Echo Fred's reccomendations. My reading is 80/90s. Most of it is
available in graphic-novel format. I'll have to look up the Erickson
stuff.

Oldies but goodies:

Barry Windsor-Smith ("Conan The Barbarian")
Will Eisner
Robert Crumb (now decamped to France - the documentary on his life is
worth looking up).

Gaiman's the Sandman is ok for the first 60 comics - can be tedious in
places. Lots of (sometimes) too-loud references (particularly the
Milton)
Love & Rockets (now defunct) - the Hernandez Brothers
Arkwright
ABC warriors ("Big Jobs!!!")
Frank Miller's Batman is ok-ish, ("Dark Knight Returns") although he
seems to enjoy the vigilantism a little *too much at times.
Most stuff that Howard Chaykin writes and draws (once he hands over
the reins, stuff goes down hill fast - American Flagg was like this).
Black Hawk, Black Kiss, American Flagg
V

Akira
Ghost In The Shell
Cowboy Bebop (my current *cough*download*cough* fav)
Battle Royale

I used to get "Heavy Metal" (http://www.metaltv.com/) which had a lot
of European content. Jean Giraud AKA Moebius is a genius. I think it's
called Metal Hurlant in France.

Most of my comic reading is online these days -

Scary Go Round http://www.scarygoround.com
Errant Story http://www.errantstory.com/ (elves & pogroms)
Penny Arcade http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/
Cat And Girl http://www.catandgirl.com/index.php
Megatokyo http://www.megatokyo.com/
The Seraph Inn http://www.seraph-inn.com/
http://www.e-sheep.com/spiders/  Delta thrives by the same author is cool.
Diesel Sweeties  http://www.dieselsweeties.com/

Scott McCloud is always interesting if a little theoretical. Does a
lot of Web-stuff these days.

Roger
On 8/10/06, MJ Walker <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Very interesting, Fred - I haven't read H. but am now tempted to try,
> and as far as graphic novels are concerned have only recently started
> reading Gaiman's Lord Morpheus series. Recommendations, please. Nor have
> I ever read a word by Steve Erickson - which one do you recommend to
> start with? There a very charming interview here that I just googled-
> http://rakesprogress.typepad.com/rakes_progress/2005/02/qa_with_steve_e.html
>
> - don't know if you've read that.
> The poem, "Innocence" is disturbing & occasionally magnificent: lines like
>
> "Women peer
>
> through slits in robes and doors,
>
> men flee and fire, and the soldiers move
>
> into the mind and landscape of the future"
>
> are unforgettable (here Dom's "comic book realism" idea is insufficient because there are very intense strictly poetic qualities to the writing); the whole Keith Douglas alternative reality passage with the ancient Wilfrid Owen is tremendously suggestive - their unspoken dreams are our history. Part 5 is the most pulpy, shot through with a mordant irony & poetic resonances; the last two lines are killers. Thanks.
> Martin
>
>
> Frederick Pollack wrote:
>
> > ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dominic Fox" <[log in to unmask]>
> > To: <[log in to unmask]>
> > Sent: Wednesday, August 09, 2006 5:16 PM
> > Subject: Re: "Innocence"
> >
> >
> >> I was looking for a descriptive term for this; "comic book realism"
> >> was the closest that came to mind - the stylisation, the ever-present
> >> awareness of and gestures towards a pulp media context (horror movies
> >> and so on); the hard-boiled, sardonically un-PC Frank Miller aspect;
> >> the morose delectation in the face of violent passions and acts. These
> >> are Houellebecqian traits as well, although sex is more his thing than
> >> violence.
> >>
> >> I suspect you could do pretty well as a comic book writer. I'm serious
> >> - and I'm quite a fan of those sorts of comic books...
> >>
> >> Dominic
> >>
> >
> > I am too.  Every semester in my intro creative writing courses, I cite
> > graphic novels as models of compressed, suggestive narrative, and it
> > distresses me that few students are aware of them.  For some years
> > I've imagined a collaboration - a comix version (or "illumination") of
> > some of my poems.  But I've made no effort to contact someone in the
> > field; really I don't know whom to approach, or how.
> >
> > Houellebecq is one of two novelists each of whose new works I
> > automatically read (the other is Steve Erickson).  Currently I'm
> > halfway through "The Possibility of an Island."  In a sense, sex isn't
> > H's thing, love is; but love for him is the great impossible.
> > Consciousness is kept from aspiring to it by obsessive narrow selfish
> > reasoning.   Market calculation as Kantian category, a synthetic a
> > priori -- H's repudiation of political hope does not make him less
> > politically revealing.  The mind in H is trapped by its own lucidity
> > in the horizon of the body - a horizon mercilessly defined by age,
> > inadequacy, and death.  It's a vision more medieveal than postmodern.
> > I intersect with it at some points but I'm more of a romantic.
>
>
> --
> The older I get, the more I agree with Shakespeare and those poet Johnnies about it always being darkest before the dawn and there's a silver lining and what you lose on the swings you make up on the roundabouts.  Bertram Wooster, Esq.
>


-- 
http://www.badstep.net/
http://www.cb1poetry.org.uk/
"From the waist downwards, Bloodnok was tattooed with a pair of false
legs... facing the wrong way."