What comic books/graphic novels are you reading at the moment?

[alexvss]

Well, it was good, and didn't need a reread of the previous volumes, but I'm not sure it added a great deal to the sense of story progression. Anyone else reading this series?

I'm reading it. In installments .
It has great art and good worldbuilding; the problem is the characterisation. The authors seem to take the "strong woman" trope too literally . The MC speaks the f-word in every sentence and seems to be in an eternal PMS.
It has many good elements; but the characters aren't characters at all, they're caricatures.

 

[HareBrain]

the characters aren't characters at all, they're caricatures.

I think the main trouble with it might be vagueness: there's so much mystery surrounding the main characters and power players, it's hard to get a handle on what they're about, so an important part of their character is missing.

I agree the MC isn't very appealing: she has little to no sense of humour, not a great deal of sympathy/empathy with anyone, and it's hard to fathom why other characters are so loyal to her, except that she's less horrible than a lot of the others.

 

[Overread]

Sometimes that's all that matters.

I've read it in bits but I really need to give it one big read through, though I'm sort of waiting for Book 2 to be published to go with my Book 1

 

[Fiberglass Cyborg]

Carrying on my current X-Men obsession: there's a new paperback edition of "House of M", an early 2000s Avengers crossover. I'd been curious about the story as I knew it had massive impact on the following 10 years or so of "X-Men." So literally all I knew about it in advance was the ending. I like it- a fast-paced, well-drawn story in which an out-of-control Wanda Maximov has changed the entire timeline. Unusually for such an alternate-reality story, not everything is put back neatly at the end. My only gripe is, with that many superhero characters crowding the page some of them get a mite short-changed.

 

[dask]

Found this in a thrift store:

 

[alexvss]

I'm coming back to I am a Hero, a zombie manga. It's great and funny, particularly at the beggining. The only problem is all the work to read all the 250+ chapters of this thing.

 

[Toby Frost]

The Fade Out by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. This is a very adult crime story about a screenwriter investigating a murder in 1950s Hollywood.

I've got very mixed feelings about this. On one hand, the drawing and writing are very good and suit the style and story well. On the other, it's like every noir Hollywood story ever: a real case of a small pack of cards being shuffled. The banal cleanliness of the movies inevitably hides total corruption and seediness: murder, blackmail, sexual assault and everything else the powerful get up to when they can't be touched. Like a lot of noir, it's hard to say if it's honest, tawdry or both. The ending is weak, I thought. It's an impressive journey, if you can stomach the scenery, but the destination is a disappointment.

 

[dask]

 

[JunkMonkey]

Just picked up Batman Hush in our village's freebie book-swap place. What a pile of....

According to a few minutes research on the interweb, and the pages of self-congratulatory guff from the creators that bookend the comic, this was an important well-received piece of work - hell they even made an animated movie of it.

I'm glad I grew up when comics were fun.

 

[alexvss]

Steampunk Palin. Extremely bad. I actually picked this one up because someone in the forum said it was bad... but I thought he meant bad taste and not bad bad! At least it's very short.

Time to read Lady Mechanika to compensate.

 

[alexvss]

Just read the first volume of A Righteous Thrist for Vengeance, from Image Comics. It's by one of my favorite comic-book writers, Rick Remender. He uses few to no words. It's a great use of graphic narrative, which is why we read comics in the first place. The problem is that the issues few too short.

 

[Fiberglass Cyborg]

Just finished re-reading all 8000-odd pages of the cult webcomic "Homestuck." Still pretty intense. I understood more of the time-travel weirdness second time around. I'm also midway through "X of Swords"- stunning artwork, some great issues, but feels slightly hampered by the need to be a Grand Crossover Event. It digs deeper into Apocalypse's origins, and largely follows on from events in "Excalibur."

 

[Bramandin]

I have some webcomic recommendations.

Digger It's a portal story, except she's still on the same planet.

Skin Deep Urban fantasy where a lot of mythological creatures are real.

Freefall Sci-Fi comic about an uplifted wolf, artificial intelligence with references to Asimov, and a non-humanoid alien.

 

[alexvss]

BRZRKR. Comic written by Keanu Reeves himself. An immortal man (illustrated as Reeves) is used by The US government for special missions, like overthrowing governments and such. He kills Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro in the first issue.

It's basically a more brutal, bloodier John Wick, and I want it adapted to the big screen already. Oh, apparently, there's already an adaptation in the works at Netflix.

 

[alexvss]

Just read the first two TPBs of Descender, by Jeff Lemire (Sweet Tooth, The Nobody). It's a great space opera, with great worldbuilding (not sure if I can still call it that) and a lot of emotion. The art--painted, not penciled--is not much to my liking, and I almost dropped right in the beggining. But I'm glad I kept reading, for it is indeed a great story--as always is with Lemire.

 

[Swank]

WildC.A.T.S. and Wildstorm

 

[alexvss]

Sentient. Yet another one by Jeff Lemire. This guy writes crazy fast! And with quality too.

Earth is almost uninhabitable, so humans build a colony in space. In a ship full of families to "boost the population" of the colony, every single adult is assassinated (including the assassin), so the kids have to survive with the help of the ship's AI.

Not a single line of dialogue or frame is put to waste; everything matters. I'd just say it's a little derivative and it's not as innovative as I hoped. It reminded me of Netflix's I am Mother a lot.

 

[alexvss]

Chainsaw Man, arguably the best ongoing manga today, is back for its second part! And I'm happy to say that it's as good as the first. It's funny and violent at the same time. It's full of dark humor from the very first page. This first chapter was the origin story of a new villain, and I'm so excited to see her clashing with Chainsaw Man.

 

[alexvss]

Black Paradox. A group of four problematic individuals meet at a website and decide to commit suicide together. In each chapter, they try to do it, but something weird happens--like the stomach of one of them being transformed into an uncanny portal to the spirit world so he keeps vomiting stones that contain the souls of people, just to name one--, and they have to try again.

It's a Junji Ito manga that somehow went under my radar. I really thought I had read everything he's ever produced (except for his adaptation of No Longer Human because I can't find it anywhere). And I'm glad because I can experience this for the first time!

 

[HareBrain]

Inspired by the launch of Amazon's show (which I can't yet watch) I've reread the whole of Paper Girls. Whereas on first read I found the last volume underwhelming and confusing, I now think it works really well. However, I have doubts how well its particular quality (it's a deliberate anticlimax, in a way) will work with a big-budget TV series.