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Comics I Loved in 2023
- NPC82 3y agoVery interesting and extensive list. I now absolutely plan to buy Shubeik Lubeik in arabic for my SO who I just realized owns zero books in Arabic even though they speak, read and write arabic.
- contingencies 3y agohttps://fivebooks.com/book/naturalist-a-graphic-adaptation-eo-wilson/ https://fivebooks.com/book/naturalist-a-graphic-adaptation-e...
- bloopernova 3y agoWow, the author's enthusiasm for these comics is infectious. What a wonderful article and introduction to so many new to me artists! Feels like I need to branch out beyond One Punch Man
- bsaul 3y ago« The world is shit, multiple genocides rage on, the world seems hell-bent on a rightward turn as the capital class’ wealth extraction schemes go on and on » Am i the only one a bit bored by the « far left / marxist artist » cliché ?
- master-lincoln 3y agoYou are bored of many artists being in a similar region on the political spectrum? What does that even mean? Are you excited about the old white man leaning right cliché instead?
- mihaic 3y ago> You are bored of many artists being in a similar region on the political spectrum? Yes, there should be a bit more diversity in the type of stories/heroes/villains we're being presented with. The fact that US culture has two poles of thought makes for many unexplored avenues. Stories like Sandman or the Metabarons would have a hard time in being explored in modern US paradigms, since everything would need to be deformed to fit into boxes. At least that's my interpretation.
- bsaul 3y agoTotally agree. Politics and ideology is ruining imagination and fantasy. It's a disaster that i hope is soon going to be over, so we can find poetry and dreams back.
- master-lincoln 3y agoHow does imagination and fantasy get ruined by politics? The commercial publication of entertainment material that was created using imagination and fantasy might be influenced by politics, but that is not the same. As for commercial success you need to be popular and certain behaviors are just not popular enough anymore (I assume this is what you refer to) There is still racist poetry out there and people still have dreams with inappropriate actions in them. I fail to see your point
- master-lincoln 3y agoWasn't there a Sandman series produced in the US 2002? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sandman_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sandman_(TV_series)
- mihaic 3y agoYou mean 2022, right? Yes, it did appear, but not as an original work. To me the adaptation felt worsened by modern ideology. John Constantine was change to Johanna Constantine, a worse written character, while at the same time the comic actually had a great storyline with a Johanna Constantine, one of his ancestors. Honestly, I'm not sure if you're trying to understand why those like me see a decrease in quality and in idea diversity, or are simply arguing the opposite regardless of what we say.
- bigbillheck 3y ago> Stories like ... the Metabarons would have a hard time in being explored in modern US paradigms According to the generally-agreed-upon historical record, Metabarons appeared in French a full decade before its US publication.
- froggertoaster 3y agoNo, you are certainly not.
- mandmandam 3y ago[flagged]
- subtra3t 3y agoIt seems like the kind of thing the pseudo-intellectuals at HN/reddit/etc would lap up though so you can't say it's not working for the author.
- broscillator 3y agoAre you not also bored of the "X is woke" complainers cliché?
- JKCalhoun 3y ago(I read your comment after having just read about more and more Americans forced to live out of their cars on the front page of HN.)
- heresie-dabord 3y ago> a bit bored by the « far left / marxist artist » cliché ? I'm not bored, not in the least. For the sake of discussion, tell us more about what exactly bores you. You needn't agree with the author of the post, but the author appears to take an interest in history and current events, and he loves art and cares about ideas. Art and ideas are distinguishing facets of human existence. Art and ideas are everywhere. History does repeat itself, but events cannot be boring to those who face them.
- causality0 3y agoThe author obviously has a bone to pick since they bring up this perspective for every single comic on the list, but that doesn't make them bad comics.
- batch12 3y agoNot exactly that, but for me it's squeezing politics into almost everything. It doesn't matter if I agree or disagree, it all feels like propaganda.
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- bitwize 3y agoHey, late-stage capitalism is a compelling dystopian setting... and it's actually happening.
- Log_out_ 3y ago[flagged]
- ycombinete 3y agoHistory begins at roughly whatever time suits the beholder.
- walidthedream 3y agoI read it. I think you’re talking about two things that have little in common … you re comparing middle age military conquests with 19th / 20th century colonialism. Arab conquests had no racial basis, they did not establish « colonies » in the 19th/20th century sense, they did not subdue the population, kill or banish their intellectuals except at specific and limited religious extremist times, segregate ethnies, and siphon the economy deliberately. which probably explains the arabization process and the fact that 90 percent of modern berbers consider themselves as Arabs because Arab is a culture, it’s not a race or an ethnic belonging. Maybe a fairer comparison would be with the Ottoman era imperialism and I can guarantee you there are plenty of writings and arts in the Arab world that depict it in critical ways.
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- Log_out_ 3y agoSo racism is a pre requisite to imperialism? How do cultural imperialist societies (China, Russia) with decorated racism (everyone outside the main area is a bumbling backwards peasant) but a multi ethnic setup into this definition? This whole uniqueness of the western colonialism seems rather flimsy.
- dang 3y agoPlease don't start flamewars. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38899916 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38899916.
- froggertoaster 3y ago> The world is shit, multiple genocides rage on, the world seems hell-bent on a rightward turn as the capital class’ wealth extraction schemes go on and on. Not to be thoroughly unproductive, but an opening sentence like this is a complete turn-off to the rest of the article.
- JKCalhoun 3y agoIt may also be signaling to you that you may not like the comics the author presented either.
- master-lincoln 3y agoIf you feel that way, the rest of the content probably doesn't target you. In that case it could be considered nice from the author to make you realize this early on.
- krapp 3y agoMeh. If the author had turned it around and said "Modern culture is shit, immigrants and refugees continue to corrupt and degrade Western civilization, the world seems hell-bent on a hard Marxist turn as the woke liberal class' anti-white, anti-male schemes of oppression and censorship go on and on" we'd see comment threads a dozen levels deep praising the author for their refreshing iconoclasm and insight, and promising to read every book on their list.
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoHow so? It's depressing, sure, but it's not wrong either.
- FrustratedMonky 3y agoAre these all published in 2023? If these are just the top ones, then how many were there total? There must be hundreds of comic authors out there to get this many in a year. Is it a big market? Also. When did digital downloads of comics become more the norm, not exception? Some of these don't seem to have physical copies available. I know digital has been around a long time, but it always seemed like the biggest hits would still have physical copies on sale.
- JKCalhoun 3y agoEspecially for comics I would think having a physical copy would be a must.
- dimmke 3y agoI vastly prefer to read comics digitally on a tablet. It preserves the fidelity of the artwork much better and there are great apps like Panels that allow a lot of customization to the experience. Having physical copies of all the manga I read would be extremely cumbersome, it would take up a ton of space.
- n6242 3y agoJust yesterday I was looking at a list of American films released in 2023 and there were more than three hundred [1]. Considering that a movie takes a whole team of people to make but a comic only one or two, they're much easier to distribute especially digitally, and comics are popular also in Asia and Europe, I would say there's at least several thousands of them published every year (without even counting that many have monthly issues). Edit: Another interesting data point, there were more than 14000 games released just on Steam last year [2]. So I think it's not crazy to assume there's also several thousands of comics. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_films_of_2023 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_films_of_2023 2: https://gamerant.com/games-released-steam-2023-record-number/ https://gamerant.com/games-released-steam-2023-record-number...
- Palomides 3y agothis is such a weird comment to see, comics isn't as large as the movie industry, but it's still a US market in the billions of dollars barriers to entry are low and it's a rich, internationally thriving medium
- Freak_NL 3y ago> Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use. To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy. The linked cookie policy is hosted on a different domain: https://automattic.com/cookies/ https://automattic.com/cookies/, where riteshbabu.net is never mentioned again, and I am presented with a list of four websites (!) where I might be able to opt-out of tracking or whatever. Not to single this website out specifically, but what a load of crap. It's all just so incredibly stupid and broken.
- ctrl-j 3y agoI noticed this as well. The site is small enough it's not likely to draw enough scrutiny to face repercussions, however there's zero chance this is enough to satisfy various data protection laws.
- cableshaft 3y agoThis looks like an interesting list, and I'm probably going to read a few of these. Rare Flavours in particular sounds right up my alley. It can be hard to tell with the newer graphic novels which ones are more fun than being a work of serious literary fiction to elevate the medium, i.e. often they tend to be downers, at least for a good chunk of the story. I do like the more serious ones myself, but my partner has a birthday coming up, she loves graphic novels, but she's much more into fun, escapist (but with interesting/strong characters) stories at the moment since her job's been pretty stressful. Does anyone have recommendations for those? This list doesn't seem like it has too many that would fit that. I got her Nimona for Christmas, after we saw (and loved) the film adaptation for the first one on Netflix, for example.
- corethree 3y agoOh man. Manga has been honed over decades to be artfully escapist. The Japanese have this stuff down as an engineered art form and they divided it by gender too. As a dude I recommend stuff like, great teacher onizuka or Naruto or attack on titan or full metal alchemist... but that's stuff engineered for men. For girls you'll have to Google but it's definitely a targeted genre as well with tons of long running mangas.
- cableshaft 3y agoShe doesn't seem to really be that into manga actually, even though we do watch some anime from time to time. Like we're churning through One Piece right now (although that's mainly thanks to seeing and liking the live action adaptation). I could give her the manga for it, but I don't think she'd be as interested as just watching the anime. She hasn't expressed any interest in it, at least, where as soon as we finished Nimona she said "I want the graphic novel." And she doesn't own any manga, whereas she owns several dozen other graphic novels.
- corethree 3y agoIt's no different really. It's just the volume of manga is much more higher and diverse then American comics. She can't really know if she's interested if she hasn't tried it. Though I will say manga does have it's cliche tropes the same way American comics do it with super heroes. If she picks the wrong book she can easily be turned off.
- causality0 3y agoThe traditional comics industry has done such a disservice to consumers by painting comics as toothless drivel. This is due to the fact having actual consequences in the plots would interfere with their ability to milk characters and stories until the end of time. There is no drama in a Batman comic because nothing that happens in Batman comic matters since it will all be reset and overwritten eventually. Single-run comics that begin and end can tell truly incredible stories and you owe it to yourself to check them out.
- chimeracoder 3y ago> The traditional comics industry has done such a disservice to consumers by painting comics as toothless drivel. > > There is no drama in a Batman comic because nothing that happens in Batman comic matters since it will all be reset and overwritten eventually. You're conflating a feature of a genre with a medium or format. The phenomenon that you're referring to (retconning) is a feature of a genre, one which enables the creation of rich and intricate stories that couldn't emerge any other way. Batman is a particularly bad example to choose for this, because it's actually been exempted from several of DC's hard resets (see: New 52). Although DC in general does this less well than Marvel anyway. If you don't like them, that's fine, but they're not the only comics around, even if you're only buying stuff from the Big Two. Dismissing comics as "toothless drivel" because you don't like the narrative vocabulary of one genre is like dismissing cinema because you don't like Avengers movies.
- Palomides 3y agoGP agrees with you? DC and marvel are what most americans think all comics are (despite being like 25% at most of modern US comics sales)
- chimeracoder 3y ago> GP agrees with you? DC and marvel are what most americans think all comics are And I'm saying that's not even an accurate description of DC or Marvel.
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- flumpcakes 3y ago[flagged]
- aczerepinski 3y agoThere’s certainly a place for escapism. There’s also a place for art with something to say though.
- flumpcakes 3y agoNearly everything published in the last few years has been political, a growing trend since the mid-2000s. I'm finding myself watching shows from the 90s for escapism.
- harimau777 3y agoFor things set in modern day America, I think it would be almost impossible to not be political. If you include minorities (especially LGBTQ minorities) then you can't write them realistically without politics coming into the picture. If you don't include minorities, then that is itself a political statement. This is of course less the case for more fantastic settings.
- presstooober 3y agoIt’s absolutely possible to have LGBTQ (main) character and plot lines while totally avoiding all political/ideological themes. Schitt's Creek (TV Series 2015‑2020) is a fantastic example.
- looperhacks 3y agoTo some (many?) people, even including LGBTQ characters is an idiological topic in itself.
- wishinghand 3y agoThat was a political statement by imagining a world where LGBT is a non-issue. It was like a TV show version of John Lennon’s “Imagine”.
- ur-whale 3y ago[flagged]
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoAre we the baddies? More seriously, if you have a problem with criticism of your ethnicity or living place, you should think to yourself if you are a part of the problem. If you feel personally attacked, do some reflection whether they have a point or not, or whether they're fair or not.
- corethree 3y agoI think that's a coincidence. What gets me more is that he just selected stuff that's snobbish and "intellectual." It's so strange that people are like this that they find hard to digest stories about ultra realistic and deep characters in ultra realistic mundane situations to be called "literature." It requires more skill and more intelligence to create an elegantly simple escapist stories about unrealistic situations and characters that speak to a combination of realism and idealism . All of these books can't hold a candle to the MCU up to avengers end game. 10 years of movies with multitudes of artists, story tellers and centuries of technology all coordinated and artfully put together to build a monument of story telling only to be dismissed by snobs for being "stupid". Instead these snobs worship these slice of life books (often with shitty low effort art) about some character overcoming racism or coming to terms with his or her identity/parent/partner/son. These archetypical story types you find in literature are just as formulaic as the escapist stories we see in genres like super hero stories or star wars or lore, etc.. Make no mistake. We all have preferences but the more intelligent genre is the one with more escapism, unrealistic situations with semi realistic characters. Because these stories are harder to pull off, they are harder to make for the big screen. People who don't understand this just aren't getting it.
- scott_s 3y agoThe first three comics on this list are fantasy. At least a quarter, maybe closer to half, of the rest of the list are also fantasy.
- talentedcoin 3y ago[flagged]
- aaron695 3y ago[dead]