Galaxy Newsbrief 072514: Is It Art?

* One of my favourite bloggers, Bob Temuka, looks at art and artifice in the comics of Joe Matt, Chester Brown and Seth at The Tearoom of Despair.

* When I was a tender lad in my early teens, tentatively exploring the wild and wooly world of underground comics, Vaughn Bode was a legend spoken of with admiration and wonder. He still is. Fantagraphics has announced a major new push to get his weird, fantastic and surreal comics back into print. The Comics Reporter has details.

* I mentioned in my last post that I was suspending this blog because I was involved in some pretty intensive training for my job. That's over and done with. And here I am on the Friday of the San Diego Comicon with this modest little post. If you're at the show, I hope you have a wonderful time and buy lots of comics. I'm not at the show, and just as well pleased because I don't think I'd actually enjoy the scope and scale of it. I did visit a local superhero convenience shop yesterday and walked out annoyed at the lack of variety and the truly ludicrous prices. It's not worth naming them, as there are plenty of good comic book stores within a 50 mile radius of my house, and I should have known better than to bother with the one ten minutes away.

* Right now the only comic I am regularly buying is Marvel's Miracleman single issues, for the gorgeous recolouring and the fact that they honoured Alan Moore's wishes in how he is credited. I am looking forward to getting the new League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century hardcover by Moore and artist Kevin O'Neill, out this week and collecting the third volume of the series (you can get it from Top Shelf here). I really like IDW's Star Trek: City on the Edge of Forever original screenplay adaptation, although their ongoing Star Trek title has had its ups and downs recently. I will probably check out Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips's new Image series The Fade Out, and am open to other comics attracting my attention, but I am one fickle bastard these days.