The Ultimate Comic Bookshelf

Fysh

Yeah, I'd definitely +1 the Umbrella Academy. I think American Virgin should be up there too.

I'd also suggest that Y: The Last Man, now that its frankly rubbish conclusion has become known to all, no longer deserves its place on the shelf.

On a separate note, I think we need to reorganise this thread. I'd like to have it more like the Film Of The Week format, but I don't know that we get enough traffic for that kind of weekly voting process.... I'll have a think and post up when I've got some ideas, but in the meantime if anyone has suggestions, post them up.

Patrick Brown

Just skimmed through the thread and thought I'd add a few things I didn't see mentioned.

Eddie Campbell: all the Alec books (best autobio in the business, witty, observational, self-depracating but never self-pitying, and the drawing just gets better and better with each book), Doing the Islands with Bacchus (3rd volume of the Bacchus/Deadface series, an anthology of short stories as Bacchus wanders the Greek Islands in the present day telling stories about the old days when the Greek Gods were still around; the rest of the series I can take or leave) and From Hell (some of his finest ever drawing).

Donna Barr: The Desert Peach (gay younger brother of the Desert Fox commanding the gravedigging battalion of the Afrika Korps -- very funny, and strangely not at all in poor taste, early on, gets more human, while remaining funny, as it goes along) and Stinz (centaurs in rural Germany in the early 20th century, one of whom fights in something analogous to the First World War). Both series have kind of gone off the rails in recent years (Barr has merged them into a bizarre afterlife-Nazi-fantasy-world, and they've lost focus and become a bit incoherent) but the earlier stuff still stands on its merits.

Dave McKean's Cages. Highly ambitious, an attempt to do a graphic novel of the same creative standard as literary fiction and good art-house cinema, while still being a comic. Lapses into pretentiousness from time to time, and McKean's idea of what kind of writing would arouse so much religious fanaticism it would force its author into hiding is totally unconvincing, but otherwise stunning. There's a scene where a guy and a girl meet in a bar and get talking and dancing, and the art gradually dissolves into abstraction and back out again to find the two of them alone at their table, still engrossed in conversation, and the barman coughing at them to leave and let him lock up, which probably the finest visual sequence I've ever seen in comics.

Eric Shanower's Age of Bronze - retelling the Trojan War from start to finish. It's not a "Classic Illustrated" style adaptation, that merely abridges and illustrates a great work of old - he's made it his own, got his own point of view on the characters and their motivations, and really made it work on a human level. The bit where Agamemnon has to sacrifice his daughter is extraordinary.

Fysh

Right, I've been thinking about this and re-read the entire thread. There are 106 titles nominated by my count, where "titles" means almost anything from a single issue to an entire run of a comic and "nominated" means anything from "posted and defended the nomination" to "posted as part of a list and never explained why".

So. There are 28 items that have received more than one vote, and 9 items that have received more than two votes. I think that the whole exercise would benefit from being started over with more clearly-defined rules as to what can be nominated and how we judge what's in or out.

I'm suggesting the following as general rules, with the idea of starting the new Ultimate Comic Bookshelf at the start of August and on a monthly basis:

Nominations

Any nominations have to meet the following requirements:

• Include the full title
• Specify whether the complete title or only a section, using either collection titles or issue numbers - merely stating the writer/artist's name is not enough. This goes double for titles which are ongoing at the time of nomination.
• Must have been collected at some point - ie if it hasn't been TPB'd at some point, it's not valid
• For titles with more than one version (eg softcover and hardcover TPBs) specify which version and why
• Include at least one paragraph explaining why the title is worthy of nomination.

If a given volume of a title is already on the list and you want to replace it with a full run, your nomination has to explain why you think the full run is better. Likewise if you think a full run does not merit a place, but a given volume does merit a place, you'll have to explain why.

You can only make one nomination per month.

If a nomination for a given title is open, you cannot open a second nomination for part of the first nomination. For example if one nomination is open for Y: The Last Man, you cannot open a second nomination for Y: The Last Man volume 1 until the first nomination is complete.

Invalid nominations will be deleted and votes for them will be ignored.

Voting

Each month, the shelf contents will be updated and a new discussion thread started. Nominations can be made but will expire at the end of that month; if they have not gained at least 5 votes in that time, they are unsuccesful. Any nominations which get 5 or more votes in that thread is succesfull and will be added to the shelf.

Anyone wishing to second a nomination must either quote the original nomination and +1 it or state the name of the poster whose nomination is being seconded and give a reason for their choice.

There is no limit on how many nominations you can second per month. If you see two nominations in a given month (eg for Sandman and Watchmen) you can second both of them.

Removal from the shelf

If you feel that one of the entries on the shelf should not be there, you can nominate it for removal by stating its title as listed and stating why you feel it should not be included. If you get 5 or more votes seconding your suggestion within one month, the title will be removed from the shelf. Otherwise, it will remain in place.

As with nominations, only one removal can be suggested per poster per month. (You can make one of each per month). As with nominations, there is no limit to how many removals you can second in a given month.

General conduct

Obviously this idea is similar in some ways to the Film Of The Week setup in Films, which as you may know was suspended for a while due to abuse. Accounts which are less than 1 month old and/or have less than 50 posts (not necessarily in the Comics forum) will not be allowed to vote, although they will be allowed to make nominations or suggest removals in the normal way.


In order to not feel like we're starting over from scratch, I'd suggest that we keep the current approved contents of the Bookshelf as a starting point and go from there:

100 Bullets
The Sandman
The Dark Knight Returns
Watchmen
Transmetropolitan
The Beano
Incal
Jimmy Corrigan
Squee!
Bone
Asterix
Tintin
Peanuts
Calvin and Hobbes
Krazy Kat
Little Nemo in Slumberland
Maus
Will Eisner's The Spirit
Jack Kirby's Fourth World, New Gods and Fantastic Four
Osama Tsezuka's Phoenix
The Invisibles
Arkham Asylum
The Footsoldiers
Y The Last Man
Dead Meat
Love and Rockets
Flight
Nextwave
Top Ten
Preacher
Hellblazer

(It's worth bearing in mind that if we were to keep all titles that have had more than 1 vote for them, we'd get a significantly different list, as follows:


Preacher
V For Vendetta
Watchmen
The Dark Knight Returns
Transmetropolitan
100 Bullets
Maus
Sin City
The Sandman
300
30 Days Of Night
Batman : Long Halloween
Batman Year One
Earth X
Grant Morrison's New X-men
Hellblazer
Kingdom Come
Love And Rockets
Marvel Zombies
Nextwave
Punisher Max
Ronin
superman birthright
Swamp Thing
The Death Of Superman
The Filth
The Invisibles
The Ultimates

But I think that the relative laxness of the voting process so far means that it shouldn't be used to supercede the spirit of the thread).

What do you lot reckon?

ztoical

would it be different threads for voting and a comic of the week type thread like the film of week model or all kept in the one thread?

Fysh

Different threads would be better, I think - one stickied thread which would list every title in the library, (and if relevant also a list of titles that had made it in but subsequently been removed), then separate normal threads for each month's worth of nominations and voting. Those threads would then get locked at the end of the month.

Incidentally, if a month turns out to be an unsuitable amount of time we can always change it, it just seemed the best figure because we don't have enough traffic to make it weekly...

billycox

I read a lot of comics myself and i have most of the comics listed, I'm amazed Osamu Tezuka hasn't been mentioned, Buddha is amazing!

Id also have to recommend:
lone wolf and cub, all 28 volumes
Akira
Lucifer by Mike Carey, great spin off from the sandman which im glad to see is already on the list
from hell by alan moore
the crow
a history of voilence
uzumaki

Mr. K

I'm unsure as to whether or not I'm going against procedure here, but my nominations are:

X-Men: The Dark Phoenix Saga - Important early-ish X-Men story

X-Men: The Complete Age of Apocalypse (Volumes 1-4) - one of the best Marvel alternate reality stories

Batman: The Long Halloween and Batman: Dark Victory (I think these two should be together at all times!) - Just brilliant

Spider-Man: Kraven's Last Hunt - Oft-mentioned classic Spidey, darker than the norm.

Spider-Man: Down Among the Dead Men, Venomous and The Last Stand (these go together as well) - fairly recent blockbuster Spidey story, alters Venom's status quo.

52 (Volumes 1-4) - brilliant writing, highlights some lesser known DC characters.

Also add my support for Kingdom Come.

Fysh

Argh, this was meant to re-start last week. Sorry for the delay folks, moving house and the accompanying joy of transferring phone & broadband access means I have sketchy access to boards until about next week. I'll post up new threads for the improved Ultimate Comic Bookshelf v2.0 next Monday and we'll see how things move along from there.

JustHalf

You really should have read:

Y: The Last Man
Pride of Baghdad
Ed Brubaker's Captain America run
Green Lantern: Rebirth
The Sinestro Corps War
Superman and the Legion of Superheroes
Superman: Last Son
JMS's Supreme Power and the spin-offs (but you can skip Ultimate Power)
Booster Gold
The Killing Joke

Fysh

As the new improved Ultimate Comic Bookshelf has started over here, I'm locking this thread to avoid any confusion over where to post.