Recommend comic trade paperbacks

I’d like to check out of the library some good comic book compendiums. Please recommend ones you like, with some reason given and a one sentence or more plot outline: “Spiderman is pitted against Captain America on the moon to save the world from the space weasels which have captured Cap’s mind”.

In particular, for no special reason, I’m wondering if there’s a good Cap story that’s available. I have a DVD of old comic books, but I think they just go on and on for probably more than 50 books. Please include characters as you will, though.

Are we talking superhero comics only, here, or other genres as well? In any case, I’d recommend Frank Miller if you haven’t read his stuff already. You may already know of Sin City, so here’s a couple of others:

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns is my favourite, and without spoiling anything I’d say it’s about what happens when superheroes go into middle age, and a look into the psychology of Batman. It’s gritty, dark and wonderfully written.

Give Me Liberty is one of my favourite comics, ever. It’s set in a near-future, dystopic America and follows a young black woman who becomes a soldier. (There’s lots of other stuff happening of course, but I wouldn’t want to spoil it.) It’s one of the best portraits of a human I’ve ever read.

Edit: Oooh, more stuff!

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore and Kevin o’ Neill is Victorian and steampunky stuff where our intrepid heroine teams up with people like the Invisible Man, Captain Nemo and Dr Jekyll.

Showcase Presents series–reprints comics in B&W. Lots of issues, low cost per issue.

Many titles to choose from.

I like Shazam! and Batman & the Outsiders.

The Classics, of course:

The Dark Knight Returns
The Killing Joke

Batman rebooted and reborn.

The Death of Superman
World Without Superman

Kinda evident, really.

Crisis on Infinite Earths
Infinite Crisis

DC reboots freaking everything.

I’m not sure if I should be sticking with superhero/traditional-style-comic books, or if I could suggest non-traditional stuff like Maus or Acme Novelty Library. I get the feeling I should go with the latter.

I haven’t read superhero stuff for ages, and am probably not up on the state of the art of current comics, but still enjoy re-reading the following:

Daredevil: Born Again. DD’s ex-girlfriend sells Daredevil’s secret identity to his nemesis, the Kingpin, who then begins breaking down DD’s life and sanity. I don’t know how much knowledge of Dardevil continuity is required to read it, but it seemed fairly self-contained to me.

Kingdom Come, Marvels: I put these two together because, IMO, they provide the same kind of awe of “what would it be like if the DC or Marvel Universes were real” to comics readers, with the awe made effective by the use of the artist Alex Ross. “Kingdom Come” (a non-continuity story) takes then-current 90’s DC Universe continuity and extrapolates 20 years to the future as old-school DC superheroes take on newer, darker heroes. “Marvels” (an in-continuity historical story) takes a human POV as a photographer’s career spans the history of the Marvel Universe and the rise of superheroes’ effect on society. Both series are well-researched, fitting in with prior established continuity with a lot minor details, in-jokes, and background material that serve to coalesce each universe into a real-seeming place.

Sandman (various titles). Neil Gaiman, as a writer, is as popular here as Joss Whedon, as a TV show creator, is. So, I’d feel kind of stupid trying to explain why I like the stories so much, since someone will be sure to poke holes in my explanations with a heavily researched essay/diatribe. Anyway. It’s a series of stories regarding the rather dour immortal lord of dreams, his interactions with a family of other immortals who lord over other aspects of humanity and human society. Some stories are human dramas colored by the interference/interaction of those immortals, others are dramas involving the immortals themselves. As a comics reader, I was delighted with the fact that Gaiman was not only writing an intricately-woven set of story arcs that referenced mythology, Shakespeare, world religions and more, but that Gaiman seemed to genuinely enjoy weaving in odd, quirky threads of continuity generated over decades of DC comics. The stories are tenuously related to both older Sandman characters, the House of Secrets/House of Mystery horror comics, and other obscure characters. That said, it’s a self-contained series, with no knowledge of DC needed.

Seconding Sandman, here, and adding the Earth X/ Universe X/ Paradise X set.

It’s another Alex Ross work, but set in the Marvel universe. Everything + the kitchen sink, but really entertaining and some fantastic moments.

Get the latest run of Astonishing X-Men, written by Joss Whedon. They are all out in trade paperback now.

100 Bullets - Simple premise becomes more and more dense and exciting with every issue.

DMZ - Modern civil war breaks out in the US, told from an on the ground journalist’s POV. Wonderful.

Fables - All of histories fairy tale characters exist in their own fenced off area of NYC. Sounds very kid-oriented yet turns out to be anything but.

I couldn’t recommend the above examples highly enough, especially if you are trying to get away from the standard super-hero fare.

The Dark Knight Returns is one of my favorites because it spawned its own continuity in a way.

Besides TDKR, Batman: Year One is good and is part of the same continuity. The Long Halloween, Dark Victory and Haunted Knight, are also good and some people consider them part of the DKR continuity (occurring after Year One) but they are written be Jeff Loeb, creator of Heroes, not by Frank Miller. Hush is also pretty good but it requires you to know about events in the official continuity.

Here are two that I like that have nothing to do with superheroes: Walking Dead and Conan.

Walking Dead is obviously about zombies. Its’ very realistic in it’s portrayal of how people would deal in that situation. It’s in black and white, though.

Conan I like because it’s a different genre of comic books than the typical superheroes. It’s not very similar to the movies. This Conan is quite the savage antihero, but still with a sense of honor. There are currently six volumes 0-5 (zero is about his childhood).

I second the recommendation of Fables, and add:

Starman - Son of a Golden-Age super-hero falls reluctantly into his father’s role and grows into the job.

Y: The Last Man - A mysterious plague wipes out every male mammal on Earth except two, Yorick Brown and his pet monkey. Yorick (and pet) must, with the help of a scientist and a government agent, navigate a world made dangerous by the sudden disappearance of half its population to eventually find the cause, and cure, so that the human race (and others) can survive.

You’ve gotten obvious suggestions so let me hit the oddball ones (it’s what I love to do):

Cerebus: High Society - The first major story arc in a comic book that was planned to run three hundred issues and then conclude with the title character’s death. It got there eventually but the creator went brain droolingly insane a bit past the half way mark so most people just kind of quietly backed away from the series. High Society shows why people were enjoying it for that first half. Our title character is a Conan parody and after he wanders the world having odd ball adventures he travels to continent’s largest city and becomes the center of the city-state’s politics. It’s smart, funny, and clever and it makes me angry at the pod person who took over later.

Action Philosophers! - This series is collected in three thin trade paperbacks that collect just three issues of the original series each. So the downside is they’re short. The upside is that for just $7 you can get humorous breakdowns of the lives and beliefs of many of the world’s major philosophers. There are several previews of different stories on their site; John Stuart Mill as Charlie Brown is my personal favorite of those.

Monster - A surgeon chooses to save the life of a child over the life of a politician in a move that threatens his career. Then all of his professional enemies die mysteriously. The child, as it turns out, is an amoral serial killer out to remake the world in his own image and returns ten years later to thank the surgeon and in the chaos that ensues the old murders are reopened. So the serial killer is being chased by the surgeon who is being chased by the police and this is set in Germany just after the fall of the Berlin wall. It’s a tight thriller that has at its core some very heady moral questions. My only problem with the series is that it’s published in a manga format where the art remains unflipped so it is to be read right-to-left. I’ll spare you my rant about fandoms of foreign material who hate the concept of “translation” and just note that this choice damages the pacing of the fine artwork.

Empowered - I’ve been avoiding superheroes here since I’m shooting for the oddballs (I won’t even mention All Star Superman as the best work at defining the iconic character since Alan Moore, for example) but somehow I don’t think anyone else would bring this one up. Let me get the nasty part out of the way: it’s superhero bondage erotica. The title character isn’t really good at being a superhero and so gets captured and tied up in mostly undressed states a lot. With that said it’s also clever, funny, sweet, touching, and everything you wouldn’t expect something that starts from such sleezy roots to be. Fans of the series tend to get really defensive about it since they for the most part really are “reading it for the articles”. It’s not for everyone but it is a lot of fun.

Oh and since no one has answered you on Cap there’s several “periods” that are considered very good. I’m going to start in the silver age since you presumably have the DVD of everything Cap up to #25 of the current series (when he died).

First, Jack Kirby was one of the two men who created Captain America and he’s the person most associated with the character. He started drawing the series with the Tales of Suspense issues and kept it going until he left Marvel over editorial issues at Captain America #109. These stories aren’t the best but this is my second favorite of Kirby’s Marvel work.

After Kirby left Marvel handed some of the art duties over to Jim Steranko who might have been the only person who could follow up Kirby’s art well (maybe Neil Adams could have done a decent job but I think he got snatched up by DC earlier that year).

The first notable writer on Captain America turns up at #153, Steve Englehart. If you read the issues straight through you’ll notice that things turn up a bit at this point and while they’re not breathtaking works of genius they do take into account a little thing occurring at the time called Watergate. Englehart spends the next four years telling the story of Cap fighting a conspiracy at the highest levels of government with the very memorably conclusion… Where the head of the conspiracy is Richard Nixon who commits suicide in the Oval Office when discovered!
Captain America then gives up his that identity as a result and spends the rest of the time trying to rediscover America (a theme that has now been repeated far too many times). This run goes up to #185.

After Englehart things don’t improve. Kirby gets a short return to the series but it is so poorly done I recommend skipping it. The next major run is Roger Stern/John Byrne’s short run that starts at #247. It features Cap’s run for President in issue #250. They only last until #255 but it’s memorable.

Then we hit the man who is impossible to avoid: Mark Gruenwald. Gruenwald had a knack for some interesting low key stories (I love his Quasar, for example) and the first third of his nearly 140 issue run is pretty entertaining (#307 to vaguely #355). After that he started getting weirder and weirder and not in a good Grant Morrison kind of way. If I remember correctly Gruenwald’s run finally ended with his untimely death.

Finally we get to the two runs that I think are worth checking out: Mark Waid and Ed Brubaker. Waid kicked off the third series and Brubaker the fourth. Waid just told some really good stories but Brubaker completely reinvisioned the mythos in a way that few comic creators have (Miller and Daredevil is an example of this). Brubaker is the one responsible for the storylines featuring the revival of Cap’s original sidekick (now Uncle Ben is the only guy who gets to remain dead in comics) and the recent replacement of Cap.

“A comics crash course,” Whitney Matheson
One , Two , Three , & Four

Rising Stars: A terrific book written by J. Michael Straczynski. It’s an atypical hero book. An event happens in a small town, granting all the kids in the town superpowers. No one else on earth has them. The course of the series traces the kids as they grow up, what they do with their gifts, etc. I rank it up with Watchmen as one of the most literary comic book works ever.

Second the acclaim for Y: The Last Man and Walking Dead. You don’t have to like zombie movies to love Dead, as the characters are what drive the stories. The zombies are just gravy.

And if you like Walking Dead, try Wasteland, from Oni Press. Fascinating post-apocalyptic book about a world that was flooded, and then completely dried out, and how the peiople survive.

I’ll second Daredevil: Born Again, and I’ll point out that Captain America appears prominently therein.