Thursday 14 January 2016

Weekly Update #117: The! Most! Controversial! Graphic! Novel! Of! All! Time!


Coming soon... the restored version of The Most Controversial Graphic Novel Of All Time, Volume 9 of Cerebus: "Reads".

14 comments:

Anthony Kuchar said...

Just curious about the decision to skip Jaka's Story through Women.

Is there a #2 for controversial? A few books come to mind. Frank Miller's Holy Terror. Neonomicon by Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows.

Also any comic that has been banned or challenged could be considered controversial.

http://cbldf.org/banned-comic/banned-challenged-comics/

Jeff Seiler said...

Ooh!, ooh! (Hand raised high, as in a classroom.) "Lost Girls", by Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie (Todd Klein, letterer)! Definitely a contender.

Jeff Seiler said...

I received my copy of Matt Dow's Christmas card a coupla weeks ago. LMFAO! There's a reason why he was Dave's most recent collaborator (to date, on one page in glamourpuss, most recently featured in Whiteley's review of glamourpuss). Look forward to next week's update, folks, look very forward. Funny coincidence, BTW, that both Dow's and my Christmas cards to Dave featured Rudolph being decidedly antisocial...

Also nice to see that, apparently, Dave's cold is over with. Continued improving health, Dave.

Jeff Seiler said...

BTW, probably the shortest Weekly Update, ever! Ever!! EVER!!! at 2 minutes, 17 seconds of new material. (Regardless of how long it took to edit...)

Hey, Dave and Sandy, we pay good money for dese movin' pitcher shows and we expects ta get ... Whazzat? ...

Ohhh!...

...Nevermind!

Unknown said...

Anthony! Howdy! I've still got JAKA'S STORY, FLIGHT and WOMEN in stock. Diamond has copies of all of those as well as the other books...except READS. READS has been out of print for a LOOOONG time. Which makes it a problem when it comes to supplying stores who have A CEREBUS customer (which is really the situation: some "benighted" individual -- who didn't get the Feminist Theocracy "memo" or got it and ignored it -- gets the CEREBUS "bug" and plows through all the books hits the wall at volume 9 and they don't want to buy volumes 10 through 16 until they've got volume 9). Interim solution would be: buy volume 9 at cerebusdownloads.com and then order the rest of the books. "Book" people tend not to be "downloads" people, however.

Tony Dunlop said...

So obviously that means the next Kickstarter archive portfolio is from Reads...? Not too many text-only pages, I hope!

GMcKellar said...

-"Book" people tend not to be "downloads" people, however.
Quite right. I've only just begun reading Cerebus with the re-masters and I don't even consider "filling the gap with digital editions" to be an option. As much as I'd like the next remaster to be Jaka's Story, I guess I'll just make-do with those OLD versions (see how you've spoiled us new fans?) for the time being.

- Feminist Theocracy "memo," got it and ignored it
Mr Sim, whether or not this is the beginning of the "reckoning" you've anticipated for decades, the feminist facade of "equality" is beginning to crack, and there are a number of men in my generation (I was born in '87) that DO NOT see "anti-feminist" as inherently/inexorably misogynistic. This "generation of men raised by women, TO BE women," as we grow up, are rediscovering the worth of logical rigor, physical/creative labor, and most importantly, male decisiveness and leadership.

Anthony Kuchar said...

Hi Dave. Makes perfect sense. I started collecting the books back in 2007/8 and it took me until Dec 2014 to find them all.

GMcKellar said...

1. Botched the verb tense in my last sentence. Oh well.
2. To Jeff and Anthony's points on controversial graphic novels; I agree. I also think it's interesting that all of those mentioned are "notably controversial" as a result of either religious or sexual material deemed "DANGEROUS TO YOUR BRAIN!" by folks who you would assume, by virtue of participating in the conversation, support "free speech."

Jim Sheridan said...

I've not read Lost Girls,GM, but when it came out, as I recall, it was labelled pornographic. Pornography does indeed face challenges in terms of freedom of speech and expression, at least in the U.S.

Anonymous said...

This probably doesn't count, but Void Indigo by Steve Gerber was so controversial it was cancelled. I don't know if Black Kiss by Howard Chaykin was ever collected into a graphic novel, but it was also very controversial. Dave's 24-hour comic "Bigger Blacker Kiss" was obviously a play on that.

- Reginald P.

Unknown said...

I've thought about it and my vote for #2 is Ditko's "Avenging World."

Unknown said...

Didn't mention Melmoth (I consider it one of my favorites, although I enjoyed them all). I hope it's safe to assume that will be remastered in due time. Btw I got all of the volumes through various means, took me a year to read (Damn Torah Commentaries!). Now that I'm finding myself wasting my money buying the remastered editions I must ask myself "Is it worth it?"

The answer, I tell myself as I look through the pages of CS remastered is a resounding yes.

Anonymous said...

How are we evaluating "most controversial"? Mike Diana's "Boiled Angel" is the first comic that comes to mind that is more controversial than anything Dave Sim did. Not only was it criminally prosecuted, but it got extensive coverage in the comics press at the time.

"CO", was "Avenging World" controversial? Ditko's objectivism was no surprise at that point. I can't remember reading anything about that; can you assist?

"Void Indigo" I recall had a lot of torture in it, before settling down to a fairly typical Steve Gerber superhero story. Funny; only a few years later it would look tame. And there was Barry Blair's "Ripper", which got a fair amount of attention for both violence and racism.

In mainstream comics, that issue of "The Hulk!" or "Rampaging Hulk!" or whatever it was called, where Bruce Banner almost got raped at the YMCA, got its fair share of ink. And of course there was Rick Veitch's "Swamp Think meets Jesus" story, but I'm not sure that counts as it was never published -- a fate Dave, as a self-publisher, never had to face.

-- Damian T. Lloyd