2013 what are you reading thread

New year, new thread.

Post-christmas I have some 200AD and Battle reprints and the latest volumes in the reprint series that I'm already reading:

Charley's War vol IX
Rat Pack: Guns, Guts & Glory
Major Eazy: Heart of Iron
Flesh: The Dino Files
The Complete Harlem Heroes
Black Hawk The Intergalactic Gladiator
Pogo Vol 2
Kamandi Vol 2 (lost in the post at the moment)
Prince Valiant Vol 6 (due at the weekend)
Dick Tracy Vol 16 (due next week)

Finished Frederik Peeters' Pachyderme and Hannah Berry's Adamtine recently. Both very good.

Couldn't think where else to put this, but thought it was a terrific piece:

http://paulgravett.com/index.php/articles/article/diabolik_the_fumetti_neri_tradition

Aldo, what a bummer abt that Kamandi volume, looking forward to getting that, too (my own copy, i mean)

Currently reading Came the Dawn, the Fantagraphics/EC Wally Wood collection, and Essential Thor Volume 6 (lotsa nice John Buscema inked by Joe Sinnott and, unusually, Dick Giordano)

Kamandi turned up this morning, yay!

Dick Tracy will be here Monday, have to start prioritising. Try and finish the Battle stuff over what's left of the weekend I guess.

Charley's War continues to be engaging, Titan not going beyond the Pat Mills period but then I was only into it for curiosity as I don't remember it myself during the WWII revival. Rat Pack is OK, but kind of generic. Much less Bellardinelli than I remember too.

That Gravett / Diabolik piece is ace.

THE ART OF HARVEY KURTZMAN. And some random issue of DAREDEVIL with a BWS cover and Mazzucchelli interiors.

http://ilanot.wordpress.com/strangers/

saw this in forbidden planet today, now added to my wishlist

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sharaz-Arabian-Nights-Sergio-Toppi/dp/1936393484/ref=reg_hu-rd_add_1_dp#reader_1936393484

I think both Dave McKean and Bill Sienkiewicz have looked closely at Toppi's stuff, and I see Walt Simonson wrote the introduction to this edition.

Pogo Vol 2 going down a treat, I must say.

That Toppi book looks ace though - what size is it? I'd love to think it was Prince Valiant-sized, or even Popeye.

fraid not, medium-sized graphic nov h/c - gd repro, tho (now you've made me wonder what size the originals were)

That toppi thing looks amazing. Gonna see if my local (US) store can order it.

Waiting for me at Desert Island to pick up on my way home: the new Weird War Stories B&W phonebook

MUST NOT ORDER JUST NOW. I am about halfway through post-Christmas reads but the Sean Howe book on Marvel turned up this morning, as did some "you might also like" stuff that could take some time to get through like the Two Morrows issue-by-issue Marvel guides.

The Sean Howe book is fun. LEarned a lot, and I found it a surprising page turner.

need to get new Scrooge volume "Christmas in Shacktown"

new Scrooge is pretty excellent, obviously

cancelled my sub back in May after realizing I had about five feet of back issues I hadn't caught up on yet. only monthly superhero thing I'm reading right now is Hawkeye when I remember to download it. dug the first two issues of Aaron's Thor but not for $4, dammit.

Just discovered Phonogram which is very ILM (there musf be a thread on here somewhere, I'll check when I'm not back on a proper computer). It's like a Bristol based Scott Pilgrim, The Pipettes and occultism.

Next on the list is Saga which is creating a stir on the comic related podcasts I listen to.

I would really welcome a top comix of 2012 poll, even at this llate date.

i've been reading this on abbott's advice and it's great:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1906838550

Quarter comics, most of which are not very good but often entertaining. I have a slim stack of current stuff I should get to sometime. Oh, and MULTIPLE WARHEADS 2, which is quite good.

Oh, and MULTIPLE WARHEADS 2, which is quite good.

Good lord, yes. Brandon Graham in color is a wonderful thing.

MULTIPLE WARHEADS #4 is excellent - I like how noticeable the forward movement is all throughout, just a very physical and continuous left-to-right experience. And Graham, somehow, manages to go even more delirious with the puns (this thing must be hell on a committed translator).

Damn it, I have started Flesh and the Phase 1 stuff which is just cowboys and dinosaurs is about as thrill-powered as my heart can bear.

Picked up a used copy of the Fantagraphic's reprint of SAM'S STRIPS, the Mort Walker & Jerry Dumas comic strip about comic strips. So far it's a blast! Really meta and insidery, especially when you realize it was a nationally syndicated strip in 1961-63.

Oops, added an S. It's SAM'S STRIP.

Flesh Phase 2 last night. GIANT SCORPIONS.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_CHfcL6vQT9Y/R0QYYWJLg8I/AAAAAAAAAhY/SMKurBkZN2I/s400/2000AD93-scorpions.jpg

The inspiration, I think, for one of my favourite Freaky Trigger ideas

Read all of Ghost Rider 2099 (lol) and was somewhat entertained by the 2000 AD homage bits. SHIELD agents of the future have large Judge-style badges!

Via Fortune, Time Warner is in talks to sell most of its publishing biz.
http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2013/02/13/time-warner-time-inc-sale/
No word on whether this would include DC Comics. My hunch is that the comics publishing is too inextricable from TV and film production of the same properties and wouldn't be included.

I agree, the intellectual property cash cow from DC is way too good to cast off with Time and People magazines

The new aya book from drawn and quarterly is great and affordable with the reissue compendium of the first three volumes.
Everyone should be reading these.

have the first two, thought about the "new" three, decided I couldn't take that much spindly pixellated computer lettering in one go

yeah, new edition doesn't reward previous loyal buyers, great though the comic is

Agree the lettering is meh but art and story more than make up for it imo

I'm a little annoyed that Multiple Warheads: Alphabet to Infinity #4 didn't tie up a single plot thread (it just advances the Nura storyline a bit and then stops dead; despite being an extra-long issue, it barely features Sexica & Nikolai at all), especially since it looks like it'll be at least a year until the next miniseries starts up. Though the character lineup on the back cover might mean these two are going to show up more, which would be nice:

http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2012/328/9/f/romance_mannnn_by_royalboiler-d5lzzo8.jpg

At least there'll be more Prophet in the interim, and the Walrus sketch comic book he's putting out with Picturebox.

Yeah that shat me a lot, especially bcz the TPB is going to feel extra pointless

um so can anyone recommend a good way to get cbrs of more obscure/interesting books? or feel like being all ysi?

i mean i buy a lot too but i'd like some ipad reading

Y'all be crazy, re: MULTIPLE WARHEADS resentment.

It's not resentment, really- I couldn't be happier with the actual comic, I'm just a bit peeved about where the arbitrary year-long chapter break is being placed. I guess I expected the miniseries to have at least some small arc of its own inside the larger narrative.

I don't know this comic! Explain it to me.

Hmmmm...

gimme a sec.

MULTIPLE WARHEADS = Brandon Graham's current writer/artist thing, put out by Image. It's sci-fi story set in an off-kilter setting, rife with puns, an extreme emphasis on environment, and a whimsical (but NEVER twee) internal logic - Graham's work is peculiar among sci-fi comics in that his work is pretty much vast swaths of "hanging out" with the occasional plot point. Currently it's a road trip between Sexica and Nikola, young lovers, intertwined with a trip undertaken by an assassin - it's kind of like SAGA, but COMPLETELY different. Presumably the paths of our characters will cross sometime in the next few years. The image posted above should give you a good idea of Graham's work. Here's another one.

My rather glib "resentment" comment above (sorry!) comes from my basic sense that Graham (as a single creative force) has never been especially big on story momentum/plot (He's writing PROPHET right now, which leans far stronger in that direction)- in terms of story, moments tend to accumulate over a prolongued period and connections are eventually made. KING CITY, his earlier solo opus, didn't so much end after 12 issues as stop, so I really girded my self for extraordinary consequence to happen. More often, the satisfaction derived from a comic derives from paying attention, going with the comic's own internal flow, playing along with the constant puns and games Graham inserts, so you could (possibly) spend 15 minutes staring at a single page or even a few panels.

I hope that came out alright.

"so I girded my self for nothing of extraordinary consequence to happen"

Awesome news, Pat McEown's graphic novel The Hair Shirt has finally got a US edition! It was originally published a few years ago in France. I've seen the English version digitally and it's AMAZING. You might remember Pat from Grendel: Warchild, or from his series of brilliant short pieces in back of Dave Cooper's comics. This represents his first extended piece in the awesome expressive skritchy cartoony style he got into in those Cooper backups.

Fantastic color job too.

http://new.publishersweekly.com/978-1-9068-3827-0

Didn't that already come out ages ago? I borrowed an English-language edition of it from the library like a year ago.

I thought it was pretty good, except that the ending was too oblique. When the climax of your book hinges on the characters discovering the truth about a traumatic event, it'd be nice if the reader could actually decipher that truth. Now there were only obscure hints... Or maybe I'm just stupid and didn't get it?

Just read Flashpoint. Huh. Could've been interesting, but kinda fizzled. A lot like House of M.

IMO "could've been interesting, but kinda fizzled" applies to pretty much all of Marvel's and DC's 00s mega-crossovers, except maybe World War Hulk.

i guess that's largely true; this one felt like more disappointing than the others for some reason though. Thomas Wayne was a good idea, even the spinoff series was fairly decent, and of course that ending is pretty emotional. Even Barry Allen, a character I have no real attachment to, was done pretty well here, but the plot just got swallowed up completely. or maybe i'm just burned out on the Muppet Movie plot that these alternate reality epics have, i don't know

I'll second The Hair Shirt. It's been out in English, just never in the US- I had to backorder a copy from a UK comic shop (even Amazon UK didn't have it).

Went to the London comic convention this weekend and bought Mark Waid's LOSH run for minus three pounds. It's really good!

Also comic conventions are depressing.

Got the print version of Faith Erin Hicks' Superhero Girl, which is a nice little comic. The strips works better when read in a row than as individual gags, because she's subtly building larger themes there.

Hicks' Friends with Boys is also worth checkin out, it's sorta like a comic book version of a teen movie like Saved!, except with less stereotypes and more humanism.

will check that out

Still mostly reading quarter comics. Occasionally posting fun bits of them to my tumblr. Have a slim stack of current stuff that I really am not all that interested in. Much more excited for the artist-driven EC collections. And still MULTIPLE WARHEADS, though there's not story there so much as there's comix.

Working my way through Hellboy, has been on the to do lust for a while, really enjoying it.

Lust? List! Fat hands, small phone.

I've tried to read Hellboy a few times, but it has always felt to me that the art is better than the scripts? Pretty much all the stories I've read have been recycled versions of Lovecraft and other pulp horror; enjoyable, I guess, but nothing particularly clever or innovative about them.

Yeah, it is the artwork that is the best thing for me, I can stare at a page for hours, which is a good measure of success for a graphic novel. I've never been much of a horror/lovecraft fan, so I guess I don't see the re-hash of stories. What I love is the quirky folklore stuff mixed in with Nazis and an action hero!

Hellboy reads much better in collected form, imo. The later issues are more plot-heavy and B.P.R.D. is a lot more interesting than I'd originally thought.

When Mignola draws Hellboy, I love Hellboy. Otherwise, I have abso zero interest. It's not that I don't LIKE his writing, more that it is inextricable from the way he draws for me. I'd rather have one 24 pager from him every two years than a dozen scripts drawn by his 'school'.

what were we reading in 1993?

I was not reading any of this shit, that's for sure.

well I guess I shouldn't lie, I had those Sandman and Eightball issues, and that is probably still my favorite single issue of Chris Ware's.

pretty sure i have owned/own/read every one of those books but the sonic

so you do have SOME standards

no

it's funny how so many of these covers convey absolutely no information about the story contained therein, just static pics of the titular characters

I had all the Vertigo stuff, Eightball and The Maxx. I don't think I've read any of those superhero books.

Out of those titles, I was reading Sandman/Death and The Maxx. Had pretty much given up superheroes, because they'd turned to grim'n'gritty Leifeldian shit, which I hated. I wasn't really into DC back then, but I was aware of the Knightfall and Death of Superman stories, though I've never actually read them. I remember reading Spawn for a while, because I was interested what this new company was doing, but it turned out to be just more of the same shit Marvel was pushing too. I guess the same thing happened to me as to many other superhero comic readers who remembered the more innocent Bronze Age stuff, in that the grim & gritty era drove me away from them, and into Vertigo and smaller publishers, and didn't return to superheroes until the early 00s, when they'd become more optimistic again, with less thigh pouches and grimaces in the art.

Obviously I was also reading Euro comics too, which thankfully didn't take such a grim turn in the 90s. And wasn't this the time manga titles started to get translated in larger amounts? I remember really liking Ranma 1/2 back then, it felt cool and fresh to me, because I wasn't yet familiar with the conventions and cliches of shonen manga.

that list was the very tail end of my first comics phase, i remember most of those covers

didn't know Jimmy Corrigan was around then - also surprised (if not... shocked) that i never saw that Static #1

Wasn't this also the time when the first Sin City book came out? That shit felt so groundbreaking and fresh back then, the chiaroscuro art especially was unlike anything I'd seen in American comics. Who would've guessed it was the last time a Frank Miller could be described as "groundbreaking and fresh"?

ha, funny you should say that. i was so into that book, while i'd give up reading superhero books right around that time, i would make trips to the comic store a couple times a year just for Sin City

Miller/Darrow also did the Big Guy and Rusty the Robot around the same time, which was the last time I cared about anything Frank Miller has done. really can't stand to even look at his stuff anymore. apart from Ronin lol.

Sin City started in Dark Horse Presents' 5th anniversary issue so 1990-91 I reckon. Big Guy & Rusty was mid-90s, and terrible - would have been 300x better without Miller's hamfisted dialogue slapped all over it.

of the list, I bought Death and Sandman and Acme Novelty Library at the time. Read Eightball in the shop but didn't buy it.

Morrison did the issue of Spawn after that one, didn't he? So close!

I didn't buy Maxx #1 at the time, but went back and caught up when Alan Moore wrote it a few years later.

I love Rusty, but mainly for Darrow. Sin City first hit trades in 1993.

The Miller ones I return to are Ronin and Hard Boiled, the latter for the Darrow art, mostly

sic, I think you mean Supreme? Sam Kieth wrote all of The Maxx

Hard Boiled is a beautiful mess. Reminds me I haven't read Give Me Liberty in years. Wonder if it's still enjoyable.

yeah i was gonna say; i'm a sam kieth stan
i have a lot of this stuff still around the house

Give Me Liberty issue #1 was good, Miller had gone off the rails by #4

sic, I think you mean Supreme? Sam Kieth wrote all of The Maxx

Moore wrote #21 and ...#27 iirc, I will now google to check

per GCD:

Wm Messner-Loebs scripted #1-15, #17-20, #22 and #23

Dave Feiss co-write and co-drew #30

Moore scripted #21. I recall him being credited on another issue but maybe it was via the letter column, not the inside front cover.

Was that the crappon inna hat issue?

1993 is almost exactly where I stopped reading comics for a decade. Sandman lost me after "Game of You" and too many turgid one-shots, Shade was direction-less, and the Batman/Superman titles were seriously off the rails after a more-or-less fault-free run since the Crisis reboot. Plus no ongoings for Grant Morrison, PAD's X-Factor was done, etc.

Looking at those covers, though, makes me think Batman has progressed more than Chris Ware in the past twenty years.

Also - thinking about it, I guess this means ILC is ten this year or next. Holy, etc.

I think this was the first ILC thread, so 10 years next January:

Wednesday Wrap-up

I was 13 in 1993, and I think I read all the superhero titles in that list apart from Avengers and lolBloodstrike. It appears I had substantially more money than sense back then :(

If I'd saved it, waited a few years and invested in tech stock I could be living on a private island somewhere tropical by now. Instead I'm having horrible flashbacks to being really excited about the shiny silver cover of Web of Spider-Man #100. I still have it somewhere at my parents' house...

That Web of Spider-Man cover is probably the goofiest of them all. What the heck was the "Spider-armor"?

I fail to recall the precise details which led to the donning of the armour (something to do with fighting a specific foe, I think), but I recall thinking even at the time that it was a bunch of bollocks...

oh god, we all remember this spider-armor cover

Here we go:

When the New Enforcers attacked New York using high caliber fire-arms, Spider-Man created a suit of "Spider-Armor". Composed of a pseudo-metallic compound Peter Parker developed at Empire State University, the suit slowed him down, but allowed him to be bullet proof. During battle, the suit was later destroyed by acid.

So, uh, I guess the spider-sense and superhuman agility which had allowed him to avoid speeding bullets countless times in the past were not sufficiently effective against the combined might of Plantman, Dragon Man and Blood Rose. Thus, he was forced to don Spider-Armour to defend himself against their 'high caliber fire-arms'.

Fuck you, The 90s.

iirc web of spider-man was generally the b-team of writers/artists using the b-team of villains or storylines. apologies to any good writers/artists I'm forgetting here, though

Big Guy & Rusty was mid-90s, and terrible - would have been 300x better without Miller's hamfisted dialogue slapped all over it.

yeah I don't disagree on that point, I was into it pretty much entirely because of Darrow

that cowboy samurai book he did was all kinds of fun

"1993 was the biggest-ever year for sales in the comics industry."

i don't think so. the direct market, maybe.

what year was xmen #1 and xfactor #1? That was the biggest direct market
but yeah, in the forties/fifties i believe sales for many titles were in the multiple hundred thousands, yes? somebody post a TCJ article and back me up here

Think you men x-force and not -factor

ah yes. the dumbass liefeld
there was the great multi-cover renaissance that destroyed the collector market.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Lee#Rise_to_fame_at_Marvel_Comics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Liefeld#Early_career
4 million copies and every one a guaranteed investment

Never forget
http://thebrotherhoodofevilgeeks.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/o_xforce1.jpg

http://noneofthismatters.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/4393-4-1.jpg

The state of comic books in 1946.

haha i totally bought that issue of sonic when it came out, would've been right after i first played the game. even then i think i knew deep down that sonic was basically a shitty character and the comics weren't a patch on those weird mario comics they used to publish in nintendo power.

the translated Mario/Zelda comics in Nintendo Power were totally awesome

the great brit comic artist mick mcmahon did some of his last strip work on the uk sonic comic...which says everything abt the british comics 'industry', really

http://tuggingyourcoat.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/bones.jpg?w=350&h=496

Any of you guys in Los Angeles? I'm going to be arriving in town on April 10th and was thinking I might try and see Ben Katchor. Would love some company:

http://www.skirball.org/programs/ben-katchor

I think I read 4 or 5 titles on that list. SANDMAN and THE MAXX and one other thing. And like a few others, that was about the time I stopped reading comics but for SANDMAN and the HELLBOY minis that came out. There was other good stuff, but it was just so depressing to go into a comic store and see what was being offered (remember--not ever shop gets everything) that dropping out seemed like the smartest course of action.

I came back for THE INVISIBLES for the first couple of issues (believe that was 1994). But it was more a once every couple months thing and not once a week.

Marvel Unlimited is opening up a lot of different series for me.
Doing Avengers Academy at the moment. Surprisingly decent for nth retread teen team drama.

AA was quite good, though sadly it suffered from being forcibly mixed in various crossovers that had little to do with its own plots. Also, the ending felt a bit rushed, and Cage didn't manage to tie some plot threads together (the stuff involving the future versions of AA members was never really resolved) before it was cancelled. But for the most part it was good, a nice mixture of old school optimistic teen superhero stuff and more current issues, such as gay superheroes coming out of the closet.

Can't imagine dropping out of floppy direct market comics in the early 90s, P. Bagge's Hate may be my favourite serial-buying comic experience ever

yeah that was an amazing 2-year (at least?) stretch

Saga is a fun read. I got a few issues and didn't read the whole batch until the last couple of weeks. I was afraid it might be too 'twee' from the looks of it and it kinda is but it is fun enough for me to get by it. I'll give BKV some credit, it's really written well for the actual comic book format as he keeps being able to pull off great issue endings each time.

I also can't decide yet if I like the first trade of Jonathan Hickman's "The Manhattan Projects", but it's so totally batshit weird and I'm going back and reading it now again month later.

yeah that was an amazing 2-year (at least?) stretch

I didn't start buying until late 91 (bought #5 and 6 on a school excursion, along with the OG Vortex Ed The Happy Clown TPB) but I reckon it stayed great til 1998. The penultimate issue, where Buddy goes on the blind date, is amazing. B&W run ended in 94 if that's where you're drawing the line though

Manhattan Projects has a bum issue here and there but, I hope, is building to something

Age of Ultron - it's surprisingly good! Made me think I was under-appreciating Bendis, but then I read the new Powers, which was just the worst.

I enjoy the whole run of Hate, altho felt like his art started to get a bit lazy by the end. agree about the blind date issue

ha, he went from 3 tiers to 4 just in case ppl felt he was being lazy by drawing for colour

a friend of mine is apparently friends with Marc Guggenheim and gave me a bunch of his stuff to read... this is the first time I'd looked at a modern Spider-Man comic in oh 10 years. oof.

bendis = best avengers writer since roy thomas, official. also looking forward to reading his x-men 'reboot'. i 'heard' there's a twist at the end of age of ultron (to be written by neil gaiman???) but i don't know what it is.

i enjoy a slott spiderman when one comes my way - dude always puts a lot into his scripts, never cheats the reader - but the art is p horrible most of the time.

i'm old enough to have bought neat stuff on the reg, so at first i was a little wary of hate, but was quickly won round. pathetic i know, but i MUCH prefer the issues that bagge inked himself (the colour was fine, but the art seemed to lose a bit of its energy when he was only penciling it.) must've been quite a while when you could buy new issues of love and rockets, hate, yummy fur and eightball p much every cpl of months, truly we were spoilt...

SPECULATIVE SPOILER: Twist is going to be Marvelman coming to Marvel universe.

And Hickman's Avengers smokes Bendis, in my opinion.

must've been quite a while when you could buy new issues of love and rockets, hate, yummy fur and eightball p much every cpl of months, truly we were spoilt

yes this was an amazing time. whatever "underground" stuff comes out nowadays on the regular, it hasn't grabbed me like that stuff did

tbf, the market has changed where it makes more sense for people to release trades rather than floppies

yep

of course that means Joe Matt really will never finish anything ever again :(

bendis = best avengers writer since roy thomas, official.

Best ever, imo. I really like what Hickman's doing on his two Avengers books right now, but I think it's too early to say it beats Bendis.

Also, Age of Ultron continues to be awesome. I really like that they banked the pages, especially Hitch's issues, so they could bring this out quickly. The pace of the story is really helped by quick publication.

tbf, the market has changed where it makes more sense for people to release trades rather than floppies

the best shit is coming out in floppies right now, but thanks to insane US postage increases, I don't get to read any of it anymore

like what? i ask

eg deforge, rilly, huizenga, hanawalt, fiffe, koyama in general

I can't believe people think Bendis is the best Avengers writer since Thomas... He pretty much tore apart everything that was unique about Avengers, brought in his pet characters, most of whom had little to do with the team's history, and wrote every character as if they were in gritty cop show and not a superhero comic. (Seriously, when it came to characterization, pretty much every character was interchangeable with someone else.) Which meant no more grandiose cosmic adventures and stuff like that, which had previously been the Avengers' forte, because they didn't fit Bendis' "realistic" vision. Sure, there were some good individual storylines, but the crossovers were increasingly bad, culminating with Siege which was just one massive fight with no rhyme or reason.

Even though it had some hacky moments and misfires (mostly the attempt to deal with racial and religious issues, which was a noble failure), in my opinion Busiek's Avengers run has been the best extended run of the title since Thomas' days. He knew what made the Avengers special, instead of writing it like a generic superhero book with interchangeable members, like Bendis did.

That said, I have been enjoying Bendis' current X-Men run so far. Seems like the gimmick of the old, more innocent X-Men time-traveling to the present day has toned down the gritty/hard-boiled tendencies of his writing, which is a refreshing change.

brought in his pet characters, most of whom had little to do with the team's history

ie exactly what roy thomas and steve englehart did! every new avengers writer has a mandate - duty! - to reinvent the team according to their own tastes and fancies.

Busiek's run basically is roy thomas revisited - i prefer the illusion of change under bendis.

brought in his pet characters, most of whom had little to do with the team's history

ie exactly what roy thomas and steve englehart did! every new avengers writer has a mandate - duty! - to reinvent the team according to their own tastes and fancies.

Well sure, but AFAIK those characters weren't popular ones with a lot of baggage (like Spider-Man or Wolverine) or writer's pets (like Luke Cage). Even if earlier writers introduced new team members, they still managed to do "Avengers style" stories with them, whereas Bendis simply took characters he liked, or characters that sell titles, and did stories that have little to do with previous Avengers legacy. I guess if you don't care that much about this "Avengers style" and like Bendis' particular set of tropes, this isn't a problem, but for me he was ill-fitted for the title.

I think if he tore down the old version, that was the point though?

Spider-man and Wolverine are overexposed because they don't have a lot of baggage - quips + agile + web shooters / claws + loner + drinks are sufficiently good handles to tell a story with them.

Also you are possibly the only person in the world who gives a shit about the idea of "Avengers legacy" - it's a dumping ground of unloved characters + the big guys.

x-post

i've been reading Avengers comics for more than thirty years Tuomas, so I think 'care' about the title as much as you do. i just don't have some platonic idea of an Avengers comic, or think there's only one way to write Avengers comics (I mean, at base, the Avengers just = some of Marvel's most popular characters all together in one comic. Which is why I don't have a problem with Wolverine or Spider-Man being members.)

Fair enough; it's just that to me Bendis' writing tics (the hard-boiled dialogue, the "realism", the way he treats superhero comics as if they were police or military fiction, the intechangeable personalities) are pretty much the opposite of what I like in superhero comics (cosmic sagas, high adventure, colourful characters, optimism), and what I've enjoyed in earlier Avengers comics. Bendis might've been a fitting writer for a title like Daredevil, where "realism" and grittiness were already an established part of the title, but I've never thought such qualities were what the Avengers was about.

Also you are possibly the only person in the world who gives a shit about the idea of "Avengers legacy" - it's a dumping ground of unloved characters + the big guys.

Haven't you ever come across angry Internet commentary on how Avengers Disassembled ruined the Scarlet Witch, ruined Vision, shat on Busiek's earlier reconstruction of the title, etc? My comments on this thread are pretty mild compared to how many others felt about Bendis and the Avengers.

Bendis really should have stopped after Siege, though. Everything after was just embarrasing.

nah, red hulk storyline was great!

I'd also put Steve Englehart and Roger Stern up there for Avengers writers.

The best Bendis' Avengers comics were still the ones about the villains. The Dark Avengers storyline, which was pretty much the sequel to Warren Ellis' Thunderbolts, I thought was the best read. I think the early blowing up of the Avengers and the early arcs up to the Civil War are pretty good, but later on the stories got pretty streched out.

People gripe about his 'pet characters' but really what creator doesn't have some in super hero comics. I thought how he used Luke Cage was pretty great myself. As for the Scarlet Witch, the only thing Bendis did was just take it to an end - as the whole "Wanda is kinda nuts" storyline goes back 30+ years. I still think it would have been better idea to have had it to be Loki during the whole Ragnarok end of Thor story to be the key to set Wanda loose and destroy the Avengers (as afterall Loki is the manipulator of the Marvel U and he unwittingly created them), but hey everyone want's to blame\use Dr. Doom.

As for the Scarlet Witch, the only thing Bendis did was just take it to an end - as the whole "Wanda is kinda nuts" storyline goes back 30+ years.

The thing is, this had already been resolved by earlier writers; during Busiek's run, for example, Wanda came to a deeper understanding with the nature of her powers, and she is also shown to remember her kids. But all of this development is ignored by Bendis: all of a sudden Wanda doesn't remember the kids anymore, she's crazy again, her powers don't work the way everyone thought they would... This is one of the biggest reasons why people thought Bendis shat on Busiek's run, and ruined Wanda. And it's not like Wanda was essential to the whole storyline, Bendis could've easily used several other characters to achieve the same ends, and without discarding the work of previous writers.

And let's just say I'm not one of those people who think Continuity Is God and should never be tweaked, but on the other hand completely ignoring it is a bit shitty too, since continuity is one of the things that makes the Marvel and DC universes different from comics with original characters, so if you don't care about it, you should probably be writing your own characters and not ones with decades of history.

New Avengers/Secret Avengers better than Avengers proper in the Bendis era.

Hickman seems to be doing pretty good stuff. I really liked his Secret Warriors as well.

The Warren Ellis Secret Avengers issues might be my favorite Avengers of recent vintage, but depending on where Hickman goes (and whether or not stupid mandatory events derail him) he could top that handful of issues with ease.

Also almost any way of dealing with DC/Marvel characters involves ignoring a lot of their continuity as there's decades of it and it varies wildly in tone and content.

Secret Avengers was a good but really frustrating book. I was intrigued by the plot Brubaker started, but then he left. Ellis was great, but very short. Remender seemed like he was telling an interesting story as well, but I haven't finished it. And then it was bogged down in tie-ins all the time.

It suffered for the fact the plot arc got fumbled through to a finish several writers later

"all of a sudden Wanda doesn't remember the kids anymore, she's crazy again, her powers don't work the way everyone thought they would..."

There was always supposed to be some big reveal on 'why' it happened and I guess there is some flashbacks in that Young Avengers series to the why being Doom messing her mind.

That's why I think it would have been better to have revealed it either at the time tying it straight into the end of the original Thor title being that Loki is the one that both caused her new bout of insanity and perhaps even the power up being tied to Ragnarok as it was part of him wanting to punish Thor by destroying the Avengers.

Just that to me would have been a cool way to tie it back towards what had gone on before.

Really the got to blow up the characters like Wanda, Vision, Wonder Man, Hawkeye, Hank Pym etc. as they can't really go big with the solo title stars 'usually'.

I think the whole Civil War kind of screwed up Bendis' momentum on the title. It sold a ton of issues, but it made his Avengers very different for like a few years. It also didn't help that while there was some good buildup and back story both Siege and definitely Secret Invasions were total punts as storylines. The actual mini-series just weren't that good at all and nothing much really happened. I think sometimes they would be smarter just doing it as a crossover between the regular titles and not having that extra mini-series or completely integrating it into some 52 style series, but hey they are about selling comics not necessarily telling a good story.

Well, Loki would have made a whole lot of sense, but Loki was a small child when Young Avengers came out, and the laws of comics say that whomever is found out to be responsible has to be punched repeatedly in the penultimate issue. So Doom it was.

You say that like there's a problem with punching child Loki in the face

Aw, Kid Loki is my favorite Marvel character at the moment, along with She-Hawkeye.

But it's more the problem with punishing a character for what he did earlier, even though in the meantime he died (twice) and was resurected as a sorta different person (twice). Hm, I wonder what he will be ressurected as next time. Frog Loki! Horse Loki!

shame kid loki isnt kid loki anymore.

they grow up so fast

how long did Lady Loki last? I was reading Dark Avengers and was just like "huh, Loki's suddenly a woman?"

Under a year, I think.

but Loki was a small child when Young Avengers came out,

Wait, what?

You haven't read Journey into Mystery? You should, it's one of the best Marvel series of recent years.

There was always supposed to be some big reveal on 'why' it happened and I guess there is some flashbacks in that Young Avengers series to the why being Doom messing her mind.

I've read Children's Crusade, but to me it felt like more like an author's saving throw than a part of some plan Bendis had originally had, especially since it came out 6 or 7 years after Avengers Disassembled. In AD and House of M, there is no implication at all that Wanda had been manipulated by some outside force (besides Pietro). If this revelation was "always supposed" to happen, you'd think Bendis would've at least dropped some hints towards it?

I read it, but Young Avengers predates it by ~5 years.

I don't think it makes a lot of sense to assume that Bendis was overly bothered about tidying up loose ends on traditional Avengers-only characters - he was betting that he would gain more readers than he would lose with a clearing of the decks, and he won that bet handily.

I read it, but Young Avengers predates it by ~5 years.

Yeah, but I think Frederik B was talking about Children's Crusade, which was the series where the whole "Wanda was manipulated" thing was revealed, and which took place while Loki was a kid.

Yup.

Not comics, but damn if I can think of a better thread on which to post this: what looks to be every issue ever of Starlog is now available for free on Archive.org:

http://archive.org/details/starlogmagazine

fuck yes, thank you for pointing this out. now i just need a zip.
and another one for Famous Monsters!

holy hell, they have OMNI!

This was good, from a few weeks back:

http://www.theawl.com/2013/03/the-future-according-to-1981-an-omni-appreciation

xpost yeah I noticed OMNI was on there too, fucking sweet

It kills my soul that Omni was writing about hydrogen as the alternative to fossil fuels 35 years ago and we're really no closer to the reality.

wow that site is really a goldmine

archive.org?

it's amazing. Some highlights:

-Tons of Robyn Hitchcock and Mountain Goats live shows
-Starlog/Omni
-HP Lovecraft audiobooks
-Scans of old Weird Tales issues

but i have only scratched the surface

oh and

-Dead shows
-I Remember Lemuria ebook

http://archive.org/search.php?query=charlton%20comics
http://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Dell%20Comics%22
http://archive.org/details/ace-comics
http://archive.org/search.php?query=quality%20comics%20AND%20mediatype%3Atexts
http://archive.org/search.php?query=archie%20comics%20AND%20mediatype%3Atexts
http://archive.org/search.php?query=collection%3Aatariforcecomics&sort=-publicdate <-lol
http://archive.org/details/blazingcombat-warren
http://archive.org/details/warren-1984-magazine ("The title of the magazine was changed to 1994 starting with issue 11 in February, 1980 based on a request by the estate of George Orwell.")
http://archive.org/search.php?query=collection%3Awarrenpublishingmisc&sort=-publicdate
http://archive.org/details/warren-vampirella
http://archive.org/details/comixinternational

also: http://archive.org/browse.php?field=subject&mediatype=texts&collection=webcomicuniverse

Well now SOME of those have gotta be technically not kosher? Like Atari Force is surely in copyright (though probly never to be reprinted for the same reasons as marvel micronauts/rom and shang-chi etc)

according to very reputable source http://home.hiwaay.net/~lkseitz/comics/atariforce/

ATARI FORCE is an expired registered trademark of the original Atari, Inc. Copyright on ATARI FORCE material belongs to either Atari, Inc. (formerly known as Infogrames) or DC Comics, depending on which issue's indica you examine. This web site, its operators, and any content contained on this site relating to ATARI FORCE are not authorized by DC Comics or Atari.

or more to the point since it's a joint copyright of an unenforced property, nobody seems to care?

huh! I wonder if the same is true of ROM. (Josh Bayer and Jeffrey Lewis to thread...)

i think the spaceknight and dire wraith mythos in xmen kinda botches that

i mean the AF thing is definitely hinky, don't get me wrong. I just doubt that warner's lawyers are focused on shutting this down.

Still just reading quarter comics. I have a slim stack of current stuff that I'll get to in time I'm sure, but quarter comics have been much more fun.

I was scanning odd bits out of them. As much fun as it was turning up the weirdo panel or whatnot, taking photographs of them have proven to be much more fun.

http://intrapanel.tumblr.com/

Steranko NICK FURY and Starlin AVENGERS has been the order of the day recently.

it's nice that IDW did an all-in-one collection of Zaucer Of Zilk, but with dayglo colour on glossy paper and shrunk to half-size, I'm really struggling to get immersed in it :(

oh man Atari Force

I once had to collect the comics writer Mike Baron from the airport and take him to a convention I was helping to organise in London. At one point in town, we walked by a magazine exchange shop in central London that had some comics in the window. Baron was looking at the display and saying to me "I wonder if they've got any of my comics on show?" Eventually we spotted one - a late issue of Atari Force that he'd had written. He mumbled to me something like, "That was the worst thing I ever wrote!"

That's what Atari Force always makes me think of.

lol

much love in my house for Mike Baron for Nexus

Let us not forget Baron's batshit Punisher stuff in the 80s and early 90s, including the, er, questionably-tasteful story where Frank Castle became black for a few issues:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_POL186vJiGw/SnxMrfALhGI/AAAAAAAAAo4/TDiLWv1ahbQ/s320/punisher61.jpg

Warren and Gary Pleece's Montague Terrace was really enjoyable.

Baron is universally terrible outside of Nexus y/n?

huh that Pleece Force thing is published here but $39.99

nah

Baron is universally terrible outside of Nexus y/n?

him and Rude did a great Mister Miracle special/annual iirc.

that's all I got

some ppl repped for the badger, back in the day, but i've never read it myself

that rude mister miracle special was written by mark evanier

His Flash issues are great. And his Punisher stuff is basically the pure-brain-distillation of every 12-year-old boy in the 80s.

(In a good way.)

that rude mister miracle special was written by mark evanier

ah of course. was thinking I might be misremembering that

when I went back to those Badger issues recently they seemed pretty stupid

altho he is a good foil when he shows up in Nexus

i like the first 50 issues of badger okay
and his work on punisher more or less defined the character for better and worse

Hmm, I might check into that then -- that was during my hiatus from Marvel/DC. I'd assumed that Ennis was the one who really brought that character out.

Ennis did do big work with the character, but that was over a decade later - mid-'80s Punisher was the iconic version for years

I'm reading Ben Katchor's new collection Hand-Drying In America and other stories which is, unsurprisingly, pretty damn great. I got a chance to go to a reading he gave in Los Angeles last week so I got it signed (apologies for the good sized pic):

http://24.media.tumblr.com/304884df405113d7ea9b2ef83d4f3a7e/tumblr_mld7whRbrN1qbknquo1_500.jpg

IIRC Baron's 80s work on Punisher is formally pretty good (never read later stuff like the black Punisher story, that sounds pretty dodgy), but his right-wing politics are also quite obvious in the writing; though Punisher of course is a character who very much invites such politics.

Also, there was some very bleak stuff there for a mainstream Marvel book (like the death of Microchip's son); if it weren't for the occasional appearances by characters like Daredevil, you could almost think Punisher wasn't part of the Marvel universe at all.

too bad this didn't get made

still looks good!

watching the wonder woman independent lens, it feels like something that was made by a non comic fan who had a point they wanted to make rather than explore the background of the character. interviews with gloria steinem, trina and the like; marston's ubermensch bondage themes utterly unconsidered, entirely retrofeminized understanding of the meaning behind his kink. the kind of documentary with way too much cut paper animation and little kids voicing word balloons. made it about fifteen minutes.

cover design on that Katchor looks terrible, at least at that cropping - v uncharacteristic!

I'd like to try Baron's Flash, but then I'm vaguely interested in reading p much the first ten years of that post-Crisis series. Seems like he came up with most of the character and pseudoscience stuff that the run rested on though? [before it became pseudomagic and The Flash Family]

But I bought idk 10-50 issues of Badger cheap years ago and struggled through five or six before running aground

that rude mister miracle special was written by mark evanier

Evanier and Rude did a Kirby Jimmy Olsen tribute in the same style about 12 years later if ppl don't know but would like to:

http://forbiddenplanet.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Mister_Miracle_Special_Vol_1_1.jpg

http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090106125911/marvel_dc/images/3/35/Legends_of_the_DC_Universe_Vol_1_14.jpg

it's not as glorious as the Mister Miracle but it's fun and pretty

"IIRC Baron's 80s work on Punisher is formally pretty good (never read later stuff like the black Punisher story, that sounds pretty dodgy), but his right-wing politics are also quite obvious in the writing; though Punisher of course is a character who very much invites such politics."

I don't doubt that Mike Baron's politics are pretty vitrolic in some of his interviews from the last decade or so, but I didn't really find it that overtly present in his 80s comic work. The guy could be pretty funny in quite a bit of his comics. I saw in an interview that he said he treated writing The Punisher like writing a TV procedural cop show and that is kind of how the comic reads. They hit upon alot of 80s crime drama tropes in that run and they hold up pretty decent for 80s code comics. Essential Punisher Vol. 2 and 3 is where the bulk of his Punisher stories are located.

I still think the Badger is a secret influence upon Deadpool, as least personality wise.

cover design on that Katchor looks terrible, at least at that cropping - v uncharacteristic!

That's a crop of the interior title page. The cover is more what you'd expect, and the book is huge - a hardcover roughly 12" x12" and 1" thick.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61EREiVkyrL.jpg

http://www.gearbits.com/images/thumbs-up.gif

Marshal Law Deluxe Edition has just turned up unexpectedly - I'd forgotten I'd even ordered it. I've got about half of Hand of Fire left to read then I'll get into it.

Yeah, I noticed it shipped earlier than the original release date was supposed to be. Can't wait to get my copy; I'm only familiar with the original mini and Takes Manhattan, the rest is completely new to me.

Does anyone know why it ended up being published by DC? Weren't the original comics by Marvel? I guess O'Neill and Mills own the rights to it, but I thought Top Shelf was gonna publish it? That would've made more sense than DC...

Original comics were by Marvel, Apocalypse, Dark Horse and Image.

I loved Baron's Flash run when I read it years ago - he did some great work establishing Wally as a jackass and then spent years developing him into a more sympathetic character.

I don't know what the story behind MARSHAL LAW's move from Top Shelf to DC is all about. Honestly, I don't know why DC would even want it. It's so utterly unlike what they do now (and so savagely parodic of their backbone material). When I heard (from Pat Mills at SDCC a couple years ago) that the book was going to DC, I didn't have any reaction because I was completely stunned. My guess is that it comes down to money, but that's just a guess.

Will be great to have all that between two covers (assuming THE MASK and the HELLRAISER material made it in as well.)

I'm sure the story of the publishing switch is pretty banal, otherwise it would have been talked about somewhere. I'm just glad it's getting reprinted as my original issues are in pretty rough shape.

Was Baron on Flash before or after Messner-Loebs? Bc I remember M-L's run being seen at the time as very depth-adding.

Our table at mocca was right next to that of Katchor's publisher, so I got to meet/talk with him for the first time. That was a serious thrill for me: he is all-time top 10 in my estimation. Could not afford the amazing looking new book but hopefully soon.

finally picked up Donald Duck: A Christmas in Shacktown

xp Yeah, I guess I conflated Baron and Messner-Loebs' Flash stories - Baron set the template for the post-Crisis Wally, Messner-Loebs added the extra dimensions.

So for all my dissapointment with the current state of floppies, last week I went into the store to catch up and bought Saga, Avengers Assemble, Guardians of the Galaxy, Batman Inc, Daredevil and Hawkeye -- and they were all pretty damn great. So maybe time to reconsider (although NB only one DC purchase).

Just treating this also as a "rolling comics news/gossip" thread as well -- Dan Adkins has died at 76.
http://www.newsfromme.com/2013/05/08/dan-adkins-r-i-p/

oh sad. great inker - notorious swiper.

I finally found Essential Man-Thing volumes 1 and 2 and am reading those comics for the first time. I've been on a Steve Gerber kick. I had read most of the Howard the Duck and some of his Defenders as a kid, but really are only reading it all in order over the past year or so. I've now read or re-read most of his Defenders run and all the Howard the Duck. Man-Thing is quite an entertaining read and the artwork is really nice, it looks really good in black and white.

I finished the Sean Howe Marvel book this morning. A good read, but pretty depressing. He zipped through the last 10-12 years a little too fast though, imo.

he's noted that he couldn't write too much about that period because people aren't ready to dish yet

This Simon Hanselmann interview is p.amazing:
http://www.tcj.com/disgusting-creatures-the-simon-hanselmann-interview/

i read one of his strips after that interview.

noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo thanks

yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees thanks

running a comic strip thread on main ilx board. nominations open now - would love everyone to participate etc:
three panels, no punchlines: ilx's comic strip nomination thread is now open

Yesterday's DAREDEVIL was just solid superhero comics.

Yeah, Waid-haters need to rethink their position in light of his Daredevil run.

Pretty sure I had a big ol' smile while reading it. The various fake-outs (esp. w/ the cuts to the supporting cast) were very satisfying.

That ending was pretty dark! Waid sure can pull out those wicker Sue Dibnys from time to time.

bought a massive, multi-volume, early-mcsweeny's-style collection of chris ware's "building stories" pieces a couple weeks ago. mostly cuz i'd been given a borders gift card. un and re boxed it, but haven't yet read any of the various sub-volumes. so far it just sits on the bedside table looking important and also vaguely embarrassing. hey big giant design-thing: you're a comic book.

also - fantagraphics' recent-ish joost swarte career survey and a collection of marc bell's strip-form stuff from d&q. swarte is gorgeous but too often disturbingly racist (;_;), while bell is gorgeous but nearly impossible to read.

also also -- several issues of michael deforge's solo comic, lose. fucking amazing.

can't understand how anyone could dislike hanselmann

Spent an hour yesterday with Tom Spurgeon's exhaustive overview of Kim Thompson's career. Real trip down memory lane for me. I cried.

today i scored at the library: mister o by lewis trondheim, nancy vol 4 by john stanley and dan gormley, and new school by dash shaw.

xxp hanselmann's truth zone strips are not good. i dunno about the rest, am not inspired to seek it out.

I just finished King City, which was nice to read in one go. I'd read bits and pieces over the years but it's pretty damn great. Just started reading Beyond Palomar as I wait for the massive order from Fantagraphics to arrive.

Hey, is Herbie as good as everyone says? Am tempted, but put off by expense of the (admitedly lovely) archive volumes.

so far this month I have been reading original art in huge quantities, and mailing unread comics home to meet in six months

Jess Fink's We Can Fix It!. Cute.

Age of Ultron, it starts off so well, but halfway through kinda loses it's momentum.

found the first four volumes of trondheim's monster children's books from papercutz; didn't even know they existed!

Herbie is absolutley as great as everyone says. I know it hails from an era where madness abounded, but it's a lot less wearying and diminishing returns-prone than some of the Silver Age superhero stuff, and very well-crafted so it isn't just some outsider art thing like "I Will Destroy All The Civilized Planets". Basically I was confused and delighted every time I turned the page in those.

i've read up to page 96 of to the finland station, inspired by the poll. i love it so far. i embarrassingly knew very little of the figures wilson mentions early on in the book -- michelet, renan, babeuf -- and love the way wilson elegantly situates their main ideas within the context of their biographies and reepective historical moments. this book is very gripping for a work of intellectual history, and in this way reminds me of bertrand russell's a history of western philosophy. i hope this book isn't also full of nonsense.

not that kind of "reading"

i am also reading a book of emily dickinson poems.

that count?

nope

oh sorry. i thought this was i love books.

and so thought you were making a comment like, that i should have already read to the finland station in college or something

no perty pictures, treeship

the last comic book i read was bodyworld. i liked the way it was put together -- how you got a good sense of the layout of the town, due to the map and the coordinates for each scene -- but i don't know if the book was totally successful. i'd imagine that people who are really utopian about hallucinogens would hate it, because it is a book where these mushrooms bring people closer together -- encourage ego death on a massive scale -- but the effect of this is scary and weird, as people become hive mind zombies.

i liked bodyworld a lot - i think crabbits told me about it

thanks, Daniel_Rf, i think i will take the herbie plunge: "a lot less wearying and diminishing returns-prone than some of the Silver Age superhero stuff" exactly dispels my fears

i traded some trades into the store today and walked out with --
a volume of the complete crumb comics i did not have (the one with patton)
a love and rockets collection for helen
watchmen (used copy for myself since i don't think i'm ever going to get back the one i leant out two years ago)
alan moore "nemo: heart of ice."

Wow, I just learned about Prophet the other day and I love it! I'm sure this is what everyone says about it, but the hard-edged sci-fi mysticism thing is so perfectly Moebius-like. Surprisingly good character development, too, even for characters (like various John clones) that are only the "main character" of single issues.

so saga is pretty fun - i read first two trades this week and it was def enjoyable + light reading (which isn't necessarily a bad thing - i prefer pulpy vaughan to preachy vaughan

Prophet is the best comic at being a monthly comic out there at the moment

I've grown to like Graham but I kinda hate Prophet. I think it's more of a mess than a joy, which is the opposite of the King City & Multiple Warheads stuff. I gave up after the second arc.

found the first four volumes of trondheim's monster children's books from papercutz; didn't even know they existed!

― how bad could it be to be stuck to the couch, forever... (forksclovetofu), Friday, July 12, 2013 11:24 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I just found these too - adorable and fun!

I've been on a faux-Marvel kick reading Savage Dragon and Invincible for the past week or so. I got a long run of Invincible that paired up to where I stopped, so I am reading it from like 54-102 right now. I'm up to #68. I'm also reading Savage Dragon and am up to #52.

I also re-read Final Crisis within the past couple of weeks, starting with the 7 Soldiers Mister Miracle mini-series and including some of the tie-ins in the reading order. I could be convinced that Superman Beyond is one of the coolest super hero comic's ever conceived and pulled off. It was a good re-read and this is the order I did. I'm going to re-read Morrison's whole Batman run soon.

Seven Soldiers: Mister Miracle 1-4
Seven Soldiers 1
DC Universe 0
Final Crisis 1
Final Crisis: Rogues Revenge 1-3
Final Crisis: Requiem
Final Crisis: 2-3
Final Crisis: Superman Beyond 1-2
Final Crisis: Secret Files
Final Crisis: Revelations 1-5
Final Crisis: Resist
Final Crisis: Submit
Final Crisis: 4
Batman: 682-683
Final Crisis: 5-7

you missed JLA: Classified

I re-read from ^ through all of Seven Soldiers and FC last year / early this year but I didn't include any Geoff Johns or who the fuck ever else nonsense

I'm planning on rereading Morrison's Batman after it's properly finished - it would still just flow out of my brain in the months between future issues.

I binge-read all of Morrison's stuff from JLA:C through to the first season of Batman Inc - it reads so much better than month-to-month, and the weirder meandering stories (like the one with the Bane lookalike, some of the trippier Inc issues, and Batman RIP in general) make a lot more sense in context. Plus, as with The Invisibles, all the reoccuring motifs and foreshadows are fun to spot.

Plus, if you pack in Animal Man, 52 and his late 90s JLA stories (which actually references many of the elements in the 00's comics), you end with this kind of self-sustaining shadow DC epic that's taken 25 years (!) to tell. It's the sort of thing that only a comics fan would geek out about, but it's still really impressive.

I bought one of the 52 issues that lead into his Batman run the other week, and it was chock-full of Buddy Baker and yellow aliens. Tell me is only be frustrated if I tried to read all of the series....

it won't be as good as you hope in the end, but it was a decent effort

Completely recommend it. Some of it is TERRIBLE, but on balance it's well worth the effort, especially if you read it in tandem with Doug Wolk's 52 blog.

(Although after Countdown and Flashpoint, reads like a list of wasted opportunities.)

A little late to weigh in but herbie is awesome, I have all three volumes. Alan moore's favirite superhero comic iirc

I didn't include the whole Legion story, as it doesn't fit as much as tying back to Johns JLA story with, but I think the couple I included worked pretty good in this Final Crisis read for me. It's not exactly necessary, but it does fill out some of the background and I think are way better done than many of these 'subsidiary' comics to these big story lines.

I think if you want to put together some long mega-Morrison DC reading order including 52, the Revelations kind of has to be included to finish off Rucka's story beat with Batwoman/The Question and the whole Crime Bible tie-in.

"it reads so much better than month-to-month"

Final Crisis as a read does get thrown off as the Batman and the second issue of Superman Beyond came out of order with the series.

That said with Morrison's Batman run, I think the whole "The Return of Bruce Wayne" I think worked better for me in reading it month to month and if I was compiling it I would have those chapters interspersed with the Batman and Robin run instead of being separate. They separate those out in the trades and I'm not sure that would be as good a read. Hard to say, I read them as singles though but I do know from reading say Civil War as a trade, it kind of blows as it misses too many key things that were in other comics.

I do think of the best things about Morrison's comics is that they got some depth that does hold up to being entertaining for re-read. I know as RIP was coming out, I would pretty much jump back and read a couple issues before it before reading the new one. Most comics, even pretty good ones, you read it and just put it away then 'maybe' a long while down the line check it again - Morrison's to me are some of the rare few, I find myself going back and re-reading quite a bit, even as they come out month to month.

just zipped through brubaker's run on Uncanny Xmen and am working through Journey Into Mystery... that's fun!

Me and Tom hart are characters in an issue of Fatale coming out shortly. Ed showed me the pages, my mind was blown.

I think if you want to put together some long mega-Morrison DC reading order

Have a draft of this on my computer at work tbh

i really miss that site that was dedicated to the right reading order of all trades (i think it was on millarworld or something)

i might hit up the ones listed here, but there's no Morrison specific list
http://collectededitions.blogspot.com/

Just finished the entire Hickman FF run, which was super fun, a little try-hard at times, but definitely worth the effort.

Incidentally yesterday I went into the store to by this week's floppies, and there was actually TOO MUCH good stuff to buy, which hasn't happened in a really long while.

I'm trying to decide whether to continue with Manhattan Projects after the first trade. It's fun, but a bit obvious, as weird as it feels to say that about a book with Robert Oppenheimer's cannibal evil twin and poor Harry Daghlian as a radioactive skull- between Hellboy/BPRD and Matt Fraction's "The Five Fists of Science" and a lot of other work this is pretty well-trodden ground. Though eliding pretty much the entirety of WWII between issues was an interesting narrative choice. Does the story pull together in some sort of recognizable shape or is it more or less all freewheeling weirdness? I think I'd be fine with either, actually, but the former would get me to pick up volume 2 a little sooner.

Earlnash, did you continue with it?

I haven't gotten the second trade of Manhattan Projects, saw it on the shelf and it is on my pick list.

In hindsight I do give the Manhattan Projects a thumbs up for just being different and a bit weird. One of the cool things when I was in comics in the 80s, the line between what was some weird indie and the regular stuff was so much smaller. There just wasn't that many titles out there including everything, so you would come across stuff like Puma Blues or Yummy Fur next to your Swamp Things or your Uncanny X-men. You would pick up an odd issue of Mister X or Mr. Monster or Love & Rockets out of the same quarter or cheap bins with the super hero stuff and often get a "WTF is going on here..." kind of vibe. The used bookstore where I got comics even would end up with some odd issues of Warrior and 2000AD and definitely those reprints of them by Eagle. I'd say Manhattan Projects caught with me in a similar way and being sold in my current comic store next to the trades of his Fantastic Four run etc.

It kind of does the same thing month to month. I don't want to say it's treading water, because that seems a bit too negative. In a lot of ways it makes sense to sell it next to FF because the 'exploration into weirdness' vibe is the same.

George Packer - The Unraveling
Lynne Olson - Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941

Rutu Modan's new book The Property is predictably amazing. The work she does with color is just flawless.

Does The Unravelling get less portentous after all the Dos Passos nonsense in the intro? I like Packer's previous work a lot but found this one pretty awkward after trying the Kindle sampler.

The Hawkeye annual is fun.

found out about this WAY too late dammit
http://www.estatesales.net/estate-sales/481185.aspx

I went to the comic store and got my pull list for the first time in a month. They were out of Manhattan Projects TPB #2, but had the new issue. They sold out and are re-ordering. I got the Prophet TPB instead.

Infinity #1- I actually have all of Hickman's Avengers run but have held off on it. I'll give the guy enough faith on it just on that Fantastic Four run, as I thought that was a good read. That said, I want to try reading a big chunk of the story at once instead of going at it an issue at a time. I'm going to read the first part up to Infinity then probably read it all again when the series is done.
Daredevil #29-
Indestructible Hulk #11
Saga #13- I'm caught up on this title, but it hasn't published in a few months.
East of West #5- I have read the first three on this comic. Story was pretty much setup at this point, but the artwork is unique and interesting. The colors on the title are very dynamic and well done.
Prophet TPB #1- This looks pretty cool and I really like the idea of more science fiction comics.

Infinity #1 was pretty good, I thought. I enjoyed the Surfer story more though, that was gorgeous.

Infinity #1 was good. Avengers #18 wasn't as good, but really, a lot happened for a tie-in comic. This is really going to be an epic story.

Trinity War is crap. At this point I think it seems pandora created the johnsiverse for no reason at all, and then created the dangerous villains as well, by mistake. Nonsensical crap.

i tried the first volume of the hickman avengers, didn't get on w/ it all - slow moving and not especially 'avengers-like' - but then i remain a bendis/avengers stan, missing him already

also on the pile: thimble theater volumes, the cinebooks' 'fake and mortimers'

I'm not 100% behind the concept that every superhero is a potential Avenger, with ad hoc team membership varying from arc to arc and even issue to issue. Shang Chi as an Avenger? And copiloting spacecraft and blowing up Infinity baddies with space missiles? I dunno... I kinda like the way Hickman played the long game in FF, though that run's climax didn't seem very climactic, so I'm willing to give him a little more slack here.

there's a great roy thomas-george perez issue of the fantastic four where a number of different characters audition for the ff, and it's a 100 times more entertaining and concise than hickman's rather po-faced variation on the same theme

I just love the epicness of it all, and the worldbuilding. In five pages (or so) hickman made the skrulls more intruguing than bendis ever did.

I've been bingeing my way through Hickman's FF and Avengers runs -- they're a lot of fun, but I find something kind of unsatisfactory about them that I can't quite put my finger on. Maybe it's the progginess - craft for craft's sake. But they are really well crafted. So I dunno.

Love this article: http://www.tcj.com/american-pickers/

I've been living that article for the last year or so, snagging Bronze Age (crap and not) up at an alarming rate. Lots of treasures out there. Sure, I'm not getting entire storylines, but I can get an issue of DC FIRST ISSUE SPECIAL with Dr. Fate done by Walt Simonson for a buck.

the comment about buying full runs and having them hardback bound is very interesting... wonder what that runs and what the process is.

I can't recall, though I've talked to folks who do this in the past. On the order of 20-30 dollars for a 24 issue volume. I think.

Y'know, if Marvel printed their books on decent damned paper, I wouldn't even consider this service. The fact is, however, that slick paper reprints of most matte paper comics looks absolutely terrible.

I got to say the Hickman/Epting New Avengers comic is quite fine. I like talky super hero stories and I have actually liked the previous Marvel U. 'Illuminati' stories before, just because the stories are that way. Like Hickman's FF run, I think he is pretty true to the characters and there is some good lines of dialog. The story pretty much is riffing with Hickman's particular style on the whole multiverse 'crisis' even with 'Red Skies' and these huge omnipotent beings playing with everything.

On a different note, I kind of wish they would do one of these things where it's Kang vs. Apocalypse, being the two big time travelers get involved in one of these epic stories. That is a matchup that seems kind of obvious but really hasn't yet happened except a minor one in back story (I think).

just got this collection of Steranko's "Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D" and am kind of appalled at the re-coloring job

Aw shit, no, I had high hopes for that book :(

How bad is it?

Or wait! Is this the old "Who Is Scorpio?" book?

just got Lisa Hanawalt's "My Dumb Dirty Eyes" and Christophe Blain's "Alain Passard", both are excellent

Norwegian Wood, believe it or not for the first time

Oh fuck this is the comics one again. Umm shakey i have that book too and you just have to go with the garish coloring. I know what u mean though.

it's this one:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51D1TmbUnZL._SY346_.jpg

which is what I get for $7 I guess

Ah, ok- I was worried for a minute it was the new omnibus thing, which I thought was out already (turns out I was wrong and it's out in October).

Lisa Hanawalt's "My Dumb Dirty Eyes"

I just ordered a copy of this through my local shop, but it's going to be a couple of weeks. Can't wait!

They did recolour Simonson's Thor for the omnibus, though, and Miller's Daredevil was recoloured too. Dunno if that's a regular Marvel policy with older stuff, given that traditional CMYK colouring doesn't look quite as good as on the glossy paper they use with reprints than on the original pulpier paper. The Thor recolouring is actually pretty good, there aren't any fancy digital effects or stuff like that, it still looks an 80s comic. But the DD recolour job is kinda crappy, IMO. I don't know if there's a way to make the original colours look good besides printing the collections on lower-quality paper?

Just started reading Locke & Key. The amount of tropes that Joe Hill's dad usually employs show up here in an amusing amount, but there's a vibe that the son grew up on 80s/90s Vertigo rather than 50s EC.

I really liked his short story collection and first novel, but every time I pick up one of his comics, the art is p ugly and the lettering is terrible and I put it down without finishing a page

Just read 'The Initiates'
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=43847
highly recommended

Burnt thru all of L&K last night except to the final unreleased issued. God, this stuff is good.

Also, Brian K Vaughan's Saga.

A handful of flyers and postcards picked up, walking between tables at SPX. Too busy seeing panels to even crack a cover on anything I've bought.

Went berserk on current Top Shelf $3 sale and am waiting for a big box of groovy stuff

http://braveandboldlost.blogspot.com/

This site is pretty awesome. I'd love to read this issue.

http://i1270.photobucket.com/albums/jj615/Silverager1969/519.jpg

Just read Pete Bagge's upcoming Woman Rebel: The Margaret Sanger Story. Really good, and his first long-form biographical work: though almost entirely told in one-page vignettes, so could have worked serialised in a newspaper or women's-interest magazine. Someone pay him to do more Founding Fathers Funnies!

Ha, the Ego planet one is great.

Bagge did one-pagers for Discovery magazine for a year awhile back. some of those were pretty funny.

Shit, I forgot the Top Shelf sale this year :(

I picked up a bunch of stuff at Philly's Locust Moon fest this afternoon:
Katie Skelly's Operation Margarine #1-3 (these are going to be collected by AdHouse eventually, but I like the little minicomics)
Andrea Tsurumi's Andrew Jackson Throws a Punch: An Inaugural Brawl (this is basically the hallway fight scene from Oldboy but with Ol' Hickory)
Grant Morrison and J.G. Jones's Marvel Boy (bought at the shop since Jones was there, but I felt like a dick about asking him to sign a book he didn't have for sale and frankly wasn't interested in the books he did have at his table, so I just stopped by and said hi)
Michael Kupperman's Tales Designed to Thrizzle vol. 2 (Kupperman was incredibly nice, did a little drawing of a skeleton in a clawfoot bathtub in my copy of the book, and has a comedy show in a couple of weeks just a few blocks from my apartment, yay)
Ron Wimberly's Prince of Cats

Andrea is great and a buddy. She has an adaptation of the wind in the willows coming out in a couple months!

Oh awesome, I'll have to check that out!

It's 10 pages within an anthology of kids lit adaptations. I can't remember the title atm. Google it!

Thanos vs. Avengers trade - I've read up through Starlin's first Warlock/Thanos story, getting ready to start the conclusion storyline.

Marvel Essential Marvel Team Up Vol. 3 - This one has the early Claremont/Byrne work with Spider-man, which is some pretty good 70s comics. I just finished the Captain Britain 2 part storyline.

East of West- I re-read 1-5 with the new issue 6.
Anyone checking this one out since the first trade came out? I like it. The artwork and style of it totally reminds me of Matt Wagner and the weird fantasy world vibe of Grendel and Mage. There is some Steve Rude future retro thing in some of the artwork too. The digital coloring really works well on this stuff too. I like the head of the Confederacy character quite a bit.

I'm also caught up on XO Manowar which is a pretty decent old-style 'marvel' comic. I never read the original incarnation and picked this up from the shelf as the first couple issues looked pretty cool and I liked Cary Nord's artwork on Conan. I've kept up with it and it's a solid comic story. Bad thing is I know like with most indies, they probably will either cold stop or blow it at some point, but it's been interesting title. I also got and read the first issue of the Eternal Warrior which was a decent Conan style comic (and the later incarnation is tied to the XO title).

Thrizzle collections will burn you out quickly, as the dada gets to be too much taken all at once

yeah: great comic, terrible book

love the look of East of West, been meaning to pick it up at some point

I agree re: Thrizzle; I love it but reading it cover to cover would just burn out my capacity to appreciate weirdness for the rest of the day. Short chunks are best.

Got some high end stuff while I was in Maine: vol. 3 of the Captain Easy Sundays, Katchor's Hand Drying in America, and a Dick Tracy strip collection that I may give to my mother for Christmas. (I was telling her about the publishing trend of reprinting classic strips and she started reminiscing that Dick Tracy was her favorite when she was a kid.)

Every time a new Dick tracy collection comes out I swear it'll be my last. And then I buy the new one when it comes out. The run between volumes 7 to 13 or thereabouts (from the switch to the large format) is just insanely good.

Talking of classic strip reprints, has there been a published reason why Walt & Skeezix stumbled to a halt and the next release is a set of strips from the years before the collections start?

East of West is fun and seems to have conquered the "every character is a Dragonlance NPC" that besets everything else Hickman does. God is Dead, Hickman's other indie joint, is awful though, or at least the first issue was.

(NPC theory courtesy of nice Tom post over on FT.)

xxp was there ever a reason given for the three-year gap between books 3 and 4?

The Essential Warlock. Despite some nice Gil Kane a/work (esp when he's inked by Dan Adkins), the pre-Starlin Warlocks are soooooooo bad.

Those early Roy Thomas issues of Warlock are still pretty strange. It's a better read than the early Captain Marvels which have some nice Gene Colan artwork and no stories at all. Both characters have pretty odd and obscure origins and it's pretty easy to see why neither title really caught on.

I just got done reading Jim Starlin's 70s Thanos/Captain Marvel/Warlock arc in trade. I had read it as a kid although not the Steve Gerber issues with Moondragon in Daredevil. I really love those pages with all of the little interior panels. The pages in both the Captain Marvel and Warlock story where Thanos gets his comes to lose are just great.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Wh-Puewskgo/TXVPqLWtefI/AAAAAAAAELo/hMD1H3N9dDg/s1600/Captain_Marvel_28-14.jpg

Whoooooa crazy

yeah that's awesome

I just popped into Dave's Comics for the first time in over a month, and blowed if my list isn't mostly K Gillen and his mates:

1x Iron Man (weirdly paced, the first entire half is "with a single bound he was free" and then some v. rushed relationship stuff)
1x Young Avengers (this = awesome, teenage FEELINGS + metatextual monsters)
1x Uber (if superheroes were another type of weapon in WWII, very good and Avatar gory while still being v. serious about WAR)
1x Three (more historicalish stuff, this is basically him shouting at 300)

1x Sex Criminals by Matt Fraction (really great - if time stops every time you have an orgasm, who do you talk to about it?)
2x Mighty Avengers by the Merely Magnificent Vic Fluro (Well put together Street Level Heroes vs ridiculously powerful cosmic evil)

1x last issue of Buffy Season 9
1x Fatale, more Brubaker and Phillips
1x Dial E, the weird rebadge for villian's month of Justice League which is instead a mind-dump / multi-artist memorial of China Mieville's Dial H title - because Dave's is a good comic shop, they weren't charging any more for the lenticular version of the Brian Bolland cover - because they're a very good comic shop, those versions found their way into the pulls of the people with Dial H on order first, and then those with Justice League.

Trades:

Sweet Tooth v1 (post-apoc is so popular right now)
Atomic Robo v4 (one-shots inside continuity)
The Cape: 1969 (I should read the Cape next)
American Vampire v2-3 (I like how the stories advance thru time, and change genre that way)

I just finished re-reading INFERNO and boy, was it the beginning of the end times for Marvel. It's barely competent.

read Jeet Heer's monograph on Francoise Mouly, which I didn't even know was coming out or existing until I saw it in The Beguiling. (seems to be on a micropress that hand-binds their books in Toronto, so it's possibly not actually available anywhere else)

it's good, though falls into a trap Heer decries of his prior self in the intro, conflating her and Art's careers, though obviously it's an occupational hazard. still, insightful and at least a moderate corrective, but maybe feels more like a Comic Art piece (RIP) than an actual book.

That's one of the greatest pages Marvel comics ever published. And they've published a few.

I couldn't find it online, but the one I wanted to publish was during the battle with Captain Marvel where he tricks Thanos into giving up the Cosmic Cube and everything is melting and has the death's head image in it.

I actually just read Starlin's sequel in The Infinity Gauntlet for the first time a couple weeks back. It would have been better if Starlin would have done the artwork, but it's a definitely a good story and I think up there with the classic Marvel tales. The use of Mephisto in the story was really pretty ace, I thought.

I stopped reading Warlock with the TWO-IN-ONE annual and am pretty okay with it.

Finished the first omni of Skullkickers, really enjoyed it.

Finally finished up Y, the Last Man. It was fun for a while.

Getting into Manhattan Projects.

I like the fact that my city has like 4 major indie publishers in it, so the library system is loaded with comics.

Just read up to the penultimate Locke & Key, based on Kingfish's recommendation upthread. If it sticks the landing, I think it might be one of my favourite comic miniseries ever. Just really good storytelling, and I've even come to enjoy the blocky-as-hell art. YMMV based on your tolerance of some fairly cliched high school stuff, and also dreadful hick characterisation (a King specialty!), but the main characters are as well drawn as anything I've read in a mainstream comic outside of Love and Rockets, and the story is just really compelling. It's good! Although yes, the lettering is annoying.

Just finished Marvel Comics The Untold Story and can recommend it as an astonishing catalog of terrible moves the company has made.

That is one I want to read too. I found a copy of Mark Evanier's Jack Kirby book and have been reading through that on and off over the past couple of weeks.

I've been reading a whole lot of just old Marvel comics working through a bunch of back issues and Marvel Essentials. A big part of my comic reading has been over the past few years doing a 13 year old bucket list item and just trying to read all of the main Marvel comics from the start. Other than a couple of things, the current super hero books for the past 2 or 3 years have not done much for me at all. For the super hero stuff, I'm just going to concentrate on reading the old stuff as that's what I like for the most part. I'd much rather read crappy 70s or 80s Marvel or DC than the junk they put out now. I just like the tone of the stories much better anymore.

That said, I think there is some cool Image and other indie comics out there these days, quite a few good ones in the past year, so that's what I get on my pull list. I was always a big fan of stuff on First, Comico and Eclipse which were often titles like below in some ways.

The Massive
East of West
Fatale
Velvet - got first issue, art is cool and the story seems familiar. Issue was pretty good, but there is not that much known on how it will work. With the colors on top of Eptings artwork, it totally reminds me of some 80s Paul Gulacy artwork.
The Sixth Gun
Lazarus
XO Manowar
Saga
Four Ghosts

I read The Untold Story and it just made me think nearly everybody who worked at Marvel, including many of the writers and artists, are massive, massive dicks and always have been.

Three stories stick in my mind:

MacFarlane talking about the lead-up to MacFarlane Spidey #1. He's getting disillusioned and thinking about leaving so thinks he's going to do something ridiculous like ask to write a book and then they'll have no option but to sack him. Before he gets a chance to do this he gets called into the office and told the company want him to write and draw their (arguably) most famous character, and they're planning a massive launch event if he says yes. He takes the job, obviously, and decides early only he doesn't actually like writing - and admitting in the process he didn't really draw very well - so takes every opportunity to put in as many splash pages as he can because "comics fans are stupid and they'll buy anything".

Claremont is asked to rewrite an entire issue of X-Men overnight because the art did something different. He says it can't be done and is sacked. He then strongly hints that Jim Shooter then does, and that's how you explain his rise through the company.

Can't remember who it is, but a penciller and inker are told they have to complete an issue that night. New York is in hurricane lockdown and they are holed up in a hotel with tape on the windows. In the end the hotel staff leave for their own safety, giving the keys to the artists (with the cheery instruction "We'll get them in the morning if the hotel's still standing) who have been told they'll be sacked if they don't finish.

You seem to have read a different book from me, Aldo, in that I thought people like Jack Kirby, Steve Gerber, Jim Starlin and Don McGregor, just for starters, came over quite well in it. And your second example can't possibly be accurate - Shooter's rise to Editor-in-Chief occured at exactly the same time as Claremont began writing the X-Men, and Claremont carried on writing X-Men long after Shooter was fired from the company.

While the book is freah in my mind and I have it to hand:

McFarlane wasn't happy on Amazing Spiderman as he wanted to work on something where he got to write and call all the shots. He was expecting to be offered something low-profile to work on but instead they gave him his own Spiderman title.

It was Byrne, not Claremont, asked to script a book overnight. And it was Scott Lobdell who got it done. This was long after Shooter's reign.

And it was Bob Layton and Jackson Guice ordered by Shooter to redo the entire first issue of X-Factor during a hurricane while everyone else evacuated.

Mea culpa. It's no defence, but I read it on holiday (sometimes by torchlight) so my comprehension could obviously have been better.

Those people do come across quite well, but there's something damning about their apologetic reasoning for returning time and again after being screwed over that I just can't get alongside.

I don't know anything else about Claremont, but I thought he came across as fairly mensch-y in the book. Byrne, not so much, but everyone knew that.

Secret Wars 2 sure sounds like a piece of work. Is it good bad or just bad bad?

i remember it as bad bad

SW2 is bad bad.

That Marville thing also sounds totally what-were-they-thinking, should-I-be-curious

SW2 is terribad. SW1 really isn't that good, either, aside from concept. Mike Zeck saves it.

you guys have piqued my interest, i should read this book

Dr. Doom is pretty cool in the original Secret Wars.

SW II is the beginning of the big event mini-series being absolutely terrible paradyne that continues to today.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5QC1X1Y9CvQ/UavAqiaCptI/AAAAAAAAJ44/_o8rlIo0C1Q/s1600/SW21.jpg

the art in the new sandman is very very pretty

For superhero stuff that's actually compelling, I'd recommend Hawkeye and Deadpool. Hawkeye #11, the Pizza Dog issue, is going to win all those awards for a reason.

Good Marvel books at present are Deadpool, Hawkeye, Daredevil, Captain America, Avengers Arena, Fearless Defenders, Young Avengers, Indestructible Hulk (this is maybe Waid's best best book, better even than Daredevil), FF (although this is patchy).

Good DC books at present are... ummm... yeah.

Hawkeye #11, the Pizza Dog issue, is going to win all those awards for a reason.

and that reason is copying Chris Ware and David Mazzuchelli at the same damn time, at the same damn time

Forks the third panel in that image is some of the most astonishing figure drawing I have ever seen

xposts

Also

NY area ilxors please come out this saturday for

http://comicartsbrooklyn.tumblr.com/

I'll be at the Uncivilized Books table, natch.

Is this the same place the brooklyn fest was?

Yep.

and most of the same exhibitors, i see! (tho no fanta... those money woes must be severe)
will try to come out and gab witcha

DO IT

wasn't i going to bring you some books or games or something to talk about jon? hit me up off thread and let's gameplan

since I co-own a pair of comic stores I've decided I should learn more about them (as a kid I only read EC reprints and old war comics I'd find at the flea market, never liked superheroes), particularly superhero comics.

Amazing X-Men #1 this week, so I'm going to start reading that.

Ordered myself some trade paperbacks:
Transmetropolitan Vol 1
Morning Glories V. 1
Saga 1
Walking Dead 18
East of West 1
DC First Wave (cancelled series with Golden Age/noir characters)
Black Beetle - No Way Out
Saga 2
Fables 1
The Killing Joke

ha! that's a funny but good reason to start reading, among others

Whoa, how did you come to co-own a pair of comic stores if you're not into comic books already?

transmet continues to be among my alltime faves

xp I grew up around them when they were a larger chain, my brother was GM of said chain before he went to work for [comic industry monopoly redacted], so as the owners decided to get out of brick and mortar retail, they made us a deal on the last two stores.

you've got some solid almost-mediocre reading lined up for yourself, congrats

Recommend me better stuff!

All I know is EC horror, war and zombies - and I'm kind of burned out on the Walking Dead tbh.

from any era?

the only modern superhero stuff I read tends to be Grant Morrison's runs on various things, but if you want to dig into Bronze and Silver Age runs, man I love that shit. lots of goodies.

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/11/5/ms-marvel-returnsasmuslimteen.html

http://america.aljazeera.com/content/ajam/articles/2013/11/5/ms-marvel-returnsasmuslimteen/_jcr_content/mainpar/textimage/image.img.png

milo from the little bit i know of you i think you'd really like preacher

do you actually work in/with the stores at all? if not then I'd submit it's probably completely unnecessary to get familiar with superheroes yourself, as long as you have a competent buyer they sell themselves. and there's no way you can get caught up on the lifer-level nerdery that the staff should already have. but getting a broad taste for comics across genres could be both useful and edifying?

also re superheroes I can totally suggest classic shit that's fun, but wouldn't suggest very much from recent years at all.

I can get anything still in print, I need to dig into the Marvel and DC websites to find collections of Golden/Silver Age comics. Also going to try to track down some collections of the Haunted Tank and stuff like that from my childhood.

All-Star Superman and All-Star Batman and Robin are on my list, along with the Alan Moore Swamp Thing.

Read Sex Criminals 1 for free on Comixology (theoretically they're going to put me out of business one day, but if they're offering up something for free I'll get it) - it was interesting.

I don't work in the stores (yet - if things calm down I'd like to pull a shift in one or the other each week), familiarity w/ superheroes is less about the stores themselves than just a blind spot where I feel like I might have missed out on something cool.

then you don't want All-Star B&R!

i support Mordy on Preacher

if you want pulpy, genre movie-type stuff, you might like the Frank Miller's earlier work too, before he went too nuts - Ronin, Batman Year One, The Dark Knight Returns, his Daredevil run, Sin City

if you're really in the mood for something different and less superheroic, i've always liked American Splendor

Adding Preacher to the list.

I want to get some Jacques Tardi books, too, but can't decide where to start - his WW I gns?

I lack the collector gene, so I should probably plan on starting a used GN section for the stuff I read.

War Of The Trenches is a good start, yeah.

DUNGEON by TRONDHEIM

I guess I'll be re-reading all of Love & Rockets soon. I sold my copies of the newest reprints during a financial crunch but I'd started noticing (most likely due to the current Fantagraphics woes, I'd wager) that they were quickly disappearing from store shelves and Amazon, so I've begun buying them on the rare occasion when I do see them.

yer scarin me! guess i better hunt them down.

I totally second Dungeon, which is just one of the best things ever. Also Locke & Key, which isn't, but is still pretty great.

i'll third Dungeon

actually, get into sfar heavily imo. rabbi's cat, professor's daughter, vampire in love, etc.

Ppl ask me at my (non comic related) day job all the time what graphic novels they should read so fuck it I might as well finally draft a list for this occasion. This is at my work from memory and I am probably forgetting huge things. Also it includes blisteringly obvious choices since Milo indicated he's pretty wide open.

Chester Brown - Ed the Happy Clown, I Never Liked You
Jim Woodring - the Frank books, The Book of Jim
Justin Green - Binky Brown Sampler
Eddie Campbell - Alec
Various frenchies - Dungeon
Vanessa Davis - Make Me a Woman
Pete Bagge - so many repackagings and retitlings but basically everything with Bradleys, Junior or Martini Baton in it.
Dylan Horrocks - Hicksville
Megan Kelso - Artichoke Tales
Tom Hart - New Hat, Banks/Eubanks, RL (forthcoming)
Rick Geary - At Home with Rick Geary aka Housebound with Rick Geary, Treasury of Victorian Murder series
Jack Kirby - The Fourth World Omnibus, Kamandi, The Demon, Captain America and The Falcon, The Eternals, Black Magic
Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan - Essential Tomb of Dracula vols 1 - 3
Harvey Kurtzman - War Comics (all of em)
Lynda Barry - The Freddie Stories
Kevin Huizenga - everything
Eleanor Davis - everything
Ben Katchor - Cheap Novelties, Julius Knipl Real Estate Photographer
Patrick McEown - The Hair Shirt
Tom Kaczynski - Beta Testing the Apocalypse
Gabrielle Bell - everything
Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell - From Hell
Alan Moore, Steve Bissette, John Totleben and Rick Veitch - Swamp Thing
Glenn Dakin - Abe
Dan Clowes - Ghost World
Mike Baron and Steve Rude - Nexus
Steve Gerber et al - The Essential Defenders vol. 2
Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips - Fatale
Ed Brubaker et al - Catwoman
Walt Simonson - The Mighty Thor
Mike Mignola - Hellboy: Wake the Devil, Hellboy: the Corpse and the Iron Shoes, Hellboy: the Chained Coffin
Walt Holcombe - King of Persia
Jaime Hernandez - Locas
Ed Pinsent - Illegal Batman (downloadable from his website)
Larry Marder - Tales of the Beanworld
Dave Sim - the Cerebus books from High Society through Rick's Story

Steve Gerber et al - The Essential Defenders vol. 2

I haven't read a lot of Gerber, been wondering where to dip in. I hate those b&w Essentials reprints though.

same

Gerber is mainly in v2. Also see essential son of satan and Essential man thing.

Seconded on those Gerber books. Unfortunately the b/w ESSENTIALS volume are about the only way to get a lot of this. And with the way Marvel is pricing their reprints now, even if you could get them in color they'd cost you an arm and a leg.

These issues may be available on Marvel Comics Unlimited, which I really ought to look into further but haven't yet.

Steve Gerber wrote some of the best, if not the best, comics in Bronze Age Marvel. Add HOWARD THE DUCK to the list, too.

The Greatest Comics Ever Sez ILC

Jon's list is a good list, broad yet personal

Just read Morrison/Robertson's Happy. Short and grimly entertaining, weird to see Grant Morrison do Ennis-schtick. Already gonna be a movie, I hear, but we never saw We3 come to fruition.

The best Gerber issues of the Defenders - the 'Headmen' saga - are all in volume three of the b&w Essentials.

I would love to have read a Steve Gerber big run on the Fantastic Four. His take on The Thing as a guest star in those Defenders stories was pretty cool. Gerber was way ahead of most of his contemporaries on use of dialog.

Just finished the first four issues of the Fearless Defenders series after signing up for Marvel Unlimited. I quite enjoyed it!

I need more suggestions for funny Marvel books(Hawkeye and Deadpool I know about).

She Hulk has moments

Journey Into Mystery and Young avengers might both work for you.

Superior Foes of Spider-Man is meant to be good

Just finished The Black Beetle: No Way Out HC.

Art is fantastic, A++.
Story is okay, I guess? I'm a sucker for pulp and noir, but this was pretty by the numbers and almost too blank.

Set myself up a subscription to the new series anyway, just for the art.

I just got the last volume of Charley's War, the next two Johnny Reds and Shako. IPC-tastic!

Read the first volume of Batman, Inc. As usual, totally blown away by Morrison's scale and ideas. Anyone got a good link to some notes so I can more fully understand the plot?

technically not comix but the hyperbole and a half lady just printed a book and it's predictable awesome

the Mindless Ones have good notes on most of the run of Batman Inc.

my v dear and talented friend martin hand gets a well-deserved write-up for his SkADAMo (Sketch A Day A Month) project:

http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2013/11/martin-hands-sketch-a-day-challenge-unleashes-mash-up-mayhem/

technically not comix but the hyperbole and a half lady just printed a book and it's predictable awesome

yeah, really enjoyed this.

Sadly, STILL waiting for my Top Shelf sale stuff to arrive.

I sat down last weekend and read the second volume of Batman Incorporated and read #11 along with the last two again tonight. Wow that was one crazy run and I thought a pretty great ending to Grant Morrison's Batman run.

I'm confused as to what volume comes after the one I have (which ends w the talia reveal...? Did the new 52 one start right after that?

Second volume starts after the last page Talia reveal which came out in a special called "Leviathan Strikes". I read it in the issues, but looking it up the first trade of the new series is called "Demon Star". Cool thing is that the whole New 52 really doesn't change Morrison's story, if you read the second volume of Batman Inc. on it's own, even though it ties into the current series.

I would imagine down the line the whole run of Batman Inc. will end up in one of those big huge hardcovers at some point.

i just finished reading up to that point too (end of Leviathan Strikes). Is Morrison's Batman run over yet?

Yes, about six months ago.

gotcha, cool. will get a hold of the (last) trade soon

read Sledgehammer 44 and Rover Red Charlie this week
S44 is a new Mike Mignola series, beautiful art, supposed to be in the vein of war comics as much as his Hellboy/supernatural stuff. I liked it and I'll stick to it (it helps that I pay $1.39 an issue!) but it's kind of frustrating that with series like this each issue doesn't read like a whole story - this was more like the first fifteen minutes of an hourlong drama. Which is cool, once they're collected but I'm finding I prefer comics in issue format.

Rover Red Charlie - three dogs surviving the apocalypse is my wheelhouse. Love the painted art - the dogs are expressive, there are some funny language gags, a few spots of 'oof' brutality. Unlike S44, it was a satisfying issue.

The three volumes of Herbie: The Fat Fury and the Ditko horror comix Vol 4 will see out 2013 for me.

I've been diving into Lone Wolf & Cub. It's damn good.

didn't know where else to put this but omg i want this
http://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/2-original-winsor-mccay-production-drawings-fro-1-c-8c6359f08a

like i am restraining myself from bidding

Buy me one, please.

LW&C is classic. I only got about 9 volumes in but it's on my "i will finish this someday in the post-apocalypse" list

they are currently reprinting it in books twice as thick as the 28 volume dark horse edition

(i found the bit with the poisoner dragged a bit but the end picked up again)

Glyn Dillon's 'The Nao Of Brown' was lovely btw. as a read and as an object.

good god, just realized those DH editions came out ten years ago. i stopped buying before they completed the series. maybe after these reprints are done i'll try again

are the new reprints in the same small size as the original dh ones?

according to amazon:
new: Product Dimensions: 6 x 12.8 x 18 cm
old: Product Dimensions: 2.6 x 10.4 x 15 cm

They looked roughly the same size to me when I saw them at B&N (except, y'know, way thicker...I think they actually comprise 3 of the old volumes). The spines were pretty much destroyed, though, but I don't know if that was an actual book design issue or if it was from overuse by the B&N mangaheads.

those little big book ones are more or less unreadable

that suggests an inch wider and taller and thicker

i think the 28 DH volumes are going to be 12 volumes in the new series. amz says "720 pages" vs roughly 300 in the old ones.

28 * 300 / 720 = 11.66, so, yeah, about that.

nicest way to read LW&C is the in the 1980s First Comics printings - twice the size of those needlessly dinky Dark Horse eds

i have been reading grant morrison's cutely curated anthology of mad old batman stories, and the first volume of slott's superior spider-man (ingenious and funny)

The First edition doesn't finish the story iirc though? (As well as being less readily available than an in-print version)

The new ones are definitely bigger than the early c21 edition.

i think you're right abt the comics not finishing the story - they just LOOK better at the larger size, to my tired old eyes. i'm guessing that the subsequent paperback reprints use the same translations/lettering/'film' as the first comics? do these new editions have the old frank miller covers?

the small books put me off ever going back to this. not the best representation of the excellent artwork.

the first edition did not finish the story. the new ones use same miller covers.

dh website says the new "omnibus" ones are 5 x 7". the older ones 4 1/2 x 6 1/2". so, much the same size.

what was the excuse? didn't they say something like the artwork was originally published in the tiny size?

the original japanese books were small. i used to have one of them (or maybe a reprint) but i don't remember it being quite as small as the dark horse editions.

the dark horse books do reprint the books as they appeared in japan, in 28 volumes, unlike the first comics which broke them up.