Having been out of the comic scene for a long time i've recently got back in to buying graphic novels and some trades. This has been particularly inspired by the wonderful Absolute Editions and Hardback Omnibus' that have been coming out.

I'm currently reading Brubaker's Captain America run which is one of the best super-hero comics i've ever read....so, let's collect all our general recommendations for books in one place.....

Hey Ben... I'm probably not qualified to join this thread, since I'm not a comic-book guy (cos I can't get them too easily) but here are links to some stuff You might be interested in...

Comics are in CBR format (so dl that program if You haven't got it already, and the links are for rapidshare annd should still be working)

All courtesy of the very fine Manchester Morgue Blog, which is well worth a visit for lots of good stuff (OSTs, and more comics)

George Romero's Toe Tag's

http://the-manchester-morgue.blogspot.c ... q=toe+tags

Friday the 13th

http://the-manchester-morgue.blogspot.c ... -13th.html

Texas Chain Saw Massacre

http://the-manchester-morgue.blogspot.c ... grind.html

Nightmare on Elm Street
http://the-manchester-morgue.blogspot.c ... storm.html
http://the-manchester-morgue.blogspot.c ... anoid.html

Ben,

I would whole heartedly recommend the following (for more details on some of these books please see my thread on horror comics). I'm not really a super hero type of guy so you will not find too many Marvel type recommendations in my list.


Junji Ito - is a Japanese horror writer/artist. I would recommend any of his books in particular Uzumaki, Tomie (vol2-3) and Gyo.

Black Hole - Charles Burns. A tale of teenage sex and deformities, beautifully drawn and told.

Incal - Jodorowsky and Moebius sci-fi yarn, you owe yourself to read it after covering Joderowsky in one of your previous podcasts.

League of extraordinary gentlemen vol 1 - 3 (Alan Moore) forget the shite movie the books are beautiful to look and great to read (don't skip the text sections either).

Crossed (Garth Ennis) - not yet out in a trade collection but worth tracking down the individual issues (3 so far) as it a great sick and twisted apocalyptic yarn.

Girls (The Luna Brothers) - sort of like Night of the Living dead but with the zombies replaced by naked women! A great tale of the battle of the sexes, a really original story with a great film like quality to it.

All Star Superman (Grant Morrisson) vol 1 -2 - a brilliant story about Superman facing his final days and dying. This story features everything that has made Superman great and has many great moments and features lovely art by Frank Quietly. I'm not a super hero guy but I loved this book.

Shaolin Cowboy (1 - 7) - Geof Darrow's bonkers books are think on plot but heavy on crazy gore fest funny fight scenes. Absolutley beautiful to look at and jam packed with Darrow's trade mark details.

Death Note - brilliant Japanese series of books. Light Yugami finds a note book that allows him to write the name of a person and as long as he knows what a person looks like he can bring abou their death in any way he likes. Like a supernatural version of Infernal Affairs - a very very addictive read featuring a brilliant Japanese detective character 'L'. Please don't watch the films first as they were average and will ruin the books.

Parasyte - a young man is infected by an alien organism but he manages to stop it spreading to his brain but is left partly infected by an intelligent alien organism. A weird buddy story that is like The Thing meets Buffy the vampire slayer.

The Walking man - Jiro Taniguchi - no horror, fantasy or superheroes; this is a simple story about a man who simply walks about his Japanese home town. The man befriends a dog, climbs a tree and takes a bath at a bath house. Beautifully realised it makes you savour the simple pleasures of a walk and to see your environment in a new light from a different perspective. Heart warmingly simple.

On a personal note -

Please, please, please don't download comics - this sort of thing gets me very angry. As I've dabbled in the comic industry and know a few 'names' it breaks my heart that people download comics as the artists and writers work bloody hard and keep really long hours to make these books, they are usually poorly paid with no advances etc. A lot of artists do it for the love and hope to make enough money to survive and get by in order to keep creating books. If you look around you can buy these books for a good price.

Piracy and illegal downloads are killing this industry more than any other and this would be a great shame to loose one of the last truly creative industries.

J

I completely agree with the spirit of your message here, and I do not want to get in a huge debate about it here. For most of the people in the world, you are totally correct, but I would like to point out one thing about it. . .

I hadn't bought a comic book since about 1994 until last year. I'd written them off totally. A friend of mine told me about Walking Dead and told me that I could download it. I'd never thought of looking for comics to download (nor could I imagine someone cutting up their comic or whatever to scan it.) I did the evil thing and downloaded the comic to read it. I read everything that was out so far of it, and was completely hooked. I totally value having a physical product in my hand over a digital copy and went out and bought EVERY SINGLE trade of TWD, as well as all the trades for Preacher, and Y, The Last Man. I currently have subscriptions going at my comic shop for four or five titles (depending on whether or not you consider Kick-Ass to actually exist anymore.) And I'm totally back in love with comics again.
I've spent several hundred on comics in the last year just from having downloaded one collection.

I just wanted to point that out, and I **FULLY** understand your position and see the harm that it does. I am the exception, not the rule, and I know it.

I manage a music store and see the effects on CD sales daily. When a CD release used to be a huge thing and we'd have hundreds of presales on a title, now it's a seriously mega-release when we have more than 20 presales on it. Downloads are affecting every aspect of the entertainment industry. I don't expect to have a job within the next 5-8 years if things keep up the way that they are.

This may be blasphemy in the comics world, but I'd like to see the publishers make digital download versions of the comics for a cheaper rate than the physical ones that you could subscribe to. It would be financially beneficial for them in that they wouldn't have printing/shipping costs for those who chose to go the digital route, and would allow for people who like to download to do so legally and legitimately. The benefit for me personally would be that I would be able to read the new comics that I buy when they release instead of the once every three weeks or so that I can get to my comics shop because I generally work around 50 hours a week plus travel time (I commute an hour each way.) I for one, would be doing the double-dip, by buying the download and reading it immediately, then buying the physical one when I can get to my comics shop. This is kind of stream of consciousness and all, just thinking it out as I type actually.

As I said, not wanting to argue or fight, just pointing out that in my case at least, it proved beneficial to the industry. =) I *am* on your side, here. lol


-Wil

Totally agree on the download front. Real harmful to an already fragile industry. I like to think I do my part with a healthy standing order at my local comic shop (the last one as two closed down last year )

On the recommendation front:

Preacher - If you've not read this then I envy you so much. I'd love to discover this for the first time all over again. It's a 60 issue story (available in trades) and I've read it through twice.

Daredevil - If you like Captain America then you have discovered Ed Brubaker? He has a similar noir style run going on this comic well worth checking out.

2000ad - This hasn't been better of late, they've really upped their game. And as a British person it's good to support pretty much the only consistent thing to come out of this island.

Hellboy - Whether it's BPRD or the Hellboy mini series, this is one of my favourite universes ever created. The use of mythology and horror with good old pulp adventuring thrown in, is a winner in my book!

Cheers
ART

By download I mean copies that have been scanned and then appear for free. Of course a legit download system that you could subscribe to could work if they could copy protect the pages. I'm all for opening up comics to people who might not read them but not at the expense of the creators who put in the hard graft and need to fund new books.
Downloads are not for me as I'm old school and prefer to order a book online and love to hold and smell a book but I'm old school and I know that in years to come everything may be digital (which has pros and cons).

I guess all creative industries face this 'digital' problem but the comics industry is possibly the most fragile as Art pointed out, the comic industry is incredibly niche compared to music and film (despite the huge success of Watchmen or Batman etc).

I'm sure we are all on the same page (no pun intended).

I think the old American comics system is a little old fashioned - in particular 'monthlies' - I prefer the French system of only having the nice hard back volumes (around 40 - 60 pages) that appear in all book shops and are works of art and you really feel like you get value for money and don't have the problem of trying to get to a specialist comic shop to buy a monthly only to find you have missed it (this is rubbish for the majority of people).
There are still a lot of specialist comic shops in France but you don't have the same problem as in the US or UK with the monthlies problem.

Respect and good luck,

J

I want to second Black hole and recomend the following:

Walking Dead: zombie drama. Very violent, very unforgiving and very well characterized with lots of well defined survivors.

Y the last man: When every single male of every mamal species dies suddenly, Yorik is trully the last man on earth. It has sex and comedy but it also has a lot of horror (millions of dead bodies), action (Yorik is a perpetual damsel in distress) and drama.

Palomar 3 books written and perfectly illustrated by Gilbert Hernandez that follows multiple generations in a small border town where reality is both harsh yet somewhat flexible, in other words it is full of poverty and sickness but also a touch of the weird and spiritual. Check out my review

http://www.theconnoisseurs.com/palomar.html

Fun Home one of the best books (graphic novel or traditional) I have read in years. She has an almost Grant Morrison level of understanding of the medium only she also illustrates it herself giving her total control. It is an autobiographical tale about her growing up as a lesbian, paired with the "suicide mystery" that was her fathers life, a closseted gay man who was run over by a delivery truck. She jumps back and forth between childhood and her college years, waving in more and more literary reference, psychoanalizis and reocurring themes. And the last page is heartbreaking and poetic, seriosly I cannot recomend it enough.

Wow, some awesome recommendations there folks. I already have Black Hole ready to read, as well as most of the Alan Moore stuff - but there's a bunch of other great sounding stuff which i'll be ordering a bunch of, once i reach pay-day.

Quick question about the new Love and Rockets collections....Is it essential to start at Vol.1 and work through? Is it a continuing story arc?

The new collections are really sweet, the Palomar ones from my review is part of the new collections.

Yeah, basically everything that is chronological has been placed in order and everything that is "non cannonical" or a one off or side project is squeezed into big books like the Amor y Cohetes one.

So my advice is choose a storyline and pick 'em up in order

http://www.fantagraphics.com/index.php? ... &Itemid=82

In addition to Captain America and Daredevil, I highly recommend Grant Morrison's All Star Superman (available in two trades) and Geoff Johns' Green Lantern: Rebirth as some of the best superhero comics of the last few years from that other big comics publisher. Actually, pretty much everything Geoff Johns has written for DC (e.g., Flash, Justice Society of America, Action Comics) is gold, but GL: Rebirth is the first thing I read of his and it's still one of my favorites.

"Epileptic" by David B is one of the best graphic novels ever written/drawn (dritten?). A really beautifully conceived and yet totally natural-feeling fusion of picture and word. It's perfect, and a great story to boot.

If you like Brubaker I can't recommend his series Sleeper highly enough. It's about a "superhero" who goes undercover as a super villain. Amazing read. Also his ongoing Criminal series is one of the best Crime Fiction comics out there. I just picked up the Captain America Omnibus myself and look very forward to reading it.

If you're a fan of the whole deconstruction of the superhero, the great Squadron Supreme did it around (I believe a bit before) Watchmen. Marvel's Mark Gruenwald essentially takes characters from the DC Universe and tells an epic morality tale. Fantastic series and the modern update, Supreme Power, is great as well.

Finally, Grant Morrison's The Invisibles is a great read if you are into trippy conspiracy stuff.

I just picked up Ed Brubaker's Daredevil Omnibus and so far it's pretty great. It starts off with Daredevil in prison and how "prison changes a man". Really interesting for a superhero comic. It's getting to the point where Brubaker could be credited for writing the ingredients on a tin of soup and I'd rush to the store to buy it.

I'm more of an 'old school' comic book fan, so I'm not totally up to date on all of the latest stuff, but I'll try to make some suggestions.

I agree with the recommendations of Brubaker's Daredevil and all thing's Hellboy

I review comics and TPBs at my blog - but it's always just a mish mash of what I've picked up lately. Here are some notes on standout books from the past few years

Jonah Hex - 70s and current version
A great Gothic western. Available in various colecctions.
http://seductionoftheindifferent.blogspot.com/2005/11/joy-of-hex.html

Suicide Squad - John Ostrander et al.
Great series from late 80/early 90s. B & W was recently delayed or cancelled.
http://seductionoftheindifferent.blogspot.com/2006/03/suicide-is-painless.html

Rio - by Doug Wildey.
Best western ever. Out of print but worth finding in second hand market.
http://seductionoftheindifferent.blogspot.com/2006/02/rio-twisting-through-dusty-land.html

Essex County Trilogy - Jeff Lemire.
Amazingly touching stuff about life in small town Ontario. Soon to be published in a single volume;
http://seductionoftheindifferent.blogspot.com/2008/10/essex-county-trilogy-poetry-in-panels.html

MW - Osama Tezuka
This is a mondo comic - cross dressing, violence, drugs and non-stop action. Crazy stuff.
http://seductionoftheindifferent.blogspot.com/2008/12/trade-marks-mw.html

The Spirit - Darwyn Cooke et al.
Cooke may have improved a perfect comic strip.
http://seductionoftheindifferent.blogspot.com/2009/01/trade-marks-will-eisners-spirit.html

Starman Ominbus - James Robinson et al.
I've read Vols. 1 & 2 now - 3 has been ordered. Great, great stuff.
http://seductionoftheindifferent.blogspot.com/2009/02/trade-marks-starman-omnibus-volume-1.html

Offhand, I'd also recommend any Green Arrow trade beginning with the Kevin Smith relaunch all the way up to (but not including) the wedding. I'm assuming that you've read From Hell - if not, please read. Dark Horse has also recently put out some Indiana Jones Omnibus collections - not perfect, but if you can find on the cheap - worth picking up.

I could go on... but I step away from the keyboard.

I've heard that theres a Graphic Novel series based around zombies, i believe it's called something like Walking Dead, has anyone heard of it? i've been searching around for it but can't seem to find it, maybe i dream't this one up lol