Seibertron.com Energon Pub Forums

Okay so let's put a ground rule in place.

Comic book discussion only. Discussion relating to movies and TV shows based on comic books can be discussed in OTHER threads. This thread is for the discussion of comics books only.

What would be your non-Marvel/DC recommendation for comic book fans?

Mine ... Garth Ennis' Jennifer Blood. Well written, good artwork, and you have to love an anti-hero.

Preacher. But everyone should have read that by now. If not- SHAME ON YOU.

Mine would be valiants x/o man o war series. Currently I'm only getting to read this series through my brother and it's a blast. As soon as my own finances as sorted I'm getting the trades

Would you count Vertigo as part of DC in this 'exercise'? (I know it is, but just checking.)

In this particular case ... no.

Then I heartily recommend the now-concluded series The Unwritten, by Mike Carey and Peter Gross.

Literature, comics medium, hyperfiction, fantastic writing and truly twisted plots and characters. A great read in good Vertigo style.

Good non Marvel Comics comics? Surely you jest good sir!

Well, actually, I have a few recommendations.

Pretty Deadly:
It's set in a Wild West fantasy world, Death had a daughter with a woman who's husband accidentially left her to die. Now when you've been wronged and you need someone to heap good old fashioned revenge on someone, you just have so sing Ginny's song and the Ghos Rider, I mean Ginny will come and butcher the heck out of them. All joking aside, this is a good book with a fantastic mythology and good characters. It can get pretty violent, but it's a comic about Death's daughter carving people up (well actually it's about more than that).
Also, one of the few books out there that doesn't sexualise women beating the crap out of each other.

Dark Engine:
Imagine God of War, now imagine Kratos from God of War, now imagine him as a woman, with a Dinosaur skull as a helmet, a huge ass bone sword (also from a Dinosaur), then imagine that time traveling by exploding out of animals and turning everything around her to meat - while being less chatty than Kratos.
You now know what the main lead of the comic is like and what she does.
There is also a Dragon, who is on a quest to merge with a giant flying monster's brain so he can pilot it, and a gay alchemist who discovers the hard, dark and awful truth about what is going on.
It's a bit confusing at first, because it just throws you into the middle of the action, it's almost like starting the LOTR movies in the middle of the Two Towers. But you slowly get to know the world a and characters better and are given the information to fill in the blanks.
It'S gory, dark, disgusting, well written and pretty darn glorious.

Rachel Rising is also a good book, it's about a woman waking up and digging herself out of her shallow grave. She then realizes she has superpowers, is undead, and that she may be a witch. She then uncovers the truth about how and why she died, and about what's going on. The fate of her hometown (Salem), and the world soon rests in her deadish hands.
The only real problem I have with this is that it works under the logic of "all men are disgusting evil bastards", there is literally not a single genuinely good guy in this, and the few that are good, die within seconds of showing up. But I still keep reading because I want to get to the conclusion of it.

Pretty Deadly is amazing.

As is The Wicked and The Divine, by Gillen and McKelvie.

Is there any recommendations you can give someone who loves the work of H.P lovecraft?

ZeroWolf wrote:Is there any recommendations you can give someone who loves the work of H.P lovecraft?

IDW's Locke & Key. Straight away.

Also, the Self Made Hero adaptations of Lovecraft's work by INJ Culbard.

I have heard good things about locke and Key. How many issues did it run up?

ZeroWolf wrote:I have heard good things about locke and Key. How many issues did it run up?

39 issues/6 volumes. Worth trying to track down the digital copies for cheap, really.
Or the boxset!

I may have to, is comixology the best to go with? I mean normally I prefer having physical but in my house at the moment space is an issue

ZeroWolf wrote:I may have to, is comixology the best to go with? I mean normally I prefer having physical but in my house at the moment space is an issue

I personally do not do digital other than review copies, but that is probably your best bet.

I enthusiastically second Locke and Key. It is a **** brilliant series!

ZeroWolf wrote:I may have to, is comixology the best to go with? I mean normally I prefer having physical but in my house at the moment space is an issue

Yes, I can highly recommend them, older issues usually get a reduction in price, they have unbeatable sales and it's damn convenient.
I mean I love physical comics, especially in hard cover. But recently my space just gets consumed, and some stuff just isn't in print anymore.
I even buy digital editions of stuff I already have, usually when there's a sale on and the price is just too good to pass up, I mean a digital copy of Watchmen I can read whenever and wherever I want without having to log my huge copy around, for a fiver? HELL YEAH!

But do be careful, sometimes it's cheaper to buy a collected edition there, instead of the singles, whiles other times it's cheaper to get the single copies. And it depends on which series it is.
So best to do the math, even during sales.

Oh yeah, anyone else think it's hilarious how DC just announced that they won't even try to keep a continuity going?
The way I understood it is they're rebooting the universe again, but this time won't attempt to keep continuity between titles and stories, and will focus on telling stories.

We all know how that's going to end, in three years they'll reboot again and try to shoehorn everything into one continuity again.

DC continuity? Oh boy do I have a thread for you!

But in all seriousness ... I didn't like the idea of "New 52", mind you, before that there were hardly any DC titles I enjoyed. Since "New 52", and more so in the last year, I'm enjoying more and more of their titles.

Just in time for them to be wiped out. Great move DC.

Burn wrote:DC continuity? Oh boy do I have a thread for you!

But in all seriousness ... I didn't like the idea of "New 52", mind you, before that there were hardly any DC titles I enjoyed. Since "New 52", and more so in the last year, I'm enjoying more and more of their titles.

Just in time for them to be wiped out. Great move DC.

We should start calling this "Doing a DC". "Oh wait, the Darkness is getting a brad new re-imagining after they killed him off? Top Cow's doing a DC!".

I read that as well, guess they really want to distance themselves from marvel. Does this mean though that character deaths will be ignored from writer to writer?

Sounds like they should of said they were abandoning ongoings to do miniseries

Dead Metal wrote:

Burn wrote:DC continuity? Oh boy do I have a thread for you!

But in all seriousness ... I didn't like the idea of "New 52", mind you, before that there were hardly any DC titles I enjoyed. Since "New 52", and more so in the last year, I'm enjoying more and more of their titles.

Just in time for them to be wiped out. Great move DC.

We should start calling this "Doing a DC". "Oh wait, the Darkness is getting a brad new re-imagining after they killed him off? Top Cow's doing a DC!".

In case you haven't seen this: http://hasdcdonesomethingstupidtoday.com/

Va'al wrote:

Dead Metal wrote:

Burn wrote:DC continuity? Oh boy do I have a thread for you!

But in all seriousness ... I didn't like the idea of "New 52", mind you, before that there were hardly any DC titles I enjoyed. Since "New 52", and more so in the last year, I'm enjoying more and more of their titles.

Just in time for them to be wiped out. Great move DC.

We should start calling this "Doing a DC". "Oh wait, the Darkness is getting a brad new re-imagining after they killed him off? Top Cow's doing a DC!".

In case you haven't seen this: http://hasdcdonesomethingstupidtoday.com/

Yup I know that, guess they need to update that site again XD

Oh yeah, lets mention really crappy comics too.

Fall Out Toy Works
Incredibly awful, it sets out to be a modern retelling of Metropolis, but just doesn't have a clue what it wants to do. It constantly introduces new stuff, drops stuff and goes round inc circles.
The artwork is nice though.

OK, time for me to revive this thread after apparently killing it with my last post ....


So my comic store has been hoarding the Miles Morales Ultimate Spider-Man run for me until the second tpb finally arrived. So I have now read vol 1 -5 to get a better feeling for the character, because I did like him in the Spider-Men crossover.
I finished all five in one afternoon. A few things I've noticed, since I stopped reading Ultimate Spider-Man, MJ has become a completely different character, she even looks different, save for her hair colour. The story lines are even shorter now, but take even more time to get to certain points, so instead of having a story line done in 6 issues, it now takes four, but somehow it takes much longer for something to develop than it did back then. Carnage is now dead and separated from Gwen Stacy who is somehow, so how does that work, don't they constantly claim how death is permanent in the Ultimate verse? Yeah sure they explained it, but it's still BS considering the whole people dies for real in this Universe so it's better than the classic verse. Venom still sucks. Miles, isn't as fantastic as I hoped.

Yeah, I mean he's sweet and kinda cool, but he isn't different enough from Peter to really feel like his own character. So far the only difference apart from name, powers, and family, are that he's black, not as intelligent as Peter (infact he's kinda stupid at times), and doesn't really "earn" his status.
I mean he's barely managed to establish himself as Spider-Man, then gives it up for an entire year, but still everyone around him makes a huge deal out of him and that he has to come back. That's just kinda ruined it for me. I mean I was really into it, then the one year later time skip happened.
At that point he hasn't done much, and it wouldn't have actually mattered had he just stopped altogether and wasn't guilted back in.
Dock Ock left a bigger impact on me as Spider-Man, heck Miguel O'Hara who started from even less scratch was better and felt like a more accomplished hero and Spider-Man in his own right after less issues than this.
Oh and better than that, Indian Spider-Man felt more established than Miles did, and he only had a single very short mini series. I still want more stuff about him, his barely there cameo in Spider-Verse isn't enough.

But yeah, Ultimate Venom sucked back when I read this regularly and he still does now. I mean they removed the "laughable" weaknesses against heat and sound, but still managed to make him an even bigger pushover, and he still is.He has the same weakness as Batman's parents - bullets.

I'll keep reading though, since it's still good stuff, and the characters are still mostly great. ^^