Comics Extravaganza - Pow Bang Smash!

[JonCole]

I've been using Comixology on my new tablet and it got me back into Marvel comics. As a result, I've been trying out the Marvel Unlimited service to access a huge percentage of Marvel's back catalog (something like 13,000 issues). As you'd guess, the selection is great when you haven't read a lot of comics but the user experience is just generally terrible. Of course, there's no way to download anything because it's a walled garden DRM situation so you're stuck using all of their proprietary readers and software to get things going.

 

As far as I can tell, the Marvel comics app is developed by Comixology so there's a base level software experience that's pretty good. Unfortunately, the Marvel Unlimited app is developed in-house by Marvel and thus sucks ass. Also, it's only available on iOS and Android, so my Windows 8 tablet is a no-go (this isn't a big surprise to me, though I'm still not happy about it). I've been using it on my Galaxy S4, which is obviously a less ideal experience than a tablet in general, but the app itself is a nightmare. There's a 15-issue limit on "offline viewing", which seems to just be a fancy word for caching. I've heard reports of cached issues not actually being available offline at all, but my phone is always connected to data so I haven't had an issue with this so far. Sometimes, however, I open a new comic and just nothing appears on the screen. The single-page view doesn't scale to meet the size of my screen and double-page view is completely useless on a phone. Instead, I use the "smart panels" view that scrolls panel by panel, detracting a bit from the comic reading experience. The app also overrides the screen rotation setting in the OS, allowing rotation at all times. Great for reading in bed. 

 

The browser-based app isn't much of an improvement. It's a flash-based thing and thus (again) sucks ass. I may or may not actually use the app because at the very least it allows me to look at full pages on my 1080p display, but I'm not loving it. I was hoping to use it on my tablet, but I don't anticipate it being very good based on how poorly it controls using a mouse and keyboard on a real PC.

 

Nonetheless, I might slog through it for a couple months to get "caught up". Comixology tends to have prices at parity with actual comic book prices, which honestly is a little high for my current budget. $10 a month lets me read a ton of comics, albeit in a far less than ideal capacity, and maybe get myself to a place where I'd want to read issues as they're released.

 

All of that said, any recommendations on what Marvel of the last 5 or 6 years I should read? I'm probably going to read all the available Marvel Now!, but I'd like to pick and choose the best of anything before that.

[tegan]

I was wondering what people's preferences are when it comes to comics. Superhero, Real life, Sci Fi/Fantastical, Comedic, Serious, Indie, Manga, Graphic Novels, Monthly etc.

 

Here's a brief rundown of some things I've really enjoyed in the past, with a brief description for each. Manga first, then western comics. My favourite creator overall is Osamu Tezuka, who really got me into sixties/seventies era manga, so that colours this list a little.

• Sexy Voice and Robo by Iou Kuroda (manga; light serial drama): she's a high school girl with an uncanny talent for impersonations and voicework. He's a manchild with an encyclopedic knowledge of toy robots. Together, they solve crimes.
• Buddha by Osamu Tezuka (manga; historical epic): a somewhat fictionalized account of the life of the Buddha. The first Tezuka book I ever read, and fascinating throughout.
• Tekkonkinkreet: Black and White by Taiyō Matsumoto (manga; crime drama): a pair of orphaned twin brothers acting as their own youth gang try to save their city from gentrification by the mafia.
• Franken Fran by Katsuhisa Kigitsu (manga; horror/dark comedy, not legally available in English): a girl grafted together from corpses by a brilliant surgeon takes over his work, performing some of the most impossible surgeries in the world, generally with gruesome results.
• Phoenix by Osamu Tezuka (manga; historical epic, science fiction, anthology): Tezuka's tragically unfinished magnum opus. Phoenix is a series of interwoven character stories that bounce back and forth from the earliest historical mention of Japan all the way up to the end of the universe, slowly converging on the present day, almost always featuring the mysterious immortal being known as the Phoenix and the folly of man's search for immortality. Possibly the single greatest comic ever written.
• Wandering Son by Takako Shimura (manga; LGBT, slice of life drama): two transgender children find solace in each other and endure the tortures of the early teenage years.
• Yotsuba&! by Kiyohiko Azuma (manga; slice of life comedy): an adorable kid does adorable little kid things. It sounds boring but it's astonishingly good. Though the English editions published by Yen Press are easily available, try to find the ADV editions of the first five volumes since the localization is far superior.
• Cat Eyed Boy by Kazuo Umezu (manga; horror): this one is very much an acquired taste. Imagine the weird late sixties Japanese equivalent to something like Tales From The Crypt and you're almost there.
• Black Jack by Osamu Tezuka (manga; medical drama): a mysterious jerkass surgical genius takes on the most difficult cases available and performs operations that border on the miraculous. The limited-run hardcover editions of the first three books come with really fascinating bonus material, if you can find them.
• Kitaro by Shigeru Mizuki (manga; slightly macabre action-comedy): a boy with supernatural powers goes on various bizarre adventures. A quirky staple of Japanese pop culture, the closest English equivalent would be something like The Addams Family.
• The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service by Eiji Ōtsuka and Housui Yamazaki (manga; horror): a group of college kids each with specialized skills relating to the dead start a business in finding the corpses of the recently deceased and carrying out their last wishes. Sometimes this is as simple as telling their family to stop looking for them or giving them a decent funeral, sometimes it involves avenging their death by finding their murderer. Crazy Scooby-Doo shenanigans within.
• Princess Knight and Twin Knight by Osamu Tezuka (fairy tale): among the first and most influential comics for girls ever written. This is going to sound really grandiose, but the closest thing to these two stories in my mind is Shakespeare. They're filled with dramatic irony, mistaken identities, tragic circumstances, etc. They're melodramatic while also being super fun.
• The Adventures of Tintin by Hergé (Belgian comics; pulp adventure): Super fun proto-Indiana-Jones-esque serial adventures. I recommend skipping the first few stories (up to and including "Tintin in America") and going from there. It starts to really gwet going right around "The Crab With The Golden Claws." There's a big boxed set with everything from "Tintin in America" onward plus bonus material, but I don't know if it's still available.
• Zot! by Scott McCloud (American comics; superhero, teen drama): a superhero who lives in a retro-future dimension comes through a portal into our own and becomes close to an ordinary teenage girl. Bounces back and forth between whimsical throwback to silver age superheroes, intepersonal drama, and deadly serious superheroics.
• The Understanding/Making/Reinventing Comics trilogy by Scott McCloud (American comics; reference and examination): Anyone interested in comics owes it to themselves to read "Understanding Comics," one of the most fascinating breakdowns of the medium. The other two books are still great, but are more for those interested in a career in comics, with Reinventing comics feeling sort of delightfully quaint now that it's a decade and a half old (Will Wright loved it, for what it's worth).
• Bone by Jeff Smith (American comics; fantasy adventure): an all-ages fantasy story in the same sort of framework as Lord of the Rings but with a much less-explored world.
• Scott Pilgrim by Bryan Lee O'Malley (Canadian comics; slice of life, urban fantasy, romantic comedy): You probably know this one. Scott is a twenty-something slacker dude who can't adjust to post-college life wants to date Ramona, the mysterious and collected girl of his dreams. In order to do so, he must get his shit together and defeat her seven evil exes in mortal combat.
• Flight by various; edited by Kazu Kibuishi (multinational comics; anthology): an eight-volume series of standalone books that collect short stories by various young creators. Some are one-shots of existing work, some were created wholecloth for the series, and most of them cover the theme of "flight" in some way.
• Adventure Time with main stories by Ryan North, Shelli Paroline, and Braden Lamb and backup features by various creators (American comics; all-ages fantasy, adventure, comedy): based on the TV show of the same name, the Adventure Time comics are actually secretly a way to showcase talented young artists, largely from the world of webcomics, and have them flesh out the already fascinating world and characters of Adventure Time. Ryan North? Meredith Gran? Paul Pope? Kate Leth? Michael DeForge? Anthony Clark? All in here.
• Daisy Kutter: The Last Train by Kazu Kibuishi (American comics; sci-fi western): an ex-bandit cowgirl is hired by a security mogul to test his wares by pulling a train heist against deadly robots. I also liked Kibuishi's far more popular "Amulet" books, but I never got very far into that series.
• Gunnerkrigg Court by Tom Siddell (British comics; urban fantasy, science fiction, youth drama): a young girl attending a mysterious British boarding school discovers it to be a breeding ground for the supernatural, the spiritual, and the technological.
• Batwoman by J.H. Williams and W. Haden Blackman (American comics; superhero): this is hands-down the most I've ever enjoyed a monthly superhero comic, and the art is gorgeous. Too bad it went belly-up due to executive meddling.
• The Sandman by Neil Gaiman and various artists (British comics; fantasy): If you like Neil Gaiman, this is some of the finest writing he's ever done.

[TheLastBaron]

I mostly read indie books these days and I would group what I read into three main categories, roughly equal in terms of the volume that I read.

First is books mostly about people, things like Essex County, Blankets, all the Alex Robinson books like Too Cool to be Forgotten. Top Shelf puts out a lot of good books of this type (such as all the ones I mentioned). A lot of the time they're single books but there's also series' like Strangers in Paradise.

Next is Crime comics. Basically anything by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. Criminal, Scene of the Crime, Fatale, ect. Also Darwyn Cooke's Parker books, Torpedo, and Blacksad are all fantastic. This category has a lot of overlap with superhero comics, with books like both Incognito and Sleeper by Brubaker/Phillips having superheroes. There's also series' like Gotham Central which was amazing as well as straight superhero books that have crime themes like a lot of the good Batman and Catwoman books.

Then there's Sci-fi/Fantasy type books, things like Fables or Saga or Joe the Barbarian (also Jonathan Hickman is on fire right now with both The Manhattan Projects and East of West). I'm also really excited for new Sandman.

These aren't hard categories, there's a lot of overlap in books like Scalped or 100 Bullets which are a mix of the first two categories, or Sweet Tooth which is in a post-apocalyptic setting with a lot of just normal people stuff, and then there are things like Hellblazer or Preacher (Garth Ennis is so amazing) which are a little bit of everything.

I'm writing this on my phone and at this point I think I should stop and come back later when I'm at a computer since I can't really see much of what I've written anymore. I'll also try to format it better as it's probably horrible.

[TheLastBaron]

Does anyone else here read Optic Nerve?  I'm finally going to get around to reading the new issue that came out last year and I'm half looking forward to it and half dreading it because it's usually pretty soul crushing.

[tegan]

I am immediately sold on Lumberjanes, you guys.

[Twig]

I'm also sold!

 

Also I recently ordered and received and read SEVEN BOOKS of comics. Skullkickers Volume 2 (so great!), The Walking Dead Book 9 (always something I enjoy!), Fables Book 6 (why was it so short this time ;_; ), Chew Volume 1 and 2 (what a stupid idea for a comic, and that's why I like it), and Y: The Last Man Volume 4 and 5 (nice to finally finish it! some things I didn't like about the ending, but it's all good).

 

Yay Christmas gift cards!

[namman siggins]

Does anyone else here read Optic Nerve?  I'm finally going to get around to reading the new issue that came out last year and I'm half looking forward to it and half dreading it because it's usually pretty soul crushing.

I LOVE Optic Nerve #12 and "Hortiscuplture" is my favorite Tomine story.

 

#13 is marvelous especially "Translated, from Japanese"

[tegan]

So has anyone been reading Afterlife With Archie? My friend says it's really good and I'm not sure if I want to start reading it now or wait and see if there's a TPB at some point. Frankly I'm just astonished that a serious zombie horror story set in the Archie universe is a thing that's actually happening.

 

EDIT: looks like there's a trade of the first five issues coming in April. Phew.

 

[TheLastBaron]

Yeah I've been reading it, I like it a lot.  Archie comics, as in the publisher, are so deceptively progressive. 

[Twig]

I was astonished that Sabrina the Teenage Witch is a character that exists in the Archie universe. Like what??

[TheLastBaron]

You've never seen the Sabrina Archie comics?

[Twig]

Clearly not!

[TheLastBaron]

I wasn't sure if you meant you had seen them but didn't know they existed in the same universe or just didn't know the comics existed. I hope everyone from the Sonic Archie comics shows up.

I don't actually wish for that.

[tegan]

I was astonished that Sabrina the Teenage Witch is a character that exists in the Archie universe. Like what??

 

Sabrina originates in Madhouse, an Archie spin-off from the sixties. She got incorporated into the rest of the cast pretty quick.

[Tanukitsune]

I remember watching reruns of the early cartoon, Sabrina tended to appear a lot in Archie and viceversa and sometimes the Groovie Goolies showed up? If you only watched the live action show or the newer cartoon, it makes sense that you didn't see the Archie connection... Does Sabrina even live in Riverdale in those series?

 

Also... there's a new Sabrina cartoon? 

 

[Twig]

Sabrina originates in Madhouse, an Archie spin-off from the sixties. She got incorporated into the rest of the cast pretty quick.

Yeah I read up on it after I discovered the connection. As Tanu implied, I only ever watched the live action TV show, and never read Archie or Sabrina comics, so the news blew my mind. I never would've guessed in a million years.

[tegan]

And then teg bought a floppy for the first time in years.

 

 

 

 

Archie is as good as I'd hoped, and I'm gonna' wait for the trade to hit before I go any further. I haven't touched the latest Wandering Son yet.

[TheLastBaron]

Stuck Rubber Baby. Wow, what a book.

[dibs]

Gosh I enjoyed her hunger games panels!

That Lumberjanes looks sweet as well.

[tegan]

I not only read volume five of Wandering Son, but re-read all five volumes again afterward. Man, what a good series. I have the sixth volume ordered at my local comic shop, so I should get that in a week or two.

[Burtis Le Pants]

Seeing a lot of love for saga on here, not sure whether people are familiar with the private eye another Brian K Vaughan series available here. http://panelsyndicate.com/ pay as much or as little as you want.

Also Matt  Fraction's Sex Criminals (only available direct from image) is fantastic, very tongue in cheek but also pretty smart storytelling, the funniest and most entertaining read every month for me.

I just bought Sara Ryan's Bad Houses, it was on a couple of end of year lists and looked interesting. Especially worth a look for those who don't read as much sci fi/fantasy or superhero books.

[Tanukitsune]

Since She-Hulk was on sale at Comixology, I took the risk and bought a few issues and I definitely don't regret it. In one issue she represents Spider-Man suing the Daily Bugle for defamation and slander! That was my favorite issue so far.

 

At the beginning she kinda like Tony Stark, getting drunk, partying and sleeping with handsome people, but she's growing smarter and more responsible with each issue, what I really love about her is she uses her smarts as often (if not more) as her strength to solve her problems.

 

I really love a comic when it's more about talking and characters than punching stuff, and oddly enough, it's balanced pretty well here so far, since she's a lawyer many issues are just cases with superheroes and supervillains... I smell a hint of drama to come, but I'm hoping it's handled well? If they resolve the full run of the comic with out going too drama crazy, I think we have a winner!

[N1njaSquirrel]

As a brit, I have never grown up or experienced Archie. What is it? Is it like the Beano/Dandy? 

 

As for comics, I recently finished the Deadpool Killogy, which was good in that it was nice to see a serious and dark Deadpool story for once.

 

I've also started Dead Body Road which is awesome and drawn spectacularly. 

 

Can we discuss manga on this thread too? I'm big into One Piece. One Punch Man is also excellent and the new volume of Kuragehime has been scanlated and it's brilliant.

[tegan]

As a brit, I have never grown up or experienced Archie. What is it? Is it like the Beano/Dandy? 

 

Archie is a super long-running series meant for older kids and younger teens. It's mostly a goofy PG-rated high school comedy, but the franchise has covered a ton of different types of stories over the years. I had a ton of old Archie digests as a kid, so I have a soft spot for it.

 

 

Can we discuss manga on this thread too? I'm big into One Piece. One Punch Man is also excellent and the new volume of Kuragehime has been scanlated and it's brilliant.

 

I've been bringing manga up, 'cause that's mostly what I read now, but I dunno if we're in the minority or what. I've been considering making a separate manga thread, but I think it would still just be me talking about Osamu Tezuka English releases, old horror manga from the sixties, and Wandering Son.

 

...Speaking of which, I got my Wandering Son volume 6 today and am going to go read it right noooooow.

[Tanukitsune]

Archie is a comic about a group of teenagers and their adventures, to me the most notable this about the comic is that somehow he has two girls he likes but never chooses one (Betty and Veronica), does this make Archie the first harem comic? ;P

 

Argh, I kinda hate that One Piece is still ongoing, because it's going to be impossible to catch up at this rate. :|

 

I "finished" the She-Hulk "season" I got from Comixology, for some reason, the site is literally missing issues and skips from the Civil War to the Secret Invasion, Frankly, I started to lose interest after this, as the comic were more action focused and we no longer got to see Jennifer use her brain as much as her muscles...

 

I like how in one case the firm defends Leader by claiming that Gamma radiation affects your personality... only to ignore it when later there are a million "Hulks" with no "personality afflictions".

 

I also liked how in one storyline a "Earth A" finds a way to teleport people to She-Hulk's world, and if the "you" in this Earth was a superhero or villain, you BECOME them! They use it for TOURISM! XD

 

But yeah, after that, it's all "clobberin' time"...

 

 

I'm kinda curious about World War Hulk, but everything post Civil War is too overly dramatic for me.. 

She-Hulk sees Tony Stark as no better than Dr. Doom and I think I almost agree.