Badmike wrote:
And a little known secret? Some of the best comics ever written are being put out today. Comics actually being written by adults for adults with wonderfully imaginative and beautifully illustrated mature storylines. It's actually a good time to be a comic reader. There's a reason why the intellectually bankrupt film industry keeps raiding the comic book stacks for ideas from Sin City to 300 to Hellboy to the newer versions of Batman, Hulk, Iron Man, Superman, and beyond.
Mike B.
And then I thought, for those that haven't read a comic in a few years, why not throw out a couple of suggestions?
Everything I'll mention is either still available, is available as a trade edition, or will be soon. As a bonus I'll only suggestg comics of this century, as well as only superhero comics.
1. Bendis/Mallev's Daredevil run. Quite simply, the best written and illustrated comic arc in perhaps 20 years, and one of the best of all time. The setup is simple....Matt Murdock is finally outed as Daredevil...but the repercussions, as well as reactions from practically everyone in the Marvel universe, are pure gold. Not to mention, Matt doesn't go quietly...he basically LIES his ass off to keep his personal and professional lives seperate, even as everything crumbles around him...perhaps making him no better than the scum he fights on the streets and in the courtroom? This is one of the few comic arcs I re-read on a regular basis, finding nuances I missed every single time. Superb.
2. The Ultimates 1st series (Mark Millar & Bryan Hitch). A modern re-imagining of the Avengers as if it happened today and not in the 1960s. A little over the top in spots, but the Bryan Hitch art is just great.
3. Green Lantern/Green Lantern Corps Sinestro War. Just finished up, so it'll be a little bit before everything is collected in a trade. A story so big it suits the galaxy spanning powers of the Green Lanterns, as arch villain Sinestro forms his own "Corps" composed of the worst supervillains of the universe (including Superboy-Prime from Crisis on Infinite Earths, the Anti Monitor, and the Cyborg Superman) as they lay planets to waste on their way to destroy Earth. Lots of fun.
4. Green Arrow 2nd series by Kevin Smith & Kevin Hester. The trade of the story "Quiver" has been collected, and it's an absolute textbook example of what a writer has to do when a comic book character is absolutely, positively D E A D.....and they have to bring him back (Arrow had died a pretty violent, on camera death in issue #100-101 of his previous title). Smith does a good job of avoiding any and all cliches and has a unique take on bringing Oliver Queen back to the lands of the living. settin the standard for that old nonsense of bringing back a hero from the dead (makes it interesting to see what Brubaker is going to do with Captain America...)
5. Death of Captain America by Ed Brubaker & Steve Epting. The first 25 issues of Brubaker's take on Cap has been collected, I can't wait to find it in a HPB! The best post cold war cap,
IMO, and another great return from the dead (this time the long gone Bucky Barnes as The Winter Soldier) that I would have absolutely never have thought of handling the way Brubaker did. I trust this guy so much that I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt to see how this entire "Cap is Dead" mess falls out.
6. Astonishing X-Men by Joss Whedon and John Cassaday. Ok, I know the jokes, "Buffy does X-Men" or "X-men meets Firefly". If you love Whedon's stuff on Buffy, Angel and Firefly, you'll love this comic. If you didn't you still might enjoy Whedon's very interesting take on the X-men, as he basically trims the team down to a nice half dozen characters and throws them into all sorts of "It's up to us to save the world" situations so we can hear some classic Whedon dialogue and watch some great Cassaday art come to life.
Well, there are a few starting points, I could also suggest perhaps Marvel's Civil War or DC's Identity Crisis, but these are probably better for the more hard core fan, as the casual fan might be confused by a lot of the references within (and to top it off Civil War is as long as hell as it crossed over into every dang Marvel comic).
Mike B.