JohnnyEnzyme

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eurographicnovels
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Video of Ana Miralles Creating the Gorgeous Art for her Series Djinn Written by Jean Defaux in c/eurographicnovels@lemm.ee
[–] JohnnyEnzyme@lemm.ee 2 points 4 months ago (23 children)

That was great! Thank you for sharing. <3

Watching that creation-process was like a meditation of sorts. A meditation set to... Chopin, or Mussorgsky, was it? (daggit, I'm good at enjoying classical piano, but not much good with the proper names)

Haha, it also kind of highlights to me how much I enjoy, yet despise watercolor. I mean, I absolutely *adore* the look of it and the creation process, but actually DOING THE WORK can be such an utter, pain-in-the-arse, and we even get a sense of that in the video.

Annnnnywaaaaaay, Djinn happens to be one of my very favorite works, by one of my very favorite writers, Jean Defaux. I'm really not sure why he's not talked about more across the BD-sphere, as the bloke is just a straight-up genius IMO.

I have like a *thousand* more thoughts upon this, but on top of grieving Cal's loss, I need to get some critical paperwork done.

I am so, SO, very thankful to you @wolfinthewoods@lemmy.ml for stepping up like this.

Bleu à la lumière du jour by Borja Gonzalez Art is Utterly Breathtaking in c/eurographicnovels@lemm.ee
[–] JohnnyEnzyme@lemm.ee 3 points 4 months ago

Thank you so much for your help. <3

"The lobster tank," from ***Grandville - Force Majeur***, by Bryan Talbot in c/eurographicnovels@lemm.ee
[–] JohnnyEnzyme@lemm.ee 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Shit, I'm sorry for kinda talking over you as I did at the time.
My bad, mate. :S

Oof, but I'm curious... anything you wanted to add about how it went with Talbot at the convention? Any opinions on what work of his we might best-share here, such as what you best admire about his work..?

(apologies on this laaaate reply, and apologies for my rudeness)

WEBCOMIX! in c/eurographicnovels@lemm.ee
[–] JohnnyEnzyme@lemm.ee 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Oh, wowsers...
So, revisiting the Vattu site the other day, I discovered the same author's latest project, which seems to take all the lessons he's learned, and skills he's being honing for ~20yrs, taking them in to even new, better directions:

https://rice-boy.com/3rdvoice/

Now THAT is a fricking impressive webcomic, with world-building for days. oO

Aye, oh and aye-- for sure I'll need to add that entry to the list, as well as a couple more Euro/webcomix I discovered the other day.

Haha, I wonder if anyone here has actually checked out these goodies, yet? :S

Bleu à la lumière du jour by Borja Gonzalez Art is Utterly Breathtaking in c/eurographicnovels@lemm.ee
[–] JohnnyEnzyme@lemm.ee 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

"Blue to the light of day" = um, "Blue of daylight?"
No, wait... "Daylight Blue?"
No, wait... "Blue like Daylight?"

Bah!

The dialogue is sparse, making the big, silent panels even more exaggerated in their quietude.

Thank you so much for sharing this, speaking as a fellow French-learner! It sounds really promising, because I love stuff like L'ours Barnabé that's almost specifically designed for A1/A2 idiots like me. 😅

Also, silhouettes in general really send me... <3

Hmm, at first I didn't think I'd heard of this (Spanish) artist or tome, before, but then I checked out some SAMPLES, and I think I did read either the ENG-version of A Gift for a Ghost, or maybe Nuit Couleur Larme.

Yeah, I'm gonna try tracking down this book, and thank you again for taking the time to post and share. ^^

Revisiting ***American Paranoid*** (six pages) in c/eurographicnovels@lemm.ee
[–] JohnnyEnzyme@lemm.ee 2 points 4 months ago

Wow, is that right..?
In any case, I feel like something evidently messed with the previously (and yes, theoretically) equanimical, vital relationship between the sexes. I mean sure, the obvious culprits were along the lines of early agriculture and lucre-based societies.

But one thing I really loved about The Power of Myth series is that it showed us via many examples that societies led by women could be completely healthy & functional. For example, the ones I saw seemingly didn't need to be in power *themselves*, but could have heavy influence in appointing the right chiefs to lead the clan/tribe!

What is a food that you want to cook but you know you'll never have the motivation to make? in c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
[–] JohnnyEnzyme@lemm.ee 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Sort of like a deluxe, Peruvian version of Scottish cottage pie, no?

And... gotta love those thinly-sliced red onions (and for me, habanero slices) soaked in lime juice in the fridge, overnight. I used to use them as a topping on all kinds of meals before my stomach finally gave out, lol.

What is a food that you want to cook but you know you'll never have the motivation to make? in c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
[–] JohnnyEnzyme@lemm.ee 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Traditional versions also contain ~50% butter by total pre-cooking weight. (Hello heart-health my old friend...)

Dunno about your area, but there's some pretty awesome frozen puff pastry sold in thin-ish sheets at most stores around here. It bakes up quick and almost magically multi-layered, and I would not for a million years be able to tell it from scratch puff pastry from une belle boulangerie.

Lemmy Needs to Fix Its Community Separation Problem in c/fedigrow@lemm.ee
[–] JohnnyEnzyme@lemm.ee 4 points 4 months ago

This was already touched on earlier, but I wanted to add on a bit:

The idea comes from how Reddit handles it (MultiReddits) but from my experience it's a feature not many people made use of, and it sounds like a pain to have to constantly create and manage new multi-communities to group together duplicate communities. This shouldn't be a task that users have to manually do.

This is a pretty bad or maybe just naive take that IMO doesn't sum things in a productive way upon Multi-Reddits. That is-- 1) it arguably doesn't matter a bit how many people make use of it, as each person's MR is going to be a custom affair, and it works at the individual user level anyway, 2) on the contrary, it's no trouble at all to build your MR's either quickly or painstakingly, and you can spread that effort across weeks, months and even years. In the end, I find MR's fantastically useful as super-custom feeds that you can use to stay focused on a tight range of topics.

Unfortunately, these kinds of half-baked conclusions tend to suggest to me that OP doesn't have a whole lot of familiarity with either platform at this time. That said, there's a lot of interesting ideas in the article, it's just a little disappointing in various places.

Where do you draw the line between "staying informed" and avoiding all the stress in the news? in c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
[–] JohnnyEnzyme@lemm.ee 6 points 4 months ago

This is a myth. You actually don’t.

No, I think that's what OP's question is all about-- more than ever, many/most people DO need to stay informed to a baseline extent. That's because laws, policy and legal interpretation are changing hard and fast in the USA for example, and citizens who aren't informed can be critically blindsided. That may result in their jobs suddenly vanishing for no good reason, discrimination being ratcheted up against them, their rights suddenly eroding (as we saw in the wake of Roe vs. Wade being revoked), and/or they're now facing deportation or being held in a facility 'just because.' Or for example, many people depend on Medicare, Medicaid, the ACA and/or SSI to stay afloat, and those are all going to be cut down, evidently. So certainly, you'd want to be as prepared as possible for stuff like the above, while still retaining a healthy mindset.

Or for example, if you were in Great Britain and weren't paying attention to the Brexit background, you may have been part of (and directly affected by), the voting disaster enabling the plan to go through.

What is a food that you want to cook but you know you'll never have the motivation to make? in c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
[–] JohnnyEnzyme@lemm.ee 11 points 4 months ago

Gonna take a detour here and mention the time that I tried to make tofu from scratch, starting with making soy milk from dried beans that I'd ordered just for the task:

The soy milk turned out surprisingly well, with the help of a semi-automated device, but I realised on the spot that most commercial soy milk has a tonne of sugar added to it, and I didn't want to go down that route. In fact, it just about turned me off of soy milk permanently.

Anyway, I moved on to the tofu-making stage, and realised that both coagulants I tested (lemon juice and nigari powder) imparted a huge, unwanted taste to the tofu, on top of neither being all that great at coagulating the soy milk. In the end, I think I could have improved on this cooking disaster, but my motivation was gone at that point, and I wanted to move on.

There's also the fact that no matter what a versatile food tofu is, it's also a significantly processed one, and I wanted to move in the opposite direction. That said, I understand that fresh-made tofu in Japan and other places can be incredibly tasty, almost worth wolfing down straight with no cooking or spices.

Revisiting ***American Paranoid*** (six pages) in c/eurographicnovels@lemm.ee
[–] JohnnyEnzyme@lemm.ee 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

And even that would be just a tiny dab in to our culture, given that Homo is 2Myrs old.

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"I leave you in the capable hands of Christina" -- first thoughts on reading Melo Pop (Lucie Durbiano) (i.imgur.com)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by JohnnyEnzyme@lemm.ee to c/eurographicnovels@lemm.ee
0 comments fedilink
 

So my French is still very much a WIP, but regardless, I really enjoyed this tome. I found it light-hearted in style, but with a good amount of emotional punch, possessing an interesting slice-of-life storytelling style.

Yeah, there were lots of obvious similarities with Lewis Trondheim's classic McConey / Lapine series, but Durbiano has her own way of telling these tales, not so much alongside Trondheim's humorous-nihilist approach. (hah)

In terms of the story, we start with a minor "rock oldies" band that's been engaged to play nightly on a cruise ship.

https://i.imgur.com/GNf3RO2.jpeg


https://i.imgur.com/qFJtaRn.jpeg

Pretty funny. The group's manager is arguing with "Mick," the singer / lead guitarist about the band's one and only groupie. One who was tacitly invited to come along on the cruise, and naturally, she has an enormous crush on the laddie. Poor, poor inconvenienced Mick. XD

https://i.imgur.com/U9K5c71.jpeg

WHAT were you saying just now? Huh, what, huh?

SIDE NOTE: One of the things which routinely blows my mind as someone who usually can't stand anthropomorphised animal comics is when I barely even notice that such was the case.

Eh, actually I found it completely charming here, serving well alongside such masterpieces as District 14 et Grandeville. TBF, if I can offer up any particular critique here, it's that the book can be ever-so-slightly "soap-operish" in nature. Still tho, it never seemed to wallow in such, as they commonly do.

Oh, and here's some more on this laudable comics gal:
https://www.lambiek.net/artists/d/durbiano_lucie.htm

EDIT: For anyone curious, we're still having a "suspicious glitch" when trying to post images in text. Still working on it...

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No no, the car works just fine. I'm telling you I'll BE there!! (i.imgur.com)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by JohnnyEnzyme@lemm.ee to c/eurographicnovels@lemm.ee
6 comments fedilink
 

It's Simon Stålenhag again.

Earlier post on him:
https://lemm.ee/post/30828607

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Jack Spriggins and the Enchanted Bean, by Scott Gustafson (lemm.ee)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by JohnnyEnzyme@lemm.ee to c/eurographicnovels@lemm.ee
0 comments fedilink
 

This English story dates to 1734, and was of course later known as Jack and the Beanstalk. But get this-- the story actually seems to have proto-IndoEuropean origins, dating as far back as 4,500 BC(!)

WP has a solid article on this stuff here.

As for the artist:

Scott... is primarily known for his work illustrating children’s classics such as Peter Pan, The Night Before Christmas, and the more recent titles, Classic Fairy Tales, Favorite Nursery Rhymes from Mother Goose, Classic Bedtime Stories, and his novel for young readers, Eddie: The Lost Youth of Edgar Allan Poe, which he wrote and illustrated.

More of his work on "Jack" is here and some of his fairy-tale works are there, which also link to his overall art portfolio.

Style-wise and theme-wise I find some similarities to the work of Kit Williams, who I briefly covered in a post here from six months ago: https://lemm.ee/post/16931863

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Daggit... now why am I always the one who says "I love you" too early? (www.youtube.com)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by JohnnyEnzyme@lemm.ee to c/eurographicnovels@lemm.ee
0 comments fedilink
 

Is too much texte, maybe...!?
Lewis OfMan

https://i.imgur.com/OWwp3Qz.jpg

https://lemm.ee/api/v3/image_proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FOWwp3Qz.jpg

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Nävis profite d'un moment avec sa petite amie [NSFW?] (i.imgur.com)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by JohnnyEnzyme@lemm.ee to c/eurographicnovels@lemm.ee
7 comments fedilink
 

So this is Nävis ("NAY-vee") from my favorite long-form sci-fi series Sillage ("Wake"). It's about a human girl who was the only survivor of an interstellar ship crash, who grew to adulthood with the help of one surviving robot and a sort of orphaned tiger-cub who grew up alongside her.

Eventually, she's discovered by the travelling collective "Sillage," which immediately turns her life upside down, but unexpectedly she proves uniquely valuable to the collective-- her human mind simply can't be read by the best telepaths in the galaxy, making her primo material as an espionage agent, particularly since she grew up in fairly savage circumstances. It's all a bit of a super-creative riff on the classic Tarzan formula, I find.

More on the wonderful Sillage / Wake albums:
https://sillage.fandom.com/wiki/Sillage_(comic_series)

Side note: I get the feeling that her bird friend here doubles as a little homage to John diFool's Deepo!

NOTE ALSO:
I've been having some pretty weird problems posting here since I publicly critiqued Lemmy.ML the other day. Let's assume it's just a total coincidence for now, but at the moment, it looks like I'm not allowed to share extra images in the body of my posts.

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Do you make art? Care to share any? For my part, here's a page from my sketchbook: [NSFW, possibly] (i.imgur.com)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by JohnnyEnzyme@lemm.ee to c/eurographicnovels@lemm.ee
0 comments fedilink
 

This page comes from a couple years ago.

So-- clockwise from L, we have my unfinished attempts at the letter "E," from an illuminated manuscript, one of the industrial fans from my apt-building rooftop, an inflatable cactus creature, and a doodle-space that a couple kids filled in at the local cantina.

At this point I'd switched from watercolor / gouache to straight-up watercolor pencils, mainly due to ease-of-use and declining health. In theory I found watercolor pencils a generally wonderful idea, but one fraught with complications and hardships, such as the reality that, daggit... the color markings one makes with the pencils really want to stay RIGHT where they are despite all the coaxing in the world from wet brush-strokes. Bah...

Still, I'm naught but a noobie when it comes to watercolor pencils, so please do take that as a grain de sel.

The last quarter-sketch (the one the kids did) embarrasses me a little bit and makes me laugh, both. Indeed, if I ever publish my 'great non-fiction' bookend, I'm planning on naming it Faces and Phalluses, directly in reference to the super-amazing ability of the human brain to recognise faces and reproductive organs in almost any possible chaos of an image.

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Neo-Art-Nouveau Girl by X (imgur.com)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by JohnnyEnzyme@lemm.ee to c/eurographicnovels@lemm.ee
7 comments fedilink
 

I love this mashup of styles, in which I'm seeing both Mucha, ancient art, ancient architecture and Jordans on the feet!

My only frustration is that try as I might, I haven't been able to find the original artist. Using reverse-image searches I've been able to come up with a couple names, like "Ely Ferreras," "Samuel Huynh," and others, but so far it seems like maybe they were just people who shared the art on their social media streams. Or maybe "Ely Ferreras" is actually the name of the subject / piece?

Bahhhh, I don't know.
Anyway, you'll get a gold star from me if you can definitively solve the mystery via your internet sleuthing skills. 😀

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The Minoan-inspired Mediterranean art of Alexander Petela (8 pieces) [NSFW] (i.imgur.com)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by JohnnyEnzyme@lemm.ee to c/eurographicnovels@lemm.ee
0 comments fedilink
 

So I'd been building up this little collection over time, wondering when I might best introduce it, when it hit me today that, holy heck-- it's Pride Month, after all!

So then...

https://i.imgur.com/lBa1EAd.jpeg

Me, I've been pretty fascinated with ancient Greek and other pantheons since I was a sprat. At one point in my early journals, I even ascribed actions of mine to various Greek gods, like Helios the Sun god, Apollo, Janus, and Athena...


https://i.imgur.com/dvrh1MP.jpeg

Those are frankly some silly-ass journals, but what can I say?
The things we once held dear as kids, amirite? :S


https://i.imgur.com/7pAUUaK.jpeg

Anyway, I love how some modern artists like Petela are such absolute bosses at mixing up modern art techniques & sensibilities with ancient, authentic art, such as the Minoan-inspired piece above.


https://i.imgur.com/W6PHaBo.jpeg

Well, that's an interesting... moustache? :P


https://i.imgur.com/wzzZgly.jpg


https://i.imgur.com/jRCJzjH.jpeg


https://i.imgur.com/pEKaART.jpeg

Honestly? I don't really know much about Alexander Petela, but I do gots some links, hey!
https://alexandriad.tumblr.com/
https://www.redbubble.com/people/AlexanderPetela/shop

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An introduction to Erik's Detective Deschamps ("Call me Dédé!") (i.imgur.com)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by JohnnyEnzyme@lemm.ee to c/eurographicnovels@lemm.ee
1 comments fedilink
 

Here's a nifty, noirish 5-tome series originally published by Epsilon / Verlag. The author "Erik" is a German graphic designer who seems to have worked outside the typical comics publishing format, and as a result I find there's a certain unconventionality to both his art and storytelling. Style-wise, the Dédé books remind me of Blacksad and Jérôme K. Bloche in that they're all a fairly casual mixture of pastiche and tribute to the genre, with traces of satire thrown in. Now take it as you might, but this one happens to be my favorite of the three, having fun, efficient pacing, wry humor, and being the least pretentious.


Almost an obligatory scene, but here's how it's handled in this series.


It's usually raining in Dédé's world, because of course.


Here we see our detective's usual haunt, the café below his apartment.


...His girlfriend Yvette and a shot of his standard-issue office.



These come from his first adventure, which has some horror overtones. Dédé's hired by an anonymous caller to check on a series of elderly ladies, all of whom he discovers to not only be deceased, but somehow mummified as well(!)

At this point I want to mention the art. While it has some 'LC' characteristics, it's also cartoonily expressive, visceral, and perhaps even self-indulgent. Facial expressions are usually over-exaggerated, female characters are built from the same toolbox, and color gradients are downright nonexistent. To be fair, the rather monotone color scheme is clearly meant to stack on the 'noir' concept, and does so pretty nicely. And while I'm nitpicking individual qualities which otherwise might annoy me, I did find that on the whole, the art works quite well. Some won't like it of course, but that's also where Erik's unconventionality comes in, which is worth a couple bonus pts for originality, I think.

Alrighty then...


Like Rodney Dangerfield, Dédé's typically in short supply of respect.


Speaking of the art, I like the isometric framing here, complete with angular rain. In terms of this particular adventure, someone's been leaving body parts around a little resort town. The inset faces represent some of the onlookers who might double as the perp.


Another almost obligatory scene. Despite his generous build, our detective's not really a fighter, and has been worked over hard. Now he's headed home. Unfortunately he has to pass the café on the way there, and it doesn't go well.


Still, he can put his foot down when necessary.

Unfortunately, there's not a lot of info out there about "Erik" and this series. It seems to have been translated to Dutch, but I'm not sure what else, nor where to get it. Scanlations perhaps, if you're in to digital comics. The GCD has a little info, if that helps.

OTOH, Erik's site is still up, and he generously offers six-page previews of all his books, provided you can read German. There's also more about his background:

https://www.eriks-comics.de/

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Natation (Nicolas Verdier) (64.media.tumblr.com)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by JohnnyEnzyme@lemm.ee to c/eurographicnovels@lemm.ee
0 comments fedilink
 

If that doesn't show up for some reason, the page link is here. I just happened to bump in to his work on Tumblr, the other day.

He's uploaded a lot of cool, sketch-like animations recently:
https://b-liba.tumblr.com/

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Closeup of Le Lombard - A Family Affair, current exhibition at the Comics Art Museum (i.imgur.com)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by JohnnyEnzyme@lemm.ee to c/eurographicnovels@lemm.ee
0 comments fedilink
 

A fun mix of familiar artists, characters, personalities, and... the obscure.

This is zoomed in and upscaled from the event poster, with the exhibit running to the end of August 25th, 2024. The museum is located at rue des sables 20-1000, Brussels, Belgium.

https://www.comicscenter.net/en/exhibitions/the-great-temporary-exhibitions/le-lombard

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Blue themes-- Ten new-ish titles for BD comics fans (i.imgur.com)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by JohnnyEnzyme@lemm.ee to c/eurographicnovels@lemm.ee
5 comments fedilink
 

I hadn't checked Mastodon for a while (I do it like this, which is also on the side bar), and discovered a load of promising titles coming out. Or which came out recently, I guess.

Pics of the albums are in the thumbnail / lead image, and below is a listing with news sources. Some are in English, but with others need you'll to hit the "translate" button:

NOTE: Jon Juarez is the artist for the bottom left one (Scavengers Reign), someone who I previously covered a little bit here.

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