Comics I should Read?

[GATEGOD]

I've never picked up a comic until I started reading Season 8 of Buffy, and I was looking at the panel to panel book and it showed alot of great artwork.
I was wondering if there are any comics you might recommend me trying to get I've only seen/have Buffy Season 8 and Angel After the Fall, any others?

[Allycat]

I guess the most obvious choices here would be Fray, Tales of the Vampires, Tales of the Slayers, and The Origin, because they're all canon.

The art for Fray is very good. It's a very different style from S8 or AAtF. The colours are very vibrant and that gives it a bit of a cartoon-y feel. Tales of the Slayers might also be a good place to start, since it contains a number of different stories all with different styles; it might help you decide what you like. (If I'm not mistaken the same is actually true for Tales of the Vampires; but I haven't read it myself so I can't comment on that one.) The art in The Origin is nothing too spectacular I'm afraid and the story is one we already know, so you might want to leave that one for later.

[DarklyDreamingDrusilla]

I have also never read any of the Buffy comics until Season 8 came out and now I have been buying a bunch of them. I really recommend the Omnibus volumes they are great because they go in chronological order and have lots of stories. So if you want alot out of a comic then the Omnibus ones are great. The first two are already out and the third comes out in Febuary. I also really like a few of the Spike comics I have Shadow Puppets and Spike vs Dracula. (that is because I am a huge Spike fan though)

[nerd4hire]

There's also Joss's comic run of Astonishing X Men, Joss and Brian K Vaughan on Runaways, and Serenity: Those Left Behind.

Actually I think Vaughan's Runaway's might contain too many obscure references for someone who's not into the Marvel verse (could be wrong about that), but BKV's Y: Last Man is pretty readable.

[goldenboy]

Runaways is actually quite accessible for a newb (I'd think). The Runaways bump into a few relatively obscure Marvel people like Cloak and Dagger, The Wrecking Crew. Doesn't really require prior knowledge though. If you like irreverent, Buffyverse style writing, you'd probably get into almost anything by Brian Vaughan. Y:The Last Man, Ex Machina, Dr. Strange: The Oath, etc.

I loved Brian Michael Bendis' Alias series. That one would seem a little mysterious without basic knowledge of Spider-Man, Captain America, The Avengers, Daredevil, etc. Really fun, talky writing though. Basically a superhero-noir-detective kinda thing (sorta like Angel, in a way). Actually, you might like Bendis' revamp of Spider-Man (called Ultimate Spider-Man). It's a reboot of the character—with a new continuity—from the very beginning. It's up to like, Vol 18 or something now, don't even know. But I read the first vol, it's good.

I don't know DC well at all. Buffy Summers could probably help out there. I know the modern Batman classics are things like Batman: Year One, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, (Frank Miller), Batman: The Killing Joke (Alan Moore), etc.

My new comics hero is Darwyn Cooke. He writes and draws all his stuff himself. Love his DC: The New Frontier series. Started reading his brief stint on The Spirit. And he's written Catwoman and Batman stories that I gotta check out. He's got a very classic, retro style.

[GATEGOD]

Thanks :D I'll look into your suggestions ^_^

[goldenboy]

Just finished Vol. 5 of Ex Machina. It's a great book. The art just keeps getting better too. It would definitely be Rated R if it were a film - just a heads up.

Always like checking out people's year end "Best of" lists. Here are a couple from EW.



The Best Comics of 2007

Ken Tucker and Jeff Jensen each pick 5 faves, from an exploration of Israel to the climax of a sci-fi saga

Because one is the loneliest number, we bring you no less than two best-comics-of-the-year lists! Below, EW's Ken Tucker and Jeff Jensen weigh in on the choicest titles of 2007.

KEN TUCKER'S TOP 5

1. Exit Wounds
Rutu Modan
(Drawn & Quarterly)
The Tel Aviv-based artist and writer Modan tells a tale of contemporary Israel through two characters: Koby, a young taxi driver, and Numi, an Israeli soldier. They are linked by the fact that Koby's father, presumed dead in a suicide-bomb attack, was romantically involved with Numi. There is no heavy-handed dissection of the Israel-Palestine conflict here; rather, Modan is interested in crafting a short story about the everyday possibilities of violence, and about the way terror becomes a grinding, constant presence of its own. Her figures are pasty, often pudgy people — intentionally non-comic-strip-heroic-looking — and humans and their background settings (the inside of a cab, small shops, and cramped living quarters) are rendered with minimal lines, inked with pale, fading tints. The result is a triumphant book about not-so-quiet desperation.

2. Popeye Vol. 2: ''Well, Blow Me Down!''
E.C. Segar
(Fantagraphics)
In addition to the much under-reported reissues of Hank Ketchum's Dennis the Menace (how can comics devotees resist Ketchum's sleek drawing line and the way his technique contrasts so beautifully with the idea of his sloppy bad-boy character?), this collection of Popeye newspaper strips is one of the year's most valuable, revelatory efforts. Creator Segar worked at this point (1931 and 1932) primarily in six-panel black-and-white daily strips and 12-panel color strips. Within this formal grid pattern, Segar worked anarchic wonders. One of the best storylines concerns the hiring of Popeye to join the ''brave'' forces of King Blozo of Nazilia (a thin, stooped-over, stringy-bearded idiot) to defeat his kingdom's enemies, the ''cowardly'' Tonsylvanians. Popeye soon discovers sedition in the ranks; Blozo's chief general Bunzo plots to overthrow the king. Each strip pays off in a fine gag, yet the narrative accumulates to reveal a good satire of war politics. This is the mark of a great daily cartoonist, and Segar raised the bar in quality of art and dialogue, such as Popeye's endless stream of grammar- and pronunciation-crunching observations. One of my favorites: ''When a obstickle pops up, I removes it — tha's what makes life intrestin.''' Words to live by...

3.All-Star Superman
Written by Grant Morrison; art by Frank Quitely
(DC)
I just adore the way Quitely draws Superman, the way he makes the Big Blue Cheese's chest puff out and shrinks his head a little — frequently giving the most iconic superhero the intense frown of a quizzical man. Quitely reminds you that Superman came from another planet, and no matter that he's been here since infancy, he doesn't...quite...fit...in with these humans. In collaboration with author Morrison, Quitely returns alter ego Clark Kent to his buffoonishness — the spectacle of a bespectacled beefy man stuffed into a business suit, always chasing a story whenever he isn't stumbling over one. Most of all, there's a luxurious air of calm about this book — as Morrison has Superman say in the December issue, ''I am a scientist's son. It's in my nature to observe and to learn.'' And whether that learning is about the history of Krypton or the eternal riddle that is Lois Lane (a nicely mussed, aggressive Lois, often accompanied by an epicene, more supercilious and adult Jimmy Olsen than usual), Superman leaps into action only when provoked.

(The other DC book I was happy to become lost in — but didn't quite make this list — was the second volume of Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus, a marvelously edited collection of Kirby's ''New Gods'' tales, many of which appeared in, of all places, the 1970s Jimmy Olsen comic book. Superman plays a side role in these books — only Kirby could move Superman to the corner of a comic book, because he's actually invented bigger super-powered beings to take prominence. As a kid, I had no use for the ''New Gods'' saga, dismissing them as the ramblings of a genius artist with no gift for narrative. Now I see them as Kirby's engrossing take on post-counterculture America, with a kind of fantasy storytelling that's far more propulsive and captivating than the work of most prose fanatics.)

4. Shortcomings
Adrian Tomine
(Drawn & Quarterly)
Maybe it's because I enjoyed writer-artist Tomine's critique of a certain kind of contemporary personality — so much clever sarcasm, so much self-absorption, so little engagement with the workaday world — that I was immediately taken with his portrait of Ben Tanaka. Tomine draws Ben the way he does most of his protagonists, with a serenely smooth line and delicate worry lines. Ben is smart, he's a horndog, and he's lonely, which makes him a quietly formidable man. Tomine raises questions of race by having others suggest that his Asian protagonist is more interested in dating non-Asian women, which proves a novel (for a graphic novel, at least) way to provide conflict. But this is not, ultimately, what Shortcomings is about. Look at the title: This is a poignant, dryly funny story of people grappling with their flaws, bending them into strengths, with occasional outbursts of emotions all the more effective for the contrast they offer to the artist's tidy drawings.

5. I Shall Destroy All The Civilized Planets!: The Comics of Fletcher Hanks
Edited by Paul Karasik
(Fantagraphics)
Even if Karasik didn't provide us with a biographical prose portrait of a hard-drinking, often mean, abusive man with a streak of misanthropy he gilded with Ayn Rand-y selfish Objectivism, this collection of Fletcher Hanks comics would still be jaw-dropping. Hanks worked for minor-league comics companies in the late 1930s/early 1940s. He drew heavily muscled super-beings of his own creation, pin-headed heroes like the Super-Wizard Stardust and a huge-headed villain, Destructo. His drawings lacked (on purpose?) depth and perspective; they were flat, florid figures that made appropriately flat, florid statements, such as the exclamation that is the title of this book. What comes across is Hanks' free-floating, near-constant outpouring of rage and paranoia — rage that there is evil in the world, paranoia that it was coming to silence his heroes...and in effect, himself.






JEFF JENSEN'S TOP 5

1. Y: The Last Man
Written by Brian K. Vaughan; art by Pia Guerra
(DC)
Next month, the greatest comic-book saga since Neil Gaiman's Sandman will come to a close after a six-year run. And so, for the final time, let us celebrate what Vaughan and Guerra have created: a brilliantly conceived vision of a semi-dystopian world devastated (and sometime improved) by a mystery virus that has killed all the men except for one. It's amazing how much story, how much Big Idea exploration, how much soapy drama Y has mined out of this narrow sci-fi conceit. The revelations and denouements of the past year have not disappointed. Yorick Brown's long-awaited reunion with girlfriend Beth and the sequence in which Agent 355 finally discloses her real name are my two favorite comic-book moments of the year. Unforgettable, just like the series itself.

2. The Killer (''Le Tueur'')
Written by Matz (yes, just ''Matz''); art by Luc Jacamon
(Archaia Studios Press)
Like foreign films, it's often easy to overestimate the quality of imported comics due to their exotic otherness. But I'm not making that error here. The Killer is the chronicle of an emotionally frozen misanthrope — an assassin by profession — struggling to collect enough cash to retire while grappling with the unsettling stirrings of his buried conscience. Matz and Jacamon have created a storytelling language that is immersive and riveting, whether it's tick-tocking the tedium of a hitman's waiting game in a Paris flat or mounting an action sequence in the lush jungles of Central America. It's a mesmerizing piece of work that thrills to the potential of the comic-book medium.

3. The Three Paradoxes
Paul Hornschemeier
(Fantagraphics)
The follow-up to Hornschemeier's sublime 2004 graphic novella Mother, Come Home was my most anticipated comic of 2007, and it did not disappoint. During a long nighttime walk with his father through his Ohio hometown, a 20-something cartoonist drifts into angsty, interrelated ruminations about his work, about his childhood, about his own artistic purpose. Shading everything is the intriguing mystery of his looming first date with a woman named Julianne he knows only via correspondence. Yeah, it's a little self-involved, but it's suffused with such winning humor, humility, and self-examination that the whole business wonderfully comes off humane and accessible. Three Paradoxes is the funny-book equivalent of melancholy pop like the Shins, and it affirms Hornschemeier's budding rep as a cartoonist/auteur on par with Daniel Clowes and Chris Ware.

4. Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Eight
Written by Joss Whedon and Brian K. Vaughan; art by Georges Jeanty
(Dark Horse)
I'm going to be accused of making an obvious, EW-ish choice or a knee-jerk nod to the Hollywoodization of comics. Regardless, I must say that Joss Whedon's comic-book continuation of his canceled TV series deserves to be on this list because it is, first and foremost, a very good comic — the best, at the moment, of its superhero(ish) kind. Whedon's inaugural arc was a touch clunky in the scripting department; despite his proven skill as a comics scribe (see The Astonishing X-Men), it felt like he was still trying to figure out how to translate Buffy's funny/poignant/poppy TV voice into comics language. Leave it to a great comic-book writer to show him the way: Buffy's second storyline, a Faith tale written by the aforementioned Vaughan, simply nailed it. The issue following Vaughan's run, written by Whedon and on sale now, is the best yet: a Buffy-Willow team-up that features a pretty genius dream sequence involving Tina Fey. Even better, this issue finally convinced me that Buffy the comic just might be every bit as good as Buffy the TV show. And kudos to Whedon for taking this comics venture as seriously as he would TV and film work. Here's hoping others in Hollywood will follow his lead. (Memo to Veronica Mars creator Rob Thomas: Hear that foot tapping? That's me and scads of other fans, waiting....)

5. I Killed Adolf Hitler
By Jason (Yes, just ''Jason.'' Whatever.)
(Fantagraphics)
A number of cool comics vied for my final slot, especially Doc Frankenstein (written by the Wachowski Brothers at their irreverent, outrageous, quasi-philosophical best, and drawn by Steve Skroce) and The Immortal Iron Fist (written by Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction, and drawn by David Aja, my favorite new comic artist). But whenever I deliberated the matter, I kept coming back to this tale — set in a cartoony world of humanoid animals — about a ho-hum killer who's hired to travel back in time to assassinate Adolf Hitler. The best thing about this title is how the story really isn't about that at all...and if spoil any more, I risk ruining the pleasure of discovering what it really is all about. Funny, surreal, sweet and even romantic, I Killed Adolf Hitler is an inspired, quirky lark that lingers delightfully in the mind.
Comics: The year's best titles | 1 | BEST OF 2007 | Books | The Best & Worst of 2007 | Entertainment Weekly (http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20162677_20164082_20167020,00.html)