What comic are you reading at the moment.

Jonesy3110

I saw some of the really early art work for phonogram on the net ages ago and I've kept my eyes peeled ever since I don't know how I missed it I got really lucky with Suburban glamour, I was in forbidden planet on a thursday morning and it was the only copy.

Cadeaus

ztoical wrote: »

The Umberlla Academy issue 2 - I'm lovin this so far. I really didn't want to, was expecting uber emo vibes but its written really well, art is lovely and James Jean covers are yum.


New X-men 43 - i really dig the art style and colouring [esp surge's hair] Some great facial expressions going on this issue but I've really gone off the x-books in the past few months and this was the only one I could be bothered to pick up.....ultimate was going well but not liking the current story, was really liking ****ed up pyscho nightcrawler but now its back to blah

Yeah really love Umbrella Academy, great tongue in cheek stuff in there, although I'm a little biased as I'm a massive MCR fan.

Definately agree with New X-men art, I can't look at the characters the same way when they're drawn by any other artist, and unfortunately, as far as I know somebody new is comin for the Messiah complex run...

I also really enjoyed the first issue of Simon Dark, great pacing and dialogue.

ztoical

Just got my copy of Stuff Still Sucks by Liz Greenfield in the post and it is beyond yummy. Its her new mini comic collecting her journal comics and it is beautifully laid out with really great paper choices and sharp printing but of course the comics are what make it so great.

MarkHall

Was Given the Frist Daredevil HB by Kevin Smith. An enjoyable read. Some fun moments. Might give DD a chance to wow me.

bombidol

I quite like that DD book. The bendis DD run is excellent as is the Brubaker one.

Fysh

Working my way through the Chris Ware issue of McSweeney's Quarterly Concern & Eisner's The Plot at the moment. Have picked up, but not yet looked at, Ellis's Ministry of Space and something by Eddie Campbell.

Speaking of Ellis, I picked up Orbiter recently after having intended to check it out for a while. Cully Hamner's artwork is very pretty, but, well, just as things got interesting the story ended! (Seriously, it was almost like Ellis decided to write some sort of weird Planetary prequel in which the shiftship's origins were explained).

Looking forward to Black Summer #4 tomorrow, and I may be checking out Popgun as well...

bombidol

Someone told me theres some Sam Keith in popgun. anyone know if this is true?

Undergod

A lot of Phonogram kinda goes over your head for the first few issues if you're not up on Britpop. Great book though, was well impressed. Anyone remember when he used to be a games journalist?

ztoical

uncanny xmen 491 + 492 - I know I said I'd given up on the x-titles but its a hard habit to break. Not impressed with anything in uncanny - the writting is blah, the art is blah and the colouring is awful. And bull**** "questions that need answers" section at the back - dear god, does anyone really want to know that Joe Quesada wants to date squirrel girl. Maybe people do and I'm just getting old.

Wonderland issue 5 - part of SLG's disney line I have to say I've really been enjoying this adaption of the lewis carroll world. I usually don't like stuff that has "inspired by" on the cover but this manages to be a fitting tribute and fresh and interesting at the same time.

Nightwing 135 - 137 - another series i said I was done with but flipping through it in the shop it looked semi-interesting. The writing is slowly getting back to were it was about 3 years ago but the art is very inconsistent.

Star Trek Alien spotlight The andorians - ok this is really awful on nearly every level but I'm a sad trekie who loves the andorians and wishes enterprise hadn't be cancelled just so there'd be more Shran.

Tales of the TMNT 40 - really great almost silent story focus on raph *happy dance* bit overkill on the zipatone in places but still a strong issue.

Raphael bad moon rising 4 - have mentioned this before. Good mini series from Mirage [thou I'm biased cus I love Raph]

The vinyl underground 1 and 2 - like the covers and the art, writing is interesting but want to read at least one more issue to see where they are going with it.

The Umbrella academy 3 - ok think I've made it really clear that I love this book.

Flink - really great graphic novel from image. About a Bigfoot or should that be Bigfeet as there are many of them. Great story and lovely art esp the inks - kinda wish it was an ongoing series. You might rec the style as its by the guy who created Earthworm Jim

Will Eisner's The Spirit - cept its not by Eisner. Picked up the hardcover book one collecting the first six issues and picked up issue 11 as a floppy. I like it. The die cut on the cover of the hardcover really nice [I'm such a sucker for nice book design]

Alberto Ruiz Bocetto 8 Not a comic but an artists sketch book. Big fan of Ruiz style even thou he does very sexual woman, theres a humor to it. His vector stuff is very strong.

Shooting War -anyone who follows Act-i-vate should have heard of this graphic novel. I'm not the biggest fan of work thats 100% digital but Goldman has developed a nice style that really suits the political work that he does.

MarkHall

Picked up Doctor 13 yesterday.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Thirteen
A strange but enjoyable read. If I knew more about the DC univers I may have enjoyed it a little more. It is well written and just a little all over the place at times but on a second reading as the good Doc himself suggests if makes a tad more sense.

Fysh

As in Dr Terry 13 : Ghost-breaker, the Phantom Stranger's antagonist/ally? I noticed there was a new Tales Of The Unexpected with the Spectre and Dr 13 in it sometime after Infinite Crisis, but I only discovered this about a month ago, well after the event.

A few minutes of Google show that it is the same series

Excellent, I didn't realise this hadn't been collected yet! I picked up the Showcase Phantom Stranger book a while back and quite like the concept & characters, though understandably the work is rather dated. I'm quite keen to have a look at the new version, it could work rather nicely with the right writer at the helm...

Fysh

Boo. I thought Black Summer #4 was out today, but apparently not. On the other hand, I got my copy of Black Dossier and Flight vol. 4 (at last!) so I'm happy. Left Popgun on the shelf more out of monetary concern than unwillingness to buy - it looks pretty good but I've got about 5-6 GNs now waiting to be read so I shouldn't be picking up more new stuff...

ztoical

Graham Corcoran posted some of the pages from his popgun comic over at the creative ireland illustration forum.

and is anyone else excited for Northlanders after seeing the amazing artwork on newsarama?

ztoical

just got my copy of World War 3 Illustrated #38. Great line up for this issue with Seth Tobocman, Kyle Baker, Mac McGill, Fly, James Sherman and Susan Simensky. Highlight this issue is Peter Kuper's journal comic of his past year in mexico.

ztoical

Northern Irish artists PJ Holden's Fearless issue 1 can be read online

bombidol

And its good too!

Fysh

Finished reading Black Dossier last night. It was good, a really interesting mix of styles and formats that nicely complemented the range of source materials being stitched together. Seemed somewhat fascinated with sex though, which I didn't really expect. It's not a bad thing, as such, just a rather unexpected focal point.

Looking forward to more LoEG though, whenever Moore gets round to it.

I'm now into Flight 4 and enjoying it immensely. Also picking up Black Summer 4 sometime in the next couple of days.

Fysh

I picked up a few single issues during the week and, well, it was interesting to say the least...

All Star Batman & Robin The Boy Wonder #8

I've been on-and-off paying attention to this since the now-infamous "I'm the goddamn batman" issue hit the shelves, and after kicking myself at not picking up a copy of the "spermbank" issue, I figured I should probably own a copy of this issue.

It's not bad, exactly, because it feels so far beyond the normal realm for this kind of material that conventional definitions of good & bad just won't do.

What it is, however, is crack-tastic. The Joker is like one of the male characters from Sin City, there's a strange female assistant with swastika nipple-tassles on that I'm sure was also in Give Me Liberty, and Hal Jordan is presented as an inmensely powerful idiot. With some of the worst internal monologue to keep things going since that god-awful theatrical version of Blade Runner.

I can't encourage buying this in any way because, well, it'll only encourage Miller to carry on writing it. But for sheer entertainment, it should be seen by everyone...


Black Summer #4

Somewhat sparse on the plot side of things, this issue is primarily showing the escalating nature of the conflict that John Horus has started by, you know, executing the President. It's all fantastically depicted, but this feels a bit weak compared to the preceding issues because it offers neither more insight into the characters nor much development into the storyline. Mind you, anyone reading this is probably reading the whole series anyway so never mind.

The Engineer (1 of 4)

It was the cover that drew me to this, but I'm glad I picked it up. The central character is a bit flimsy in his depiction, but the whole series setup (the Engineer searching for the pieces to rebuild the Konstruct and save the universe, while possibly slipping inadvertently between realities along the way) has enough weirdness to it to be potentially brilliant. Hopefully it'll have the same magic to it that most of the Grant Morrison Seven Soldiers of Victory series had.

Ultimate Iron Man II (1 of 4)

Wow. I'd been looking forward to this for ages, but it's a pretty underwhelming read. The change in artwork is noticeable and for the worse, but the writing is what seems to have really suffered. Having read a few of Card's books, this comes off as something that he had to transform from basic premise to final script in, say, half an hour. Tony Start doesn't come across as being any further developed than the young man at the end of the first Ultimate Iron Man series, and the ease with which he agrees to become a government assassin without even questioning the intelligence they're using seems improbable. I'll check out issue 2 and see if things improve, but this doesn't seem like a good set up for a 4-issue mini to follow on from the first series.

Fysh

Also picked up something you're probably already following, ztoical - issue 3 of the Omega The Unknown series with Farel Dalrymple on art duties, written by Jonathan Lethem (who I've never heard of). Having not read issues 1 & 2 I don't know if the story's going to be great but the dialogue is well-written and the setup is weird enough to really let Dalrymple's artwork shine like it did in Pop Gun War. Yay for having 7 more issues of this yet to come!

Undergod

Just got Hellblazer: Fear and Loathing, first Hellblazer I've read. Like the characters, can't really make full judgement till I have read a bit more and can put it in context.

Xaniaj

Said I'd drag up this thread as opposed to starting a new one.

Basically I've just started reading comics, main reason being that I am a huge Buffy fan and when I heard that it was being continued in comics, I had to get it! I'm now getting it monthly and loving it.

I've also started Y The Last Man series and really enjoying it...the only other one I've read so far is Umbrella Academy which is...meh, I wasn't blown away by the first buy enjoyed the last few more.

I've also order the first few books of Preacher...following on that, is there a series I "have" to read? The superhero side of things isn't as appealing to me for some reason although I'd give it a go no doubt!

Thanks

Fysh

Yay, Christmas! I was rather delighted to find myself on the receiving end of a copy of Absolute Watchmen (signed by Dave Gibbons, no less). Great, great stuff - I'm usually dead against hardback comics (well, against hardbacks in general TBH, since only libraries really have a justifiable need of the heavier cover and publishers normally use it as a way of jacking up the price). But in the case of this, I'm delighted with it - the fresh colouring is great and the increased page size really shows off Gibbon's linework for the masterpiece that it is.

I recently picked up the Love & Rockets : Beyond Palomar book but haven't finished it yet. So far so good; Gilbert Hernandez is the business. (Sadly, I'm not so taken with Jaime Hernandez's contributions, but those are the breaks, I suppose).

Hellblazer : Bloodlines is also mine, and has gone part of the way to making me more fond of Garth Ennis' run by showing more of Kit and how her relationship with John developed. It was better writing from Ennis than I generally expect, though it did also include a chapter that was essentially glorifying the experience of getting falling-down drunk and such wonderfully non-stereotypical bits of characterisation as Belfast woman=good drinker. But on the whole it was good; besides, I was in a very happy mood at the time of reading as it seems that DC have finally decided to reprint a TPB collecting Jamie Delano's Fear Machine storyline, which is great.

MarkHall

MuiriosaB wrote: »

I've also order the first few books of Preacher...following on that, is there a series I "have" to read? The superhero side of things isn't as appealing to me for some reason although I'd give it a go no doubt!

Thanks

Preacher a a great tale. Very enjoyable and worth finishing.
I'm currently working my way through The Sandman Trades I may seek out the Absolutes in January as I am really liking this run. The Main plot is very enjoyable but I really am loving the mini tales that pop up in it.
The art and lettering can get a Bit strange at times but on a whole a wonderful series.
Muiriosa: IF you like a Good tale that just happens to have Zombies give the Walking Dead a chance.

Fysh

I've been rather tempted by the Absolute Sandman collections as well - it's a very good series and definitely worth checking out, but as with so many comics of its time, the colouring looks very dated by now. I've seen a couple of samples of the new colouring on the Absolute versions and it's a shocking improvement.

Crucifix

MuiriosaB wrote: »

I've also order the first few books of Preacher...following on that, is there a series I "have" to read? The superhero side of things isn't as appealing to me for some reason although I'd give it a go no doubt!

I would suggest Y: The Last Man, but it looks like you've got that covered!

I just finished reading Y:TLM myself (the first nine volumes), and I'm currently reading Iron Man: Extremis.

Xaniaj

MarkHall, might give that a look in, thanks

At this stage, I think I've enough to keep me going (purely because of monetary reasons!) - just ordered Watchmen.

MarkHall

When your Done. AS a buffy Fan you may wish to check out what IDW are doing with Angel and Co.They've done some enjoyable Spike Books and some fun One shots for each of the characters.

markw999

I am re-reading Transmetropolitan again. God how I miss that book.

There's not much out there that's caught my eye in the past while. Any reccomendations?

Kinda stuff I read:
Old DC/Vertigo (Transmet, Preacher, Invisibles, Sandman)
Fantagraphics/Drawn and Quarterly (Berlin, Peep Show, Seth)
Cerebus (my vote for one of the best comics ever - discounting the last 100 issues, of course)
Most alternative/indie/underground books (Ariel Schrag, Stray Bullets, House of Java)

spooydermot

MuiriosaB wrote: »

Said I'd drag up this thread as opposed to starting a new one.

Basically I've just started reading comics, main reason being that I am a huge Buffy fan and when I heard that it was being continued in comics, I had to get it! I'm now getting it monthly and loving it.

I've also started Y The Last Man series and really enjoying it...the only other one I've read so far is Umbrella Academy which is...meh, I wasn't blown away by the first buy enjoyed the last few more.

I've also order the first few books of Preacher...following on that, is there a series I "have" to read? The superhero side of things isn't as appealing to me for some reason although I'd give it a go no doubt!

Thanks

been reading the Fables books over the past few months, which have blown me away. Can't believe it took me so long to pick it up.The next book isn't out till March or May...does anyone know why Vertigo leave it so long to put trades out? is it to boost single issue sales?

Fysh

I think the current climate is pushing it that way alright; they'd gotten quite good about trade releases for some of the newer series like Testament & American Virgin, but they now seem to be thinking that releasing the trade too soon leads to reduced monthly sales due to trade-waiting. (Which isn't a problem for Marvel, what with the whole Quesada-inspired drive to have TPBs come out as close as a few weeks after the last issue of a story arc; somehow this telling piece of information hasn't yet led to someone in Vertigo encouraging a rethink of their business model since they as an imprint are pretty much geared towards creator-owned long-form stories and those stories aren't always well-suited to monthly serialisation).

Must admit I've gotten to an apparent breakpoint with Fables - I like the core conceit and the writing is mostly solid, other than the odd bit of utter dreck (issue 50 in particular was a bit, er, questionable in terms of characterisation). My problem is that it doesn't really seem to be going anywhere any time soon, especially not if the rumours are true and Jack Of Fables is to be accompanied by another Fables spinoff series later this year. 8 trades in and there's still no sign of an over-arcing storyline...I may yet check out Sons Of Empire, but it'll have to be damn good to keep me on board, sadly.