Friday, January 15, 2016

This Art Form Deserves To Die


Advertising in the Previews Catalog for volume 27 (!) of the Modesty Blaise comic strip reprint collection by Titan Books, September 2015.

Imagine that all the world's museums (The National Gallery in London included) despised the work of Francisco de Goya or William Turner being full of mediocre crap instead. Imagine that publishers shunned the work of Marcel Proust or Virginia Woolf (that's... ahem... not that difficult to imagine because it's happening already). Imagine that the work of Ingmar Bergman or David Lean was completely ignored (again, that's... etc... etc...). You get my point. 

Impossible? That's exactly what happens in comics.

Apart from the amateur publications of the ADCCC (All Devon Comics Collector's Club) no one else but Titan Books is reprinting British newspaper comic strips. And what does Titan publish, I hear you asking? Great newspaper comics series like Carol Day or Matt Marriott? Not at all! What Titan Books is publishing is crap like the one that you can see above.

Maybe they thought something like: "OK, enough mediocre pap! Let's do things right and publish all the seventy Matt Marriott story arcs." Unfortunately, no, they added crap to their already existing pile of crap as you can see below. 

As I repeatedly said on this blog: this art form deserves to die!


Advertising in the Previews Catalog for a volume reprinting four James Bond comic strip story arcs published by Titan Books, October 2015.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

How did you come across Matt Marriott anyway?