The Comics Thread : Hulk SMASH! Edition

Books, comics, TV, music
21

No - it started first and foremost as a webcomic. The TPBs came later. It’s like Order of the Stick in that respect. But it’s an easy mistake to make since Foglio has been drawing comics for like the past 30 years and only recently started posting stuff online.

Lucifer… I started reading that until I realized it was almost an exact clone of Sandman in terms of formatting. I suppose it makes sense since the character came from the Sandman book, but I was disappointed with the straight fantasy turn it took immediately after the first TPB.

I’ll second, third and fourth Bill’s recommendation for Transmetropolitan. Read it now. I’ll also suggest the following:

DMZ - The US is undergoing a civil war, with NYC one of the few contested zones. A young journalist is dropped into the middle of the whole thing and tries to stay alive.

Testament - Merges the Old Testament with the near future as characters from one influence the reality of the other. Apocalyptic and sacriligeous.

22

noun, you are decidedly wrong about Girl Genius. Girl Genius did not start out on the web, with the exception of the b&w teaser introduction. It was published four times a year for 13 issues before it migrated to the web in April 2005.

23

Huh. Well, there you go, then.

24

Transmet was really ahead of its time when it was written; or perhaps it was a definitely product of it times and the world just sort of fell into the speculative fiction it created. Either way, it’s really good stuff that has to be read all the way through to fully appreciate what it’s doing.

I’ll second the following TPBs. Fables, Y -the Last Man, Lucifer, (even as a 2nd rate Sandman), The Losers, and the essential comic for the literary fag, Sandman.

Adding.

Promethea
It’s either an indulgence in hermetic Qabbalah theories, a dense deconstruction of the Wonder Woman stories or a surreal journey into the history of mythology. With Alan Moore, it’s probably all of them. Mainly though, the art is fantastic, with J.H. Williams trying every possible combination of panels and pagination just to get that feel.

We3
Imagine Homeward Bound meets the Terminator. Grant Morrison tends to really go out there with his concepts, (seaguy?) yet this particular story is touching, manic, violent and surprisingly grounded in almost all the right places. Again, fantastic art from Quitely.

The Defenders
You have to admire Keith Giffen for actually writing a story about Hulk, Dr Strange, Namor and the tired old trope of Demonic invasion and making it funny. Then again, Keith is a really funny writer. In the same vein, check out his TPBs of "Formerly known as the Justice League "

Lone wolf and Cub
The original Lone Samurai epic. This is a masterpiece of samurai fiction and few have ever come close to the stark portrayal of revenge and swordplay. Sure most other Manga are more fun, (Samurai Champloo for one), but Lone Wolf and Cub is almost meditative in its quality.

Batman - The Long Halloween and Dark Victory
Since the next Batman movie is heavily influenced by the Long Halloween, it’ll probably be a good idea to read it before playing a game of spot the influence in the movie. There should be a separate category for really good Batman trades too, btw.

I realize all these are kinda old Trades. I’m not sure what’s out now that really good. Personally though, I’m not a big fan of DMZ. Brian Wood took a fantastic concept and threw in so much angry rebellious angst that I’m afraid the book might shoot itself.

25

I’ll second the recommendation on Brubaker’s Sleeper. I think the “pitch” is pretty awesome: Superhero who goes undercover as a super villain loses his handler and now he can’t get out. The book itself is even better. It takes place in the Wildstorm (Wildcats, Authority) continuity, which ends up working well for the book.

I just picked up the first Buffy “Season 8” collection. So far so good. If you like the show you’ll like the book.

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You should just go completely off tilter like E5 does when somebody brings up his personal QT3 meme. It’s considerably funnier, especially if you toss in expletives about female relatives and inappropriate intercourse.

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Rimbo has good natured bad taste.

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It’s not my favourite style , it’s good but just not my style.

29

Should’ve mentioned i’ve read this too. Well, half of it. There are just way too many volumes. I kinda got bored of it at volume#15 and quit(not quit but it was replaced by Vagabond).

30

A warning about Promethea: it starts out really neat. Great premise, great art. And then about book 3 Moore goes off on a long, long digression about magical theory and so forth. Unless you’re as fascinated by that stuff as he is, you may wish to steer clear once it hits that point. I found it positively soporific, even with the art still being great. (Same problem I had with From Hell, really. Except that I don’t particularly care for Eddie Campbell’s art.)

Of Moore’s America’s Best Comics work, I’d much more handily recommend Top 10 and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. And certain bits of Tomorrow Stories are pretty awesome also.

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It wouldn’t be Conan if they didn’t.

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I recommend Ex Machina. (on the Wildstorm DC imprint) It’s another title by Brian K. Vaughan, and it’s great. Without spoiling anything, the world’s only superhero parlays his fame into political influence and becomes Mayor of New York. This has already happened when the book starts up, and much of his superhero days are shown via flashbacks. Flashbacks aside, the story deals with him as mayor, how people react to him both on a political level and because of his past, and various super-things that come back to haunt him.

33

I’ll third the Sleeper suggestion. Super(heh)ficially it bears some resemblence to the truely aweful Wanted, but its much more nuanced and interesting. Brubaker is consistantly great.

Blade of the Immortal - hee hee I don’t like Manga at all but this is sooo over the top that I chuckle (see above) every time I think about it. He’s Immortal cause he’s full of worms and at least one of the dudes he fights has the decapitated heads of his ex-wives sewed onto his shoulders. Can’t say I’ve read more than one, but it leaves an impression.

34

Other stuff people might like:

100 Bullets - my girlfriend loves this series, I’m kinda over it but the art is good and it is occaisionally interesting.

Hellblazer - Good ol John Constantine, even Keanu can’t kill him off. YMMV with the TPBs, depending on who is writing them.

35

I had the exact same experience, except by Book 2 :D

It’s already covered in the other thread, but I’ll just bring up a couple of my favorites.

Powers - very witty and gritty cop drama in a world of superheroes that evolves into much more (although takes a long time to get there). Still ongoing, but at this point you have 10 TPBs to get through.

Astro City - when I first saw this I thought it was Golden Age, a bit over the top stuff. Perhaps it is, but at the same time it is so much more. It’s “the world with superheroes in it”, written in a way that makes more sense to me than any other continuum. Every book is very nearly a separate story.

Top Ten, books 1 & 2 - in this one, everyone has powers. Some may be silly, but they’re still powers. The story deals with the 10th Precinct police statioin and its officers, and stuffs more in-jokes per page than any other book I’ve read. After book 2 Moore stopped writing it and the humor went stale.

The American Way - the Cold War and superheroes; it could be The Watchmen, but it isn’t. I found it to stand on its own quite well.

100 Bullets - what would you do if you were offered a completely untraceable gun, 100 bullets, and undisputable proof that your shitty life was caused by one specific person? That’s how it starts, but it kinda goes all over the place from there. Great art and consistently great writing, but I gotta admit that at this point (Book 11) it feels like it’s meandering a bit too much.

And of course Walking Dead, Fables, Y and Transmetropolitan. Oh, and Sleeper. I’ll look through my shelf to see if I’m leaving anything out …

36

Top Ten 1&2 are must reads. Moore wrote a retro one also (the Fourty Niners) that’s pretty good.

As long as we are talking about Mr Moore,Of course V, League of Ex. Gents and Watchmen and his Swampthing(s) are all must reads. I also liked the turd polishing on W.I.L.D.C.A.T.S. he did back in the day and From Hell is pretty amazing, and gets more amazing if you bother to read all the footnotes and such that are included in the back.

Anyone ever read his Supreme run? I just can’t bring myself to pick it up.

37

Yeah. Did you ever read Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?

It’s basically his Superman book.

It’s a celebration of superman kitsch, and an attempt to prove that you don’t have to make things gritty to make them post-modern. Keep the dog, keep the “superman family”, etc. etc.

But to make it work you also have to be Alan Moore…

38

Is 100 Bullets close to ending? I bought and read up through trade #8 back when that was all that was available. By the time trade #9 came out, I couldn’t remember enough to jump right in and read it, so I’ve got #9 unread and haven’t bought #10 or #11. I want to just wait till it’s done.

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100 Bullets is about to hit issue 87, so a little over a year’s worth of singles left.

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Oh, major manga pick:

Akira. Pay no attention to the movie. I happened to like it, but…the manga is something like six thousand pages long. There’s really no good way to condense that into under two hours of animation, which means the movie kinda suffers for attempting it. But the manga is so, so good. A lot more depth of plotline and characters. Tokyo gets destroyed at least twice.