Con Chrisoulis of "Tales of The Smiths" interviewed for MTV Greece

Congratulations Chris! :flowers:
 
wow i love graphic novels and will be starting my illustration degree very soon this winter. i have a very large collection at this point worth around 25000 based on cover price. dont really do superheros or the like but love the history philosophy based stuff like lucifer and kid eternity. if you have any recommendations or would like any yourself let me know as i love the topic and medium. my fav authors would probably be ed brubaker, warren ellis, garth ennis, mat wagner (grendel is phenomenal), bendis for his crime stuff, brian wood (northlanders is great dmz is ok), mike carey, jason arron (the otherside about vietnam for example) etc etc. im guessing youve already read phonogram. awesome to see you getting attention so keep it up.
 
Thanks for the reply, Anonymous!

You already seem to have a great grasp on comics trivia and fairly good taste!
Yep, I've read most of the stuff you mentioned and I too am not a huge fan of superschlock!

Phonogram was insane! So many references in there that it takes ages to figure some out!

Some of my recommendations, not on your list, would be:
Twentieth Century Eightball, Pussey and Ice Haven by Daniel Clowes
Dork! by Evan Dorkin
Optic Nerve by Adrian Tomine
Age of Bronze by Eric Shanower
(the last two are collected in trade paperback collections under various titles)

Current ongoing stuff blowing my mind:
Jupiter's Legacy and Starlight by Mark Millar

Hope that helped!
Please check out my fb page or contact me through there for more stuff, news etc! :)
 
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cool, jupiters legacy has been pushed back so many times im dying to read it. didnt care much for starlight when i picked it up though im sure ill sit down and read it proper once it goes for a bit. supercrooks and her majestys secret service (of which is still ongoing) were also both great and from millar. just bought planetary in its super delux version which is one of my fav titles of all time. especially the dedication to h.g wells. phonogram was a lot of fun but i bought it mostly cause it had the full page reconstruction of suedes debut album cover as a chapter head. dork i already own but ill check out the rest. the stuff by daniell already sounds familiar it makes me wonder if ive ever picked it up. this collection is the most expensive thing i own at this point and is insured lol. what im currently reading meaning titles still on going are these:

bedlam (crime horror)

saga (political sci fi from vaugh who wrote ex machina, one of the best books ever)

red team (crime/police)

manhattan projects (alternative historical sci fi)

f.b.p (sci fi political corruption)

lazarus (sci fi action)

stumptown (crime detective)

the massive (a psychological tale of environmental survival)

the unwritten (literary historical political)

satellite sam (crime history of television production)

fatale (noir horror)

scarlet (crime political)

zero (sci fi espionage)

sex criminals (sci fi sex crimes)

hellboy in hell (horror history mythology)

parker (old school adaptations of donal westlakes parker the best crime books ever written. based in the sixties)

black science (sci fi moralists)

god is dead (mythology science based and otherwise)

ten grand (horror crime)

velvet (espionage)

i will say in terms of superhero stuff brubakers captain america (a character i hate anywhere else with all of his strategic leverage) was stupid amazing. its not really a superhero run/book at all but really an awesome tale of espionage thats was so good. micheal lark and eptinge were very good choices as collaborators. think i first heard about it on npr which is probably why i gave it a try. also try a book called flagg. its one of the first books to really do the graphic novel format and is super relevant to today and a huge inspiration to the cyber punk genre.
 
Haha, we've pretty much been reading the same books, Anonymous! :guitar:

I loved the suspense in Saga, but it hasn't really won me over ...yet! I think the tv heads really put me off! haha! Still, I keep reading it.
And yes, definitely read Jupiter's Legacy. It's way worth it, if only for Frank Quitely's style.

I agree on Brubaker's Captain America run. However, I don't know what it would have been like if he didn't use the Bucky's return gimmick, which was a no-no for years in Marvel.
Epting has gone a long way since his horrific style on his '90s Avengers run, and it shows on both Cap and Velvet.

Other stuff that is cool is Prophet, which is partly drawn by a fellow Greek, Giannis Mylonogiannis, and the Last Call series, also by a fellow Greek, Vasilis Lolos.

I started doing comics in Australia, where I grew up, and then in Greece and now I live in the UK, so my influences are quite diverse at this point.

I also really liked RASL by Jeff Smith (a 15-issue alternate reality meets time travel whack series)
and Locke & Key (a thrilling horror comic written by Stephen King's son) was amazing (that last series is totally recommended)!

Hope that was some help! Again, please stay in touch via my fb page for more news n stuff! :)
 
yeah i think though that was the only reason he decided to write that captain america book, that they let him bring back bucky. im assuming you read the winter soldier trilogy stand alone that ended buckys story which was also drawn by lark, whom i love, and eptinge. brubaker takes characters and breaks them. thats his whole thing in a way. in his daredevil run he killed everyone close to him and made it matts fault and questioned the ethics a lawyer who lies to police about being a vigilante and then tries to go to court and fight for truth even though he considers himself above the law. he breaks down and becomes the leader of the hand on the last page. in gotham central, a highly recommended book if you like police drama, is another example of him just breaking characters down (which works really well in the police department). my current goal right now is to find a copy of the killers second book, french i think, in hardback as i already have the other four and its currently going for money im not willing to pay back yet. im waiting for my alias omnibus to arrive as well. that rick jones impostor story so was such an incredibly and sadly poignant story about the desperation for fame. anyway i gotta stop or ill be going for ever. keep writing
 
Yeah, I agree on Brubaker's Daredevil run (though, to be honest, he had to follow Bendis, who followed Kevin Smith, who followed etc etc who ALL followed Frank Miller's recipe of breaking a character and bringing him down to the bare essentials before his big comeback).
The best Daredevil run (and collection) in my opinion is Miller-Mazzucchelli's Born Again. Just brilliant.
Being a really old reader too, it's easy to spot when a writer emulates him too! :)

Still, Brubaker's got some chops and, compared to Bendis' tiresome dialogue scenes, in the end manages to deliver!

Thanks again and talk soon! :)
 
yeah he of course did have to follow bendis which is in my all time fav top ten runs of any book as i really like the overly dialog heavy stuff myself (goldfish was the worst of it though). i just re bought that in the over sized hard back versions the max line put out (they did the same with alias and ennis's punisher run which is also in my top ten i think). millers daredevil run is alright to me but to much in the vein of traditional superhero stuff but what can you do as it came out when it did. ive been sorta refusing to read the diggle run as how can it possibly compare. diggle is a good solid writer though. did you read the miller romita (love him to death) run the man without fear. short but good.

as for quietly, i agree hes great and is responsible for one of the only two superman runs i have collected the other of course being millars (which i know you know), but he draws most women to look a lot alike and asian which is sorta funny. did you read we:3 (the sci fi version of homeward bout with grant morrison) cause it was really nicely drawn and also by quietly. if you like morrison try the mystery play which is an old vertigo book he did right after kid eternity which most people kind of forget about. beautiful to look at though as it looks to be water colors or something similar.
 
Yeah, I've read pretty much everything Grant Morrisson's done; beyond his X-Men run, the rest, including Invisibles, is not really appealing to me.
He tends to have this fascination with superheroes, which at this point I'm over (I've been reading comics for about 30 years, so I can't really dwell into superheroes too much as they seem incredibly repetitive, especially after 1986's Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns blew them all away). We3, I agree was great though, again, with Quitely saving the day!
Superhero deconstruction, like The Boys or the Millar-Hitch/Quitely run on Authority is the only thing I really like in terms of superhero comics!
Get onto Daniel Clowes Eightball collections, you'll love his stuff!
Or Joe Sacco's Palestine, which is really relevant these days due to the horrific Gaza strip killings.

That's all folks! :)
 
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