The walking dead is incredibly easy to find - most large chain book stores stock it (in the US and UK). If not you can find it on Amazon. Every comic book shop I have been into around the world have TWD. The German/Swiss version is in a small neat hardback version which is very cool.

In fact there are:

The monthly issues
The collected oversized hardback verison
The collected regular hard back version
The collected paper back version

It's a fantastic zombie series that owes a HUGE debt to Romero.

Cool, well i'll certainly be shopping at Amazon once finances pick up again, Thanks for the info

I agree re. Walking Dead - a very good read and it's a easier on the wallet, as it was done in black and white.

For Zombie nuts, I'll also recommend the recent collection of Marvel's 70s series, Tales of the Zombie. It's good stuff all around - and there are some nice text articles with still photos from various classic (and less than classic films).

Sorry to keep linking to the bits on my blog - it just seems easier than copy and pasting:

http://seductionoftheindifferent.blogspot.com/2009/06/trade-marks-essential-tales-of-zombie.html

It's in the very affordable 'Essentials' format.

Thanks for the info TorontoScott I'll check out Tales of the zombie!

Hope you enjoy TWD Kesslers_Curse but be sure to start with volume one as it is one big long narrative.

I grew up as like a faux-comic geek. Constantly read Wizard but had no way to actually buy any books, but there were a lot of books in Wizard that I was always infatuated with and have only been able to pick up now as an adult. So yeah, I'm a noob but I'm playing catch up.

Have really loved all of the Sin City books. Favorite probably being The Hard Goodbye or The Big Fat Kill. Keeping with Miller's work, The Dark Knight Returns might be the best Batman book I've ever read. With Year One and The Long Halloween coming a close second.

Transmetropolitan changed my life. Read everything in the series some months back, just couldn't put it down. Currently I'm dabbling with Preacher and some Sandman, although I find Preacher the far more interesting read. Love the artwork and the seedy disturbed content. Great stuff.

I've really got to get my hands on The Walking Dead, since everyone on earth seems to have read it and absolutely love it.

I've just finished reading volume 2 of The Walking Dead and have just bought volume 3, was just wondering is the series still going or has the series come to an end and if so how many volumes are there?

It's still going and going hard. No signs of slowing down at all. Kirkman has said that he's got no plans for it to end anytime soon at all and has stated that he's got several major story arcs planned for the next few years.

By volumes, you mean the hardbound books? Or do you mean the trade paperbacks? There are 9 trades so far, with the 10th coming out next month I think. If you mean the hardback volumes, there are 4 so far (I think) maybe just 3....

-Wil

Thanks for the info, i'm buying the paperback versions

I read the Watchmen finally.
I recall seeing an issue of it in the 80s but while I got the Dark Knight Returns I didnt bother with the other.
I had heard bits about it over the years and wanted the read it before seeing the movie.
As a comic its obviously groundbreaking for the medium, and has some brilliance in its deconstruction of super heroes, there were some funny and poignant moments, but I found the ending lacked punch.
I think Gibbons was more successful in making "a comic about comics" and reflecting that in the art than Moore was in making it like a Moby Dick.

I felt the characters at the newsstand were a waste of space-if one was meant to sympathize with them when the big event happened it didnt work for me.

I didnt like the alien scheme. As a big plan it seemed convoluted and geeky--if it was meant to be satirical I didnt react to it that way.

The fate of Rorschach also seemed tacked on(couldnt the blue guy erase part of his memory?) unless it was meant to signify that Dr Manhatten was becoming homicidal and thus threatening Veidt's plan in the future.
The Rorschach diary in the hands of the newspaper at the end also bugged me. Not sure why. It just didnt feel like a satisfying conclusion.
Maybe if it had ended with the newspaper guy spilling some ink over it and rendering it unreadable or "subject to interpretation." I dont know.


He was an interesting character although I didnt find him as sympathetic as say, another brutal character like Tony Soprano.
In fact, not sure i would say any of the characters sparked much or any sympathy from me except the first Nite Owl and what happens to him--which is interesting since he represents the old fashioned hero and so there is irony in his fate being so undignified when compared to how the "elderly hero" ended up in the Dark Knight Returns.

'Asterios Polyp' by David Mazuchelli:
Every few years Mazzuchelli pops up with a book that shows why he is still one of the best practitioners in the field of comics and in 2009 he delivered what will undoubtedly be seen as a classic of the medium. Beautiful production values and an abundance of thought provoking ideas and graphical statements mean this more than deserves to sit on the bookshelf next to such 'graphics-for-grown-ups' books as those by Posie Simmonds (Gemma Bovary) and Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis).

'The Hunter', Darwyn Cooke & Richard Stark:
Cooke is most famous (if you like comics) for being the writer and artist for 'DC: New Frontiers' which stripped the DC universe back to its origins and baked it in the light of JFKs famous speach. His Catwoman comic, Selina's Big Score, was pretty great as well and he also worked on the 90s 'Batman-The Animated Series' which is the best incarnation of the character so far (although I like the 60s tv series as well and hated the Dark Knight film).

2009 saw the release of Darwyn Cooke's adaptation of a Richard Stalk story, a hard boiled / noirish tail about a crook who steam-rolls through the dark underbelly of the city trying to get revenge on the creep who stitched him up. It wasn't suprising it reminded me of the stylish 60s Lee Marvin classic 'Point Blank' as I found out its based on the same writers work.

Love and Rockets: Very pleased to see this being recommended as it is up there with the best comics ever produced. Having said that the collections I borrowed from the library ('Locas') showed me how hard it must be for a newcomer to get into them as publishing them as issues gave you time to work out what was going on but the collected volumes sometimes bring out a disjointedness to them. Might just have been that collection though as some of the other collected that Titan published in the 80s work fine. Jaime gets most of the praise but Gilbert's stuff is more complex to me. The way the panels jump situations, charactres and time periods can be difficult to take sometimes though.

Sometimes wondered what a cinematic equivalent of love and rockets would be and its something like Russ Meyer + Last Picture Show.