What are your favorite types of comic book stories?

[Lightning Rider]

Hey guys. Just curious what the dominant preference is for everyone here. We all know categories are subject to overlap and disagreement on the boundaries, but I just wanted to get a feel of what, to you personally, makes the best kind of comic book story.

If you can't decide, it might help to look at your top 5 or so favorites and see if they have anything in common.

These are some guidelines for the categories I gave:

Light-Hearted Adventure

All-Star Superman, Waid's Flash run, much of the current "Rebirth" issues. These stories usually keep a fairly simple good guys vs. bad guys dynamic, include humor and have their fair share of heartfelt moments, while using the heroes as positive characters.

Dark and Serious Mystery

Identity Crisis, The Long Halloween, lots of Gotham-centered stories. It's pretty self explanatory. Heavy stuff, a dark tone, and a mystery.

Trippy Science-Fiction Adventure

Grant Morrison's JLA, Captain Atom, and a lot of Silver Age adventures. These stories contain lots of mind-blowing concepts and plots about psychology, mind control, time travel, (quantum) physics, chemistry, etc.

Apocalyptic Event

COIE, Blackest Night, Flashpoint, etc. You know the type. The planet, Universe, Multiverse, or timeline is at stake and no character remains unaffected.

Philosophical Epic

Watchmen, Kingdom Come, Dark Knight Returns. These stories are full of character introspection and creative narrative devices, with strong literary and philosophical themes that are meant to reflect aspects of human culture.

Origin Story

Year One, Birthright, Secret Origin, etc. The hero's childhood and foundation of character and reason for being a hero are established on a journey of self-discovery. (Not sure this deserves its own category but I figured, why not, they're all similar enough in narrative and themes.)

So, which tends to be your favorite?

[Lightning Rider]

Funny to see "light-hearted adventure" and "dark and serious mystery" tied in the lead. Though there is some overlap. The apocalyptic event making a comeback, I thought it might stay at 0 or 1 lol.

Come on people, vote!

[Trey Strain]

I'm going to write in noirish thrillers relieved by occasional comedies. A comic that followed that junked decompression, kept its stories reasonably short and followed that format would get my money.

[Tuck]

Any of those well-done is good. I think what works more often is a story being self-contained, and usually (but not always) out of continuity.

So, All-Star Superman, DKR, Watchmen, American Alien most recently . . . they would all fall in that category.

Long Halloween and Spider-Man: Blue would be examples that don't fall out of continuity exactly.

[Starchild]

I picked everything except lighthearted. Lighthearted comics usually have no substance, but i leave those to the children. I like conflict and mature issues in my comics.

[Maxpower00044]

Voted for all of those genres because the only thing that matters for me is if they're good and I enjoy them.

[Lightning Rider]

Any of those well-done is good. I think what works more often is a story being self-contained, and usually (but not always) out of continuity.

So, All-Star Superman, DKR, Watchmen, American Alien most recently . . . they would all fall in that category.

Long Halloween and Spider-Man: Blue would be examples that don't fall out of continuity exactly.

I totally agree, a lot of my favorite stories are set in their own continuity or at least could be. It's a start to finish story with a specific vision and a freedom to write the characters within that vision. I wish monthly floppies were given more freedom to pursue projects like that. It's difficult depending on how out-there the story's setting is, but plenty of more creative stories could be told with the same basic status quo being the same in the end for another artist to begin another vision and direction.

[nx01a]

Trippy Science-Fiction Adventure & Philosophical Epic.

[codystarbuck]

One that grabs me from the start, surprises me along the way, and leaves me smiling, at the end. The rest of the poll is semantics. I've read stories that are all at once. I have a preference for a good story; dark, light, funny, serious, mystery, action, etc....

My favorites tend to be more stand-alones. There's something stronger about telling a brilliant story in just a few pages. Many epics strike me as padded beyond the needs of the story. Not all; but the majority. To me, real craftsmanship is taking a small number of pages and creating a self-contained epic. James Robinson did sevel, with the Times Past and Talking with David stories, in Starman. A favorite is the secodn Talking with David, where they act out a pirate fantasy, while Jack relates the events of the past year to David. David surprises him with a special gift when their ship reaches the dock; a reward for becoming more of a hero. It's O Henry in comic book form. Neil Gaiman achieved it regularly in Sandman, with things like A Dream of Cats. Both those writers also achieved epic. They wrote the length the story needed.

I love the slapstick brilliance of Barry Windsor-Smith's Thing story, from Marvel Fanfare (#15), the absurdity of "Moving Day," in JLI (#8); the surreal brilliance of Francois Boucq's Pioneers of the Human Adventure, an ordered society rent asunder by a mysterious cube, in Francois Schuiten and benoit Peeter's A Fever in Urbicand, the cinema-on-paper of the Goodwin/Simonson Manhunter, which was brilliant in each 8 page chapter and even more brilliant when put together. Denny O'Neil and Don Newton's The Curse of Crime Alley (Detective 483), Bill Pearson & Don Newton's wonderful Bogart riff, in a Phantom story, in "The Mystery of the Mali Ibex (Phantom #70, Charlton). "Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot (Christmas with the Super Heroes #2), for giving us pre-Crisis fans a glorious Christmas present and for summing up heroism in one statement. The Great Cow Race. High Society. A wealth of them in Love & Rockets. And more; so many more.

[scribbleMind]

I like all of these, but it's become obvious that my favorite is actually books centered around two equal individuals. Duos, but not mentor sidekick. I just like to watch friendships evolve through all the crazy that comes with being in a comic book, and a buddy book of any kind is far more proficient at and focused on that than team books.

[lameco]

Most of the comics I would say I love falls more towards the dark and mysterious category. But I really love light-hearted one off stories like the recent Superman issue and that issue in nu52 Aquaman where he goes to a school reunion (i guess it almost falls into the origin category). But at the end of the day, I don't necessarily seek out things to read the fit into the categories, I just read what I think is good.

[Lightning Rider]

Do people electing "other" mind adding what additional "type" they enjoy? Aside from combinations of the already existing categories.

[JasonTodd428]

I picked all of them because I like all of them. I also meant to vote "other" but I missed it and had already bit the vote button. My "Other" genre of choice is any type of fantasy comic, like Demon Knights or Black Magick.

[EmeraldGladiator]

Well written cosmicy epic involving everyone, off the top of my head my favorite arcs of all time are in no particular order The Sinestro Corps War, The Great Darkness Saga, Crisis on Infinite Earths, Avengers Forever, the Infinity Guantlet, Green Lantern Rebirth, Starlin's Captain Marvel run, Starlin's Soul Gem (Avengers Annual and Marvel Two in One Annual), Simonson's Surtur Saga on Thor and X-men's Inferno. Very Cecil B. Demille well written with a cast of thousands. The big two try to give me what I want but more often than not they miss Civil War II more so than they hit Secret Wars (Hickman). All of them involved a large than usual cast but was written well with incredible artwork but by your definition I have to go Apocalyptic because in each of the events mentioned the entire universe was at stake for the most part.

[Lemurion]

I put down two - light-hearted and trippy, but I can read almost anything. The one big exception is those long character deconstruction arcs where they strip everything away from a character only to build them up again. Born Again was a great story, but that was 30 years ago and I don't need to read it again with different characters and spread out over the course of a year. I want to read stories about the characters I like, not stories where the point is to tear them down so they aren't that character any more.