What COMIC BOOKS have you been reading?

The thing that makes Jimmy Corrigan so positive for me is that he able to not only make you care about some pretty emotionally stunted characters (anyone can do that with some manipulation), but much more importantly, I think Chris Ware's work helps you *understand* people and their POVs better than anyone else, in large part due to Ware's spectacular observational powers so that the tiniest details of life immerse you in the character's world.

Last week I read Shazam: The Monster Society of Evil (Jeff Smith version) to Jesse, one chapter a night. It was his first multi-part book. He loved it, and it has invaded all his make-believe play. He likes it even more than Superman! It really is a bummer that there wasn't a really worthy follow-up series; Smith's changes to the franchise are really fresh and clever (the Mr. Mind redesign is a little disappointing, though).

I've since been downloading golden age Otto Binder Captain Marvel comics from the Digital Comics Museum and reading to them; he loves those, too. I might have to finally start working on my years-long dream to create a personal series of bound books of all the Otto Binder Captain Marvel stories, since DC is never ever ever getting around to it. I'm pretty sure they're *the best* superhero comics for 3-year-olds ever.

dragonstout wrote: Last week I read Shazam: The Monster Society of Evil (Jeff Smith version) to Jesse, one chapter a night. It was his first multi-part book. He loved it, and it has invaded all his make-believe play. He likes it even more than Superman! It really is a bummer that there wasn't a really worthy follow-up series; Smith's changes to the franchise are really fresh and clever (the Mr. Mind redesign is a little disappointing, though).

I've since been downloading golden age Otto Binder Captain Marvel comics from the Digital Comics Museum and reading to them; he loves those, too. I might have to finally start working on my years-long dream to create a personal series of bound books of all the Otto Binder Captain Marvel stories, since DC is never ever ever getting around to it. I'm pretty sure they're *the best* superhero comics for 3-year-olds ever.

One of these days, I'm going to pick up Shazam: The Monster Society of Evil. The artwork is great, and I hear that the story is good, too. At one point back in the golden age, Captain Marvel was outselling even Superman. Makes sense, because most comic buyers were kids back then, and from a kid's point of view, Captain Marvel has an awesome power: he can turn into an adult just by saying a magic word.

We must be only a month away by now from the next graphic novel for A GAME OF THRONES. I really liked the first one a ton and will hopefully pick up the next one as well.

Shellhead wrote:

dragonstout wrote: Last week I read Shazam: The Monster Society of Evil (Jeff Smith version) to Jesse, one chapter a night. It was his first multi-part book. He loved it, and it has invaded all his make-believe play. He likes it even more than Superman! It really is a bummer that there wasn't a really worthy follow-up series; Smith's changes to the franchise are really fresh and clever (the Mr. Mind redesign is a little disappointing, though).

I've since been downloading golden age Otto Binder Captain Marvel comics from the Digital Comics Museum and reading to them; he loves those, too. I might have to finally start working on my years-long dream to create a personal series of bound books of all the Otto Binder Captain Marvel stories, since DC is never ever ever getting around to it. I'm pretty sure they're *the best* superhero comics for 3-year-olds ever.

One of these days, I'm going to pick up Shazam: The Monster Society of Evil. The artwork is great, and I hear that the story is good, too. At one point back in the golden age, Captain Marvel was outselling even Superman. Makes sense, because most comic buyers were kids back then, and from a kid's point of view, Captain Marvel has an awesome power: he can turn into an adult just by saying a magic word.

Plus the art and stories were awesome compared to Superman (which isn't saying much, golden age Superman is kind of hard to read)...a lot of the classic Superman mythos stuff, especially a lot of the sillier stuff, was created by Otto Binder when he left Fawcett after DC made them stop publishing Captain Marvel. He created Braniac, the Fortress of Solitude, Krypto, Beppo the Super-Monkey, Titano, the bottle city of Kandor, the Legion of Superheroes, Supergirl, the Phantom Zone, a lot of Bizarro stuff, the classic Jimmy Olsen approach, and tons tons more. Basically, the silver age Superman ported over a lot of both Captain Marvel's tone and, in some ways, content (specifically, turning Superman into a Super-family). I feel like what we think of as "the silver age" and its loony out-there fantasy concepts started with Captain Marvel; most of the other golden-age stuff I've seen isn't as whimsical. They're all free to read, too, check it out. You want to go for the Otto Binder stuff, though, the really early Captain Marvel is painful writing-wise (except for the origin story and this crazy story with giant frogs with spikes on their heads).

The original Monster Society of Evil story from the 1940s is also the first graphic novel-length superhero story. It had 25 parts! They won't reprint it these days because it's got hella racism. C'mon DC, you reprinted the Spirit with no problem, just don't target it towards kids!

The Jeff Smith book is both well-drawn and well-written. My wife mostly rolls her eyes at my superhero comics, but the cliffhanger from part 3 to part 4 drove her crazy. I liked lots of Jeff Smith's changes, but probably my favorite is simply that Billy and Mary are both young kids instead of teenagers; there are a ton of teenage heroes, but not a lot of little kids (the Power Pack?), and it makes for a nice contrast between Captain Marvel and Mary Marvel. Don't go in expecting depth or anything, though, for god's sake, despite the political commentary.

I read The Nobody by Jeff Lemire this weekend. It's OK, nothing really special. Feels like it really should have been fleshed out more.

Started in on Queen and Country, Vol. 2. I'll never know what real spies are like, but for me Queen and Country is as a realistic portrayal as it gets. The rotating artists with really different styles is kind of tough, you've got to figure out who's who all over again. And some of them are more "cartoony" than others which clashes a bit with the tone of the series, but the "toon" artists do make the characters a little easier to recognize.

Queen and Country is a direct rip from an early 80s TV series called The Sandbaggers. It was all about the in fighting between MI5 and MI6, mostly office politics. The Sandbaggers were the elite assassins. Definitely not Bond but very good.

The author admits in his blog that he ripped off the show bigtime.

ThirstyMan wrote: Queen and Country is a direct rip from an early 80s TV series called The Sandbaggers. It was all about the in fighting between MI5 and MI6, mostly office politics. The Sandbaggers were the elite assassins. Definitely not Bond but very good.

The author admits in his blog that he ripped off the show bigtime.

I hadn't heard of that. Does it stand the test of time?

Black Barney wrote: We must be only a month away by now from the next graphic novel for A GAME OF THRONES. I really liked the first one a ton and will hopefully pick up the next one as well.

So probably another 4 months away for the library to get it. I borrowed the first one 1-2 months ago (just became available) and felt it was pretty faithful to the novel. If it's anything like the Wheel of Time comics, it will probably need 6 graphic novels (36 issues) for the first book alone.

Interesting blog post about where DC's at right now with which graphic novels it's pushing; especially pointing out that 40% of their "essential 25" are by Alan Moore, including one that got unexpectedly taken from him when the company he did it for (Wildstorm) was sold to DC:
everydayislikewednesday.blogspot.com/201...-most-essential.html

I read a pretty good Astro City story last night, the "Samaritan: The Eagle & the Mountain" story.

I was reading Straczynski's (sp?) The Twelve series. I'm about halfway through and it's alright so far, but I'm not really that interested in any of the characters. Reminds me a bit of Astro City in that the writing/characterization isn't as shit-hot as it thinks it is and the art is pretty so-so. So I set it aside to read ....

GI Joe - Cobra The Last Laugh! I had some doubts picking this up blind, but took a chance on it based on some online chatter. It's 15 or so issues of various IDW Cobra comics about an undercover GI Joe operative named Chuckles who is working to infiltrate a mysterious criminal organization. (**SPOILER ALERT - IT'S COBRA!**). IDW's GI Joe universe is a relaunch, and Cobra is more or less an unknown entuty at this point in time.

Quick thoughts:
1. It kinda sucks to have read this first as it's apparently the high water mark for the new books put out by IDW, so anything further I read may be a step down.
2. That didn't stop me from ordering the IDW collection of their first "season" of GI Joe stories from their various other limited series.
3. Does Hasbro not have to approve the shit that goes down in these books? I remember the older Marvel comics being a bit darker than the cartoon, but nothing like this.
4. They did a nice job of updating classic GI Joe people/technology (Hey look! Hisstanks!)
5. I'm tempted to pick up a trade to sample the original series, but I've got a feeling they would be pretty disappointing to read as an adult (I read a few issues when I was young, and as a kid the silent issue with Snake Eyes and Stormshadow was pretty awesome).

Quick update: Finished reading the Twelve and it really doesn't get any better. Big reveal wasn't really that big, plot felt kind of forced, and the characterization was weak. Pretty meh overall.

So Joe Abercrombie's First Law trilogy is being adapted in comic book form and they're uploading 3 pages a week online for FREE viewing. Pretty cool!

Link

metalface13 wrote:

ThirstyMan wrote: Queen and Country is a direct rip from an early 80s TV series called The Sandbaggers. It was all about the in fighting between MI5 and MI6, mostly office politics. The Sandbaggers were the elite assassins. Definitely not Bond but very good.

The author admits in his blog that he ripped off the show bigtime.

I hadn't heard of that. Does it stand the test of time?

It's a little dated in production values but still good. There are three seasons, definitely not action orientated.

I was very disappointed in the comic book because the entire plot is ripped, he just changed all the names.

The local library had the first five volumes of Freakangels, and I was blown away by it. I liked Planetary, but nothing else that Warren Ellis had written had really grabbed my interest. Until now. Freakangels is sort of like the X-Men if they had been invented by Roger Zelazny and Hayao Miyazaki, in a very British setting. It also reminds me of the parts that I disliked in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, only those elements work just great under the pen of Warren Ellis.

Ellis introduces about a dozen of interesting characters, and made me care about them. The art is quite good, except that sometimes it seems like the artist skipped the class on how to draw human lips. Anyway, I loved the first five volumes so much that I just bought the complete six-volume set on Amazon at more than 50% off.

Shellhead wrote: The local library had the first five volumes of Freakangels, and I was blown away by it. I liked Planetary, but nothing else that Warren Ellis had written had really grabbed my interest. Until now. Freakangels is sort of like the X-Men if they had been invented by Roger Zelazny and Hayao Miyazaki, in a very British setting. It also reminds me of the parts that I disliked in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, only those elements work just great under the pen of Warren Ellis.

Ellis introduces about a dozen of interesting characters, and made me care about them. The art is quite good, except that sometimes it seems like the artist skipped the class on how to draw human lips. Anyway, I loved the first five volumes so much that I just bought the complete six-volume set on Amazon at more than 50% off.

Wasn't Freakangels originally released as a Web comic? Seems like a read an issue or two. I think my library has them too, Warren Ellis is a bit hit or miss for me (liked Planetary, did not like Transmetropolitan) but your Zelazny reference has my curiosity piqued.

I picked up Fables "Inherit the Wind" from Half Priced Books last week, still haven't read it though.