Talossan Pannapictagraphist Society

[Tric'hard Lenxheir]

I believe the issue Tric'hard is talking about may possibly be Superman #500. This run of Superman (from his death to resurrection) was fairly popular at the time, so they printed a whole bunch of every issue...I'm still finding them in dollar bins. However, #500 is a major key, and having it signed would make it slightly more valuable than an unsigned copy.

So probably worth $1.23

[Iason Taiwos]

https://comicbookplus.com/
This is a great source for extremely hard to find (public domain) comics.

[Iason Taiwos]

An American company, Papercutz (headed by former Marvel Comics editor Jim Salicrup) has begun releasing new editions of the Asterix books (three of the original albums per volume), and I've picked up the first four. I believe these editions cover books originally published from 1961-67. I read a few of the Asterix books when I was maybe 10 or 11, and loved them then. Re-reading them now as a fifty year old, they're still great, and I found myself laughing out loud quite a bit. Superb art and storytelling. Highly recommended. (No wonder they have an Asterix theme park in France.) (Asterix is apparently one of the most popular comics series in history, but sadly remains relatively unknown in the US.)
Other recent purchase was the premier issue of the revived "Savage Sword of Conan", by Titan Comics. The original Savage Sword was a black and white, magazine sized book published by Marvel, which ran from 1973 until sometime in the mid nineties. I was a big fan back in my teenage years. Glad to say, the first issue of the new series is great. Like the original, it's printed on newsprint (ahhh...inhale those pages, you can smell the ink!), and features a fine Conan story by Arcudi and Fafner. The back up story features Solomon Kane, story and art by Patch Zircher (may be actually better than the Conan story.) Well worth acquiring (the $6.99 cover price is nice.)

[Ián Tamorán S.H.]

I love Asterix! The English translations are wonderful - and all the better when you read the (original) French, which contains just as many puns and wordplays as the English. I giggle at both versions - excellent.
Come on, US - read Asterix!  :)

[Iason Taiwos]

I love Asterix! The English translations are wonderful - and all the better when you read the (original) French, which contains just as many puns and wordplays as the English. I giggle at both versions - excellent.
Come on, US - read Asterix!  :)

These books I got contain brand new English translations... in Volume One, it says "The previous excellent English translations by Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge were wonderful, but our goal is to help make Asterix as accessible as possible to new generations here in the USA, while maintaining everything that made Asterix great in the first place."
I no longer possess my copies of those Bell/Hockridge editions, so I can't compare them to the new, "Americanized" translation. I do notice that they've changed Getafix back to Panoramix (which I understand was his name in the original French version), and there are footnotes supplying translations for all the Latin phrases used throughout the series. (Because they don't teach Latin as a required course in American schools.)
I'm trying to do a minuscule part in spreading the glory of Asterix, I've got my wife reading volume one, and hope to introduce them to the grandkids sometime soon.
Oddly enough, I discovered Asterix in England! I went on a school trip to England and Scotland as a kid. I was already a comic book fanatic by then. It was in the gift shop of the British Museum that I saw these interesting looking books on the shelf. I bought four or five of them, and absolutely loved them. I'm glad they are more easily available in the USA now. (Typical me behavior, I go on a trip overseas, and instead of buying more normal souvenirs, I come home with a bunch of comics!)

[Iason Taiwos]

(I wanted to add, tho, that the depictions of black people in these early Asterix books are pretty...well, racist. Hopefully they moved away from that as the series went on. These new American editions have a disclaimer that just says they are presenting it as originally drawn, but not mentioning why there's a need to even state that.)

[Miestră Schivă, UrN]

(I wanted to add, tho, that the depictions of black people in these early Asterix books are pretty...well, racist. Hopefully they moved away from that as the series went on. These new American editions have a disclaimer that just says they are presenting it as originally drawn, but not mentioning why there's a need to even state that.)

Unfortunately, the broad racial caricatures remained at least until the mid-80s (and don't get me started about the Jewish caricatures in _Asterix in the land of black gold_). At least in the English translations, though, black characters eventually started talking normally rather than in what Frank Zappa would have called "comedy negrocious dialect". What can you say, it's France.

I didn't know they got a new translation, though, among professional translators the Bell/Hockridge translations are renowned for being examples of top-quality cross-cultural translations of humour; will have to check that out. But you can get weird about "accessibility for the kids". There is a French film called La Haine (1995) about kids from a deprived suburb getting up to mischief in Paris. They go to the house of a drug dealer who is a small skinny guy they call "Asterix". In the original American dub, they changed that to "Charlie Brown" because they didn't think US kids would get the reference.

(I have no idea what modern translations would do with, for example, references to The Beatles in _Asterix in Britain_, or the way that the main antagonist in _Obelix & Co_ is a caricature of Jacques Chirac.)

[Iason Taiwos]

Well, for changing "Getafix" back to "Panoramix", I assumed it was because of the drug connotations. ("This is America! We have an opioid crisis! You can't keep calling the druid 'Getafix'!")

[GV]

Prince Valiant.  'Nuff said.

[Iason Taiwos]

Prince Valiant.  'Nuff said.

Indeed. Hal Foster was one of greatest.

[Bråneu Excelsio]

A few months ago, a fellow coffee shop owner gave me this as a birthday present (the right one).
It's now my most precious pannapictagraphist item.

[Iason Taiwos]

A few months ago, a fellow coffee shop owner gave me this as a birthday present (the right one).
It's now my most precious pannapictagraphist item.

I've seen some of these before! And almost bought one. (The comics store Vitxalmour Conductour and I frequent (New Dinension Comics, in Ellwood City, Pennsylvania) every so often has a "secret warehouse sale" at another location. Usually it's in an old potato chip factory. The guy who owns New Dimension buys all the stock from other comics stores that apparently have shut down, and holds these sales where every book is only a dollar. When we go there, I assemble two different stacks: "must purchase", and "maybe purchase". I've found some genuine treasures at these sales, but at check out time a lot of the maybe purchase books are left behind. Too Much Coffee Man was one of the ones left behind. (And I still spent $164 at the last sale.) (For all I know, Vitx may have bought it.)

[Mic’haglh Autófil, SMC EiP]

A few months ago, a fellow coffee shop owner gave me this as a birthday present (the right one).
It's now my most precious pannapictagraphist item.

You may be interested to know that at one point, in a TN issue long past (and never completed), I had a cartoon drafted in which you were depicted with an IV drip of coffee. (Also since you didn't have arms yet you were the city flag of Monterrey, but that's thankfully no longer the case.)

[Bråneu Excelsio]

A few months ago, a fellow coffee shop owner gave me this as a birthday present (the right one).
It's now my most precious pannapictagraphist item.

You may be interested to know that at one point, in a TN issue long past (and never completed), I had a cartoon drafted in which you were depicted with an IV drip of coffee. (Also since you didn't have arms yet you were the city flag of Monterrey, but that's thankfully no longer the case.)

Hahaha sounds amazing !!
Im really happy with the idea that it was a thought and a draft (: thank you