Comics
 

I hate comic books. my friends in Oregon would always get me to read "the really good ones"
, though.



Now, they were united in their opinion that I should avoid Garth Ennis at all costs. What I saw of Preacher seemed good, but I trusted that they knew more than I did. They were fucking wrong, I've just finished reading the first five issues of The Boys, it's fantastic and the first comic I've ever really liked, let alone was (now) an actual devoted FAN of. Now I want to buy and read a complete collection type thing of Preacher, and I can't fucking find one. I'd actually like to buy and have it in my hands as opposed to just downloading it, but I can't! Am I literally supposed to buy this volume by volume?! Is this what you comic book fans are used to?! Further, what the hell am I supposed to do with The Boys, buy a yearly subscription or something?

Because I refuse to pay money for Preacher unless I can buy it in bulk and at a sane price. Only time I ever paid for a comic book was when Frank Frazetta's Death Dealer: Shadows of Mirahan came out in hardcover with the full page prints of the original paintings, and I was so pissed off that I'd spent that much money on such a worthless pile of comic book shit after I'd read it that I was spitting blood and poison. Never again.

I like the Goon and Tank Girl. Maybe a few things featured in Heavy Metal, but other than that, I'm not particularly into a lot of comics.

Marvel 1602 holds a special place in my heart, though.

I HAVE to admit that The Goon always looked fun, but could never be bothered to download it... I DID download COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS just to see what a "bad" comic series was like. It was exactly like almost every other superhero comic ever, as far as I could tell. I figure it just pissed comic fans off because they were getting completely ripped off (more than usual).

EDIT:

I've sometimes wondered if comic books might be inherently inferior to all other mediums. They're a medium of pictures and written words but according to Drawing on The Right Side of The Brain you use your right hemisphere to process visual information and your left hemisphere to process language. Is it possible to give a comic book your undivided attention?

I'm not a huge comic fan but anything by Grant Morrison is most likely worth reading.

I could also recommend some Japanese comic books, or Manga if you're not in the know how. Ichi the Killer by Hideo Yamamoto, way better than the movie in my opinion. Don't know if it has been officially translated. Then there's Battle Angel Alita, which does have an official English edition which has had the images reversed so you don't have to read it right to left. Don't judge Alita by it's first chapter, the way Japanese comic serializations works is the first chapter is like a pilot and so it isn't always a good indicator of the overall quality.

READ CHEW

I really liked X-men age of apocalypse. You can get it now in paperback or some shit.

Have they suggested The Invisibles to you?

I've actually never heard of the Invisibles, I'll check it out.

Since you can get them free without having to download them, and it looks like webcomics may actually be a half-decent starting platform for artists atm, I've actually read a lot of manga, since they're primarily black and white and I like to see how they resolve visual problems.




HATE HATE HATE manga ten times more than western comics. Fucking hate them with a vengeance, fucking hate their stories with a fury, fucking hate them more than Frank Miller's worthless ass ("TRY SIN CITY RHYS, IT'S AWESOME. TRUST US, YOU'RE GUARANTEED TO LIKE IT CAUSE YOU LIKE VIOLENT STUFF. WELL? WAIT, WHAT?! WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU THINK IT'S STUPID EXCEPT FOR THAT ONE MARV STORY, MILLER'S THE GREATEST THING EVER, SOMETHING'S WRONG WITH YOUR BRAIN AND WE CAN'T HELP YOU").

Except for Vagabond. Vagabond is amazing. And as far as X-men goes, I've actually read every storyline ever on wikipedia :lol Wasn't particularly interested in anything other than Omega Red and the Hellfire Club, though :(

READ CHEW YOU DUMB FUCKER

The Boys is entertaining, for sure, but it's kinda scattered--I still don't know what the point of it is, and I've read every issue except for this Wednesday's release. Hellboy is always great, and I loved 100 Bullets.

I've kinda fucked off from all of the Marvel and DC stuff because it's just so convoluted and not worth whatever payoff you get from keeping up with the big storylines. Blackest Night sucked. While we're on the topic of comics that suck: The Walking Dead. It was off to a great start and there were some really good arcs (the Prison, the Governor, to name a couple), but it gets stagnant reeeeally quickly, and it takes a while to recover. Right now, I'm reading in the hopes that it'll get good again, but it's just a bunch of existential crisis bullshit--which can be good, if done well, but Kurtzman isn't a good enough writer for that sort of thing. I loved his Ant-Man stuff, but that had a lot more comedy and a lot fewer characters looking somber and being hopeless.

You can trust me man

I thiiiiink Ennis is planning to go over sixty issues with The Boys, right? He may be taking his sweet time just because he's confident he'll get to finish it

SAM I JUST LOOKED UP CHEW IT IS AWESOME

Hadas what the fuck am I looking at


This is like a concentrated dose of everything manga. Weird ineffective comedy meets violence meets naked people meets bad drawings meets single sentence conversation

This is the big climax of the series, I was hoping it'd make you want to read the whole thing, I guess that plan backfired. Ichi the Killer is a pretty complicated psychological series with lots of sadistic titillation that I would think someone who likes Preacher would appreciate. I don't know if I agree with "bad drawings" but your the artist so I'll have to take your word on that.

As far as I saw, Preacher had moments like:
"ONE WORD! SAY ONE FUCKING WORD, AND YOU'RE DEAD!"
"Miss."
"*bang* GODDAMNIT!"


By comparison, that, uh... seemed like a standard, if weirdly presented Japanese character moment where Our Violent Protagonist must reach an epiphany about himself as a person under an eccentric mentor in order to improve his skills in general/learn the next most powerful move so he can defeat his latest nemesis/obstacle


'CAUSE HE'S SPECIAL.

WTF Gris, where'd you get that garbage from what I posted?

I've read alot of manga too man, I know all the tropes. So believe me when I say if I recommend a manga, you may dislike it, but you won't dislike because it's manga.

EDIT: You might hate them for being too Japanese though, I CAN"T HELP THAT.

Awright, I'll give this a shot when I have the time

I love the things Otto posts about, those Japanese horror artists. Fucking fantastic.

Some of that shit's flat-out freakish

we ain't got shit on the japs as far as repressed twisted fuckery goes

That shit ain't repressed. It's fuckin' out there.

gus, you have shitty friends. Preacher was magnificent. Watchmen, however, is probably the most overrated book I have ever read. I've been reading comics since I was five, and in the past 22 years, I haven't found anything that comes close to trumping it.

I picked up the first tpb of Preacher after reading the Weekly review about it here. I enjoyed it so much I had to go out and track down the rest of the series. It was a pretty fun series. I wish I could find another series that was as fun as that one.

Considering #57 just dropped and it's, like, the start of an arc, yeah, it should surpass sixty. Things seem to be heating up, so I guess we'll see what happens, but it's taking forever for shit in the big supe-world to get going. I loved the Wee Hughie stories, but let's get back to the main event, braw!

Edit: Didja get to the issue with the surveillance pictures of The Homelander? Graphic stuff.

Nick, fuck off.