I've never read a comic in my life. I've wanted to start, but it seems like there is just so much out there that it's impossible to catch up or keep up. I have no idea where to start, so I never do :(Pick up Batman: Year One. There are plenty of great self-contained graphic novels, but I think this would be a good starting point.
FA, you should read Conan, manliest of all comics. There's five trade paperback volumes of the new Dark Horse series out, and they're awesome.
FA, you should read Conan, manliest of all comics. There's five trade paperback volumes of the new Dark Horse series out, and they're awesome.
Don't listen to this cigarillo, FA. He's just trying to get into your pants with homo hypermasculine bullshit. This is what real men read:
(http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51EDG3DYDRL._SS400_.jpg)
Although, if you want a good "superhero" comic without too much baggage, Morrison's NEW X-MEN run is pretty fucktastically awesome
I just read Mark Millar's Wanted on the recommendation of a friend.
If you hate superheroes than you should check out Garth Ennis's The Boys. It's a highly anti-superhero comic about a secret group whose goal is to take down superhero organizations. It's even got Simon Pegg as one of the main characters.
(http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c296/SamSawyr/Happy%20Fun/Ennis20Robertson20The20Boys.jpg)
Patel, I'm just looking for something cool to read in downtime between work/school or spare time at home. I'm totally a clean slate and may check out the new X-men and see where I go from there.
Sandman or Invisibles - can't go wrong with either.
Morrison's New X-Men run is great. Let me know if you need trade titles (or torrent links).
god, how is Kingdom Come venerated
fanwank tracery
All-Star Superman is pretty goddamn amazing every time it comes out.
Also, I would like to suggest the new Blue Beetle. It's a hispanic teenager who is infected (or 'blessed') with an ancient alien artifact which gives him powers. It's really the setting and the supporting characters which make this series. I can't wait for them to start collecting this in good hardcovers.
speaking of fun fan wankery, though, wasn't there a new ambush bug recently?
a flashback?! next thing you'll be telling me there's interstital text describing the scene
It's like DC just did all kinds of stupid shit to their fun 80s characters
okay, it's time to post this song
http://www.mediafire.com/?xjm1sbxnn4c
you forgotnow i'll never have followers!
minus 4 cha
Before trying to get more specific about 'myth', let's get a bit more specific about the structural and literary hazards of bricolesqe storytelling. Timothy Burke posted a fine essaylet several months ago, "Powers and the Comic Book Human". It really expresses very well exactly what exasperates Moore:
The problem with the standard superhero comics is the problem that all serial melodrama has. The longer your characters go on, particularly if you’re not allowing them to age, the more that the accumulation of contradictory events in their lives and within their worlds creates a kind of toxic layer of underlying sludge that turns the characters and their surrounding mythos into a kind of fever-dream patchwork unreality.
There are actually a couple semi-distinct problems here. Let us be a bit pedantic and distinguish them. First, sheer volume of ever-accreting eventage will eventually get embarrassing. Even ordinary human characters having ordinary 'adventures' can only have so many, reason teaches. (Will Rex Morgan, M.D. never take a permanent vacation?) Second, difficulties maintaining consistency are proportional to total volume of eventage, which increases exponentially (cubically?).
And, by the by, the reason something like DC's "Crisis On Infinite Earths" is doomed to be aesthetically unsatisfying and actually rather dull (in my opinion) is that it's flagrant cosmic kludge in response to two patently mundane problems. (1) There's too much stuff, and (2) it's all messed up. As the wikipedia definition puts it: "a kludge is never elegant or admirable, except ironically." Pretending a kludge can support so much top-heavy 'If this be Ragnarok' eschatonnage is an attitude best maintained ironically, since literature should make a point of being in some way admirable, or at least self-aware of its limitations. (The alpha and omega of DC's 'crisis' was marketing. Decades of marketing strained the fabric of the universe; this had to be mended for the sake of future marketing. If only it could have been a titanic clash between the Marketer and the Anti-Marketer, with the villainous Anti-Marketer finally defeated by twelve of the mightiest heroes from all the earths - that would at least have been honest.)
I agree. If it's not black and white, I don't read it anymore.
The only good superhero books of the last ten years were Grant Morrison's X-men run and his Marvelboy series.