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Post by assbeard1013 on Jul 1, 2012 4:20:19 GMT -5
Figured I would start a thread for those interested in comic books. I start off by suggesting my all time favorite comic book run.
Before WATCHMEN, Alan . Moore made his debut in the U.S. comic book industry with the revitalization of the horror comic book THE SWAMP THING. His deconstruction of the classic monster stretched the creative boundaries of the medium and became one of the most spectacular series in comic book history. .
Book One begins with the story "The Anatomy Lesson," a haunting origin story that reshapes SWAMP THING mythology with terrifying revelations that begin a journey of discovery and adventure that will take him across the stars and beyond.
Don't judge this series on the horribly campy Movie it spawned. This is high art that help catapult Moore into the star he is today. There would be no Watchmen without this book.
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Post by assbeard1013 on Jul 2, 2012 8:50:11 GMT -5
Next ill recommend a title that originated from Saga of the Swamp Thing. Hellblazer is a .mature reader's comic book, published monthly by DC/Vertigo. The tales told therein are based around the con-cman come magus John Constantine. Born and raised in Liverpool, England, Constantine's childhood was less than ideal. His mother died giving birth to him -something which his father, Thomas, could never forgive him for.
John became interested in the occult at an early age, as a school boy he went so far as to curse his own father using his bare bones knowledge of magic. This curse would come back to haunt the adult Constantine when his father dies but is unable to pass on to whatever passes for the afterlife because of that curse made so long ago. Trapped as a ghost, the shade of Thomas Constantine would haunt his grandchild Gemma until John steps in to break the curse he made as a boy.
John's rough formative years led to his running away to London on several occasions and eventually he settled in the nation's capital with the help of his best friend Chas. It is here that Constantine has spent the bulk of his adult years, roaming the streets and becoming involved in more than his fair share of bad weirdness.
John has a strong knowledge of the occult and at times he appears to wield strong magical powers but he has also become known as something of a con-man, more likely to talk himself out of trouble than pull a rabbit out of a hat. Charastmatic in his own 'wide-boy' way, John makes friends easy but his dangerous lifestyle has left most of those who know him as such dead.
Despite his strong affinity for London, and his background as a native of Liverpool, the most important event in John's life actually occurred in the dingy confines of the Casanova Club in Newcastle, wherein Constantine met the child Astra and doomed her soul to hell.
This title has been running for over 20 years and has many great trade paperback. Original Sins and Dangerous Habits being the best in my opinion. Once again like Swamp Thing do not judge this series based on the horrible Constantine movie. This is true horror with comics biggest bastard in the lead role.
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Post by jmodlinc on Jul 2, 2012 10:52:24 GMT -5
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Post by maffy on Jul 2, 2012 16:01:45 GMT -5
Thanks for these suggestions. I've got a fair few graphic novels and comics but there's a lot of stuff I miss, especially in the horror genre, so I think this is a really cool idea for a thread.
It's a terrible thing that I've never checked out Alan Moore's Swamp Thing - after reading your post I noticed there were some collections released last year so I'm going to check those out as soon as I can. The artwork looks superb - just my kind of thing. I'm not a huge fan of the artwork in modern comics, the more mainstream ones anyway, it just looks too mass produced (I know it is mass produced!). I like stuff that looks more...hand drawn.
I like a lot of modern indie comics (the kind of stuff that (Canada-based!) publishers Drawn & Quarterly put out) but the only kind of horror-ish stuff in that vein that I can think of comes from the twisted mind of Charles Burns. If I was looking for a comparison to his work in the world of film, David Lynch might be the way to go. He's (gradually) putting out a new series of books which started with X-ed Out just over a year ago, with part 2 The Hive coming out soon. X-ed Out:
Meet Doug, aspiring young artist. He's having a strange night. A weird buzzing noise on the other side of the wall has woken him up, and there across the room, next to a huge hole torn out of the bricks, sits his beloved cat Inky. Who died years ago. But that's no longer the case, as he slinks through the hole, beckoning Doug to follow. So he does. Now there's no turning back. What the heck is going on? To say much more would spoil the creepy, Burnsian fun.
Thanks Amazon. I'd also especially recommend Burns' Black Hole which came out in 2005. Set in 70's Seattle, it's, on the surface at least, about a teen plague which turns people into monsters or at the very least causes them to grow new body parts. It's an eerie portrait of the nature of high school alienation. I'm not being clever, it says that on the dust jacket of the book.
I thoroughly enjoyed Junji Ito's Museum of Terror series from a few years back. Just remember picking one up in a Forbidden Planet and was hooked straight away. It's really twisted, hallucinatory manga. It's pretty graphic at times, stunningly drawn, genuinely creepy in parts. I think there was a Japanese film either based on it or this is based on that, anyway, it's called Tomie and supposedly not very good. If you like Japanese horror I'd recommend Museum of Terror highly...
And I still love my EC Comics and DC's House of Mystery collections - I know they're old fashioned and creaky as hell, but they're beautifully drawn - there were some insanely talented artists working on these back in the day.
Anyway. keep those recommendations coming and thanks again.
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Post by assbeard1013 on Jul 2, 2012 20:38:58 GMT -5
Oh I love Crossed. Its crazy extreme. Definitely not for everyone. Fans that dont mind extreme gore and taboo subjects will love it. I plan on doing tons of suggestions. I've been collecting comic books for about 25 years so I've read a lot of books. Fans of genre usually enjoy comics tremendously if they give them a chance.
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Post by assbeard1013 on Jul 3, 2012 4:40:53 GMT -5
Next Suggestion: The Sandman
Taken from Wikipedia: The Sandman's main character is Dream, the Lord of Dreams (also known, to various characters throughout the series, as Morpheus, Oneiros, the Shaper, the Shaper of Form, Lord of the Dreaming, the Dream King, Dream-Sneak, Dream Cat, Murphy, Kai'ckul, and Lord L'Zoril), who is essentially the anthropomorphic personification of dreams. At the start of the series, Morpheus is captured by an occult ritual and held prisoner for 70 years. Morpheus escapes in the modern day and, after avenging himself upon his captors, sets about rebuilding his kingdom, which has fallen into disrepair in his absence. Gaiman himself has summarized the plot of the series (in the foreword to Endless Nights) as "The Lord of Dreams learns that one must change or die, and makes his decision."
The character's initial haughty and often cruel manner begins to soften after his years of imprisonment at the start of the series, but the challenge of undoing past sins and changing old ways is an enormous one for a being who has been set in his ways for billions of years. In its beginnings, the series is a very dark horror comic. Later, the series evolves into an elaborate fantasy series, incorporating elements of classical and contemporary mythology, ultimately placing its protagonist in the role of a tragic hero.
The storylines primarily take place in the Dreaming, Morpheus's realm, and the waking world, with occasional visits to other domains, such as Hell, Faerie, Asgard, and the domains of the other Endless. Many use the contemporary United States of America and the United Kingdom as a backdrop.
I cannot recommend this series enough. Its truly fine literature that have many comparing Neil Gaiman to Shakespeare. This is the type of story that people a few hundred years from now will still be reading and dissecting. Simply amazing stuff. Norman Mailer, Stephen King, Clive Barker and many other writers never missed an issue. The story itself is 75 issues long or 11 trade paperbacks. My favorites are volume 2 and 11.
Read it and thank me later.
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Post by assbeard1013 on Jul 5, 2012 2:05:55 GMT -5
Next Suggestion: Maus
Taken from wikipedia:
Maus is a graphic novel by American cartoonist Art Spiegelman. In it, Spiegelman interviews his father about his experiences as a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor. The book makes use of postmodern techniques in its presentation, most strikingly in its depiction of different races of humans as different kinds of animals, with Jews as mice, Germans as cats and Poles as pigs. It has been difficult to classify, sometimes being labeled memoir, biography, history, fiction, autobiography, or a mix of genres. It was the first comic book to win a Pulitzer Prize.
The story alternates between two timelines. In the "present" frame tale, beginning in 1978 in Rego Park, New York, Spiegelman talks with his father about his Holocaust experiences, gathering material for the Maus project he is about to begin. In the "past", Spiegelman depicts his father's experiences, starting in the years immediately leading up to World War II. Much of the story revolves around Spiegelman's troubled relationship with his father, and the absence of his mother, who committed suicide when he was 20, and whose own written accounts of Auschwitz were destroyed by her grief-stricken husband.
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Post by assbeard1013 on Jul 5, 2012 8:16:49 GMT -5
Suggestion: Y the Last Man
Y: The Last Man is a comic about the last man on the planet Earth, Yorrick Brown and his male pet monkey, Ampersand. The first trade provides a number of possible reasons males have all mysteriously dropped dead; virus, an odd scientific birth and other reasons are given throughout the series. I find this series has high literary value because I regard it as a largely feminist work. With this comic we get to examine what the world would be like if men did not exist and women were free of gender bias. However, Yorrick and his male pet monkey are the only males to survive whatever it was that caused the world’s men to perish. Brian K. Vaughan takes readers on an incredible journey giving them new clues as to why Yorrick and Ampersand may exist, and introducing them to the dangers of feminine society.
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Post by assbeard1013 on Jul 5, 2012 8:20:06 GMT -5
Suggestion: 100 Bullets
100 Bullets is probably one of the grittiest crime epic’s I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading. The genius creative team behind this series has since gone on to do other comics together and is perhaps one of the best Writer/Artist pairings in comics today. Brian Azzarello tells the tale of a mysterious G-man named Agent Graves who solves stranger’s problems for them by appearing with a gun and 100 bullets, every last one of them untraceable. Eduardo Risso’s bleak but enticing art sucks readers in to the world of 100 Bullets from the very first page and doesn’t let go the entire time. Each of these stories focuses on a person who has some sort of unwanted stress in their life, someone they need gone and what they decide to do with the 100 bullets Agent Graves gives them.
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Post by assbeard1013 on Jul 5, 2012 8:25:41 GMT -5
Suggestion: Preacher
The story follows Texas preacher Jesse Custer (initials JC, modern-day Christ, but BAD ASS) who has the pleasure of acquiring the word of God when he becomes possessed with the offspring of an angel and a demon. The word of God doesn’t mean he has a bunch of lunatics following him around and drinking his blood and eating pieces of his flesh but rather, the amazing ability to command people to his will. With a few words, Jesse Custer possesses the ability to make anybody do as he says which leads to hilarity at every turn. My personal fav is when he tells an overbearing conservative police officer to ‘Go eff himself’. Jesse develops into an amazing hero throughout this series and essentially does the work of a God that has abandoned Heaven and hidden himself somewhere on Earth. Jesse uses his power to do good and help folk out along the way and goes in search of a cowardly God in order to make God realize the error of his ways in abandoning Heaven. Jesse is accompanied by his girlfriend, Tulip O’Hare and the ultra-cool Irish vampire Cassidy on this wild road-trippin’ adventure across America’s heartland.
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misterd
Frightful Fiend
Posts: 1,220
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Post by misterd on Jul 7, 2012 23:35:08 GMT -5
Figured I would start a thread for those interested in comic books. I start off by suggesting my all time favorite comic book run. Before WATCHMEN, Alan . Moore made his debut in the U.S. comic book industry with the revitalization of the horror comic book THE SWAMP THING. His deconstruction of the classic monster stretched the creative boundaries of the medium and became one of the most spectacular series in comic book history. . Book One begins with the story "The Anatomy Lesson," a haunting origin story that reshapes SWAMP THING mythology with terrifying revelations that begin a journey of discovery and adventure that will take him across the stars and beyond. Don't judge this series on the horribly campy Movie it spawned. This is high art that help catapult Moore into the star he is today. There would be no Watchmen without this book. Technically the movie spawned the comic. That is, the character had existed prior to the film, but hadn't had his own book in some time. With the film they relaunched the character with his own title. It was about to be cancelled before they handed it over to Moore, who completely changed the tone and quality of the book. |
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