Best comics for non-comic fans

http://notthebeastmaster.typepad.com/weblog/2005/06/starter_comics_.html

The suggestions are ordered by genre, which seems pretty smart to me.

We3 maybe, Vimanarama definitely not.

Seaguy, however - YES.

Daredevil: Born Again would be a good starter superhero book. It's been a long time since I read it, but I think Epicurus the Sage would be a hoot for a newcomer.

OBJECTION (on the grounds of assuming that indie shit isn't as tied up in its own insular world as spandex shit is in its insular world) (and that the problem w/ getting into comics is continuity & not the medium)

Black Hole
V for Vendetta
Y the Last Man
Locas
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Epileptic
We3
Preacher
...and my dad picked up a copy of Ed the Happy Clown, read it, and asked me "do you have anything more like this?"

It depends what the scepticism is based on really - obv a sceptic thinking comics are for kids isn't going to be convinced by Titano the Super-Ape. But someone like my wife who thought comics were for sad goths was!

Shit...

Yeah, no doubt - I'd love to know the split between comic readers that grew up reading comics vs. comic readers that came to comics after a certain age, & see if there's any correlation between that &, for instance, the schism between teaching kids a foreign language vs. learning a new language later in life.

Along the lines of offering Y & Persepolis because of how they're presented, I'm thinking that something more formally rigid (if that's the phrase for what I'm getting @ - I'm thinking of stuff that adheres to a specific panel layout & works the story around that; only examples I can think of = Fell, The New Frontier, & maybe Watchmen?) would go over well w/ non-fannies.

Big ups to Y, though Persepolis I'd hesitate on because it's not that good, and a more thoroughly watchamacallit better/fulfilling read would be Maus, to which Satrapi is indebted.

I would also add Finder.

CHALLENGE! to the objection: can you name anything currently existing in the indie shit circle of the venn diagram that actually does depend on decades of back-continuity? The only example I can think of is Love & Rockets, and while I have no idea how inaccessible the current work might be (cos I'm 12 years behind innit), many of the older books do a perfectly servicable job of letting a new reader know what's going on. Do you need to have read about Luba at age 40 to pick up Poison River and read about her life from 0-20? In Wigwam Bam, there's enough of other characters going "are Maggie and Hopey still not talking?" for you to know why the two characters are both having their story told.

Strangers In Paradise started in 1994, surely.
(and I gave up in '95 but don't they always hit the 'reset status quo' button anyway so all you need to know is "boy loves girl, girl loves girl, girl is clit-tease, OH LOOK GANGSTERS"? if not then yeah, the soap-operay style would probably be off-putting like it is with '80s X-Men. BUT ALSO really really appealing to people who enjoy soap-operay story-telling, like in '80s X-Men and soap operas.)

Doonesbury? Are any manga series that long-running? The album format for French series generally works in their favour, no?

Ooh! The Fate Of The Artist is really likely to test this, actually.

I'm not saying Persepolis is *that* good, but non-comic fans do seem to love it.

Just off the top of my head. Note that I'm woefully behind on my indie comix. I thus retire my "team comics" badge immediately.

Make of that what you will.

Given that, I wouldn't recommend anything to a non-comics person that wasn't fairly strong in the visual storytelling department. We can slog through badly laid-out panel arrangements and shitty art because we're familiar with the language. Those who aren't are going to wonder why they should bother. Which isn't a bad question, in general.

I'm wondering if there's something else to the question that I'm missing, but my provisional answer is YES.

DV: It's good that you called me on my snotty bull-hoo Persepolis/Maus equivocation. I just wanted to feel smart for once!

Lone Wold & Cub
Samurai Executioner
Astro Boy
Phoenix
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Blade of the Immortal

If your local shoppe is worth its salt, then a quick browse through its manga TPB section should answer the question!

My roommate is a radio DJ who does a show for a local radio station focusing on indie pop. She has very specific tastes, but also a pretty broad knowledge of indie/undie music, and has a lot of CDs she never listens to because she has some idea that they are "important" and that she needs to have them in her collection. When her parents, or her work friends, or someone comes over to our house and says "why don't you put on some music?" she *never* puts on her favorite music -- Magnetic Fields or Belle and Sebastian, for example. Instead, she does some sort of calculation, like "Well, dad likes Neil Young and Bob Dylan, and Will Oldham kind of sounds like them (?!?!), so I'll put that on." Usually it's a band or artist that she never really listens to of her own volition. This inevitably leads to one of two possible reactions: A) Absolutely silent indifference, or B) "What is this? Why do you like it?" To which she has no real reply, because she *doesn't* like it.

Why *doesn't* she play Magnetic Fields (or B&S or something that she really loves)? Of course, she assumes they won't like it. They probably won't: They don't listen to anything remotely like it. But if she *did* play the Magnetic Fields, this could be the spark of a very interesting conversation about the kind of music that is closest to her heart -- a conversation she would excel at, given the depth of her passion and her knowledge. She might even compel them to give the music another chance, and they might learn to like it. But because of some imagined isometry between some CD that she never listens to and her idea of her parents' (or whomever's) tastes, this never happens.

I've made this mistake myself, wrt comics. My current lady friend is a big Proust fan. So when she asked for a comic recommendation, my first response was "Epileptic" out of some notion that there was something "Proustian" about it. A day later, I said "wait, I take that back," and gave her an embarrasingly (and hopefully endearingly) geeky annotated list of superhero comic books that I love and my reasons for loving them.

Which is perhaps an unnecessarily long way of saying this: If you read and love lots of comic books, and someone knows you read and love lots of comic books, and asks you (knowing that you read and love comic books) which comic books you'd recommend, why wouldn't you give them a list of your favorite comic books, the ones you actually read and love, perhaps accompanied by some background information (where continuity matters) and your personal reasons for liking them? It seems to me that *this* is probably what they're really asking for. Or it *should* be what they're asking for: What good is your passion and you "expertise" if you apply it to some subgenre about which you have very little passion or expertise? Why would someone currently immersed in BMB's retelling of Peter Parker's youth immediately say "oh, you should read Optic Nerve" when some cute girl asks about what comics she might like?

Also, I think the importance of continuity is a little overstated here. I've read Morrison's run on X-Men and JMS's run on ASM having read only very little of either title in the past, and had no difficulty figuring things out as I went along. Someone who had only seen the movies might wonder, for example, "who's this Gwen Stacey person, anyways?" but I think that these kinds of questions get answered pretty quickly for anyone paying the remotest bit of attention. I think anyone who watches evening dramas on TV and has any kind of life outside of watching TV that causes them to miss episodes is pretty accustomed to picking things up as they go along and filling in the blanks. And I think even the writers of the most convoluted continuity damged comics (G. Johns excepted, obviously) are pretty good at filling in back story stuff whenever it is relevant.

That said, if you are a total geek for continuity impaired spandex comics, why wouldn't you tell your friend or whomever has asked you for a recommendation about this love and try to share it with them? "Oh man, X-men is like Lost if Lost had been on TV for 30 fucking years and the characters stayed the same and never got old (MASH style). It is both the most ridiculous and most awesome thing ever. You should start with Giant X-Men #1, etc etc etc."

That said, my recommendations would be: Anything by Kyle Baker, anything by Darwyn Cooke, Ultimate Spider-Man, Madman/Atomics, GM's Doom Patrol, and the Kirby/Lee Fantastic Four.

I totally want to read this comic.

What about the Kevin Smith runs on Green Arrow/DD? Depending on your friend's view of KS, i guess. See also: the Clerks comics, esp the ones that Jim Mahfood did.

(My diatribe was, now that you mention it, spawned in part by the Preacher rec's-mixed-with-ambivalence, and that list from Marc Singer linked above that had very few of what I would consider to be "typical" comics -- i.e. very little of the stuff that most of us spend the majority of our comic-buying and comic-reading income/time on.) (As well as the fact that, as a long time lurker, I was a little disappointed in not seeing any of the folks that usually chime in on the "ship" threads recommending the stuff that they actually buy on a regular basis.)

My example of my indie-rock-roommate was probably somewhat ill-chosen, in that it implied that some of you are recommending comics that you don't actually like. I guess my point was that there seems to be a strange disconnect between our weekly pull lists and what we tell our friends to read. Yes, we all read Spiegelman and Clowes and etc. and probably like or even love them, but why do we all seem so hesitant to let in anyone outside of the already converted on the incredible range of DC and Marvel comics *not* penned by Moore, Miller, Morrison, or the usual "revisionist" et. al.? There's this whole sub-culture surrounding the comics that *aren't* produced by the usual New Yorker-approved bunch that is both fascinating from an outsider's perspective and fun to participate in as an insider, and I think we are selling our non-comics-reading friends short by staying away from the spandex and adhering to the "comics aren't just for kids, now" party line.

Looking back on the thread, I would definitely second Gotham Central. I think it would be a fun read even for people who only watched the Batman movies and/or TV show.

was finished (and started) in the 70s, wasn't it? prospective sequels and sci-fi versions don't count!

Astro Boy
Phoenix

I'm sure Tezuka died in the '80s, so there's deffo no continuity to catch up on with either of these (I'm 99% certain that Astro Boy didn't run into decades anyway)

Samurai Executioner

This is Koike and Kojima too, yeah? Haven't they not worked together for yonks (until recently) or something? If so then I infer again that it's not still running with continuity to catch up on, and never ran for decades in the first place.

Now I have to google:
Neon Genesis Evangelion

Started in 1995! And appears to be completed?

Blade of the Immortal

Started in 1994 but IS STILL RUNNING! If it's still going in eight years, it gets to make it onto the list.

For example, Superman 650 is a lovely little comic book, sets up it's story really well with an intriguing premise, but the odds are really high that within four or five issues we'll be hip deep in Infinite Crisis backwash, and no-one could humanely expect a new reader to read that.

I think a problem with your indie rock roommate as an example is that the original question was more like getting to someone who's never heard music.

Actually, I'm not sure, and even if I was sure, I'm still smart enough to suspect a bait&switch, but I think that the 52 series is the EXCLUSIVE distributor of Infinite Backwash so that the proper titles can properly move forward and accumulate jumping on point readers. So it's actually possible that whatever great things are happening with the OYL comics (I've yet to pick-up last week's comics and now I really hope there's some Superman 650 left) will manage to stay on target. For a while at least.
Of course, this leaves 52 as a merciless stroke mag for fanboys, which is, y'know, not without merit.

I don't know about that. I think most people have at least a passing familiarity with the medium. See JW's pictures upthread.

The one about whether decades-heavy continuity tends to be a barrier on anything bar superhero comics. I asked if there were manga examples, Lee said HELL YEAH, I said what, he said these, I SAY THEE NAY!

Anyway, I'm pretty sure LW&C ended in the '90s (and I mean the series in Japan).

Samurai Executioner

This is Koike and Kojima too, yeah? Haven't they not worked together for yonks (until recently) or something?

It is a K&K production, and it's true that they haven't worked in a long tme because one of them has been dead for that long.

aaaregh blast that xpost!

OK LW&C, Phoenix, (I'm presuming) Astroboy don't rely heavily on continuity. But Blade of the Immortal definitely does.

well, I'm running on the assumption that if the series is finite and has been complete since (say) 1968, then continuity isn't going to be an issue because it's not like you need to know ALL THIS HISTORY to understand what's GOING ON RIGHT NOW, because you'll just start reading at the beginning, yeah? no-one's going to come in on some random week's episode from 1965 and just start going forwards from there.

Googling again gets me a LW&C wikipaedia: Koike begins the new "Lone Wolf and Cub" manga right where the original ended, with Daigoro amidst the aftermath of his father's revenge. A mysterious samurai appears at the seashore and forms a new bond with the boy. Volume 1 will also contain an essay by Koike about his return to the manga epic after almost thirty years... so looks like I was right there.

Maybe this is unusual in manga, too. Phoenix I think did run for decades, but neither of us appear to actually know anything about what kind of narrative it was, so not much use for the argument there. The only basically-ongoing-done-by-a-replenishible-production-line-of-hacks manga I've ever read was Ranma 1/2, which I guess has some degree of continuity in that people who've fought and been beaten before will come back to fight and be beaten again, but this generally has no actual effect on the narrative beyond three pages of reference in between 200 pages of FITE!ing - it's not like the setup even allows for characters histories to affect the progression of the narrative (at least not before I gave up at volume nine or something).

Blade Of The Immortal you can argue now, but if it wraps up in two years then it just becomes a finite story that ran for less than decades. Maybe. Is it one story, or ongoing adventures?

Incidentally I re-read Wigwam Bam last night and apart from drastically misrecalling the structure upthread, it reinforced my belief that the continuity is handled so well that prior knowledge is unnecessary, largely because I couldn't remember half the characters from the last time I read the previous Xaime book! Are these guys the same band that Hopey and Tex were in before? That's Rocky from the Rocky And Fumble strips where she's a girl in space with a robot, did she become a real person ten years ago or just in time to hook up with Ray? Have any of these neighbourhood kids been seen before? er I can't remember but it doesn't seem to be impairing my reading! (I do want to go back over the last half a dozen books and check though...)

Blade of the Immortal is kind of like LW&C in that there's a primary mission that launches subsequent optional side-quests (RPG vocabulary intentional). I haven't followed it for two volumes of trades, but lately it seems to be coalescing around its central premise again.

As for Phoenix (I do know about the narrative makeup! [nerd pedant alert]), Tezuka conceived of it as 12 volumes whose narratives were to be distinct from each other; only at broadly thematic levels were there any commonalities between the volumes. (To my knowledge, no volumes share any characters, or for that matter specific time periods.)

But I do sense a pattern: long-running manga titles seem to involve only one author or one artistic team (putting aside the assembly-line process used by some of the manga ppl). They don't seem to treat the title as a specific property that a number of authors and artists get to work on for a finite period of time.

And now I'm understanding the thrust of your question. (Ongoing, company-owned titles vs. the Japanese model.) I blame Infiniti Chrysler for my denseness.

With Lone Wolf & Cub you can say "Here is volume 1. There are another 27 of them, but they're all pretty short, as you can see. Everything you need to know to understand the story is in these volumes. Want to read more? The other volumes are in the bookshop."

With X-men you can say "Here's Grant Morrison's run. The rest of Grant Morrison's run is in the bookshop (don't mind the changing artists) if you want to read more. These are the characters that you may have seen in the films, if you saw the films. Oh yeah, and there's this empire in space. And Sentinels. And Genosha - that's where lots of mutants live. Oh that guy in the wheelchair on Genosha? That's Magneto. No, I don't know why he's in a wheelchair...

Okay, tell you what, let's start with Chris Claremont's run instead. He really started off a lot of this stuff, so you won't have to worry about continuity (much). Now, this box here holds the first two years of his run. These are the crossover events, you should read them before you move on to the second box. You don't want to carry two boxes? Oh, that's okay, some of these stories have been collected, you can get them in the bookshop. And the other ones you can get as back issues in the comic shop (if you're really lucky). (Don't worry, that probably isn't really cat-piss) Don't forget to put them back in the mylar bags after...- wait, wait, where are you going? I haven't explained the difference between Astonishing and Astounding X-men yet!"

European comics in general seem to be a better option, because in general they're less insular and less based on continuity and genre knowledge. I know several people who might read Tintin, Asterix or Corto Maltese, but not much else. I wouldn't recommend most superhero comics as a starter for anyone because, even if they're not based on 30 years of continuity, they require some cultural competence to understand the nuances and to get past the distracting genre conventions - such as the BIG BOOBS ;). It's kinda like horror movies: the non-enthusiast might watch one every now and then, but she'd probably not understand what the horror geeks really sees in them. To her it's just scary movies, nothing deeper.