Comics Extravaganza - Pow Bang Smash!

[Gormongous]

Nausicaä and Akira stand out to me as two manga that belong as hardbound books on your shelf alongside other novels. Both are so beautiful and otherworldly, I can't imagine a more proper place.

[TheLastBaron]

it's incredibly difficult to find American comics you'll enjoy if you don't like superheroes

It's actually not that hard, you just have to accept that you won't like anything by DC (not counting Vertigo) or Marvel (of course there are exceptions). If you look at other publishers like Image, IDW, Vertigo, ect. you'll find tons of great books that aren't about superheroes (along with ones that are) and if you look at someone like Top Shelf none of their comics are superhero comics.

[Tanukitsune]

I'm pretty sure ComiXology is 99% American comics and only 1% of my collection is superhero related, which is probably because I don't usually buy Marvel or DC.

If there one thing I've discovered with comics, is that if you get tempted to buy a bad comic due to sale, it will always be better than a bad game, mostly because it will over much sooner.

It's strange getting used to American comics, I'm not used to seeing a series change artists or writers so much, but like I said about their sale, when I take a risk, I either get something good like Madame MIrage, something cheesy as hell like Jurassic Strike Force 5 or something Troll2-tastic.

Speaking of which, I don't care what people will think of me, I really want to read that Tarot comic I keep hearing about, it sounds so dumb I must read it!

[tegan]

It's actually not that hard, you just have to accept that you won't like anything by DC (not counting Vertigo) or Marvel (of course there are exceptions). If you look at other publishers like Image, IDW, Vertigo, ect. you'll find tons of great books that aren't about superheroes (along with ones that are) and if you look at someone like Top Shelf none of their comics are superhero comics.

The difficult thing about comics isn't finding one that you'll like, it's finding two similar ones. Whenever somebody gets into comics, they are usually handed a short list of recommendations. It usually contains, among a few other mainstay titles, The Dark Knight Returns and Maus. If you like The Dark Knight Returns, and want to explore the unusually specific superhero genre further, you then have a selection of hundreds of recommended comics to read, many of them legitimately good. If you like Maus and want to explore the slightly less specific "personal drama about family and the holocaust" genre, you're basically never going to get anywhere.* Unless the artistic landscape has changed drastically in the last four years or so while I wasn't paying attention, this seems to be the biggest roadblock to reading comics. It's something I'm always worried about when it comes to games too.

As a personal anecdotal example, I remember getting into Scott Pilgrim as a teenager back when it was about three volumes in and just starting to become a thing. Since I liked Scott Pilgrim, people would almost invariably tell me to read Sharknife. When I finally did end up reading Sharknife, I found that not only was it terrible, it had only the most superficial of similarities to the thing I had enjoyed in the first place.

*with the exception of course of Osamu Tezuka's Message To Adolf, available now at fine retailers everywhere

[Codicier]

If you like The Dark Knight Returns, and want to explore the unusually specific superhero genre further, you then have a selection of hundreds of recommended comics to read, many of them legitimately good. If you like Maus and want to explore the slightly less specific "personal drama about family and the holocaust" genre, you're basically never going to get anywhere.*

I'd say the genre you put Maus in is far more specific than the superhero's one.

If we widen that to "personal drama taking place in a society in upheaval" (which is broader but still pretty specific) we can bring in things like the wonderful Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. Which gives a child's eye view of the Islamic revolution in Iran and its consequence on the day to day life of the young narrator and her family.

Or If your willing to stretch a bit further still, there's Palestine by Joe Sacco. Which is takes a look at the day to day lives of Palestine's living in Gaza and the west bank from a quasi journalistic viewpoint.

Those are just two I've read, I'm sure with a little digging you could find more.

And if we widen it even further and slip out of comics to anime for a moment there's Grave of the FIreflies, which is a very personal WW2 story.

Don't get put off by the idea that all superhero comics are the same. Yes that basic premise of the power fantasy is still there at the heart of them but there is enough scope within that broad concept that the best writers can produce works like The Dark Knight or Watchmen which have radically different choices of outlook, tone, style, and pacing , and yet can still fit under the same umbrella of "Superhero fiction".

I've just finished reading Grant Morrison's Supergods, Which is half autobiography, half history of superheroes.I'd recommend that if your interested in catching a glimpse of the full range of stories people have told to tell within the genre (& also the life of a quite strange but equally interesting man).

[tegan]

I think I'm getting caught up in the specifics here. my original point is that comics are unusually balanced toward a certain subgenre and that there isn't enough of an effort to instill exposure for anything that doesn't fall under that label, and that that it creates a marketplace discouraging to anything else It's a problem that creates itself. Compare a decent video store or book store to a comic book store: one will have work sorted into approximate genres or styles with potential subsets; while the other is almost always going to be roughly divided into Superheroes, Manga, and Other. I personally don't think it's coincidence that we're only starting to see a wider breadth of genre diversity now that we have online marketplaces and creators aren't doomed to linger in "Other."

Also, Maus was only a hypothetical example, but you're definitely right about Persepolis (and possibly Palestine? I'm not familiar with it). But with that being said... Grave of the Fireflies is not a comic book, and Supergods is something that was specifically not requested. Not to be confrontational, but they strike me as very unusual choices to recommend to someone based on those stipulations.

It's not that I'm opposed to superhero comics at all, really, but they're the fossil fuels of the comic book world. They're almost universally better suited to other mediums now, for one thing (see: Infamous, Prototype, the last five years or so of Marvel films, the DC animated universe, etc), and they come across as an unnecessary gimmick at times (I love Zot!, but Scott McCloud's pointed out before that Zot! was largely inspired by manga and indie comics, but that he knew that he could only get those kinds of stories onto newsstands by making his male lead wear red spandex). While I'm always open to the general concept of the superhero archetype, there's no reason why they should be emblematic of an entire medium. It's not the specifics of their tropes, it's that oversaturation like this is inherently damaging to any medium.

I guess what I'm trying to say is:

Fuck superheroes, frankly. The notion that these things dominate an entire genre is absurd. It's like every bookstore in the planet having ninety percent of its shelves filled by nurse novels. Imagine that. You want a new novel, but you have to wade through three hundred new books about romances in the wards before you can get at any other genre. A medium where the relationship of fiction about nurses outweighs mainstream literary fiction by a ratio of one hundred to one. Superhero comics are like bloody creeping fungus, and they smother everything else.

-Warren Ellis

[TheLastBaron]

Compare a decent video store or book store to a comic book store: one will have work sorted into approximate genres or styles with potential subsets; while the other is almost always going to be roughly divided into Superheroes, Manga, and Other. I personally don't think it's coincidence that we're only starting to see a wider breadth of genre diversity now that we have online marketplaces and creators aren't doomed to linger in "Other."

I can't really comment about the first part as the comic book store by my house is sorted by publisher, but I don't feel that there is/was a lack of diversity in comics. Just because a there are more comics about superheroes than there are about other things doesn't mean that there aren't tons of books about other things. I read a huge amount of comics and very few are about superheroes, and I also don't feel like I'm in any danger of running out of things to read as there are plenty of books I haven't read yet and more coming out that I want to read.

Supergods is something that was specifically not requested.

I think he was recommending it so that you could see that there is a very wide gamut of stories told within the "superhero" genre of comics that people don't realize and most of the time they write off the whole lot of them without realizing such.

They're almost universally better suited to other mediums now, for one thing (see: Infamous, Prototype, the last five years or so of Marvel films, the DC animated universe, etc), and they come across as an unnecessary gimmick at times (I love Zot!, but Scott McCloud's pointed out before that Zot! was largely inspired by manga and indie comics, but that he knew that he could only get those kinds of stories onto newsstands by making his male lead wear red spandex). While I'm always open to the general concept of the superhero archetype, there's no reason why they should be emblematic of an entire medium. It's not the specifics of their tropes, it's that oversaturation like this is inherently damaging to any medium.

I guess what I'm trying to say is:

While I agree with everything else, I strongly disagree that superhero comics are universally better suited to other mediums now. Sure other mediums do great things like you mentioned such as games (I haven't played Infamous and I really didn't care for Prototype at all, but the Arkham games are of course great examples) as well as movies (both Hollywood and animated movies like the DC ones), but I don't think they do superheroes better than comics. It's hard to even compare them, especially when you take into account the amount of time, money, and people it takes to make a game/movie/animated film compared to an ongoing series or book. I think other mediums can be just as good, sure, but that doesn't always happen (for every good superhero movie there are a few bad ones) and comics are also very different in the sense that they're ongoing (even the DCAU shows were almost entirely self-contained episodes with a couple two-parters). On top of that the medium allows you to do new/different things with characters much more easily (multiple series' going on concurrently, alternate versions like Marvel's Ultimate line). I feel the comic book medium is still very well suited for the genre.

I really hope it doesn't seem like I'm attacking you as I'm really only trying to form a rebuttal to some of your points. I can totally see where you're coming from and wouldn't mind seeing even more books that aren't superhero based as well as fewer books that are (I read the first 2-3 issues of all 52 series' when DC did it's reboot last year and the majority were pretty bad, though there were a couple that I really liked and ended up continuing to read). As someone who reads pretty much maybe 80-90% non-superhero comics I probably take it too personally when people say that there are too few books that aren't about superheroes (which to be fair is most people) as I feel they aren't seeing all the books that I read and love.

[tegan]

I'm just delighted that I'm getting more of a reaction out of "it's hard to find American comics if you don't like superheroes" than "Japanese comics are creepy, pandering crap."

[Tanukitsune]

I'm just delighted that I'm getting more of a reaction out of "it's hard to find American comics if you don't like superheroes" than "Japanese comics are creepy, pandering crap."

Frankly, I think I most mainstream comics tend to be pandering in a creepy way, they just have different skin tight costumes.

[Codicier]

I think he was recommending it so that you could see that there is a very wide gamut of stories told within the "superhero" genre of comics that people don't realize and most of the time they write off the whole lot of them without realizing such.

The recommendation was made because it's a good book for anyone who's interested in understanding how and why superhero's came to dominate the sales charts.

I thought understanding the process that lead comics to this point, in a book written by someone who is a well articulated advocate of the superhero concept might be something people would be interested in checking out.

I'm really confused by

Supergods is something that was specifically not requested.

I can totally understand if the themes that Supergods tackles are not something your interested in exploring, however I don't see why it shouldn't be mentioned. (and I can't see any reference to the book in the thread anywhere, or any references to "no mentioning of books that discuss the medium of comics & it's history")

I feel that the domination of superheroes is overplayed, and that the perpetuation of that myth is harmful. It can genuinely put people off from trying a entire medium, because they worry they will have to wade through a river of crap to find a story that will speak to them. Perhaps it was that way 10 years ago but I don't think it is now.

Perhaps it's silly of me, but I feel if someone values the things that comics (or "sequential art" if you want to use Scott McClouds more catch all term) can uniquely do, they need to try and debunk the myths surrounding it.

You make some really strong points but I feel your just being too negative. There so much good stuff out there now supported by a variety of different publishing models that there's a lot of reasons to feel genuinely positive about where comics are now, and where they are headed.

[Nappi]

I just bought my first comic book ever*, Alan Moore's Watchmen, because of the almost unanimous praise it has received and not just in comic book circles (if those even exist). I don't know what took me so long. I guess I will head here for further recommendations when I'm finished with that one.

*if you don't count the Donald Ducks of my childhood and Sam & Max: Surfin' the Highway of my adulthood, and I don't actually see why you wouldn't.

[tegan]

It's kind of weird that Watchmen is such a popular First Comic Book Ever, because it was written with the intent of deconstructing everything that came before it. I like Watchmen (and it's a perfect example of a story that only works as well as it does because it's a superhero comic), but it's like if Bioshock or something were your first game.

Incidentally, have there been any really good manga in the last few years that I'm just not aware of? The most recent thing I remember enjoying was Fullmetal Alchemist and I never did make it to the end of that. That and Franken Fran, but I guess that hasn't been given a proper translation yet.

[gregbrown]

I'm almost finished with Chris Ware's Building Stories, and WOW. I was a big fan of Ware's earlier book Jimmy Corrigan, but this latest one seems like a leap beyond. It plays a lot more notes than Corrigan's meditation on lonely behaviors, and the playfulness is put to a lot better use. The term "book" is a little loose in this case, since Stories comes as a giant box loaded with everything from small pamphlets to a giant board that folds out as if you were going to play a board game.

These are weird and bad comparisons to use, but the whole thing feels like my favorite part of Infinite Jest: the middle-third where you get 20-30 page jags of some of the best writing you've ever seen, going on for hundreds of pages, seemingly (and pleasurably) without end. Of course, IJ has to come to an ending of sorts, but because Stories is in a dozen different pieces in no particular order, there's this very real feeling that it truly is endless, that you could loop back around to read them in a different order and forever stay in that zone.

The other comparison I would make is to Edward P. Jones' The Known World, which has these wild leaps in time, even in the middle of a sentence. You get the feeling that Jones has imagined his character's entire lives into the future, and that's a similar impression to what Ware brings. Pieces are set as early as the '40s and as late as the modern day, covering different spans of memory and time. One memorable piece—and probably the best to orient yourself by—covers 24 hours and is patterned after the Little Golden Books of my childhood, with the gold spine and hard cover.

Best unwrapping experience ever.

[Gormongous]

Incidentally, have there been any really good manga in the last few years that I'm just not aware of? The most recent thing I remember enjoying was Fullmetal Alchemist and I never did make it to the end of that. That and Franken Fran, but I guess that hasn't been given a proper translation yet.

This isn't published in the States yet, I don't think, but Boys on the Run is nothing short of amazing. Not epic like some of the manga previously mentioned in this thread, but so very real on its own merits.

I'm also reading Berserk, which is good seinen fun, but I'm beginning to suspect a George R.R. Martin scenario from the artist, Miura. It's almost unimaginable that he'll finish the massive story he's got planned before he kicks it.

[Codicier]

I just bought my first comic book ever*, Alan Moore's Watchmen, because of the almost unanimous praise it has received and not just in comic book circles (if those even exist). I don't know what took me so long. I guess I will head here for further recommendations when I'm finished with that one.

It's kind of weird that Watchmen is such a popular First Comic Book Ever, because it was written with the intent of deconstructing everything that came before it. I like Watchmen (and it's a perfect example of a story that only works as well as it does because it's a superhero comic), but it's like if Bioshock or something were your first game.

Incidentally, have there been any really good manga in the last few years that I'm just not aware of? The most recent thing I remember enjoying was Fullmetal Alchemist and I never did make it to the end of that. That and Franken Fran, but I guess that hasn't been given a proper translation yet.

Pluto is probably the closest thing the manga community has to the Watchmen, although it's far more limited in scope. I also think it's author Urasawa lacks Moore's talent for making his audience feel smart, and when he attempts some of the same interconnected plot tricks that Moore pulls off so effortlessly in Watchmen they often feel laboured.

Not sure if I'd recommend it overall but I think for someone who had more affection and knowledge for the material its examining (I've never read any of Tezuka's Astro Boy stuff) I can imagine it being worth a look.

I'm also reading Berserk, which is good seinen fun, but I'm beginning to suspect a George R.R. Martin scenario from the artist, Miura. It's almost unimaginable that he'll finish the massive story he's got planned before he kicks it.

The only ongoing manga I follow at the moment is Vinland Saga, who's creator Makoto Yukimura wrote one of my all time favourites Planetes (although this information is almost irrelevant because the two stories' themes and styles have very little in common). It gets compared a lot to Berserk, although I find it more grounded (for better or worse) and also more focused on character development than Berserk (which can fall victim to frequent bouts of exposition regarding its grand meta plot).It's also a long series (at volume 12 at time of writing, with no sign of approaching a end) but my experience with Planetes makes me hopeful that the author has the a definite ending in mind and the discipline to steer the series to it without meandering too much off course.

[Ben X]

Nappi, please report back to us on how you find Watchmen, because as has been said it's definitely not a My First Comic Book choice so it'll be interesting to see how well it works in that situation.

We all suggested some introductory texts previously, right?

[Argobot]

I don't know, Watchmen was my first comic book read and I understood most of the references based on the comic book history I'd learned through general pop culture osmosis. Sure I could tell that there were references that I wasn't getting, but my enjoyment of Watchmen was so great that it encouraged to me eventually seek out those missing gaps in my comic book knowledge. Personally, I think it's a good first read because the story is so masterful and because it has this reputation of being a more 'intelligent' comic book story.

[Codicier]

Nappi, please report back to us on how you find Watchmen, because as has been said it's definitely not a My First Comic Book choice so it'll be interesting to see how well it works in that situation.

We all suggested some introductory texts previously, right?

If what you mean is people talking about the one or two books that brought them personally to the medium, I think that would be something I'd be interested in reading.

However I'm not sure i feel the same about big "introductory lists" . I mean for a sub genre (like superheroes) within comics I can see how it would be helpful, but for the whole medium? it feels like it would be difficult to pin down a selection of works that would suit a wide range of individuals.

[Ben X]

Well, what I meant was "didn't we all list our suggestions for which comics are good as introductory texts to the medium already on these forums?"

But yeah, absolutely, it's a very broad question. When I try to decide which graphic novel to introduce someone to the medium with, I deal with it on a case by case basis, consider their preferences and experience with other mediums (do they like wordy plays, bombastic action flicks, mood poems?) and cater to that. But something like Watchmen specifically plays to the characteristics and history of the medium, not just the cliches of the superhero genre, and I really think that one would benefit from a little reading experience in that medium before tackling that text. I'd liken it to recommending Tristram Shandy as someone's first novel or Eternal Sunshine Of A Spotless Mind as someone's first film. Not that those texts are impenetrable, but that it absolutely helps to know which conventions they are playing against, adhering to and commenting on.

[Ben X]

We need an "ALERT DRUNK POST" smiley.

[tegan]

Pluto is probably the closest thing the manga community has to the Watchmen, although it's far more limited in scope. I also think it's author Urasawa lacks Moore's talent for making his audience feel smart, and when he attempts some of the same interconnected plot tricks that Moore pulls off so effortlessly in Watchmen they often feel laboured.

Not sure if I'd recommend it overall but I think for someone who had more affection and knowledge for the material its examining (I've never read any of Tezuka's Astro Boy stuff) I can imagine it being worth a look.

I read the first three volumes of Pluto, but never got around to finishing it for some reason. I've read a lot of Tezuka (including the entire run of Astro Boy), so the big difference between Pluto and Watchmen that sticks out for me is that Watchmen explores the themes and implications of superhero comics that superhero comic creators probably didn't think about much, while Pluto expands on ideas that Tezuka absolutely intended. There's lots of little authorial commentary bits in the definitive version of Astro Boy, and it becomes gradually apparent that Tezuka was always pushing for Astro Boy to be full of the bigger ideas about the human experience that dominated his later work.

[Nachimir]

Nappi, please report back to us on how you find Watchmen, because as has been said it's definitely not a My First Comic Book choice

When I was about 14, I dismissed comics as shallow pap for other, younger kids, then found Watchmen in my local library and it changed my mind. I'm sure I missed many references, but other forms of pop culture had told me enough about superheroes that I could fundamentally get it and what it was doing.

[Codicier]

Bryan and Mary Talbot's Dotter of Her Father Eye's has just won the Biography section of the Costa Prize (which is a reasonably respectable set of book awards in the UK), if they could win the overall prize it would be a great achievement. However that's probably unlikely since they are up against the awards juggernaut that is Hillary Mantel's Bringing up the Bodies(don't take that as me knocking Mantel btw, the awards & praise are entirely justified).

Alice in Sunderland (another Bryan Talbot book) was the graphic novel that first gave my interest in comics a legitimacy in my parents eyes after I brought it home with me for a family visit, and which eventually led to them slowly acquiring a small graphic novel section on their own bookshelves. So I hope the equally excellent Dotter will grab the attention of a new crop of people who otherwise wouldn't have considered reading a graphic novel.

[miffy495]

If we widen that to "personal drama taking place in a society in upheaval" (which is broader but still pretty specific) we can bring in things like the wonderful Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. Which gives a child's eye view of the Islamic revolution in Iran and its consequence on the day to day life of the young narrator and her family.

I realize the conversation has moved on, but don't forget Waltz With Bashir.

Frankly, I think I most mainstream comics tend to be pandering in a creepy way, they just have different skin tight costumes.

Yes and yes.

Incidentally, have there been any really good manga in the last few years that I'm just not aware of? The most recent thing I remember enjoying was Fullmetal Alchemist and I never did make it to the end of that. That and Franken Fran, but I guess that hasn't been given a proper translation yet.

For whatever reason, I have trouble getting into manga that I don't have when I try to read a comic. Can't speak to the following personally, only second-hand. That said, my partner is big into them and eagerly awaits each translated volume of MPD Psycho and Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service (both by Eiji Otsuka). She likes the horror stuff though, so if that's not your thing, disregard.

[tegan]

I don't think I've ever felt as self-conscious buying a comic as picking up my pre-orders for Message to Adolf.

Not that I don't love the cover treatments that Vertical gives their Tezuka books, but geez.

Alternate joke: You ever see the deleted scene from The Pagemaster with Mein Kampf in it?

For whatever reason, I have trouble getting into manga that I don't have when I try to read a comic. Can't speak to the following personally, only second-hand. That said, my partner is big into them and eagerly awaits each translated volume of MPD Psycho and Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service (both by Eiji Otsuka). She likes the horror stuff though, so if that's not your thing, disregard.

I actually read the first volume of Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service at one point and remember liking it, so I'm not entirely sure why I stopped reading. I never looked into MPD Psycho though.