Topic: Anyone here read comics?

[Nail_Bombed]

Just wondering if anyone follows any comic series/graphic novels. I've been a comic/GN collector for a long time myself. Some of my faves are Transmetropolitan, Preacher, The Sandman, Promethea, League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Planetary, The Walking Dead etc. Tons of good stuff.

Also the Ultimate Marvel comic series. Though that looks to be under the hammer soon. I just read the latest issue of Ultimate Spiderman - and Peter Parker is dead . Been following that since they started it, just about, along with the Ultimate version of X-Men, Fantastic Four and Avengers. They're still continuing the Ultimate series of Spiderman, but it won't be Parker in the suit - which to me is just wrong. The values instilled in Peter Parker are what makes Spiderman great. To kill him off... it just beggars belief.

[Abnormal Freak]

I've got pretty selective comic tastes. I just kinda pick up and read things that look interesting, or are done by artists I already like.

Only ongoing series I buy individual issues for are Usagi Yojimbo and the upcoming IDW Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series. The latter is my biggest comic passion... I've got a hefty collection of most of the previous Turtles comics and plenty of trade paperbacks and such, including plenty of non-Turtles stuff done by Mirage.

Kevin Eastman's my favorite comic guy. Love all his Turtles and non-Turtles stuff. I also really dig Frank Miller. The Dark Knight Returns, The Dark Knight Strikes Again, Ronin, Sin City... Them's some fantastic series.

Been buying and enjoying the Spawn Origins deluxe hardcover editions, the oversized ones with like 25 issues per. Also been collecting and going through the Jack Kirby omnibus books DC have been releasing (the Fourth World stuff is all really cool) and the EC series like Tales from the Crypt and Shock SuspenStories; been getting the EC Archives collections of the latter, which are pretty cool, but I'm not too fond of the redone colors—would've preferred the original non-digital coloring.

Lessee... I think Nocturnals is cool. Dinosaurs for Hire is a fun old series. I like other little things here and there. Rick Veitch comics kick ass.

I'm generally not big on superheroes, with the exception of Batman. Though Superman can be cool when he's written well and isn't nigh-invincible.

[Nail_Bombed]

Batman is actually one I've not got round to collecting much of - the only thing I own is the Batman Vs Dracula: Red Rain crossover series. I keep thinking about picking some other ones like The Long Halloween, Killing Joke etc. ... but money these days (as ever) is tight, and there's only so much stuff I can pick up... might be a while before I get round to expanding on the Bat. Always loved the character though - and the films are mighty.

[Nail_Bombed]

Forgot to add... Brian K Vaughan's stuff on Ex Machina and Y: The Last Man is well worth reading. Ex Machina is a good superhero-as-political-commentary yarn and Y: The Last Man is a post-apocalypse treatise on gender issues. Good stuff.

[Abnormal Freak]

Forgot ta mention one other comic I absolutely adore: Dylan Dog. Shame the movie looks like such shite. :p Sucks also that there aren't more of Tiziano Sclavi's works translated to English. I really wanna read his stuff involving his character Francesco Dellamorte, like the Dylan Dog specials and the book which the movie Cemetery Man (Dellamorte Dellamore) was adapted from, since it's one of my absolute favorite flicks. Makes me really curious how the character is in the novel and comics, because his movie self is a lot like Dylan Dog. And, of course, Dylan Dog's looks in the comics were modeled after Rupert Everett, who plays Francesco in the film, so there's an obvious connection there. Cemetery Man is essentially "the real Dylan Dog movie," as far as I'm concerned. :p

[X]

Also the Ultimate Marvel comic series. Though that looks to be under the hammer soon. I just read the latest issue of Ultimate Spiderman - and Peter Parker is dead . Been following that since they started it, just about, along with the Ultimate version of X-Men, Fantastic Four and Avengers. They're still continuing the Ultimate series of Spiderman, but it won't be Parker in the suit - which to me is just wrong. The values instilled in Peter Parker are what makes Spiderman great. To kill him off... it just beggars belief.

I remember a comic that came out years ago that featured two Peter Parkers. One was Spiderman while the other was the Scarlet Spider. From what I heard, Parker/Spiderman retired in order to have more time to devote to Mary Jane and left the crime fighting to the Scarlet Spider who then became Spiderman. If this info isn't accurate then check it out on wiki or some other "web" site <--yes, this is a pun.

I read the occasional comic I pick up every once in a while though I mostly read online manga. I also have two versions of Bram Stoker's Dracula in graphic novel format. The first is called the complete Dracula published by Dynamite entertainment while the other is called Bram Stoker's Dracula: the graphic novel adapted by Gary Reed and illustrated by Becky Cloonan. While both are Dracula stories, they differ quite a bit. The complete Dracula is done in full color and takes a really long time to read through. The other is in manga format and is not nearly as long but both stories are similar.

[Nail_Bombed]

I remember a comic that came out years ago that featured two Peter Parkers. One was Spiderman while the other was the Scarlet Spider. From what I heard, Parker/Spiderman retired in order to have more time to devote to Mary Jane and left the crime fighting to the Scarlet Spider who then became Spiderman. If this info isn't accurate then check it out on wiki or some other "web" site <--yes, this is a pun.

Remember that alright. And there was the Clone Wars as well (which I think had the Scarlet Spider). The thing with the Ultimate Marvel universe is that once you die, you stay dead (for the majority of people they've killed off in Ultimate that's been true), and there are no comebacks, unlike the Marvel 616 universe where everyone seems to be resurrected like Dracula every 5 weeks. I think on the part of Marvel, this is a cheap ploy to get more people interested in the comic again - and erasing a character from the pages that is pivotal to the series really is desperate IMO.

[JR]

I'll read the occasional comic. I used to read a lot of Batman, but then it seemed like there were just too many support heroes in his comics for my tastes. Then he became emotionally dysfunctional. Now I hear he has a 13-year-old assassin child from Talia Al-Ghul, or something? Ugh. I guess I prefer his stuff from about '85 up to the Knightfall arc.

I also like the occasional Punisher story, and one-shot stuff like The Crow. But in general, besides Bats and the Punisher, I wouldn't have a clue what to read. I'd probably have to go outside of Marvel or DC to really find something to enjoy, but I haven't made much effort to find anything new.

[Kale]

American comics are too hectic for me. I read manga and manwha.

I do remember suggesting this before, but to reiterate... Read Noblesse. It's a korean manwha that's free to read, and has been translated by EGScans. It's just ridiculously awesome.

[darkjak951]

Ever since I saw Xmen First Class, I have been very intrigued by the Xmen comics and plan on delving into them someday. Other than that, do graphic novels count? Or how bout the old Sonic the Hedgehog comics? Cuz that's all I've really read comic wise.

[Abnormal Freak]

do graphic novels count?

Firstly, are you talking actual graphic novels, or trade paperbacks? Second, yes, they do. :p A comic's a comic whether released in single-issue form or a larger graphic novel.

Speaking of manga, I picked up the first three volumes of Old Boy 'cos I love the movie so much. Gotta get to reading that.

[Successor The Cruel]

My favorite comic series is called Green Lantern: Mosaic. It's about this black guy that is chosen by some incredibly old, wise, and powerful aliens called the Guardians of the Universe to be a member of a corps of intergalactic peace keepers called the Green Lanterns. Each Green Lantern is given a power ring that allows them to create light constructs of whatever they can imagine, given that their willpower is strong enough to make the constructs materialize. The ring allows them to do plenty of other stuff, too, such as create a life support field that allows them to travel through space/underwater/volcanoes, fly, translate languages, and so on.

Anyway, this black guy (John Stewart) isn't the first human to be chosen. There is another Earthman Green Lantern, a white guy named Hal Jordan. John Stewart envies Hal Jordan to the point where it gets disturbing. He wishes he can be just like Hal, who is known as the greatest Green Lantern. After John failed to save an inhabited world from destruction (because he sucks), he's near the point of madness and in deep depression.

So, one of those Guardians of the Universe went crazy, and he took a bunch of settlements from many different worlds, and put them on a planet so that he can live with them. The diverse group of beings all want to go home, but the Guardians claim there isn't enough energy to transport them back to their respective worlds.

While they're waiting to get enough resources to transfer the cities back home, John Stewart is charged with keeping peace between all the different aliens on this planet. One of the settlements is a country town from West Virginia, and is the home of Rose Hardin, Hal Jordan's girlfriend. John and Rose get closer, and Hal Jordan (who is back in Earth's space sector defending his territory), goes to the planet to beat John's ass for moving in on his woman, and also because he feels he's mentally unstable.

It's a really strange comic book, but one of the most fascinating things I've ever read. I highly recommend it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Lantern:_Mosaic

[Abnormal Freak]

re: John Stewart

http://ourvaluedcustomers.blogspot.com/2010/06/to-her-son-regarding-jon-stewart-black.html

[Nail_Bombed]

Was always interested in the Green Lantern character/mythos. The idea of your imagination being your super-weapon was something that appealed. But again, too little money and too many books.
Hal Jordan had an up and down path throughout his career as a Lantern, even becoming the super-villain Parallax as I remember - the worst fears of the universe combined. Seeing as fear and overcoming it plays a big part in the Lantern Corps, it was interesting to see that storyline.

I'm not hugely into the manga form of comic books. I can see why people like it, and I'm sure there are good books and storylines - the style just never appealed to me that much. I feel a lot of good stuff is still coming out of the West, mostly by Irish writers like Garth Ennis, and the British writers Warren Ellis, Mark Millar, Alan Moore, Grant Morrison et al.

[Successor The Cruel]

Green Lantern can be an intimidating thing to dive into, because it's been going non-stop for so long and there are so many characters and so much complex history. I think the interesting thing about John Stewart Green Lantern is that he's a comic book character who actually grows and changes over the years, and does so successfully. I know that sounds like a simple thing, but when you really think about it, major characters don't do that often in typical super hero comics.

To explain that a bit, when writers write Hal Jordan, they don't often write anything to advance Hal's character. It's more about the situation than the man in the situation. And that man doesn't really grow often. They like to keep him at a status quo. This is understandable, though. Take Peter Parker. Many people have expectations for him, and from what I've seen, most feel he's best when he's going to college, not married, working for the Daily Bugle, and living with Aunt May.

When people write John, I think they feel they have less expectations to live up to, and they have more breathing room to take John's character on a journey, and as such, some really big and unexpected things happen with him, and he changes (the exploding planet was one thing). The cool thing about John is you can do things like that with him and he works great in so many different situations, unlike many other characters. A good example is what they did with him on the Justice League cartoon, with his relationship with Hawk Girl and all that. Don't get me wrong, I love Hal Jordan, too (most of the time), but John Stewart Green Lantern is a really fresh alternative, and the Mosaic comic really shows that.

John Stewart is known for being an unconventional thinker, so that comic series is definitely not like typical super hero fair. It's a very artsy and philosophical story about a guy who is struggling to break out of the shadow and get from under the thumb of his mentor, who the mentor kind of views as his bitch, or as John says, "his child-man". And about a guy who is trying to make a successful society out of many strikingly different groups of people who are all in an alien environment, instead of just being about pounding super villains. The story is really weird, and it makes sense because John is slipping into madness, though there is nothing that overtly says that, or blatantly points it out. Though it is technically a super hero comic, many people feel it's more along the lines of what DC puts out on their Vertigo imprint, like Sandman, 100 Bullets, and all that.

Sorry. After I made the first post, I pulled out the comics and read a few of them and was surprised at what magic I have sitting idly in my closet.
Definitely recommend downloading this, or something. If it doesn't tickle your fancy at first, give it a chance. It's so odd it takes a bit of getting used to.