Comic Books and Graphic Novels

I stopped reading comics, particularly superhero comics, back in the mid-1990s when the comic industry imploded after the saturation of limited edition metallic-foil collector's 1st issue crap. Over the years I would wait for the graphic novel compilation to be released than buy the monthly issues since it was easier to store the books on my bookshelf than trying to find a place to store the comics.

After buying an Android tablet last summer I decided to try the Comixology app and download some free issues. DC has had some 99 cent sales and the only superhero series I'm interested are the Batman ones. Digital comics has gotten me back into reading comics (I don't care about collecting them any more), mostly because it's very convenient to store the comics on my tablet (or the cloud storage) than physically take up room in my apartment.

I'll often buy good reproductions of classic material I enjoyed though. DC is doing a Tales of the Batman series where they present Batman comics from the 70s or 80s by a single artist in these handsome oversized hardcover books. They're really great quality. The Don Newton one was a revelation.

If you like Batman, I'd really like to suggest Scott Snyder's recent Detective Comics run. It's recently been collected into a hardcover book called The Black Mirror. It is amazingly good.

I picked up a Kindle Fire this weekend during one of Amazon's one-day-sales, and have rekindled my interest in comic books through the Comixology app (much like Eric). I don't have a ton of money to devote to too many series, so I'd like your opinions on which of the following comics are worth continuing. I basically purchased/downloaded a bunch of issue 1s for some things that might possibly interest me:

• Atomic Robo
• Batman
• Batman and Robin
• The Flash
• Green Lantern Corps
• Green Lantern: New Guardians
• Irredeemable
• Justice League Dark
• Justice League International
• Red Lanterns
• Transformers: Robots in Disguise
• Uncanny X-Force

Atomic Robo is awesome...

Seconded. It's really a lot of fun. I should probably pick up more of it at some point.

Out of that list, I'd say Batman and Atomic Robo are definites. Uncanny X-Force will be on the WHY ARE YOU NOT READING THIS list once Phil Noto takes over on art.

I've read exactly two comics since I was a child. Planetary by Warren Ellis and the graphic adaptation of The Dark Tower series by Steven King. Both were amazing. If I've been missing out on a lot stuff with that level of quality, I'd like to get a lot nerdier.

Planetary is hands-down one of the best series of the last ten years. If you liked it, pick up Ellis' two Global Frequency trades. Highly recommended.

Invincible is the only comic I buy, every time one of the hardcovers comes out. It's a fantastic love letter to the Silver Age, while maintaining a modern sensibility and has excellently mature writing for relationships. I need to pick up the last couple Atomic Robo trades at some point as well.

I'll also add to the voices recommending Atomic Robo. Their website has a few free stories, and these are also free on comixology.

If you have fond memories of Sandman then Saga, a new release from Image, might fill the itch, though it is only one issue in so we have yet to see overall quality. It's written by the same person who wrote "Y the last man" for Vertigo and "Runaways" for Marvel. Anything written by Paul Cornell I'd also recommend, particularly Demon Knights, part of the relaunched DC universe, but set in England during the middle ages and more sword and sorcery than superhero.

For something a bit more down to earth(ish) then Strangers In Paradise by Terry Moore is also a book that I have enjoyed

Saga is going to be an ongoing, which will be an interesting new experiment from Vaughn, since everything I've ever read from him that was any good (the first pod of Runaways, Y, Ex Machina) had a clear start and end point. I'm considering holding off for trades on that.

Cornell also has a new series coming out through Vertigo called Saucer Country that might be a little bit easier to get into than Demon Knights, because, yo, some of those characters are a little bit obscure. It's about a political candidate who was maybe just a little abducted by aliens.

If you like crime stories or gritty, modern types of stuff, you might try Scalped. It's by Jason Aaron and without spoiling much it's hard to give much details, but by the end of the first issue you find out that it's about investigating criminal enterprise on an indian reservation.

Chew might be the best thing in the universe. It's an Image title that I'll again be spoiling the first issue of because otherwise it's impossible to describe. In short, Bird Flu got out of control and that led to the FDA becoming a practically military organization and chicken being illegalized. Tony Chu is a low-level detective with a shit job who happens to be a cibopath - a person who basically performs object reading on anything he eats. Turns out that's pretty useful for solving, say, murders, provided you're willing to eat some dead guy. It gets weirder from there. It's the most creative thing in the universe and also routinely hilarious, and Showtime is working on seriesifying it.

Morning Glories is an ongoing from Image that's about kids who may or may not have some sort of weird cosmic powers or destiny or something at a prep school where occasionally a ghost man touches somebody in the brain and the whole place is kept on military lockdown. It's actually the closest thing to Lost that i can remember encountering in a long time, and for what it's worth, Damon Lindelof apparently agrees with me. Word of warning, though - that one might read better in trade than issues, as, since I've switched over, the individual 22 page jobs feel a little sparse.

Reed Gunther is a terrific all-ages ongoing about a cowboy who rides a bear. It's not quite as clever as Atomic Robo, but it's approximately as much fun.

Wasteland is a sort of ongoing from Oni press that really dials in that Fallout 3 vibe. I just started it and it's a little bit resistant to my attempts to get into it, but not enough to completely dissuade me. People who like it love it so much they've got papercuts on their naughty bits.

I have the first four of those hardcovers still in the shrink wrap. I guess I should read them then?

The first one. Invincible lost me in the third hardcover when he went to space. I'm not sure I'd shotgun the whole thing in one go.

The first one. Invincible lost me in the third hardcover when he went to space. I'm not sure I'd shotgun the whole thing in one go.

It's interesting, Saucer Country is the one title of Cornell's that I haven't been able to get into yet. I'm not all that interested in alien abduction stories. Demon Knights, the characters might be obscure but I don't think that really matters. You don't need to know who they are before going into the title, half of the characters are new and the other half are introduced with no prior knowledge required (plus, I want Demon Knights to climb up the sales charts so it's not in danger of being cancelled).

I also forgot to mention the Dungeons and Dragons comic being written by John Rodgers. It has been absolutely fantastic, and giving enough twists to the D&D formula to be interesting while still being familiar to people who know that game and what often goes on during an adventure.

I would. Keep going as long as you're still enjoying it.

Secret Six was theoretically replaced by Suicide Squad, wherein Amanda Waller was recast as some skinny ass Lauryn Hill looking bitch, much to the chagrin of pretty much everybody as far as I can tell, because it's kind of hard to reconcile "The Wall" with, you know, that. I guess I can't blame them, though - at the time it was written, nobody knew if Green Lantern was going to crash and burn (I think) and I guess the movie couldn't get one of the, like, three or four black actresses that isn't a comedian but also has some mass to her. It's got the same basic premise that you like, but it's one of the many that I jettisoned after six because I wasn't looking forward to it when it came out.

I'll also make mention here, if anybody's an Avatar fan that isn't in the other thread, that Gene Yang (American Born Chinese, Gordon Yamamoto and the King of the Geeks - both of which I liked) is writing season four of Avatar in comic form. It won't beat the sequel to air (the first of the three books is out now, but the second won't hit until early summer), but the intention is to provide bridging content between the original seasons and the new series. Also, if you like Jim Henson, Archaia has been doing hell of work with his back catalog - most notably, they turned an unproduced script (Tale of Sand) into a book which has apparently gotten universal praise, but I haven't read yet because those ass clowns won't put it on digital.

Has anyone here tried the Marvel comic service? I'm still bitter at them for killing the Git Corp compilation DVDs for their crappy service. 40 years of comics scanned into PDFs along with the old ads and everything. I did manage to purchase all of the DVDs before the end and they did manage to get Captain America out. The next ones were supposed to be Thor and Daredevil and I was really looking forward to those.

It killed the series too early yes, but Gail Simone had enough warning that she was able to wrap the story. Not like her troubled relaunch of Birds of Prey she was writing at the time but I've heard there were issues many issues with that title.

So what has/will people pick up this week as it's new comic day. I've just finished going the Comixology and my pickups are:

• Action Comics
• Animal Man
• Averngers vs. X-Men #1: Infinite (Don't care so much about AvX, wnat to see what Mark Waid and co do with a purely digital canvas)
• Batwing
• Green Arrow
• Justice League International
• Swamp Thing

(Marvel or DC... can you tell which side of the fence I'm sitting on?)

Also eyeing off the Terry Moore Echo graphic novels but I'll wait a bit for those.

Echo is rolled up in a single edition if you're looking to get it. I've tried and failed to get into Strangers in Paradise twice now (I'm sorry - I know it makes me a bad person with no soul but I just do not care about these whiny nineties shitbags in the least, and there's nothing weird yet for me to hook onto), but I figured it was worth the thirty or whatever the cover price at the time, since it sounds like it might be more up my alley, and it's in the Terryverse with Rachel Rising, which sounds pretty interesting.

Birds of Prey has been sort of up and down. It's not terrible. The drama that I'd heard actually had to do with Travel Foreman moving to that title from Animal Man, which was what he wanted to do in the first place because his family life has been kind of shit for a while and he really didn't want to draw a book that's basically about a relatively functional family. Him coming off of what is probably the best thing to come out of the relaunch is upsetting, but I'm not going to blame the guy for not stabbing himself in the nuts repeatedly every day just to make me happy. His style, though, might not be a good fit for the book.

Green Arrow was so aggressively shitty from the jump with the relaunch that I can't persuade myself to build up any enthusiasm. All these stories I hear about old Oliver Queen sound infinitely better than anything they attempted while I was paying attention. Maybe once the television show gets here I'll revisit.

Action Comics was a miss for me. Me and Grant have never gotten along particularly well, and I'm pretty sure that's just his style and not me holding a grudge about his charitable endorsements during the Animal Man run. It also appears that the book straight abandoned that whole early Superman thing at the absolute earliest opportunity it got.

Batwing would be better if the first villain wasn't unapologetically Shao Khan (I'm not going to accuse anybody of thievery, but, yo, that is TOTALLY fucking Shao Khan, so at least make a joke about it or something) and also the art wasn't the kind of art I hate. I do like that he's apparently going to be taking Batman's place on JLI, though. I might end up picking up JLI as my fix for a bunch of characters that I don't want to read by themselves. Like Guy Gardner.

I could not possibly give fewer shits about AvX, but I've heard so many good things about Wolverine and the X-Men that at this point I'm just waiting for some kind of a sale to come through. It's allegedly fun like Atomic Robo to the extent that any series with that much continuity could be. It would help if I could remember to check Comixology on Mondays and Fridays, since I've probably already missed at least one sale as it is.

Okay, here's my revised list of comic series (bolded entries are definites):

• Atomic Robo - So awesome. Definitely collecting.
• Batman - Will probably continue.
• Batman and Robin - Will probably continue.
• The Flash - On the fence
• Green Lantern Corps - On the fence
• Green Lantern: New Guardians - The premise seems interesting enough that I'll give it a shot
• Irredeemable - Will probably continue.
• Justice League Dark - Bleh. Dropped.
• Justice League International - On the fence.
• Red Lanterns - Bleh. Dropped.
• Transformers: Robots in Disguise - Collecting because I need a Transformers fix.
• Uncanny X-Force - On the fence. Will give it 5 or so issues.

Picked up based on recommendations here and elsewhere:

• Chew
• Wolverine and the X-Men

Haven't had a chance to read these yet, but I have high hopes for them.

Why does no one talk about Marvel? I was just looking at some article on what comics you should be reading and the only Marvel title was this new Avengers vs. X-men. Really?

I read:

Amazing Spider-man (which despite the Brand New Day debacle, is consistently a fun book)
Avengers
New Avengers
Whatever event comic Marvel is pushing (I suffered through Fear Itself, the best part of which was the Spider-man books which showed normal people overcoming fear or not), now it's this AvsX. Okay.
Astonishing X-men which I picked up when Whedon was writing and just kept reading. It's my one X-book and I feel like keeping a toe in that water to know what's going on, who's currently dead, who's currently evil, and suchlike.
Flash because he was one of my favorites growing up because I was a fat kid who couldn't run fast.
Batman because he's Batman, goddammit.
Animal Man because everyone said it was awesome. It's okay.
Walking Dead because zombies.
Knights of the Dinner Table because it's D&D hijinks.

I also pick up the trades for:
Irredeemable
Invincible

I go to my FLCS about once every other month to pick up a huge stack, so I'm consistently behind the guys who buy every week and talk about comics online, so I usually don't participate in online discussions about comics.

I don't have an ipad so I don't buy my comics digitally. I have a kindle fire, but wasn't impressed with reading comics that way because I have to zoom and pull the darn thing around to read the text because my eyes are bad.

Have you tried the "guided reading" function of Comixology in the Kindle Fire? It works quite well - it zooms and pans panel-to-panel, or pans across panels for large/busy ones, with every tap or swipe. You can also configure it to show the entire page before and/or after each panel on the page, and configure the panel transition speed. I find it's my preferred method of comic book reading on the KF, as it allows you to get a good view of the art and dialogue while still giving you a sense of the overall page layout.

I notice Irredeemable getting mentioned a lot, but not its partner book - Incorruptible. I haven't had the chance to start either yet (I. Will. Finish. 100. Bullets. Before. The. Show. - and I don't care how much I dislike it), but for a while there I was actually hearing better things about Incorruptible.

Looking back on it, I'm amazed at the number of heroes I liked who were over-the-top too powerful when I was reading (mid-70's). Flash and Green Lantern primarily, and it never crossed my mind how ridiculous the power imbalance between Green Lantern and Green Arrow was - why were these guys even hanging out together? It seems like DC did a lot of Flash / Green Lantern crossovers, like the bit where the two of them inexplicably exchange powers.

Barry Allen and Hal Jordan were super best friends. Not sure if that kept happening after both of those guys got swapped out.

Kieron is also writing Journey Into Mystery if you're interested. That book has some good press and might not be as deeply mired in the event of the year.

Oh, and how could I forget Locke & Key? Terrific series of series. Written by Joe Hill, who you will immediately recognize as being created in part by Stephen King if you ever see him, because it's kind of uncanny. It's an exceptional little Maine ghost/supernatural story.

Adventure Time has a comic

I have not tried this. I suppose I'll give it a try.

I also think that if I go digital it's kind of a betrayal of Steve, my FLCS owner, who has steered me to many good comics over the years, and who takes back anything from my pull pile (even if it's over a month old and been sitting there) without complaint or comment.

Is this the general comics thread?

It is now!

So Dan DiDio announced that an established 'identifiable' character would be coming out of the closet. Any guesses? My first few (Booster Gold and Guy Gardner, Kyle Rayner if they really meant it to be someone big) don't actually jive with what he's saying there, since he seems to be suggesting that it would be a character that hadn't been introduced yet in the new continuity. Which makes me think it'll probably be someone who's currently dead. And that's too bad. I always figured that if DC wanted to drop a bombshell, they could just have Superman come out. Sure, Batman's the easy ha-ha answer, but Superman's only ever had the one serious adult relationship, passing on opportunities with class-1 hotties like Wonder Woman and Maxima, and his relationship with Lois has always come across as a passionless cover. Initially I assumed that it would be a cover so he could pass as human, but it could certainly work as a beard situation!

Oh well. Any guesses?

Wonder Woman is the easy way out if they want to take it.

There are a few people it can't be if they're going total gay (Aquaman, Barry Allen, Superman would be remarkably out of place given that we've already seen him mooning over Lois Lane, etc.). Theoretically, it could also be a Golden Age character in James Robinson's (excellent, thus far) Earth 2. I haven't seen Starman yet, but that would be kind of a risky move, since Robinson's run is so well-loved, and I wouldn't call him particularly major.

Edit: Super duper dumb question - what's the current status in Stormwatch? Since Apollo and Midnighter basically ARE Superman and Batman, that would be a cheap way out, but I seem to remember from before I gave up on that particular title that they were already hitting on each other. The new new Power Girl (I believe they're trying to forget that appearance in Mister Terrific) might also be in play, or the new new Huntress.

They've said the character will be debuting, so it's not likely to be any of the (current) Justice League. They could take the cheap route and make it one of the Earth-2 heroes, but I think that would look too much like tokenism ("Sure, we can have major gay characters in a universe that doesn't count") - that's what Marvel did, putting all their gay characters in the Ultimate universe or Canada.

Thoughts:
- Jean-Paul Valley. The New 52 doesn't have an Azrael yet, and throwing in a gay character whose background is steeped in religious imagery could add a lot of conflict to the backstory. Also, I don't care what they have to do or if I have to kidnap Dan Didio, I approve of anything that gets me a relaunched Azrael book.

- Wally West. Not likely if DC wants to avoid the problem of the Land Of A Thousand Flashes that the DCU tends to turn into. Then again, I haven't read Teen Titans, so I don't know if Kid Flash there is supposed to be Wally or Bart (and if it's Bart, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of because half the point of the character originally was his introduction, the extension of the Flash legacy into the future, etc etc)

- One of the Wildstorm characters. Not likely if only for the fact that no one would care.

- A villain? We've seen most of Batman's rogues' gallery at least in snippets and cameos, so not likely to be one of them. We've seen Superman face off against Brainiac and Lex Luthor, so not one of them. Wonder Woman fights the Greek gods and they're all "let's swan-rape chicks and do golden showers" so making Zeus gay would be pointless. I don't think we've got many of the iconic villains yet to debut except for Ra's Al Ghul, and since we've already got his grandson faffing about, that's not likely. Unless it's one of those "After 250 years of heterosexuality, I'm BORED." things.

- Plastic Man: The costume WOULD make sense in a sort of Gaga-esque manner, and the idea of a superhero whose concept of sexuality is as fluid as his molecular structure has a sort of weird synergy.

- Jack "Starman" Knight. But only if they had James Robinson writing the book. See also the "do I have to kidnap Didio" rider to the previous Azrael mention.

- Doctor Fate. I don't think we've seen Kent Nelson pop up in the New 52 yet, have we?

And my whacked-out theory because it would piss off the fanboy elitists SO HARD:

- Tim Hunter, as the new Sandman, crossing the Justice Society version with the Vertigo version and rolling the character into the New 52 continuity.

Oh man, I totally want a gay Plastic Man. Jack Cole would claw his way out of his grave.

Link

Yes, the jiggling line is in the original post. JIGGLE JIGGLE

Spiderman gets his own team. Or sells Aunt May/The rest of the Avengers to the Devil.

Given the direction of Ends Of The Earth, it wouldn't surprise me to see Spidey not only off the Avengers, but treated as a villain by the world at large.

(But seriously, punching out Al Gore in front of the UN, how cool was that? Sure it was really the Chameleon, but still - awesome!)

So, turns out that DC's gay superhero is Earth-2 Green Lantern, Alan Scott.

All I can think of is "Homosexual Tearfully Admits to being Green Lantern"

http://www.theonion.com/articles/homosexual-tearfully-admits-to-being-governor-of-n,9533/

What do I win? I sort of called it. It was one of the Earth-2 guys.

I guess this means Sentinel doesn't exist and never did in Prime anymore?