Favourite Comics Ever

xoxo

-love and rockets (the early locas stories, but also blood of palomar, poison river, and wig wam bam.)

-little nemo

-nausicaa of the valley of wind

-r. crumb's weirdo stories, but especially "uncle bob's midlife crisis," "where has it gone (the beautiful music of our parents)," "that's life," and the blues artist bios.

-spider-man #1-30

-jimmy corrigan: the smartest boy on earth

-v for vendetta

-the work of thomas ott

-the work of lewis trondheim

-the work of tom hart

-the work of jim woodring

-akira

-it was the war of the trenches

-cages

-krazy kat, esp. the "tiger tea" storyline

-the work of suero maruo

and about 9 billion others escaping me at the moment.

Skreemer - Pete Milligan, Brett Ewins, & Steve Dillon's "retro future gangster epic"

Nemesis the Warlock before Pat Mills was replaced by his evil twin Pat Mills.

Watchmen, obviously

Dark Knight Returns, obviously

the original run of Marshall Law - Pat Mills & Kevin O'Neill doing a S&M superhero cop

Like A Velvet Glove Cast In Iron - this is the Dan Clowes comic that should have been filmed, not nicey Ghostworld.

Sandman, for all that no one likes it anymore apart from Sad Goths.

And then there's war comics:

Charley's War

Johnny Red - a British fighter pilot on the Russian front.

Darkie's Mob

Union Jack Jackson

etc.

Oh, and of course Judge Dredd, again before it went shit - so stuff like The Day The Law Died, the Judge Child, lots of wacky shorts, The Cursed Earth etc.

Zenith

(I could keep going indefinitely)

Nancy and Sluggo

Meat Cake

American Splendor

MAD w/Harvey Kurtzman era

Archie

-yummy fur, especially the short stories and the gospels. (ESPECIALLY the gospels which are absolutely brill. jesus is my new favorite super hero.)

-american splendor (but ONLY the crumb drawn stories. i feel like he's pekar's most...sympathetic collaborator. i'm just not feelin it otherwise.)

-some of the sandman one-shot short stories are fabulous (thinking in particular of "three septembers and a january" and "ramadan.") the longer stories i can take or leave these days...

-large chunks of any given issue of raw. (the other large chunks are typically pretentious dross.)

-marshall law! i completely forgot about this...especially the "takes manhattan" one shot...why were the brit. takes on "grim and gritty" superheros uniformly better than their american counterparts? (dark knight = blech.)

-miracleman. (both the moore and gaiman issues.)

-harvey kurtzman's e.c. war stories (two fisted tales and frontline combat)

-the last four issues of grant morrison's run on animal man. and his entire run on doom patrol.

Nemesis the Warlock was grate before the switchover of which the Vicar speaks but the real Pat Mills meat is Ro-Busters and the first ABC Warriors story. ABC Warriors is particularly good as Hammerstein must recruit more and more phenomenally violent amoral and lunatic robots culminating in the brilliant episodes where he fights THE MESS. Then! Then! They go TO MARS and FIGHT DINOSAURS (Why are there dinosaurs on Mars? ENOUGH WITH SUCH QUESTIONS READER!). You can tell why this is best comic evah. All of Hammerstein's squad are total liabilities and nobble his own guns, go on rampages, etc.

The Ro-Busters story where the evil demolition robots attempt to create some bypass or other and are stopped by enormous robot Charlie is also awesome.

Ethan is OTM on Velvet Glove.

The best comic ever though is Eagle when they relaunched it with photo stories. It's completely deranged.

is that boring?

he is also a wee bit even before MY time gasp, but i inherited some of my uncle's old eagles so encountered him

the best Dan Dare adventure is well-known now as published in book form: where they are kidnapped by a blue horsefaced fellow named Lex (?) and taken to the far distant planet Trantor (?)

The earliest art I remember tho is Korky the Cat discovering that all the pond rowboats are tied together, which is why he is having such difficulty rowing. I was mortified on his behalf, and could not believe that the story did not go on over the page, so as to end happily.

Larry Gonick's Cartoon History of... series

Anything and everything by Mobeius, esp. the more macabre things from the pages of 70's Heavy Metal

Joe Sacco's Gorazada

Jimmy Corrigan and other Chris Ware stuff

Maus (okay, Spiegleman's a pretentious asshole but this book is genius)

Gilbert Sheldon's Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers Series

Lots of my faves have already been picked - 'Uncle Bob's Midlife Crisis' poss. greatest comic strip ever - but here's a few that haven't been mentioned, I don't think:

'The Man' by Vaughan Bode, ' Here' by Richard McGuire, 'Asterix' by Goscinny and Uderzo, 'Lucky Luke' by Goscinny and Morris, Segar's 'Popeye', 'Bristow' by Frank Dickens, 'The Perishers', 'BC' by Johnny Hart (before he went all christian), 'The Jungle Book' by Harvey Kurtzman, any EC strips by Craig or Krigstein, 'Hercules Among The North Americans' by Mark Marek, 'Schizo' by Ivan Brunetti, most Steve Ditko strips (even the loony libertarian ones!), 'Barnaby' by Crockett Johnson, 'Bravo for Adventure' by Alex Toth, 'The Defenders' when written by Steve Gerber, 'The New Gods' (etc.) by Kirby, 'Life is Hell' by Matt Groening and anything by Lynda Barry, various Drew Friedman strips, 'White Nightmare' by Moebius (plus all of his Jodorowsky collaborations), 'The Yellow M' by Edgar P. Jacobs, 'Corto Maltese' by Hugo Pratt, 'Mort Cinder' by Alberto Breccia, 'Fires' by Lorenzo Mattoti, 'Beryl the Peril' by Davey Law, etc. etc.

My number one is still Tintin - Chang was based on a real person, btw, which I think explains some of the (ahem) 'depth of feeling' in 'Tintin in Tibet'. Great blistering barnacles!

Larry Marder's Beanworld

Joe Matt, Seth, Chester Brown (the whole canuck thing)

Leanne Franson (Lilianne)

Roberta Gregory (Naughty Bits)

Alan Moore (League of Extraordinary Gentlemen right now)

P. Bagge (Hate)

Dave McKinnon and Terry Riley (Sleaze Castle)

Jim Woodring (Frank)

Joe Sacco (Palestine etc)

and too obscure by half, Oxford's own jeremy Dennis (ta da!!!) though I haven't found anything by her for years now.

The comics page today is almost entirely rotten. Bad sitcom strips written at the literacy level of a seven-year-old that used up their five jokes before Sputnik, drawn by the grandchildren of the original artist's assistant, side by side with lame "Far Side" ripoffs and dopey attempts to appeal to stressed twenty-something workaholics. I only read it for the soap opera strips. Honestly, "Mary Worth" and "Judge Parker" are much funnier than "Cathy." Hell, the crossword puzzle is funnier than "Cathy." Bill Watterson, where are you?

Oldies: The nihilistic netherworld known as Nancy. Krazy Kat is dada Itchy & Scratchy.

Hipster cliches, but for good reason: Love & Rockets, Hate & Eightball (I usually like Clowes' short pieces more than the serial stories, but Ghost World I liked).

These days, my strip of choice is the godlike Boondocks.

Kid Eternity series by Ann Nocenti. Hellshock by Jae Lee. Halo Jones. Xombi, which no-one remembers. Sandman. Planetary. Barry Ween.

I thought I really loved Dragon's Claws from Marvel UK ages ago, but a recent opportunity to buy and read them proved me wrong.

There are a number of bad things about the Invisibles' end:

i) tying everything to the Eclipse is a sad cliche, and is particularly pathetic when the final issue comes out months and months after the eclipse - we already know the world hasn't ended.

ii) having loads of artists on each issue makes everything look shite.

iii) the whole story had gone up its arse by that point.

Has anyone mentioned "The Preacher" as one of their favourite comics ever? In retrospect there's a real air of "what was that all about it?" about it, so I'd be surprised.

I sold my comics last year, but kept 2 of my favourites, NEXUS and the John Byrne run of Fantastic Four. They are GRATE. I also bought several, like Kingdom Come and Marvels both of which i thought were ACE, and now Top Ten. Alan Moore really is GOD, has he ever written anything rubbish?

i) tying everything to the Eclipse is a sad cliche, and is particularly pathetic when the final issue comes out months and months after the eclipse - we already know the world hasn't ended.

ii) having loads of artists on each issue makes everything look shite.

These are both good points, which however pertain to most of the rest of the issues in the last volume, and not the last one.

iii) the whole story had gone up its arse by that point.

A martter of personal choice: the story was about everything, and it was never going to have a proper ending. I liked the positioning of the whole series as a tool to get the answers out of your own head. And as Tom says, you knew what you were getting into.

Preacher was never going to end well: Ennis is very good at what he does, but he's too beholden to proper westerns to get a different ending.

Andrew

Top 10 (also by Moore)

Asterix

Le Clique and Invisible Man (great horny stuff by Manara)

Heinz (local favourite, Heinz is a cat who talks like an Amsterdammer, always is in a bad mood and has crazy adventures. Alas all the jokes are untranslatable).

Arkham Asylum (great line by The Joker when someone suggest they pull Batman's mask to see what his real face is like: "Oh please that *is* his real face.")

Dark Knight Returns, Ronin, first Sin City and Elektra.

Now on the subject of F.Miller, recently I was reading a bit of '300' again in the shop and it struck me how Miller's supposed fascist streak, which I never really got in his individual heroes, suddenly becomes full-blown when dealing with a collective. The Spartans in '300' really are ugly, and I don't mean in an aesthetic sense. ;) Yes? No?

Also, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen = any good? These hard-covers are quite expensive so I want to make sure it's worth the green, so to speak.

Just went comic shopping last week - so far, the only books that's really stuck w/ me is the ABC anthology (by, yes, Alan Moore) and Fury (the new "mature" Marvel series about Nick Fury - first issue has gruesome close-up of gun victims, a hernia, and naked Asian escorts; oh, and it's written by Garth Ennis, in case you were wondering). The NEW Defenders is fun, but a bit blah (especially w/out Larsen's art), the NEW Suicide Squad (Keith Giffen JLA-ing the Injustice League, ha ha ha?) is OK, and I haven't read Grant Morrison's NEW X-Men (yet).

Unfortunately, the store I bought this stuff from isn't very "indie", so I couldn't satiate my would-be-Gen-X-slacker jones with any Clowes or Bagge stuff. Alas.

Is Optic Nerve still around?

Serialized story - V for Vendetta

Books - Asterix

Strips - Robot Ron

Ongoing - Judge Dredd

Superhero - Batman

Also in that Asterix/Lucky Luke/Tintin canon, there's Franquin's Marsupilami, Gaston and Spirou & Fantasio. Why not more love for them?

Comic strips: Calvin & Hobbes, Gary Larson's stuff, Sluggy Freelance.

Super heros: DC over Marvel, tho both are great- Image is TERRIBLE! Batman is my all-time fave, also very fond of Keith Giffen era Justice League: International, Green Lantern, Daredevil, Spider Man, and all the silver age classix.

Not quite super heros but bought by the same demographic: Sandman, Transmetropolitan, Preacher!, damn near everything Alan Moore has ever done.

Alternative: Freak Brothers (especially Fat Freddy's Cat), Love & Rockets (I like the latter stuff best.)

stuff with "bone" in the title: Bone, Boneyard.

All-time faves... well, Dredd, Swamp Thing, Watchmen, V, etc etc etc as has been gone through - but what about Saddle Tramp? Doomlord is still the best photo-story ever. The protagonist - NO ONE will BELIEVE him - actually got madder and madder as it went on. I don't think he slept between photoshoots. By the end he had huge bags under his eyes and was gibbering madly in every shot. Brilliant.

Anyone read the Metabarons? It's utterly mad.

Marvel's Essentials collections, because they're such amazingly great deals: Howard the Duck is the best of them that I've picked up, but the X-Men ones remind me of just how the X-mania crap started: cause the comics were a lot better than they needed to be, at one point.

A complete run of Swamp Thing. I got various issues autographed by a bunch of different folk when I still lived in Northampton (Mass, not UK) and Noho still had the Words & Pictures Comics Museum. Swamp Thing is probably the reason why I still pick up Alan Moore projects now and then, even though I can't remember particularly liking anything of his since "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?"

All things Barry Ween.

Almost everything Rick Veitch has done, but especially Brat Pack.

Ranma 1/2 -- and actually, I like Maison Ikkoku even better. Also a casual fan of Oh! My Goddess.

I have a ton of Will Eisner stuff (a lot of Moebius and Crow stuff, too, come to think of it) because both an ex and a friend worked for Ktchen Sink press, so it was available cheap/free-because-it-was-damaged/etc. Eisner's Contract with God is a great read.

I love the first couple Sin City series, but can only read them on the rare occasion when I'm not still feeling overdosed on the dark-grim-gritty-snikity comics phase.

Morrison's Animal Man -- Classic. Everyone else on that series after him ... iffy.

I'm probably going to be selling the bulk of my comics, come to think of it, for moving expenses and taking-girlfriend-out-to-dinner.

Oh, strips. Strips I read currently: Sluggy, Get Fuzzy, Boondocks, Doonesbury, Foxtrot, PvP, Something Positive. All-time greats: Li'l Abner, Bloom County, Pogo, Spider-Man at its best moments (if it's still in print, the "Best of Spider-Man" tpb with the yellow cover is well worth the price).