If you are truly sick of what mainstream american genre comics provide here is some stuff that is very readable while still definately not boring-
City of Glass - Weird postmodern detective story set in New York. One of my all time favorite comics. It's based off a novel but strangely I think the story's concepts are explained better in the visual/text combination of comics. A little cerebral perhaps, but so freakin' good.
Akira - Mindstunningly good stuff. So giant and epic. It's like the Japanese Cyberpunk Lord of the Rings. Forget the movie THIS is Akira at it's finest.
Notes for a War Story - Fantastic Italian comic about a group of teenage boys trying to survive as a group in a near future war torn country side.
Hard Boiled - It's kinda like Blade Runner meets Terminator without being like either one of those. Super gory fun with eyeball melting art by Geof Darrow. A quick read that you spend hours exploring in detail.
Other than Akira, these are all nice quick reads that are contained in a single volume. Lots of great cheap and quality reading material beautifully told.
Nick
Two thoughts:
1.) Chuck, FYI, Akira is apparently VERY different from the film, or at least the film is a super-duper-OOPER condensed version of the comics. I suspect the comics would explain things better whereas the film is visual gloss. (Not bad, mind you, just very much abridged by comparison.)
2.) Re: Hard Boiled -- I always found the artwork in that to be a bit...I dunno..."busy" for my tastes. It's highly detailed, but in a way that, for my eyes, ends up amounting to TOO much detail to the point where it becomes noise for me. Weird, I know. But then, I dig Tim Truman's early stuff (especially to look at it compared to now -- talk about an artist evolving his style), and I still have a special place in my heart for Marc Silvestri's run on X-men back in the late 80s. Maybe I like cruder stuff?
Black Cross and Xenozoic Tales were a couple I enjoyed.
Xenozoic Tales (a.k.a. Cadillacs and Dinosaurs) is great stuff. Oh, and bonus -- there was a cartoon AND a videogame beat-em-up (a la Double Dragon and TMNT) that you can probably still find out there. Very fun sort of 50s pulp.
Queen & Country - Realistic spy series. It's a comic and a few novels. I have one more case (tpb) and the two novels to read. But it's a great series.
Queen & Country - Oni Press
THIS I am going to have to check out.
Garth Ennis' Punisher Max.....
I know a lot of folks dig the later Punisher stuff, but me...I dunno. It seems so over-the-top to me, which I guess is the point, but a point which just doesn't run my engine. I prefer the earlier stuff. I have -- I think -- Issue 5 from the mid-80s run, back when Klaus Janson was drawing the series, and it's a much more subdued approach. It's him going up against a small-time thug, but it's a lot more about Frank using his wits in a more realistic situation. I liked that. It seemed, in that issue anyway, like the Punisher could actually be a real guy in the real world going up against real-life-scale villains. The later stuff sort of strikes me as fusing some of the more outlandish Batman villains with big friggin' guns and lots of blood 'n' guts.
Chuck -- you say you don't like a ton of violence, but you do like compelling characters. Check out Scout and War Shaman, like I mentioned. Skip Grimjack if magic isn't your thing. Or at least save it for later when the "overdose" feeling wears off. As I said, it's sort of "Detective-fiction-meets-magic-and-sci-fi", so it might not be your thing right now. Scout, however, has good -- but not over-the-top-graphic -- action, and (in my opinion) interesting characters. War Shaman especially is good in this regard, and is a bit more personal of a story, but it helps to have read the early stuff to understand what drives the character.
Based on what you said, I'd actually skip Give Me Liberty. Its political satire may be a bit excessive and (sorry, Larry) eye-roll-inducing, and the violence is a bit more graphic than the other stuff I mentioned. It's also oddly...realistic violence in some sense. In a weird way, I think this has to do with some of the sound-effect and speech bubbles used when violence occurs, as much as it does the visuals themselves. Which is interesting because, until writing this, I never really thought what an impact that has. Neat!
Anyway, the Grendel run may be a mixed bag for you. I found it interesting (at least, what I've read).
Can you cite some of your favorite comic artists? Or favorite runs on a given series to give folks a sense of artistic style and tone that you dig?
Examples:
- I love love love John Byrne's run on X-men. Love his art. Don't know why but it feels very...comfortable. Glossy almost.
- I mentioned the one issue of Punisher. I liked the realistic feel of the series, and I found that Klaus Janson's art -- while very much a late-80s-slapdash approach -- worked to create a sense of grit rather than flash. The combination of the two elements -- a more basic art style and more subdued stories -- worked for me.
- I already mentioned the Goodwin/Williamson run on Star Wars and how I love the "retro" feel of what they did.
- While I dug it at the time, I now really have an issue with the sort of over-the-top style of Jim Lee and Whilce Portatio (and others) from the early 90s. I find that stuff like Ivan Reis' work on Green Lantern takes some of that but grounds it more in the ACTUAL human form, so you don't end up with "impossible anatomy" issues.
Can you offer any kind of observations like that? Might help folks figure out what you'd dig.
lol
