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Comic Book or Graphic Novel Suggestions
burbo
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Hey guys,
So, I just read the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay (which I would highly reccomend to anyone who like to read novels) and it got me interested in getting back into comics. So, I'm looking for some suggestions on ones to check out. What I think I would like is something more adult, that might have a bit to chew on, thematically. Maybe more important is for it to have really nice art. For example, I really like the Watchmen for the story and themes, and I just got through with Promethea and thought the art in it was fantastic and beautiful. Any other recs? Thanks in advance.
So, I just read the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay (which I would highly reccomend to anyone who like to read novels) and it got me interested in getting back into comics. So, I'm looking for some suggestions on ones to check out. What I think I would like is something more adult, that might have a bit to chew on, thematically. Maybe more important is for it to have really nice art. For example, I really like the Watchmen for the story and themes, and I just got through with Promethea and thought the art in it was fantastic and beautiful. Any other recs? Thanks in advance.
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Astro City: A fantastic super hero series that looks more at the lives and effects heroes have on the world than any particular exploits. Many of the stories don't even directly involve the heroes but instead regular people getting by in a world that has them.
Fables: I like this one a lot for the art. The setting and concept make for a great yarn though the first book is kind of weak.
Marvels: I love the art in this one. It's actually similar to Astro City in that almost the entire book is actually about a photographer observing the emergence and effects of Marvel super heroes on New York over the course of his life. It also loosely follows Marvel's comic history.
V For Vendetta: Not a huge favorite of mine but I always got a similar vibe to Watchmen from it and plenty of other people have nothing but high praise for it. About a vigilante getting revenge on the people and government that exploited him.
Marvel
New X-Men – in 2001, Marvel hired Grant Morrison (you’ll see his name crop up a lot on this list) to revitalize the flagging X-Men franchise. He took his mission statement seriously and made forty of the best X-Men issues ever, breathing new life into the comic with wild new characters and ideas. They’re compelling action comics at its finest, completely accessible to anyone with even a basic familiarity with the X-Men concept and are packed with details that reward attentive readers on a second and third reading. Available in trade or giant hardcover omnibus.
The Ultimates, vol 1 – the Ultimate Universe was conceived as an effort to revitalize Marvel’s flagship characters without the fifty years of accumulated cruft. The experiment ultimately didn’t work out, as the new versions quickly grew their own barnacles – but that doesn’t lessen the impact and excitement of this introductory volume. Glib comics populist Mark Millar populates the book with widescreen, cinematic versions of the classic heroes, while Bryan Hitch’s detailed art adds a sense of colossal scale and state-of-the-art action.
Marvels – The classic origin stories of Marvel’s earliest days, reinterpreted by writer Kurt Busiek and acclaimed painter Alex Ross as events in the life of photojournalist Phil Sheldon, who was on the scene for everything from the debut of the original Human Torch in 1939 to the attack of Galactus in 1965. Sweet, nostalgic and perceptive, this is a wonderful tribute to decades of storytelling.
DC
JLA – Marvel picked Morrison for the New X-Men job because he’d done so well here, with DC’s JLA: Justice League of America, where he took a dead comic and made it the company’s top seller for the mid-1990s. It’s forty-two issues of DC’s biggest heroes fighting mind-bending cosmic threats on a scale never before seen in superhero books. Available in trade.
All-Star Superman – Last year DC hired Morrison, along with uber-artist Frank Quitely, to tell twelve Superman stories unshackled by rules or continuity. The result was the single best Superman story ever, moving and powerful, backed by incredible art. Available in trade or in a huge hardcover omnibus.
Justice League International – before Morrison revived the “classic” Justice League lineup in 1994, the best run on the title had been this hilariously irreverent take on superhero tropes. This Justice League is a collection of misfits, losers, and horndogs who have to somehow learn to work together to save the world while at the same time dodging manipulative bureaucrats, angry exes, and lawsuits. Currently being collected in a series of hardcover omnibuses.
Darwyn Cooke’s New Frontier – in 2004, animator-turned-artist Darwyn Cooke told this story of what might have happened if DC’s greatest heroes had gotten their start during the heyday of 1950s atomic paranoia and McCarthyism. Gorgeous art with a space-age, lounge lizard flair complements a really cool, politcally savvy story. Available in trade or giant hardcover omnibus.
Superman: Birthright – More 2004 vintage: Mark Waid and artist Leinil Francis Yu retell Superman’s origin and early days. It was written to tie the comics version into “Smallville”, but Birthright is about eight thousand times better than the show. Waid’s really good at earnest, heartfelt writing and it’s used to good effect here. Available in trade.
Seven Soldiers – Grant Morrison’s most recent megaproject: seven super-obscure DC heroes are reinvented for the 21st century and have to work together as a team to fight off an invasion – without ever meeting each other. Each character has their own separate story (with their own, usually awesome, artist) but read together they combine to form a super-complicated single narrative. Available in four trades.
Jack Kirby’s Fourth World Omnibus – The long-awaited rerelease of Jack Kirby’s massively ambitious comics opera about the “New Gods”, beings of good and evil fighting a cosmic battle on Earth, with characters like Superman and Jimmy Olsen getting caught in the crossfire. Nearly forty years later this still blows most modern comics out of the water in terms of sheer craziness and energy. Available in four hardcover omnibuses.
Suicide Squad – the team that created Justice League International also, around the same time, brought us this deadly-serious and gritty take on espionage and black ops. In the DC Universe, convicted supervillains can earn a chance at freedom by joining the Suicide Squad on deadly missions for the US government across the globe; if they survive, they can get early parole. One week the Riddler and Captain Cold might be fighting terrorists in North Africa, the next week Count Vertigo and Poison Ivy might be infiltrating a domestic hate group. Well written, with compelling characterizations and a lot of real-world authenticity, it’s an interesting look at how superheroics might collide with realpolitik. Available in trades.
DC-Vertigo
Sandman Mystery Theatre – DC’s original Sandman, Wesley Dodds, a playboy who solves crimes that he predicts in dreams, reinvented as a 1930s pulp crusader. The stories were scrupulously researched and historically accurate, but had the adventure and flair of the classic pulps. Underrated at the time it came out, it’s now recognized as a classic. The first couple trades are out; more will become available later.
Doom Patrol – Grant Morrison’s first really big splash at DC was with this title, reinventing a little-known superhero comic into a bizarre odyssey into mysticism and Dada art. Some of the weirdest shit you’ll ever read is right here, but it’s all backed up with a genuinely sweet and moving love story and relatable characters. Available in trades.
Flex Mentallo – But my personal favorite of Morrison’s books – possibly my favorite comic ever, and many other people’s as well – is this four issue opus. Flex Mentallo is a character from Doom Patrol, but you don’t need to know anything about him to appreciate this story. A young pop musician has overdosed and called the suicide hotline to reminisce about his boyhood as he lays dying in an alleyway; meanwhile, muscular superhero Flex Mentallo is trying to solve a mysterious threat to the whole world. The two stories converge in an incredibly powerful, moving way. Unfortunately a lawsuit from the Charles Atlas company (to whom Flex bears a resemblance) has made this series difficult to obtain legally, but rumor has it that it might be collected in the last Doom Patrol trade.
Wildstorm/ABC
Stormwatch – in the late 90s writer Warren Ellis took a shitty action comic about superheroes working for the UN and turned it into an epic political thriller about black ops, sabotage, and assassination. Available in trade.
The Authority – after Stormwatch dies at the hands of Aliens (as in, Aliens from the movie, yes, really) Ellis launched this spinoff. The surviving members of Stormwatch, and some new characters, do battle with huge “widescreen” threats using increasingly fascist methods, eventually turning their eyes towards America itself. Available in trade or big hardcover omnibus.
Planetary – another Ellis comic in the Stormwatch universe, about the Planetary Society, a team of super-archaeologists who travel the earth in search of the strange, mysterious, and extraordinary: ghost cops in Hong Kong, lost cities, forgotten heroes and even the corpse of Godzilla. Available in trade or hardcover omnibus.
Top 10 – After his run on the classic Superman homage Supreme for Image, Wildstorm gave Alan Moore his own division of the company to run wild with, and he created some of the best work of his career. Top 10 is one of these, about cops in a city where everyone – the police, the criminals, the citizens, the garbagemen – has superpowers. With insanely detailed art by Gene Ha. Available in trade.
Promethea – a modern girl gets the power of Promethea, a heroine from the realm of the imagination, and goes on a psychedelic tour of the history of art, religion, and consciousness itself. If you liked Sandman you should love this. Available in trade.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen – forget the shitty movie, this is the real deal. Captain Ahab, Allan Quartermain, the Invisible Man, Mina Harker (from Dracula), and Dr Jekyll versus the great villains of literature. Fuck yes. Available in trade.
Image
Supreme – comics legend Alan Moore’s take on the Superman mythos. A loving homage to 50s comics as well as a powerful story in its own right. Available in trade.
G0dland – Writer Joe Casey and artist Tom Scioli take Jack Kirby’s style of storytelling into the present day: cosmic gods are here doing battle on earth – for good, for evil, or in one case, for really sweet drugs. It’s simultaneously a homage to and parody of stuff like The Fantastic Four and Johnny Quest, and is a deliriously good time. Ongoing and regularly collected into trades and hardcover omnibuses.
NON SUPERHERO
DC-Vertigo
Shade the Changing Man – One of the original early-90s Vertigo titles, along with Sandman – this was about Rac Shade, a secret agent from the planet Meta, sent here to stop a disease made of sentient madness from taking over the world. Along the way he befriends and falls in love with a troubled, vulnerable girl and her brash, lesbian New York girlfriend. The book was a wildly experimental look at culture, politics, and psychology that didn’t always make a lot of sense but was always fascinating. The first couple trades are out; more are due later.
The Invisibles – This is Morrison’s life work, the thing that he’ll most likely be remembered for. A team of occult revolutionaries, “the Invisibles”, use magic and James Bond mojo to battle a global conspiracy, with human free will as the prize. Morrison tosses everything into this book: science fiction, superheroes, movies, great literature, pop culture, music, art, history, politics, cutting-edge science – all with the goal of explaining life, the universe, and everything. A tour de force in every sense of the word, very possibly one of the most important comics ever made. Available in trade.
Preacher – A young, disillusioned Texas pastor becomes the unwitting host of a heavenly being, and goes on a road trip with his girlfriend and an Irish vampire named Cassidy to escape the religious conspiracy that wants his power for themselves. Which sounds really gothy and serious, but it’s the total opposite, with wild comedy, ridiculous ultraviolence, anal-raping cannibals, and a kid named “Arseface” because he has a face like an arse. Available in trades.
Transmetropolitan – Warren Ellis’ magnum opus is this science-fiction story about Spider Jerusalem, an irascible, drug-abusing, Hunter S. Thompson-like journalist battling hypocrisy and political corruption in The City, the sprawling megalopolis that covers most of 22nd-century America. Available in trades.
100 Bullets – a mysterious black-suited man finds people who’ve been wronged somehow and offers them a briefcase containing two pistols, one hundred untraceable bullets, and photographs and documents proving who was responsible for what happened to them. What happens next is up to them. Available in trades.
Y: The Last Man – Yorick, a twentysomething slacker dude in New York, is the last survivor of a disease that’s killed every last male human on earth. As he embarks on a postapocalyptic odyssey across America to find his girlfriend, various forces are hunting him to get the secret of his survival. Available in trades.
Misc
From Hell – the movie was bullshit, but the book is solid gold. Alan Moore and artist Eddie Campbell present their uber-researched, super-detailed take on the Jack the Ripper crimes, and it’s pretty much a total tour de force and an essential piece of comics even for people who don’t usually read them. Available in trade.
Alec – This is Eddie Campbell’s solo book, an autobiographical story spanning three decades and giving insight into his family life, his artistic career, and the ups and downs of the British and worldwide comic business from the 80s to today. Available in trades.
Strangehaven – A dude on a road trip through rural England wrecks his car and finds himself stranded in the village of Strangehaven, a mysterious town with very odd residents, and finds it impossible to leave. It’s like the Twin Peaks or Prisoner of comics. Ongoing, available in trade.
Optic Nerve – writer/artist Adrian Tomine’s collection of short stories about teens and twentysomethings, ranging from a couple of pages long to a couple of issues, in the style of Raymond Carver: quiet, observational, and intensely realistic. His draughtsmanship is impeccable and his writing has a gift for understatement. The stories depict the very smallest of incidents – a boy and girl meeting at a concert, or a kid stealing from the copy shop where he works – but manage to linger in your mind for weeks afterwards. Available in trades.
Also Sandman is sadly missing from Jacobkosh's list of Vertigo titles and is easily the best they ever published.
And despite Dave Sim's worldview being a bit "unusual" sometimes, there is just nothing, absolutely nothing, that comes even close to Cerebus, if you want a gigantic, epic graphic novel that is in parts extremely funny, sad, experiments with the form and just totally unique. I also think that the art is beautiful, Dave Sim is just incredible at facial expressions.
From Wikipedia:
I was very disappointed with Fables, thought the story was rather weak and didn't offer much besides the novelty factor of fairytale creatures in the modern world, so I really don't get all the love for this series.
The same applies to Preacher, which I adored and collected as a monthly series when it came out and I was severely disappointed by the way Ennis wrapped things up. In retrospect, now that I'm a bit older I think Preacher is your typical 90s shock effect collection, heavily influenced by movies of the time and Ennis is a bit of a hack who always writes the same mixture of hip vulgarity and seemingly funny ultraviolence. At the end of Preacher I found basically every character very unlikeable and I do not think that was intended.
It's not a Garth Ennis story unless someone gets their head shoved up their own ass.
Another favorite of mine is Sleeper, written by Ed Brubaker. It's set in the Wildstorm universe (pre-reboot), but apart from some very minor name-dropping it's entirely self-contained.
It's a rather grim noir story with superpowers on the lower half of the scale - no Supermen, but the people are still very powerful in how they use their powers. The protagonist is an undercover agent who was fused with an alien artefact, and its powers killed his entire team when they tried to help him. It gives him the power to absorb pain and "store" it to power himself up. He still takes damage, but is extremely resilient.
He's sent to infiltrate the criminal mastermind Tao's organization as a double agent, and gets burned by his agency to give him a legitimate cover. But when his handler, the only person who knows the whole story, falls into a coma (after getting shot by Grifter), he's in deep shit and has to walk a fine line between law and crime to stay alive. It's good stuff.
It's collected in four trades, which in turn are collected in two bigger "Season" trades.
Kingdom Come is my number one DC universe story, especially of you like Marvels.
Definitely Y: the Last Man and you may like DMZ as well. The Peter Panzerfaust trade just came out this week, and it was way better than I expected!
Do you enjoy soul-crushingly bleak zombie senarios? You're in luck!
http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/163671/dont-know-much-about-comics-click-here
Now, a lot of great comics have been posted in this thread. Jakobkosh particularly posted a very comprehensive list. I'm going to give you three collections that haven't been posted here I think you'll enjoy.
Captain America: Man Out of Time. Written by Mark Waid with art by Jorge Molina, this is the story of Captain America waking up in the modern era and dealing with how the world has changed since World War II. It is great.
Planet Hulk. Written by Greg Pak. When the heroes of Earth come together and decide to shoot the Hulk into outer space for his own good, he lands, weakened and wounded, on a planet where he is forced to fight as a gladiator. In time, he finds himself dragged into a rebellion against the Emperor of the planet. All Hulk wants to do is smash.
The Immortal Iron Fist. Written by Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction. One of Marvel's more obscure heroes was completely revitalized and given a place in the spotlight, with this series. Iron Fist, aka Danny Rand, is a guy whose super power is magic kung fu that he learned in a hidden city in the Himalaya mountains. That's all you need to know. Read this book.
I can definitely second Pax Romana. And Y: The Last Man is always great.
If you want something "mature" that you can also leave on your coffee table, you really can't go wrong with "Sandman", as others have mentioned.
I'm not very knowledgeable about "the capes" so I'm probably a bad person to ask about Marvel/DC-style super hero books, but Marvel 1602 was really cool. It's fun to see all your favorite characters redone in a way that's really different from what you might be used to. Ye Olde Matt Murdock is awesome. I also liked Allen Moore's run on "Saga of The Swamp Thing".
Speaking of the Mad Wizard of the North, "V For Vendetta" is much better than the movie it inspired and is, for the first two thirds at least, a tightly plotted, exciting and challenging piece of literature(the "transubstantiation" sequence is so awesome). The monthly that was carrying it folded with the story unfinished and Moore had a hard time picking back up when he had the opportunity. This becomes really apparent when it's read all together as you would in a TBP. In the end, he falls back on his twin muses of male nudity and hallucinogens, but overall the book is still terrific.
No one has mentioned it yet, but I love The Goon. The art is basically what would happen if Norman Rockwell's sleazy doppleganger took dubious acid. It's also got a great cast of really weird supporting characters. Giant spider wearing a bowler hat trying to scam some money he should be spending on back child support but instead will waste on booze and dice? Sold! Eric Powell (the creator) is also able to tell a pretty wide variety of stories within a fairly unique horror/crime framework. I hate football and even I loved the storyline with Goon starting his own team. It can be pretty raunchy and sophomoric, but than you read something like "Chinatown" or the stories with Buzzard and you realize that, hey, this guy really knows how to tell a story. As an aside, don't start with "Chinatown". It's terrific but it has a much greater impact if you've become more familiar with the characters.
Leaving "genre" books aside completely, I have a friend who swore by "Love & Rockets". It wasn't really my "thing", but I only read a little bit and I feel like I may have "come in in the middle." I found Derf's "My Friend, Jeff" to be interesting and legitimately chilling in places. I also liked "Epileptic" by David B.
Hope those suggestions help.
Two I've read in the last few years that were good times were We3 and Pride of Baghdad.
They're both small, self-contained stories., We3 is a Grant Morrison penned story of the military weaponization of household pets. It still elicits a strong emotional response from me when I think about it. Pride of Baghdad is the story (based on actual events) of the escape of a pride of lions from the Baghdad Zoo following the American invasion.
Both are short, sweet and I found them to be very emotionally involved (in a good, I'm engrossed in this kind of way). They're also both sad stories, so you've been warned.
It's a great romp and a wonderful take on Lucifer Morningstar, The fallen angel, rather than what everyone paint's him to be.
One of my favorite lines is "When the Devil wants you to do something, he doesn't lie at all. He tells you the exact, literal truth. And he lets you find your own way to Hell."
It also has some of the best cover art since Sandman only matched by Fables