Ha. I deserved that one.

You are correct I grew up in Europe (Holland, in fact), but I also used to read a good few American comics as I was doing so. It's not for lack of exposure that I generally dismiss the superhero genre. I'm perfectly aware that there are instances of great storytelling, but much like fantasy I'm just not willing to spend the time wading through the majority of crap to get to the good stuff and even the better ones seem to descend into silliness eventually (especially in movie-form)...

Put it this way: It's not like you can't write good fantasy, but don't you wish game developers turned to something other than orcs & elves once in a while? Also, just because something touches on some heavy subjects doesn't make it profound. If Scooby Doo started dealing with serious issues, it would still be Scooby Doo.


I don't feel where you're from should ever get in the way of broadening your horizon. I actively seek out things that are not familiar. Too much of the same gets boring quick.

Tell you what? You try some French comics, I'll try some more American ones. Perhaps Watchmen, as suggested above, or maybe Sandman, which I've heard some about and sounds intriguing.

But I'm still not reading Spiderman. ;)

And Avengers: The Initiative! :)

Favourite Non-Superhero American Comics/Graphic Novels:
From Hell (Alan Moore, Eddie Campbell; adult)
Lost Girls (Alan Moore, Melinda Gebbie; adult)
V For Vendetta (Alan Moore; David Lloyd; mature)
Global Frequency (Warren Ellis, various artists; mature)
Orbiter (Warren Ellis, Colleen Doran; mature)
Sandman (Neil Gaiman, various artists; mature)
Maus (Art Speigelman; mature)
The Preacher (Garth Ennis, Steve Dillon; mature)

Favourite Superhero American Comics/Graphic Novels:
Planetary (Warren Ellis, John Cassaday; mature)
Promethea (Alan Moore, J.H. Williams III; adult)
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Alan Moore, Kevin O'Neill; adult)
Watchmen (Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons; mature)
Astro City (Kurt Busiek, Brent Anderson; mature)
Concrete (Paul Chadwick; mature)
Jinx (Brian Michael Bendis; mature)

I'll come back and think about European stuff later. Doctor's appointment.
(ETA: Still Thinking...)

Here's the trailer for the Watchmen movie which came out today. I've never read the novel so I literally have no idea what's going on in it, but it does look impressive and if you're a fan you should be excited.

http://www.empireonline.com/video/watchmen/

Well, I may go see it at some point, but I know of one person who definitely won't see it; Alan Moore. As far as he's concerned, there is no way it can be done properly in film, and he also doesn't like the director's work on 300, so he really doesn't think this movie will be a proper representation of the book at all.

But anyway... I'm a huge fan of Alan Moore, but he's notoriously picky. Seemingly nobody liked From Hell, but I thought they did a great job with it, even if they screwed with the main characters of the story to get Johnny Depp into the leading role. It's still not as good as the book, but it did a pretty great job in places. The same can be said for V For Vendetta. Sadly, it doesn't extend to LXG. That film was just awful. Even Sean couldn't save it.

Still, I suspect Watchmen might work out better than Alan thinks.

I wonder what Moore didn't like about 300. I thought it was really good. Also really enjoyed V for Vendetta... but then I haven't read either of the comics, so I suppose I wouldn't know how they compare. They worked as films at any rate.

I just wrote a review for the ten-issue comic book Omega the Unknown. I've never written that sort of thing before for a superhero comic, but the guy who runs this review site found it interesting that I was seeing the whole thing as a metaphor for Asperger's Syndrome, and asked me to write it up. Anyway, yeah, it is a superhero comic about Asperger's Syndrome and it's totally awesome. I can't fairly assess whether it's as good as Avengers: The Initiative, though, because I'm biased toward this one.

The only few comicbooks I own are the series The Crow James O'Barr, which I started to love at around age 11. The owner of a comicbookstore said I need to read Spawn if I liked The Crow, so I need to do that some time. O:
I have a few Silent Hill comics aswell... But seriously, they really suck :(

Otherwise I only have a few mangas by Junji Ito (horror/gore-ish). I'm too cheap to buy Blade of the Immortal by Hiroaki Samura-- but I will some day! I really adore that manga. (and I am really disappointed with the anime that just came out-- even though I knew it couldn't stand up to the beautiful manga's art from the very beginning it was announced.)

Hehe... I realize it's mostly american comics discussion here, but it dooooes say anime in the title, so... 8D

I need to discover more comic books. So far, the only stuff I can think of that's really grabbed me has been Sandman, Maus, and Persepolis (oh, and Understanding Comics, if that counts). I'm always interested in finding more comics that are emotionally complex, non-superhero-based, and just generally groundbreaking and interesting, so if anyone can suggest anything, I'm all ears. Stuff written by women is a plus. And I don't like porn, so the "adult" stuff is pretty much out.

A side discussion: what makes something "mature", what makes it "adult", and what makes it neither? And does liking things from the "neither" category mean you don't have sophisticated-enough taste? :P

Have you tried Fables? It's a wonderful series, through and through.

As a general rule "mature" comics will involve the same sorts of issues that would earn a film an adult only rating (15 or 18 in the UK rating system) Violence (such as gangster revenge series Love and Bullets) black magic (such as long-running series Hellblazer) even sex (though only as an element of story. See "adult" below)

"Adult" comics are drawn porn. A perusal of this section in Forbidden Planet (a London comics shop) showed me there are artists with a lot of talent in this area excepting a somewhat suspect grasp of realistic anatomy. :P

Liking comics in the "neither" category just means you like those comics. I read a lot of books aimed at children and not being "mature" or "adult" in content doesn't stop them being well-written stories. A good story is a good story regardless of intended audience.

Speaking of which, Bone by Jeff Smith is the best comic I've ever read. I wish they'd release 'em in larger color editions.

Thanks for the recommendation. I'll keep an eye out for it.

I forgot that one! (And to think I own the whole one-volume edition, and even sort of worked on the games...)

You may want to try Franquin (Gaston) or Goscinny/Uderzo (Asterix)... both are good in different ways, though they have wit and wonderful art in common. Avoid the later Asterix comics though. Not the same without Goscinny.

One comic that I loved reading as a kid, but is veeery local and hasn't I think ever been translated from Dutch is "Douwe Dabbert", originally published in Donald Duck magazine. It's set some time around what is known in Holland as the "Golden Age" back around when we were off pillaging Indonesia.

It's about a dwarf called Douwe who travels about carrying only a knapsack which has the magical quality of always producing just the one item he needs most without further explanation, leading often to much pondering what on earth he's to do with *this*... While mostly a rich historical setting it has heavy touches of fantasy with magic in particular playing an important role. Most of the stories are set in some part of Holland but Douwe also travels as far as Africa and the North Pole by way of mysterious bridge in a cavern below a witch' house... his traveling companion, for a time, is the world's last living dodo.

Great art-style and very imaginative stories.

http://www.ninjadodo.net/temp/wijn_douwedabbert.jpg

Oh, and that reminds me- I love Carl Barks's first few Uncle Scrooge comics. It's a shame nothing like that's being written anymore. Though I guess there might be European comics like that and I just wouldn't know.

I good 'graphic novel' I read last month was 'Pride of Baghdad' about 4 lions (2F 1M 1Cubb) who escaped their cages when a bomb struck the bag dad Zoo (true story). But the graphic novel is basically a fictional 'account' of what when on after that. This novel is not for kids.

Yeah, Brian K. Vaughan's good. Personally, my favorite thing he's written is Runaways, about a group of teenagers who find out their parents are supervillains. (But just the first 18-issue volume of it. It went downhill after that.) Pride of Baghdad's good too. He's most famous for Y: The Last Man, which was entertaining but not nearly as good as it's usually made out to be. I don't know if I'd want to reread that. And Ex Machina started out really interesting but quickly got stale. I didn't particularly care for any of his numerous Marvel miniseries. Anyway, I doubt we'll get a lot of new comics from him since he's working on Lost.

Oh, I forgot about The Hood. That was very good, and the character's still being used in Marvel Comics today.

Is anyone here familiar with Sean McKeever's work? I used to love everything he did. He was always good at characterizations, though maybe not so great with plots.

His best series was Mary Jane (and then Mary Jane: Homecoming and then Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane), where he was playing out the whole Spider-Man teenage soap-opera from Mary Jane's perspective. That was phenomenal. In each issue he'd have several storylines running through simultaneously, linked thematically, and that issue would be emotionally satisfying on its own, but then it would lead right into the next issue. And if I pull out a random issue just for a second and start looking at a few panels, chances are I'm not going to stop reading until I've got all the way to the last issue. It was really good.

He also did an Inhumans series which also was a teen drama. He's good at teen dramas. Except this one was a teen dramas about aliens. Really really fun.

The thing with his writing is, you really come to like all the characters, and with all his endings you want it to go on forever because you want to see what happens to them next. All the endings are unsatisfying like that.

So he did all that good stuff for Marvel, and then DC had him sign an exclusive and since then everything he's done has been crap. He was involved in DC's rightfully-hated Countdown weekly series, he went on and off Birds of Prey too quickly to do anything with it, except to repeat some female-brainwashing clichés, and now he's working on the utterly pointless Teen Titans. I blame his editors- they must be holding him back.

This one looks intriguing. I'll have to look out for it as well.