My name is Marcelo de Castro Bastos. I graduated with a Publishing degree from Universidade de São Paulo (USP) and I earn my living translating American comic-books (mostly Marvel and DC) for their Brazilian publishers.

I also moderate a forum on comics and sci-fi in the oldest Brazilian BBS that is still operating, Canal VIP, and I'm a founding member of HQ Society, a São Paulo-based comics fan group, which will be helping me in finding info for this page.

I like a lot of different kinds of comics, but I favor good writing -- I tend to prefer a well-written book with unspectacular art over a flashy comic with a lot of splash panels and poor plot. Yes, I know, that's not what most of the market prefers -- but then, I have just turned thirty and most of the comics readership is composed of teenagers. That might explain why I have some rather obscure titles in my reading list, and very few of the top sellers...

Some of my favourite comics are:

• Almost anything written by Neil Gaiman, Frank Miller, Alan Moore, Garth Ennis, Peter Milligan, Howard Chaykin, Grant Morrison or Mark Millar; that would include, of course, Sandman, Swamp Thing, The Dark Knight Returns, Batman: Year One, Watchmen, Miracleman, Preacher, Shade, American Flagg and Doom Patrol, as well as more recent stuff any of them has done.
• A lot of stuff by Keith Giffen, Peter David, Mark Waid, Karl Kesel and Alan Grant. They may work mainly at the mainstream, but they are very good at what they do, and that's not to be sneered at.
• Kurt Busiek's Astro City and Marvels.
• James Robinson's Starman.
• Anything by Milo Manara.
• Corto Maltese, by Hugo Pratt. If you never heard about this guy, he was one of the great masters of the comic form. I lost count of the times I caught the "big names" of the business paying homage to him...
• Astérix, by René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo. Well, actually, anything by Goscinny, including Lucky Luke, Iznogud and even Le Petit Nicolas, although the last one isn't a comic. I never read anything by Goscinny that was less than excellent.
• Lum (Urusei Yatsura) and Ranma 1/2, by Rumiko Takahashi. I never imagined I would like Japanese humor, until I read those.
• Crying Freeman, by Kazuo Koike and Ryoichi Ikegami.
• Grey , by Yoshihisa Tagami.
• Any Disney story by Carl Barks.

The following are newspaper comic strips:

• Li'l Abner, by Al Capp
• Alley Oop, the old strips by V.T. Hamlin. I'm not putting down the more recent strips by Dave Graue; it's just that I don't know well his work (my newspaper doesn't carry it).
• Mafalda, an Argentinian strip from the sixties, done by Quino.
• Bloom County, by Berke Breathed. Pity he decided to stop doing it.
• Calvin and Hobbes, by Bill Watterson. Is there anything remotely as good as it on the newspapers today?
• Níquel Náusea, a Brazilian strip by Fernando Gonzales.
• Piratas do Tietê and O Condomínio, two Brazilian strips by Laerte Coutinho.

Well, that's about it. This list is necessarily incomplete; there's a lot more stuff around that I really like, but I couldn't remember at the moment.

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