “more books about more things”.
For inspiration, here’s some more evidence of that exuberant diversity which is already out there. Read the rest of my PG Previews for June 2013 here…
Read The Blog At The Crossroads here.
