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Post by Ally on Jul 24, 2010 19:50:53 GMT
So, after the holiday (all of four hours after it...) I've been thinking about comics.
What comics do I need to read to really get to know my Marvel and DC? I've read a bit of Batman War Games and some X-Men trade that I can't remember the title of, but the rest of my Western comic-book reading is mostly SIP, Sandman, Swamp Thing and Hellblazer. I've realised I don't know all that much about the characters that keep getting films made about them, and I'd like to. So gimme a reading list! ;D
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Post by stokerino on Jul 24, 2010 20:53:38 GMT
Well, Marvel's what I'm plowing most heavily into at the moment... Some of the DC trades I've read have been good but the way the Marvel universe intertwines makes it more compelling for me, and I come out wanting to investigate more tangeants - whereas the DC ones leave me thinking "That was good...but unless someone can pick out the good from the bad for me, I have no idea what to get next".
The way I went about it was to pick a character/series and asked people online for a decent place to start. For example, I wanted to try to get a handle on The Avengers and Captain America, then branched out from there into the likes of Thor, Spider-man, Thunderbolts, Deadpool etc.
The stuff I've got is all relatively new. I've flicked through some of the collections of 'classic' comics from decades back and I think if I tried reading them properly I wouldn't be able to enjoy them quite so much because there are just so...twee, I guess. Mine are all from 2004 - 2010, with the oldest one being the 'Avengers Disassembled' trade, since it effectively ends the 'old' Avengers arcs and is therefore a necessary basis for the newer ones.
But yeah. If you care to pick out a character or group you'd like to give a look, I can either recommend trades I got or try to work out what might be logical in a similar vein.
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Post by Ally on Jul 25, 2010 17:04:12 GMT
Okay, I shall start with X-Men
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Post by stokerino on Jul 25, 2010 17:28:49 GMT
I've only briefly dipped into X-Men with my readings thus far, so personally know little...but I have asked the people online that recommended other stuff for me and will get back to you with their answer.
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Post by stokerino on Jul 25, 2010 18:51:04 GMT
Okay, apparently quite a good one is: X-Men: Deadly Genesis(I include the Amazon link for info if nothing else - maybe the ISBN will be useful if you intend to find it via libraries...) This is briefly after the 'House of M' incident, which is in some ways more an Avengers story than an X-Men story, but is nonetheless an event which has a dramatic impact on mutantkind...so it could be useful for you to read first. House of MAfter Deadly Genesis, I'm told the next good one to get after that is: Uncanny X-Men: Rise and Fall of the Shi'ar EmpireSo that would make a preliminary reading list of: 1. House of M 2. X-Men: Deadly Genesis 3. Uncanny X-Men: Rise and Fall of the Shi'ar Empire ...to hopefully get you started. >_>
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Post by Ally on Jul 25, 2010 19:48:03 GMT
Cheers! I'm off to the library tomorrow, so I'll see if I can find them then ;D
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Post by Emily on Jul 25, 2010 21:39:30 GMT
if you're going down the library route all you're gonna get is volume 2 of any given serie.
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Post by Ally on Jul 25, 2010 22:05:43 GMT
I'm going to see if I can order them - if not, I'll wait till payday and Amazon it.
(Seriously, though, is it a rule of libraries that they only get random numbers of any series?)
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Post by Emily on Jul 26, 2010 8:39:13 GMT
I don't know... i found book one of something I wanted to read... and another book that *claimed* to be book 2 except it was book two of a different storyline and therefore spoilered the hell out of the all the set up in the previous one... guh.
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Post by stokerino on Jul 26, 2010 9:16:55 GMT
Well, at least the trades I listed tend to be 'standalone' ones (that is, their own isolated arcs, rather than Vol. 1, 2, 3, etc. of a series like some others are)...although I would never underestimate a library's ability to mess even those up.
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Post by tangent on Jul 27, 2010 2:15:55 GMT
I can't quite comprehend why anyone is interested in Marvel these days. DC actually has had some truly interesting storylines (what with the Blackest Night and the Brightest Day storylines), and seems to have done an interesting emergence from the Dark Age of Comics (the 90s) and in some ways brought back some of the fun from the Silver Age of comics.
Though I'm sure there are those who'd disagree.
What's needed is a decent storyworld with a half dozen comics working in it, editors that aren't idiots who fuck up everything (I'm looking at YOU, Marvel, and the idiocy that is the current Spiderman mythos), and a sense of continuity that doesn't have holes so large in it that you're left wanting to smack your head against a wall. Wish we had that on the webcomic front....
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Post by stokerino on Jul 27, 2010 6:17:11 GMT
Today I shall receive the newest Captain America and Iron Man trades and I shall laugh at your opinions whilst enjoying their awesomeness.
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Post by Emily on Jul 27, 2010 20:02:10 GMT
oh come on, webcomic consistentcy? Plotholes and frantic retconning are what MAKE the webcomic world.
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Post by tangent on Jul 27, 2010 20:34:19 GMT
Um, you just described the print comic industry, luv. To a T. Or does the various Infinite Whatevers DC pulled through the years not ring a bell? Or the hundreds of retcons and plot sinkholes in Marvel's band of comics? oO
If Webcomics suffer from that... it's because they evolved from their print brethren. Besides, the franticness comes from redrawing the beginning of the comic in an artistic reboot of the series. Sometimes more than once. ^_^
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Post by Ally on Jul 27, 2010 21:10:18 GMT
To be honest, when a story's serialised in whatever form (comics, webcomics, TV series, etc), I think it's incredibly difficult to avoid inconsistencies completely. (I'm particularly bad, I know). All stories change as they're written, which is fine in a novel - the writer can go back and edit the whole thing before the reader even sees it. In a way, inconsistencies in comics can give a history of how the story has changed and evolved over time - I'm particularly thinking of SIP here, which is overflowing with inconsistencies and sudden handbrake turns in the plot, but is arguably a better story for this evolution than it would have been had Terry Moore stuck rigidly to the characterisation and storylines that he developed in the first few issues.
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Post by stokerino on Jul 27, 2010 21:14:17 GMT
Plus, most comics change their writers every few years. That can't be helpful.
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Post by Ally on Aug 5, 2010 13:26:50 GMT
Read House of M. Good call, Stoker. Not many books make me go "HOLY CRAP!" out loud. ;D
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Post by stokerino on Aug 5, 2010 13:41:43 GMT
Yup. That Wanda Maximoff sure is one crazy bint.
I haven't read the other two that got recommended to me (and then to you), so I cannot vouch for their quality in the same way. >_>
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Post by stokerino on Aug 6, 2010 7:37:41 GMT
Yasha read Ally's endorsement of House of M and is in the middle of reading my copy now.
Honestly. I recommend things to her, she does nothing. One word from anyone else...
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Post by Ally on Aug 10, 2010 21:32:30 GMT
I influenced someone? Awesome! ;D
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