I don't read a lot of books-- Black Summer, Casanova, Fear Agent, Immortal Iron Fist, and will be picking up Final Crisis mostly because I love Morrison's Seven Soldiers... Anyway, I am starting to branch a little into the "alternative" comics scene. The term "alternative comics" is pretty much irrelevant now anyway, with so much creator owned stuff and webcomics and whatnot, but I'm not quite sure what else to label the thread.
I'm trying to get a lay of the land, figure out what lines up with my interests-- scifi, westerns, ninjas, robots, fighting, etc. I am looking to compile a list of alternative creators and titles, get recommendations, chat about stuff, but I am not interested in bitching about the mainstream or anything like that.
Bryan Lee O'Malley
I am reading Scott Pilgrim currently, or waiting for books 1 and 3 to show up. I ordered the four volumes with my b-day money a week or two ago, and only 2 and 4 arrived, 3 is somewhere, and Borders cannot obtain a copy of vol 1. I read book 1 and 2 back when they first came out, thought it was completely awesome... and then it kind of slipped off the radar when I moved away from the library. I have not read his other stuff.
Corey Lewis
I own Sharknife and think it is rad. Will get Peng! some day, not really interested in his Rival School issues... Has he done anything else?
Paul Pope
I read Heavy Liquid, 100% and Batman Year 100, but do not own any of them. I would like to some day, but I am trying to mostly buy things I have not borrowed from libraries.
Dan Hipp
Own Gyakushu vol 1, ordering 2 within a week or two, same for Amazing Joy Buzzards.
The same order will include Brandon Graham's King City and Escalator, and James Stokoe's Wonton Soup.
Slightly more mainstream... Casanova is almost the best thing ever, certainly the best spy comic I have ever seen. Trading in the singles for the Luxuria hc, and look forward to doing the same for this current arc.
I've read Hellboy and BPRD, really enjoy it a great deal, but am several years behind on most of it.
I also recently acquired Aqua Leung. About a third of the way through it, and loving every page of it. Amazing book so far.
So what else is out there?
Posts
You won't be disappointed. Brandon Graham's one of those guys that deserves so much more recognition than he gets, and James Stokoe's appallingly talented for his age. You should definitely try to track down Brandon Graham's Multiple Warheads one-shot comic that came out a while back too. i should post some scans of that actually.
I'll have to remember to contribute to this thread tomorrow when I have more time.
Tumblr Twitter
http://www.mania.com/simon-dark-1_article_56321.html
i guess. i didn't read that but it looks all right looking
i'm too tired to type
Man, now that's alternative!
Brandon Graham creates it.
i've been loving the re-launch
Yes. The storyline actually stems directly from some old porn comic he did, though Multiple Warheads is much more reserved as far as nudity/sexual content goes. The thing that strikes me about all the Meathaus guys (Graham, Stokoe, Corey Lewis) is how completely insane and alien their ideas are. Their stuff is really unlike anything else being published. I'd love to see some of them do some work for hire for DC/Marvel, just to see what they'd do.
Here's Stokoe's livejournal, which has a bunch of pages from his upcoming work, including Murder Bullets. Which may just be the greatest title ever conceived by man.
Tumblr Twitter
Lewis was going to do a Longshot one-shot, not sure what happened to that. He seems have trouble sticking with anything long enough to complete it. I think he does freelance design work so he has food to eat and stuff, and is maybe overworked from that too.
Stokoe's LJ has some troll/orc WIP thing that looks insane. Also, cocks and titties. (Same for Graham's)
I remember when Pinapl was supposed to be a 16 page monthly
post-apocalyptic world in which genetically engineered pig people are working in huge factories to build stuff for the man and then are sent to the slaughterhouse. Eventually one of them escapes, becomes the protagonist of the story, and wanders about the desert fucking people up. Eventually he wanders into this town where they've captured a guy that can regenerate any wound, and are continually cutting pieces off of him to feed the town.
that sounds awesome
100 Bullets doesn't get nearly enough praise for a Vertigo title, but, and I say this only after reading 4 or 5 trades (so not up to date), it's definitely worthy of the Vertigo brand name and one of the unsung heroes of the line. I'm waiting for it to finish up at issue 100 before I pick them all up and read it through as one continuous story instead of stops and starts.
This is an unconventional suggestion, but the now defunct Crossgen comics had a lot of unique genres and alternative titles ranging from air pirates to detective comics to supernatural, lord of the rings style epics, Deep Space 9 style space adventures and more. Some of my personal favourites were Sojourn, Crux, Negation, Meridian, The Path and Ruse. It's a real shame the company went under, as I think the only problem was they came out just before the rebirth of the comics industry after the rut of the 90s. If they had waited 5 years, I think it would have taken off or at least been sustainable.
Atomic Robo is a recent series that ended it's first 6 issue mini, but is due for a volume 2 later this year. One of the funniest and more unique concepts I've seen in a long time. I loved the irreverent humour and its probably up any Penny Arcade fans alley. It's about a robot created by Tesla that took on Nazis and evil mad scientists while contending with Edison's attempts at sabotage in the past, but is mostly set in the present day building on random flashbacks. It features mobile Egypian attack pyramids, spelling out giant fuck you's to Stephen Hawking on Mars and other fun stuff.
I'm not sure how off the beaten path or alternative my picks are, as I usually stick more mainstream and pick up the indy / Vertigo stuff after the fact when a series' been verified as good and collected in trade, but hopefully someone enjoys them.
The five-ish issues I read of it were glorious.
And I really don't want to get into another series right before college
So I'll be trade-waiting this one
you don't need to start with the first one
Maybe I will pick this up, or at least flip through next time I'm in the shop
I really just don't want to get into another new series right now
Good suggestions. I've been meaning to look into Yotsuba, I keep hearing about it. What is it about? 100 Bullets was good, I read the first five or six trades. It is fun, but the main plot is lost to me from reading them spaced out too far. Maybe I will buy all of the trades I am missing when it is finished. I'm going to buy Atomic Robo in trade some time soon.
I'll second the "Ruse" recommendation. It's a detective comic, set in Victorian times. It didn't completely revolutionize the way I look at the world or anything, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.
i went to the emerald city comicon this weekend and ed brubaker was there. when i was leaving yesterday, i wanted to walk by the media guests booth to tell jamie bamber that battlestar galactica rules, but ed brubaker was already like way deep in conversation with him, handing him a copy of the lawless trade. so ed brubaker is pimping criminal to apollo from bsg, which is pretty awesome
This. All of them.
I picked up the first three volumes recently, ironically enough.
It's about a six-year old named Yotsuba who moves to a new neighborhood and gets into all sorts of weird situations because of her bizarre view of the world.
Kind of a slice-of-life comedy thing.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
American Flagg. One of the big comics of the 80's - it was right up there with Watchmen and DKR in terms of its influence, but it's fallen out of many people's memory since nobody in the US has been able to put together a collected edition until now. You like Casanova? This is one of Fraction's biggest influences in comics. To this day there are very very few comics that have matched Flagg for sophistication, density, and sheer velocity - tons of shit happens in every single issue and it's all top-grade stuff.
Another good oldie: The Adventures of Luther Arkwright and its sequel Heart of Empire. Talbot's a gorgeous artist and Arkwright, which came out in the late-70s/early-80s, was heavily influential on a generation of UK artists and writers - guys like Moore, Gaiman, and Morrison. It's pretty awesome action sci-fi with a heady dash of 70s pop psychedelia and mysticism.
god knows the book needs pimping
A short while ago I picked up a comic called Blue Pills by Swiss artist Frederik Peeters. I was drawn in by the attractive black and white art and the little tagline beneath the title, 'a positive love story.' Every now and then I like to read a little slice of life story to take a breather from the kind of high stakes superhero/crime/sci-fi comics I mostly read. So I thought, "Hey, a nice happy little love story should hit the spot." Now stupid me, I didn't read the inside jacket blurb, or piece together the rather obvious clues offered by the title and the tagline. So when I got about a chapter in, and realized I was reading an autobiographical comic about the creator's love affair with an HIV positive woman named Cati, I was more than a little surprised. To be honest I was kind of dismayed too. Here I was, just wanting a little something light to pass the time, and instead it looked like I'd be getting a depressing, overwrought little tale of tragedy and doomed love.
To my incredible surprise, I still got that light, happy little love story I went looking for in the first place. Blue Pills gives one of the most honest, open portrayals of HIV I've ever seen in any media. Yes, it's a bit sad at times. Reading it, you're struck by the feeling that, had Fred and Cati met sooner, things would have gone much easier for them. But there's also a lot of genuine humor and warmth. The book follows Cati and Fred as they fumble through sex, as they try to figure out what's safe, an experience with a broken condom, trips to Cati's reassuring, if a bit overworked and manic, physician, and Fred's attempts to get close to Cati's HIV positive son. The entire book is packed full of such earnest, human emotion that I couldn't help but love it. To anyone looking for a good love story, I can't recommend it highly enough.
Here's another review that explains the book a bit better.
Tumblr Twitter
WHOA. Hold the phone there, dude. Today's Howard Chaykin is a hollowed-out shell of a man ravaged by twenty years of booze and coke (and a lot of 'his' art these days is, iirc, handled by his studio interns). Chaykin circa 1982 was one of the best comic artists in America.
It's why Fraction holds him in such regard.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
That, and his sense of graphic design (which sort of falls into the art category, I guess, but I tend to think of it as a separate thing). FLAGG! had all these incredible, innovative new ways to do stuff like motion and sound effects, and it had this really hyperkinetic sense of storytelling that anticipated modern-day ADD video editing techniques.
Atomic Robo is what I thought of when I saw the topic title. It is an AWESOME comic... people should check it out. I think the 6 issue run they worked on is over, but I am hoping for another story soon.
The Stephen Hawking joke was absolutely brilliant.
The story follows this one hitman who's having lady-troubles. The hitman gets hired to go back in time to kill Adolf Hitler pretty much the same week he breaks up with his girl. So he agrees to do it, but fails, not only getting trapped in the past, but also allowing Hitler to escape to the present in his time machine.
The hitman then has to just hang out in the past, aging normally until time he's back into the present again. He's old as hell then, and has to enlist the help of the girlfriend he just dumped to help him track down and kill Hitler. To her, they just broke up a few days ago, and now her boyfriend has returned, asking her for help and old to the point of enfeeblement.
It's a pretty cool and clever story, and I'm pretty partial to the art style. Here is a sample, stolen from the interwebs:
I'm not sure if that page is the best example, but I'm sure you get the idea.
Also, Munch, if you're into lighter, slice of life stuff, then I would recommend checking out Harvey Pekar's "American Splendor", at least the first volume or so (if you haven't already that is). It's a collection of short, autobio comics about this hilariously cranky and brutally honest guy. Sometimes it's a little overwrought, but overall I loved it.
I've started picking up Zorro from the same line (Dymamite) and it's pretty similar in style to TLR. Still, it's slower and not quite as good, though it looks like it could be once it gets going.
For superhero stuff, Dynamo 5 is usually a fun read, not to mention having a very simple yet very cool premise. Umbrella Academy is really good too, but I don't know if it counts as "under the radar". And I'll add my yea vote to the chorus of approval for Atomic Robo. It's made me laugh out loud more times than I can count. Well worth picking up.