What comic are you reading at the moment.

CastorTroy · 05-10-2024 02:40PM

Finished Absolute Power and read the All In special.

I don't see the Absolute Batman, etc doing well.

I'll check them out for a couple of issues, mainly to see (All In spoilers)

What's happening with Booster, unless he's got another series. Maybe he'll just disappear until the next event.

Xofpod · 25-10-2024 11:12AM

Currently circling back to finish off some stuff I started but never got around to completing. Finished the Captain Britain Omnibus (Alan Moore/Alan Davis era). Objectively it's only OK, very 80s, and Moore dropped out after the first run, but I read this in the 80s in the UK Daredevils comic when I was very young and impressionable and I definitely have a soft spot for it.

Plus, I've always thought Alan Davis was a very underrated artist. Not flashy but always very solid.

Thargor · 25-10-2024 04:03PM

Completely fell out of reading comics at all this year, are there any blockbuster series recently I might have missed? Something like Saga or Invincible (not holding out any hope of ever reading something like Berserk or The Boys ever again)? I honestly cant take any more Batman or Marvel anymore, just all feels a bit pointless now.

Xofpod · 30-10-2024 03:16PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122763048#Comment_122763048

Mostly reading older stuff recently but I've enjoyed what I've read of What's the Furthest Place from Here? and Something is Killing the Children (maybe not that recent…)

Xofpod · 07-11-2024 09:57AM

Despite my complaints about him, I picked up Tom King's Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow and enjoyed it. Art was good too, by Bilquis Evely, who I hadn't come across before and reminds me of someone, but I can't quite place the style.

Also, the mini-series apparently forms the basis for the forthcoming DCU Supergirl movie under James Gunn, which I have to admit I'm now kind of interested in seeing.

Fysh · 08-11-2024 01:42PM

I've been very distracted from comics in recent months; or more accurately I've been distracted from reading comics because I'm still happy to periodically drop a fat chunk of cash on them (e.g. there was a comics fair near me a couple of months back where I picked up a bunch of cool stuff, almost none of which I've even looked at).

I have at least gotten myself caught up on my Dragon Ball reading, finished my Sex Criminals re-read, and have decided that it's time to revisit Mieville's run on Dial H for Hero which is as dementedly fun as I remembered. I've also decided to reread Hickman's Pax Romana and Transhuman, as it's been yonks since I read either and I want to see how they hold up now.

Fysh · 26-11-2024 12:23PM

Dial H for Hero was good fun of the "never mind the Shared Universe gubbins, what if we just went for out-there fun every chance we got?" variety.

Transhuman was an interesting re-read, and I must go back and read Nightly News again - apparently I've forgotten how biting Hickman's writing can be when he's in full-on angry satire mode. (Revisiting any Hickman project inevitably reminds me that Black Monday Murders still hasn't been finished, and I assume that we're just never going to see Feel Better Now at this point because it's been, what, a decade since it was announce?)

I also popped into the comic shop recently, where I was unable to pick up the next Dragon Ball collections for my continued Dragon Ball Z read, but I did get a copy of The Nice House By The Sea #1 and the second volume of ¡UNIVERSO! by Albert Monteys (which I didn't even know was still going, although I'm very glad to find out it is)

Other stuff in my to-read pile currently includes:

El Invasor HC
Animal Man Vol 1 (Jamie Delano era)
OroPel #1-4 (Spanish limited series
Hellbreak Vol 1
W0rldtr33 Vol 1 HC
Amaniaco #70
TMEO #177
La Esencia Del Cloro
Medea HC
Morirse en Bilbao TPB (+ the sequels as single issues)
Totem Extra #2
El Club De Sangre (Charles Burns one-shot)
Dominion Tank Police #1 & 2 (of 5)
Sleight of Hand #1 (Jason Lutes mini)
A bunch of Spanish-language small press stuff

Xofpod · 26-11-2024 02:56PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122816225#Comment_122816225

Picked up Dial H (from the library) based on your mention above. Never knew that Mieville had written these. Great fun. I must go away and google but do you know off hand if he's written many other comics? (I'll give his Keanu Reeves BRZRKR comic novel a read at some point too)

Fysh · 26-11-2024 04:24PM

I don't think he's done a lot - I was reminded of his Dial H run because he had a proposal for an Iron Man storyline which I'd have loved to read, but was rejected because it was Tony Stark as the bad guy facing a superhero who was basically the personification of a union 😁

Fysh · 03-12-2024 02:32PM

I decided it was time to try and get my single issues and small press shelves into some sort of vaguely-decent state. I've made a good start, but my one concession to "Ooh, I forgot I had this" was re-reading my copies of #7 & 8 of Desolation Jones, the aborted 2nd arc with Daniel Zezejl that never went anywhere because it got eaten by whatever it was that happened to Warren Ellis's computer and backups which also killed off Doktor Sleepless.

It's weird to go back to it, for a variety of reasons. I've read a lot more Ellis since my first reading of this (including becoming somewhat weary of the tropes and habits he sometimes leans too hard on), but more notably I've also read the entirety of Charlie Stross's Laundry novels, which are about a different variety of secret government spooks. So it lands a bit differently. Hard to say how it might have turned out, but the two issues of it feel like they're leaning too much on referencing Philip K Dick. The art is good, but the fact that it's not J H Williams III is inescapable and makes me think that, much like that New 52 Batwoman series, its success is down to the art - so when the artist leaves, what's left?

I also started reading one of my random 2nd hand purchase, namely a volume from Delano's run on Animal Man. It's.... Well, it's kinda fine. Plotwise there's similarities to Delano's Hellblazer run, but honestly without wanting to sound mean, I have no reason to care at all about Buddy Baker or his family, and the individual stories are kinda meh.

Fysh · 16-12-2024 10:11PM

I finished that Delano Animal Man tpb and having looked it up, part of the reason it wasn't landing for me is that it's from more than halfway into the run i.e. I'm supposed to already know and care about the characters. But I don't think I'd be arsed reading more - Animal Man/Buddy Baker is just not a character I find interesting.

I also read the first and only trade of a Cullen Bunn horror/action series called Hellbreak, essentially a sort of extraction team setup where the gimmick is that the extractions are from hell, as part of exorcising people who are possessed. It's good, albeit hollow - like you'd read it once and enjoy it, then forget about it and never read it again without anything much being lost.

I'm having a hell of a time getting the next volumes for my Dragon Ball read through, last weekend I visited 4 different comic shops and book shops with good comic sections - all of them carried the series, none had the volumes I'm looking for next 😅 I'm increasingly tempted to just bulk buy all the remaining volumes in one go, but my To Read pile is already shamefully tall and wobbly ...

Ridley · 30-12-2024 01:06AM

House of X/Powers of X

X of Swords

X-Men by Jonathan Hickman Omnibus

Still got Inferno to go but hard to be enthused knowing that Hickman didn't get to tell the full story. Maybe they'll do it for the MCU version the way that's mining more recent storylines. Was curious how X of Swords was going to pull off that tournament to which the answer was disappointingly: it didn't try to. Hard to give a damn about Arakko and I've yet to see anything that circles around Arthurian/Celtic lore from Marvel that I've particularly cared for.

Daredevil: Shadowland Omnibus - I felt something when it gave me a papercut, at least.😉 I liked the art in the Shadowland and Daredevil issues but it was pretty dire as events go as it doesn't have much depth in Daredevil being placed in charge of the Hand (the Wrist?) nor does it have any particular nuance in the execution of the forces undermining it. Murdock's told the Hand cant be trusted and that's correct. There just happens to be a Japanese castle sitting in the middle of New York at the same time. And the tie-ins don't do much with it either. I like that Moon Knight can't get possessed caused he's already occupied. After the Luke Cage show, the Power Man miniseries comes across as horribly outdated with its use of the '70s versions of characters. Knowingly so in some cases but it's also banging up against 14 year old attempts at sounding checks notes Urban? Street? And it describes respawning in that whole "You know when a character in a video game" way. Plus there's a miniseries where Colleen Wing and Misty Knight both look like a palette swap of this long faced white woman. You know? Like how in video games a character will be given a different set of colou

Wonder Woman: Rebirth Deluxe Edition Book 2

Ghost/Hellboy Special* - Just read it to test how the bundle displayed on a monitor compared to, say, Comixology. Can remember next to nothing about Ghost beyond her look from the Dark Horse Heroes Omnibus. Typical story of protagonists being at odds until they pair up in the end though.

Jim Henson's The Storyteller: Dragons*

Spirou & Fantasio 1: Adventure Down Under - Or, as it's known in France, volume 34. Spirou and Fantasio look better when they have Smurf eyes rather than Tintin eyes. I am cultured.

Indiana Jones and the City of Lightning (et la Cité de la Foudre) - Read the fan translations of the three French-exclusive Indiana Jones comics. I was just never sure whether I should count them in this list or not. Cursed Grimoire is the more interesting of them, I think, just because it's a glorified James Bond story where Indiana Jones only appears in his leather jacket and fedora on the cover. Anyway, here Indy first encounters the Thuggee a few years before he first encounters the Thuggee who get their comeuppance when the guy releases a group of imprisoned lepers and the cult gets caste-system'd to death off-panel. Then the lepers get sealed inside when the temple entrance collapses. Archaeology, there.

Donald Duck: Frozen Gold - Best joke is when Donald Duck says he doesn't get mad often.

*Digital edition

Xofpod · 08-01-2025 04:29PM

I enjoyed the first couple of collected Immortal Hulk books so thought I'd take a look at some more of Al Ewing's Marvel work. Liked his short Defenders run, a good dip into the "cosmic" side of the Marvel universe. The Immortal Thor first TPB was OK, not brilliant but I'll stick with it. Currently reading the third collected volume of the Immortal Hulk and I think I might have reached saturation point…

I think Ewing started off on 2000AD stuff but it was well after my time reading it - can anyone recommend anything particularly good that he did there?

Also, as I was dipping my toe back into Marvel stuff, I took a peek at some X Men. I'd deliberately ignored the whole Krakoan age thing as I just couldn't be bothered, but I looked at some of the Marauders books and the interest might be piqued. Given there's 2 million different titles, are there any stand-out runs that people would recommend?

Fysh · 09-01-2025 09:36AM

I made a smallish dent in my reading pile over the Christmas break.

First up was W0rldtr33, written by James Tynion IV. Having really liked other horror comics he's written I figured I would probably like this, and was not wrong

I followed that with a palate cleanser, Tato: Lo Más Mejor by Albert Monteys, which is a best-of collection of a strip that used to run in El Jueves, a Spanish comic magazine that's like a mix of Viz and Private Eye.

Then I read the 2025 2000AD Annual, which was pretty enjoyable, and was a good introduction to Strontium Dog for me. It wouldn't have hurt for it to have fewer ads - considering it's a pricey enough hardback, having almost every story followed by a "BUY MORE STUFF WITH THIS CHARACTER IN IT" ad felt almost Millar-esque in its baldness 😜

mrcheez · 31-01-2025 08:27PM

Read through the 3 volumes of Essex County by Jeff Lemire.

The drawing style initially put me off and the story seemed simple at first but as you uncover it there's so much depth and tear jerking moments...really top notch stuff

Xofpod · 06-02-2025 02:20PM

Read a few recently:

Pax Romana, Jonathan Hickman - meh. Good idea, reduced to transcripts of minutes of various meetings. Not for me.

Analogue, vol.1 Gerry Duggan - again, good idea. Noir thriller set in a world pivoting back to analogue technologies. Will read more but wouldn't be rushing out for it.

Immortal Hulk vols. 3&4. Completed the run and really liked it. This and a few other recent things have rekindled some interest in Marvel output and I think I'll continue to scratch around the edges.

Next to read:

-The collected Wonder Woman Earth One, Grant Morrison. Even though I haven't been impressed by much of the recent stuff (last 10 years..) that I've read, I'll always give him a chance

-Far Sector, the Green Lantern(related) run by N.K.Jemisin. Loved her Broken Earth fantasy/sci-fi novels so looking forward to this.

After that, thinking about a reread of Planetary…

Fysh · 30-03-2025 06:04PM

How have I gone so long without posting in this thread?

El Invasor

It took me a while to get to this one, but I'm glad I did. It's a twin-strands storyline about two people living very different lives in a Basque city who end up meeting during the pandemic lockdown. As with many pandemic-era artefacts one of the interesting things is how easily some things have slid from collective memory because government and society have just sort of decided that it's all done now. I suspect living in the city where it's set has probably added to my appreciation of it, but the storytelling is strong and I would read more comics drawn by Alex Orbe.

Lowreader #2: Mr. Sato

This is a Spanish reprint of a French comic (Lowreader), which is technically a series but it seems like each issue is a done-in-one. The story is a kind of Falling Down affair, though given a bit of flair through a couple of details like the main character thinking he's invisible or the story being set in Japan (as perceived by a French comic creator). All in all, I enjoyed it but I'm not convinced that it entirely justified its cover price (€8!), though the art was very good. I'm probably not accounting for the larger pagesize and heavier (better-quality) paperstock, either.

Vilader5000

Speaking of comics that make your wallet sting... Vilader5000 isn't exactly a comic, though it is a very cleverly put together artefact. It is about the size of an iPhone 4 and comes complete with a rubber phone case; its contents are chat logs from Wallapop (a popular Spanish p2p sales platform a la vinted or ebay) showing conversations between various sellers and quite possibly the stupidest potential customer to ever use a device, presented as they would appear on the platform. Some of them are genuinely funny and a lot of work has gone into the presentation, which is great - but it also stings a bit that it costs ~€10 for something you'll breeze through in an hour and where there's not really artwork so much as graphic design.

Gente Como Usted

I picked this up having seen a couple of strips by the author in TMEO, a satirical comedy comic. He seems to specialise in a sort of extremely-bodily-fluid-laden variation of the kind of grotesque cartooning Leo Baxendale excelled at. Again we've got large pagesizes and decent paperstock here. I found the comics weirdly inconsistent in terms of my enjoyment - some of them are hysterically funny (there's a 3-pager titled something like "Crapping while drunk" that had me howling), but then there are others where the humour relies entirely on stereotypes that are decades out of date (on the level of promiscuous gay men dressed up like the biker from Village People) that were pretty disappointing. On the whole a case of "art is great, but the writing needs work".

Oropel #1-4

An independent Spanish comic mini from the mid 90s I picked this up out of curiosity more than anything. It was an interesting read, but also one that feels like a creative team still figuring out their tools - over four issues it tells a set of overlapping stories all taking place on the same day in the same city (except for the epilogue, in a move which makes sense in the context of info needed to wrap up the narrative but also feels jarring when it's introduced). Artistically it's nice, although doesn't necessarily do enough to clearly delineate the various different storylines at play. Narratively I didn't think it really came together to give enough of a payoff for the convolution of how the different stories overlapped.

Xofpod · 04-04-2025 04:11PM

Has anyone read any of the Dark Tower (Stephen King) comics? I had it in my mind for a long time so recently reread the Wastelands, the third Dark Tower book. Absolutely loved it (again, after 25 years) and while I'm not going to reread the whole series again, I'll definitely read a couple more of the (IMHO) better books. Someone told me that the comics - which expand the story, particularly the back story - are decent but I'm not sure is it worth dipping my toe in?

JayRoc · 06-04-2025 09:35AM

Fred Fordham's adaptation of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is by far the best graphic novel I've read in a long long time and probably now in my top three of all time. Absolutely fantastic.

(If you live in DLRCC you can even get it from your local library!)

Fysh · 09-04-2025 09:01AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123331242#Comment_123331242

I just read a review of this on TCJ and it sounds really good, I'll add it to my list of things to look out for.

For my part, I've been distracted from the backlog by new shinies. Namely The Power Fantasy volume 1, which is Kieron Gillen and Caspar Wijngaard doing something that feels halfway between Watchmen and The Wicked + The Divine. I anticipated enjoying this, and was not disappointed.

I've also finished a(nother) re-read of the two Si Spurrier/Aaron Campbell Hellblazer trades ahead of starting in on the (annoyingly, hardcover) collection of Hellblazer: Dead In America. 2 issues into its 11-issue story, it maintains the quality of the previous 2 trades, and I don't expect that to change.

Xofpod · 09-04-2025 09:50AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123331242#Comment_123331242

I'm a big fan of getting hard copies from the library; this is going on the list

ahro_john · 11-04-2025 11:47AM

Currently reading Monstress

Fysh · 11-04-2025 12:15PM

Hellblazer: Dead In America was a really good read - a bit of a shift in tone from the previous 2 volumes, partly down to the change in setting but also, I imagine, down to the time between when they were written. The presence of what I'll call Other Vertigo Characters to keep it spoiler-free was well-handled and interesting, and I really liked the epilogue and how it calls back to the start of this run (and further). It'd be nice to think we may yet get more Hellblazer of this quality, but tbh I wasn't massively impressed with Tom Taylor's Hellblazer: Rise & Fall so if this marks the end of it, well, there are far worse ways to wrap up.

Xofpod · 22-04-2025 01:52PM

3/4 of the way through my Planetary reread (enjoying it but not quite as great as I remembered), about the same distance through my Tom Strong reread (love it every bit as much as previously, love the lighter/more innocent mood Moore conjures up), got distracted a little by random Judge Dredds (Satan, Trifecta. MC2 City of Courts).

Currently reading Monica, Daniel Clowes. For some reason - vaguely similar art styles? - I always mix him and Charles Burns up, but Clowes is the far superior writer to my mind.

Xofpod · 20-05-2025 10:13AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123331242#Comment_123331242

Read and enjoyed it. Absolutely gorgeous book. Probably don't feel as strongly as you do about it but any issues I have I probably had with the original novel - e.g. the framing of christian guilt as the (only?) viable alternative to the mindless soma society. The structure of the story also might not have fitted the graphic novel format exactly; the beautiful, mostly dialogue-free set-up of the city maybe jarred with the very dialogue-heavy (but obviously very necessary) later scenes.

I'll definitely check out more of Fordham's work. Does he mainly do literary adaptation?

JayRoc · 20-05-2025 03:07PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123467171#Comment_123467171

I had never come across his work before this. I believe he does seem to specialise in adapting novels.

Strangely enough I don't remember being nearly as taken with the original book, although it is a good while since I read it.

The core message is utter tosh (while being simultaneously captivating) but remember when it was written, I guess

JayRoc · 20-05-2025 03:10PM

I'm going to fly in the face of popular opinion here, but I thought Planetary was only okay. I bought the big omnibus edition on a recommendation from my local bookshop owner and while it's grand, it doesn't really ball my melon the way it seems to for a lot of people whose tastes I share

Fysh · 20-05-2025 09:07PM

I think a big part of its appeal is Cassaday's art, but I think there was also some degree of hype built up on the back of the delays in the last few issues coming out. There's also an element of doing a sort of Pop Culture Remix thing in a way that's not too dissimilar to Watchmen, but not at the same level.

Of course, the further away we get from the early noughties, the less tolerance you may have for Peak Warren Ellis Authorial Voice, which also might not be helping.

I'm long overdue a re-read myself but the backlog keeps growing and I've barely put a dent in it recently so it'll have to wait...

Xofpod · 12-06-2025 10:50AM

By chance, read a couple of things from the thrill-files of 2000AD recently

The collected Flesh, strips dating back the 70s and the first issues of 2000ad. Time travelling cowboys farming dinosaurs, written with Pat Mills' full-on anti-corporate bile. It's of its time but I loved it (again). Brought me right back - I was too young for the first run but definitely read it at a very impressionable age. Got to love the stuff that they snuck into mainstream, child-oriented material. Unfortunately I don't think the final book(s) of the run have ever been reprinted/collected.

Also, because I've been picking up things by Al Ewing recently, I read Zombo: Can I eat you Please?, not realising it was the collection of a mid-2010s 2000ad strip. It's an unexpected treat, full of gore and humour and more gore. Must pick up the second collection now.

I imagine there are probably a lot of hidden gems from the last 20 years of 2000ad that I know nothing about (Scarlet Traces looks interesting, for example). Anyone have any recommendations?

willow.traveler · 12-06-2025 11:01AM

Just started reading Saga again from the beginning — still one of the best blends of sci-fi and fantasy out there. The art and storytelling hold up so well.

What comic are you reading at the moment.

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