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Mostly, I'm talking trade paperbacks. What's good and why?

Currently I'm reading the Marvel book Universe X. It's my first attempt at reading a whole arc in terms of superhero oriented stuff. I always kind of closed-mindedly assumed all superhero comics were a waste of time...but I really get a kick out of this inter-dimensional, apocalyptic what-not. I didn't realize this was the sequel to the Earth X limited series, so I'm quite out of the loop, but it's good in a way because it gets me reading backstories for all different characters...so it's getting me more familiar with the Marvel universe. So I wonder if you guys have other suggestions. What would be good some good starting points for getting into superhero comics? (Remember...I know virtually nothing about the subject)

I'm looking for stuff that's epic and somewhat serious, but not so serious it becomes ham-fisted. Also, I appreciate stuff that's a little silly, but not overtly jokey. What I mean is...the writers had to know it was kind of corny when they were working on it, but they wrote it with a deadpan tone. Also...I'm interested in stuff that really plays with continuity and character identities.

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My go-to comics recommendations:

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

Watchmen.

(Ignore the movie versions, they're crap)

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Watchmen.

I'd been wary of this one, because I did see the movie, but since you say it's different, I'll at least look at it during my next trip to the comic shop. Thanks for the recommendations, and welcome to idle thumbs.

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I would actually warn you away from Watchmen. Not because I think it's bad or anything, but rather I think you will get a lot more out of it if you wait until you become more versed in the cliches and archetypes of superhero comics.

I really Grant Morrison's run on Doom Patrol. It's a nice bit of crazy, but it's not everyone's cup of tea so I'd recommend trying to borrow the first book or two from a friend if you can (Morrison's run fills 6 trades, if you're curious).

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It's all about the 2000AD.

Each issue has five unconnected stories but stories can continue for up to 24 issues. Their attitude is that if a reader likes four of the five stories they've done a good job so they don't mind taking a risk now and then. This does mean the quality varies wildly though.

Most of the hero's aren't superhero's in the traditional sense, but it ticks most of the boxes you mentioned and it's worth a punt in case it turns out to be your kind of thing.

Oh, and it's published by video game developer Rebellion. So yeah, video games.

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I'm looking for stuff that's epic and somewhat serious, but not so serious it becomes ham-fisted. Also, I appreciate stuff that's a little silly, but not overtly jokey. What I mean is...the writers had to know it was kind of corny when they were working on it, but they wrote it with a deadpan tone. Also...I'm interested in stuff that really plays with continuity and character identities.

Wow, that's a very specific list of requirements! I don't know what to recommend... but I'm a bit of an Alan Moore snob :) Generally anything written by Moore will have some greatness to it, IMO. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is excellent, but it won't be what you're expecting (as with all of Moore's stuff) which I see as a good thing!

You should also read: Maus by Art Spiegelman (a holocaust survivor's tale). Blankets by Craig Thompson (a personal story by Thompson about a girl he loved). Neither are superhero based, but both are fantastic examples of the art form and how good it can be.

For lighter fair, I love Bone by Jeff Smith (gives you a warm fuzzy feeling and is quite epic, too) or Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan (excellent one-liners and a great story to boot).

Edited by ThunderPeel2001

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In a superhero vein, I really like Planetary by Warren Ellis. If you're after pure apocalypse and super beings, The Authority might be more up your street; Planetary is in the same world, just as violent and with characters no less brutal, but it finds a lot of time for beauty and whimsy. Also, the final issue comes out this year after a very long wait.

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War of the Undead is good.

Nazis versus classic horror monsters like Frankenstein/Dracula. It's very fun

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You can't go wrong with the Batman classics like A Long Halloween, The Killing Joke, The Dark Knight Returns and Year One. My personal favorite is Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, mainly because I think Dave McKean is the fucking man and I'm a sucker for Morrison's writing.

There have been two trades released so far, so you should definitely track down All Star Superman. When I was big into reading comics a little while ago it was one of my favorites, and Morrison has a certain reverence toward the character that shines through even as he breaks him down to his base properties. It's outside of DC continuity, meaning that issue one really is issue one, and you won't have to worry about getting caught up on some crazy backstory.

I hear the new Green Lantern series is pretty solid as well (Rebirth I think?).

If you're looking for something lighthearted to break things up a bit, I found Warren Ellis' Nextwave to be pretty refreshing (maybe a little too jokey for you though).

Oh god, more Ellis...I know it's not a capes book, but have you read Transmetropolitan? Nach recommended Planetary (seconded, it's great) and it reminded me of another awesome Ellis work. It's the sort of suggestion that someone always makes in these kinda threads, so I feel kinda silly, but I do feel like everyone should read at least the first TPB.

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I'll second Transmetropolitan too. I didn't mention it because it's not really superhero like you mentioned, but it's by far my favorite comic. It's insane and brilliant.

100 Bullets was also a recent highlight, it finished this year after a decade long run and is an astounding piece of work on themes of American violence, racism, class and principles.

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ThunderPeel2001's list is awesome. Read all of those.

I don't think I'm going to do any of the books below justice, but they (particularly the first four, though the last ain't shabby) are truly fantastic, and, I think, some of the best examples of the art form.

  • Black Hole is awesome. It's a beautifully drawn B&W comic by Charles Burns (whose art you may recognize from adverts and that sort of thing). It's a great book, to put it shortly: it's a horror/coming of age story. Black Hole is about a bunch of kids and how they deal with an STD that mutates people into freaky lookin' dudes.
  • I'm a huge sucker for anything by Chris Ware. If you want a quick taste of his work, go for any of the Acme Novelty Libraries. He also has the long form graphical comical book Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Boy on Earth. Essentially, it's depressing stuff. The stories are all about sad people and sad shit that happens to them. But, I think, this isn't a reason to avoid it. His art is really beautiful, it's very clean (people, an art instructor of mine, for instance, sometimes say it's too clean) but it carries the emotional weight of his stories very well.
  • Fun House by Alison Bechdel is a great book. One of the more cartoony looking books I've mentioned here, it's Bechdel's autobiography, her story of growing up as a gay kid in a funeral home and her relationship with her deceased father (odd parallels to Six Feet Under abound).
  • Gipi's work is really great. I believe his only two books are Notes From A War Story and Garage Band. Both are really great stories of kids growing up in versions of Italy, each done in beautiful watercolors.
  • Road To Perdition is an awesome book. Note: Do not read the sequels/spinoffs, read the original graphic novel. Sometimes you can find it with Tom Hanks on the cover. You may have seen the movie, which may or may not be a bad thing (I remember seeing it when it came out and being disappointed, but that was many years ago for me) but the book's loosely based on real life and Lone Wolf and Cub. An Irish mob hitman's family is killed, save his young son, and the two of them go out to seek their revenge.

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Allow me to return the complement: I loved Black Hole and Chris Ware's stuff is indeed amazing (if a little depressing!). I haven't checked out the others on your list, perhaps I should!

I don't think he's been mentioned yet, but David B's work is supposed to be outstanding... I just haven't gotten around to sampling it.

100 Bullets was also a recent highlight, it finished this year after a decade long run and is an astounding piece of work on themes of American violence, racism, class and principles.

I'm halfway through 100 Bullets and I've really enjoyed it so far. Very pulpy, occasionally affecting, but always really well done.

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I'm looking for stuff that's epic and somewhat serious, but not so serious it becomes ham-fisted. Also, I appreciate stuff that's a little silly, but not overtly jokey. What I mean is...the writers had to know it was kind of corny when they were working on it, but they wrote it with a deadpan tone. Also...I'm interested in stuff that really plays with continuity and character identities.

I'm not exactly sure what you wanting or how weird, unsuperhero, and non-Alan Moore it is allowed to be, but you could try some Daniel Clowes books, either the short story collections like Caricature or longer ones like David Boring, Ghost World, or Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron. There's a mess of character identity problems and weird continuity in all of his books that comes off strangely comforting because of the straight art but usually ends up unsettling or disturbing in one way or another. It you aren't wanting anything overtly jokey, I'd avoid Pussey or anything Lloyd Llewellyn by him.

You may also want to give The Maxx a shot, which is an old favorite of mine. It also bends a lot of time and space and goes through a lot of human emotions or problems without ending up completely pretentious as most "underground" comics tend to (not that The Maxx is underground, just shares a lot of qualities with certain nonmainstream publications, especially later issues). It's been nicely collected into 6 volumes for people that pretty much gets the whole story. I think the beginning starts off a bit rough with the first 10 issues as it was having an identity crisis among the new Image crap and whether it wanted to be a full blown superhero book or not. It ended up not, peaking around issue 25 I think.

I also really enjoy Evan Dorkin's Hectic Planet, which is also nicely collected in 3 TPBs. It contains a bunch of well written futuristic heartbreak stories as well as some sci fi adventure and violence thrown in for good measure. It's probably way too over the top and jokey sometimes though, but some of what you are wanting may be there.

Dave McKean's Cages may fit the epic and continuity changing bill, as it is a thick book. If you can find it it's worth a shot, but it tends to get pretty avant garde and abstract sometimes, not that it is much of a bad thing. He does some crazy stuff with sequencing. The books he's done with Neil Gaiman writing are a bit more grounded and recommended as well: Violent Cases, Mr. Punch, and Signal to Noise. I think the only thing that really may be hard to find is Cages.

You could also try to give Ashley Wood's solo books or books done with his wife a shot. Sometimes I can hardly understand what's going on because it either gets too pretentious or his sequencing it's ridiculously hard to follow, but I really enjoy the over sexualized art and the robots. Popbot is one of his now that is in a big available book right now, but hell if I know what's going on the second half of the issues of the whole series. It sure started strong, though. His horror adaptations in Doomed and mythlogical stories in Lore are much easier to follow.

If you are okay with Japanese comics, which have a distinctly different flavor, some good ones well worth reading and tending to be fairly epic are Tekkon Kinkreet (or Black and White), Akira, and Domu. The latter too may be way to serious though. The Akira comic, unlike the movie, does a lot more in terms of stirring up images of post WWII Japan, which was really depressing for me.

And then there's Hellboy... which is still going, but highly recommended by me as far as epic, serious, readily appealing, and non-corny one-liner stuff goes (at least the more Mignola centered issues, which is sadly straying too far from it's original creator now).

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If you are okay with Japanese comics, which have a distinctly different flavor,

Absolutely, I was actually into manga long before I ever tried any western stuff. Favorites include:

Battle Angel Alita

One Piece

Fullmetal Alchemist

FLCL

Death Note

Thanks for all the suggestions, guys, sorry for having such specific and idiosyncratic criteria...it's just that it seemed like without that, it'd be hard to sift through all the junk.

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I'll recommend some writers, just to mix it up:

Warren Ellis. Planetary, The Authority, and Transmet have been mentioned, but he also did some work on Hellblazer, and did a great series titled Global Frequency.

Garth Ennis. Preacher. Hitman. The Pro. War Story. Fury. Also did some work on The Authority, Hellblazer, and the '99 Punisher re-launch.

Brian Michael Bendis. Jinx, Goldfish, Fire, and Torso are among my favorite comics of all time. There's also Alias (not related to the TV show), Powers, and I think he's still working on Ultimate Spider-Man.

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Preacher

Tom Strong from Moore is interesting

The Exterminators (Insurgency)

DMZ: On the Ground

Blade of the Immortal

I quite enjoyed Punisher MAX too, but some people might not be into it.

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Do you know nothing about superhero comics, or comics in general? If the latter, my recommendation is the Sin City series by Frank Miller.

There's also a good article here by AV Club about which comic to recommend as someone's first ever, with a lot of comments. There's a lot of overlap with the recommendations here already, though!

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Oh, I completely forgot about Hellboy!

Don't forget to use my Hellboy reading order if you decide to go down that route :)

Ghost World was my favourite comic of all time ever until the end, whereupon Clowes decided to be very melodramatic. I was so let down. David Boring suffered from the same problems too, if you ask me. For some reason Clowes felt he needed to add insane plot to otherwise incredibly compelling characters and situations. His writing was easily strong enough without it I felt. I wouldn't mention any of this if I hadn't absolutely LOVED (big flashing L-O-V-E-D) the first 80% of Ghost World. Anyway just my 2c.

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I am very glad this thread exists.

I started reading comics a year ago when a friend gave me The Walking Dead hardback volume 1 for my birthday. I love it, it's really good. I'm always trying to get a better idea of what to read next.

Otherwise, I'll just repeat comics here have mentioned... consider it a vote!

Y: The Last Man is groovy. I also really enjoyed Preacher.

I tried the first collected volume of Transmetropolitan and really didn't like it, but most people seem to think it's fantastic.

I've also been trying to read more superhero stuff... I just finished the first seven issues book of Civil War... I'd be interested in classic superhero tales. I read The Man Who Laughs and The Dark Knight Returns recently and liked them.

Also, Thunderpeel, I'm glad your reading order for Hellboy exists, I want to get into that.

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You can't go wrong with the Batman classics like A Long Halloween, The Killing Joke, The Dark Knight Returns and Year One. My personal favorite is Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, mainly because I think Dave McKean is the fucking man and I'm a sucker for Morrison's writing.

Ah!!! My curse of reading through the thread too quickly. I'm going to read every book you recommended in that post. Eventually.

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So you're interested in non-superhero stuff too? You specifically asked for superhero, but people are listing a bunch of other comics as well. I just ask because I don't read superhero comics but I would have a bunch of other recommendations.

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So you're interested in non-superhero stuff too? You specifically asked for superhero, but people are listing a bunch of other comics as well. I just ask because I don't read superhero comics but I would have a bunch of other recommendations.

Oops, I guess that's why I didn't list anything earlier, because I thought his second paragraph was leading into the third but then targeted the third paragraph only for suggestions since I figured it was okay since others were listing non-superhero comics.

Er... shorten my list to The Maxx then, for whatever that counts.

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Ah!!! My curse of reading through the thread too quickly. I'm going to read every book you recommended in that post. Eventually.

Well it looks like we have similar tastes (aside from Transmet, which boggles the mind...) so I'd imagine you'll have a pretty good time. Based on the classic superhero stories comment, I'd start with All Star Superman, as it fits the bill perfecty.

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So you're interested in non-superhero stuff too? You specifically asked for superhero, but people are listing a bunch of other comics as well. I just ask because I don't read superhero comics but I would have a bunch of other recommendations.

Sure, why not. I'm curious about superhero stuff but I'll read anything that's good.

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I thought the first League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was great, the second was so-so, and the last was absolutely abysmal. Recently at the bookstore I saw that there's a fourth one, does anyone know if it's any good?

While I have certainly enjoyed Hellboy, it's story feels like it's stalled out in the recent collections. I find that it's spin-off BPRD seems to have a lot more momentum, and actually seems to be going somewhere.

I noticed that no one has recommended any webcomics yet, so I'm going to fix that.

MS Paint Adventures (If you like adventure games this comic is tailor made for you.)

North World

Digger

Dawn of Time

70-Seas (I make this comic so my recommendation is a bit biased.)

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