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DC comics worth reading

Started by madhair60, December 08, 2020, 07:30:29 PM

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madhair60

Hello. I read Batman at present because he's good. I'd like to know, historically, which DC comics are good and worth reading. Most of the shit I liked is Bats-adjacent, but I also like Grant Morrison stuff (Animal Man and Green Lantern waiting to be read), I've enjoyed a tiny bit of more modern Flash stuff, but little Justice League, Superman. I liked Red Son. I hear Morrison's Justice League is extremely good too.

El Unicornio, mang


magval

Hitman. Garth Ennis just. Do Hitman first.

The absolute best DC is Swamp Thing by Alan Moore, available in six handy volumes.

Otherwise, I find it really hard to recommend DC stuff because unlike Marvel where you can say 'Miller on Daredevil, Walt on Thor, Claremont X-Men' etc, DC is better known for memorable 'books', like Year One and Red Son and so on.

Most of the long runs (Denis O Neil on Batman or example) are really badly collected by DC, so it's hard to get decent comprehensive collections of Batman stuff before the 70s.

This applies to DC generally, I always found. I like to sink my teeth into five-year runs and that's not easy with mainstream DC stuff. But Vertigo is far better for this.

Morrison's JLA is ace, yeah.

Kelvin

Morrison's Justice League is really good. Just inventive, silly fun of the best sort. Probably my favourite Morrison thing, actually.

chveik

don't read much superhero stuff but Jeff Lemire's Animal Man run is good

Sin Agog

Mike Carey's Lucifer is the only Vertigo series I've gone back to read multiple times.  It does start out very different to how it ends, so stick with it for a bit.

Shade the Changing Man sometimes felt like a last, triumphant counter-cultural gasp.

There was a period there where Karen Berger was the name I'd seen the most times without having any idea what she looked like.

Alberon

The Sandman.

The Grant Morrison Doom Patrol, and the recent Young Animal imprint run of the same title are really worth it too.

13 schoolyards

They've been collecting the Alan Grant / Norm Breyfogle Batmans from the 90s recently - I remember that being a really great run of solid Bat-focused stories.

The big classic Vertigo series (Preacher, Sandman, Transmetropolitian, The Invisibles) are all definitely worth a look, though some have dated more than others.

Mister Six

Quote from: madhair60 on December 08, 2020, 07:30:29 PM
Hello. I read Batman at present because he's good. I'd like to know, historically, which DC comics are good and worth reading. Most of the shit I liked is Bats-adjacent, but I also like Grant Morrison stuff (Animal Man and Green Lantern waiting to be read), I've enjoyed a tiny bit of more modern Flash stuff, but little Justice League, Superman. I liked Red Son. I hear Morrison's Justice League is extremely good too.

Morrison's JLA is great, but repeatedly interrupted and messed with by nonsense crossovers so suddenly Superman is blue and has electric powers for no reason. Still ace though.

I assume you've read Morrison's epic Batman run? If not: that. At one point it intersects with Final Crisis, which I love but is an acquired taste. I don't know if the trade collections are still a fucking mess but double check the correct reading order.

There's Morrison's All-Star Superman, of course. And his Animal Man and Doom Patrol. Rachel Pollack's run on Doom Patrol, which came after Morrison's, was also excellent but sadly truncated by cancellation, and the planned trade collection was cancelled. Oh, Morrison's spin-off, Flex Mentallo: Man of Muscle Mystery is also great, although sadly the trade was recoloured in rather shit fashion.

Away from Morrison... Gotham Central was GREAT - a police procedural following the cops who have to put up with Batman interfering with their cases. Homicide: Life on the Street meets, er, Batman, basically.

Also set in Gotham but totally different in tone, Hitman is the best thing Garth Ennis ever did. Fantastic mix of daftness and pathos, with a great Superman issue. It spun out of his run on The Demon, which is also fun but I don't know if it was ever collected. Hitman had two spin-off follow-up miniseries,[nb]Plus a brief JLA Classified arc, but I think that's in the Hitman collections. [/nb] All-Star Section 8 (which is middling) and Six Pack & Dogwelder: Hard-Travelin' Heroez (which is hilarious).

Interested in stuff from the Vertigo line? Some of that was in (and out, and back in again) continuity with DC:

The Sandman is still the best thing Neil Gaiman ever wrote. Some superhero appearances (though mostly obscure characters) early on, but it quickly becomes its own wonderful, fantastical thing. Truly epic without losing track of the humanity that makes stories worthwhile. The spin-off, Lucifer (the Mike Carey one, not the revivals, which I haven't read), is also fantastic. Very different to The Sandman in tone, but it would have to be, given the protagonist.

Hellblazer is great until Mike Carey's run ends, but that's still 200+ issues of ace comics. Some Swamp Thing appearances, and Zatanna turns up at John's 40th birthday party and smokes a massive bifta. Ignore almost all the shit revivals, but the recent The Sandman Presents: John Constantine: Hellblazer by Si Spurrier was on a par with the best of the original run. And then it got cancelled. Natch.

Oh yeah, Swamp Thing - but just the Alan Moore issues (and that one trade of the early pulpy Len Wein stories, which are fun).

And I dunno if they ever properly collected it but Peter Milligan's Shade: The Changing Man is fucking stonking. Mostly self-contained, but Constantine appears in one arc, so it's just about in continuity.

Mister Six

Preacher, mentioned above, isn't in DC continuity but DOES feature a John Constantine cameo. See if you can spot him!

H-O-W-L

It is still Batman, but the No Man's Land run is very, very good.