Not a great June for me either in terms of numbers, especially in new comics - I read only 2 issues of Gilbert Hernandez's Psychodrama, and one of those turned out to be a re-read from last year. I liked this new issue better than the previous one, though I'd be hard-put to tell you why: they're mostly meant to be examples of Fritz's many B-movies and they're all so weird it's hard to explain.

I finished the Hammett/Raymond Secret Agent X-9 and feel a bit relieved I'm done with it: the stories were only so-so the printing so blurred that Raymond's art was not easy to appreciate. If they ever manage to somehow produce a new edition with better reproduction I'd replace this one, since I think Raymond's work is always worth looking at even when the writing is no great shakes, as here. Since I've gone back the the 20s/30s in some of my prose reading, I'd like to find some more comics from the same era. I have Terry and the Pirates and I'm trying to order a couple other things online, though I've found that less reliable the last few years than it used to be.

Once again guided by the era of book I was reading, I next turned to the 1980s and read Gray Morrow's Edge of Chaos miniseries, the first few issues of Frank Brunner's Warp and of the famous, trend-setting (is it fair to say?) mid-80s DC "event" series, Crisis on Infinite Earths. In all three, I'd say the artwork turned out to be the main attraction. This wasn't a surprise with Crisis, since I already knew going in that I wasn't likely to suddenly start liking DC characters I had never liked much my whole comics-reading life; but I had hoped to find Warp and Chaos a little more special in the writing department than they turned out to be for my personal taste.

Warp has an interesting back-story, having begun as a stage-play - which must have seemed a very strange piece of work for theatre-goers of the time (actually a few years earlier, in the 70s) but as a comic it feels very familiar and perhaps even just a little stale. Still, the Brunner art is more than enough to compensate for these short-comings, even though it isn't up there with, say, his best work on Doctor Strange.

Edge of Chaos was a fun romp, a cute variation on the idea of the ancient gods as astronauts, generally perhaps a little more light-weight than I'd expected. Gorgeous art by Morrow, though some of the line-work was so delicate that I think it was lost in the printing (though nothing like as bad as the X-9 printing I mentioned earlier). It seemed to be set up for a sequel but nothing ever happened as far as I know - too bad, I'd read it if there was one. Back to the writing, I know this is a contentious issue and therefore I hesitate to bring it up, but I want to be up front about this: it's in comparing things like this to Kirby's take on the basic idea of Olympian pantheon as ancient astronauts in the Eternals that the remarkable originality and creativity of Kirby's writing comes out. I'm sure many people would read Edge of Chaos and find the dialogue, even the overall scenario, etc much more acceptable than the Eternals because it feels and sounds much like what they're used to and expect; but conceptually, to me there's no comparison the two.

I "read" about 70 pages of a big collection of Moebius's 70s work - the quote marks because much of this material is made up of sketches and illustrations rather than sequential story-telling, so it's as much an art book as a comics or B-D collection. But there are some comics in there, including a few Major Gruber stories (the very first?) at the end of the section I read, which appear to lead into around 100 pages of Le Garage Hermétique de Jerry Cornelius - which I'm looking forward to reading in full (assuming this is indeed the complete Airtight Garage), having previously seen only bits of it in English in the odd issue of Heavy Metal I bought back in the day.

I included "Doré's Illustrations for Ariosto's Orlando Furioso" in my list: I've been looking at it as I read William Stewart Rose's 1830s translation of the famous Renaissance epic. How does everyone feel about including art books in our lists? Probably I was influenced by the ambiguous character of the Moebius book, which contains both illustrations and comics. Ideally, I'd like to have an edition including this text (because I wanted to read this specifc translation this time around) and the Doré artwork: I found another translation online with the Doré art and there are one or more pictures to most pages but occasional stretches of 2 or 3 pages with just text. I suppose I was also influenced by the illusion that I'm "reading" this art book, when what I'm actually reading is of course the Ariosto poem and only viewing or looking at (as opposed to reading) the art book as I go along. To complicate the question further, I just found a more complete edition that has all 600+ illustrations rather than just 200, though unfortunately it's of smaller dimensions. I'll probably end up not including them in my list but I'll wait until I'm finshed the Ariosto book before deciding.

I love Psychodrama. I would probably have trouble trying to find the words to explain why. It’s so dang weird. I’ve read the last four or five issues and I always look forward to the next one.

For a while there I liked Psychodrama more than I did most of what Gilbert was doing in Love and Rockets itself but I think he's raised his game there lately so I that's no longer the case. I think part of it the attrtaction of Psychodrama is the weird B or Z-movie charm that Hernandez somehow instills into these stories. That's probably why I liked this latest issue more than the previous one: the setting was more interesting than the stranded-on-an-island scenario of the earlier issue. If they had been movies I'd have preferred it as well.

Late on the July wrap up as I've been absent for a bit over a week. July was a big comic reading month for me, as I tried to spend more time reading and less time scrolling online (though prose reading was a bit down). I read over 200 comics this month. Highlights included some Gladstone Disney Comics, some of the arcs in Legends of the DC Universe, Far Sector, and some of the current titles I am grooving with.

-M

28.5 funny books in July.  A lot of that was The Lonely War of Capt. Willie Schulz.  My prose reading was a lot better.  

I went a bit overboard in July reading all those Atlas comics, but it was an interesting side project. 20th Century Boys is the best thing I'm reading at the moment. Boy's Ranch is my favorite thing by Kirby. I like Rawhide Kid too, and would take Western Kirby over Science Fiction/Monster/Fantasy Kirby most days of the week. My Direct Currents thread has prompted me to revisit some books from that era. I'm really enjoying Alan Grant's Demon series, and I've gotten hooked on Ennis' Hitman after not vibing with it the first time round. 

I read that a few years ago (even reviewed it in another thread) and liked it quite a bit.