Comic Recomendations

[Skie]

I guess more what I'm looking for is recommendations for trade paper backs and graphic novels, unless it's something new out that's really good. I don't want to start trying to collect a bunch of back issues for a story. Sandman and Watchmen are a couple of my favorites. My somewhat guilty pleasure is Ultimate Spiderman. Manga is cool as well, I really liked Ghost in the Shell and enjoy the Lupin series.

[adam]

I really, really am fond of the Akira manga, which Dark Horse republished a few years back as a collection of six books. I'm not sure how hard that is to find, but if you can, it's well worth it.

I also quite enjoyed the Bone series, which is widely available. It's in a fairly different vein than anything else out there these days. Sort of a cross between Pogo and Lord of the Rings, which is as odd as you'd think.

I would recommend Frank Miller's Daredevil collections. His work on that comic was pretty novel at the time. There are far more imitators these days, but few are as good.

[gambit]

Y: The Last Man and Ex Machina both written by Brian K. Vaughan. These series are amazing. Y: The Last Man follows Yorick Brown and his pet helper monkey, Ampersand (y'know, this symbol "&"), after, inexplicably, everything on the planet Earth with a Y chromosome is killed. Yorick is literally the last man on Earth, and trust me, that's a fucked up world. Ex Machina follows the new mayor of New York, who used to be the world's first superhero (names escape me at the moment). It's a very political comic as the mayor tries to deal with his job (gay marriage, offensive art) and his past life (the source of his powers, old enemies/colleagues), and it's set more or less in the real world. Great stuff.

Strangers In Paradise by Terry Moore. I suggest the pocket books since you get more bang for your buck. Anyway, this is a romance comic following the on-again/off-again relationship of Katchoo and Francine, and they'd probably be a couple by now if Katchoo's past and Francine's family/religion/upbringing didn't get in the way. It's extremely funny, dramatic, and heart-breaking all at the same time. A must read.

Tom Strong by Alan Moore. Classic pulp sci-fi hero stuff, and Alan Moore does a great job with this series. It follows Tom Strong, a super-strong super genius and hero of Millenium City, and his adventures and battles that ensue. It's just a lot of fun to read this series, and Chris Sprouse is an amazing artist. Love it.

[mmm skyscraper]

Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis

Manga:

Appleseed
Dr. Slump
Planetes (if you like space stuff)

[den]

I know absolutely nothing about comics or graphic novels. But the Musuem of Contemporary Art in Chicago has an exhibit on Chris Ware right now, whose most well known for his 'Jimmy Corigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth' grapic novel, which is really fantastic. That's all I've really been exposed to, but it's pretty engaging.

Here's a link discussing the exhibition and Ware's work.

http://www.avclub.com/content/node/48760

[darktrain]

add Runaways to the Brian K. Vaughn list. great stuff, that.
also, The Ultimates.

and the absolute best trade i can recommend from last year is Great Lakes Avengers! sounds silly, right? it is, but it's wonderful:D

Edit1: my favorite two comics of all time are collected nicely in trades: The Maxx and Preacher. MUST READS!

Edit2: for tripped out art, check out Ashley Wood's Popbot

[sanakan]

my most favorite (well, perhaps second favorite, as nothing beats wattersons calvin & hobbes :) ) comics are by french artist marc-antoine mathieu. note that these are very different from american (DC-style) comics and mangas as mentioned above.
i like his comics for two things: the simple but yet detailed style of drawing, and the stories... it's hard to explain, but each of his book is mindboggingly astounding. with his ideas he even breaks the limitation of a "normal" comic. example?
- in one book there's a frame of the protagonist stating something along the lines of "it seems this has already happend". if you turn to the next page, you realize that this panes was acutally cut out and you've been reading it on the next page....
- he has written a whole comic with mirrored frames ("Le Début de la fin", the beginning of the end // the title on the back is "La fin du Début"..."): the whole thing is mirrored in the center of the book where the protagonist goes through a mirror. even the site-numbering is mirrored (begins as -32, goes to 0 in the middle of the book, then to +32)

on this german site (http://www.reprodukt.com/creator_info.php?creators_id=33) you can find some sites from his book (click on the navigation at the left where it lists his titels "der ursprung" to "tote erinnerung").



my other favorite artists include the drawings of moebius and stories of jodorowsky who also write things to warp your brain :)

[Malt Refund]

Wow thats awesome, I thought I was the only Jodorowsky fan in the whole world. Metabarons for the WIN! I wish he'd write more.

My favorites right now are: Concrete, 100 Bullets, Hellboy, The Walking Dead and Invincible. Anything Chris Ware also wins. I run the tiniest (http://community.livejournal.com/acmenovelty/) Chris Ware community on LJ.

[Kennrr]

Battle Royale manga is great. i've read the book, seen the movie and I think the manga is the best. gorey and get all the cool side stories from each character.

[gambit]

Maus by Art Spiegelman. This won the Pulitzer back in 92, and it completely deserves it. It follows Art as he chronicles his father's time in Auschwitz during WWII by depicting Jews as mice and Nazis as cats (and other nationalities as other animals). It's funny, depressing, heart-wrenching, and just a phenomenal piece of art.

Channel Zero by Brian Wood. The religious right has taken over the American government, and has more or less outlawed free speech. Anyone trying to express an opposing viewpoint to the government risks death, but most Americans don't care. In comes Jennie 2.5, a performance artist turned freedom fighter, and she starts a revolution by hacking the airwaves. Originally written and drawn back in 97, I think, it's a pretty damn scary read now, but highly recommended.

Superman: Red Son by Mark Millar (and the artist I can't remember). Y'know how Kal-El landed in the heart of Kansas and was raised on American values? Well, scratch that; Kal-El landed in the Ukraine and was raised on Soviet values, becoming the heir to Stalin. Think about Superman's powers of sight and hearing, and he becomes the scariest Big Brother ever imagined. Just a great twist on a story we all know by heart.

[sanblaster]

Venom vs Carnage


Iron Man: House of M


the new Transformers comics, I think they win with the amerimanga fever.


Marvel Zombies (if only for the laughs)


Batman: Jekyll & Hyde



The Metal Gear comics are pretty cool too, but they are a transcription of the videogames, hence no interesting plot to discover if you already played them..

[Kennrr]

Superman: Red Son by Mark Millar (and the artist I can't remember). Y'know how Kal-El landed in the heart of Kansas and was raised on American values? Well, scratch that; Kal-El landed in the Ukraine and was raised on Soviet values, becoming the heir to Stalin. Think about Superman's powers of sight and hearing, and he becomes the scariest Big Brother ever imagined. Just a great twist on a story we all know by heart.


holy fuck does that sound intersting. i think i'm going to drop by the comic store tomorrow for this.

another recommendation would be WE3. Homeward Bound + Robocop

[Malt Refund]

I hated Red Sun.. it could have been so much better then it was.

[gambit]

Bah, it was brilliant.

[adam]

Oooooh yeah! I'd second The Maxx! That comic is aces.

[Skie]

Edit1: my favorite two comics of all time are collected nicely in trades: The Maxx and Preacher. MUST READS!

The Maxx was one of the first series I started collecting. I wish I'd have collected all of them. I didn't know there were trade paperbacks. Maybe I'll look into what number I collected to and either pick up the trade paperbacks that finish it up. If I only need a couple to get the full series, I'll see how expensive it is to go that route.

I heard Preacher was cool, but it was too far in the series by the time I thought about collecting it. I own quite a few of the shorter series that Image made around that time. Pitt and The Maxx are the two I wish I'd have collected all of.

[adam]

So I was unpacking my stuff yesterday (I just moved) and I found Johhny the Homicidal Maniac. This is a must. A MUST. It comes in a nice hardcover edition too. He also has a two comic series - I Feel Sick - that I actually like better, but read JTHM first.

Also, there are two additional Sandman books not part of the main series, that are written by Gaiman, that people might not be aware of. Endless Nights is a beautiful book, one story for each of the endless, each with a different artist (also available in hardcover). There's also...uhhh...I can't remember the other one, but he adapted a Japanese folktale into a Morpheus story (in prose) and the guy who does a bunch of Final Fantasy artwork did paintings for it. That's killer too.

[Kennrr]

Adam - I thought Endless Nights is part of the Sandman series. The other one your talking about is Dream Hunters with illustrations by Yoshitaka Amano

JTHM I use to really really dig Johen Vasquez stuff couple years back, but looking back JTHM is just screaming with teen angst/hot topic-ness. maybe its because of those people that love his work so much. don't let me sway you from it though, its still good with some funny/gores. I recommend Squee over JTHM only because it has less of the mindless rambling.

[adam]

I really don't think JHTM has to do with teen angst issues, really...he did do Invader Zim, after all. I think he was just (unfortunately) over-championed by that group. He does make a lot of fun of some of them, too.

Also: find Spider Man's Kraven's Last Hunt collection if you're interested in mainstream stuff. That's good too.