Comics

[Gil-galad]

As some of you may know, I've been trying to broaden my view on different types of media-- one of those forms of media being western comics. I'm not sure why I had, but I'd always sort of avoided western style comics, only ever really getting into Japanese comics, and anime. Anyways-- now I'm trying to change that.

Based on suggestions I've received, I'm probably going to pick up Fables, and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I also have intended to buy Sandman, but I haven't really found a good deal on that series yet.

Anyways-- feel free to discuss your favorite western style comics, and graphic novels, as well as offer suggestions to those looking to expand their interest in the genre. ^^

I have only really read two graphic novels-- Watchmen, and V for Vendetta. Both of which I really enjoyed. Watchmen, I found was a bit more enjoyable than V for Vendetta-- but they were both really very excellent.
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[SolemnSound]

I have a varied collection of western comics. A random sampling from many different series here and there, but i rather enjoy the Marvel series of all types. My favorite comics would probrobly have to be The New Warriors. I really dont know why I like them the best, I just do and I have collected all of the issues of the New Warriors to date, which was rather hard to complete. Thank you internet and ebay ^_^
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[Amyral]

The League of Extraordinary Gentleman is very good, although very, very raunchy.

My favorite graphic novel is Kingdom Come, which is a DC Elseworlds novel. Elseworlds basically means it uses DC characters but it's not canon. The story basically looks at the premise of what would happen to the traditional heroes if people began to demand a more violent type of hero. It is very, very good and you don't really have to know much about DC characters to get it, although it does help. The art is absolutely amazing and the imagery is incredible (it relies a lot on the Book of Revelations).

Another rather good series is Transmetropolitan, which is basically a dystopian future story on crack. The main character, Spider Jerusalem, is a journalist who absolutely hates the city he is in and tries to go against the government, interspersed with going against various other people. He also has the absolute coolest weapon ever, a gun that gives people a seriously bad case of the runs (with different settings on how bad of a bowel movement he wants a person to have).

Other things I have read, Sin City is alright, although Frank Miller isn't my favorite. Sin City is pretty good for an action- noir series and it's staged very interestingly.

[RedCydranth]

As you can probably tell from my Name and Avatar rioght now, I'm a huge fan of comics. I never got into anime because I grew up on, "western comics" as you'd call them. To me they're just comics and all asian stuff is Anime, Hentai or whatever title you throw on it. I can't read their stuff because I just can't get a grip on the backwards books. I know thats how they read them, but I'm a fricking american, and if you want me to read them, then put them in order for me to read them. If these anime fans want to be so purist about how they read these damn things, then fricking learn japanese and be a true purist.

Enough ranting on "eastern comics". As Philosopher King mentioned, Marvel is one of the top selling branches, however its not at all good if you're not into super heroes. If you want a series thats more gray area and and less "I'm good, I'm evil" read Preacher. Its rather screwed up, but its really good. Another wonderful book is From Hell. That one has changed lives. I'm serious. If you like twisted crap, I'll suggest you look into The Works of Kyle Baker. His drawing style is a bit cartoony (a la disney or Nickelodeon) but thats his thing. I personally don't follow it, but many who like twisted crap love his stuff.

If you want fundemental Western Comics, you've read Watchmen and V for Vendetta, Next I'd say is read some Hellboy. The movie was okay, but I think the comics do a better job portraying him, naturally. My comic guy, Don really wants me to get into 100 Bullets but I don't seem to have the time for that one. I heard its good.

It all depends on your tastes. There's some Marvel and DC thats not too bad though. Really, I grew up on Marvel, so I'm skewed from DC stuff, but I can only get into Batman, Maybe its because I think Superman is too powerful and the rest of DC is shit. Marvel is where its at for Super Hero books. If you can get your hands on Infinity Gauntlet you'll see what the best of Marvel can do. Its basically every Marvel superhero and villain worth a damn versus Thanos and the power of the Infinity Gauntlet. Its a great read if you've got some time to kill. If you want to dive into a single hero or group, I've got personal favorites that are a bit off from the standard. Moon Knight obviously is not a top name, but has a great story if the writing is there. Black panther comics of old are a gem, I just love his persona. If you want to follow one group and not get confused because their members change every hour (like Avengers and X-Men) then go with Fantastic Four. You know them, and you like them so there's no changing. Actually they did do a series where Invisible Womanand Mr. Fantastic a went MIA and Storm and Black Panther filled in. But thats not that cool. Black Panther is awesome, but he's not Fantastic Four material. He's got his own agenda to deal with.

I'm getting off topic though. Other popular titles of comics are Swamp Thing, Grendel, Maus, Strangehaven and Hellblazer. Since I have no clue what your tastes are, bring this list in and ask your local comic junkee which would suit you most. If you're into the anime stuff though, I'm not in a position to compare as I know nothing about those series. I'm only barely familiar with Hellsing, but thats because I got a friend who loves it.

On one last note, if you're not overly into cliché heroes like Wolverine, Superman and Captain America, but want to see a darker side to being gifted with powers, I'll suggest you read Astro City. Its a series about various heroes that live in Astro City and their day to day lives. The entire series was gold. You get perspectives from both heroes and villains. Aspiring heroes and aspiring villains. Its pretty great. Some of my favorite comic characters sprung from the series. One of whom is The Samaritain, which is clearly an hommage or rip on Superman. Most of the characters you see are based on archtypes used by Marvel or DC but done fantastically better. The First Family for one is a far better take on the Fantastic Four than the Fantastic Four often is. Jack-In-The-Box is one of my favorite, but he's more of a Joker-Harley Quinn type of guy but he's for the good side. He's weird but so lovable. You'll have to read it to judge for yourself about the series, but I rather enjoyed it.

There you have it Gil, my take on what Western Comics are worthwhile, there's many more that I like, but those should be good to start you off.

EDIT: Amyral has it right, Transmetropolitan is a solid read too. I only read the first few before I jumped into other series, but what I read was good. I should get back into reading that.
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[Tullaryx]

I used to be a huge collector of comics which is how I became a huge fan of just comic books in general. I actually have G.I. Joe and Transformers comic book issues released by Marvel during the mid-80's right up to the end of the decade. Anyone who was a fan of Marvel comics around that time would remember the Universe issues. I'm talking about Marvel Universe and Transformers Universe compedium comics. These comic books from Marvel were like encyclopedia issues which had detailed entries of each Marvel character from the most well-known to the least.

Of all the superhero universes I prefer Marvel just for it's large and interesting cast of characters. Yes, Marvel does have an inordinate amount of cosmic beings and entities who technically could destroy Earth and entire systems. Except for a few major story-arcs like The Infinity Gauntlet, Infinity Wars and Secret Wars most of these beings usually stay on the sidelines. Once you factor them out the rest of Marvel's characters are more varied and well-rounded than DC's. Even during the beginning of Marvel's rise during the Silver Age of comics, characters like Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, The Hulk and The Avengers were all flawed individuals who were only called heroes because they fought individuals even more flawed and screwed up than they were.

I still like the DC Universe, but their main characters dominate the titles so much that it's difficult for the second, third and fourth-tier character to make a name for themselves. The one thing DC has done to make it's line of comics more appealing to people was to create its mature-line of comics with Vertigo. Other than the Batman titles, it's Vertigo which really attracts me to DC. I will agree with Moon Knight that Preacher is one of those comics which doesn't define itself with a good versus evil theme. I would say that Grant Ennis' twisted child of a comic has to be one of the most politically-incorrect and funniest title to come out in the last 25 years. In fact, Garth Ennis is one of those few writers whose work I follow all the time.

That's where my taste in comics have changed from when I first began truly collecting and following comic books during the beginning of the 1991. Then I was more of the packrat collector who just had to get every issue of my favorite titles no matter who wrote or drew it. I must admit that I was caught up in all the collecting-craze which included hologram covers, embossed covers, limited-editions and a slew of other gimmicks to make comic book fans buy multiple copies. I still have those multiple of multiple copies properly bagged and boarded using acid-free mylar bags and boards. Now, I go less for the gimmicks and who draws the comics but more towards who writes them.

Ennis' work appeals to me since they're just now written with themes and characters living in the gray-area of morality but most are quite amoral to begin with. His work to resurrect The Punisher title to something that makes it one of the best-written titles for Marvel is pure genius. His work in The Authority is also quite good. Another writer whose work I follow with a passion is Warren Ellis. His best-known work has to be Transmetropolitan. I was introduced quite late to this series, but when I finally picked up the comic I was hooked from the first couple pages right up to the end. Spider Jerusalem has to be one of the best comic book characters ever created. A character who was a mix of gonzo writers Hunter S. Thompson and H.L. Mencken. His Stormwatch and Planetary stuff also helped deconstruct the superhero team concept.

Then there's Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman. There's not much else to say about these two other than they're the original masters of the independent-style of writing. Both have done traditional titles, but it's their more out there stuff which made them cult then perenniel favorites with the generation of the 1990's who have grown up to be parent's themselves. Watchmen and Sandman are classics and rightly so. Gaiman's Sandman work are better written than most of the novels pumped out every year. Not all of Alan Moore's stuff appeals to me since he has a tendency to really go off on a tangent with his personal philosophies and leanings. But even then I still end up reading his stuff.

Current writers who I've been following a lot more are Brian Michael Bendis (Daredevil, New Avengers and Ultimate Spider-Man), Ed Brubaker (Captain America, Criminal, Sleeper and Daredevil) and Robert Kirkman (The Walking Dead and Invincible). Bendis' run on Daredevil I must say is equal and, at times, even better than Frank Miller's own run on that character. Ed Brubaker follows Bendis on Daredevil and continues to make that title the best comic being published right now. Of the two I have a tendency to like Brubaker's stuff better since he's more adept in writing noir-style stories. Sleeper and Criminal are very good crime-thrillers which actually does noir better than Miller's own Sin City books. Kirkman's The Walking Dead is a favorite title of mine since it takes the traditional zombie-genre and runs with it farther than what Romero has done with the movies. Kirkman gets to do what a lot of zombie fans always wanted when they saw those Romero zombie movies: see what happens once the movie ended.

Moon, if you're still on the fence about 100 Bullets I suggest you really pick it up. It's a great series and like Preacher, there's actually an end in sight for the epic storyline. It has great characters in The Minutemen and The Trust. A couple characters in the series which are starting to become favorites of mine are Agent Graves and Dizzy Cordova. I won't say more since this book really needs to be read spoiler-free. Another new serialized title you can also try out is Brian K. Vaughn's Y: The Last Man. This one is something similar to Kirkman's The Walking Dead but instead of zombies it deal with a world where all the men in the world are struck dead in a moment except for one man and his pet monkey.

The final book I'll add as a suggestion will have to be Bill Willingham's Fables. Like 100 Bullets and Y: The Last Man, it's a serialized comic book title. It's pretty much a story about what happens if all the fairy tale, folk tale and mythological characters were actually real and have been sent into exile from their realms to the mundane world of the real by villain called The Adversary. It's title both funny and serious. It takes characters like Snow White, Cinderella, Prince Charming to the Big Bad Wolf and put them on their ears and upside down.
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[Blackjack]

I actually just posted this in Highland, but here it is for you.

[jjrrs]

I have some questions about the current comic books, I know nothing about comic books except that Spiderman #1 is worth alot of money (and that you shouldn't eat it if you have a mint copy according to the simpsons) I recall about ten years ago back when I had nothing to do and had to kill time by basically walking around after school at 2 PM, I went to comic book stores just to look around and found out lots of people are really serious about this stuff. Then I moved to an area of the country where walking wasn't a good choice of transportation, got a computer to start playing games and never thought about comic books much again.

Recently I started reading Ultimate Spiderman and I am really liking it. At first I just wanted to look at some comic arts, I enjoyed Bagley's drawing and after some reading I thought the story is quite good with some really likable characters, I liked reading it so much that I actually went to a comic book store last week and bought a few issues I didn't have, which was quite an experience as I have never done that before. I don't think I'll expand my comic reading any further since I don't have the time or money to do that, but I'd like to stick with Ultimate Spiderman unless I just really start to hate Stuart Immonen's art style.

I also looked online to try to get more issues of the series cheaper, which worked out so far as I'm eagerly awaiting about 50 issues in the mail soon. While I was doing that I also saw the collector's aspect of it, I'm not even considering collecting comic books in anyway but I have some questions about how that stuff works nowadays.

I have no knowledge of any of this until just days ago so please correct me if some of my assumptions are wrong:

I see that other than key issues of a series or highly graded comics, there are valuable variant covers from time to time with official planned ratios of their release, other than to create hype and attractions does it benefit the publishers to do that in anyway?

that seems cool and all but wouldn't it mean all the variants falls right into the hands of the people working at the stores? or those that have some sort of hookup with the stores?

I remember trying to collect mcfarlane's variant sports figures back in the day, but gave up because all the variants got snatched up by dealers right away even if they are worthless, I can only image it being worst with these variant comic books of popular series, so what's the fun in collecting it if the only way to get it is over paying on ebay?

Also in general, are there any other reasons to collect comics than just to say you have them?

I like to collect video games of value when I can buy them at a discount, but that hardly applies to other collectibles since they are never on sale to begin with and most bargains are found due to luck more than anything else, with things like sports memorabilia I can see investing in a certain player or whatever, could that be done with comics too and do their values change like that?

I hope most of those weren't terrible questions, like I said I don't know anything to consider collecting comics nor do I have the interest to, but I do find collecting all sorts of valuable items to be fun and would just like to slightly understand how it works with comic books.

By the way I have a question about Ultimate Spiderman if someone can answer it for me: I don't know about the family setup in the original amazing spiderman, but it says in Ultimate Spiderman that May is the sister of Peter's mom Mary? so how are Ben and May even Parkers?
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[Tullaryx]

Collecting comic books has always been and always will be about whether the person buying them just wants to have them or just bought them to see about making money off of them. If it's the former then just like any hobby you want to have the comic book issue to own. If it's the latter then you really don't care for the comic as a hobby but a sort of investment.

I will say now that comic books that weren't published and printed during the Golden and Silver Ages are pretty much worthless. It would take another 10 to 20 years before comics of the 90's to current would even be worth much. Those type of collectors are called speculators and they almost destroyed the comic industry after the so-called new "Golden Age" of comics during the 1990's. They're the ones who continue (in much smaller numbers) to push for variant covers, limited editions, and fancy material covers, etc... of important issues. I know people who consider comics a hobby still buy these variants but not as a way to make money off of them but just to have them. Speculators on the other hand will try to inflate the prices on such variants and push it on others who are not as knowledgable of the industry and hobby or just don't mind wasting money.

My advice for you is to just buy the comics if you have to money to buy them and only stick to the ones you want to read. Another way to get your fill of your favorite title but without spending too much is to wait for the trade paperback collections, or in the rare instances, hardcover collections of entire story-arcs.
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[Keriaku]

The only two comics I read (not including manga of course) are Runaways and the first half of Sin City. They were both very good, but I still overall prefer manga because of the art style.
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[Rune Walsh]

I'm kind of a newbie on the whole western comic scenario, but so far, these are the ones that really get to me:

Sandman: Possibly my favorite western comic. I love the whole personification of things that aren't material thing. Dream is an awesome, almost omniscient character, though he's really flawed in many ways. He's almost kind of a god, since he can control people as he sees fit and punish them any way he wants to. And even though he's scaringly powerful, he's matched by many of the other beings. But it's not just a comic about the conflict of opposing beings. It's much more focused on the diplomacy. When Dream visits Hell, there is a tense climate, but the demons know he's not someone to be taken lightly, and Dream knows he's on their territory, so it's a state of mutual respect for the sake of both sides. Plus, his visits to our world result in awesome stuff, like his temporary teaming up with John Constantine from Hellblazer, another comic from Sandman's publisher(Vertigo) which I'm yet to read.

Ultimate X-Men: Lately, I've been very interested in the Ultimate Marvel Universe, especially after I read about Ultimate Iron Man, who's uber cool. But before that, I read some numbers of Ultimate X-Men, and it's really good. It's pretty much what you would expect from X-Men, but darker, more mature. Magneto isn't just a "For the good of the mutants" kind of villain. He's a sadist, almost sociopath terrorist. And the X-Men aren't just the "For the good of everyone" kind of heroes. They have an objective. They want to save mutants from humans' harm, since it's not just a hatred thing, it's almost a killing intent. It's much more violent, especially considering Magneto's acts of terrorism.

I'll update this when I feel the need to speak about new good comics I've read.
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