Comics.... that don't suck

[evil_ash_xero]

I was curious if anyone here reads Y the last man, The walking dead, or Ex Machina?

I haven't read comics for years other than Berserk. A friend of mine game me a stack to read and I'm totally hooked on all three.

The art in Y the last man blows but thats not the reason I read it...
All three of these have really good stories and writing. They don't really feel juvenile at all.

I see that you're reading some Brian K. Vaughn and Rob Kirkman stuff. I would HIGHLY recommend Ed Brubaker's "Criminal" from Marvel/Icon comics. If you're not against superhero fare, try out his "Captain America" and "Daredevil". You'd be shocked at how dark these supposed kids books are.

I just have to nod my head to everyone saying "Moore". Watchmen is basically the Holy Grail of comicdom. V For Vendetta, Miracleman(which you would have to download, since it's not currently in print), Swamp Thing, etc. etc. are all amazing.

You may have heard of Neil Gaiman's Sandman, which is a great comic, and seems to pick up a lot of people who don't really like comics overall.

If you liked Dark Knight, i'd recommend Frank Miller's Daredevil:Born Again.

Instead of fully listing what I think are the greats here, just hop on over to my Amazon lists:

http://www.amazon.com/Graphic-Novels-yo ... title_full

http://www.amazon.com/Graphic-Novels-yo ... title_full


s/m

[JoshF]

Popbot

[Gorecki]

It's odd, considering all the comics I've gone through, but I've hardly read any Batman. It's a pretty daunting property to approach, but I guess the obvious place to start is with Dark Knight Returns, Killing Joke and maybe Arkham Asylum. Anyone got some other Batman graphic novels recommendations?

Try Batman: The Long Halloween. It has some superb art, a great story, and it throws pretty much every Batman villain you can think of into the mix. It's one of the better Batman comics I've read.

Away from Batman, I also recommend the Preacher series. I've only read three volumes but so far it is every single kind of badass you care to mention.

[P_HAT]

Blame!

[Frederik]

I really loved HATE! by Peter Bagge. The typical tale of a 90ies Seattle slacker.

[Acid King]

I really loved HATE! by Peter Bagge. The typical tale of a 90ies Seattle slacker.

Peter Bagge is great. He also does comic strips and artwork for Reason magazine.

[magnum opus]

100 bullets is excellent, the first arc or so won't seem all that geat but once it starts revealing the overarcing plot it becomes fantastic.

I second Blame!

Transmet is fucking brilliant, as are planetary (though probably not as much if you don't know comics) and global frequency. Careful reading too much Ellis though or you'll notice it gets a little repetitive.

honestly fuck anything by Grant Morrison, he's constantly trying to do some banality-of-the-strange thing but ends up proving Gabriel Syme's point about how utterly boring chaos is.

Busieks conan is pretty good, once the overwrought narration dies out in the 5th-ish issue, his Astro City books are sometimes good sometimes fantastic, but like planetary (or starman, also awesome) probably won't get the full impact without being a comic fan.

DMZ is pretty good right now though at some point he's going to be forced to take sides on the politics and it'll probably come crashing down.

Ty and track down a series called American Century, it's amazing.


although i can't really get behind the Berserk love. I mean it's entertaining (although i feel the intoduction of the pre-teen witch is some where between jumping the shark, just annoying, ad plain against type ). But there's only so many times i can deal with people refusing to give up and onlookers going "what is he". it's also just so god damn machismo-riffic. And while i can't really point to any good specific instances, it seems so fucking mysogynistic.

[moozooh]

And while i can't really point to any good specific instances, it seems so fucking mysogynistic.

Middle Ages actually were pretty misogynistic. Even though Berserk is set in an alternative universe, this aspect of its culture is truthful to the time.

[magnum opus]

doesn't mean i like it in my escapism

[moozooh]

Too bad.

[PaCrappa]

I really loved HATE! by Peter Bagge. The typical tale of a 90ies Seattle slacker.

I actually began reading Neat Stuff (Bagge before Hate) when it came out. Studs Kirby was one of the things that had me very interested in living in Seattle even when I was 15 years old. I visited Seattle for the first time as a senior in high school. Then Hate came out later that same year, as I was about to graduate iirc. Now after all these years I'm starting to get a little bit back into comics and it seems like everything I want to read is by Fantagraphics. Which is nifty because their HQ is right in LAke City and they got a sweet little store down in Georgetown.

Fantagraphics publishes the absolute best comics work I have ever read in my life, Gilbert Hernandez' Palomar stories in Love & Rockets. I had never read Love & Rockets as a kid because I thought it was boring. I guess I was still into superheroes or at least zany wacky underground stuff. No time for the slice 'o life type stories in L&R. Well a couple months ago I was a little early getting to the house of some friends so I went to the comic shop. I walked by "Human Diastrophism" about ten times before acknowledging the fact that it wouldn't leave me alone. I walked out with it and when I finally got back to my house I was treated to the most enjoyable comics experience of my life. Gilbert's cartooning is so perfect and clean and the writing is clever and heartwarming at times and brutally cold at others. Storylines range from a 7 year old village girl trying to understand the stars and outerspace to the decades long saga of an unkillable gangster sworn to protect multiple generations of buxom females.

I can't really describe it in any terms that will do it justice. I can say without any doubt whatsoever that this was the most enjoyable comic I've read in thirty years of collecting.

[magnum opus]

Too bad.

would that be a Too bad i don't like misogyny even when it is historically accurate

a Too bad i find one facet distasteful in a series that i'm already pretty luke warm to regardless

a Too bad because it's there anyway so What Am I Gonna Do About It (a stance which basically states that no negative opinion of anything is valid)

or a Too bad you couldn't think of a better justification for misogyny but felt you needed the last word?

[moozooh]

Too bad that you concern yourself so much (that you are ready to argue about it) about a facet of a fictional universe. Imagine that you didn't like something like characters betraying and killing each other in Berserk, and were reminded of it every second page. Man, that would have truly been a sad reading experience.

[magnum opus]

misogyny isn't a facet of a fictional universe. it's a part of reality that people need to stop accepting and defending.

[moozooh]

What reality are you talking about? Misogyny is an artificial concept to begin with. There was no misogyny in the world until one "clever" person "realized" the opposite.

[scrilla4rella]

Try Batman: The Long Halloween. It has some superb art, a great story, and it throws pretty much every Batman villain you can think of into the mix. It's one of the better Batman comics I've read.

Personally, I thought the long Halloween was kind of lame. To me it felt like all the Batman villians were kind off shoe-horned into the story just for appearance sake. The art is superb but all the villians are distracting. Jeph Lobe does the same thing in Batman: Hush.

Batman: The Cult really impressed me. The art syle is a little weird but the colors are nice and the story is pretty gripping. It's definantly not a standard Batman tale.

[Ayanami]

Watchmen.

[Nuke]

Here's a few titles to add to the already mentioned masterpieces; Alan Moore's run on Swamp Thing, Hellblazer (Especially when written by Jamie Delano, Warren Ellis or the early Garth Ennis ones), The Goon and the indie comic Strangehaven by Gary Spencer Millidge.

[doctorx0079]

Manga:

Seraphic Feather
Cannon God Exxaxion
Gunsmith Cats

Comics:

Street Fighter

[Acid King]

misogyny isn't a facet of a fictional universe. it's a part of reality that people need to stop accepting and defending.

So why is violence acceptable in your reading material but misogyny isn't? Thats an even larger, more problematic part of reality than misogyny.

[CMoon]

C'mon, let's stop fuckin' around:



Yeah, my copy just arrived today.

[Nuke]

Hehe, I can't view an American war comic without thinking back to Hank the Yank from the Adventures in the Rifle Brigade (Garth Ennis version) screaming nothing but "GOD DAMN' IT!!!"

[CMoon]

Well I've been waiting years for an affordable Sgt. Rock omnibus. There is no possible way to take it seriously now--the illustrations are great (though in no way that will surprise anyone) while the writing waxes poetic about the true nature of men. I find these comics an absolute riot of no lesser proportion than the clearly ludicrous stuff like the mummy ants featured on page 1 of this thread.

[PaCrappa]

Good fucking call CMoon. I never could get into Sgt Rock as a kid because the superheroes were in firm possession of my brain. But in 2001 my friend of 30 years decided that he was moving to Morocco. In exchange for the service of auctioning off his truly righteous collection of toys he gave me his entire comic book collection that he's had since before I was in kindergarten. He's about three years older than me and an artist who is the son of an artist. So in this collection I found all kinds of shit that I'd never have purchased. My favorites by far were the late 60s and early 70s DC horror and war comics. When I first saw 'em I thought that there'd be no way I'd like those books. Luckily I decided that I'd read every single comic in those boxes before deciding what to do with them. Sgt Rock, Weird War and everything Berni Wrightson ever did are all pure fucking genius.

And right now I'm reading something really keen that I got in the same deal. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, illustrated by Berni Wrightson.

[CMoon]

Don't forget Jonah Hex!

[Super Laydock]

I only endorese it till about #202 "Angst op de Amsterdam"

Childhood memories and great fun. And available in other languages as well...(even japanese and Timorese I noticed) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spike_and_Suzy

Otherwise, besides the normal recommendations of Mangas, who can forget about Asterix and his adventures. The people writing the stories really knew there facts of history AND had a good sense of humor.

[Andi]

Peter Hsu's Quadrant is my newest interest.

It's basically the story of an amazon woman battling against evil forces on another planet. It's pretty campy and absurd but it plays it really straight faced and I'm pretty sure the people behind it are dead serious. The art is gorgeous too. Also, all the chicks are topless, which makes sense in the context of the book.

[Nuke]

I'm going to start collecting the local translations of Tintin seeing as it's my all time childhood favorite, and the translation is a word-play masterwork.
I can't compare them to the French editions, but compared to the straightforward (I'm told) english translations they are golden.
I'm also a big fan of Asterix, Lucky Luke and some of the older Spirou runs.
And oh, do watch The twelve tasks of Asterix, it's only one of the funniest cartoons ever.
Also while I'm on a European role, check out The Metabarons.
Not only is it a space opera written by the surrealist legend Alejandro Jodorowsky (best described as his Greek tragedy Dune), it's graced by the watercolors of Juan Giménez one of the greatest comic book artists ever to grace the medium.
He was later replaced by Das Pastoras, who is a master of technique but sadly not as artistic or free as Giménez was. [/url]

[JoshF]

http://www.brokenfrontier.com/columns/d ... php?id=427

[durias]

I'll ready anything written by Brian Michael Bendis, Warren Ellis, Frank Miller, Grant Morrison...