Graphic Novels and Comic Books

Sorry, for insulting half the people on this site but for me growing up comic books were mostly for loaner zitty nerds. I had a couple of friends who collect comic books and I would read them once in while but I never cared for them that much. But in the last year I've been blown away by two amazing movies Dark Knight and the Watchmen and then I was blown away reading the Watchmen. I'd love to find more of that kind of stuff.

So I've started reading Alan Moore's V for Vendetta. After that I'll try to find League of Extraordinary Gentleman from the libary. But what other recommendation do you have?
Note: I'm personally only interested in comics that have been made into book or graphic novel format. I not really interested in heading to a comic book store every month to pick up the newest issue. I'd rather get it out of the library or spend $20 for the complete book.

Thanks for everyone's help. Also, thanks Shellhead for telling me about a great comic and game store in Minnesota, the Source. I ended up heading there a second time before my flight out of Minnesota. That's where I picked up V for Vendetta and 2 Cylon figures for my BSG game.

Alan Moore's Swamp Thing is good.

Marv Wolfman and George Perez's New Teen Titans series is extraordinary IMHO.

X-Men 94 through the end of John Byrne's tenure there is very good.

Alpha Flight #1 through the end of John Byrne's work is very good.

Anything Alan Moore is pretty much amazing. Other ones I love that you haven't mentioned are Top 10 and Tom Strong. They are more "fun" though. From Hell, and his Swamp Thing stuff are a lot darker and also totally fantastic.

Warren Ellis is awesome. Check out Planetary first, but pretty much everything he's done is varying degrees of great.

I'm also a huge fan of the Conan comics. There are lots of different eras with different creators. I really like the newish Dark Horse Busiek/Nord volumes.

For great art and a fun, though pretty derivative, story check out Mouse Guard.

Dark Knight Returns - Frank Miller

Batman Year One - Miller & Mazzuchelli (the BEST batman story in my opinion)

Maus - Art Spigelman

Sin City - Frank Miller

The Dark Phoenix Saga - Chris Claremont & John Byrne

Hellboy - Mike Mignola

Hard Boiled - Geoff Darrow (okay story fantastically detailed art!)

1602 - Neil Gaiman & Andy Kubert

Bone - Jeff Smith

Black Hole - Charles Burns

Anything by Chester Brown or Joe Matt (autobiographical)

Marvels - Alex Ross

Kingdom Come - Alex Ross

Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth - Chris Ware (heart-achingly beautiful)

that's a start anyway

drmabuse00 wrote:

Batman Year One - Miller & Mazzuchelli (the BEST batman story in my opinion)

It's way shorter, but Killing Joke is still better I think.

MattLoter wrote:

drmabuse00 wrote:

Batman Year One - Miller & Mazzuchelli (the BEST batman story in my opinion)

It's way shorter, but Killing Joke is still better I think.

To be honest I was never a DC fan growing up but it was the art of BYO that attracted me and after I read the first comic I was hooked. I don't think I bought any other DC title after that.

edit: oops I did buy Kingdom Come, but again it was the Alex Ross' art that attracted me.

Fables

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fables_(Vertigo)

I usually don't feel like I get enough bang for my buck when it comes to comic books. Sure, a lot of them have neat art but I quickly read them and the story barely advances. It frustrates me to wait and it's too expensive. I'd rather read a novel. Fables is an exception - great storytelling.

I am a comic book guy and for graphic novels I would have to say that hands down, "Kings in Disguise" is one of the most moving/disturbing/affecting books I have ever read... graphic or otherwise... Haunting, and better than Maus... and I loved Maus.

www.goodreads.com/book/show/821808.Kings_in_Disguise_A_Novel

10 amazing comic series, all available in trade paperbacks:

100 Bullets
Fables
Scalped
Planetary
The Authority (1st 12 issues by Warren Ellis & Bryan Hitch)
Bone
Astro City
Lone Wolf & Cub
Hitman (Garth Ennis & John McCrae)
Y: The Last Man

Sounds like you really dig Alan Moore, which means you have good taste. Other great Moore titles: Top 10, Supreme, Promethea, Tom Strong.

Also I have a soft spot in my heart for the "Preacher" series by Garth Ennis... They are collected into a series of ten (?) graphic novels... But it has been a LONG time since I read them, so i would hate to staje my rep on them...

I would throw out "Wanted" the graphic novel, but I think you have to be more of a comic book geek to fully appreciate it... Don't let the craptastic movie fool you... good stuff

THE SANDMAN by Gaiman. It's fucking sad that it took page 2 to list this, people.

The only one's I own are: WATCHMAN, THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, and Moore's SAGA OF THE SWAMP THING.

There's a whole thread on here somewhere about Moore--some of his stuff is shitty. But some is so fucking good you can't miss it.

ROAD TO PERDITION is very good.

The Marvel ZOMBIES stuff is good assuming you didn't pay for it.

Some folks swear by BONE. It's OK. Why the rabid following is beyond me.

I never got (or even understood) the whole Comics/Graphics Novels/B.D. hobby. I read the 'Nam series (Marvel) when it got out, I stopped after some 40 issues when they introduced young super-heroes.

The only comics I truly liked was Love and Rockets .

I used to read comics as a kid, then some manga in high school then left it all alone until a couple of years ago. Here are some of my suggestions, some are stand alone graphic novels but most are current series but already have several volumes collected in graphic novel form. These are in no particular order.

The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller is a really great Batman story. One of those pivotal works that changed comics.

The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman is the zombie movie that never ends. Survivors of an unexplained zombie holocaust struggle for survival and their humanity.

Fables by Bill Willingham takes a smorgasborg of fairy tale characters, mixes them up in NYC and then tells their story of the struggle to retake their homelands from the mysterious Adversary who's been conquering worlds.

Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan is about what happens when all of the men (and male mammals) mysteriously die except one man and his capuchian monkey. Him and some female companions criss cross the world encountering the Amazons - a group of ultra-feminists who burn off their right breast and terrorist the country, hardline Israeli commandos, women cross dressing as men, etc. A really great read. Not the wet dream you think it would be.

Blankets by Craig Thompson is an autobiographical tale of growing up strict Christian and experiencing his first love and heartache.

Pride of Baghdad by Brian K . Vaughan is a graphic novel loosely based on true events about some lions that escaped from the Baghdad zoo during the invasion in the yearly days of the Iraq war.

Criminal by Ed Brubaker is a great crime noir comic.

Sleeper by Ed Brubaker is a really great tale of a super hero undercover in a shadowy super villain crime syndicate. His boss - the only person who knows he is undercover - is in a coma. Good stuff.

Sandman by Neil Gaiman is good gothy stuff. I didn't get past Vol. 2 though.

Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud is a graphic novel about graphic novels. It's a really good read and will help you appreciate the medium of comics better. A lot about how we interpret images and communicate visually.

On the lighter side:
Hellboy by Mike Mignola, the subject matter isn't light - horror comic after all - but it's not a hard or deep read. But Mignola does his research into old legends and fables when putting his stories together.

Invincible by Robert Kirkman is a great young superhero comic. The kid has superman like powers, but his personal life is more akin to Spider-Man's Peter Parker. He's the son of a Superman-type hero and he starts to gain powers. Then there's twist with his dad's true identity.

Runaways by Brian K. Vaughn, all teens think their parents are evil, but this group of teens find out their parents are actually super villains. So as the title suggests, they runaway.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8, if you were ever a fan of the show, this is a good recommendation, it's an official continuation of the series as "Season 8." Ditto with Angel: After the Fall.

I'm sure I'll think of more later.

After nearly 40 years as a comic fan, I'm close to the end with that hobby. The superhero comics from DC and Marvel have become obsessive continuity wankfests, and the story-telling is often decompressed to fit the trade format, meaning 2-issue stories get dragged out for 6 issues. I still love the format, but I don't feel like I'm getting good entertainment value for $3-4 an issue. But I will probably continue to buy trade paperbacks occasionally, because it's a convenient format that collects a lot of the best material from over the years.

I still hesitate to recommend any superhero titles, because the good stories are often tied to mediocre stories by continuity. Indie comics and comics outside the superhero genre are just more accessible to new readers.

So with all that in mind, I recommend:

Hellboy: Mike Mignola is not the best writer or the best artist, but his combination of the two is excellent. He has done a lot of research on the occult, but breathes fresh life into old ideas. The character Hellboy is a gruff, likeable, blue collar kind of guy who just happens to be a demon from Hell that was raised by humans.

Swamp Thing: I recommend the original run from the '70s, plus the back-to-back '80s material by Alan Moore and then Rick Veitch.

Y the Last Man: My girlfriend gave it a try and then ended up reading the entire 60-issue run in two days. The final issue is bold, experimental and has perfect cinematic transitions. The series is surprisingly violent, and yet also has some of the most realistic dialogue ever.

Planetary: is great, but you should hold off for now, because the final issue won't be out for months, and the trade will come out later still. It has taken over a decade for the first 26 issues to be published. It's an interesting deconstruction of comic books, science fiction and pulp heroics of the 20th century, with some great action scenes.

Conan: Get the first four trades from Dark Horse, which collect the entire Barry Smith run from the early '70s in full color and glossy paper. Great stuff, almost better than the source material by Robert E. Howard.

Kabuki: Hot asian chick espionage action with layers of symbolism and characterization. However, prepare to bail on Kabuki as soon as every page starts to look like an art school collage. Writer David Mack is also a strong artist with a wide range of styles at his disposal, but when he goes off his meds for too long, Kabuki becomes too hard to read.

Jonah Hex: is the only monthly title that I would strongly recommend. Nearly every single issue is a standalone story, but the consistently strong writing by Gray and Palmiotti gives amazing insights to one mean anti-hero.

Promethea: Alan Moore got very mixed reactions on this series, but I enjoyed it up until the last few issues/the last trade. The first 11 issues are almost standard superhero fare, only deconstructed by Moore with a wink and a smile. The next dozen issues or so are like a short course on magick conducted by an interesting professor. The last several issues start well and then trail off into an angle that I didn't enjoy. The very last issue actually unfolds into a large 2-sided psychedelic poster, and is practically unreadable. Still, the artwork is outstanding and the writing is generally very good.

Top Ten: Alan Moore writes the comic book equivalent of a great cop show, except that it takes place in a city where everyone has superpowers. Older fans reference Hill Street Blues, but I thought that the tone was closer to Homicide: Life on the Streets. Either way, the first season (the first two trades) are great.