I just wanted to let you know that your Jonathan Hickman recaps have been very helpful. Are you planning on doing one for Secret Wars?
Thanks, I’m glad you find them useful, I don’t get much feedback about them. I hadn’t really considered doing one for Secret Wars; reason being that I wrote those to help prepare people for SW, as there was such a long and complicated build up.
In fact, I’m just re-reading everything again now, which is probably the first time since I wrote those recaps. Love this run so much…
Hey guys, here’s the first couple of pages from Veterinary Clinic. A new horror one-shot comic book written by myself and drawn by Mark Teffer. We’re currently doing a Kickstarter to help raise funds to cover printing and shipping costs. If you’d like to contribute anything helps, here’s a link for more info on the book. Thank you!
Hey guys. My talented friend Tim Vargulish is tantalisingly close to a fully funded Kickstarter for his new comic. You can be a part of it by donating a small amount and seeing him across the finish line!
Anonymous asked:
Is the Infinity OHC in the proper reading order? As is often the case with Hickman collections, all of the covers are at the end of the book, so it is difficult to tell which issue is which.
Hey CBL, Do you think that Marvel will collect the Secret Wars Battleworlds and Warzones stories in oversized hardcover format?
Doesn’t look like it I’m afraid, if they were going to I think they’d have been solicited before now. And they don’t tend to revisit events until years later, when they become more of a ‘classic’ story, so I think we’re out of luck there.
Hopefully some of them will be included in oversized versions of the relevant series. I’m hoping for an Old Man Logan OHC that includes Bendis SW mini, and an oversized version of Edmondson’s Black Widow with Last Days included.
Anonymous asked:
I saw recently that War of Kings and Realm of Kings are getting the omnibus treatment. However it looks like that both of those are double dipping the recently released Guardians of the Galaxy by DNA Omni. Would you recommend getting just the WoK/RoK omnis and then the complete collection of GOTG TPB to avoid having duplicate issues? And is this something that Marvel does a lot?
Good question - I was talking about this with someone else recently. It depends how much you like the Omnibus format I think. If you’re just interested in owning the majority of it, then the first Complete Collection of Guardians, along with WoK and RoK will give you almost everything – except for the Annihilators back ups.
But if you have the money to spare and a preference for the format, it’s nice to own the Guardians Omni just so that on the day you want to read only that series, you just need to pick the one book off your shelf.
Marvel don’t do this sort of thing that often, but in this case it was a blatant cash-in on the popularity of the movie. Even though there’s no evidence that these movies make a great impact on comic sales.
Anonymous asked:
When looking to buy a run of any comic, do you prefer buying the Omnibus first, or do you buy trades and then go back and buy the Omnibus later? I love Omnibuses, I think they look beautiful on my shelf, but they can be hard to read and kind of expensive.
If there’s an omnibus available of a run I want, I’ll buy that in the first instance, But the vast majority of the time, I’ve already bought the TPB’s of the entire run before an Omni comes out, so I have to go through the process of selling off all the trades.
I don’t find Omni’s particularly difficult to read, but when they’re particularly big I do prefer a regular OHC if I have the choice. Take New Avengers for example, there’s an Omni collecting Disassembled and the first 3 OHC’s, but after owning both I much prefer to have the separate OHC’s.
I’m sorry I haven’t been posting much on here lately, but I’ve been working my balls off on a new video podcast, and I’m excited that I can finally reveal it to you guys today.
The podcast will be available on iTunes by the end of the week, but it’s enhanced for video viewers, with images and video clips of the things we’re discussing.
It’s been a lot of hard work, but I’m really pleased with the results and I’d love to know what you guys think. Please give it a watch and let me know in the comments, any feedback would be really appreciated.
Part 1 - Weekly Roundup
The first segment includes reviews of Wonder Woman #1 and The Flash #1, along with our impressions of the first episodes of Preacher and Outcast
Part 2 - News & Rumours
Here we talk about the Superhero games revealed at E3, including Spider-Man, TellTale Batman, and Injustice 2. We also speculate on what Flashpoint might mean for The Flash TV show, and talk about Marvel and DC Comics futures, based on the recent solicitations and teasers.
Part 3 - Superhero Sellouts (Topic)
For a topic this week, we discuss recent Superhero TV shows and Movies that have gone wrong, and the reasons for why they failed. the discussion covers Arrow Season 3, BvS, and the Fantastic Four movie.
I just wanted to say your display is amazing. It inspired me to stop reading a lot of things digitally and start collecting physical copies, all in the hopes that one day I might have something that looks half as good. Do you have any advice on how to go about procuring a collection? I know the things I like, but it's also difficult to not want to just go out and buy EVERYTHING. Are there some guidelines you have that you follow? Thanks for the great work!
That’s a REALLY good question, and one that not enough people think about when they get into this game. So many people give into the urge to just buy everything, then they end up with a load of books they aren’t really interested in. You’ll notice that my collection is mostly modern comics, and that’s just because most of the writers I enjoy are from the 2000 onwards era.
My advice would be, decide which writers you like and buy their books. If you’re a digital reader that’s great, because you can always sample things before you invest in a massive volume of something you might not enjoy that much. If I ever read something I bought and think I’ll never read it again, it goes up for sale, because what’s the point in keeping something I won’t read.
Be strict with yourself and stick to some sort of guideline, to prevent yourself from getting sucked into that collectors mentality that so many fall victim to. I’m baffled when people buy everything they can, because how can one person like absolutely everything? Someone who likes everything, by definition, has no taste. You don’t want to be that guy.
Welcome to the fifth entry in this series of recommendations for Out of Lives, which will be the final comic book within the Standalone Series category. After this we’ll be moving on to some longer runs of 4-6 volumes in length. There’ll be a few more mini-series showing up as extra suggestions on future posts, but this is the last time one will be the main topic of discussion, so we really should go out with something truly ground-breaking.
Comics as a storytelling format have never been in the mainstream; over the years these bastard stepchildren of film and novels have learned their place, sticking to the fringes where they belong. They’ve happily stood on the sidelines as movies, TV series, toys and T-shirts adorned with comic book characters have claimed all the glory and financial success.
But every now and then a comic series transcends the medium and achieves mainstream recognition, and a prime example of this is written by anarchist-magician Alan Moore, with art by normal-guy Dave Gibbons. Watchmen is a superhero story that deconstructs the superhero genre (if there is such a thing), creating a realistic world where normal people dress up and fight crime, then showing what happens when a real person with incredible powers turns up.
It is an intricately structured, masterfully told story that is so full of detail, parallels and themes that it’s impossible to take it all in at once. This story can be read five times over and feel different on each occasion. The story is a conspiracy within a murder-mystery, set mainly in an alternate-history version of the 1980’s, when the second generation of costumed heroes have hung up their tights, as the time and matter controlling Dr. Manhattan has made them irrelevant.
Anyone who has seen the 2009 Scott Snyder movie will know the broad strokes of the story, but the film couldn’t possibly capture everything the comic has to offer. The brilliance of this story is that it’s designed as a comic book, and it was long considered unfilmable because it was never meant to be adapted into a different format. The only way to experience the full impact of this seminal work is to frisbee your DVD out of the nearest window, buy yourself aTrade Paperback, Deluxe Hardcover, or (if you’re feeling fancy) theAbsolute Edition, then put it in your eyes, page by glorious page.
If you liked this you might also enjoy…
Swamp Thing by Alan Moore & Stephen Bissette
Watchmen was Alan Moore’s last hurrah in American Superhero comics, as after finishing that story he felt he’d said everything he had to say on the subject. To find his most brilliant work prior to that, we need to go back to a time when he still had plenty of things on the tip of his tongue.
Swamp Thing isn’t a typical superhero; he doesn’t wear a cape, or have a logo on his chest, in fact… he’s a bog monster. When he was conceived by Len Wein a decade earlier, Alec Hollund was simply another victim of a science experiment gone wrong, but in Moore’s hands he was deftly reconstructed into something much deeper and more interesting. This run takes place over six volumes, and every story arc feels like a re-imagining of the character in some way, as his powers and abilities develop, secrets are revealed, and Swamp Thing’s place in the planetary ecosystem is revealed. This is an early example of how Superhero stories can be more than just punching bad guys, as this story has more dimensions than string theory.
You should still be able to find thetrade paperbacks in print, but some of the hardcovers are hard to find at this point. Failing all else you can find the collections on ComiXology under Saga of the Swamp Thing.
Before Watchmen: Dr. Manhattan by J. Michael Straczynski & Adam Hughes
If you want to know more about the world of Watchmen, DC recently took the decision to tell more stories set before the events of Alan Moore’s story. They recruited a superstar team of creators and divied up the characters between them, with mixed results. Some found it hard to recapture the voice of the original series, whereas others took to it more natural. Dr. Manhattan is probably the best story the Before Watchmen initiative has to offer, as JMS seems to have a real grasp of what makes the character interesting, and a rare ability to make grand ideas feel grounded.
This four-issue mini series has also found new relevance recently, as DC Comics: Rebirth #1 seems to imply that the character may have had something to do with the creation of the New 52. If this intrigues you at all, check out our feature on DC’s Rebirth. You can find this story collected in a pair with Straczynski’s sister title Nite Owl either in Trade Paperback, or Deluxe Hardcover.
DC: The New Frontier by Darwyn Cooke
Watchmen was a story about Silver Age heroes dealing with Cold War paranoia, but Alan Moore took a particularly bleak and cynical approach to the topic. Seeing the same subject being handled so differently by Darwyn Cooke inThe New Frontier is really quite fascinating, as he carefully poured out all the negativity and replaced it with pure liquid optimism. Even though the story features a large and diverse cast, it’s mostly made up of classic heroes who are known to even the most agnostic comic reader, so there are no issues with accessibility.
In the space of just 400 pages, Cooke takes his readers on a tour of the DC Universe, and shows them just what makes these heroes so special. He implements an unusual 3 panel layout per page, which allows the characters room to breathe and all gives everything a cinematic feel. Cooke is inspired by classic artists like Will Eisner, and everything he draws has a simple elegance and a 1950’s sheen to it. Sadly, due to his recent passing, books like this simply won’t exist anymore, as nobody else in the medium can emulate what this kind of work.
This story is available in a single Trade Paperback, a Deluxe Edition, or an out of print Absolute Edition. All of the printed copies may become harder to find, as often happens when a creator passes away, but they’re readily available through ComiXology if you can’t find a physical version for a reasonable price.
That brings us to the end of this instalment, and the section devoted to standalone mini-series. Next week we’ll be graduating to some longer-form stories, and discussing one of the best comic series ever scribbled onto paper. To keep track of all future recommendations make sure you bookmark the original post, which has an index at the bottom of the article.
Here is another book recommendation, aimed at people who new comic readers who are trying to find a place to start. This is a project I’m doing for Out of Lives that started withA Beginner’s Guide to Comic Books. Most of my Tumblr followers are well-versed in comics, but in case you overlooked any of these suggestions in the past I thought I’d share these posts here:
Welcome to the fourth in a series of twenty recommendations, designed to turn the comic-curious into the comic-crazed. The first five suggestions are all self-contained volumes that require no prior knowledge or understanding, then after next weeks post we’ll graduate to some more in-depth runs and keep building from there. If you’re new to comic books but interested in developing your knowledge, first check out A Beginner’s Guide to Comics, where we all the basics will be covered for you.
If you happen to enjoy one of the main recommendations, there are always three further books to try, that share a similar creative team, title character, or tone. So far we’ve covered a variety of genres within the medium, from straight-up superhero stories, to a handful of creator-owned projects. This time we’re going to split the difference with a Marvel book with decidedly less capes and tights:
Old Man Logan was an eight-issue run on the main Wolverine title by the superstar team of Mark Millar and Steve McNiven. This was at the hight of their power, when they were fresh off a certain event book, and they were pretty much in a position to choose any project they wanted to do. For new readers, this story has the benefit of being unconnected to any continuity, as it’s set in an alternate future where the villains decided to band together with their far superior numbers and take out the superhero community for good. Very few of the old guard are left alive; only really the people who the villains have nothing to fear from. This includes a Hawkeye without the benefit of his vision, and a Wolverine who refuses to pop his claws. The reason behind Logan’s turn towards pacifism is kept secret at first, but when you are finally given the answers it will all make sense.
This is a story about two old friends taking a cross-country trip through some exceedingly unfriendly territory, in order for Logan to make enough money to keep the local mob off his family’s back for a few more weeks, only in this case the mob are also the severely inbred children of Bruce Banner. Several big characters from the wider Marvel universe make an appearance, and the world they inhabit feels remarkably fleshed out for such a short run. This is in no small part thanks to Steve McNiven’s cinematic storytelling and attention to detail. The world is quite a dire place, and there are a couple of truly gut-wrenching moments, but there’s also some levity and bombast that make the story more well-rounded, and less like a typical post-apocalyptic nightmare.
This story is said to be the inspiration for the in-production Wolverine movie, so if you’re interested in picking up a copy before that, you can find it in a single Trade Paperback, an oversized hardcover, or as part of Mark Millar’s Wolverine Omnibus, which also collects his previous run with John Romita Jr. For digital readers you’ll also find it on both Comixology and Marvel Comics Unlimited.
If you like this one you may also be interested in…
Civil War by Mark Millar & Steve McNiven
The same two creators have done a couple of books together, but the most well known is Marvel’s Civil War event. Most people will have a working knowledge of this story, and the imagery above really says all you need to know, but if you want to know more about this book you can have a look at Enduring Events: Civil War, in which the entirety of the event is discussed, from the build-up to the fallout. You can find this in trade paperback, a freshly reprinted oversized hardcover, or you can splurge on a boxset that includes all of the tie-in stories. The usual digital options are available as well.
Secret Wars: Old Man Logan by Brian Michael Bendis & Andrea Sorrentino
When the first run finished in 2009 we thought we’d seen the last of the elderly Wolverine and his hellacious western reality, but that wasn’t the case, as in 2015 alternate worlds collided in Marvel’s Secret Wars event, and Old Man Logan was given life anew. In the tie-in mini-series to Secret Wars, Wolverine went on a globe trotting journey across the domains of Battleworld, bumping into alternate versions of a variety of characters who’d managed to survive the end of all things.
Brian Bendis cleverly builds on what Mark Millar established, and adds some of his own twists to the mythos, and Andrea Sorrentino provides some pencils that actually rival Steve McNiven’s. This short run leads into an ongoing series by the same artist, but written by his collaborator on Green Arrow, Jeff Lemire. You can collect this story in a trade paperback, an incoming Secret Wars companion hardover, or the usual digital services.
East of West by Jonathan Hickman & Nick Dragotta
If you’re looking for something in a similar dystopian-cowboy-future setting, then this might be the book for you. East of West is an ongoing series, currently in its sixth story arc. It follows the four horsemen of the apocalypse, with a particular focus on Death, but to say too much about the story would spoil something, as it is as cleverly orchestrated as science-fiction gets.
Hickman is a meticulous planner who spends a great deal of time moving his characters around the board, revealing secrets one by one until everything is bought together in a grand finale. If that sounds like the kind of story you’d like to experience as it happens, then you can catch up on the series with the oversized Apocalypse: Year One edition, or five trade paperbacks. The entire series is also available on Comixology, and the first issue is only 69p (99c), so you can try it out for the price of a chocolate bar.
That brings us to the end of another round of recommendations. Next week will be the last time we focus on the short, standalone stories, as we’ll be moving onto slightly bigger runs of 3 to 6 volumes in length. They’ll cost you a bit more, but the rewards are even greater, as some of the best runs in comics were finished in less than six volumes. To keep track of all the future posts just bookmark the original article, and scroll down to the bottom to the index, which is updated shortly after each recommendation goes live, or just come back in a weeks time. Thanks for reading.
