Comic Books

[godix]

I dunno if Green Hornet is anyones idea of a great comic, or Kevin Smith is their idea of a great comic author. But figured I'd toss a link to a contest to win a copy of Kevin Smith's Green Hornet comic with a couple original sketches.

[Brad]

So we dropped by Challengers today and I picked up the first volume + 7th issue (most recent) of The Sixth Gun. It's a new-ish title on Oni Press by Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt. I just finished it up and I am very impressed. It's a really fun and interesting western horror/fantasy series. The first volume is a nice all-encompassing arc, that leaves it open enough to continue the story. If I had to make any criticisms is that by the tail end of it, it does feel like "Oh shit we've gotta wrap this up by vol. 6 so we can make it a normal size TPB." since things sort of feel rushed, but on the whole, I really enjoyed it. It'll be one I continue to pick up each month for sure.

[NS]

Went to barnes and noble today, read Wolverine:Old man Logan. it's a short arc, worth the read though. The art is very nice as well.

[Brad]

Update time

So last night I read through Blacksad. It's a super-slick graphic novel told in a very 40's-50's noir fashion. For all intents and purposes it's a gritty detective story, though the characters are all animals. Though it does a very good job of not using this as a gimmick, but more to create a unique atmosphere where people's personas are visually represented by their animal counterparts (ala Animal Farm). So it's more like humans that look like animals rather than animals that act like humans. All in all, I really loved it and I highly recommend it (thanks to Andre for lending it to me).

I picked up Sky Doll as per Sn0wcrash's recommendation. I think his little snippet to describe it was fairly spot on. Really cool art, pretty short on story. The book is pretty much a collection of short stories set in this universe inhabited by sexualized robot dolls. It's really quirky and fun, but the stories just don't really mean that much. However, the art style is really lovely most of the time, so you could look at it as simply an art book and get your money's worth.

I finally got back to reading the Grant Morrison Batbooks I had picked up a while ago. I had read Batman & Son soon after I got them but then for whatever reason moved onto other things. Tonight I read The Black Glove and R.I.P. Well... I can definitely see why many people have mixed feelings on Morrison. Not only does he have a love affair with referencing/bringing back Silver Age characters, he does seem to be one of those "smartest guy in the room" sort of dudes. And with me not having a long history of reading Batman (or the many tie-in books that do directly relate to the main storyline), I was definitely lost for quite a bit of it. However, all that being said, Morrison must be onto something because I do want more. I want to see where this is all going. I also realize that I definitely have to read Final Crisis, if only to see where the Batman storyline goes. Primarily I want to get into Batman & Robin. Everything I've been reading online has been praising it as one of the best cape/cowl stories in the past decade, and I'd like to be able to follow along and not be lost. Maybe that's beyond hope for me if I don't seriously spend months going back through countless back issues, but nevertheless, I'm gonna give it a shot. If I end up disappointed, so be it.

Aside from the main Batbooks, my agenda for the coming week in terms of reading some more of books Andre has picked up, including:
Batwoman: Elegy
Irredeemable: Vol 1+
Incorruptible: Vol. 1+

I'm still putting off starting into Y the Last Man until I decide whether or not to wait for vol. 5 of the hardcovers, or if I'll just bite the bullet, get vol. 9 and 10 of the TPBs and eat the cost later when the hardcover comes out.

[Snowcrash]

Update time

So last night I read through Blacksad. It's a super-slick graphic novel told in a very 40's-50's noir fashion. For all intents and purposes it's a gritty detective story, though the characters are all animals. Though it does a very good job of not using this as a gimmick, but more to create a unique atmosphere where people's personas are visually represented by their animal counterparts (ala Animal Farm). So it's more like humans that look like animals rather than animals that act like humans. All in all, I really loved it and I highly recommend it (thanks to Andre for lending it to me).

Forget to talk about this one, this graphic novel is pretty popular around the world actually. The authors are spanish but the editor is french (Dargaud).
The draws are awesome but it's not my kind of story (despite I read each issue ^^).[/quote]

I picked up Sky Doll as per Sn0wcrash's recommendation. I think his little snippet to describe it was fairly spot on. Really cool art, pretty short on story. The book is pretty much a collection of short stories set in this universe inhabited by sexualized robot dolls. It's really quirky and fun, but the stories just don't really mean that much. However, the art style is really lovely most of the time, so you could look at it as simply an art book and get your money's worth.

+1
It's worth a look more about the art tha the story.

But I am really waiting the moment when you will read Universal War One

[Castor Troy]

Any comic fans watch Linkara's Atop the 4th Wall series on That Guy With The Glasses?

Funny show that makes fun of bad comics.

[Brad]

Oh hey. It's update time.

I've read quite a bit over the last week and a half. Probably the most notable would be Identity Crisis. This is a 7-part miniseries crossover event in the DCU that (AFAIK) helps set the stage for the 2007 Infinite Crisis. Identity is far less world-changing than Infinite, but is still a very impactful story. Not to give anything away, the story begins with a death, which leads to everybody questioning everything. It's very much a humanized tale where there's no easy answers. There is some seriously heart-wrenching stuff in here that in all honesty almost brought me to tears at one point. Both the writing and to a huge extent, the art, really got to me and made me truly feel for these characters. The closest I'd come to that kind of emotional impact was with Joss Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men (who coincidentally wrote the intro to the Hardcover edition of this book) and certainly with JMS' Midnight Nation. So yeah, it's a little tough to recommend this book without having at least a decent amount of experience reading the DCU and having some familiarity with the characters, but so far it's gotta be my favorite of any crossover event title that I've read.

I also read Andre's copy of Batwoman: Elegy. I won't say much but it really made me excited for the new Batwoman series. I really fell for her character and the art style is just amazing. Highly highly recommended. It works well as a standalone book without much knowledge or continuity (other than maybe just knowing who Batman is).

I also read issue #1 of a new Ender's Game comic series, Speaker for the Dead, based on the novel of the same name. It's going to be a 5 issue run, and quite frankly, based on the content of the first issue, it really seems like it should be 10 issues or more. I'm extremely familiar with the source material so I already know what's going to happen, and the pace at which they're telling the story is going to be way too fast to really appreciate anything, unless they cut out some significant plot points. Either way, the art is really cool and it's definitely awesome to see how they're treating this universe (especially Jane, who's been one of my very favorite characters in literature for a while).

Another issue #1 I picked up on Wednesday was Brian Wood's The New York Five. Upon reading the intro page I realized that this is actually a sequel series to the original The New York Four. So I ended up going back and picking up the trade of that book to get myself caught up. It's one of the first slice-of-life comics I've read so far and it really reminded me a lot of the Nana manga. It's set in New York following the life of a young, shy girl named Riley who is starting school at NYU. There's not really a whole lot to say about the plot honestly. It's just a nice, fun little romp through New York. One of my favorite aspects of it are the little author intro's to each of the different areas of the city. You cal tell Brian Wood truly adores the city and wants to share his own experiences through the story.

Back to cape/cowl stuff, I've read the first 7 issues of the new Power Girl series (launched in the middle of Blackest Night I believe) and I'm really digging it. It's a nice departure from stuff like Batman in that you still get a superhero story, but it's much more "fun" than almost anything else out there. Power Girl is brash, witty, sarcastic, and kick ass and is a blast to read.

[Brad]

I'm reviving this thread. Deal with it.

A lot has happened in the last year. I had a probably 5 month period early last year where my interest in comics had waned. I chalked it up to the fact that I'm a "phases" kind of person. I have phases where I'm SUPER into something and I can't get enough....until I just couldn't care less anymore. It kinda made me sad since I had already bought a bunch of books and was felt like "well.. that was kind of a waste." But thankfully, my interest was piqued once again (don't really remember what did it exactly) and I've been on board ever since. The major influence to make me read more stuff was getting my iPad 2. Reading comics digitally has been an extreme delight. I know there's that special something about holding a paper and ink book in your hand, but when it comes to consuming the story from a practical standpoint, reading on a tablet is just considerably nicer than taking a stack of issues, all in bags and boards, figuring out what order they're in, going back and looking for a previous issue to look at something, etc. So yes. I am on board with the whole digital comics thing. Funny thing is though, I'm still buying my issues every week and picking up TPBs every now and then. Mostly from a collector's standpoint I guess.

I'm not going to go through and outline every single thing I've read in the last year. Suffice to say, I'm still much more in the DC camp than Marvel. The New 52 has totally worked for me (if you're unfamiliar, DC did an unprecedented move last September by completely cancelling (almost) every single on-going series they had, and rebooted them as 52 new #1's. The series are currently on issue #5. It was a tremendous success not only for DC but for the comics industry in general as it got a good amount of new readers into the stores, along with old readers who saw it as a chance to get back into the medium. So far among the rebooted series, the stand outs for me have been Wonder Woman, The Flash, Supergirl, Batwoman (continuing off of the Batwoman: Elegy team referenced in the previous post), Action Comics, Animal Man, and Swamp Thing. There are several more that I'm reading that I'm enjoying, but those are the ones I pick up first when they come out. Aside from Batwoman, I haven't started reading any of the Bat-books, since I've been wanting to catch up on the Morrison Batman run pre-New52. The one unfortunate thing about the reboot is that they sold it as EVERYTHING was being started over from scratch and any new reader could pick up any new book and be totally fine. Eh... not so much. While not quite as bad as Green Lantern (which was literally a direct continuation of what had been going on, which is fine story-wise, and I've heard it's been great stuff, but bad for new readers), there's still a definite feeling of continuation of what had been going on. Which is unfortunate since apparently Batman (written by Scott Snyder) is easily one of the best comics being put out right now.

The other major new for me is that I am actually getting into comic book writing. I'm still very much a beginner when it comes to this stuff and I have a long way to go, but I feel like I have a really good idea on my hands. But a good idea does not a comic make (let alone, a story). My plan currently is to start out by writing some short, 5-6 page issues of stand-alone stories. Might sound simple, but in reality it's probably pretty tough, if you want to have solid story structure, but I think it'll be a good exercise.

As far as art goes, our very own Kikai_Saigono (Kiki) is going to be collaborating with me on this project. It's as much a learning experience for her as it is for me. While she may be a very talented artist, she doesn't have much experience with sequential art and visual storytelling. But the for sure thing is that we're both psyched about it and we both believe in the idea and the characters and where it can all go.

All that being said, anybody else reading comics? Making comics? Comic-curious?

[Fall_Child42]

I just got
Incredible Change-Bots by Jeffery Brown

If I were to make comics, I would want to make comics like this.

[gotegenks]

wow, i thought this was a new thread and i didn't bother reading the dates...

read the first post, scroll and skim through the first page of replies, see a post by godix.

-chills-

i've only read graphic novels like watchmen or series compiled into a book like the batman ones menioned on the first page, but i think i may start checking out things, at least some more batman stuff because i'm crazy about the stuff i have read and the nolan movies. i have a bunch of random ones laying around because the yugioh tournament i go to is hosted a comic shop and they have a thing if you're buying more than $5 worth of stuff you can ask and get a free comic so i may actually check those out sometime.

saw a wolverine manga (yea) at barnes n' noble once and i flipped through. it was more disgusting than it sounds.