I agree about Dark Knight Returns, fwiw. Along those lines, there were a lot of one shots of Batman but I don’t know how tough they are to find or cost.
Batman: Holy Terror was very good and dystopian.
Batman: Gotham By Gaslight was a fun little adventure, setting it in Victorian New York.
The Killing Joke is a fun joker story. I think there is another Joker story that is just an updated version of Joker’s first appearance from the 40s that was also quite good.
I can’t think of any more if I have any. But I will reread those every couple of years because they are good.
Oh, and I went to my local library. They have crap, crap, and more crap. First, they are shelved in the children’s section and I always feel a little weird going in there, since I have no children. Plus I don’t want to touch anything - I know what children do, they wipe their noses and then wipe the nearest surface.
I went to the lady at the counter, since I couldn’t find them, and asked her for comic books. She said “Not comic books, graphic novels,” in a fairly snotty tone. Uh, ok. She did point them out to me - one bookcase, about five shelves high. Most of them were very much for children, like The Choo-Choo train and stuff like that.
They did have Howl’s Moving Castle, which I would have grabbed, but only books 3 and 4 were in house. And I saw a few other semi-interesting ones…like 4.
(I mean, it’s a great story, but it’s darn depressing. It’s fun like Schindler’s List is fun. For more “fun” with the Joker, try “A death in the family” :eek:)
Regarding the library, does your library have an inter-library loan system? I’m not sure about others, but mine is great. Anything in the whole county can be found on their website. A few clicks and it’s ready for pickup at my local library within a week.
Oh, I forgot, if you’ve enjoyed Joe Hill’s (aka Owen King, Stephen’s son) novels, he has a great series of graphic novels out called Locke and Key. The last one just showed up at my house yesterday from Amazon, early!
I’d recommend:
*Master of Kung Fu *by Doug Moench & Co., especially after #29. I’m talking about the original series in the 1970’s.
*The Spirit *by Will Eisnter & Co. especially the run from 1945 through 1950. Kitchen Sink Press did some reprints in the 1980’s. E-Man, both the Charlton and First runs
*The Watchmen *by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
*Swamp Thing *during the Moore/Veitch/Tottleben run. The best horror comic of all time. Strike that, some of the best horror of all time.
Walt Simonson’s run on The Mighty Thor
*Bone *by Jeff Smith Crossfire by Mark Evanier and Dan Spiegle. Not only it is a great comic book, but Evanier’s essays on Hollywood are fabulous Sandman by Neil Gaiman and co.
*Supernatural Law *by Batton Lash. The name may have changed, but it features Wolff & Byrd
**
Hellboy** (minus the various spinoffs) has been collected in 12 TPBs so far. Amazon lists them all at around $12 new (and closer to $6-8 used). With postage, you can enjoy the run for a little under $200. A likelier route would be to buy the first couple volumes online and then scour the used bookstores in your area for the rest (The hunt is an essential part of the experience).
Locke and Key is amazing. After the father dies, the rest of the family returns to an old house where the father grew up in. While the youngest of the three children is exploring, he finds a key that lets him leave his body when stepping through a certain door. There are more keys and more doors that do other things. Also, something is lurking in the well, something that remembers the family very well.
It’s a wonderful example of economical storytelling - some of the keys you only see in one frame or so and you still know exactly what happened and how it affected people. The last volume I read ended on such a cliffhanger I haven’t quite gotten up the nerve to pick up this one because I care about these people so much.
Ok, so I spent some time this afternoon going through my library’s interlibrary loan and requesting stuff. I requested:
Planet Hulk
batman the killing joke
Girl Genius vol 1
Howl’s moving castle vol 1 & 2
Nausicaa…all 4 volumes they had
The sandman vols 1-5
Life and times of scrooge mcduck! unbelievably, they had it
Y the last man, vols 1-5
I don’t expect them all to show up at once, but I figure as they come in, I’ll pick a bunch up, and then, when I finish the ones they have, I can request the rest of the series (like sandman and y the last man>
They don’t have any fables or watchmen. I am seriously considering donating a copy of Watchmen to them (I do this now and then, buy a book, read it, and then donate it almost-new to the library; it’s my way of contributing to the commnuity). They also have Cable & Deadpool…vols 3 & 4 only. WTF is up with that?
I know a lot of you guys gave other recommendations, and I’ll keep the list around for the future, but let me get started on this much first, and I’ll keep you posted.
Be careful, it’s a slippery slope. I currently have a massive stack of unread comics on my nightstand - Essential Hulk, Peter David’s Hulk, Essential She-Hulk, Terry Pratchett’s Discworld and about 5 years of X-Men comics. I’ll probably be about 40 before I get through all this stuff.
ETA: Oh, and also my current stuff - back issues of Wolverine and the X-Men and X-Factor. And I’ve yet to read the Grant Morrison run of the X-Men, or the Sandman series, and I haven’t finished Bones…
Now I’m in this situation where I read the Civil War 7 issue series because I’m all into Captain America and then now there’s all these branching stories that lead out of there, and some of them look interesting, and my fiance doesn’t remember which ones he read and which ones he didn’t and which ones were good (well, he does have some which he’s pulling out of the, sigh, long boxes) - so, what was good? I was interested in what happened with the Punisher and Iron Man and Spider-Man, but I don’t want to read shitty comics because I’m 32 year old and I don’t have time for that shit.
I don’t have an answer for you, but a similar thing happened to me. I started reading Detective Comics and Gotham Knights because I liked Batman, and then “Bruce Wayne: Murderer” happened, and before I knew it, I was buying Nightwing and Birds of Prey regularly, and the occasional Robin too. That’s how they getcha…
I went back and re-read both Deadpool and Cable and Deadpool. My opinion? Go with Cable and Deadpool. It’s funnier, less dense(visually) and generally more enjoyable. Also, there’s enough explication of back story(what little there is) as you go along that you won’t miss much even if you’re new to both characters.
