Bullet to the head

November 16, 2009 10:52 AM

The first four issues of Stray Bullets set the world on fire when they came out. Paper burns, you see, and a comic book as inflammatory as Stray Bullets just had to be burned. The religious right burned them. The Godless left burned them. The people in the middle felt left out and burned them too. Only a few copies survived and are probably worth millions by now. Inaccessible to the common man, the wonders of the digital universe have finally arrived to allow you—the average Joe—to see what the fuss was all about.
posted by Artw (37 comments total)

Stray Bullets fucking rocked. Go read that shit, Lapham's art and layouts were fan fuckingtastic.

Yes goddamit, you're supposed to fucking cuss when discussing Stray Bullets.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:00 AM on November 16

Sorry, Unable to process request at this time -- error 999.

3rd panel first one. Anybody else having trouble?
posted by tarheelcoxn at 11:05 AM on November 16

Lapham's latest - "The Young Liars" - is one of the most convoluted, nonsensical pieces of shit I've ever had the displeasure to read.
posted by autodidact at 11:05 AM on November 16 [1 favorite]

Six pages in, yeah. I think we killed it.
posted by middleclasstool at 11:05 AM on November 16

Sorry, Unable to process request at this time -- error 999.

Yup. It's spotty at best.
posted by dortmunder at 11:11 AM on November 16

Is there a way to go from page to page without going back to the initial page? I'd like to read it, but that messes with my flow.
posted by OmieWise at 11:14 AM on November 16

It's shocking to me that it's out of print. Crime comics need more love.

Everyone here is reading Criminal, right?
posted by Artw at 11:16 AM on November 16

had never heard of this. thanks a shit ton.
posted by shmegegge at 11:18 AM on November 16

I find "Young Liars" pretty awesome. Yes, its convoluted. I happen to like it that way, so YMMV I guess.
posted by keep_evolving at 11:22 AM on November 16

Of course we are, Artw. To do otherwise would be, uh... Bendis?
posted by robocop is bleeding at 11:23 AM on November 16

I HAVE STRAY BULLETS IN OVERSIZED HARDCOVERS he bragged.
posted by Ron Thanagar at 11:23 AM on November 16

Artw - And don't forget the astonishingly good INCOGNITO.
posted by Ron Thanagar at 11:24 AM on November 16

Everyone here is reading Criminal, right?

Oh hell yeah. It's the only comic book I bother to read.
posted by dortmunder at 11:26 AM on November 16

I thought Stray Bullets was in print in tpb format. I mean, I own it. It's not that rare is it? And, while it's awesome as all get out, I can't imagine 'the godless left' hating it that much.
posted by Football Bat at 11:26 AM on November 16

(There may be an element of hyperbole in that description, yes.)
posted by Artw at 11:27 AM on November 16

In a world where Tarantino has been making movies for decades now, I don't see what all the controversy is over this comic.

That said... Wow! Beautiful artwork!
posted by hippybear at 11:34 AM on November 16

My god, it's 2009. There are better interfaces for reading comics on the web than fucking jpg thumbnails.
posted by Caduceus at 11:35 AM on November 16 [1 favorite]

.gif thumbnails?
posted by Saxon Kane at 11:57 AM on November 16 [3 favorites]

We're living in the future now, we have cross-browser .png support!
posted by Artw at 12:04 PM on November 16 [1 favorite]

BOOM!
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 12:06 PM on November 16

More seriously, I've pretty much found all interfaces for onscreen reading of print comics yuk in one way or another. The absolute worst would be anything in flash where you have to "turn" pages. I'll take clicking every thumb on a page or manually editing the url over that.
posted by Artw at 12:06 PM on November 16 [2 favorites]

That's certainly something.
posted by flatluigi at 12:14 PM on November 16

Artw, about the best I've found is reading things in .cbr. Even that's suboptimal.
posted by Pope Guilty at 12:28 PM on November 16

Yeah, my buddy had a big stack of these, back in the day. I read them all in one go. Great stuff. Meant to get the hardback collected books but they were pretty expensive and then I just sort of forgot. Thanks for the memories! Lapham did a fun Punisher/Daredevil book too, iirc.
posted by turgid dahlia at 12:38 PM on November 16

(has complete first run copies of each issue.)
posted by sadiehawkinstein at 1:39 PM on November 16

Actually, I've found that with my monitor rotated to portrait format (as is my wont), reading .cbr files totally rocked (except for the 2-page spreads, which totally sucked.)
posted by Zed at 1:50 PM on November 16

Omie, I found these javascript bookmarklets very useful for incrementing and decrementing the terminating integer in the page numbers of the address.
posted by Hypnerotomachia at 2:17 PM on November 16

The softcover collections are out of print now, but still not too hard to find unless it's the ones you need to complete the run (*grumble grumble*).

I got into it mostly because it was set in Bmore, and am still irked that Lapham can't afford to finish it. El Capitain books went under, and he's got to pay the bills somehow. It ended on a heck of cliffhanger.

Sidenote: .cbr is great. Like reading an actual comic, so long as you have a decent sized monitor.
posted by Dr.Enormous at 3:31 PM on November 16

I enjoy .cbr as well. If you've got an iPhone there's a really good app for reading them that way (and the website includes tools for compressing the files and moving them to the phone). The iPhone screen, horizontally, is just big enough that most comics can be read without zooming in, so you just flick up to scroll down the page and then left to turn to the next, and for two-page spreads or really detailed panels a reverse-pinch zooms in. Very slick and comfortable interface.
posted by rifflesby at 4:31 PM on November 16

I'll take clicking every thumb on a page or manually editing the url over that.

Next Image for Firefox. Tres handy.
posted by Evilspork at 5:27 PM on November 16

Thank you for this. Wonderful reading, wonderful.
posted by Bageena at 6:18 PM on November 16

Loved loved loved the first few years of Stray Bullets. I especially loved the consistent use of 8 panels per page, all the same size, in every issue, except for the first and last pages and an occasional internal page (having all the thumbnails on one page really lets you feel the impact). I'm usually a big fan of comics writers who play with page layouts, but by removing that variable so thoroughly Lapham streamlined his storytelling in a way that perfectly suited the material. Those early arcs are great stuff - both the art and writing.
posted by mediareport at 9:42 PM on November 16

Thanks. That was an excellent read.
posted by slimepuppy at 5:57 AM on November 17

I'd never read those. Thanks, it was a good way to spend an evening. There were a couple where the extension wasn't written correctly. I would usually just go back to the last one that worked, and manually change the number before .jpg, and that worked, sort of.

.cbr files suck less than jpg though.
posted by Ghidorah at 6:48 AM on November 17

People paid for this misogynistic shit?
posted by VMC at 7:04 AM on November 17

... ? what a bizarre reaction.
posted by shmegegge at 7:42 AM on November 17

If I was 13 again this would have been SOOOOOOOOO cool.
posted by Sukiari at 9:37 PM on November 17