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The All New Comics Thread 2017+ Edition

Started by Small Man Big Horse, October 13, 2017, 05:58:40 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

BeardFaceMan

I'm looking for some comics that have some good black and white artwork, similar to Eduadro Risso's Batman Noir stuff, any suggestions?

Magnum Valentino

Nothing looks better in black and white than Sin City, the bigger you can get the better.

DC did a whole run of black and white versions of those books that were originally printed in colour (including the one you mentioned), you should check some of them out. The Tim Sale books look gorgeous.

Terry Moore's stuff is in black and white too, great storyteller and a master of expressions. Very funny.

Old 2000AD stuff obviously, including Halo Jones.

Jeff Lemire has some great BW stuff, most celebratedly Essex County.

BeardFaceMan

Lovely, I'll check some of that out, I'm only familiar with Sin City out of all that lot. I only read the Batman Noir stuff because I'm a big Risso fan, I don't usually go for superhero or plain DC stuff.

Magnum Valentino

For Batman, specifically take a look at The Long Halloween and Dark Victory, they work really well in black and white and are considered Batman essentials. I hate the dialogue but the writing is fine otherwise, and I'm in the minority anyway. You might like The Black Mirror as well. Nice and dark, nasty stuff.

Terry Moore's books aren't superhero stuff at all so that should be right up your alley. I believe the term is "slice of life" but not sure that's accurate. Motor Girl and Strangers in Paradise are two to check out. Motor Girl is short but SiP is massive.

Walking Dead famously, too (which Terry Moore was the original artist on). I never finished it though so can't recommend.

BeardFaceMan

Oh God, I forgot about The Walking Dead, mainly because of how utterly shit it became, I didn't finish it either. Do you mean Tony Moore? I actually preferred his art on TWD to the guy who took over.

Magnum Valentino


Mister Six

Too many Moores in comics. Tony, Terry, Alan, Steve, Stuart. Ironically, we need fewer.

Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: Magnum Valentino on October 24, 2021, 08:07:18 PM
Terry Moore's books aren't superhero stuff at all so that should be right up your alley. I believe the term is "slice of life" but not sure that's accurate. Motor Girl and Strangers in Paradise are two to check out. Motor Girl is short but SiP is massive.

I was going to recommend Terry Moore, I'm a big fan of most of his work but Rachel Rising is the one I enjoyed the most, and at 42 issues it didn't outstay it's welcome.

Quote from: BeardFaceMan on October 24, 2021, 08:10:29 PM
Oh God, I forgot about The Walking Dead, mainly because of how utterly shit it became, I didn't finish it either. Do you mean Tony Moore? I actually preferred his art on TWD to the guy who took over.

Yeah, I didn't get on that well with the guy who took over, to this day I have no idea why I read every issue, especially as after 100 and
Spoiler alert
Glenn's death
[close]
I was hate reading it each month.

BeardFaceMan

Quote from: Small Man Big Horse on October 24, 2021, 09:04:24 PM
Yeah, I didn't get on that well with the guy who took over, to this day I have no idea why I read every issue, especially as after 100 and
Spoiler alert
Glenn's death
[close]
I was hate reading it each month.

I did pretty much the same but gave up on the hate reading about 10 issues later, I think. It was the introduction of Negan that started the rot for me, just felt like another Governor but with some of the most appalling dialogue I've ever read that was written by an actual professional. Bailed on the tv show pretty early too. And don't get me started on the fucking novels (well, the first one, there was no way I was continuing after that fucking shitshow). I'd never heard of Kirkman before reading TWD and I've gone from someone who loves his to work to the point where I don't want to read anything he's written again because I think he's that bad, all in the space of a single franchise.

Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: BeardFaceMan on October 24, 2021, 09:11:45 PM
I did pretty much the same but gave up on the hate reading about 10 issues later, I think. It was the introduction of Negan that started the rot for me, just felt like another Governor but with some of the most appalling dialogue I've ever read that was written by an actual professional. Bailed on the tv show pretty early too. And don't get me started on the fucking novels (well, the first one, there was no way I was continuing after that fucking shitshow). I'd never heard of Kirkman before reading TWD and I've gone from someone who loves his to work to the point where I don't want to read anything he's written again because I think he's that bad, all in the space of a single franchise.

I felt the same way about Negan and could never understand the love for the character, I only stuck with it as I was able to read it for free thanks to someone scanning it and posting it on a site each month, and kept on vowing to quit but was strangely hypnotised by how awful it was. The only positive thing about reading all the comics is that I found quitting the tv series easier as I presumed I knew how it'd pan out (though of course it's gone in a completely different direction now), and thankfully wasn't aware of the novels until I was really despising the franchise.

You're not wrong about how awful the dialogue is either, but weirdly I did quite like Invincible, it's nothing essential by any means, and I did give up on it at one point but then discovered he'd ended the series 12 issues later and so ended finishing it off. It definitely over ran but it was sometimes fun, and the ending was a hell of a lot more satisfying than The Walking Dead.

BeardFaceMan

Yeah I've heard good things about Invincible, unfortunately I heard them after I'd read the first TWD novel so I've never given Invincible a try. Just go and read about the twist in the first novel to give you an idea of how bad it was, god knows what happened in the other novels, I didn't even dare read a review of them.

Mister Six

Gave up on TWD comic after the Michonne/Governor torture-porn issue. It had become incredibly repetitive, and Kirkman seemed to think that making it horribly, nihilistically sadistic was the spice it needed. Gave up on the show at the end of season one, on the basis that it was fucking shit.

BeardFaceMan

It was season 2 of the tv show where I gave up, where Norman Reedus gained a bit of fame from season 1 and so by the time season 2 came around Daryl had somehow used the zombie apocalypse to transform into a supermodel with perfect hair. Which was the best thing about that season, actually. The comic really had just become an incredibly tedious kitchen-sink type drama by the time I gave up on it, just boring domestic squabbles with a vague sense of zombies now and again. Didn't he always say he had an ending in mind? That would explain why a lot of the issues and storylines felt like padding, not to mention all the double-spalsh pages.

Mister Six

Just thinking about it now, The Walking Dead was always kind of conceptually buggered. Kirkman's pitch to the audience was that it was a zombie movie (read: Romero-style zombie movie) that never had to end - but there's a reason why the movies it draws from don't go on for longer than a couple of hours, and that's that they have a fairly rigid formula that doesn't at all mesh with a longer structure.

Basically, a disparate group of people flee from the zombies and hole up in an enclosed location (house, shopping mall, army base, whatever). After securing it, they manage some kind of stability until pressures from within (someone going crazy, internal friction, someone hiding a zombie bite) or from without (rampaging bikers, hillbillies, army men, whatever) break the seal and let the zombies in. Carnage ensues, and only a couple of people - if anyone - survive.

That's the formula, and that's what TWD was for most, if not all (as I said, I stopped reading it) of its run.

There's a lot you can do with zombies in an ongoing series, but "a zombie movie" isn't one of them.

Magnum Valentino

The Walking Dead was never better than the scene in the first couple of issues where the wee lad saves his ma from zombie attack by blasting its face off after she made a fuss of him being allowed to defend himself with one. The look on his face is sublime. It's a great moment.

Unrelated: anyone else love Silver Age Marvel stuff, unironically and without the caveat of "it's good for what it is" or "apart from the dialogue"?

I'm part of a few online comic collector groups but all they ever talk about it modern stuff. They buy the old gear too, but only to sit it on their shelves. I've just finished reading one of those big Omnibus collections of Spider-Man comics and I absolutely love it. Love the silliness, love the colour, love that it's from a less complex world, and I do indeed love the dialogue. Excluding the first issue with his uncle, it's about 80 issues of Spider-Man before something really consequential happens and when it does, it's quite devastating. I also think Stan Lee is a much better writer than he gets credit for in these backlash days, on an operational level, even though Kirby, Ditko and Romita deserve their plaudits as plotters.

Small Man Big Horse

#1275
I've just had a look at the wiki pages for the novels, I had no idea there were so many of them, or that about six of them were either Governor or Woodbury based, it seems ridiculous given how much mileage the comic got out of it as well.

Quote from: BeardFaceMan on October 24, 2021, 11:00:40 PM
It was season 2 of the tv show where I gave up, where Norman Reedus gained a bit of fame from season 1 and so by the time season 2 came around Daryl had somehow used the zombie apocalypse to transform into a supermodel with perfect hair. Which was the best thing about that season, actually. The comic really had just become an incredibly tedious kitchen-sink type drama by the time I gave up on it, just boring domestic squabbles with a vague sense of zombies now and again. Didn't he always say he had an ending in mind? That would explain why a lot of the issues and storylines felt like padding, not to mention all the double-spalsh pages.

Yeah, he always said he knew the ending, but he also claimed it would go for a lot, lot longer and the suggestion that he was around the half way mark at issue 150 meant that I was expecting him to try for 300 issues, whereas of course it suddenly and abruptly came to an end with 193. Though as that
Spoiler alert
was a time jump issue I guess
[close]
it could well have been the (shit) ending he planned all along.

Edit: Just saw this on the Walking Dead wikipedia page for the final issue, which if true is interesting:

According to Robert Kirkman, the Comic Series was originally going to have a much bleaker ending, as it was supposed to end
Spoiler alert
with Rick's takeover of Alexandria. Rick would give a speech to the Alexandrians about rebuilding the world, and the scene would eventually transition from his face to the face of Rick's statue, many years in the future. The view would then pull back to reveal that Alexandria has been destroyed and abandoned, with walkers pouring in, making the moral of the story that any attempt to rebuild civilization is futile.
[close]

Which to me is a far better ending than the one we got.

BeardFaceMan

Quote from: Small Man Big Horse on October 25, 2021, 10:29:18 AM
I've just had a look at the wiki pages for the novels, I had no idea there were so many of them, or that about six of them were either Governor or Woodbury based, it seems ridiculous given how much mileage the comic got out of it as well.

Yeah it was that first novel about the origin of the Governor that really boiled my piss. Bad in every conceivable way and even made The Governor character retroactively shit for me.

Quote
Yeah, he always said he knew the ending, but he also claimed it would go for a lot, lot longer and the suggestion that he was around the half way mark at issue 150 meant that I was expecting him to try for 300 issues, whereas of course it suddenly and abruptly came to an end with 193. Though as that
Spoiler alert
was a time jump issue I guess
[close]
it could well have been the (shit) ending he planned all along.

Christ, 300 issues? So there would have been another 100+ issues just to get to the same end point? Dodged a bullet there. To be honest, I'm not even sure how it ended, I was so pissed off with the series not even morbid curiosity got me to check it out the final issue.

Quote from: Magnum Valentino on October 24, 2021, 08:07:18 PM
For Batman, specifically take a look at The Long Halloween and Dark Victory, they work really well in black and white and are considered Batman essentials. I hate the dialogue but the writing is fine otherwise, and I'm in the minority anyway. You might like The Black Mirror as well. Nice and dark, nasty stuff.

Batman is about as close as I get to superhero stuff (unless you count The Punisher, who is my fave) but still never really read a lot, it's usually only when someone I like is involved. And on that note I see that Garth Ennis has been writing a Batman series recently (Batman - Reptilian), anyone read that yet?

Magnum Valentino

Just the first issue but I liked it enough that I'm going to wait for it to finish now, then read the lot. I'd recommend it. At least in that first issue he's not making fun of his subject. I don't think he's a fan of Batman (in the way he likes Superman, as discussed in this thread), but he seems to be taking the gig seriously.

BeardFaceMan

That's what interests me about it, he seems to share the same disdain for superheroes as me. I know he's done a few issues and mini-runs with proper supes before but I'm interested to see what his version of a serious superhero story would be.

madhair60

Have you read his Marvel Knights Punisher stuff? Boy does he hate Wolverine.

BeardFaceMan

Yeah that's one of the things that made me a Garth Ennis fan, seeing the way superheroes got treated in his comics, like Punisher or Hitman.

madhair60

Have you read his Dastardly and Muttley series? It is shockingly good. Well, not shockingly - it's Ennis - but it is remarkable just how funny and ultimately haunting it turned out.

BeardFaceMan

I haven't, mainly because a passion for war & westerns is the one thing I don't share with Ennis so I'm a bit behind on that stuff, I can take or leave it. Didn't even know he'd done Dastardly and Muttley though, that does sound interesting. Actually, I think it may have been an Authority book that made me a fan of his. The first real US-style DC/Marvel comic I read was Preacher (before that it was Beano, Dandy, Oink! and Viz), I think I started it a year or two after it ended, so when I'd finished it I went out looking for some more stuff from this Garth Ennis fella and the next thing I read was one of the Authority Kev books, and he had a quote from The Young Ones as one of the issue titles and that was what made me a fan. All the stuff about him thinking superheroes were a bit shit came later and that made me very happy too.

Mister Six

Read the first couple of issues of Reptilian a couple of months ago, and aside from some fairly funny dialogue, it was pretty unremarkable, aside from the pretty good Bisley/McKean-esque art. It's an out-of-continuity story, although the first couple of issues don't do much about the status quo. The Riddler, Penguin and Joker all get horribly mutilated, but don't actually die, and being horrendously attacked in one storyline and appearing right as rain in another a couple of months later is par for the course in superhero comics.

Actually, I'd forgotten it even existed up to this point, so I'll catch up on it when I can. I get the feeling it's probably Ennis doing a "one for the studios, one for me" deal in exchange for more Section 8 or whatever.

BeardFaceMan

Things like continuity and status quo go right over my head though, I have no idea about any of that so a standalone story sounds right up my street.

Mister Six

It doesn't really matter that much, it just seems odd that you'd have Ennis writing a story that technically has the freedom to tear the usual status quo apart (kill the regulars, raze Gotham City to the ground etc) but he doesn't really seem to seize that opportunity. In the first couple of issues, at least.

samadriel

Ahaha, get a load of the right wing crybaby colorist who quit Superman because "they're ruining the characters".

https://www.newsweek.com/superman-artist-quits-dc-comics-characters-ruining-motto-bisexual-1641169

"He continued: "My Grandpa almost died in World War II; we don't have a right to destroy s*** that people died for to give us. It's a bunch of f***** nonsense.""

Yeah cucks, his grandad ALMOST died in WW2 to give us the specific wording of a Superman catchphrase!!!

Mister Six

"My grandpa didn't almost die in WWII just so you could have freedom of speech. Just wait till this comic gets to Argentina."

13 schoolyards

Quote from: Mister Six on October 25, 2021, 04:37:17 PM
It doesn't really matter that much, it just seems odd that you'd have Ennis writing a story that technically has the freedom to tear the usual status quo apart (kill the regulars, raze Gotham City to the ground etc) but he doesn't really seem to seize that opportunity. In the first couple of issues, at least.

I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that Ennis wrote the script as a kind of showcase comeback for Steve Dillon after Dillon made it past some issues that had derailed his comics career for a while. And then Dillon died, Ennis left it in the drawer for a few years, found it again and thought "well, considering it's already written..."

BeardFaceMan

Quote from: 13 schoolyards on October 27, 2021, 05:05:12 AM
I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that Ennis wrote the script as a kind of showcase comeback for Steve Dillon after Dillon made it past some issues that had derailed his comics career for a while. And then Dillon died, Ennis left it in the drawer for a few years, found it again and thought "well, considering it's already written..."

I just read the first few issues and at the start of the first one there's a note from the artist saying that the script was originally intended for Dillon. Have to be honest, I'd have much preferred that, I'm struggling to get through it with this art style.