Coutoo by Andreas, the Serpent Crown & a general note on comics...

I recently decided to move the complete of my comic collection from my parents' house. I originally made a selection when I got married & tooke the best ones & the graphic novels etc to have in the big "σκαλιέρα" of the living room... but now I guess it's the time to (buy a new set of shelves for the bedroom &) take care of all those issues.

During that transport I bumped into several titles & I started reading again, but the first one I read was in my house all along, it was "COUTOO" by Andreas. Streight after that was the "AVENGERS: SERPENT CROWN" TPB by marvel.

I can't help but write about the big differences of these so different types of comics. 

Although German in origin I perceive Andreas as a "french school" artist, mainly because when I got aquainted with his work (back in the early ninties) it was through the french big comic houses (Lombard, Dargaud etc), digging up on the first flour of Librairie Kaufmann in Athens. All those "french" comics are so well treated by the publishers, large sizes, hard covers, excellent quality of print... the downside is that they are in french! Thank good for my french-speaking school for that, I was able to read them.

On the other hand the old marvel comics are so familiar as I literally grew up in the eighties reading them & collecting them from a few (counted on the fingers of one hand) kiosks scattered allover Athens & Glyfada who brought "imported comics"... I think that's why I bought the Serpent Crown, I actually had (from Monastiraki) one of the original 70s issues & wanted to read the whole story. That's pretty much my situation nowadays. In my 32 years of age I every now & then find something original to read (which usually is something like Rutu Modan's "Exit Wounds") or dig up some new TPB that collect all the issues I was missing from a certain arc.

So I ended up reading those two comics within a week's time. I so much enjoyed the Andreas' one! The feeling was so nice, so "noir" I couldn't stop reading (& happily french language was not a serious obstacle). The serpent crown on the other hand was... well... boring is not exactly the word for it but...

This difference in the storyline, in the quality of the drawings, in the language etc made me wonder how on earth did these comics (the french school) never made it big time!

After reading Coutoo I went to mycomicshop to see which albums of Andreas were printed in english. I was shocked! I mean almost nothing made it to english print!!! On the other hand if you check amazon.fr you will be dazzled with the many different titles available. I don't understand this.

Coutoo is a detective story in a typical noir atmosphere where the main hero hunts down a serial killer, coutoo (which if freely translated from french means knife), who was also hunted down & killed (?) by his father (also a detective). Very nice plot & classic pictures drawn here & there. Works like that in my mind transform the whole comic media from child/adolescent oriented to adult oriented.

The seprent crown on the other hand deals with the ever complicated adventures of the Avengers streight after the Scarlet Which's & Vision's marriage, involving time travel to the wild west, voyage to a parallel dimension & stuff like that, ending up to the infamous "serpent crown"... The storyline has several weak points (even for a marvel comic book).

My interest to the Serpent Crown started back in (1990 or was it 1991?) during the Atlantis Attacks arc among the Marvel Annuals. That's why I hunted down comicbooks involving that serpent crown... oh, well I was let down that's for sure. But this brings me to another issue alltogether. I see how Marvel collects & prints TPB with "omnibus" pritned on or how they collect storylines like "Inferno" or "Acts of Vengence" & I am puzzled... should I get the TPB or should I buy the original comics from interent sellers??? I honestly do not know what I would enjoy the most. On one hand a TPB looks far better on a shelf & is easy to carry everything bound together on one book. On the other hand with the original comics you get all the non comic content which can strike a note of nostalgia if you were reading stuff like that when young. Also the paper on printed comics was not glossy. Now, is that a good thing? I do not know! Reading the serpent crown on glossy paper made me feel strange. I think it was made & coloured for that cheap non-glossy paper & when printed in gloss it looked somehow "cheap"? I don't know. I am sceptical about that.

So anyways, Coutoo was placed back in the "σκαλιέρα" in the living room and Serpent Crown is waiting to be placed with the rest of the comics & issues on the new IKEA shelves I have my eye on...

Now next to my bed is found Andreas' "RORK Tome I Fragments"... I think Rork is his masterpiece... which means I need to save money to start buying th "Capricorne" series...

 By the way, I hade some meetings in athens last week & I managed to get earlier than expected with the Metro, so I stopped by Public to have a lok at their comic book section. I was impressed alright, too many titles to choose from (although no Andreas!). But one thing really annoyed me!

As soon as I bought my iPhone I loaded the free app "Price Check". This is one of those apps which scan the barcode of products & then can look online on stores for a price check or create a library or wishlist. Now, I am not the guy who will check the price of a book on amazon before I buy it from a bookstore, but I was looking forward into scanning things I intend to buy in the future so that I can look them up back home.. unfortunately Public has replaces all the barcodes with its own ones!!! So scanning was not possible. I was so let down as I actually bumped into a graphic novel that looked quite interesting.

It was a Sherlock Holmes graphic Novel, the  "A STUDY SCARLET"... hmmm, I flipped the pages & it looked interesting, it did remind me a bit the "LOGICOMIX" one, but maybe that's just me.

Oh anyway.