Comic Book Thread

Nerds Only: Here We Go

Alright, I’m 21 and I JUST got into comic books a few months ago when a buddy lent me “Y:The Last Man”. BRILLIANT comic book about a diease that kills everything with a y-chromosome except 1 man.

After that I read V for Vendetta and am currently building my Sandman Library. Also in my collection but yet to be read is “The Watchman”.

Anyone reading/read any of these or any other “Must have” comics you recommend?

[quote]Lonnie123 wrote:
Nerds Only: Here We Go

Alright, I’m 21 and I JUST got into comic books a few months ago when a buddy lent me “Y:The Last Man”. BRILLIANT comic book about a diease that kills everything with a y-chromosome except 1 man.

After that I read V for Vendetta and am currently building my Sandman Library. Also in my collection but yet to be read is “The Watchman”.

Anyone reading/read any of these or any other “Must have” comics you recommend?[/quote]

I’d like to get into comic books. I wonder, do they have e-comic books? If not, that’s a good idea… hmm…

The new Conan series is great.

I like Ultimates a lot, too.

Preacher - Garth Ennis and artist Steve Dillon, published by the Vertigo

Y:The Last Man owes a lot to Preacher. It’s a major influence on how the story is plotted and told. Think of it as a Y:The Last Man but with blasphemy, extreme violence, and dark humor.

Madman by Mike Allred.

Madman is on the exact opposite end of the spectrum. It’s my all time favorite but I don’t place it first because it is an acquired taste. It’s set in a pop art inspired retro futuristic society full of mad scientists, robots, mutant street beatniks and extraterrestrials. Frank Einstein isn’t a costumed hero so much as a resurrected amnesiac that dresses in his childhood superhero’s costume to give him the courage to deal with the above mentioned obstacles.

Robert Rodriguez has the film rights and is friends with the creator. He is going to do a Madman movie the with the same greenscreen method he used with Sin City.

Watchmen is definetly a must. You should read it, though, in the context in which it was originally presented - that being, the comics world of the '80s. Of course, even if you don’t, it is an unreal story that almost seems plausible.

Milk and Cheese. Google and love it.

Watch Invader Zim. Just because the guy who did Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, Jhonen Vasquez, did it.

Of course, Batman. The recent Hush story was, well, a let-down, but it was Jim Lee + Batman.

Maus: A Survivors Tale. The Holocaust with the Jews as mice and the nazi as cats.

Planetary. Is good.

The Garth Ennis StormWatch and Authority. Hell, through Planetary in there as well.

Grant Morrison’s Invisibles. Forget the Matrix. Believe this.

First the SF thread, then this? What’s happening to T-Nation? =)

If you like Batman at all (and even if you don’t), then you have to read Batman: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller.

Also try Frank Miller’s Sin City. The movie was good, but the comics are better. The book are gritty, bloody, and full of T-Men.

Hellboy by Mike Mignola is pretty interesting. It’s about a demon, summoned by the Nazis, who ends up fighting for the good guys. And he has a really big fist.

You could also try The League of Extraordinary by Alan Moore. It takes characters from “classics” (Jekyll and Hyde, Mina Harker, Captain Nemo, Quatermain, etc.), and combines them into a Special Forces unit. It’s pretty interesting.

[quote]StevenF wrote:
Lonnie123 wrote:
Nerds Only: Here We Go

Alright, I’m 21 and I JUST got into comic books a few months ago when a buddy lent me “Y:The Last Man”. BRILLIANT comic book about a diease that kills everything with a y-chromosome except 1 man.

After that I read V for Vendetta and am currently building my Sandman Library. Also in my collection but yet to be read is “The Watchman”.

Anyone reading/read any of these or any other “Must have” comics you recommend?

I’d like to get into comic books. I wonder, do they have e-comic books? If not, that’s a good idea… hmm…
[/quote]

It’s possible to “obtain” comic books fron the Internet. I’m not sure how legal it is, though, so I can’t point you to sites, unfortunately, but it isn’t to hard to find. As far as I know, none of the big publishers (DC, Marvel, etc.) release comics digitally.

When you get the comics downloaded, use a program called CDisplay. It makes reading comics on your computer much easier.

Ever considered Manga? Naruto is just starting to get very, very good. And Fullmetal Alchemist is brilliant. Monster, however, is legendary.

Check out a local Con in your area. They always have some great stuff. I just went to the New York Comix Con a couple months ago, had the time of my life!

Don’t really read too much anymore used to collect pretty much everything now I just get the rare graphic novel or TPB. With that being said I always liked

Top Cow. It was the shit in the late 90s. Witchblade, The Darkness, Rising Stars, Fathom,Ascension and the Spirit of Tao. They had some great artists Marc Silvestri will always be my favorite.

I also read pretty much of all the mainstream DC and Marvel stuff,even have most of the first issues of the Ultimate lines just got to the point where I was buying them and hardly reading them all before I’d buy the next months issues.

thanks for the ideas guys.

And really, comics are pretty cheap for the most part, you can get an entire series for like $100 or less (1000’s of pages)…why not just buy them and help support the industry. They don’t sell in the millions like CD’s so every little bit helps.

Along with several others that have been mentioned, I am very partial to The Crow dark comic novels as well as the original Spawn comics.

You can also sample complete story lines by looking for the TPB (Trade PaperBack) shelf in your local bookstore.

“100 Bullets” is good reading; not the superhero/scifi genre.

Let me echo someone above: “Planetary” by Warren Ellis. Also, “The Authority” and early “Stormwatch” TPBs; they all tie in together.

You just missed “Infinite Crisis” in DC, which built off of elements from the “Crisis on Infinite Earths” from 20 years ago. The TPBs building up to it are already there.

A couple months ago I finally gave up a 35-year-old addiction and stopped spending $200+/month on comics. Now I’m very selective about what I get, and saving lots of money for Low-carn Metabolic Drive, once it’s back in stock. My wife was actually worried about my mental health once I didn’t have my weekly dose.

There’s a lot of good writing and entertainment in serialized illustrated literature, and other posters to this thread have given you lots of examples. Enjoy.

Judge Dredd.

The movie and the short lived DC adaptation sucked balls but the proper English comics are great.

My favorite of all time is still the early Witchblade series. Can’t put into words how much I loved that series when it debuted. I haven’t read regularly in a long time, but I get the notion it’s gone downhill since Michael Turner (series co-creator) left the book.

If you like comics at all, you absolutely owe it to yourself to check out some early issues of this series if you can get your hands on them. They’re pretty hard to find now.

And don’t waste your time with anything to do with the TV show. They turned the Witchblade into some kind of medieval knight sword; utter crap. They put a black mark on the Witchblade name with that garbage.

Can’t let this thread die, there’s too much good stuff mentioned.

There’s got to be more nerds around here.

One of the writers for B.P.R.D. (Hellboy spinoff) started his own series called Goon. Worth a look.

Maybe a bit out dated, but for it’s time, my favorite comic was the Batman graphic novel “Arkham Asylum”. I loved the art and the story telling. But most of all, I loved the story. I have always been drawn to Batman from the psychological perspective of a man so screwed up in the head that he wears a costume (persona) to hide what he has become, a man consumed by vengence. Arkham Asylum does a good job of opening the door to the concept of Batman as a dark tormented quasi nutjob himself.

I think I will go read it right now in fact. Good stuff.

For those who know it, Berserk is everything.

It’s a manga, and it’s storyline has started 18 years ago and is still growing and getting better. It truly has the greatest character development and intelligent notion, and realism, of any book or story I’ve ever read, and I’m sure all fans of it agree.
Plus the main character is as bad-ass as they come :

No words can sum up what it’s about, but Wikipedia does an okay job.

This is where most of the big-ass swords in mangas and video games come from by the way.

The Punisher - gareth ennis stuff (punisher max i think)

New Avengers - only about 19 issues out so far - new line up for a team,very funny and great artwork - you can probably pick up a paperback collection of the first 12 issues.

Astonishing X-men - the first 12 issues were done by Joss Whedon and main theme of the storyline is akin to X3.

Watchmen is a great book - i think a movie has been on the cards for some time now.


I went through a comic book jag back in the 80’s. One of the my favorites, but short lived comics was Space Beaver.

Here’s a thumbnail…

“Space Beaver is about an anthropomorphic beaver who, along with a turtle and a rat, goes around with a blaster and fights evil. Or something. When his arch enemy (Pork, an evil pig) is revealed to have his girlfriend Jackie (a rabbit), poor Beave goes berserk trying to save her…”

How can ya not love it.

Beaver ho…