127: What?s Actually Good (In Comics)

[zander2231]

I must have had bad luck with superhero comics before, because every single issue I've ever read I would easily summarise with one word: Rubbish.

I'm certainly not unbiased here as I read quite a lot of superhero comics but if you read Robert Kirkman's Invincible and still think they're all rubbish then I don't think there's a series out there you will like. In the spirit of plugging Kirkman further I would like to second the recommendation of The Walking Dead.

Oh, and if you can find it The Red Star.

 

[DominicDavies]

I'm certainly not unbiased here as I read quite a lot of superhero comics but if you read Robert Kirkman's Invincible and still think they're all rubbish then I don't think there's a series out there you will like. In the spirit of plugging Kirkman further I would like to second the recommendation of The Walking Dead.

Oh, and if you can find it The Red Star.

While I think that Kirkman's work for Marvel is very ordinary I will always throw my hat in with those who love Invincible and The Walking Dead. The first three or four trades specifically for Invincible is great.

The Red Star was solid, especially the artwork. There was a video game in the works for a long time as well, I wonder what happened to that.

 

[coot]

I soured on the superhero stuff long ago (like, the seventies , even though I was tempted back by the Dark Knight series and other modern reinterpretations. Still, there's only so much romantic angst and tortured impotence that I can deal with without experiencing extreme medical reactions.

My all-time favorite remains the Sandman series by Gaiman -- maybe the art was not always great, but for writing and depth it remains unsurpassed.

A recent find, fascinating and brutal and honest, is Blacksad. Yeah, it looks corny, but the plots and the characters are grim and devious and smart. The best and most unexpected read i've had in a few years.

 

[Lanowar]

Well most of what was mentioned were very good and I would like to echo previous suggestions of Pride Of Baghdad which is amazing full stop. Hellboy is a great series really different from anything else that is out there.

Fables as well it a great series by Bill Willingham it's by DC's Vertigo and is just amazing of a read.

Speaking of Geoff Johns quickly he's doing "The Sinestro Corps War" arc in Green Lantern which is just an epic storyline and should have been DC's event of this year rather then Crapdown.

If I was going to reconmend a easy Marvel Read then I would go with a series that unfortuntely is actually ending soo which is Cable & Deadpool which features Deadpool my personal favourite Marvel character he was in Ultimate Alliance and X-Men Legends 2 if you played them. Unfortuntely Marvel are yet to re-print any of his stuff he's been in outside of C&D which makes it really annoying to recommend any of his stuff to first time readers.

 

[Dectilon]

The Sandman, Alan Moore classics like V for Vendetta and Watchmen (soon cometh the Watchmen movie, yes?), Dawn... Anything strange and philosophical is my cup of tea (and I don't even drink tea!).

Some constantine books are great too, like Hard Time, Good Intentions, Setting Sun and Highwater. As long as they don't powergame or do a "monster-of-the-week" they are usually of high quality.

Otherwise I'd say local or national comics often hold a high standard (mainly humoristic comics though). Interestingly though, some local comics become so popular that they spread abroad. Rocky, a comic about the artists everyday life in Stockholm has become so popular that it's being released in the US.

As for the article itself it feels like a list more than anything else. It's a good subject, but I'd rather seen a more in-depth discussion of good comics and why they are good rather than this ~~

 

[sharp_as_a_cork]

Since I'm new to comics, and getting them is hard in my part of the world, is there a way to try some comic books for free? (I mean complete books, not the 4-page crap Marvell has on its site).

 

[Vortigar]

Fupjack:
You've got to keep a few things in mind though, when an American says comics there's a 99% chance he means what we call American comics (which will sometimes have foreign writers or artists). And in America comics is also synonymous with superheroes for the large part as well, which is why the word graphical novel pops up more and more often. I also wonder how big the knowledge on European standards like Asterix, Tin Tin, Storm and the like is in the States(Suske & Wiske?).

Zanzibar:
Any good comics store will be able to get a hold of the books named in this article, I live in Holland and have no problem getting this stuff ordered in. They probably won't be lying on the shelves, though you may be surprised, Y the Last Man and Transmetropolitan were just lying around locally when I picked them up. Hey, now I think of it, it was a Swede who recommended Marvel 1602 to me (by Neil Gaiman; see coot's post), don't get this book if you haven't got a very solid background in the Marvel universe though, half the fun will pass you by.

Dectilon:
I can't wait for Black Summer to be finished and collected (I don't buy loose comic issues). It's a book by Warren Ellis about a super hero who deems the American President is a criminal due to his policies defying human rights and the amount of deaths that can be directly linked to him without justifiable cause. So he kills him. This naturally spins out into all manner of debate on heroes, their rights and dissidence among the heroes themselves who agree or disagree with his actions, madness abound. (The president getting killed is the book's opening.) Maybe you're as interested at looking into this as I am.

Sharp as a cork:
Most of the longer books have had their first issue released by the publisher on the internet for free so you can check out what you're getting into even if it isn't on the shelves, this is true for Transmetropolitan at least and I've seen a few others. Many publishers don't believe in this kind of thing though, so google around with titles that sparked your imagination.

Article:
Good to see this article broken up by author (as someone mentioned above). It really is the most telling factor in a book. I've been reading more and more American comics of late, I'm slowly building up a collection largely based around Warren Ellis, Alan Moore and Frank Miller and filled up with random assorted stuff. I was already planning on looking into Ex Machina, thanks for the confirmation there, though Y was really all I needed to search out more of Vaughn's stuff.

I'd love to read more stuff on comics. Maybe a rundown of European stuff? The Killer, XIII, SAS, Gilles, Siegfried, etc...?

 

[rhizic]

to be honest most [hero] comics these days tend to suck, the golden age is over and all we're getting are nostalgic highs from them, all the creativity these days can be found in the graphic novels, like the stuff from gaiman, ellis, davis etc. great review btw thew way, some interesting points in it, oh and manga is'nt generic bleeep. its the atypical shonen drivel that the companies are flooding us with becuase little kiddies and fun loving goth girls like it, but theres alot more to manga, some of it rivals a doystesky [bad spelling] novel, and have more social commentry and impressive art and all that imbetween stuff than any of the western comics. well in my opinion anyway

 

[Dectilon]

"Maybe you're as interested at looking into this as I am."

Thanks mate! I think I am : )

"to be honest most [hero] comics these days tend to suck, the golden age is over and all we're getting are nostalgic highs from them"

When was this exactly? : ) All I can remember that I was reading spider-man back in 1994 and thinking: "Woah, they completely nailed the art here. And the dialog isn't ridiculous anymore".

That said, Spider-man will never be anything more than it has always been : )

 

[Corbineau]

How did you mention Warren Ellis and not talk about the single best thing he's working on right now, 'Black Summer'? Seriously, anyone who liked 'Transmetropolitan' and/or the spectacular Alan Moore book, 'Watchmen', go and get the 5-so-far books in this series now. You can pick up the now rare 99 cent #0 issue combined with issue 1 as issue Alpha, released last month. But you owe this to yourself. It is bloody classic. Doktor Sleepless is also quite fantastic. And finally, while Ellis is now taking over 'Astonishing X-Men' and that rocks, recall that he's taking over from Joss Whedon, whose issues I think spawn 2 trade paperbacks worth of excellent. That's a lineup that can't be beat, without having Frank Miller or Alan Moore pick up the thread after Ellis is done with his go.

 

[Sylocat]

I've been meaning to check out Jeff Smith's new Captain Marvel mini-series. If it's anywhere near as good as Bone, I'm gonna love it.

 

[jt2002tj]

I must have had bad luck with superhero comics before, because every single issue I've ever read I would easily summarise with one word: Rubbish.

I'm certainly not unbiased here as I read quite a lot of superhero comics but if you read Robert Kirkman's Invincible and still think they're all rubbish then I don't think there's a series out there you will like.

Invincible is great. Meltdown was pretty good too. Too bad it was a miniseries, only 2 issues (?).

As others have mentioned, Fables is good as well, though more so in the first 50 issues. As is Mouse Guard. If we're going back a bit, Rising Stars was awesome. It's like a combination of 4400 and Heroes.

If we're going with DC/Marvel...Ultimate Spider-man and All-Star Superman are the ones to check out.

 

[Morghus]

I hope I'm not a unique snowflake in wanting to see the two "Joe's" work together on something; J. Michael Straczynski and Joe Madureira.
My two absolute favourite at story and art.

And yes, most definitely great to see a mention about comics.
Dissing manga's bad though - it's like saying comics are bad just because whatshisface wrote the story about whatshisface that's the merging of Magneto and Xavier that wants to kick Benjamin Franklin Richards' ass for being more awesome.

 

[Koselara]

First, thanks for the interesting article, though I can't critique anything about comic books since I'm only now considering getting into them outside a few web-comics...

However... What's with writers at Escapist slamming non-game formats (even while praising one of them)? I know it's not a constant by any means, but it's often enough to be irritating, and it's usually done with surprising ignorance. Different people get an immersive experience full of action, thought, etc. from different formats, and having it with one of them doesn't mean we can't also get it from others or that we automatically think they're inferior. It's possible to go into details at length about some aspect of one format without dissing another; other sites (usually non-game, not always) manage it. This site is great in so many other ways, so I kind of expect more than this from it.

I'm sorry, I'm coming back to gaming after a 10+ year absence, and the Escapist seems to be the best site for me thus far (it certainly has the most intelligent discussions). Since I'm trying to also broaden my horizons by getting into new formats, I'm checking out recommendation-focused articles & discussions, and it's just frustrating to see an entire format (or format subtype) I've loved for ages put down based on someone's experiences with a specific sub-genre. (The quoted lawyer clearly hasn't watched much film outside the blockbusters, and certainly hasn't read many books or much outside a particular genre, if he seriously thinks only comics can combine all of the elements he mentioned!)

 

[Sewblon]

The author who has had the most impact on me as a person is Jhonen Vasquez. Once you have come in contact his one of his creations, it will burrow deep into your brain, where it will grow, fester and feed off of your life force until it emerges as a gigantic abomination of God and nature that will destroy and remake the universe into a hell designed especially for you! I have read some stuff by Alan Moore so I have some knowledge about what mainstream comics where at a specific time, the only thing of his I read that I did not like was V for Vendetta, all the characters seemed to be passive-aggressive. I will check out the authors you mentioned. Warn the people about Jhonen Vasquez before his tainted bibliography twists anyone else into a sweaty fanboy!

 

[Ekonk]

Watchmen wasn't mentioned.

V for Vendetta wasn't mentioned.

I am dissapointed. Very dissapointed.

 

[Byrn Stuff]

For interesting stuff that's chock full of allusions and mystique, I feel Neil Gaiman is a can't miss. The blended stories, retellings of classics, retconning of legends, and the like in The Sandman were wonderful.

Also, if you read Stephen King's Dark Tower series, the comic stories being done right now are excellent. They have phenomenal artwork, and even though they've left the canon behind, it feels like these stories jumped right out of the books.