Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 28, 2024, 03:38:13 PM

Login with username, password and session length

What are some all-time classic comics, manga and graphic novels?

Started by Mister Six, May 10, 2021, 09:14:40 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

willbo

I always thought Tezuka's Buddha looked beautiful but I always put off reading it because I thought it would be a little boring and heavy going. Been meaning to read it for years now

sevendaughters

oh I really like Usagi Yojimbo by Stan Sakai. Just got the first of the anthologies and went from there. Beautiful, especially considering it's about a rabbit who is a wandering samurai.

kalowski

Great stuff here. Can I add
If we're talking Daniel Clowes then Wilson is amazing, even if he is the most horrible creation.
I love Jeff Lemire and can particularly recommend Essex County and Roughneck. Just received the final trade paperback of his Gideon Falls run (with Andrea Sorrentino).
Glad I saw Jimmy Corrigan mentioned. I think Chris Ware is great.
Jason Lutes wrote an amazing book called Berlin that is just wonderful and challenging and historical.

In addition to the other superhero books I'd say Mark Waid's Irredeemable is worth reading. Imagine if someone with Superman like powers just went "Fuck it" and stopped being the hero.

Mister Six

Ooh Irredeemable somehow reminded of a couple of superhero books I've been meaning to read for yonks but had forgotten about: Astro City and Starman.

garbed_attic

Quote from: willbo on May 13, 2021, 07:55:37 AM
I always thought Tezuka's Buddha looked beautiful but I always put off reading it because I thought it would be a little boring and heavy going. Been meaning to read it for years now

Tezuka's never boring though - tbh I'd say his main issue was a tendency to cram too many daft jokes and incident into his more serious stories.

Video Game Fan 2000

The Book of Human Insects is probably the best place to start for Tezuka.



bakabaka

Quote from: Mister Six on May 10, 2021, 09:14:40 PM
I just got done with Akira (FANTASTIC, especially if you know the film backwards as it's quite different in many ways) and have ordered the first volume of Dave Sim's Cerebus. I'd actually forgotten all about Cerebus even though I read so much about it in the late 90s and early 00s.
Cerebus picks up dramatically after the first volume, so keep going if you find yourself flagging.

I've not read it since the comics first came out[nb]Cerebus and Howard the Duck are the only comics I bought the full run of as they came out monthly, back when I could afford to buy comics.[/nb] but I would be interested to hear your thoughts on the Roach. He was used by Sim to parody the current 'big thing' in comics, so I'm wondering how well that translates thirty-odd years after the event. My favourite section was when he was having a go at Frank Miller's Daredevil, with all of its torture/pain porn[nb]that has finally become the mainstream with comics on TV like the early Green Arrow shows and Daredevil, not to mention The Boys and Invincible [/nb].



It was only while looking for that page that I came across the idea that the Cerebus story finished at issue 200, with the rest being Sim's bizarre interpretation of Judaic religion. So you may want to stop there. Otherwise, I hope you enjoy the journey. The artwork picks up massively once Gerhard joins sim, and by Church and State his work is stellar.

letsgobrian

Quote from: Mister Six on May 13, 2021, 04:13:03 PM
Ooh Irredeemable somehow reminded of a couple of superhero books I've been meaning to read for yonks but had forgotten about: Astro City and Starman.

Starman is great until its editor Archie Goodwin dies. It then takes a nose dive before recovering a little. Goodwin was an all time great editor, as indicated by the output of the likes of James Robinson & Jeph Loeb when he wasn't editing them.

kalowski


Mister Six

Quote from: bakabaka on May 13, 2021, 09:26:13 PM
I would be interested to hear your thoughts on the Roach. He was used by Sim to parody the current 'big thing' in comics, so I'm wondering how well that translates thirty-odd years after the event.

Cheers, I'll let you know, although I don't think The Boys is very torture-porny, just very violent and gory.

Quote from: letsgobrian on May 13, 2021, 09:41:25 PM
Starman is great until its editor Archie Goodwin dies. It then takes a nose dive before recovering a little. Goodwin was an all time great editor, as indicated by the output of the likes of James Robinson & Jeph Loeb when he wasn't editing them.

I'll read that with a mild sense of trepidation then!

samadriel

Quote from: bakabaka on May 12, 2021, 07:00:58 AM
For a proper classic, look no further than Little Nemo by Winsor MacKay. Just over a hundred years old now, it was groundbreaking in its development of the visual language of comics and still looks as good as anything since. The only problem with it is the dialogue - MacKay wasn't that good at writing in the vernacular and the language has changed a lot since 1910, so it can read as a bit clunky. But the absolutely gorgeous artwork more than makes up for it.

There are several collections out there these days, as well as the tribute Dream a Little Dream[nb]Don't buy it from Amazon if you can help it, but if you do, do it via Neil's affiliate link so at least he gets some of the hefty price tag.[nb]And it's not really written by Grehard; that's a mistake that has been replicated by most sellers now despite him only doing the first picture (which is why he was listed first and then taken as the only writer)[/nb][/nb] by some fantastic modern comics authors/artists which, amongst other things gives you a feel for the sheer size of the originals. It's the same size as they were, broadsheet, which is about A3! It doesn't fit on any of my shelves and is too heavy to hold while reading for more than a handful of pages at a time.

I looked it up on archive.org, and found a downloadable collection which I shall peruse at my leisure. Thanks for recommending it.

bakabaka

Quote from: Mister Six on May 13, 2021, 11:18:51 PM
Cheers, I'll let you know, although I don't think The Boys is very torture-porny, just very violent and gory.
I think you're right; The Boys doesn't revel in it the way that Miller did/does and Invincible at least has a point to the pain that isn't Miller's "Ooh, how manly and stoical my characters are." I'm sure there are other, better examples but I don't read as many comics as I did while working in a comic shop.

And another correction - Little Nemo was originally 40 x 53 cm which is almost A2, not A3. Newspapers were enormous back in the day!

studpuppet

Quote from: kalowski on May 13, 2021, 01:46:21 PM
Great stuff here.

Agreed - I love threads like this. There are basically no wrong answers, and my list this time is probably a third longer than last time, based on recommendations from people here when we had a similar thread a couple of years ago.

Video Game Fan 2000

Fav superhero stuff is Ditko's original Spiderman, Alan Moore's Swamp Thing and Morrison's run of Doom Patrol especially Musclebound. Obv stuff but no one has said them yet.

Fav horror is the obv pick of Junji Ito's Tomei although I want to shout for Maruo's Doctor Ingumai too. I don't go as wild for the gross out panel horror mangas as soom do but the good stuff is undeniably brilliant. Ito's Frankenstein is exceptional for something a bit more low key but still jitter inducing.

Big Eldo Yoshimizu fan for the naked ladies and explosion stuff.

Video Game Fan 2000

I could read Strontium Dog all day. The really early stuff before they introduced Durham Red and all. Shooting Thatcherites on dead planets and hitting monsters with a hammer.

badaids


Most of the Dredd mega epics from the mid 80s to 90s are incredible. Oz and Necropolis are the ones that stick in my mind. What they don't capture though is that many of the other Dredd stories and other stuff in 2000ad at the time all built into them, most notably with The Dead Man. The segue from that into Necropolis is the single biggest mint blown event I have ever read.

13 schoolyards

Speaking of 2000ad, anything at all by John "Judge Dredd" Wagner is great. I've a soft spot for his often overlooked 90s crime stuff - A History of Violence, the comedy flip side in The Bogie Man, and especially Button Man, the first book of which is brilliant.

The second book isn't quite as good, but gets bonus points for having the ruthless killer main character being such a relentless killer that he straight-up kills everyone he comes up against, even while his bosses (who literally run a murder sport) are saying "hang on a bit, maybe slow down with the killing".

Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: studpuppet on May 12, 2021, 11:26:08 PM
In no particular order (and repeating lots of the above suggestions):

Jimmy Corrigan
Building Stories
Batman - Killing Joke
Dark Knight Returns
Batman - Arkham Asylum
Blankets
Habib
Lost Girls
From Hell
Watchmen
V For Vendetta
Alice In Sunderland
Tale Of One Bad Rat
Berlin (Jason Lutes)
Persepolis
Buddha (Osamu Tezuka)
Chew
Fun Home
Palestine
Safe Area Gorazde
Locke & Key
Maus
Pim & Francie
Richard Stark's Parker
Sandman
Superman - Red Son
Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service
Manhattan Projects
Animosity
Y - The Last Man

There's some really great recommendations there, I've not read them all (Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, Pim & Francie and Animosity being the main three I really need to rectify) but the majority that you mention I loved.

I never did finish Chew though, after reading the first 54 issues I for some unknown reason missed the final six, does it end well?

The majority of my favourite series have already been mentioned but I'd also recommend

Jeff Lemire's Descender (and the frustrating delayed Ascender)
Jason Aaron's Thor run (I'm not normally fond of Marvel, but I think he did some really fun things with the character)
Shutter
Paper Girls
Peter Milligan's Shade The Changing Man
Rachel Rising by Terry Moore (was a big fan of this)
Phonogram by Kieran Gillen
The Wicked + The Divine
The Vision by Tom King
Mister Miracle by Tom King (though I've issues with the ending)
I Kill Giants by Joe Kelly
Trillium by Jeff Lemire

bakabaka

The Bojeffries Saga - a very, very English surreal horror comedy by Alan Moore and Steve Parkhouse. Originally published sporadically over several years at the back of other independent comics (all of which I accidentally bought at the time) it reads kind of like a League of Gentlemen prototype. Probably the funniest thing Moore has written, and Parkhouse's art is sublime.

I tried to do an audio version of it for CaB radio all those years ago but came to a stumbling halt with the episode that had no dialogue, surprise, surprise.


Video Game Fan 2000

I don't know if its worth being called an 'all-time classic' but Dorohedoro is extremely entertaining, a great mix of grim art, satire and unexpected funnies in a similar mix to the best Dredd and Strontium Dog stories. And with a bewildering nu-metal art style.


Food obsessed mages battling fungus monsters in magical realism slums. Lots of gore panels, heads being swallowed and cheesecake of women built like multistory carparks.

studpuppet

Quote from: Small Man Big Horse on May 15, 2021, 02:34:21 PM
I never did finish Chew though, after reading the first 54 issues I for some unknown reason missed the final six, does it end well?

I recall it coming to a satisfactory conclusion - ar least I don't think I got the feeling of being short-changed, so it must have been okay. That must be sign that I need to re-read it!

Of course the real star (who got his own spin-off) is:


holyzombiejesus

As an aside, what was that really long-running series, still going 5 or so years ago, think it was set in a school. Might have been an Image publication.

Mister Six


Magnum Valentino


bakabaka

Quote from: holyzombiejesus on May 25, 2021, 03:23:59 PM
As an aside, what was that really long-running series, still going 5 or so years ago, think it was set in a school. Might have been an Image publication.

X-Men.

Mister Six


Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: studpuppet on May 15, 2021, 07:00:14 PM
I recall it coming to a satisfactory conclusion - ar least I don't think I got the feeling of being short-changed, so it must have been okay. That must be sign that I need to re-read it!

Of course the real star (who got his own spin-off) is:



Ah, missed this before, but thanks for that, I wasn't aware of the spin-off so will check that out too.

holyzombiejesus

Quote from: Magnum Valentino on May 25, 2021, 03:45:35 PM
Morning Glories.

More details me hole.

That's the one. Used to buy it at the same time as I'd get Rachel Rising. Not very good, mind.

Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: holyzombiejesus on May 25, 2021, 07:53:50 PM
That's the one. Used to buy it at the same time as I'd get Rachel Rising. Not very good, mind.

I thought Morning Glories started really well and at first I was enormously in to the whole mystery, but as everything was slowly revealed it became more and more disappointing, it was also supposed to return for what was described as "a third season" but that has yet to happen and no one seems to know why.