Oh god, YES Hawkeye too.
Ditto. The only comic I can think of that I've loved in the last 5 years "connected" to the events is Uncanny X-men by Bendis... and even then... it wasn't really. YES, we had a tie-in to Inhumanity and Original Sin... but did we... really? They never referenced the event comic, instead just put on the tie-in cover and did their own thing, telling their own story.
Young Avengers by Kieron Gillen
Gambit by James Asmus
Hawkeye by Matt Fraction
Journey into Mystery by Kathrynn Immonen
She-Hulk by Charles Soule
Superior Foes of Spiderman by Nick Spencer
All wonderful comics, all free of events, free of having to include any major "overall comic" plot points. And even with events, comics like Jeff Parker's Thunderbolts or Kieron Gillen's Journey into Mystery used the events for their own purpose, and it never felt like it was taking over the comic (far from it, it felt organic, making you wonder how the plot could have happened without it).
Then just ignore their ignore. Buy what YOU want, and what YOU think is good, and ignore what Marvel is telling you is great. There are still tons of great comics by Marvel, just takes a little while to work out what comics please you and get those. Often yeah, you need to try a few duds, but ultimately - I get roughly 5-8 comics a month, and I love ALL of them, and any I stop enjoying I just drop. Simples.
"We are Shakespeare. We are Michelangelo. We are Tchaikovsky. We are Turing. We are Mercury. We are Wilde. We are Lincoln, Lorca, Leonardo da Vinci. We are Alexander the Great. We are Fredrick the Great. We are Rustin. We are Addams. We are Marsha! Marsha Marsha Marsha! We so generous, we DeGeneres. We are Ziggy Stardust hooked to the silver screen. Controversially we are Malcolm X. We are Plato. We are Aristotle. We are RuPaul, god dammit! And yes, we are Woolf."
Since a couple of folks have mentioned the Fraction/Aja Hawkeye run, it is worth mentioning that the current Hawkeye run the Lemire is writing may very well be the Fraction run's equal(to tell you the truth, I think it may be better).
Very solid self-contained story. If you liked Clint's brother being a part of the previous run, you might want to consider checking it out.
I think other people were right in saying to put energy into indie comics and non-big 2 superheroes. I'd also suggest looking into back issues of other genres that DC/Marvel used to do back in the day. Depending on your tastes you might find some real gems.
I thought that you're main problem was with the writing...but then I don't get how you can like Scott Snyder's paint-by-numbers Batman stories.
Anyway, I don't have a problem with SH comics, but I do find that too much of the stuff from Marvel and DC is thin on substance and just not worth the cover price. SH comics (especially the stuff from Marvel) was really great in terms of stories about character and stepping up to the plate (especially when you don't feel like it), duty, service and being bigger than yourself. I also liked the social commentary. But much of that is gone now. Right now I am enjoying a lot of what Image puts out. And even the stuff I like from DC (Omega Men, Grayson, Midnighter) is not so much conventional SH comics.
It's better IMHO. Fraction runs (like much of what he writes) is just one dimensional hetero male wish fulfillment fantasy, where the hero just kicks butt and screws as many women as possible. Jeff Lemiere has more layers and dimension to his characters and he is a phoneminal story teller.
He has quickly become one of my top 5 all time favourite writers.
Last edited by Mia; 10-04-2015 at 09:18 AM.
As others have mentioned, the new Vertigo book by Hernandez and Cooke.
What gets me frustrated is that a new book by Gilbert Hernandez and Darwyn Cooke should be the book that everyone is talking about. People are certainly aware that it's coming, but it's flown under the radar compared to whatever's coming out of Secret Wars. This is Gilbert Hernandez, one of the finest creators in the history of the medium, and Darwyn Cooke, perhaps the finest talent to come along in the past two decades-- how is this not the book that every comic fan is anticipating????
Patsy Walker on TV! Patsy Walker in new comics! Patsy Walker in your brain! And Jessica Jones is the new Nancy! (Oh, and read the Comics Cube.)
Mia is talking about Hawkeye. And while I wouldn't call it one dimensional and I wouldn't call it a wish fulfillment fantasy in exactly the same way that say James Bond or Conan is, there's still an aspect of it that's male fantasy. I'm thinking of the aspect of the comic were you have beautiful exes that are willing to hang out with you and each other at the same time ( "Hey all of us have been intimate with Clint, but let's set that aside so that we can play card games together with just him and no one else"). And they are all willing to bail you out of trouble at the same time ( "oh that Clint, let's get together and help him out cuz we all still love him on a certain level")...yeah, that's kind of a male fantasy.
There's nothing wrong with having male fantasies, but that's kinda what it is...
Last edited by ed2962; 10-04-2015 at 01:04 PM.
I highly recommend astro city too.
It's the best 'pure' superhero comic right now..Marvel is going through a deconstruction right now and DC is trying to be Edgy. they both still and wil always have good ongoing books but astro city is a modern return to the golden age
it should but superhero comics dont get as much cool points as indie ones :/
What we used to call life has very little worth these days. Welcome to the very edge.
--Prince Namor (Earth-616)
I like Hawkeye more than, pretty much anything Fraction's done otherwise, but I would like it more if it took some jabs at its fantasy once in awhile.
I'm really enjoying JLA 3000's interest in mocking, however gently, overly cynical takes of the Justice League. In trying to recreate Wonder Woman, Superman, the Flash, the far future young geniuses have tried to make them more believable, riffing on the old stories, so Wonder Woman's a constantly aggressive fighter with sex issues, Superman's cocksure bully. The Flash is Barry, but he's got red hair and his superspeeds hurt his skin because he has no natural protection against drag. It could easily play as the I'm-too-cool-for-superheroes power fantasy, or have them lose bad and prove the classic-heroes-are-the-best fantasy, but instead Giffen and DeMatteis commit to following through on their heroes' creator's mistakes.
It's the kind of awareness in the authors that saves Preacher, for me, and it works great here. I'm all for indulgence and fantasy, but when the world-order starts agreeing with the more absurd forms, it's got to be a children's story or I kind of check out a little and start critiquing it reflexively as I go along.
Patsy Walker on TV! Patsy Walker in new comics! Patsy Walker in your brain! And Jessica Jones is the new Nancy! (Oh, and read the Comics Cube.)
How do we change this? I know I'm preaching to the choir, but how do we point people to better comics? Why does this thread even need to exist?
(That's that the end of my hysteria for tonight.)
But seriously, if we begin with the assumption that most comics readers can read (which for my money is fair) and at a certain point what they are reading doesn't work for them (which is inevitable), how do we guide them in the right direction? You would assume that the curious would follow creators, but most don't. How do we we get someone who likes Lemire's Animal Man, Green Arrow, or Hawkeye to read the Essex County Trilogy? To follow that to American Splendor? Or better yet to Eddie Campbell's Alec?
How do we make N American comics fandom better read? How do we expand the 200,000 superhero faithful to embrace comics beyond their comfort zone? It's not like the comics aren't there. Why aren't millions of people reading these books like in Europe or Japan?
I know I'd rather live in a world where Gene Yang's American Born Chinese is more read than his tepid run on Superman.
Last edited by FanboyStranger; 10-04-2015 at 08:13 PM.
As Baseman pointed it, it goes beyond comics with the reading public. What are the most widely circulated books at most public libraries? Not the fine literature or new award winning critically acclaimed stuff, nosiree it's series romance books by Harlequin and the like )i.e. thing sread out of brand loyalty or genre fixation). And it's not the well reviewed critically acclaimed books that dominate the best-seller lists, it's the trashy thrillers like Dan Brown or Sue Grafton and the like churn out.
Reality television dominated ratings for how long now? It's a trash culture that dominates and sells lowest common denominator fare. Comics merely reflect the broader culture in terms of the proclivities of what gets consumed and sells and what doesn't. There are a small number of vocal people swimming against the tide, but the tide hasn't changed and shows no signs of doing so.
Enjoy the great books, recommended them to open-minded or like-minded folks, but don't expect them to be embraced by the masses as a whole until the masses proclivities change at all levels, not just in comics, and I doubt that's happening in my lifetime.
-M