Quickies #51

Preview of Jungle Girl Omnibus, drawn by Adriano Batista

Aluísio Santos draws Grim Leaper

Sam Hart draws The Coldest City

Marvel and Cirque du Soleil are joining forces to make a comic book about the show KÀ, which will be drawn by Wellinton Alves

A review of Photo de la Favela

Fabrício Nascimento and Renan Carvalheira created a free and collaborative comics creation platform, called The Story Boom, that's going through it's first experimental phases. Feel free to contribute.

Sources: Neorama dos Quadrinhos, @odyrbernardi and Universo HQ.

Quickies #49

Batman: Night of the Owls Booklet #1 (drawn by Rafael Albuquerque) made available for free here.

Manguinha was placed second on Kodansha's 5th Morning International Comic Competition. The comic will soon be available at their website. It's been made available here, and it's good.

A 007-style comic about Rock in Rio is being published in newspapers in Portugal and Spain

Renato Guedes went to a comics expo in Catamarca, Argentina

Preview of Daytripper in French

Sources: Neorama dos Quadrinhos and Universo HQ.

Beleléu #1

Now you can read Beleléu #1 in English. It's a collection of short alternative comics, some pretty good, some not so much. Here.

Done torturing myself

I'd decided to just read what I had to read once and for all. Or not. Maybe I should write decent reviews. But I won't. Maybe I should post some pics. But no.

Besides The Major, there are a few short stories you can read at the right column on Hector Lima's website. I think Steve Brain is the only one worth reading.

Here's a parody of Den by Junim called Ankh video.

Promises of love to strangers while waiting for the end of the world s a very interesting alternative experimental comic by Pedro Franz. It's divided in three parts, with four chapters each. I highly recommend reading this, but chapters are too short, maybe you should wait for a whole part to be available in English (so far, there are only 2 chapters) to get the real feel. Or maybe wait for the whole series to be done. I know I'll have to read it again when it's over.

If you're feeling romantic, try these short stories by Mario Cau.

A sci-fi shortie drawn by Edu Francisco

Here's a very balanced report on the police action in the favelas of Rio, made for a Dutch political cartoon website by Augusto Paim and MauMau can be read here.

Not bad comic strips by Adão Iturrusgarai in English and Spanish.

And here's some stuff I wouldn't even dare to read: Supersonic HQ and Foreskin Man.

Some short stories by Amilcar Pinna and Amanda Grazini. They're so beatiful... I wish there were more than just three...

Here and here you can find stuff by Odyr. I don't really recommend it though... the comics are mixed up with some other stuff, uncategorized, and some of them are "subtitled". Ok, Odyr made another more organised and bilingual blog.

Pigs, pigs, pigs, pigs

Iris Yan is a Chinese blooded Brazilian chick who does volunteer work in Mozambique. She has a quite high rate of production of these little amateur comics you see above, in four different blogs. I think the quality of Pigs in Maputo varies a lot, there's some pretty good stuff and some waste of time. I didn't have much fun with the other blogs, Pigs in Math, Pigs in Spirit and Pigs Incorporated, perhaps they're way too niche, as the name suggests.

Once Upon a Saturday

Once Upon a Saturday is a comedy webcomic about God, and Adam, and Eve, and the creation of the world, stuff like that. It's quite famous in Brazil. Funny and everything, but not as fucking awesome as people make it seem. Anyway, it's translated in full here.

Ratantia

Ratantia is another webcomic I shouldn't even tell you about, but this time, for different reasons.

In an island where an alchemist used to make experiments, rats, frogs and bats have gained human-like intelligence. As if the war wasn't enough trouble, it seems that someone is plotting to awaken an ancient enemy...

It's actually a well written and skillfully drawn adventure comic by Ricardo Goulart and Lúcio Pimentel. The translation isn't bad either. The problem is that only the first two chapters have been translated. In footnotes. It's a bummer, but you may check it out, and if you like it, tell the authors to continue the translation in a better format.

Quacks of a Random Platy

I made a commitment to read every Brazilian webcomic available in English and tell you about it. So, here we go. Another one of the "just don't read it" series.

Quacks of a Random Play, by... Random Platy. It's supposed to be a funny strip about a platypus. I guess random defines it well. It just doesn't make sense. And it seems to have been originally written in English, but I guess a Google translation would've been better.

To be fair, I did laugh once or twice during the whole thing.

Here.

Ezquizofrenia

You know, the main goal of this blog is to make scanlations of Brazilian comics (at least in theory), but it's also interesting to talk about Brazilian webcomics already available in English. So I try to read every one that I find, even if it's a piece of shit.

Ezquizofrenia, by Bruno L. Ferreira and Wagner Gomes, is some sort of mutant, super-hero, nationalist, demons and angels comic. Not only are the script and artwork quite lame, but the translation and the page turning are terribly painful.

It could be interesting as a webcomic experiment, but it's not. Doesn't matter how much the authors brag about how badass and professional they are, it won't come true.

It only goes up to the fourth issue. Guess they gave up. Phew!

Don't read it here.

The Amazing Adventures of Puny Parker

It's a webcomic by Vitor Cafaggi that plays with the idea of a younger Peter Parker, with him being bullied all the time, admiring Captain America... and there's a young Mary Jane too.

I'm not a big super-hero fan, so I must have missed many references. But it's still pretty darn cute.

It's about 150 strips. You can read them online or download the first, second and third seasons.

Illustrated Cities

Cidades Ilustradas is a collection of artbooks showing some important Brazilian cities drawn by different international artists, published by Casa 21.

Belém, by Jean-Claude Denis (fr)
Very, very beautiful. I don't know if it's because of the city or because of the artist. Probably both. Oh, the colors, the textures... The text shows the artist's impressions and some peculiar findings.

Belo Horizonte, by Miguelanxo Prado (es)
By far my favorite. Not only are the city and his artistic view very good, but he uses the opportunity to write a delicious short mystery story that takes place in the city. Too bad this is the ONLY issue that doesn't have an English translation in the end. That's why I'm putting it on my maybe-someday-scanlate list.

Curitiba, by Cesar Lobo (br)
Even the simplest of the albums is very well done. But this one feels more touristical than the others.

Florianópolis by Guazzelli (br)
This one has more flat colors, drawn more loosely. The author focuses on the country life and dreams.

Porto Alegre, by Carlos Nine (ar)
The most bizarre, everything alive and distorted...

Rio de Janeiro, by Jano (fr)
Anthropomorphic and subversive, of course, and rich in details. It was later made into a movie, Rio de Jano.

Salvador, by Marcelo Quintanilha (br)
Poetical, human, realistic and artistic at the same time. Instead of information or impressions, a web of short stories.

São Paulo, by David Lloyd (uk)
The one I liked the least. The paintings look too much like photographs, and the written text is boring.

All the volumes (except for Belo Horizonte) have English translations in the end. All of them can be downloaded at low-but-still-good-enough resolution at Quadrinho.com.

Virginia's Diary

O Diário de Virgínia, by Cátia Ana, is a webcomic (more of an illustrated story, actually... well, it's a diary) about a graphically talented girl, dealing with her fears. It's inspired in the works of people like Scott McCloud and Edgar Franco. McCloud himself twitted about Chapter 4: "Fun little scrolling Brazilian webcomic". The translation is noticeably flawed, but it's still quite interesting if you're into that kind of experimentation.

Friday Comics

On the preface of Bá and Moon's O Girassol e a Lua (The Sunflower and the Moon), Laerte says that Brazil is the country with the highest concentration of twin graphic artists: Bá and Moon and the Caruso brothers. Well, he forgot to mention the Pandolfo brothers. Now the Jesus Vignolli brothers come to add to that (even though I don't know of they're twins).

Their Friday Comics don't come out every friday, as the name suggests. They make mostly subtle short stories. My favorites are Light & Shadow and Modern Heroes, with good storytelling and meaningful use of colors; Natal, boring story, but with a very interesting reinterpretation of Jesus' birth with northeastern Brazilian themes; and The witch of lakemba, strips always starting with the same panel.

Santolouco's short webcomics

The one you see above is the Speedsk8ter Fairy, and there's another called Emergency Pit-stop. Yeah, just two free short webcomics by Mateus Santolouco. So there isn't much I could say without spoiling your fun. Check it out.

XDragoon

XDragoon is a quite shounen cliché comic, but, unlike many shounen wannabe, it actually has pretty good artwork, plot and storytelling. Written, drawn and colored by Felipe Marcantonio, it's been ongoing slowly but steadily since 2008, with 12 issues so far (one complete story arc).

I'd recommend it to shounen fans. It gets pretty good once you get past the first chapter's unbearable cliché and hideous translation. Oh, filesize is quite large.

P.S.: The cassarian mistery remains: Why do female dragons have boobs?

Frankenstein - Her Majesty's Secret Service

Frankenstein - Her Majesty's Secret Service is a webcomic by Hugo Maximo. Frankenstein, vampires, Crowley, and a LOT of ass kickin'!

But, from 100 pages published, the storyline was no big deal. And the artwork looks like it's made from stiff 3D models with strong Photoshop effects trying to cover it. However, a lot of people seem to really enjoy it.

It could use a more apropriate image format too.

Magics and Barbarics

Magics and Barbarics are the adventures of an annoying mage and a barbarian that quotes Shakespeare. Very good adventure/comedy strips by Fabio Ciccone. Apparently simple, very mature artwork.

But there are a couple of "buts": First, it's updated only once a week in the Portuguese version (tops), and who knows when it'll be updated again in English. Second, MANY of the earlier strips are missing. Regarding this, the author told me:

Unfortunately the earlier strips are not online in the English website. It's a decision I made when the site was put together due to some stuff that was going on at the time, and it's not easy to revert now. I expect to upload them one day, but I cannot tell when I will be able to make it.

Such a good series in such a lame state. =/

P. S.: The series will have it's first printed edition in Portuguese very soon.

Ordinary

Ordinário is a series of strips by Rafael Sica that's been published online since 2008 and just got an album published by Cia. das Letras.

Very thin lines, very dark, very... I don't know... melancholic? No, that's not it. Hopeless, I think that's it.

Almost all strips are mute, that's why I'm posting about it here.

Experimental. Some are really awesome (like the one above), most don't make much sense. A lot of people discuss about them. Sica never says a word.

If you're into crazy shit, check it out.

Wake Up

This is a short story about hopes and dreams, made by Mário César and based on a text by Nick Farewell.

Even though it's an adaptation, it's not a bad one. It doesn't seem to be a big deal, but the ending is beatiful and surprising.

But it deserves a little proofreading.

Source: Universo HQ

Otto & Heitor

Otto & Heitor is an average funny strip about kids... hey, when I read a few of these, months ago, I didn't like it that much. Now, I don't understand why! They're pretty great!