The Comic Book Thread (spoilers)

[Your Mom]

Got Absolute Sandman Volume 1 for my birthday. Can't wait to tackle this thing. It's huge though!

[I Don't Mind]

Got Absolute Sandman Volume 1 for my birthday. Can't wait to tackle this thing. It's huge though!

Twice as satisfying as it is long

[Nick Adams]

Anybody doing Free Comic Book Day? The only thing that I really want is the Star Wars/Firefly cross-over, and maybe the teaser issue for Spider-Man: Season One.

[Your Mom]

Seeing an old Batman cartoon has reminded me that it sucks that in the New 52 Harley and Ivy aren't friends anymore

[Nick Adams]

Gotham City Sirens and Stephanie Brown are my most lamented losses that happened because of the New 52, as far as women go. Honestly, the changes to the Bat-verse in total are the only ones I don't like. Hell, if they'd just continued the Red Robin title and made what became issue 26 in to issue, say, 30 or 31, with the reason for the attack on Captain Boomerang being the whole Ra's al-Ghul interaction causing Tim to have a reversal of morality for a little bit. Ah well, at least Harley is still part of the continuity, even if she's almost more over-sexed than Starfire.

[TKz]

Man. After Avengers I had an urge to read more comics, so I re-read most of Ultimate Spider-Man (and on a similar note, man Ultimate X-Men sucks at the start. It gets kind of fun later on, but it just feels like there's so little time to care at all about most of the characters because there's something major going on all the time) and I'd heard that Peter Parker...

Dies and gets replaced by a black kid named Miles. And I was like "Oh well that's kind of cool." So I read it and was about ready to be heartbroken after really starting to like Peter after reading all of it, I reach the end of Ultimatum Requiem... and he's alive. So I'm like, hey, that's awesome! And then I find out, what the hell, he dies like two story lines later? What was the point of that? Why not just have let him sacrificed himself in Ultimatum. I got my hopes up that he didn't die after all.

Haven't gotten around to reading the bits where he's not dead.

Anyone got any suggestions on some good points to start with certain popular Marvel comics? I'm quite interested in reading some of the Thanos stuff. I've read most of the big crossover events starting with House of M up until Avengers Vs. X-Men. Is there a good point to start with something like Avengers, Amazing Spider-Man or some other series like X-Men, that'll give me quite a lot of a series to read?

I really enjoyed what I read of Thor in during Dark Reign and I quite like Ms. Marvel, are there any good points to start with those two?

[Johnny Latino Heat]

Man. After Avengers I had an urge to read more comics, so I re-read most of Ultimate Spider-Man (and on a similar note, man Ultimate X-Men sucks at the start. It gets kind of fun later on, but it just feels like there's so little time to care at all about most of the characters because there's something major going on all the time) and I'd heard that Peter Parker...

Dies and gets replaced by a black kid named Miles. And I was like "Oh well that's kind of cool." So I read it and was about ready to be heartbroken after really starting to like Peter after reading all of it, I reach the end of Ultimatum Requiem... and he's alive. So I'm like, hey, that's awesome! And then I find out, what the hell, he dies like two story lines later? What was the point of that? Why not just have let him sacrificed himself in Ultimatum. I got my hopes up that he didn't die after all.

Haven't gotten around to reading the bits where he's not dead.

Anyone got any suggestions on some good points to start with certain popular Marvel comics? I'm quite interested in reading some of the Thanos stuff. I've read most of the big crossover events starting with House of M up until Avengers Vs. X-Men. Is there a good point to start with something like Avengers, Amazing Spider-Man or some other series like X-Men, that'll give me quite a lot of a series to read?

I really enjoyed what I read of Thor in during Dark Reign and I quite like Ms. Marvel, are there any good points to start with those two?

For Spidey, I'd recommend when Dan Slott started on the book, it's an arc called Big Time. According to wikipedia, it starts on Amazing 648. Slott quickly establishes what the status quo will be and most of his run has been great, IMO.

[TGC]

Man. After Avengers I had an urge to read more comics, so I re-read most of Ultimate Spider-Man (and on a similar note, man Ultimate X-Men sucks at the start. It gets kind of fun later on, but it just feels like there's so little time to care at all about most of the characters because there's something major going on all the time) and I'd heard that Peter Parker...

Dies and gets replaced by a black kid named Miles. And I was like "Oh well that's kind of cool." So I read it and was about ready to be heartbroken after really starting to like Peter after reading all of it, I reach the end of Ultimatum Requiem... and he's alive. So I'm like, hey, that's awesome! And then I find out, what the hell, he dies like two story lines later? What was the point of that? Why not just have let him sacrificed himself in Ultimatum. I got my hopes up that he didn't die after all.

Haven't gotten around to reading the bits where he's not dead.

Anyone got any suggestions on some good points to start with certain popular Marvel comics? I'm quite interested in reading some of the Thanos stuff. I've read most of the big crossover events starting with House of M up until Avengers Vs. X-Men. Is there a good point to start with something like Avengers, Amazing Spider-Man or some other series like X-Men, that'll give me quite a lot of a series to read?

I really enjoyed what I read of Thor in during Dark Reign and I quite like Ms. Marvel, are there any good points to start with those two?

Ms. Marvel's previous series (which ran during Dark Reign) only lasted like 50 or 60 issues before cancellation and is all collected in like 7-10 graphic novels/trades. She also has a new series spinning out of AvX this month or next called Captain Marvel.

A great bit of stuff to read involving Thanos that is current and modern would be the MArvel Cosmic Stuff from the last 5-7 years. Again, all available in graphic novels/trades. Start with the Annihilation graphic novels(there are three of them) and then moves on and all are collected in Nova, Guardians Of The Galaxy, Annihilation: Conquest, War Of The Kings, Realm Of Kings, Thanos Imperative. All are excellent stories.

[Nick Adams]

Man. After Avengers I had an urge to read more comics, so I re-read most of Ultimate Spider-Man (and on a similar note, man Ultimate X-Men sucks at the start. It gets kind of fun later on, but it just feels like there's so little time to care at all about most of the characters because there's something major going on all the time) and I'd heard that Peter Parker...

Dies and gets replaced by a black kid named Miles. And I was like "Oh well that's kind of cool." So I read it and was about ready to be heartbroken after really starting to like Peter after reading all of it, I reach the end of Ultimatum Requiem... and he's alive. So I'm like, hey, that's awesome! And then I find out, what the hell, he dies like two story lines later? What was the point of that? Why not just have let him sacrificed himself in Ultimatum. I got my hopes up that he didn't die after all.

Haven't gotten around to reading the bits where he's not dead.

Anyone got any suggestions on some good points to start with certain popular Marvel comics? I'm quite interested in reading some of the Thanos stuff. I've read most of the big crossover events starting with House of M up until Avengers Vs. X-Men. Is there a good point to start with something like Avengers, Amazing Spider-Man or some other series like X-Men, that'll give me quite a lot of a series to read?

I really enjoyed what I read of Thor in during Dark Reign and I quite like Ms. Marvel, are there any good points to start with those two?

For Spidey, I'd recommend when Dan Slott started on the book, it's an arc called Big Time. According to wikipedia, it starts on Amazing 648. Slott quickly establishes what the status quo will be and most of his run has been great, IMO.

I was going to say Spider Island for Amazing, since you also get introduced to Scarlet Spider during that point, but yeah, Big Time is good, since it ends with a ".1" issue featuring Venom, which leads directly to the Venom series that's going on now.

As for X-Men... well, that's a long list of things that would be a good starting point, but considering the status quo right now, and the whole point of A vs. X, you probably should go with House of M to start. Doing anything before that would make you fall in love with some characters that become totally irrelevant afterward. Moreover, it gives you roughly three years worth of reading, if you're gonna' go through the whole series. A word of advice, though - get the trades instead of the back-issues if you can, unless your local comics shop has the back-issues collected. Otherwise, you'll be spending about thirty or forty percent more for the exact same issues and illustrations.

EDIT: Just remembered this, but if you like Nathan Summers, AKA Cable at all, read Cable & Deadpool. It had a decent run, all of the issues are in trade format now, and as far as I'm concerned, it's very difficult to go wrong with the Merc with the Mouth. Even the Ultimate Spider-Man version didn't ruin Wade Wilson for me. Though I like to pretend that "The Dead Pool" that we saw in XMO: Wolverine wasn't actually Wade.

[Your Mom]

I can feel someone screaming NEEEEEEEEERD in my ear as I say this but Alex Summers is Havok. Nathan Summers is Cable.

[GoGo Yubari]

How dare you know stuff about comics in the comics thread, you nerd!

[Nick Adams]

HEADDESK! MAJOR HEADDESK. Edited, for correct naming. I apparently do that a lot. At least I knew it was somebody named Summers...

But the real reason I came in to the thread: I just read the two new DC #1s related to Earth 2, and as far as I can tell...

Earth 2 is basically the DCnU continuity, but it started in the Silver Age instead of five years ago. Hence, the Trinity of superheroes is a lot older. Because of this, Superman was still the world's first visible superhero. However, one thing that I do thing is different as far as Earth 2 is concerned is that there are no Green Lanterns, or if there are, then the forces of Apokolips already destroyed them, or at least the human ones that would have made the Lanterns give a damn.

Because it starts in the Silver Age instead of the pre-Flashpoint Earth 2, which was stated to start in the Golden Age, the Justice Society never existed. But it looks like they're going to be the heroes of Earth 2, with practically the same origins as the original DC heroes in the Justice Society (Flash is blessed by the Roman god Mercury, Green Lantern uses a mystical Chinese lantern, etc). Man, if that's the case, I really wonder why they didn't just call the Earth 2 series Adventure Comics. It's fairly obvious that that's where they're going with it, and since they brought back the World's Finest name, they might as well have used the other old title.

Ah well, it's going to be interesting.

Although speaking of new issues, this week's Action Comics

Was a huge surprise to me. A black president that actually WASN'T born in the USA, because he was born on freaking Krypton, adopted by a couple that happened to give him a name extremely close to his real name, was intriguing. The fact that Lex Luthor in Earth 23 is still a villain, but one of the "mad scientist that wants to kill the hero" variety instead of the "evil genius that thinks he's benefiting humanity" was a nice detail. I found myself wishing that they wouldn't just leave it off at that, because Earth 23 seems like all kinds of awesome. Of course, since I already know that issue #10 has a white Superman, it isn't gonna' happen, but it was a nice interlude.

[VerbalPuke]

Out of curiosity, has anybody ever read any of the other Crow comic books? I'm talking the stuff that wasn't Eric Draven as the main character, but still written by James O'Barr.

Also, anybody want to suggest some stuff? My favorites are stuff like Preacher, The Boys, The Crow, The Punisher, Walking Dead (just started those recently), and I have the first three books of Sandman but have not read them yet (should I start)? I'm working on collecting the rest of the Boys, some more Walking Dead, and perhaps Sandman if I enjoy the first three books. I'm not so much into the super hero type of stuff anymore (barring the Punisher, but from my understanding Garth Ennis wrote some much grittier Punisher stuff that might be worth a look) so stuff like X-Men, Spiderman, Super Man, etc. probably wouldn't be up my alley.

[TGC]

Out of curiosity, has anybody ever read any of the other Crow comic books? I'm talking the stuff that wasn't Eric Draven as the main character, but still written by James O'Barr.

Also, anybody want to suggest some stuff? My favorites are stuff like Preacher, The Boys, The Crow, The Punisher, Walking Dead (just started those recently), and I have the first three books of Sandman but have not read them yet (should I start)? I'm working on collecting the rest of the Boys, some more Walking Dead, and perhaps Sandman if I enjoy the first three books. I'm not so much into the super hero type of stuff anymore (barring the Punisher, but from my understanding Garth Ennis wrote some much grittier Punisher stuff that might be worth a look) so stuff like X-Men, Spiderman, Super Man, etc. probably wouldn't be up my alley.

The Punisher MAX books are the ones you want. Excellent. I can recommend any and all Hellblazer trades from Vertigo.

[Nick Adams]

Check out '68. It's an Image Comics limited series, but if you're in to zombie books, it's a decent read.

[HailtotheYo]

Anyone reading Winter Soldier ?

[stokeriño]

Is there a Winter Soldier I don't know about, besides the Captain America arc from 2005?

[Johnny Latino Heat]

There's a Winter Soldier ongoing now, it's currently at number 4 and it's written by Brubaker and pencilled by Butch Guice.

[Nick Adams]

I barely read Marvel, and Cap isn't one of my biggies. The only new Marvel titles (by "new" I mean "started in the last twelve months") that I've been reading are all Spider titles (Scarlet Spider, Avenging Spider-Man, Ultimate Spider-Man vol. 2). Is Winter Soldier any good; or put another way, would I like it in spite of not really caring for the Captain America titles?

[HailtotheYo]

Picked up the first three issues of WS and I'm liking it. Brought back an old school villain. Has a very nice espionage feel and seems to be going with a darker tone that many would expect from "bucky" ...