What COMICS have you been reading? ARCHIVE

Dragonstout and I inadvertently hijacked Barnes' closet clearing thread with a discussion on comics, so …

What COMICS have you been reading?

I picked up the latest Fables this week, "The Great Fables Crossover." I'm almost done with it but find it pretty so-so. The literals are an interesting addition, but it's probably because I haven't read Jack of Fables that I don't have much connection to the story and it took me a while to catch up with what is going on. I just want it to end and the next trade to come out so I can see what happens with this whole Mr. Dark character.

And i continue my conversation with Dragonstout here, so who are your preferred comic writers?

I know that Dragon snoot... whoops, snout doesn't like Warren Ellis but his Plaentary just had book four come out (I usually wait for the trade's) and it is as awesome as the rest of the series and really, really satisfying to have an actual ending. I'm not normally a huge Ellis fan but this series is his magnum opus (even more so the Trans met if you ask me) and anyone who doesn't like him should at least give that series a try. Just avoid Black Summer and some of his silly one offs like that (Jack Cross too).

I just finished Lost Girls too. NOT FOR EVRYONE!! But I loved it. It is VERY racy. It is probably illegal in some countries and could be considered pornography (but I never even considered beatin' off while reading it so I'd call it erotica, for those who like semantics), but like Neil Gaiman said in his review; "it wouldn't make for a very good one handed read". The book is about as complex as Alan Moore ever gets so if you don't want a good cerebral read then avoid it.

I am continually reading Galmourpuss, currently my favorite shelf comic (and the only thing other then Astro City that I buy singles for). Dave Sim has really produced the most original comic I've seen in years. The book is a fascinating disection of realism in comic art over the last century and his virtuoso performance is astounding, some of the drawings will blow your mind.

The other thing I just finished was Flash Gordon as done by Al Willaimson. The stories are seriously average but it doesn't matter one bit because you could read and enjoy this thing with no dialogue whatsoever. He may be the best Sci-Fi artist I have ever seen (and of course Lucas wanted him really badly for all the original Star Wars stuff.. he only did some though). I highly reccomend this book to everyone.

I've only read the first Fables but it was intriguing and I would love to pick up the reast of the series some day. I heard it gets better.

I just finished reading Pluto by Urasawa. It's a spin off of an old Astro Boy story, The Greatest Robot on Earth (or something like that). I never read the Astro Boy version but this was fantastic - thoughtful sf for adults in a way few manga are, ruminations both overstated and understated on the nature of humanity and the nature of robots. In fact it's probably worth a re-reading to catch a few subtle nuances I missed the first time around. Also only 8 volumes which is nice.

I also just finished up the first bound volume of Chew. The premise is hilarious - a detective who has the power to know what's happened to objects he's eaten. Now give him a murder victim. Yum! I'm not sure if I'm sold on the story around it though, some weirdness about bird flu killing millions, except maybe it was a big govt conspiracy instead. Meh.

The only Warren Ellis I've read is Transmetropolitan, which was fantastic. I'll have to check out Planetary.

I'm only currently buying a few comics on a regular basis: JSA, Jonah Hex and Batman & Robin. I am not currently wildly enthusiastic about any of them, but Bill Willingham has finally turned in two very good issues of JSA back-to-back. His run has been okay, except that he seemed to have a tin ear for the voices of the characters. Now he has found those voices, and it's great. Also, he went nuts creating a whole slew of nazi supervillains for the current storyline. Aside from that, I have been following Hellboy, but only in trade format.

Most of the comics I've been reading lately are trades that I've been checking out from the library. They had surprisingly great collection when I stumbled across it two months ago, but it feels like a chunk of it is either missing or always out on loan. I've been reading about a 50/50 mix of Marvel Essentials and various Vertigo titles. From Hell was amazing, once I got accustomed to the crude but appropriate black and white artwork.

For no real reason at all other than I saw them sitting around on my shelf the other day, I'm rereading the Ellis run on Stormwatch. Good stuff. I need to grab that new Planetary book, I got the issues up to around #30 but then got side tracked and stopped picking them up. I actually liked Jack Cross too...

My cousin is way into Fable but I haven't been out to visit her in a while so I'm pretty out of the loop on those (I just bummily read her's when I'm over) but I dig em.

Just picked up the Deluxe HC collection of Ed Brubaker's "Criminal." So far, I'm really digging it. Though I took no notice of his name at the time, I really liked Brubaker's "Scene of the Crime" Vertigo mini, and then promptly forgot about him until the whole Death of Capt. America thing. Now I'm finding myself compelled to go hunt up his Daredevil run since he does your basic crime fiction so very well (IMO). DD is a particular guilty pleasure/favorite of mine for a very long time (my mom actually taught me to read using comic books, and DD was one of her favorites. I wish I still had those early 70s books....)

And DD really is a "guilty" pleasure because, let's face it, aside from a few shining moments, that character has suffered from some of the most atrocious writers in the Marvel stable across the last 30 years...

JonJacob wrote:

I know that Dragon snoot... whoops, snout doesn't like Warren Ellis but his Plaentary just had book four come out (I usually wait for the trade's) and it is as awesome as the rest of the series and really, really satisfying to have an actual ending. I'm not normally a huge Ellis fan but this series is his magnum opus (even more so the Trans met if you ask me) and anyone who doesn't like him should at least give that series a try. Just avoid Black Summer and some of his silly one offs like that (Jack Cross too).

Naw, actually I love a few Warren Ellis comics definitely, Planetary being one of them. Also loved his Authority run. Love them both so much that I have the Absolute editions. I also liked Nextwave and Stormwatch. But LOTS of his other shit drives me crazy (including Transmet, which I was shocked to discover at a reread which I couldn't even bring myself to finish), hence the mention in that other thread among other "vastly overrated mainstream writers". I also listed Mark Millar despite the fact that I liked his Ultimates, and Bendis despite the fact that I thought his Daredevil run was mostly good (but then, I like the character). Ed Brubaker's Captain America I wasn't too impressed by, but I liked Sleeper, and am curious about Criminal.

I'm reading through 100 Bullets now (and for the last few months...)...it is REALLY good, and I think it's just about the only Vertigo series that I think is worth a damn since Preacher. After that, though, I'm definitely going to be just reading short things for a while; it's taken me waaaaaaay too long to read this. Single-volume candidates that I picked up recently were Locas 2, Footnotes in Gaza, and Thirteen Going on Eighteen; it's probably going to be the latter for a nice light break after 100 Bullets and the amount of effort that it takes to figure out what's going on.

PS MattLoter - if you stopped Planetary around issue 30, you might have all the Planetarys: it stopped at issue 27.

So I just looked and I stopped at #23 it seems. Does it have a good real ending? If it does then it just shot up on my list to read.

Planetary ends well. Not every plot thread is neatly wrapped up, but all the important ones are, and in a satisfying way.

Picked up a chunk on sale at a local used book store.

Scalped - finished first trade and about to start the second. I'd recommend that anyone who liked Criminal (and Sleeper) at least pick up the first trade and try it out.

The first two Flight volumes. Really nice art, but not sure how strongly I'd recommend them based on the stories. It might be my own preference for longer more involved stories rather than anthologies.

The BPRD trades (working through them all, on #4). I'm enjoying them more than the Hellboy trades.

The Boy Vampire books by Trillo and Risso. Again, the art is nice (Risso did 100 bullets), especially in the oversized format, but the story is pretty lacking. Wouldn't recommend.

The Wasteland deluxe version (the first 12 or 13 issues). I don't have any great interest in post-apocalyptic stuff normally, but read through this one night a couploe weeks ago. Highly recommended, but I'm not sure what to use for reference (if you liked .... you'll like Wasteland). I'm torn now as to whether or not to pick up the next trades or wait for a second deluxe volume to come out.



The first Human Target trade is next in the queue (or the first DMZ trade, or Goon 8 and 9).

I read the first volume of Transmetropolitan and thought it was totally sophmoric. I did read the first volume of Planetary which I liked quite a bit, but I haven't liked anything else by Ellis.

I forgot I enjoyed Bendis' run on Daredevil. I really enjoyed it when he got sent to prison.

I was disappointed in 100 Bullets because it wasn't what I thought it was going to be. I thought each story would be "here's 100 untraceable bullets" leaving characters with the choice of what to do with those kind of possibilities. Go vigilante? Rob banks? Sell them? Instead it was "Here's 100 untraceable bullets, here's all the dirt you need on the people who royally screwed you over in your life and they deserve to die." I thought that was boring. Maybe I just didn't give it enough time to get into the mythology of those secretive agency guys.

Scalped is good if you like crime comics. I like Criminal better, though. That first run "Coward" is probably the best I've read so far.

I had checked out two volumes of Terry Moore's run on Runaways. Talk about disappointing. I'd always heard great things about Stranger's in Paradise and I had read some of Echo which I liked but his string on Runaways was just juvenile. And the art got even more manga-tastic.

metalface13 wrote:

I was disappointed in 100 Bullets because it wasn't what I thought it was going to be. I thought each story would be "here's 100 untraceable bullets" leaving characters with the choice of what to do with those kind of possibilities. Go vigilante? Rob banks? Sell them? Instead it was "Here's 100 untraceable bullets, here's all the dirt you need on the people who royally screwed you over in your life and they deserve to die." I thought that was boring. Maybe I just didn't give it enough time to get into the mythology of those secretive agency guys.

I had checked out two volumes of Terry Moore's run on Runaways. Talk about disappointing. I'd always heard great things about Stranger's in Paradise and I had read some of Echo which I liked but his string on Runaways was just juvenile. And the art got even more manga-tastic.

100 Bullets ends up being COMPLETELY different from how you ever thought it was going to be. Fairly quickly. I'd say you have read at least to the end of the second paperback to get an inkling of where it's going. It's about neither of the things that you posit.

Terry Moore is juvenile everywhere, skip everything he does.

100 bullets is a weird series. Sometimes I love it but there are just as many times that it feels like Azarello is just trying to be the most macho writer on earth and it comes across as silly and pretentious. The language he uses is so over the top that there are many moments were I just roll my eyes and turn the page. But the overall story arch gets more interesting and the "100 bullets scenario" that is so often seen at the beginning just disappears after awhile and the story gets to be more and more about the high level characters and the families.

I actually think the art is my favorite part of the whole thing. They did a Batman comic together that looked fucking awesome (but once again the writing was too pretentious for it's own good, like Azarello's shitty superman run!).

I'm just re-reading through 100 bullets now to get caught back up and it's enjoyable enough to do that but the art pushes me to go further then I would otherwise.

mealface13... you should try to finish planetary... it really picks up at the end of book two and that's where you start to see how good it is.... book one is just a hint of what's to come.

I've eyed that Bendis run on DD for years and know that I've heard some good things on it maybe I'll go back and pick them up, I haven't bought new DD's since I was a kid and Miller wrote the fucking thing... that's a long time.

I find that I am enjoying comics/trades that are outside the Big Two more and more because there aren't any limits imposed on the creativity from the business side. Any major hero is too valuable as an intellectual property to make any big-time lasting changes, and after enough years (or sooner) there really isn't any interesting new character growth. For the past few years, almost every time I've picked up a trade for a major title/character (no matter who wrote it) I've been a little disappointed afterward.

Almalik wrote:

I find that I am enjoying comics/trades that are outside the Big Two more and more because there aren't any limits imposed on the creativity from the business side. Any major hero is too valuable as an intellectual property to make any big-time lasting changes, and after enough years (or sooner) there really isn't any interesting new character growth. For the past few years, almost every time I've picked up a trade for a major title/character (no matter who wrote it) I've been a little disappointed afterward.

Me too. The only Marvel comics I usually read are the ones that are allowed to kind of do their own thing like Astonishing X-Men, Runaways and Ultimate Spider-Man. For the most part I like sticking with stuff from Vertigo, Dark Horse and Image.

Although I have been picking up the trades from IDW's Angel series. Yeah I'm a dork of a fanboy, I know. Mark Buckingham is doing a run on it though.