I didn't see anything I will be getting this week, and when I do that I hunt for graphic novels. Is there a graphic novel by that really talented guy who fell of a roof, he did an amazing Green Lantern cover a while ago? I wanted something by him but can't remember much about him (except he fell of a roof and was very very talented). Also nothing struck me in comics news either -- discuss, review, and recommend, especially this week, since I have nothing.
With the space I have today I am going to relate something funny and make a list. The something funny: Dr. Strange 3 is out today, which reminded me that when Brad got Dr. Strange #1 his girlfriend saw the cover and said "so you got a comic book about Liberace?" Nice.
The list. These are not necessarily the most important or the best, but they are my favorite comic books right at this moment; ask me tomorrow and the list will be different. In no particular order:
1. Casanova
2. We3
3. Steampunk
4. Frank Miller's Batman work (all of it: I think it is best appreciated as a unit)
5. JLA Classified 1-3
6. The Authority: "The Nativity" and "Under New Management" pt 1
7. Flex Mentallo
8. Astonishing X-Men: "Torn"
9. All Star Superman
10. Punisher: The End
You will notice there is nothing by Alan Moore there. That surprised me too. But today I am caring about fun, and Watchmen is very very serious. And no other Alan Moore books are leaping out at me, which, again, surprises me too. Feel free to make your own lists, in the comments thread. Remember: top ten favorites (not most important), right at this moment (not for all time), no particular order.
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1) Spider-Man/Human Torch
2) The League of Extraordinary Gentleman
3) Runaways (First Series)
4) Y-The Last Man "Safeword"
5) Sandman (No I don't think it's too serious. ^_^
6) Death the Hight Cost of Living
7) Hellblazer #27 "Hold Me"
8) We3
9) All Star Superman
10) Sin City
Patrick: on #5: seriousness was bad for me this week -- if you are in a serious mood all of you picks can be serious ones. No need to defend serious to me.
What's Hellblazer 27 about and who is it by?
1. Neil Gaiman's Stardust
2. Fables: Legends in Exile
3. Ursula Vernon's Digger (vol. 1 / 2)
4. Powers: Who Killed Retro Girl
5. Batgirl: Year One
6. Death: The High Cost of Living
7. Persepolis (serious, but seriously enjoyable)
8. Frank Miller's Batman work (I second this notion, Geoff!)
9. Lone Wolf and Cub (currently on vol. #2)
10. Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics / Making Comics
You'll notice I'm big on the fantasy-but-not-sword-quest types of comics. Maybe that's because I'm a girl; who knows. :)
I'm not in an Alan Moore mood today, either. I had to stop reading his books over my lunchtime break at work, because I was constantly concerned about coworkers glimpsing nudity/violence. (For some reason, Lone Wolf and Cub seems a better choice--maybe because it's not in vivid color?)
Hellblazer 27 was a Neil Gaiman one shot. Quite a good one, too.
List of the moment:
1. Alan Moore's Swamp Thing
2. Seven Soldiers
3. Transmetropolitan
4. Animal Man
5. Red Son (only good thing Millar ever wrote...)
6. It's A Bird
7. Understanding Comics
8. Hicksville (Dylan Horrocks)
9. Sleepwalk (Adrian Tomine)
10. It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken (Seth)
I HAVE BEEN ALL OVER ALAN MOORE FOR THE PAST COUPLE OF WEEKS, so all of you can just hush. There is plenty of wackiness in there too. I have recently read the following in the Moore cannon:
1. From Hell
2. Wildcats-Homecoming and Gangwar
3. Reread Top 10 Book 1 (The best line is from Wodin: "Verily, my son is a butthole, as you name him.")
4. Top 10: The 49ers
5. Top 10: Smax
6. Reread Green Arrow: Night Olympics
As far as year end wrap-ups go, my next feature for Silver Bullet is called "Microcosmic Awareness", and it is a list 30 smaller parts of comics, movies and music that are microcosms for the 30 wholes. Also, it will feature original art by my friend Chad Thomas (www.omgcat.net).
. Seaguy
. The Invisibles
. The Filth
. Stray Bullets
. Cerebus (Everything up until Latter Days, although I haven't read Guys)
. Queen and Country
. Powers
. Nextwave
. Casanova
. Watchmen
Lone Wolf and Cub is awesome. And there's so much of it! For more black and white violence (along with a good share of misery and general depravity) Stray Bullets is just perfect.
With all this talk of Alan Moore and Top Tens, I have to ask if you've read Alan Moore's Top Ten. I finished it recently, and loved it. It's Alan Moore being very good, but also being very fun. Some of his best superhero work ever, I think. I think he has a reputation for being kind of stuffy, but he's done some really fun stuff.
My Top Ten Favorite Comics of the Moment:
1. Doom Patrol (the Morrison years)
2. All-Star Superman
3. Top Ten
4. 52
5. ACME Novelty Library
6. Planetary
7. Daredevil (grim and gritty can be fun too, sometimes)
8. Vimanarama
9. Mystery in Space (the original series)
10. Civil War
Actually I just looked at everybody else's list and it occurs to me that Stray Bullets and Wimbledon Green need to be thrown into my mix somehow...
People loooove lists!
I read so much stuff, I think this is more just the first 10 comics that come to mind :) Along with a couple comments...
1. Flex Mentallo. Forever and always. Have always been a Morrision fan, but this book put into words my love affair with the comic medium and will always top my list.
2. Doom Patrol, The Morrison Era. I was a young kid buying the preceeding 18 issues of this series, and this book just appeared. It completely warped my entire perception of what comics could be at the time. Works that alter your perception of a given storytelling medium are pretty good, I hear.
3. V for Vendetta.
4. Promethea.
5. Planetary.
6. Transmetropolitan.
7. Moore's Swamp Thing. Only horror comic to ever actually give me chills.
8. We3.
9. Morrison's Animal Man. Best time travel tale ever. And can you tell I like Morrison?
10. Preacher
11. Moore's Tales of the Green Lantern Corps story "In Blackest Night." Yes I cheated. But it is a great story I read as a young GL fan, having no idea who Moore was. A story about explaining the concept of Green Lantern to a creature to whom light (and by extension, color) doesn't exist is quite fun.
Hellblazer 27 is a great single issue by Neil Gaiman. It is in the book "Neil Gaiman's Midnight Days" which is a collection of random DC Gaiman stories.
Tim from MySpace
The "guy who fell off a roof" is, presumably, Seth Fisher. I bought the Green Lantern TPB Willworld and the Fantastic Four/Iron Man TPB Big In Japan purely for his artwork. Great stuff.
* Stan Lee's Hulk
* Stan Lee and Gene Colan's Daredevil
* Gerry Conway's Spider-man
* Morrison's Animal Man
* Doom Patrol
* Scott Pilgrim
* Invisibles
* Flex Mentallo
* Kirby's Mr Miracle #1-10
* Epicurus the Sage
Geoff, when you wrote "If you can't get into [Casanova], kill yourself now, because ain't nothing good comin' your way", I realised that there is no way you have read Scott Pilgrim. To me it is everything you say about Casanova, only for real, and much more.
Obviously there is too much Morrison in my list. I am reading Morrison's Doom Patrol for the first time at the moment. I'm half-way through Vol 4. Wow, just wow, it is blowing my mind. But I checked out the first Doom Patrol Archive earlier in the year, and the original stuff is pretty good too.
I want to get Brendan McCarthy in somehow, but oh well. And Osamu Tezuka, though I haven't actually read any of his comics, just seen some of his comic artwork displayed at a gallery.
David! You're just the person I've been looking for.
Meaning I too am reading Morrison's Doom Patrol for the first time right now as well - Finished Vol. 4 two days ago, then went right back to page one and read it again. So far it's been my favorite of the DP trades, not to mention some of my favorite comicbook work ever. Phenomenal, phenomenal stuff.
1)The 7 Soldiers of Victory
2)All Star Superman
3)WildCATS original miniseries 1-4
4)Wildcats Serial Boxes
5)Daredevil: Underboss
6)Civil War main 6 ish arc read alone
7)The Authority Under New Management first half
8)Unity (yes, the Valiant crossover)
9)Executioner's Song (yes, the X-men crossover)
10)Wildstorm Rising and the few Stormwatch and Wilcats issues leading up to it - holy crap do I remember this being good
Who knows how many of these books would make the grade if I went back and read them today. But if I decide entirely by my memory of enjoyment, then this is definitely the list.
1 - Grant Morrison's New X-men
2 - Long Halloween
3 - The Death of Superman
4 - Kingdom Come
5 - The Ultimates
6 - Mike Grell's Green Arrow
7 - Casanova
8 - Midnight Nation
9 - NYX
10 - Rising Stars
In no particular order, but I would say Leob & Sale's 'Long Halloween' and Morrison's 'New X-men' run probably are my favourite comics ever.
Off the top of my head, without looking at the other lists... NO ORDER:
Grant Morrison's Invisibles V2
James Robinson's The Golden Age
Alan Moore's Promethea
James Robinson's Starman
Kurt Busiek's Avengers Forever
Alan Moore's Top 10
Roger Stern et all's Superman: Exile
BKV's Runaways
Simon Oliver's Exterminators
Mike Baron's Badger/Nexus (cheating I know)
In no particular order, except where noted:
Watchmen (greatest single work)
Sandman (best series)
Love and Rockets (v. 1)
Cerebus
Millar's "Swamp Thing"
Morrison's X-Men
Millar/Hitch's "Ultimates" (all 26, no matter what 2.13 looks like)
Miller's Daredevil
Seth's "It's A Good Life If You Don't Weaken"
Chester Brown's "The Playboy"/"I Never Really Liked You"
Oh, and: "I didn't see anything I will be getting this week"
E X T E R M I N A T O R S ! ! !
_______________________________
damn it!
Matt Wagner's Mage: The Hero Discovered
Tim Truman's Scout
Baron/Rude Nexus
Grant Morrison's Invisibles V3 (someone has to love this)
Kiyohiko Azuma's Yotsuba!
Alan Moore's Miracleman: Olympus
Chris Claremont's The Asgardian War
Greg Rucka's Queen & Country
Jim Starlin's Warlock
Darwyn Cooke's DC: The New Frontier
Fun as theme...
1. Yotsuba&! It's the cutest/happiest comic in the world, and I defy any heartless being who says otherwise.
2. Genshinken: The heartwarming tale of otakus in Japan.
3. Naruto, the most enjoyable of the "I'm going to be the best ___" manga genre for me, currently. Iron Wok Jan is pretty close though, but Naruto has ninjas.
4. Beanworld, Larry Marder.
5. Ultimate Spider-Man Annual #1
6. Avengers #something to #something or other, when Spider-Man briefly joins during the Byrne run, and they go fight things in space, and reality blinks out.
7. 100%, Paul Pope, no boring staticy art here.
8. The What If the X-Men stayed in Asgard issue I have somewhere deep in the recesses of a box in another state.
9. The Ultimates, first run.
10. Top Ten
Hey Geoff, I'll lend you FF: Big in Japan next time I see you.
1. V for Vendetta (at this moment AND for all time)
2. Chris Claremont's first X-Men run (all of it, including spinoffs, from 1974-1991)
3 League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
4 Alan Moore's Supreme
5 Tom Strong/Promethea/Top Ten/Tomorrow Stories
6 Cerebus (from the first one all the way up to 300, I don't care what the critics say!)
7 X-Men 56-65 (the Neal Adams issues)
8 The Incredible Hulk issues 368-377
9 Snakes and Ladders (Moore/Campbell)
10 That collection of all of Alan Moore's mainstream DC work (minus Swamp Thing), the one that has The Killing Joke and "For the Man Who Has Everything" and those Green Lantern Corps stories, etc.
In no particular order:
1)Ed the Happy Clown
2)Dork!
3)Peepshow
4)Flex Mentallo
5)Morrison's Animal Man
6)Morrison's Doom Patrol
7)All-Star Superman
8)Cerebus
9)Stray Bullets
10)Watchmen
If web comic strips counted, I'd definitely include The Perry Bible Fellowship(http://pbfcomics.com). Tons of oddball variety.
I now have 2 weeks of comics to read. But in the meantime:
Astonishing X-Men
Dr. Strange: The Oath #1
Irredeemable Ant-Man
Civil War (yes!)
Casanova
Daredevil (Brubaker)
Walking Dead
The Escapists
(I may have taken "right at this moment" a little literally.)
Lists are fun. When I want something new to read I am going to come back here and treat this like a shopping list. I am going to do this again soon.
In a earlier blog you remarked that Sandman was too pretentious and self-serious. While I think that's a good characterization of the Sandman character, I don't think that's true of the overall series, or Neil Gaiman's work at all. (I have the same kind of personal love for Gaiman that you have for Morrison).
Even though I’m in total agreement that comics first and foremost should be fun (notice the absence of Watchmen from my list as well) I’m mostly drawn to the warmth and humanity that Gaiman infuses in so much of his writing. Which is not to say that Neil can’t go for the gusto- “Puck meets Puck” anyone?
Hellblazer #27 is simply the best comic I’ve ever read. It is one of the few works of art I can say without embarrassment that made me cry.
Swamp thing(wein/wrightson, moore, veitch, millar- that gaiman annual)
Plastic man(cole)
Pop eye(segar)
Planetary
Paracuellos (and related)by Giménez
newuniversal- because it is new and shows potential
V for vendetta
The flash story by morrison where he runs against his imaginary childhoodfriend
Hourman
Peepshow(Joe Matt)
Lost girls
I'm trying to put this together without looking at anyone else's lists...
1)Madman
2)Promethea
3)Morrison's Animal Man
4)Shade the Changing Man
5)Seven Soldiers
6)Casanova
7)Y: The Last Man
8)X-Force/X-Statix
9)Ex Machina
10)Godland
I could probably put some other stuff on there, but that's what I came up with on quick contemplation. Here, I'll try to think of some honorable mentions: Preacher, 100 Bullets, From Hell, Sandman, Fables, early Fantastic Four, Watchmen. Yeah, the usual suspects.
Wow, some good choices here. I should add Runaways, Morrison's Doom Patrol (I'm also reading it for the first time; I'm up through The Painting that Ate Paris), Kyle Baker's Plastic Man (and The Cowboy Wally Show, and Why I Hate Saturn, and etc.), ACME Novelty Library (the recent issue was excellent!), Nextwave (how could I have forgotten that one?!), Transmetropolitan, Lone Wolf and Cub, Scott Pilgrim, Death Note, Cromartie High School, Morrison's X-Men, Morrison's JLA (I also like Joe Kelly's JLA). But that's way too much. All good stuff. Man, comics are awesome.
I cannot begin to start commenting on everyone's fantastic lists, but I just want to say to Brad: did you notice that 5 of your top 10 are big crossover events?
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