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Underground > Comic Books >

Good Comic, Bad Comic

14:38 / 30.09.05

So. Post one good comic for me to read, and one I should definitely avoid.
Recently I've been reading random X-Men for example and it's like playing dogturd roulette. Ultimate X-Men seems good (it's in the same continuity as the Ultimates, right?) but Uncanny seems shit, I can never remember which is the retcon of them as kids and which is the random B-list X-men (Claremont) and I can't be arsed to work out which series to follow because it's only X-Dudes and I don't care much. So could we start with a good X-comic and a bad? For me?

This thread for posts of one Good Comic and one Bad Comic. Does exactly what it says on the tin. Y'know, for fun.

imaginary friend on the phone

17:26 / 30.09.05

I support this thread and everything it stands for. It seems like a huge waste of energy that the most popular thread on the comic boards right now is focused on shite for shite's sake, not even guilty pleasures but simply paying attention to bad comics.

So, in the spirit of positivity, I point in the direction of the graphic novel God Loves Man Kills, written by Claremont before he went insane, containing the story on which X:2 would later be based and also being one of the best x comics out there. The art is beautiuful but simple, the the story is a self contained one which, unlike much of Claremont's x writing (space pirates anyone) gets right to the core of the X-Men's most relevant concept, that of bigotry and isolation. The killing on the swings is brutal poetyr, and Xaiver's skyscraper nightmare alone is worth the price of admission.

If your'e looking for something more current, Peter David's recent Multiple Man min series is pretty high quality.

In terms of what to avoid, I wouldn't very higly reccomend Inferno or any of the late eighties mid nineties X-Men mega crossovers. Every one of those trades is about six hours of your life you'll never get back.

17:43 / 30.09.05

Fluffy by Simone Lia. Should be read by everyone. It's just the right side of cloyingly sweet and is absolutely beautiful.

To avoid? I dunno, the Warren Ellis JLA is a bit ropey. Too shiny and what is wrong with Wonder Woman's neck and breasts in issue 10?

18:42 / 30.09.05

No current X-Comic is remotely readable, including Milligan's X-Men and Vaughan's Ult. X-Men. But you can try your luck with Peter David's upcoming X-Factor with Ryan Sook art.

Shite comic to avoid: Superman/Batman. 'Cause, y'know, it's shite.

18:43 / 30.09.05

If you're looking for good X-Men, definitely check out the Essential volumes. There's some weak stuff early on, but it's very cool to watch the characters evolve right from the beginning. I'm on Volume 4 right now, and I'd say the Paul Smith stuff is even better than the Byrne run, both content wise and art wise. There's some downtimes, but it's a lot of book for your money, and it's pretty amazing to go back to a time when Wolverine, Storm, etc. were actually characters who could have permanent change and evolution, rather than just having stuff happen to them with no consequence, as in almost all X-Men stuff since Claremont left the first time, with the exception of Grant and Joss.

00:38 / 02.10.05

Get Planetary whenever it comes out. Ellis' ability to copy and paste things out of his blog annoys now and then but it's still pretty solid. You can pick most of the series (bar the most recent 2-3 issues) in tradepaperback format.

Get the Uzumaki series by Junji Ito. Real proper (body) horror comic about a town under attack by the concept of the spiral. Creepy as fuck in places although, like most scary stories, it succumbs to stupid protagonist syndrome.

Avoid The Amalgam Age of Comics because, apart from my own interest in comic mythos/archaeology, it's fucking shite.

17:24 / 02.10.05

Get Why are you doing this? by Jason, a simply pacy thriller in the hitchockian tradition where implications and minimalism set up a heartbreaking ending.

Avoid? Since someone already mentioned Ellis' JLA also avoid his Jack Cross. A mind numbingly mediocre piece of work with unimpressive art, standard Ellis cliches and bad writing in general.

14:44 / 03.10.05

Ta, although I find Planetary a bit irritating at times (the parallel world JLA pastiche was trite for example) Ellis has his moments.
More please!

18:27 / 04.10.05

a simply pacy thriller in the hitchockian tradition where implications and minimalism set up a heartbreaking ending.

Sounds like Origin. Which I actually quite enjoyed. A bunch of questions left unanswered, but in a way that doesn't piss you off. Well, me at least. The art gave it an awesome feeling of "this is a Wolverine story?" which I loved. Too many Wolverine stories are just about him going berserk and killing shit, while this one shows him grow from timid boy, to nature guru, to the confused and always guilty brooding Wolverine that most people have come to adore, or at least, respect.

An excellent, self-contained, Origin of a character everybody thinks they know, but really, don't.

12:23 / 05.10.05

I just read Origin, didn't like it personally- I thought it was implausibly wide-eyed.

good comic- Tommysaurus Rex a story of a boy and his dinosaur, which I just found out will be made into a movie soon, genuinely funny and touching.

bad comic- Hellblazer 'Son of Man' absolute tripe by Garth Ennis.

12:54 / 05.10.05

Good comic - The Walking Dead. Black and white art is the only way to draw zombies. Increasingly bleak storylines and yet real warmth in the little moments between the characters. Plus, zombies. Lots and lots of zombies. We're talking "a bad day in Malton" levels of zombies.

Bad comic - Ultimate frigging X-Men. Waste of space bloody book this is. Like that nineties X-Men cartoon where they tried to compress massive classic stories into one episode. Characters which rapidly devolve from interesting riffs on their 616 versions into carbon copies within minutes of being introduced. All the other Ultimate books are, at least, reasonable reads. Ultimate X-Men is a bad comic BAD COMIC, it should be rapped on the hind quarters with a rolled up newspaper and have it's nose pushed in the mess it's made.

13:51 / 05.10.05

Ultimate X-Men is a bad comic BAD COMIC, it should be rapped on the hind quarters with a rolled up newspaper and have it's nose pushed in the mess it's made.

I've really heard mixed reviews on this comic. I was considering buying the first big hardcover...so maybe I'll just check out the first paperback trade and if it's shite...well, you saved me $50.