Sam Reader, Perpetual Grace LLC
@strangelibrary
A useless hanger-on in horror (they/she) I cannot donate to your campaign, sorry reactormag.com/author/sam-reader www.the-gamers-lounge.com www.strangelibrary.com Inquiries: caiuscaligula@strangelibrary.com ebegging:
Lestat? The tat is what I need! The tat is the whole point of this. I'm not just jonesing for some hot blonde vampire, with or without tat. I need the tat!
Post a random picture or everything else will go bad in July.
He lived long enough and was involved enough in technological circles he had to have at some point, right? But also, here's a taste of the work Amano did outside of JRPGs:
One of my favorite memes I've edited. Low-effort, but effective
26. The Extremist by Peter Milligan and Ted McKeever - A woman puts on a gimp mask and murders people with a katana for a secret society of fetishists while searching for her husband's murderer. Might also be about identity, superheroes, and self-annihilation. Whatever it is, it's bleak and nasty.
25. Tales Designed to Thrizzle by Michael Kupperman - An absurd "comic magazine" anthology where a kids' section tells you how to mix drinks for your parents and Picasso threatens to chop people into little cubes. Still some of the funniest stuff I've read in any medium, period.
24. Tekkonkinkreet by Taiyo Matsumoto - A slice of life urban fantasy about two "stray cats" named Black and White who live together in a city called Treasure Town slowly gains darker and darker elements as new threats force them to grow up emotionally. Fantastic art, weird plot, and a gutpunch.
23. Hyperthick by Steve Aylett et. al. - Aylett brings his "brand new sentence" style to a vintage-style crime anthology comic where strange existentialists break into houses and men punch tigers on fire escapes for incomprehensible reasons. You cannot read Aylett and stay reasonable.
22. Like A Velvet Glove Cast In Iron by Daniel Clowes - People will consistently use the word "Lynchian" to mean "spooky" or "weird" or "has a diner." Velvet Glove is truly Lynchian, a dreamscape made of kitsch, horror, strange encounters, and a sense you're never fully awake.
21. Achewood by Chris Onstad - A hyperliterate, surreal comic first appearing on the web before being collected into books, written on the very DNA of everyone who used the internet in the 2000s. Simplistic but beautiful, hilarious but elegaic, terrifying but tender. The great American graphic novel
20. Sha by Pat Mills and Olivier Ledroit - I'mma level with you, I don't remember much about this one, but it's the Mills/Ledroit joint where the main character isn't a literal Nazi (and one of the worse Nazis at that), so I want to recommend them without recommending Requiem.
19. Spread by Justin Jordan, et. al. - A trippy post-apocalyptic comic with some grotesque creature designs starring a mute, axe-wielding man named No and a baby named Hope as they fight their way across an apocalyptic landscape full of red horrors and human atrocity
18. Vampirella, created by Trina Robbins and Forrest J. Ackerman - There are way too many runs to cover, my favorites being Leth, Cornell, and of course the crossover with Hack/Slash, but she's campy, fun, overconfident, and the best runs play really well with that.
17 because fuck you I ain't waiting. Storm by Don Lawrence - The pulp story is just a backdrop for some of the wildest visuals in comics, tales of self-replicating spaceships, naval battles set around an atmosphere-emitting white hole, planetary romances...it hasn't aged well, but it's still unique.
16. Criminal: Last of the Innocent by Brubaker/Phillips - As a high school reunion descends on a small town, yearning for the past and dissatisfaction with the present leads to reminiscing and a shocking murder. There's a central conceit to this one, but I won't say. A beautiful, fucked-up book.
15. Rice Boy by Evan Dahm - A surreal epic fantasy that, unlike its contemporaries (Bone, etc) never really loses its heart as the stakes grow higher. The art is beautiful, the story is strange and surprisingly both intimate and epic, and there's nothing like it.
14. Hellblazer by Jamie Delano, Garth Ennis, etc etc et.al. - You cannot make me pick a run of this, I refuse. Each run reinvents him, each arc creates new fucked-up adventures, but the singular pillar in all of this is John Constantine, a street sorcerer with loose morals and cosmic significance.
13. Doom Patrol by Grant Morrison et. al. - What is it they say? First installment best installment? Morrison turned a team of DC c-listers into a surreal, violent masterpiece that further attempts have tried and failed to recapture. Every Doom Patrol does something different, Morrison did it all.
12. Sink by John Lees et. al. - VERY dark urban fantasy/horror comic about a horrifying suburb of Glasgow full of killer clowns, apartment buildings turned into a snuff show, crime lords, and a vigilante in a fox mask. VERY violent, but weirdly compelling and some great world design.
11. Bedlam by Nick Spencer, Riley Rossmo, and Frazer Irving - a former supervillain is released from a sinister asylum to become a mild-mannered loon who tries to consult on supercrimes. Sick, strange, violent, hilarious meditation on the nature of evil and redemption. Ended way too soon.
10. Promethea by Alan Moore, J.H. Williams, et. al. - Alan Moore went crazy in the late 2000s and early 2010s, and this was the best result from it, a metacommentary on stories and comics and an absolute delight. Bill's my favorite Promethea for obvious reasons. Weirdly joyous despite its content.
9. Kabuki by David Mack - A recent favorite, a wild, moody cyberpunk story that grows bolder the more its author experiments with art and narrative. A dystopian cyberpunk story about personhood, art, violence, and nationalism
8. Sleeper by Brubaker/Phillips - The elevator pitch is "The Departed with Superheroes," the meat is the inner lives of heroes and villains as they navigate a complex conspiracy around a supersmart genetically engineered crime lord. It's an unholy alliance between Watchmen and Friends of Eddie Coyle