Comic Books

[Star]

I just finished all of Hush. It's really a gorgeous comic book and a lot of fun to read, although I sort of guessed correctly who Hush was around issue three. I don't think it's quite as good, in terms of writing, as The Long Halloween and Dark Victory, although I certainly like the Riddler a lot more in it and it's the same author. The jury's still out for me whether I care for Batman's entourage or not.

[brohypnol]

Sorry to zombify this thread, but it's on pg 1 and I see no need to make a new thread about comic books.

I LOVE COMIC BOOKS. I wrote my college essay on comics.

That said, as far as ongoings are concerned, right now, my pull list looks something like this:

Batman & Robin
Captain America
Daredevil
Dark Avengers
Ex Machina
Fables (Jack Of Fables, The Literals...currently in a crossover. Taking Jack Offables off my pull list when that ends)
Green Lantern/Green Lantern Corps.
Incognito
Invincible Iron Man
New Avengers
No Hero
Scalped
Secret Warriors
Thor
Thunderbolts
The Unwritten

Those are just the ones I buy. I download almost every major comic that Marvel's producing right now because they're all part of the current massive event "Dark Reign", and most DC/Vertigo/WildStorm titles. Some Image titles (Only Invincible & The Walking Dead, really), and a bunch of books on Avatar Press, most of which are written by Warren Ellis.

Here's some stupid-ass text file I wrote last summer about comics. If you're new to comics, you should take a look at this. Even if you've been reading for a decent amount of time, and are wondering what to read next, here ya go.

http://www.mediafire.com/?mfqvqtimzdz

Oh yeah...I have about 80 GB of comics on my laptop, and I'll be willing to upload anything you may want. I have pretty much everything under the sun with regard to modern DC/Marvel/Image and Indie Publishers (although you should definitely buy the Indie publishers books).

[Gündelfinger]

TANK GIRL makes me happy.

[brohypnol]

More opinions that I will attempt to pass off as fact:

-Wanted was a shitfest of a comic. "Watchmen for villains" my ass. It presented an interesting, if not slightly derivative concept, and failed to run with that concept, turning into a huge wankfest full of forced edginess, ending with something that goes a little like this: "Fuck you, you fat, 20-something, do nothing, go fuck yourself, you useless piece of shit", before finally ending with a gigantic, full page of Eminem's face screaming "THIS IS MY FACE WHILE I'M FUCKING YOU IN THE ASS". OOPS SORRY DID I SPOIL IT 4 YUO?!?!?!?   

(in case you need a visual aid: http://s3.tinypic.com/zuf3f4.jpg )

-V For Vendetta sucks, but most of Moore's other work is fantastic. Except Lost Girls, and League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier. Fuck that noise.

-Sandman is the only comic I consider second to Watchmen. Its spin-offs, Lucifer and Books Of Magic are two of the things that made Vertigo the best imprint ever in the 90s.

-Fables is currently Vertigo's best ongoing title. Its spin-off, Jack Of Fables, however, is crap.

-Bone is a great series, but I have a love/hate relationship with it because Jeff Smith pigeonholed himself into the ending by writing it before writing the rest of the series. Had he not done that, the series could have gone in any number of directions.

-Batman: The Long Halloween, and Batman: Dark Victory are two of the best Batman stories ever written, up there with Batman: Year One, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, and Batman: The Killing Joke, and are some of the best work that Jeph Loeb has ever done. He's a washed-up hack now, and one of comics worst writers. It's beyond me how the man who wrote these two gems, and Marvel's "Colors" series (Daredevil: Yellow, Spider-Man: Blue, Hulk: Grey) could write shit like Ultimates 3 and Red Hulk.

-Not into DMZ, but Y: The Last Man is great, and 100 Bullets is up there with Sandman and Watchmen for me, rounding out my holy trinity of comics. Some of the most subversive, intricate, and well written Crime fiction ever is in 100 Bullets. I can't recommend it enough.

-Astonishing X-Men was a great follow up to what Grant Morrison addressed in his run on New X-Men. I don't like Whedon (at all), but I liked his run on AXM well enough. It came out too sporadically for me to purchase it as single issues. The current and following creative team is running into the same scheduling errors that Whedon's run ran into. Warren Ellis is one of the best writers comics has seen...up there with Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman, but the artist they have working on it sucks ass.

-The Goon is amazing, my favorite Dark Horse title this side of Hellboy related works.

-Batman: Hush was such shit. My god. I think the creative process went something like this:

Jeph Loeb: "Hey guys, I have this brilliant idea for a Batman comic: Okay, so Bruce gets sick...and we'll introduce a completely new character that the Batman continuity has never seen before, and give him little to no backstory, other than that he's a doctor. At the same time we introduce this new character, we'll introduce a new villain that the Batman continuity has never seen before, and give him little to no backstory. We'll try to throw the reader off by making them think that this entire time it was Jason Todd, returned from the dead, and the readers will never figure out the two completely new characters that we've introduced are related!"

DC Editorial: "BRILLIANT!!! (we're also going to greenlight Amazons Attack, Countdown To Final Crisis, Batman R.I.P, and Final Crisis in the near future)"

Jim Lee art was the only thing that saved it.



I am a huge fucking faggot, I know.

[Star]

I agree with everything you've said (to my knowledge), with the exception of two things:

-V for Vendetta I found fantastic.

-The Killing Joke sucked ass. It was like Alan Moore gave up or something.

I mean,


THAT'S where the Joker's angst comes from? Seriously? Laaame.

However, that being said, The Black Dossier was also terrible, and I can't emphasize that enough. Why on Earth would you try to write a 'lost' Shakespeare play, Alan Moore? You don't have any experience with dramatic verse!

[Sannit]

That wasn't really where the Joker's Jokering came from.  He admits in the comic that he doesn't even really remember which of his memories are true and which aren't.

Also, I had sort of the opposite reaction to Whedon's X-Men run.  I thoroughly enjoy everything he's done on TV (and Serenity, of course), and his writing in the comic was still pretty good, but every time another plot point came in, the previous one was ignored entirely.  When it started, I looked forward to seeing all the conflict that would result from the "cure" thing, but then they moved on to space aliens and Danger and Cassandra Nova and more space aliens, and then I stopped reading because it was all ADD.

Or maybe that's how X-Men is.  I haven't read a lot of it.

[brohypnol]

I'm not gonna disagree with you on your points about The Killing Joke, but it's an incredible study on character and humanity of Superheroes/Villains. It retreads a lot of ground that Moore already covered with Watchmen, but I thought that it did it well. It has an incredible, and almost visceral ending, in that Batman and The Joker may not be as different as they'd like to imagine. You also have to take into consideration that for the time the book was written, it posed an incredible question: "What if Batman is responsible for the demons that plague him?"

Certainly, it's not the pinnacle of writing in comic books, but it's good because of how incredibly important it is. Nearly every iteration of stories that focus on the conflict between Batman and The Joker since its publication have drawn from it in some way, shape, or form. Most recently, and obviously, The Dark Knight.

It's also important because of the repercussions that The Joker's actions have had on the DC Universe as a whole. The shooting of Barbara Gordon is something that has affected characters to this day.

With regards to V For Vendetta, I just found it to be nothing more than a shallow, immature attack on Thatcherism. Sure, it was one of his first major publications, and it should remain important for that reason alone, but I don't think it stands the test of time very well. The Wachowski Brothers took this, and essentially turned it into an attack on the Bush Administration.

And to lighten the mood a bit...

[Ruskin]

Killing Joke rules. Period.
V for Vendetta, same thing.
V for Vendetta movie sucked ass.

[TTS]

-Bone is a great series, but I have a love/hate relationship with it because Jeff Smith pigeonholed himself into the ending by writing it before writing the rest of the series. Had he not done that, the series could have gone in any number of directions.

This, and Jeff Smith is a total weenie. Is RAZL really fooling anyone? (I wouldn't know, I haven't read it yet :<)

[Star]

Just re-read Hush, and remembered the redeeming factor in that book:

The last four pages make The Riddle baaadaaassss. And the Riddler is my favorite supervillain ever.

[LAz]

Asterix and Tintin?

These are my two favourite comics. Man, I love these two. I have them all I think.



I also like Lucky Luke, though those are not as common in english - but they are available.
Also, Uncle Scrooge is one that I like.

[Gagootsi]

You really need to stop necroposti...
You really need to stop posting.

[LAz]

Aww come on, I just discovered this part of the forum.

[Sannit]

It is sort of hidden.  It's, like, a full click away from the index.

[Grakelin]

I started reading Akira, but I find the pacing at the beginning a bit lacking.