A couple of months ago at Mr. Randy's bachelor pub-crawl I struck up a conversation with Devin about our nerdly pursuits. I decided to do a L&E post on comic books as a thread for *everyone* to share recommendations - Here it (finally) is:Here are the series that I'm reading right now:
100 Bullets: I currently have all 13 volumes and am working my way through 'em. I'm between vols. #7 & 8 at the moment. If you're looking for a single volume to start with, I LOVED volume 5 'The Counterfifth Detective' - It's a great stand-alone volume with an excellent plot, plus you can read it out of order without missing out on too much background.
Y: The Last Man: I'm 2 volumes into this one, and am seriously jonesing to read more. So much so that I may be tempted to break my rule and buy the next few volumes of the trades at full-price. That's saying something.
The Walking Dead: Zombies, FTW! I've had these for awhile, and decided to get to reading a few volumes before the AMC television series came out. It took a few books to get into, but now I'm hooked. I really appreciate the way this series cycles through "main" characters. It is a Zombie apocalypse, after all.
The Boys: Gundy turned me onto this one and I'm loving it. Garth Ennis always does good work, but this one is a shitload fun to read.
Transmetropolitan: Another Gundy recommendation. Imagine Hunter S. Thompson living in a Neil Stephensonesque dystopian metropolis. Good stuff.
Here are a few stand-alone Graphic Novels/Collections I'd recommend:
Marvel 1602: I love Neil Gaiman so much that I'll even buy his Marvel title (the only other Marvel trade that I own is that mediocre Kevin Smith Daredevil book). I really, really, really liked this one. I never followed any of the superhero comics, but managed to piece together who was who from all of the terrible Marvel films I've watched on cable while hung-over. The fact that I loved a book filled with characters I'm ambivalent to (at best) speaks volume about how good this is.
Black Hole: Since Gundy is always giving me advice on comics, I loaned him this one because I really loved it. He hated it. To each his own - I still say it's brilliant.
Superman: Red Son: Written by Mark Millar and penciled by Dave Johnson. Sign me up. It's about Superman in the USSR? With a soviet Wonder Woman... and Batman is a German anarchist?!?!
*Nerd Spazz*
EC Archives: I'm in love with these collections of the old 1940's-1950's EC comics. The collections are exceptionally well done and a lot of fun to read. Even if you don't recognize "EC Comics" you know the titles; Tales From the Crypt, Weird Science, Two-Fisted Tales, etc. My favorite of the bunch are the Shock-SuspenStories collections. I just wish that I had grabbed more of these before Gemstone went bankrupt and the price of these collections shot through the roof.
Here's what I have on my wish-list right now:
Batman: Year 100
Neil Gaiman's Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader
DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore
Johnny Cash: I See a Darkness
Any other recommendations?
3 comments:
Sorry but Black Hole just bored me to tears. If it weren't for the amazing art, I would have never finished it. Burns is an awesome illustrator.
I gave Walking Dead a try and it didn't pull me in. It was tough to shrug off how closely it follows 28 Days Later early on. I mean if you are going to do a zombie story, you already have a lot of tight-niched material from which you need to distance yourself. Being the zombie soap opera is one way to do it, I guess.
That said, someone one of my podcasts pointed out that if our soap operas are all about zombies and vampires, we live in a wonderful world indeed.
Y is the first series I read straight through in an all-digital format. I can't wait for an Android tablet to hit the market so I can catch up on a ton of reading.
I loved Y. It's one of my favorites so far. Same for 1602, but I am a Marvel guy. That being said, Kingdom Come was freakin' fantastic - like opera in a graphic novel. Just got done reading Wolverine: Old Man Logan, which I liked, but didn't love. You check out Ex Machina, yet? That's pretty good, too.
Jason Woodburn recommended Ex Machina too - I'm planning on starting on that one once I finish the Y series.
Kingdom Come has been added to my wishlist.
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