2014 what are you reading thread

"The Eyes of the Cat"

And Madwoman Of The Sacred Heart.

After putting it off forever, I finally finished L'Incal a few months back and was less impressed than I'd expected to be. The first volume is terrific, then both writing and art kind of go down the tubes. I guess I like plotty Moebius more than mystical Moebius.

That said as I am a comic fan and I never learn and I am super excited to finally read Airtight Garage &tc.

i inherited an old-gen iPad and since i pretty much only wanted one to read comix on it fits my needs perfectly. so far i've loaded the following on it to read: the new Prophet run, the last year of adventure times, the recent scott snyder run of batman, a bunch of guardians of the galaxy and annihilation stuff (just saw the movie finally lol), manifest destiny, recent moon knight, recent ms. marvel, recent silver surfer, the multiversity stuff, and the united states of murder. oh, and the recent greg pak action comics. what else should i add? i kinda haven't been paying attention to superheroes since we last had those diamond shipping threads

xpost
'plotty' and 'less mystical' are not the first terms i wld use to describe airtight garage, fwiw

Yeah I think Airtight Garage is him at his most experimental.

what else should i add?

Kieron Gillen's Journey into Mystery is possibly the best superhero run of this dedace so far, though in order to fully get it you kinda need to be familiar with the Thor comics that preceded it (meaning Straczynski's reboot and Gillen's own Thor run, which are pretty good comics in themselves), at least read the Wikipedia summaries. Killen & Jamie McKelvie's Young Avengers run was also quite good (McKelvie in particular has a fantastic, crisp and detailed line), though its ending was bit meh, especially compared to the JiT finale, where Killen pulled that rare Morrisonesque trick of being totally meta and tearjerkingly sentimental at the same time.

And if you like teen superheroes, I would also recommend Christos Cage's Avengers Academy. It was quite uneven, mostly because the "Avengers" title in the name meant it had to be involved in various crossovers, even though it would've worked better as a fairly standalone title, a la Runaways... But the highs in it were still quit high, the school setting and the wide-eyed idealism made it feel like Claremont's early 80s X-Men, so if you dig that, you should dig AA too.

Oh yeah, and Saga by Brian Vaughan and Fiona Staples, of course! It's one of the best, and definitely the best-looking, American mainstream comics in recent memory.

Copra is the only good action comic of the last couple of years that I've read

(counting Prophet as sci-fi and the revival of Shaolin Cowboy as an older work. if Saga's the best-looking mainstream comic, mainstream comics are worse than I thought)

You don't think Saga looks good?! I know some people don't care for Vaughan's writing tics, and sometimes they irritate me too, but I've never heard anyone not liking Staples art in it.

I'm with sic, I think it looks OK but I wouldn't say it was one of the best looking current comics.

Anyway, on the Vertigo side I'd recommend Mike Carey's and Peter Gross's The Unwritten, which is about to conclude soon. I guess it's in the Sandman/Fables continuum of urban fantasy with metafictional commentary on fables/stories, but the emphasis on meta is heavier than in those books, and Carey is quite good at juggling it with the more epic/thrilling fantasy stuff.

TBH, I'm not sure if Vertigo is putting out any other good titles at the moment... Is Fables still going on? It's been a few years since I last checked it, and it felt pretty stale already.

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I didn't say it's the best looking of all current comics, just among American mainstream comics. (Which I guess includes Marvel. DC, Image, Dark Horse, are there any other big publishers left anymore?) But if you can point me to other ongoing mainstream series that look better than it, I'd be happy to check them out.

Though I guess I'm just a sucker for freaky/other-wordly character designs, and simple-but-grand, Moebius-style cosmic vistas, both of which Saga has plenty, so it's right up my alley. The latter in particular is something that I haven't seen too much in the American mainstream comics (except in cases where Euro artists have been hired to do them), the US tradition in cosmic comic art seems to be more in the Kirby/Byrne vein, i.e. complex, intricately detailed stuff with loads of lines.

Staples in Saga kinda reminds me of Jean-Claude Mézières in Valérian and Laureline, and that one is probably my favourite sci-fi comic of all time (particularly when it comes to the graphic design), so I'm just glad to see something like that being a success in the American mainstream.

that Mazzuchelli-cum-Ware Hawkeye series looked fantastic (I'll borrow a run and read it if someone wants to mail it!) but I think it's been cancelled. Sandman: Overture looking fantastic feels like it might turn out to be the only thing going for it.

Saga's perfectly readable from what I've seen (first two vols) but not visually remarkable ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

are you reading Prophet?

Mainstream books currently (or very recently) worth reading:

Marvel

All-New Ghost Rider
Black Widow
The last year or so of Deadpool has been a blast
First 6 issues of the new Magneto series
Axis: Hobgoblin (against all odds)
Loki: Agent of Asgard (ILX's own Vic Fluro)
You said Moon Knight, Ms Marvel and Surfer
I've been enjoying Captain marvel but that might be just me
Avengers: Arena (that man Fluro again)
All New Invaders is kind of like James Robinson doing what he did at JSA with the Marvel Golden age heroes
Iron Fist The Living Weapon
Mark Waid's Daredevil BEFORE the renumbering/move to the West Coast
Elektra is very pretty but not that engaging
I've enjoyed Cyclops but it's not for everyone
Inhuman started well but has lost its way a bit in the last couple of issues
SUPERIOR FOES OF SPIDER MAN (maybe the only Spider book worth reading)
Thor
Hawkeye
The Doop miniseries was great (although you might need to read All New XMen to understand some of it, so maybe not worth bothering)
Vic Fluro writes Vic Fluro's Mighty Avengers, maybe but WARNING GREG LAND
Thunderbolts by, of all people, Doug Moench

DC

Flash is still worth reading, nowhere near as good as immediately post-Nu52 but still a good book
Green Arrow got really stylish about 18 months ago (so about #20?) and is often DC's best looking book
Wonder Woman (the Azzarello/Chang book only - DO NOT GO NEAR #37 WHICH IS THE START OF DAVID FINCH PRESENT'S DAVID FINCH'S WONDER THE DAVID FINCH RETELLING OF DAVID FINCH'S WONDEROUS WOMAN. (In unexpected news, the first issue came out ON TIME and apparently was David Finch)
The recent Batman & Robin stuff on Apokolips has been pretty thrill-powered
Grayson is more entertaining than the premise would suggest, almost a spy thriller?
Star Spangles War Stories has been good, if you have a high Gray and Palmiotti tolerance
Dial H might be on your radar, if not then it should be

does Dial H have anything to do w/ that dude w/ the belt who used to hang out w/ superboy in the very short lived superboy and the ravers comic?

also -- is kitty pryde doing anything in anything ongoing?

No, it's a revival of a 60s property by China Mieville.

Kitty's main thing in an ongoing book is as Peter Quinn's gf (in GotG maybe?) although she was a big player in the Doop mini.

kitty is dating peter quinn?????

Wtf, does Bendis like Kitty so much he transplanted her to GotG?!

No offense meant to Staples but in terms of recent memory (3-4 years?) and mainstream American comic art, Richard Corben, Bill Sienkiewicz, Attila Futaki, Greg Ruth, Kevin Ferrara, Frank Quitely, JH Williams, Chris Weston, Phil Winslade, James Stokoe, Eric Powell, John Romita Jr, Kelley Jones, Emma Rios, Daniel Acuna, Dan Brereton, Sam Kieth, Leinel Francis Yu, Jae Lee, Amanda Conner, Guy Davis, Mike Mignola, Mike Kaluta, Esad Ribic, Bernie Wrightson and Arthur Adams are far preferable to me.
Admittedly, very few of these people were doing an ongoing series. If I was reading lots of comics I could probably name some more appropriate examples.

lol

anybody read "Marshal Law"? thinking of picking it up.

Marshall Law is one of my favorite comics of all time. Each series is a bit a case of diminishing returns, but it starts at such a high level it has room to fall off.

Is Lemire still doing Green Arrow? He seems to have lot of good ideas for DC stuff, his Justice League Canada book seems especially up my alley, but I just can't bring myself to... I don't know, the nu-52 Green Arrow doesn't seem anything like the 70s/80s Green Arrow I love. I know. That's MY hang-up.
Recently read:
Francesco Francavilla's Black Beetle, very stylish nostalgia trip that's as much Raiders of the Lost Ark as it is New Frontier (Darwyn Cooke writes intro & if you like his stuff, you'll probably like this).
G.Moz's first Action Comics trade. The artist can't seem to decide if Superman is 13 or 25. Morrison seems more in love with Lex Luthor than ever. Packs a lot in compared to the Justice League comics I've read.

Lemire off GA at the moment, leading to a shift to almost 90s era tone - Connor Hawke era maybe?

whatever happened to J.T. Krul?

also, I just want to say that it has taken an tremendous level of self-restraint to not buy the Multiversity books. I even packed the kids in the car and took them to the comic shop one day, telling myself, well, if it happens it happens. I ended up dropping $50 on books for them. (pro-tip, 6yo's love Archie Digests)

oh yeah, Green Arrow just got a new writing team "straight from the hit TV show". I guess this means TV Arrow wins. This guy is gone for good.
http://longboxgraveyard.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/doug-moench-and-gene-colan-detective-559.jpg

has TV Arrow totally excised his radical leftie angle? if so >:(

Do buy the Pax Americana issue of Multiversity, it's splendid

Hoos: Marshall Law is very diminishing returns after the first series; if you're buying a big mostly-complete hardcover, the second half of it will be fairly tired and repetitive team-ups with other people's characters.

I gotta say, as groundbreaking as Marshall Law felt was back in the day, I reread it when the omnibus came out, and even the first story felt awfully dated now, partly because of all the "so 80s" cultural and political signifiers, and because of how many other series have used its ideas since then. The second story actually reads better now than the first one, because it has less of the political stuff, mostly it's just a funny and over-the-top violent parody of popular Marvel superheroes. The other stories (which I'd never read when they originally came out) are all pretty meh, as people have said in this thread, and even O'Neill's art seems to get progressively lazier.

If you want to read the actually really good comic Mills and O'Neill did together, check out Nemesis the Warlock, that one still feels much fresher than ML.

mm. will probably be buying said hardcover.

gonna use a gift card on the gillen/mckelvie young avengers omnibus that just came out

ordering a patch from The Humans, which is so gross and offensive but i enjoy it

Bitch Planet, predictably, is awesome.

i'll look up nemisis & the warlock, thx tuomas.

Nemesis is glorious

I think Marshall Law has suffered pretty much the same fate as The Dark Knight Returns: the ideas that made you go "whoa!" back in the day have become so commonplace that it's much easier to see the flaws in the writing, now that you aren't blinded by the whole "superhero comics have grown up" thing.

(xpost)

If you want to read a more contemporary take on those ideas that doesn't feel as dated, check out The Boys by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson. It owes a lot to ML, the main concept being pretty much the same (the protagonists are superhero hunters keeping the immoral and/or crazy superheroes in check), but the storytelling is a bit more conventional (the protagonists are mostly likable, whereas ML is almost as awful as the superheroes he fights), which I think is a plus. Ennis's criticism of superheroes is almost as witty and poignant as Mills's, and he's better at characterization and plotting, so it's mostly a good read. (Except for the few occasions where he tries to write "black" slang and fails at it even worse than most European comic writers.)

i've read the boys and warning note to anyone who hasn't: super gross, vulgar, misogynistic, homophobic, etc basically an ennis comic book i don't know why it needed a warning note now that i think about it

I dunno, IMO The Boys is notably less sexist and homophobic than some of Ennis' earlier works, such as Preacher. It's true that the series starts pretty horrifically with Starlight, the main female protagonist, being forced to perform oral sex on one of the superhero villains, and at first it felt like Ennis was treating this mostly as ultra-black comedy to depict how horrible the superheroes are, and I was almost ready to quit reading there and then, but Ennis does actually take the rape issue seriously and, despite all the expectations, manages to make Starlight into a sympathetic three-dimensional character instead of just a throwaway victim, which I thought was actually quite impressive.

Maybe I'm giving Ennis more leeway than I would with another writer, but in both The Boys and Crossed it felt like he was taking the criticism aimed at his earlier work seriously, so the stuff he has been rightfully criticized for (sexism, general macho attitude, treating all queer character as depraved, etc) gets deconstructed, or at least toned down a lot in these comics. It's true that they still are vulgar and gross and gory, that's part and parcel with Ennis.

i guess i kinda feel the opposite. preacher was vulgar but it was obv concerned w/ other things too and the vulgarity was a kind of plain spoken vernacular in which he was telling this larger narrative about -- i guess faith and loss? lol. but then boys + crossed was just like diving into his own moral abyss like what horrific thing can he dream up next oh i know raping zombies raping ppl's faces to death that'll shock them. (also i seem to remember a lot of homophobia in the boys... 3rd arc i want to say? where he has to infiltrate that teen titans type org?) i don't know where to stick punisher max or hitman here bc i like both of them and i think they both benefit from working within a tighter structure (and presumably w/ more editorial objections than crossed ever got)

crossed was just like diving into his own moral abyss like what horrific thing can he dream up next oh i know raping zombies raping ppl's faces to death that'll shock them.

I'm not sure if you've probably read Crossed? Sure, the zombies are there doing all the horrible things (though unless I totally misremember it, they don't actually rape any of the human characters in the comic, just each other), but considering what someone with the imagination of Ennis could've done with the concept, it's actually fairly subdued. Anyway, the whole point of the comic is that the absolute amorality/social nihilism the zombies represent is used as contrast to the very hard moral choices the human survivors have to make. So Crossed is all about morality and what makes us human, it's actually more serious and far less indulgent than many other Ennis comics (including The Boys).

i have read crossed

And yeah, obviously the zombie/human contrast is at the heart of most zombie apocalypse stories, but I think Crossed actually puts an interesting twist into it, because Ennis's zombies aren't mindless flesh-eaters, they still have their wits, they've just utterly amoral and totally hedonistic. So it doesn't become your typical survival of the fittest parable, where the zombies are equated with animals/nature, it's more about what morality means in a world where it's become almost extinct.

(xpost)

Sorry about the typo, I meant to write "properly read", not "probably read". Anyway, I don't want to sound condescending or anything, but if all you remember of the comic is "moral abyss" and "gross zombies", then you probably didn't quite get what it was all about.

lol just to be sure i opened up the first issue of the entire run and on the second to last page, just as i remembered it...

trigger warning

i mean, this certainly read for me at the time as just vileness for its own sake (which tbh i really shouldn't be complaining about since i've been enjoying my copy of fukitor) and not w/out a lot of nuance unless u have a specific semiotic reading of this panel that i am missing

I dunno, obviously Crossed is still quite extreme, but I think there is a fine line between illustrating your point and being indulgent. Yeah, I guess Ennis and Burrows could've toned that scene down, but like I said, they want to paint a picture of utter loss of morality. And that scene is limited to the one panel you posted. Compare it to Alan Moore's Neonomicon (also drawn by Burrows) which has a disgusting mass rape scene that goes on for several pages. Now, horrific violence and rape are part of both of these stories, you can't really tell them without it, but Ennis most certainly doesn't indulge on it the way Moore does. Of course your opinion may vary whether Crossed still shows too much of it, I can certainly understand that opinion... Ultimately it's a question of how much vileness you really need to show to get the "horror" part across... I know it's a fine line to walk, but I still feel Ennis and Burrows mostly stay on the "justified" side, rather than the "indulgent" side.

trigger warning

jesus christ sometimes I hate comics

I dunno, IMO The Boys is notably less sexist and homophobic than some of Ennis' earlier works, such as Preacher. It's true that the series starts pretty horrifically with Starlight, the main female protagonist, being forced to perform oral sex on one of the superhero villains, and at first it felt like Ennis was treating this mostly as ultra-black comedy to depict how horrible the superheroes are, and I was almost ready to quit reading there and then, but Ennis does actually take the rape issue seriously and, despite all the expectations, manages to make Starlight into a sympathetic three-dimensional character instead of just a throwaway victim, which I thought was actually quite impressive.

I'll go a step further and say I still have a lot of love for Preacher, even with its flaws