Help Me I'm New To Comics

Robos A Go Go

Alright, in that case he might like Jeff Smith's Bone as well. It's a fantasy story with some cartoonish elements, but it's also fairly intricate and engrossing. There perhaps a couple of scary scenes, but nothing that'll traumatize a fairly mature 8 year old.

Centipede Damascus

I think Marvel Adventures would be righ up his alley. It also couldn't hurt to pick up some classic comics, like some Jack Kirby Fantastic Four. I read the heck out of those when I was eight.

Jeff Smith's Bone is also pretty great all-ages stuff.

Houn

Actually, yeah, the Marvel Adventures is looking pretty good. Anyone have any personal experience with them? I'm sorta leaning toward Avengers, but that may just be movie anticipation.

Antimatter

Marvel Adventures Spider-Man is pretty dang good

thirding Bone

Centipede Damascus

WiseManTobes

Marvel Adventures doesn't dumb it down reading-wise, not sure on the others.

And Marvel Adventures is really fun, ( half of this board is addicted to it, some as our break from dark/gritty)

Also, thought about grabbing him a Calvin and Hobbes book? I loved those when I was a kid.

edit: holy smokes look at all the marvel adventures chime in as I was typing this post!

herojoe

Calvin and Hobbes is a masterpiece.

TexiKen

Along with Marvel Adventures, Mini Marvels is also worth a look, although for some sad reason Marvel hasn't reprinted the Ultimate Collection digest. Some of the jokes might go over his head but it's very clean and is very similar to Calvin and Hobbes in how kids and adults can love it.

poshniallo

I'm not new to comics at all, but I haven't bought any for about 20 years.

Tomorrow I'm going to a shopping centre and plan to pick up a trade paperback/graphic novel or two. I want to get back into comics a little. I know the 'big events' such as Civil War vaguely, so I don't think I want to read older stuff to get up to speed - I just want to find the best of the current issues.

I love all of the classic Marvel teams/characters - X-men, Avengers, Thor, Cap, Spidey and so on.

Now obviously I could just find some Ultimate trade paperback or the most recent X-men one, but what would people recommend? Not for any specific purpose, just what have been the best Marvel trades of 2011?

Thanks.

Thomamelas

Brubakers run on Cap has been excellent. The Winter Solider trade is a good place to start his run with it. If you'll listen to a non-Marvel suggestion, then Astro City. It's amazing. Quid once told me that he hates capes. I gave him Astro City. He admitted he was in error. Busik's run on Avenger's is pretty good too. Avenger's Assemble would be a good place to start there.

Maximum

I can’t recommend any X or Avengers stuff from 2011 as they’ve been dealing with big events and honestly haven’t been all that great.

Spider-Man has been on a roll and there is some X-Stuff from a few years ago that I do like quite a bit though.

Astonishing X-Men Volume 1 (There are 4 of these. Several years old but probably the best X stuff in a long time)

Spider-Man: Big Time
Spider-Man: The Fantastic Spider-Man

Wolverine Weapon X: Volume 2 - Insane in the Brain (Volume 1 was good but the second arc was fantastic)

Captain America: Winter Soldier Collection (This is the start of Brubakers run. Quite good and if you like this there’s tons more)

Thor: The Mighty Avenger Volumes 1 & 2

TexiKen

Best Marvel trades/hardcovers of 2011:

Uncanny X-Force: Apocalypse Solution
Uncanny X-Force: Deathlok Nation
Uncanny X-Force: Dark Angel Saga vol. 1

Venom vol. 1

Doomwar was phenomenal and you don't need to know anything going into it, it's all in the story.

Marvel Universe vs. Punisher is another great read but more a What-If tale.

But outside of that, they have New X-Men Ultimate collections (three of them) that collect Grant Morrison's run that really brought me back into comics 10 years ago. If you read comics in the 90's then went away, Morrison basically moved the X-Men forward more in three years than from the whole decade of the 90's. A lot of recent X-Men stuff I can't recommend that's in trade right now, but they just restarted the whole line with Uncanny X-Men and Wolverine and the X-Men if you want to pick up the regular issues.

Like Thomamelas wrote Avengers Assemble is also a great place to start with Avengers, Busiek makes it incredibly easy to jump into the Avengers. It is definitely the best bang for the buck price to page wise of anything from Marvel in terms of recent stories.

And I know you only mentioned Marvel, but I would be remiss if I did not plug Batman: The Black Mirror, it was easily the best all around story of the past year, 10 Tim Tebows and Aaron Rodgers put together.

Maximum

Edit: Thank Tex, forgot about Uncanny X-Force. Buy those they are good.

Stupid autodrafting....

WiseManTobes

I'll 2nd basically all of the above. Also Nextwave,might have some callbacks you won't recognize but enough that you will. and Spider-Island once it gets collected.

edit: Oh, Planet Hulk! everyone should read Planet Hulk, it was awesome.

Turambar

Ultimate Spider-Man
All of it

Centipede Damascus

I'll enthusiastically second Wolverine: Weapon X. I love everything Jason Aaron has written.

If you like Thor, check out the Thor: The Mighty Avenger collections. Fantastic, fun stuff outside of regular continuity.

If you like Iron Man, check out Invincible Iron Man: The Five Nightmares, by Matt Fraction.

If you want to check out something a little different, check out SHIELD: Architects of Forever by Jonathan Hickman. It's the story of how SHIELD is actually a centuries-old secret society run by people like Leonardo da Vinci and Nicola Tesla.

Duke Phillips

Hey there, so I'm really interested in Dr. Doom as a character but haven't really read a lot featuring him. Are there any Dr. Doom focused trades out there?

To a slightly lesser degree I'm somewhat interested in the Fantastic Four. What are some of the "must-have" (and preferably not long or big crossover event) stories out there?

I'd really appreciate any suggestions, thanks everybody.

TexiKen

Doomwar is all about how Doom is so evil yet so righteous he loops back into making perfect sense.

The Mark Waid FF arc called Doom is really good at establishing Doom with his magics, it's part of the first Fantastic Four Mark Waid trade.

If you don't start with Waid's run, you could start with Fantastic Four with the first Hickman trade, but outside of the first arc dealing with Reed it starts to get into telling a big story where you might want to just save up and buy all the trades to read at once.

poshniallo

Thanks for the recommendations. The book shops turned out to be rubbish, but I could find one of the recommendations - Planet Hulk.

So I'm happily reading that.

poshniallo

Double-post.

Centipede Damascus

Planet Hulk was so fun.

Solar

Planet Hulk was excellent comics

Siegfried

If I want to get into an ongoing Deadpool, which is the best/easiest to start with? I read all of Cable/Deadpool on Marvel DCU so I'm familiar with his shtick, I just don't know which to pick up because there a bajillion of them.

Munch

Personally, I'm really fond of the cancelled Deadpool Team-Up. Each issue paired Deadpool with an interesting foil, told a complete story in 22 pages, and featured creative teams that were generally pretty good. I can only recall really disliking a couple of the stories.

For Deadpool proper, I'd recommend you simply buy Deadpool: Dark Reign, which pits Wade against his sometimes-friend-sometimes-nemesis Bullseye, and Deadpool: Monkey Business, which features a monkey in a suit, who fires guns with his feet.

The rest of his series is, outside a few good issues here and there, not worth reading.

Primarily because he's only really interesting when paired with an Elmer Fudd to his Bugs Bunny, be that Cable, Bullseye, or Hit-Monkey. And unfortunately, his series has mostly been about him running around solo, and having uninteresting adventures.

Turambar

Siegfried wrote:

If I want to get into an ongoing Deadpool, which is the best/easiest to start with? I read all of Cable/Deadpool on Marvel DCU so I'm familiar with his shtick, I just don't know which to pick up because there a bajillion of them.

Uncanny X-Force

Duke Phillips

Awesome, thanks Tex.

So if I was starting to get into FF then will Waid's run continue into Hickman's run?

Also, I guess I didn't really mean I wouldn't be interested in a long story arc cuz I like investing time into a good story, but moreso I wouldn't want to track down a bunch of interweaving story elements for something to make sense like in a big crossover.

Centipede Damascus

Actually, after Waid's run, J. Michael Straczynski wrote about twenty issues, then Dwayne McDuffie did about ten issues, followed by Mark Millar who wrote about fifteen issues before Hickman took over. I haven't read them all, but I've been told that the JMS, McDuffie, and Millar runs are not required reading and are just not that good overall.

a while ago I made a list of trade paperbacks with corresponding authors and issue numbers for knowledge purposes:

Waid Vol. 2 503-513
Waid Vol. 3 514-524
McDuffie Beginning of the End 525-526, 551-553
JMS Vol. 1 527-532
JMS The Life Fantastic 533-535, Wedding Special, Dinner with Doom, Death in the Family
JMS Road to Civil War 536-537, New Avengers: Illuminati, Amazing Spider-Man 529-531
JMS, McDuffie Fantastic Four: Civil War 538-543
McDuffie New Fantastic Four 544-550
McDuffie Beginning of the End 551-553
Millar World's Greatest 554-561
Millar Masters of Doom 562-569
Hickman vol. 1 570-574
Hickman vol. 2 575-578
Hickman vol. 3 579-582

Solar

Waid's run is good, Duffie's is also pretty good, Hickman is great

I found the JMS and Millar runs to be pretty much entirely skippable

herojoe

I've found most of the Deadpool issues very hilarious. All of the event tie-ins where he just lampoons the event are just great.

Inkyblots

Haven't read a comic in a loooong time. Got 50 bucks to blow at a comic store, looking for some suggestions of TPBs. Thinking of getting the We3 deluxe edition, I already read it but it's such a great book. In interested in anything that's a good read basically, superheroes or not. Some of the comics I have read:

V for Vendetta
Watchmen
Sandman Vol 1
We3
Invisibles Vol 1
Hush
Bone (one of my favorite reads)
Fables Vol 1/2
Walking Dead book 1/2

Looking for a new story but something that I won't have to buy a bunch of volumes to finish. Went to look today and couldn't make a decision, saw Dark Knight Returns and the Killing Joke, and Y the Last Man. Also Chuck Jones book which isn't really a comic book but I'm a huge fan of.

Also saw the Usagi Special Edition for 100 bucks which isn't even on Amazon, always seemed like something fun to read.

UltimateInferno

All Star Superman
Batman: The Black Mirror

Inkyblots

I was so tempted to get all star superman I actually can't think of a good reason that I didn't other than I saw the film. Black Mirror sounds really cool, thanks!

TexiKen

Superman Birthright is the best Superman story ever.
Batman Black Mirror is fantastic, it will be recommended a lot.
American Vampire only has two trades out so far. Same with Unwritten only having three. Both are some of the best Vertigo books at the moment. And Locke and Key has a small amount of volumes out so far, these are all easy to get into without standing down 10-12 trades like Fables or Walking Dead have.

WiseManTobes

Locke and Key
Chew
Sweet Tooth
PS238

Inkyblots

Chew sounds amazing, I think I'm going to pick up the vol 1 HC as well as black mirror. Thanks guys!

Houn

I will go to my grave recommending Preacher and Transmetropolitan to every single person I ever met.

Keios

Houn wrote:

I will go to my grave recommending Preacher and Transmetropolitan to every single person I ever met.

This. Although I would also add Nextwave and Hitman to that list.

Solar

Batman: The Black Mirror is really good

captaink

I'm in the mood for some comics. I tried the first trade of Runaways a couple months ago, it didn't really grab me. I'm looking at buying a couple of trades.

Things I have liked:
Y: The Last Man
The Sandman
Watchmen
Lost
Fringe

I'm thinking either Powers, Fables, Planetary, or something else sci-fi or maybe a (relatively) standalone superhero.

TexiKen

Fables is really good.
American Vampire is also worthwhile.
Batman: Black Mirror is a stand alone hardcover and you could then check out Snyder's current Batman work.
Animal Man and Swamp Thing are also good series that still have that Vertigo hue.