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Post by Don Quixote on May 28, 2012 6:35:01 GMT -5
It's not my usual superhero stuff. If you're pretty much exclusive to superheroes you might wanna try Atomic Robo. He's sorta a superhero. Gonna second that. There's six trades out of present. They're between stories at the moment, so it's a good time to jump in. The trades are a bit expensive ($20), but it's worth it. I'm looking into getting BPRD. I've heard it's fantastic.
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Post by angilasman on May 28, 2012 16:37:42 GMT -5
^BPRD is fantastic, but it's hard for me to disconnect it from the rest of the "Mignolaverse" (Hellboy -the main series- as well as Lobster Johnson, Witchfinder, Abe Sapien and whatever other series undoubtedly will spring up) so there's a lot of stuff to discover.
...but with the Hellboy and BPRD hardcovers collecting multiple books I suppose it's never been more accessible.
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Post by Joker on May 29, 2012 1:34:03 GMT -5
Read:
The Question, Vol. 2: Poisoned Ground by Dennis O'Neil, and Denys Cowan. Vic Sage a.k.a. The Question continues to fight crime in Hub City even as law and order has broken down after the mayor is pretty much a drunken lout. His ex-lover, Myra, is trying to keep the city together as Question gets dosed with some sort of hallucinogen and has to expose a conspiracy that leads to Santa Prisca and a sadistic crime lord looking for redemption through witnessing high-tech alchemy. Then he has to face off against the man who almost killed him in a neighborhood with a deadly secret.
The Question, Vol. 3: Epitaph for a Hero by Dennis O'Neill and Denys Cowan. In Hub City things are still lousy as a cabal of killers has decided that all of society's ills can be traced back to a lack of discipline in the military. So they decide to slaughter a team of elite commandos at a demonstration in a stadium full of people. The Question tries to track these elite killers down and winds up their prisoner in an ordeal that could break him physically and mentally. Then two criminals who have based themselves after Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid decide that the unstable Hub City is a great place to make a new organized crime syndicate. They try to take out Izzy, a dirty cop-turned-hard-boiled-good cop who is the example of a citizen making a difference and Question must track down the two bad guys. An assist from Green Arrow and an attempt to emulate Rorschach from Watchmen seem to be the keys to stopping the two outlaws.
The Question continues to be one of the darkest and most compelling characters as martial arts philosophy and detective skills come into play to smash crime. It's really powerful stuff that pulls no punches with random things that become bizarre story points. At one point Vic actually has to confront the character flaws that keep getting him beat up even though he is a martial arts master. Recommended.
Irredeemable, Vol. 7 by Mark Waid, Peter Krause, and Diego Barreto. The Plutonian is confined to a intergalactic mental institution on a star as his old allies begin to realize that Survivor, the new top superhero on Earth, may himself be unstable. Plutonian finds someone who brings him back to reality and he begins his mighty plan to burrow down through this prison world to the core, where his reincarnated nemesis Modeus and ex-ally Qubit are trying to stop his escape back to Earth. This winds up being more interesting than previous entries as this crazed ex-hero is a terrible villain who will make any alliances he needs at the moment and the story gets all twisty. Recommended.
28 Days Later, Vol. 5: Ghost Town by Michael Nelson, Alejandro Aragon and Ron Salas. Selena and her American journalist friend continue to press into infected Scotland, where the infected are no longer a threat as they are simply starving to death. The real threat is a British military captain who will stop at nothing to exact revenge against Selena for a fallen comrade from the first film, not even if he has to slaughter American soldiers trying to repatriate Britain as the infection burns itself out. The story gets mush more intense as this hardcase Englishman takes the woman back to the Worsley House military camp from the first film and it comes to a very ironic ending that you have to watch the movie to understand. Recommended.
Flex Mentallo: Man of Muscle Mystery by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely. Flex Mentallo was a hero who popped up in Morrison's Doom Patrol comics who used his rippling muscles to fight crime through telekinetic flexing. His world is coming to an end and at the same time an artist who draws him is having some sort of personal crisis where he's committing suicide by drinking and taking too many sleeping pills. This artist's troubled past becomes the key to what is happening around him and Flex has to find a way to get into the real world to save this guy before everything comes to a terrible end.
Someday someone will find some blood in Grant Morrison's LSD stream. That's what I think anyway as this story is just so trippy and becomes so meta that I assume that hallucinogens play a big role in his imagination. The hyper-detailed art by Quitely makes the story realistic even as the story becomes incredibly trippy to explain how unreal things are becoming real. It becomes a criticism of the nihilistic dark world of modern comics and trying to reclaim the wonder and positivity of Golden Age comics. Highly recommended.
Next up:
Invincible Ultimate Collection, Vol. 2 by Robert Kirkman, Ryan Ottley, and Bill Crabtree
H.P. Lovecraft's The Dunwich Horror by Lovecraft, graphic adaptation by Joe R. Lansdale, Peter Bertwing, and Menton Matthews III
The Advance Team by Will Pfiefer and German Torres
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Post by Mighty Jack on May 29, 2012 4:42:17 GMT -5
If you're pretty much exclusive to superheroes you might wanna try Atomic Robo. He's sorta a superhero. Gonna second that. There's six trades out of present. They're between stories at the moment, so it's a good time to jump in. The trades are a bit expensive ($20), but it's worth it. I got the free comic book day Atomic Robo in '08 and wasn't real impressed with that. It was okay. Maybe if a used copy of a tpb shows up at the shop I'll give it another shot.
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Post by angilasman on May 29, 2012 15:17:20 GMT -5
I got the free comic book day Atomic Robo in '08 and wasn't real impressed with that. It was okay. Maybe if a used copy of a tpb shows up at the shop I'll give it another shot. I was introduced by this year's FCBD issue. It had me in stitches. "What hath mad science wrought!?"
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Post by Mighty Jack on May 30, 2012 4:11:10 GMT -5
I'll take a look in the used section, I might get lucky and find a collected edition cheap.
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Post by angilasman on Jun 4, 2012 20:31:18 GMT -5
I'm looking into getting BPRD. I've heard it's fantastic. The current BPRD issue out "The Transformation of J.H. O'Donnell," is actually a great intro to both BPRD and Hellboy.
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Post by floatinginspace82 on Jun 28, 2012 10:57:55 GMT -5
I hope I'm not changing the subject too much but has anyone here read invincible? I really like the dynamic of the story and writing and the art style is pretty good.If you haven't read it try it out it's a good superhero comic.
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Post by Joker on Jul 4, 2012 0:09:52 GMT -5
Read:
Invincible Ultimate Collection, Vol. 2 by Robert Kirkman, Ryan Ottley, and Bill Crabtree. After his father commits mass murder and leaves the planet Mark Grayson/Invincible becomes a new superhero on the government's payroll. As he fights crime and monumental threats he has to balance that life with his personal life. One of these adventures has him going under the sea to fight a giant monster and become the mate of the queen of the fish people's kingdom. Meanwhile, one of his friend's gets kidnapped by the Frankenstein-like guy at the university Mark attends.
Invincible Ultimate Collection, Vol. 3 by Robert Kirkman, Ryan Ottley, and Bill Crabtree. Mark suddenly gets called by an unknown alien race to save them from a threat and when he gets to their planet he is reunited with his father, now the leader of the insect people there and having fathered a son with one of them somehow. The threat is from his father's people and he needs his son's help fighting the scouts sent to take over the planet. It doesn't seem like Mark is strong enough and upon his return to Earth he resolves to work at becoming stronger - just in time for a dimension-hopping supervillain to take his family hostage in order to get revenge for a past slight.
The Invincible series keeps getting better as it's full of action and bloody fights and a continuity that is easily followed. In Vol. 3 Mark makes a terribly hasty action that has repurcussions for him on a moral level. The whole thing is far out and still approachable being both a satire of superheroes and an original story as well.
H.P. Lovecraft's The Dunwich Horror by Lovecraft, graphic adaptation by Joe R. Lansdale, Peter Bertwing, and Menton Matthews III. Four people invoked an interdimensional beast in the past and it's now ravaging the countryside. The key to defeating it seems to be in the ancient evil tome the Necronomicon. Even if these people can decipher the passages from the book it's still going to be no easy task stopping a monster that seems to be a dark tornado with headless cattle and human corpses blowing around in it. After that somewhat uninvolving story is an illustrated short story from Lovecraft called "The Hound." Two wealthy art lovers get bored and decide to create their own monument to death, eventually raiding a Dutch grave to get an amulet and then being pursued by an unseen beast. This winds up being the better of the two stories as it was much more atmospheric and creepy.
The Advance Team by Will Pfiefer and German Torres. A pizza delivery guy is touched by some sort of power during a massive blackout and seems to have developed superpowers. There is a cabal of other superior people who have become rich and powerful because of it. He's trained by his uncle to become a killing machine and his targets are these powerful people who must be assassinated or the world will end. The whole story seems to be some sort of power fantasy and the story takes a wild turn near the end that explains everything, but is otherwise a bit tedious.
Next up:
Night of the Living Dead, Vol. 2 by Mike Wolfer, John Russo and Aira Tomas
Blackgas by Warren Ellis and Max Fiumara
Batman: Death by Design by Chip Kidd and Dave Taylor
B.P.R.D.: Being Human by Mike Mignola, John Arcudi, Scott Allie and Richard Corben
Batman: Venom by Dennis J. O'Neil and Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez
Batman: Detective Comics Vol. 1: Faces of Death by Tony S. Daniel and various artists
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Post by mummifiedstalin on Jul 12, 2012 9:45:04 GMT -5
Comment and questions:
I go on tears with comics. I don't follow any, but I'll go through periods of just devouring tons of stuff at once. But here's my problem: I read them fast, *consume* them. It's hard to justify the money I often spend because the experience is over so quickly. And I find that I don't linger over the art as much as I always think I'm going to.
So how do other people actually read comics? Do you just read the blurbs and scan the pictures for the information? Or do you actually *read* the art, too, really taking it in and taking time with it? Obviously it's different for different artists. Some are workaday and just there to get the story along while others are more thoughtful. But, that said, I'm still curious if other people are often surprised to find how little time they actually spend on the visual side as I am?
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Post by angilasman on Jul 12, 2012 22:20:33 GMT -5
It depends. If I read a comic it's invariably because I enjoy either the art or the writing (preferably both) and if there's a particularly great moment involving art or the story (again, preferably both) I can linger on the page for a long while before moving on.
Mike Mignola (Hellboy) and Stan Sakai (Usagi Yojimbo) are great at timing, especially Sakai. The synthesis of the art and writing really dictates how slow or fast you read it. When they put in a pause you don't just quickly take in that panel and go to the next, you often spend as much time on that one as one with dialog because you're in the rhythm and you feel like you have to.
Of course, I usually don't read you're average, mainstream comics. My typical diet is creator-owned general audience titles (like Hellboy and Usagi), more indie fare (like Love and Rockets), been getting into European books lately, old comic strip reprints, ect. ect. The current mainstream books tend to have storytelling I just cant get into: all huge splash panels and little dialog. It's like they took 6 pages of what I'd think of as a proper comic book and blew up all the panels so's they fit the whole 22 pages! It's one of the most frustrating things.
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Post by Mighty Jack on Jul 12, 2012 23:23:42 GMT -5
I like Superheroes. So that's where I spend most of my time. My first read, I just gobble them down. But then I go back and really pay attention... to the art, to the dialog. The second go through lasts a lot longer because of that.
Brian Azzarello, who is doing Wonder Woman, does a lot of wordplay, words from one character that connect to another. So that's fun to pay attention to.
Grant Morrison is very dense, there's a lot of little Easter eggs pointing to the past and to the future. He makes you work, you really have to read Morrison carefully.
Artists have gotten a bit minimalistic of late, it seems to me. One comic (not a superhero, but one considered "rural noir") titled Revival (the dead rise, there's an alien wandering the back woods. Weird stuff). Anyway, the artist Mike Norton is amazing, he's old school in that he really gets into the architecture and landscape of a piece. You really feel like your in someones house, it adds personality to the person living there. A lot of today's artists just seem to throw in random blocks and abstract shapes as backgrounds, so Norton was a treat. I just lingered and stared and stared at each panel.
Finally, when an arc is completely I'll go back and read the whole thing again in one sitting. That can be an eye opener and reveal new things.
I also read a lot of collected editions to save money (libraries often carry them, so I can sample for free). You lose the suspense of waiting for a monthly, but you get a whole story arc in one, which has it's benefits.
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Post by Don Quixote on Jul 15, 2012 19:09:16 GMT -5
Gonna second that. There's six trades out of present. They're between stories at the moment, so it's a good time to jump in. The trades are a bit expensive ($20), but it's worth it. I got the free comic book day Atomic Robo in '08 and wasn't real impressed with that. It was okay. Maybe if a used copy of a tpb shows up at the shop I'll give it another shot. Depends on what you like, really. It's a common thing to say "Robo is in the vein of Hellboy", but it's not entirely accurate. It's not nearly as moody as Hellboy. Robo very clearly has conflict, but he deals with it, instead of pouting about it. It's a lot more silly than Hellboy. It's also a lot of fun. Maybe not entirely the best (if the '08 FCBD issue is the one I'm thinking of, that wasn't the best Robo story out there), but it's well-written and always in character. It's benefited from the creator-owned system, and we've gotten some amazing stories out of it. As I said, it all depends on what you like. There's a story arc set during the depression, there's an arc set during WWII, there's an arc set spanning the entire twentieth century, there are a few modern arcs, and if you're looking for something a little cheaper and a bit less focused, see if you can pick up the Real Science Adventures issues (there have been three so far). They're cheaper, have a few serialized vignettes (starring Robo & Bruce Lee and another starring a British WWII operative), one or two original stand-alone stories, and a reprint of an older Robo short. And they're doing an animated short in the near future, thanks to kickstarter!
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Torgo
Moderator Emeritus
-segment with Crow?
Posts: 15,420
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Post by Torgo on Jul 15, 2012 20:00:52 GMT -5
Comment and questions: I go on tears with comics. I don't follow any, but I'll go through periods of just devouring tons of stuff at once. But here's my problem: I read them fast, *consume* them. It's hard to justify the money I often spend because the experience is over so quickly. And I find that I don't linger over the art as much as I always think I'm going to. So how do other people actually read comics? Do you just read the blurbs and scan the pictures for the information? Or do you actually *read* the art, too, really taking it in and taking time with it? Obviously it's different for different artists. Some are workaday and just there to get the story along while others are more thoughtful. But, that said, I'm still curious if other people are often surprised to find how little time they actually spend on the visual side as I am? I never really thought about how I "read" a comic book. I guess I let the dialogue do the talking and breifly burn the image into my head to tell the visual side of the story. Don't really look at it any different than how a read a book or watch a movie. I don't think I've ever taken any time with one to let it sink in, unless I'm engrossed by it. Then I'd probably be sunk into it for about an hour.
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Post by Mighty Jack on Jul 16, 2012 15:38:56 GMT -5
Just picked up the trade paperback for $8 at Amazon, and it's a good one. It's a mix of crime noir and horror (cops, cults and supernatural beings). This is the series first vol and it collects issues 1 through 5. While it has a nice self contained story, it leaves plenty of mysteries unanswered. Art is good an moody, in the style of classic noir. I'll be back for book 2.
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