♪ ♪
I can't think of a time when I didn't love comics.
I love them so much that there was never really
a choice for me to not get involved with them.
It was always what I was going to do,
at some point in my life.
So, here we are.
This just happens to be a copy of one of my favourite
comic books of all time: Frank Miller's Ronin.
This thing here is probably the comic book that's the
most responsible for me standing here in front of
you guys because I was crazy about this thing.
It came out when I was 13 years old.
I sort of saw it on a whim.
It was like maybe the first or second time I'd ever gone
into a comic book store.
It blew my mind.
I couldn't figure out what the story was about.
I couldn't figure out where it was going.
I couldn't decipher the techniques that were being
used to create this story.
But every new question that it created for me,
which was on every page pretty much,
just compelled me and it made me realize that comics
could be more than just like you know the kind of Marvel
and DC superhero comics that I was reading
in the early-80s and the mid-70s.
It showed me that these things could be kind of
whatever you could conceive of them being.
What else do we have here?
Cages!
Dave McKean for me is one of comic books' true geniuses.
There's just something about the guy.
The quality of his images, that sort of dreamlike
quality, and its command!
Its sheer command of craft — like you give this guy any
assignment and he can knock this thing out of the park.
I read this thing and it was another book almost like
Ronin where it was sort of confounding in a way because
not a whole lot was going on with it.
It was all sort of moments in a person's life,
very still, very slow, very deliberate,
very slice of life.
And yet you knew that there was something else going on
beneath the surface.
I didn't know what it was.
I couldn't tell if it was something supernatural.
I didn't know what was going on.
But yeah, incredible book.
Seminal: I tried to copy it many times.
Failed miserably every time but what are you going to do.
♪ ♪
What do we have?
We have Saga!
Brian K. Vaughan, Fiona Staples.
It's kind of a huge science fiction,
cross-generational, epic saga.
Think it's supposed to be about two parents on the
run, I'm still not entirely certain what I'm reading
to be totally honest with you but I'm loving it.
I kind of get the impression when I read this book
that Brian K. Vaughan —
and also like one of his other books, Paper Girls —
I'm convinced Brian K. Vaughan
is just making these stories up as he goes along
from issue to issue.
But for whatever reason he's hit the right formula and
these books are so addictive and incredible.
These are very beautiful books.
I didn't expect them to be quite so pretty.
Nice.
I don't know a whole lot about them but I read about
them and it was shocking and exciting for me to see
Margaret Atwood dipping her toes into this world and it
was kind of a beautiful thing it was almost like
hearing about Ava DuVernay and Spike Lee
directing superhero movies...it's like,
what the hell?
I didn't see that one coming.
And it is drawn by a black man.
Drawn by a black man!
There are so few of us out there
doing this kind of work.
It's like, you got to represent.
Good stuff.
Oh wow!
Love Charles Burns.
Like, you'll notice a theme in my things that I've said
where I've spent time ripping off the artists
that I loved.
And Charles Burns is yet another one.
I must've spent a year trying to imitate this
beautiful brush line that he's got which is
so beautiful and precise it looks like it was drawn
by a robot.
And yet you know I know that it wasn't.
I've seen Charles Burns with my own eyes.
I know he's a real guy.
Yeah, this is an incredible book:
disturbing, beautiful, obtuse.
I love this book.
About a teen plague spread through sex
if I remember it correctly.
♪ ♪