A Bit Of Advice For A Newbie?

pauldeehan

Hey, have just recently begun to get into comics and was wondering if anyone could reccommend any particularily good ones to me.

I've read:
Watchmen and V for Vendetta,
Superman Red Son,
Powers: The Sellouts
30 Days of Night and its sequels (thought they were cool but missing something)
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns

I'm prob going to get hold of Batman YearOne but I was wondering if The Dark Knight Strikes Again was worth my money? I was also thinking about getting a few more of the Powers series.

Anyone reccommend something that might suit my taste or perhaps expand it?

donalfall

Do you mean Dark Knight returns? Defineately worth the money, buy it now. Check out the "fave all time comics" thread thats around here somewhere.

Dont be at yourself

If you liked Powers, check out Alias. It's also by Brian Michael Bendis (who also does a lot of books for Marvel's Ultimate universe books).

Alias follows a washed-up superhero turned Private Eye, who works on cases featuring, or relating to, many of the big marvel superheroes. It's very well written, but if pages and pages of talking heads doesn't sound appealing, steer clear. Not very action packed.

The Batman: Hush storyline was very good, but I'm not sure if that's out as a collected edition yet.

AngryBadger

I'd steer clear of "The Drak Knight strikes again", get "The Dark Knight Returns" first, the second one isn't nearly as good.

I'd suggest any of "The Authority" collections from the first series, they're fantastically written, (Warren Ellis, and Mark Millar), and the art is terrific, plus they' re a very fresh take on superheroes. And backed by superstar artists Bryan hitch, and Frank Quitely.

If you can get your hands on the "Invincible" hardcover, I can't recommend that enough, fantastic stuff.

Ultimates from marvel is also brilliant, written by Mark Millar, and drawn by bryan Hytch.

For titles in general, I'd recommend most of the Ultimate line, except maybe Ultimate X-men, but for the most part all the titles are produced by A-list creators, and really top notch stuff.

DC comics is also in the middle of their iterative "re-set" event, (every ten years or so), and they're re-launching a lot of titles, there's a new Captain Atom series, Green lantern has just been re-launched, as has the Lantern Corps. Personaly I stay away from the big guns, Batman, and Superman comics are usually garbage, but the All Star stuff out at the moment is pretty god, I'd particularly recommend finding a copy of "All Star Superman" #1, written by grant morrison, drawn by Frank Quitely. brilliant stuff, and these are characters everyone knows. "All Star Batman" is out also, but it's on issue #3 by now, and to be honest I'm not loving it, Jim Lee's pencils are just too "sci-fi" for Frank Millers' writing.

There are tons of other books I'm not recommending, and there's a lot of mainstream stuff that I'm sure other posters, (Fysh?), can fill you in on.

Fysh

Dark Knight Returns is great, I personally didn't like Dark Knight Strikes Back at all. It felt unnecessary and, aside from the government using The Flash as a way of generating electricity, didn't have any ideas that really interested me in it.

If you're not keen on 30 Days Of Night (which I can kind of agree with; Templesmith's art is great but the stories feel like they're missing that one extra aspect that would make them great) you're probably better off steering clear of other IDW books as they generally feel very similar to me. However, you should certainly check out The Walking Dead; there's 4 collected books out so far and it's the most compelling zombie story I've seen so far. Sea Of Red may also interest you (first trade out recently) although the mishmash of genres and artwork may or may not be to your taste.

If you liked Watchmen & V For Vendetta, more Alan Moore would be a great idea. League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen volumes 1 & 2 are a great read (an odd take on the notion of a superteam; all the characters are drawn from victorian literature and put under Moore's unique scrutiny), or if you prefer a more straightforward action/superhero flavour you can go for stuff like Top 10, Tom Strong and others.

I'd recommend checking out some Warren Ellis stuff as he's not entirely dissimilar to Alan Moore, though generally a bit darker. Transmetropolitan : Lust For Life is the second volume of the fantastic 10-book series and the best place to start; Planetary (currently finishing and collected in 3 books so far) is a great series about the Secret History of the world (not unlike League of Extraordinary Gentlemen in a way), and there's Stormwatch/The Authority for Ellis's take on superheroes.

Marvel's "1602" would probably float your boat (though if you don't know much about marvel characters you'll miss some references; nothing crucial to the story though); it's a harmless introduction to Neil Gaiman as a writer, and has some gorgeous artwork to boot. If you like Gaiman you could then check out Sandman for what is probably his best work.

Another writer you might want to check out is Garth Ennis. Mostly (in)famous for the Preacher series, he's also written The Punisher and Ghost Rider in terms of gritty superhero-type material, Dicks as pure inspired lunacy (and very funny to boot), and Hitman (somewhere in between the two).

There's loads of other titles I could pimp at you, but I'll leave it to the following and very much as "if you see them in a shop, have a look and see what you think" recommendations:

100 Bullets
Hellboy
Hellblazer
Sin City
Kabuki
Fables

Uncle Spunk

Dark Knight Returns is the best comic out there but you'll spoil yourself if you read it without exposing yourself some of the superhero crap out there. The Ultimates are the fokkin business. Don't forget that there are now a healthy amount of decent Irish comics to read too.. I'm completely biased on that though

pauldeehan

As I mentioned, I've already read Dark Knight Returns, really enjoyed it. Collected Books are pretty much all I'm looking for, I don't have easy access to a comic book store, only when I visit Belfast every month or two. So buying individual comics would be a hassle.

I figure I'll prob give Dark Knight Strikes Again a miss and go for Hush based on your advice and I'll defo take a look at Walking Dead if I can lay my hands on them.

I've been thinking about getting LXG anyway, that Planetary one sounds good. I had heard about Marvel 1602 but perhaps I'd miss a lot of incidental stuff? I loved all the alternate stuff in Superman Red Son (especially the Green Lantern Squadron) so it may still be worth a look.

I'll also keep my eye open for The Authority and and Alias and I'll probably be buying more of Powers, I liked it.

Has anyone read Full Moon Fever? I was told about it and thought it might be worth a look.

Cheers for your help everyone.