I want to buy a new graphic novel or trade today, but I'd like some recommendations.
I'm avoiding tights, zombies, and I've read most of the "classics." I'd like to know what's good and new. I became a big fan of the Unwritten and Chew, so is there anything new out that might interest me along those lines?
Note: Nothing against tights or zombies, I'm just not in the mood for any of that.
The first thing that comes to mind is Transmetropolitan, if you haven't read that. It's not new, and could be considered a classic. If you haven't checked it out, I'd reccomend it.
(Or Preacher or The Sandman - both kind of classics, but I don't know what you've read)
you still got a lot of lee-way. Depends what you're looking for.
DMZ is pretty good - alternate-near-future where New York is a battleground
The Exterminators - sometimes strange, often amusing, definitely gross
the Courtyard - Alan Moore does H.P. Lovecraft
that should get you started - or piss you off, depending on your tastes.
there's two other threads on graphic novels/comics which are chock full of good recommendations (and lots of zombies in tights)
Transmetropolitan and DMZ might be considered a classics or must reads at this point...but I haven't read them. Now might be a good time to start. The Exterminators and the Courtyard both sound interesting.
I don't usually get pissed at comics. I either like them or I don't.
I'll look up those other threads. Thank you.
Superior #6 just came out this week (finally) It's a fun Mark Millar title (Kick Ass, Wanted, etc.). Speaking of which, Wanted is a fun book that makes me smash my face into a wall every time I think about how that awful movie came from such fertile soil.
I'm not a super big Superman fan, but Superman Year One and Superman Last Son are both some fun modern looks at the Man of Steel.
Ben Templesmith's Wormwood is quirky and visually fresh, as well.
100 Bullets
Criminal
Sleeper
Incognito
Sam & Twitch
none of those have tights or zombies!
I need to pick up a copy of Monocyte, which just came out this week on IDW from a fantastic artist Menton3. Of course I am a little biased because I bought a few pieces of original art from him this summer and I heard a rumor that one of them will actually be in the book. You can check out a 6 page preview here I've heard good things so far.
Kirk! I was leaving it open for you to recommend The Maxx!
That artwork is really cool. I love artwork like that and could easily see myself owning a book of his stuff. But, I don't like when comics have that kind of artwork. It distracts me too much.
I work in a comic shop. I can't count how many times I've been asked this question. I'm actually at work right now, so I'll get off my ass and walk our shelves to suggest the following:
Welcome to Hoxford by Ben Templesmith. Templesmith's art is at times bizarre and abstract but always very lively and frightening, lending itself well to the horror comics he usually illustrates and writes. Welcome to Hoxford is about a pack of werewolves who run an insane asylum and it's a fantastic read.
Meachman also recommended Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse by Templesmith, which is also a great read.
Fables by Bill Willingham. What if all the fairy tale and folkloric characters were driven from their homeland and forced to inhabit ours? Forming a little community in, let's say, New York City. That's what Fables is, and most of the characters have been re-imagined and modernized. There's the archetypal Jack, who's basically every Jack from fairy tales. Jack Horner, Jack the Giant Killer, Jack Frost etc etc. Snow White and Prince Charming are divorced because Charming can't keep it in his pants. The list goes on.
Locke and Key by Joe Hill. A family who's father was murdered and mother was raped relocate to their family estate of Keyhouse in the town of Lovecraft, Massachusetts. Excellently told and illustrated. Apparently it will also be a TV series soon.
House of Mystery, also by Bill Willingham and Matthew Sturges, is a pretty bizarre series. It's about a house that doesn't really exist in our world, and the people who become trapped there. There's a bar and they need to pay for each drink with a story, making it a kind of anthology. Also Cain of Bible fame is one of the main characters.
Finally, I know you said no tights, but... well let me first say I hate Superman. He's an overrated superhero. But if there's one Superman trade you should read, it's Red Son. It poses the question: What if Superman landed and grew up in Communist Russia instead of the U.S.?
That's all I got for now. Happy hunting!
What kind of comics are you interested in? I could give you a lot of recommendations, but there are a lot more comics out there than those dealing with zombies and superheroes (although there are a lot of good superhero comics). Actually, I can't think of any zombie comics besides The Walking Dead and Marvel Zombies (which combines zombies and super heroes and the original miniseries was written by the author of The Walking Dead, but he didn't write its sequels) . Oh, and I guess Crossed is sort of like a zombie comic.
It's difficult to make recommendations when there's such a wide range unless I just mention random non-super hero stuff that I like.
Kirk! I was leaving it open for you to recommend The Maxx!
HAHA, thanks, man. Though I do highly suggest everyone read The Maxx, I'm kind of at the point where I think anyone who might have read it probably already has. It's kind of like Sandman in it's importance of comics to me.
But yes, if you haven't read The Maxx, do so asap. You can read the entire run in just a few days and it have some very powerful moments. Sam Kieth is a master.
I agree with The Maxx being one of the best comics ever. It's smart, psychological, funny, and profane. It's amazing shit with great artwork. Unfortunatly, I think it's going out of print. I keep waiting for a new, $50 hardbound deluxe edition of the whole thing.
The cartoon is really good, too. Oh, which leads to The Tick, which is great (but superhero).
Also, for nonsuperhero - Cerebus. The first 4 phonebooks are great (called phonebooks because it's black and white on cheap paper).
Here is a suggestion that isn't in here. We3 - a book that on the surface seems really goofy and shallow but is actually pretty emotional and deep. Quick Summary
The story follows the journey of We3, a squad of three prototype "animal weapons," as they flee captivity. The group consists of a dog, "Bandit" a.k.a. "1"; a cat, "Tinker" a.k.a. "2"; and a rabbit, "Pirate" a.k.a. "3", who were all kidnapped from a nearby city and encased in robotic armor. They were also given a limited ability to speak through skull implants. Their body armor fields numerous weapons, including mine laying devices, machine guns and razor claws.
We3 is pretty legit. I read it a few weeks back when the store was slow.
@BryanHowdie - I just read the complete Cerebus phone book series (17 or something) - 300 monthly comics. Dave Sim claims it is the longest continuous narrative in comics, and maybe in any medium (um, not so sure about that Dave). the first four are pretty good - he really builds momentum, and the rest are really hit and miss. I'm still not sure what to make of some of it, particularly some of his riffs on feminism and the whole rewriting genesis & exodus (that's the only part I didn't read entirely...)
@David Welsh - check out Will Eisner's Contract with God trilogy - that man was a master of visual storytelling. He takes simple themes and draws out some beautiful stories. Families trying to make a go of it through tough times. It's masterful work.
Fables is a great series I think. I'm mainly a Batman sorta bloke when it comes to comic books but was obsessed with The Sandman series. Still want to be the Absolute editions, even though they're insanely expensive but soooooo worth it :)
I second (third?) The Maxx. Great story, art, everything.
Great TV adaptation, too.
I can surely recommend You my most beloved comic of all time : The Invisibles by Grant Morrison.
Pure masterpiece - a mix of conspiracy theories, chaos magic, spy-stories, HPLovecraft mythology, pulp s-f and MANY more.
Also Preacher, Transmetropolitan, Wanted...
Oh man, you guys totally came through!
We3 looks really cool. Cliff Blezinski (he made the Gears of War games) tweeted about it the other day and said it made him weepy. I though "Isn't that the one with the animal robots?"
Locke and Key is jumping to the top of my list. I very nearly grabbed the hardcover this weekend.
House of Mystery sounds right up my alley too.
I didn't like the first Fables trade, but everyone tells me to keep with it.
What I actually picked up this weekend was Dear Creature by Jonathan Case. It was great. It's about a "Creature from the Black Lagoon" style monster that feeds on horny teenagers. But he hates doing it and finds more nourishment from these cola bottles that wash up on his shore that are stuffed with Shakespeare. He speaks in iambic pentameter, and he decides to go on a quest to find the person sending them, who he is convinced is his true love. It's sick and beautiful at the same time.
Thanks everyone.
I didn't like the first Fables trade either and I didn't keep with it. Do you know what's great (but kind of super hero-y)? The collections of Will Eisner's The Spirit. He comes up with techniques in those comics that are probably like 50 years ahead of their time. They're more about the narrative than the content (which isn't always so great).
Y the last man!
Y the Last Man is definitely a good choice, as is Ex Machina, both written by Brian K. Vaughn. Ex Machina might be seen as superhero-ish by some, though.
Incognito was recommended, and I think that might be superhero as well, even though it is written from a villain's p.o.v. It is a pretty good read, so keep that in mind for when you're in the appropriate mood.
I'm a big Grant Morrison fan, so I'll second the recommendations for both We3 and The Invisibles, and I'll also throw in The Filth while I'm at it.
From Hell
The Sandman
DMZ is solid, as is another book by Brian Wood, Local.
Preacher
Stray Bullets
I could name a bunch more depending upon what you're into.
@Phillip : cheers for the Morrison's works. Did You read Flex Mentallo? That's some twisted, psychodelic sh*t :P
I'm really into Grant Morrison's comics as well and his run on Doom Patrol may be my favorite thing by him (which is where Flex Mentallo first appears). Doom Patrol is pretty superhero-y while the Flex Mentallo miniseries is EXTREMELY superhero-y.
I'm also really into Ed Brubaker's comics. Like Pete mentioned: Point Blank, Sleeper (which is sort of a sequel to Point Blank), and Incognito. They all combine the superhero/villain genre with crime comics. And then there's the various short volumes of Criminal that he's written (which is entirely "crime")
I'm really into pretty much anything that Brian Michael Bendis (which is mostly super hero stuff these days but he used to do crime comics: I suppose a lot of his current comics also combine both genres). I liked Sam & Twitch while he was writing it. Not sure whether or not anyone else ever wrote the title.. Also not sure if it lacked superheroes considering the characters originally appeared in Todd McFarlane's Spawn comic (the two characters are police detectives).
Our comic taste are so similar, yet I can't stand Grant Morrison. I think that's the one time I felt like we were going to get in an arguement. lol
If you recommend something I'll give him another shot.
I read his entire Batman run. I've also tried to read The Invisibles and The Filth. I admittedly didn't give either of those more than an issue or two of a chance.
Morrison seemed to have stopped writing serial fiction before the Seven Soldiers "metaseries" and now it seems like he writes graphic novels that are broken up into monthly issues, which is a terrible format to read them in. I disliked his issues of Batman when I read them as they were coming out each month, but I loved them when I read them altogether in a row (although his Batman "saga' isn't exactly over yet: a special giant-sized issue of Batman is supposed to come out in December to wrap up the Batman Incorporated series and sometime next year, DC will allegedly be publishing the final part of the "saga": 12 issues of Batman: Leviathan). Also, I found the final issue of The Return of Bruce Wayne that came out a while back nearly incomprehensible. The last issue of Final Crisis shared a similar problem.
You probably really need to give The Invisibles more of a chance if you want to get into it (and you need to start with the first issue). I had mixed feeling about The Filth. I liked some issues and disliked others. It was just a pretty ugly series.
I'd recommend his run of Doom Patrol if the idea of a comic about a surreal team of superheroes appeals to you. I would also recommend Seaguy, which is two volumes long and very short. Maybe 4 issues per volume. A third and final volume may come out one day.
I hate Morrison's X-Men, and I hate his Batman. But his Superman stories are the best I've read of the character. He just likes to purposely fuck with characters, which I think works better when it's his own work.
Y the Last Man is one of my favorite comics ever. It's stuff like that that I want to see more often in comics. It's a great concept, but so hard to do in any other medium.
I have a really great collection of The Spirit. I love those stories. He really does do amzing, amazing work with it.
I think I've either read all of those Spirit collections or almost all of them. The library near where I was living at one time seemed to have them all in stock.
I really liked Morrison's X-Men and All-Star Superman, but I don't think much of his new Action Comics title so far. I guess he also wrote the character very well in his run of JLA.
I've read all the issues of Y the Last Man. Decent comic but I was never that impressed with it. Sort of like how I feel about Vertigo's Sweet Tooth at the moment. Maybe it was a little too conventional for me to be really enthusiastic about it.
I loved Y the Last Man.
@Bradley: I read Morrison's Batman through the collected books, not monthly.
I will give The Invisibles another go. Also I'll check out those other two you recommended.
@Bradley Sands: wrt Sweet Tooth - there's something about Jeff Lemire's stories that really get across this feeling of loneliness and innocence in the face of atrocity. I'm not sure what to think of this series either, but we'll see.
For Japanese comics, I recommend Akira and Vagabond. Vagabond is an ongoing series based on the historical adventures of Musashi, the swordsmen of swordsmen. It's paced really well, and the story is quite remarkable - definitely geared towards an adult audience - which is rare for most of the manga translated into English. So much of it is for adolescents.
@Bradley Sands
Morrison seemed to have stopped writing serial fiction before the Seven Soldiers "metaseries" and now it seems like he writes graphic novels that are broken up into monthly issues, which is a terrible format to read them in. I disliked his issues of Batman when I read them as they were coming out each month, but I loved them when I read them altogether in a row
This is primarily the reason I rarely buy monthlies anymore. The entire industry, not just Morrison, has moved to a sales cycle of
- come up with a story-arc designed to fit in a TPB
- sell monthlies to the fan-boys
- sell the TPB to everyone else (often times the fan-boys need these too)
I don't have an issue with that, but I started enjoying the books I read a lot more once I stopped buying monthlies. I really don't give a shit about collect-ability so it works well for me. Now if only these publishers could get their digital pricing figured out, I would be happy.
I just ordered Nextwave because Chris Sims (comicsalliance.com) was going off on a few characters being great and it's written by Warren Ellis. It's superhero, but it looks pretty awesome.
Also, Hellboy. I don't know how I could not mention Hellboy. The Library editions collections are AMAZING. The art is awesome and the stories are usually taken from old folktales and such. It gets better the further you go. And it's probably my favorite comic-book movie (although that's a really hard one to guage).
@Bradley: I read Morrison's Batman through the collected books, not monthly.
Did you read all the collected books together or as they were being published? Although I'm assuming reading the trades as they're being published is preferable to reading the individual issues on a monthly basis.
The most appealing thing about Sweet Tooth to me is the art, which I think is really great.
Nextwave is a lot of fun, but definitely doesn't have much substance to it (as I believe Warren Ellis would be the first to admit considering the comic's wikipedia page quotes an interview with him where he says, "I took The Authority and I stripped out all the plots, logic, character and sanity," which made it sound appealing to me and was the reason why I read it).
TPBs are preferable to buying the monthly issues because they lack ads since Marvel and DC started filling their comics with an excessive amount of ads a while back (I remember one issue of Morrison's X-Men that accidently ruined a two issue spread by putting an ad on the right page, so I had to fold the page with the ad over to actually read the spread as it was intended to be read). And I'm not entirely sure, but I'm assuming TPBs also cost a lot less than the combined cost of the issues that they collect. It's kind of weird how quickly the TPBs are published after the end of an arc. Back when I started buying comics on a weekly basis in the early nineties, they had few TPBs that collected issues and when they did, I'm pretty sure they collected issues that were published years before.
I pretty much read them all back to back up to Battle for the Cowl, which I really wanted to love. I shouldn't say I hated his run, I just found it overly confusing. Some of the books were pretty good. But on the whole I thought there were too many coincidences and loose ends.
So you only read his issues of the Batman title rather than his run on Batman and Robin and the miniseries, The Return of Bruce Wayne (which came after)?
The issues sometimes confused me, but I would do research on the internet to make sense out of them. He often referenced stuff that happened in Batman comics of the distant past and brought back obscure characters to make him or her a major part of the story, so I found Wikipedia to be very useful. I probably would have enjoyed the issues a lot less if I ignored the things that were unfamiliar to me.
And I assume you "really wanted to love" Morrison's run on Batman rather than the "Battle for the Cowl" storyline (and you made a grammatical error in that sentence), right? I didn't bother to read Battle for the Cowl since Morrison didn't write it and I wasn't interested in any writers of the writers who did.
The Invisibles makes like a zillion references to different things, but I don't think it's necessary to research the references to make sense out of it (although regardless of that, you may find the story confusing). But if you do research any of the references, it may result in gaining an interest into something new.
I don't error! When I said Battle for the Cowl, I meant I really wanted to love that too. But for some reason I was thinking that Morrison wrote Battle for the Cowl (ok fine I do error).
And yes, I haven't read any of his Batman and Robin or The Return of yet.
I liked his run on Batman and Robin more than his run on the Batman title, although if you didn't like his issues on Batman, you probably wouldn't like his later Batman stuff either. I guess he took some time off from writing the Batman comics while the "Battle for the Cowl" storyline was going on. Depending on when you read it, you may have found out the identity of the "new" Batman before I did (although the title of the miniseries reveals Bruce's present status).
Maybe if I like The Invisibles I'll have to give his Batman run another shot. I respect your taste and every time I mention somewhere that I didn't like it, you are always wanting to find out exactly why.
Morrison is a big "idea guy" and he often writes "science fiction-y" type of stuff. His writing is weird and unconventional. Significant events often occur "between the panels" (similar to Llewelyn's death in the No Country for Old Men movie) and you have to fill in the blanks yourself. He is also often difficult to follow and his writing can get confusing (even more so if you're reading his issues on a monthly basis rather than all together considering you're likely to forget what seemed to be an insignifcant detail from an earlier issue that becomes very important in a later issue).
While as far as the comic writers who we both seem to really be into like Bendis and Brubaker, they're pretty conventional content-wise, but not so much with Brubaker since he usually combines superhero comics with crime fiction and that's pretty unconventional in itself. And while Bendis' content is also conventional, his writing is far from it. I'm not sure if anyone writes like him and he does some pretty radical stuff (although it's not like he's a "Will Eisner" or anything and he's not doing incredible things with narrative decades before its time--plus he's not a writer/artist like Eisner even though he used to draw his own comics way back when and was good at it).
Bendis' Ultimate Spider-Man series was really cool because it combined the superhero genre with the "slice of life" type of comics that alternative comic book creators often publish. Although he/they killed off Peter Parker and the first three issue the new version of the series (with a new character taking up the mantle) has been kind of blah. But it's only three issues. I'm not going to judge it based on such a small amount, particularly considering the previous version of the comic was so good.
@Bradley Sands - Morrison is definitely an ideas guy - Bendis' greatest strength is his dialogue - I've read his stuff sporadically, but the dialogue, he just nails all those awkward half-sentences and interruptions and so on.
Some would probably say that Bendis' dialogue is too wordy.
Deleted due to a weird double-post thing.
@Fnz - That's one I haven't gotten around to yet! The Grant Morrison documentary whetted my appetite for it, though. I remember it took years for DC to finally get the trade released, and it's near-impossible to track down the singles.
I really enjoyed the Grant Morrison documentary. I found it very inspiring and it gave me an overwhelming urge to write. The director also wrote a really great book about The Invisibles.
There's that documentary about Alan Moore as well. It's a decent documentary, but mostly just has Alan Moore talking about random things that interest him rather than comics and storytelling.
As far as The Invisibles, I got into it while the issues from the third volume were being released once a month. I bought the first TPB and really liked it, so I also bought all the issues of the first volume off ebay (including the issues from the first TPB since no one was selling the first volume minus those issues), then I bought the first two TPBs for the second volume along with the individual issues that they collected in the Kissing Mister Quimper TPB. When I was caught up, I bought the third volume's issues on the day that they were released each month. I remember it being my favorite day out of the month.
I vaguely remember the TBPs for the second volume being released before the TBPs of the first volume (with the exception of the first book) and it might have also taken them a long time to release the third TBP in the volume considering I bought the individual issues. That would explain why I would have bought the issues off ebay rather than get the TBPs. It's a bit odd. I guess they did it that way because the second volume had the potential to appeal to a wider audience than the first. But it must have been as confusing as hell to read the second volume without reading all the issues of the first one. Seems like sort of a clusterfuck (if my memory is correct) and it probably drove away a lot of would-be fans until DC eventually made all the TPBs available in their proper order.
Eric Drooker (I think that's his name) wrote two comics without words Flood and Blood Dance - I'm a big fan of visual storytelling, and he does an exceptional job in both of these.
I like Jim Woodring's Frank comics. I remember there was one month like slightly less than a decade ago where every comic that Marvel published had no text. That was kind of weird. Although I remember liking Grant Morrison's "silent" issue of New X-Men. Frank Quitely did the art and I'm fond of his stuff. Peter David's issue of Captain Marvel was also good. I think those were the only two issues that I read that month (since the other writers who worked for Marvel at the time didn't interest me). Coincidentally enough, I just googled the New X-Men issue to confirm that Quitely was the artist and stumbled across a review on a site that said those were the only two good issues from that month.
@Bradley - The same folks who made the Morrison doc also have a Warren Ellis doc coming soon. It should be entertaining. And I feel much the same way about the Moore film.
I don't always like Ellis' comics, but I loved Transmetropolitan, Planetary, and his runs on StormWatch and The Authority.
Anything from Ed Brubaker. well, except Daredevil and Captain America because those would be tights books.
100 Bullets by Brian Azzarello
I've heard Scalped by Jason Aaron is good but, I've never read them myself.
and Y, The Last Man.
I have the first few Scalped books, it was pretty killer. One I've been meaning to catch up on but never get around to.
I liked Brubaker's Daredevil (but not as much as when Bendis was writing it because it was fantastic, along with Alex Maleev's art). Same thing with Brubaker's Captain America comics. Although I still prefer his more crime-oriented comics. His Criminal comics are probably my favorite comics that he's written.
