The Essentials: Which Comics are Must-Reads?

Sandman tends to be one of those titles I respect more than I love. It has been ages since I read it but I was always cold to it and never really cared for any of the Endless which is obviously a tough hurdle to overcome. Now Sandman Mystery Theater, that was an excellent book(and would make an amazing movie or better yet, TV show).

My contribution: Seven Soldiers by Grant Morrison.

I often waver on which of Morrison's works are my favorite, The Invisibles, Flex Mentallo(finally getting re-released!), All-Star Superman, New X-Men, but most often I find myself falling behind Seven Soldiers.

The story of seven superheroes destined to save the world but never meet, a simple enough gimmick really, but Morrison works his usual magic(I suppose there should be a 'k' at the end) and turns it into a sprawling examination of superheroes, the positive to Watchmen's negative. The first issue(Seven Soldiers #0) is a marvel of a thing, with J.H. Williams's art morphing along with the story, feeding into the subtext of the piece. I, Spyder's grand introduction to the team in all of his modern, hip-to-not-be-in-spandex Ultimates-esque glory is probably the standout moment.

Each miniseries then follows one of the titular Seven as they, well, make their way more than anything. Self-actualization is pretty much the name of the game here, with traditional superheroics taking a backseat(for the most part) to growth and change. Some SPOILER time:

Each of the miniseries brings the goods, with some truly standout art(Frazier Irving's fourth page of Klarion is a masterpiece, it sucks that the trade removes the issue titles, the title coupled with the picture was great) and each brings at least one perfect moment to the table:

Not to mention the amount of ideas and gee-whizery within, it easily outdoes what the rest of comic-dom puts out collectively in a year(only the slightest of exaggerations). There is really only one true negative I see, issue #4 of Bulleteer has an art flub that runs throughout that diminishes a big part of it.

So, long story short: my favorite superhero comic ever. It looks at superheroes from a multitude of angles, takes the broken pieces left over from the grim and gritty era and beyond and puts them back together again. Plus it has Frankenstein, subway pirates, and a character name Murderella-rella. 

Also, if you haven't read it and intend to, try to make The Manhattan Guardian #4 the last issue you read before the finale, there is no right way to read it but it I think it works best if it is the penultimate issue.

And I'll probably do New X-Men next, assuming no one else does. It is the greatest final story to a comic that didn't actually end.

Good call on Seven Soldiers, but I think that's really only essential if you're already a reader of comics. If you come out it from outside of that as a new reader, I can see the throughline and the themes not really registering. If you are a comics reader, though, boy howdy is it ever awesome. But there's still a lot to like even if you're not necessarily in the know. My personal favorite character was the Bulleteer, and I'm surprised that no one has taken that character and run with her. She has a great concept with a strong emotional core, as well as a wonderful celebration/subversion of the cheesecake concept. If they tried, DC could make her one of the premier female heroes.

All Star Superman would be my personal pick for superhero comics, as it's just such a wonderful distillation of what makes superheroes so great and fun. And it does it with wit and a true sense of maturity. I always walk a little "higher" after reading it.

For none superhero comics, Lost Girls has really grown in my estimation over time. Sure, it's not for everyone (or anyone under a certain age), but it hits nearly every emotional button throughout the course of its story, and by the end, one really shares in the catharsis of the principle characters. My one complaint would be that nearly all of the male characters are kind of oafish, and I wish that Moore had found a way to explore the viewpoint of male sexuality, but those are pretty much nitpicks. Truly a hilarious and haunting piece of work.

Bone by Jeff Smith.

Bone, with its ditzy cast of characters and deceptively simple artwork, came to life as something of a comedy but got darker and more complex as it got on, though thankfully never quote losing sight of the silliness that started it all. The result is a sprawling sword-and-sorcery epic that must be read beginning to end to be truly appreciated.

Nice post Charlie, I am waiting for your take on New X-Men. I loved what he did with Xorn (even if I was spoiled of the whole thing by a wikipedia entry).

I'm going to add James Robinson's Starman to the list, though with the caveat that, much like Seven Soldiers, it's more essential if you're a long-time reader of comics than a newcomer to the medium.

Either way, though, the book is a fantastic read from beginning to end.  The themes of what it means to be a hero, what it means to be a father, what it means to be a son, and what it means to be a man in general are pretty universal things that can really touch a wide range of people.  Almost as interesting is the idea of the legacy, and what it means to be a part of that legacy even when you think it is silly or embarrassing.  Robinson really has a reverence for the past, and while it can sometimes cloud his judgment when it comes to exceptionally goofy characters (I'm looking at you Space Cabbie)m it is hard not to get caught up in the enthusiasm that Robinson has for these characters.  The book is a love letter to DC history specifically (and pop culture history in general), but that never really overwhelms the story itself.  Jack Knight is a great, flawed, fully-realized character, and he has one of the best, most interesting supporting casts in the history of the medium.

Unfortunately, the art is not as consistently great.  Tony Harris kicks things off in style, supported by great fill-artists like Paul Chadwick and Gene Ha, but his departure was a real blow to the book's creative success.  I know Peter Snejbjerg (or however the hell you spell that) was supposedly Harris' hand-picked successor, but his flat, lifeless art is such a dramatic step down from Harris' brilliant and evocative pencils that the series becomes something of a slog in its second half.  Still, the quality of the story remains high throughout, and the ending is thoroughly satisfying (the original ending at least...I haven't read the standalone issue that was released last year, so I can't speak to it's quality, or how it affects the series as a whole), thus making the whole journey worth it.

How bout Watchmen. As far as I'm concerned it's a must-own.

That one kinda goes without saying.

Ok I'll be Mr Obvious: X-Men The Dark Phoenix Saga. The first comic "Event" (and I highly doubt it was planned in any way as such). This story arc catapulted Uncanny X-Men from a cult favorite to THE Super-Hero comic. There's a sense in which the X-Men comics and movies have tried and failed to live up to this story line. It was also the first time that a major character was killed off in a comic (until it was retconned, but that took several years if I recall).

The fact that the subsequent comics and films, and many many other comics and films have cherry picked plot and story elements from this story line should not deter you. A must read for anyone getting into comics.

How this thread has gotten more than a single post without mention of Art Spiegelmans MAUS is beyond me. Watchmen is obvious but no less essential for it. I'd throw V For Vendetta in there as well (the only comic book to make me cry) while we're on Alan Moore. I'm not the worlds biggest Miller fan, but The Dark Knight Returns really needs to be read not least for its place in the evolution of the artform.

...and on a purely personal note, I'll give a shout out to J.M. DeMatteis Brooklyn Dreams, a touching funny look at a young man growing up in New York in the sixties, with art by my favorite alternative artist, Glenn Barr. It's a cracker and never gets the due it deserves in my opinion.

For the last few months I've been in a stale spot when it comes to comics so I think I'm due for some catching up and the like.

My contribution would start with Maus, it's not your typical comic in any sense, it's a pretty powerful story and really shows the medium has looooong legs. (EDIT: God damn it Rain Dog you beat me. :(..)

For a more indy vibe you can't go wrong with much of Ross Campbell's stuff. Water Baby is a personal favorite, it's a cool little road trip story about a surfer girl that's dealing with losing a leg to a shark and her life in general. And to be blunt Campbell does women really well, his faces aren't for everyone but he's got an eye for female anatomy that takes a really natural stance.

Next up, for the super hero crowd, is Planetary. Now before anyone starts throwing shit at me I realize the book gets a lot of hate, at least from EVERYONE I've ever tried to discuss it with but I really dig on the universe Ellis' crafted and I'm a fucking sucker for borrowed literary characters. 

Staying with supers I'll throw in Powers and The Umbrella Academy, both have cool minimalist art styles and show, Powers especially, that you can do cartoony with a rough edge. I can't say enough about the hardback collections of Powers either, great books, great price and some pretty cool bonus content as far as sketches and script, etc.

For the fans of all things asian we've got Hiroaki Samura's Blade of the Immortal. Now, not to defend myself but, it runs long. The story starts out really strong and it's turned into a slow burn but I still think it's worth it. Samura's art is a great bag of mixed medium going from pencil to inks to charcoal, etc. and it's a good mix of feudal japan with completely retarded modern tropes. Not as outlandish as Samurai Champloo but it's, in no way, historically accurate fiction. The big dog of the bunch is really a wolf. Lone Wolf and Cub is hands down my favorite series of all time. It has it's "mid-season" spots like a good tv show but the beginning, middle and end are a visual and intellectual orgasm as far as I'm concerned. It's a long, hard road and in the end it's just that. The end.

My personal favorites of the last couples years were Kurt Busiek and Cary Nord's run on Conan, great art, great tales of high adventure. You can't go wrong. Then we've got The Killer, a sort of quirky French series about an assassin for hire. Eric Powell's The Goon isn't exactly underground anymore but I've been with him since the beginning and I can't say it's perfect but I love it. Powell's art is pretty amazing and for a lot of folks he was this guy that sort of came out of nowhere with a highly polished sense of who he is and what he does. The sense of humor isn't for everyone and it builds around volume four of the trades to a darker turn that's still going on with the jokes being fewer but still stupid fun. I won't be running around telling anyone how much I love Garth Ennis but I can't deny that Sandman (specifically Season's of Mist, Neil Gaiman FUCK YEAH!) and Ennis' own Preacher are really what got me back into comics so if you haven't read Jessie Custer, Tulip, Cassidy and the Saint of Killers magnum opus you should give it a fair shake. 

Mike Mignola's Dr. Strange & Dr. Doom Triumph and Torment and Frank Miller/Geoff Darrow's The Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot. I wont' say either of them are game changers by any stretch but they're both pretty great and The Big Guy, especially, always makes me crack a grin when I look at the art.

Now that I've significantly spammed the thread with my flowery bullshit I'll say Bone is fucking awesome and it only gets better and in a "similar" vein, but not really, is Dave Sim's Cerebus. He's a barbarian, aardvark, merc for hire! Yeah it's as weird as you would imagine. It's got some chest thumping moments, a lot of filler and some reallllllly depressing down beats. In the end though I think it was worth reading. 

Will Eisner's THE VERY BEST OF THE SPIRIT (DC Paperback)

Forty years before Frank Miller & Alan Moore, Will Eisner demonstrated what the comic book form was truly capable of with illustrious imagination & writing worthy of Hammett & Spillane.

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheGhost 

Next up, for the super hero crowd, is Planetary. Now before anyone starts throwing shit at me I realize the book gets a lot of hate, at least from EVERYONE I've ever tried to discuss it with but I really dig on the universe Ellis' crafted and I'm a fucking sucker for borrowed literary characters. 

 

Speaking only for myself, the problem with Planetary is that it should be so much better. The concept and the awesome world that Ellis built is barely used when all is said and done.

And my next pick is fairly recent but I'm positive its stature will grow as time goes on.

A seven issue series with each issue focusing on a  different character as they go to a club one particular night. Oh, and all of the leads are Phonomancers, people who use an ill-defined magic based around music. But don't let that little bit of high concept-ness scare you away, it is really a character piece through and through. The club in question is lorded over by Seth Bingo and The Silent Girl, who enforce three simple rules: 1) No Boy Singers. 2) You Must Dance. 3) No Magic.

The characters weave in and out of each others stories as they look for love or fun or whatever it is they end up needing on this night. A lot of talk about music, the culture around music, identity, and what exactly music means to people. 

I don't want to get too specific but I must make mention of issue #4, perfectly titled "Konichiwa Bitches". Every other issue focuses on someone going to the club but #4 is from the perspective of Seth Bingo and The Silent Girl as they DJ the event. Every page is 6 panels in the same layout, 2 on top of 2 on top of 2. And they all are showing the same space from the same angle, a dead on view of Seth and Silent Girl's DJ booth. Besides being the funniest issue("You know what I like about Sleater-Kinney?"  "They've split up."  "Yes. Exactly that.")  it is masterful in its storytelling, the rigid format really puts the pressure on Jaime McKelvie(and Julia Scheele who gets an Art Assistance credit for this issue) to make the art work without being able to do anything even remotely dynamic and they pull it off. Two characters standing in the same place over and over again and it works beautifully.

Only a couple of years old but I would say it is definitely one of the standout titles of the new millennium.

As great as Phonogram is, a hefty knowledge of Britpop is definitely required to actually get anything from it. I'd also be surprised if it resonated with anyone who didn't live through the Brit/Indie scene of the 90s. That said, the series is still a great pick.

Personally, I think Volume 1 is the better of the two:

Howard Chaykin's American Flagg! Was reissued in some sweet trades a few years ago.  Criminally unknown.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Art Decade 

As great as Phonogram is, a hefty knowledge of Britpop is definitely required to actually get anything from it. I'd also be surprised if it resonated with anyone who didn't live through the Brit/Indie scene of the 90s. That said, the series is still a great pick.

 

Personally, I think Volume 1 is the better of the two:

 

I think The Singles Club works perfectly fine without any particular Britpop knowledge, I certainly have next to none(which obviously explains why I'm cold towards Rue Britannia), or really any knowledge about the bands that get talked about. A lot of the bands that get discussed, I know of them more than I've actually listened to them in any great depth and only rarely is there a feeling of missing something integral.

And funnily enough, I like very little of the music that gets mentioned in the book and yet at least one of the mentions lead me to a music act I now quite enjoy(Johnny Boy). And I would hate for anyone to miss out because they feel a distance between themselves and the world presented here, I really feel that The Singles Club is pretty open to those who are outside of the 'scene' it is in.

Huh... I was actually kinda disappointed with The Singles Club but it's really interesting to hear an opinion about the series from a non-Brit muso. Perhaps, I'll give it another..ahem..spin.

Isn't this thread degenerating rather quickly into "my favorite comics are..."?

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Originally Posted by The Rain Dog 

Isn't this thread degenerating rather quickly into "my favorite comics are..."?

Well "essential" is a rather nebulous term and I think SomethingClever's "comics that every comics lover should read." opens it up to stuff outside of what one would see on Wizards Top 100 or some other such list. I mean I wouldn't put up the Sub Diego arc of Aquaman(even though I love it) but sticking just to the tried and true "classics" seems like a conversational dead end.

I was planning on doing a big write up for Morrison's Batman run(Batman & Son->RIP, Batman and Robin, Return of Bruce Wayne, maybe Batman Inc., and some Final Crisis for good measure) which I think is the absolute bee's knees, basically the best run of a superhero comic ever and the definitive look at the character. And I was really looking forward to it because a lot of people don't like it, Final Crisis especially.

I'd add Alan Moore's run on Swamp Thing. Not as polished in concept or execution as Watchmen, but you see Moore playing with the DC Universe and the possibilities of the comic in a really cool and free wheeling way. And as much as I love Watchmen and V for Vendetta, I don't think Moore had as much fun with those as he did with Swamp Thing. And that sense of fun comes through very clearly. It's also a compelling story in its own right, and culminates in a war between God and Anti-God!

I'd like to nominate Rob Schrab's Scud the Disposable Assassin if I may.  It was an indie darling back in the '90s, but having re-read it twice in the last couple of years, I can say that it holds up quite well, and that the ending Schrab wrote in the earlier part of the '00s is totally satisfying.  It really is a precursor of sorts to stuff like Scott Pilgrim, especially in terms of style and overall sensibilities.  Somehow, though, it manages to be even more frenetic and outrageous.  It's an insane, over-the-top story that features stunningly original character design, and is propelled by crazy, kinetic action.  The love story is genuinely touching as well, even though it sort of comes out of no where.  If you've never read this series, you owe it to yourself to grab the whole shebang edition that Image put out a couple years back.

Alex Ross & Mark Waid's KINGDOM COME

This is the DCU's equivalent of The Sistine Chapel by way of Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns. Company mythology writ large with a gripping re-examination of the purpose of the "Super-Hero".

A bitterly resigned & aged Superman returns from a decade of isolation after witnessing a massive disaster caused the current generation of super-heroes. Together, with other aging ex-Justice Leaguers, Superman struggles to determine whether the existence of the super-being is, in truth, a benefit to humanity or whether it is an unpredictable, violent blight.

One of the few graphic novels that can be read twice in a single sitting.

Since I take my username from it, I have to suggest Box Office Poison by Alex Robinson. It's one of the most true-to-life portrayals of what it's like to be a struggling twentysomething in New York City, in any medium. The characters he populates the book with will live with you forever, I promise.

I think many of the 'great' comics read better when you are already familiar with the genre. ie. Watchmen, The Dark Knight, All Star Superman.

If I had to pick a bunch of comics that are 'essential', this is what I'd give suggest

1. Understanding Comics

2. Watchmen

3. The Dark Knight

4. Hellboy : The Chained Coffin and Others

5. Y : The Last Man

6. From Hell

7. Liberty Meadows

8. Creature Tech

9. Maus

10. Preacher

Runners up

11. Bone

12. Pride of Baghdad

13. Black Hole

14. All Star Superman

15. Conan from Dark Horse

There's a bunch of other great series I could name drop. There's probably a bunch of others I've never heard of or read. The ones listed certainly gave me a good introduction to the world of graphic novels.

Hm I notice that all the suggestions so far date no earlier than the late 70's. What about Denny O'Neil's work on Batman and Green Arrow/Lantern from the 60's-early 70's? Stan Lee's FF, Avengers, Spiderman, Xmen etc? Will Eisner, et al should rate a mention.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Art Decade 

Alex Ross & Mark Waid's KINGDOM COME

 

This is the DCU's equivalent of The Sistine Chapel by way of Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns. Company mythology writ large with a gripping re-examination of the purpose of the "Super-Hero".

 

A bitterly resigned & aged Superman returns from a decade of isolation after witnessing a massive disaster caused the current generation of super-heroes. Together, with other aging ex-Justice Leaguers, Superman struggles to determine whether the existence of the super-being is, in truth, a benefit to humanity or whether it is an unpredictable, violent blight.

 

One of the few graphic novels that can be read twice in a single sitting.

 

fuck yes!  And the ONLY comic that has made me punch the air and go "YEAH!!!" when a page was turned (it was fairly near the end, pretty sure mpst people that have read it will know what I mean).

A comic that I've loaned to loads of people because it's that good is Peter Milligan and Duncan Fegredo's "The Enigma".  Eight shot, one of the first Vertigo ones (not sure if it was ever available as a TP).  Absolutely brilliant.  Broadly it's a bout a 'lost' guy (boring job, stale relationship, no motivation) who's childhood comicbook hero (The Enigma) and adversaries come to life and the impacts this has on it's life.  But it's SO much more than that. Breathtaking.  The art at first seemed rerally cluttered and unfinished to me but there's a reason for that...

http://www.comics.org/series/13414/covers/

The reason I got that was because I was reading Milligan's take on Shade the Changing Man at the time.  The American Scream arc of that is also mindblowingly good.

I'm enjoying the hell out of the classic 70's Savage Sword Of Conan omnibus's of late. They're not reinveinting the wheel or ironically commenting on the post modern context of graphic novels, or indeed have much to say at all - but they're a cracking read and make me feel about twelve years old again.

...and sometimes its good to remember that that's the reason most of us started reading comics on the first place - for the tales of high adventure.

I recently read Alias, and I really think it's one of the best comics I've ever read.  It's only 28 episodes, since the writer realised it reached it's natural conclusion, that it had peaked.  And this is one of the reasons I thought it was so great, it didn't try to drag it out, even if it was selling well.  And the characters were rich and well developed, and there was also a central mystery that hooks the reader.

It also a fun examination of superheros themselves, something any reader of comics will appreciate.  And the artwork.  Man, I absolutely loved the art.  It's painted and it's fantastic.  I wish more comics looked like this.  Pound for pound, it's an incredible comic.

 Youngblood vol 1 by Liefield.

A superb paraody of not only superhero comics, but hero driven media in all it's forms, Liefield deftly weaves a script that at first appears to have been written by a sexually confused thirteen year old in the five minutes between lunch and domestic science, but is clearly the work of a Kubrickian master. You'll laugh at lines like "that's why I'm a DA and you're the superhero", you'll cry at the money people spend on this tripe 20 years ago, and you'll certainly hurl at the art.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Love Machine 

 Youngblood vol 1 by Liefield.

 

A superb paraody of not only superhero comics, but hero driven media in all it's forms, Liefield deftly weaves a script that at first appears to have been written by a sexually confused thirteen year old in the five minutes between lunch and domestic science, but is clearly the work of a Kubrickian master. You'll laugh at lines like "that's why I'm a DA and you're the superhero", you'll cry at the money people spend on this tripe 20 years ago, and you'll certainly hurl at the art.

 

 

I see what you did there.
 

I'll throw out Peter David's run on The Incredible Hulk.

Everything that Greg Pak is working with today comes from David's run. The entire Joe Fixit in Vegas story, the combined Professor Hulk, the Panthenon, the Maestro...classic stuff. David infused humor with a strong sense of history (a better word than continuity), rewarding readers that payed attention to details. He took the Hulk away from the "Hulk Smash!" days, and explored child abuse and multiple personality disorder (and other ISSUES like domestic violence, AIDS, abortion rights, gay rights, and so much more).

Unfortunately he started to peter off towards the end, and the final storyline feels a little forced, but the last issue is a classic. An old Rick Jones tells an interviewer named Peter (yep) about the last days of the Hulk. Loved it.

I'm planning a guy.com piece on this one soon: Howard the Duck.

Great satire, great Gene Colan artwork, and it twisted my head around at a pretty early age. After it, I could never really take superhero comics seriously again.

The 25th anniversary of the awful movie version is coming up, that's why the guy.com piece.

29.  PREACHER.

Because it has to be there.

The quality of the writing in this is exceptional.  It starts out like gangbusters and never lets up, never compromises, and never plays it safe.  I was continually blown away by the willingness of Garth Ennis to go to some really, really touchy areas.  Rude, crude, blasphemous, and enormously entertaining.  It's my favorite comic series.

30. GIVE ME LIBERTY, Frank Miller & Dave Gibbons

Miller turns his Reagan satire dial up to 11 while painting a stark portrait of the life & heroism of black, military heroine Martha Washington.

Huh, I haven't contributed to this thread yet? Well, I hate to start with a negative, but:
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Judas Booth 

29.  PREACHER.

 

Because it has to be there.

 

The quality of the writing in this is exceptional.  It starts out like gangbusters and never lets up, never compromises, and never plays it safe.  I was continually blown away by the willingness of Garth Ennis to go to some really, really touchy areas.  Rude, crude, blasphemous, and enormously entertaining.  It's my favorite comic series.

The first half of Preacher is great, though it suffers somewhat from "We wish we were a movie" syndrome; nevertheless, as with Y: The Last Man, the artist (Steve Dillon) is spectacularly good at character "acting" and other narrative nitty-gritty that a lot of flashier artists often fumble, so the frequent lack of visual flair isn't as much of a problem as it might be. But the second half of the storyline goes off the rails BADLY. First it gets sidetracked by a truly stupid standalone plotline involving the Ku Klux Klan AND Nazi war criminals AND a villain who fucks meat, at which point you realize Ennis puts shock and button-pushing ahead of story and character. He continues to give us more and more Arseface, a character who was briefly funny but quickly becomes tiresome, and turns his big archvillain, Herr Starr, into a walking joke who's impossible to take seriously. And then, even as the final battle is moving towards a genuinely touching confrontation between Jesse and Cassidy, Ennis basically completely loses interest in the whole "hunt for God" thing--you know, the premise of the book?--and resolves it in an utterly perfunctory and predictable manner. It's not a good sign when you end a series going "huh, that would have been a lot better if they'd ignored all the crap that the series was supposed to be about and just told a modern western."

An overlooked classic that I highly recommend is Carla Speed McNeil's FINDER, which is going through a renaissance in the pages of Dark Horse Presents (along with Concrete, another amazing indie classic that doesn't always get its due) and with a couple of giant-ass collected editions. This is a really mind-blowing comic--it's a post-apocalyptic cyberpunk satire, a fantasy epic, and an intimate character study all at once. The world McNeil creates is a bizarre mashup of our world and whatever else she feels like throwing in there, so you'll have one storyline about anthropomorphic cats struggling to choose a new leader in the midst of an Orwellian theme park, and then the very next storyline will be a low-key story about a little girl's coming of age and her relationship with books with few if any fantastical elements. And yet it all feels of a piece. More than once I've been blown away by McNeil's narrative daring in telling this story--she simply does not play by the rules we've come to expect from superhero and other comics, which can occasionally make the book seem challenging and off-putting to casual readers. However, McNeil provides an in-depth series of annotations to every story (sometimes a little too in-depth; some of this stuff is actually better without the explanations), so you shouldn't have that hard a time with it. Highly recommended, and if you pick up the collected editions it's like $30 for several hundred pages of comics, so it's a good value, too.

There's a thread for it, but Casanova is a really exciting book that's currently ongoing, by Matt Fraction and the Gabriel Ba/Fabio Moon team (they alternate storylines). Their art is always kind of mind-blowing in its expressiveness and stylization, especially Bas. The story is sort of like Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius meets Jim Steranko's Nick Fury, a superspy SF epic about parallel worlds and crazy robot technology. It's also pretty dense and can be hard to follow at times--I found the first series, Luxuria, required a rereading before I got everything that was going on, and there are still aspects of the second, Gula, that I don't quite get--but it's funny as hell and features great action sequences. It's all in service to some metaphor about the creative process. This is the kind of experimentation that superhero comics should be doing but can't anymore because the Brand has to be protected.

What else? I think I've mentioned Alan Moore's Supreme before, but it really bears repeating. Obviously everything Moore does is worth reading, but this one kind of fell through the cracks; it played a huge role in the "neo-Silver Age" movement that helped reverse the obnoxious "grim 'n' gritty" trend of the late 80s and early 90s, but has since been overshadowed by its successor, Tom Strong. Basically, in the wake of 1963 (which is also a fun read, but far more insubstantial), Moore was offered a chance to write the Rob Liefeld-created Supreme, who was basically a bad (and EXXXXTREME) Superman ripoff. Moore decided that as annoying as Supreme was, he wasn't really that much worse than what had been done to Superman himself at that point, so he set out to flip it on its head by giving the character a backstory that deliberately echoed Superman's classic adventures. So suddenly this over-muscled, over-rendered 90s badass found himself with a super-dog, a young sister with his powers, a job at a comics company working alongside "Diana Dane" and "Billy Friday", an allergy to "Supremium", a Justice League-style team of superheroes, and so on. Each issue was built around a flashback to the "good old days", drawn with eerie fidelity to the various Superman artists by Rick Veitch. It all became a postmodern romp with a lot of metacommentary on superhero comics, and a blueprint for how superheroes could balance the old-school stuff and the new-school stuff while keeping the best elements of each. Sadly, it was never properly finished, with Liefeld's publishing company losing its funding and cancelling the book two issues away from the conclusion of the series. But apparently there are now plans afoot to publish those last two issues (which Moore did script) and have the series taken over by Erik Larsen. Now Marvel needs to get off its ass and publish Marvelman in a purchasable format, and we'll have both halves of Moore's "Non-Superman Superman" work.

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Originally Posted by The Prankster 

Huh, I haven't contributed to this thread yet? Well, I hate to start with a negative, but:
 

The first half of Preacher is great, though it suffers somewhat from "We wish we were a movie" syndrome; nevertheless, as with Y: The Last Man, the artist (Steve Dillon) is spectacularly good at character "acting" and other narrative nitty-gritty that a lot of flashier artists often fumble, so the frequent lack of visual flair isn't as much of a problem as it might be. But the second half of the storyline goes off the rails BADLY. First it gets sidetracked by a truly stupid standalone plotline involving the Ku Klux Klan AND Nazi war criminals AND a villain who fucks meat, at which point you realize Ennis puts shock and button-pushing ahead of story and character. He continues to give us more and more Arseface, a character who was briefly funny but quickly becomes tiresome, and turns his big archvillain, Herr Starr, into a walking joke who's impossible to take seriously. And then, even as the final battle is moving towards a genuinely touching confrontation between Jesse and Cassidy, Ennis basically completely loses interest in the whole "hunt for God" thing--you know, the premise of the book?--and resolves it in an utterly perfunctory and predictable manner. It's not a good sign when you end a series going "huh, that would have been a lot better if they'd ignored all the crap that the series was supposed to be about and just told a modern western."

 

While I WILL agree with you on Arseface (that ran out of gas long before the end) and on a desire for a better resolution on the Jesse/Cassidy relationship, I was happy with it from beginning to end. It DOES get a bit excessive towards the end though...a valid point.

It's the one series that I can loan anybody and know, for a fact, that they'll love it.  I've had 100% success with it.

I think Garth Ennis would be crushed to hear that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Prankster 

I think Garth Ennis would be crushed to hear that.

My friends and family are the types that appreciate that kind of humor.  Thank GOD.

Thanks for the recommendations. I've had Finder in my que for some time. I think it's finally time I just bought the fucking thing. Over 600 pages for 13 dollars? Sounds good to me.

I've also had my eye on Supreme for a few months now, but they all seem to be out-of-print and good copies are out of my price range.  

Everyone needs to read Fun Home by Alison Bechdel (of 'the Bechdel Test' fame!), probably my favourite comic/graphic novel and one of my favourite books in general. It's kind of a mixture of both - it's written mostly in prose, but all the specific scenes, details and dialogue are drawn out as comics alongside.

It's a memoir about the author's upbringing and troubled relationship with her closet gay father who commited suicide, and how it all relates to her later life as she later finds out she's a lesbian. Based on that it sounds like something really heavy and melodramatic and depressing, but it's really not. What it's like is listening to a really intelligent, articulate person calmly going back and forth over their complicated past and trying to draw some sort of conclusion from it all. Probably helps if you're a fan of melancholic introspection. But so fucking well written.

Another good one was Epileptic by David B. That one is another memoir about the author's childhood, centered around his brother who suffers from crippling epilepsy. This probably sounds heavy and depressing and this time is exactly that. It's a pretty grueling read, basically about how you can have two similar people with similar potential, and have one of them more or less destroyed thanks to a random quirk of genetics. But it's fascinating. The artwork is really great, a bit like Persopolis only much more surreal and impressionistic.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Odo19 

I've also had my eye on Supreme for a few months now, but they all seem to be out-of-print and good copies are out of my price range.  

Huh, that's odd. I got my copies from Amazon, but it does indeed seem to be out of print (Well, The Story Of The Year is; the second half, The Return, is still on sale for $24.99). Well, like I say, it does seem like they're gearing up to bring back Supreme, which may result in some better reprint editions of Moore's issues (The Checker volumes are actually pretty bad on the technical/reproduction side).

By the way, the funniest thing I've read in the coverage of Supreme coming back is Liefeld insisting that people are split down the middle as to whether people prefer his version of Supreme or Moore's.

You guys like to laugh, right?

Then you should start reading Sergio Aragones Funnies.

He has been doing comics for over 40 years and he is still

as funny as ever.

Whenever a thread like this pops up, I always name Paul Chadwick's 'Concrete'. My favorite arc is Fragile Creature, in which our nigh-invulnerable non-superhero hires himself out as 'special effects' for a low-budget film production. The behind-the-scenes details and drama are authentic and sharply observed and, as with most Chadwick stories, a close reading reveals numerous parallel storylines. Try and find the original back issues or the first full-color TPB; the reduced, black-and-white reprints don't do it justice.