I’ve lately gotten back into comics in a fairly big way. It started with following Batman, who’s my favorite of all the classic superheroes. Unfortunately, I started following him right at the beginning of the RIP storyline–as a result, I’m not following him any more. Instead, I’m entirely off in non-superhero realms reading Fables/Jack of Fables/The Literals, Elephantmen, and Dark Horse’s Star Wars titles. And, for the most part, I’m pretty happy with this–especially Fables.
But there’s a little part of me that’d like to have at least one superhero title a month to look forward to. I like Batman, as I said, and the soap-opera like silliness of the superhero genre is part of what drew me back to comics in the first place. (It was actually the “Marvel vs. DC” youtube videos that got me rolling last year.) The trouble is, mainstream superhero comics typically have hundreds of issues of backstory that you need to follow. Additionally, the usual practice of putting all of your titles into one continuity leads to fairly absurd results, so far as I’m concerned. It also gives the publisher the opportunity to do crossovers, and all the sudden you need to buy a bunch of other titles you were never interested in just to have some idea what’s going on.
So I guess the question is: Are there any decent superhero comics that have a relatively manageable number of back issues, and that take place in their own special continuity? There’s often an ad for one in Dark Horse’s Star Wars comics… goes to look Well, except for in this month’s issue of Legacy. :smack: The End League, that’s it. Looked interesting from the ad, but reviews were pretty tepid. Any other ideas?
Invincible - What if the Kryptonians had a penchant for forcible colonization of civilized planets?
Firebreather - the son of a city-stomping monster and suburban housewife tries to cope with high-school, divorced parents, and the family legacy.
Dynamo 5 - what if Superman slept around a lot and each of his five bastard offspring inherited a measure of his powers?
Noble Causes (has just wrapped, alas, but is available in trade) - Superhero celebrity soap-opera.
Proof - Bigfoot as an FBI agent. Not quite a superhero comic, but full of win and awesome; if you like Hellboy and Elephantmen, I think you’ll like Proof
The Boys - The results of nihilistic superheroes and the CIA team dedicated to punishing them for excess. Only four trades so far and all worth buying by my reckoning.
I second Invincible. Could be the best traditional superhero book out there. And Kirkman knows his foreshadowing.
The Sword - By the Luna Brothers. It’s about a young woman and how she obtained meta-human powers. It’s a mini-series halfway through its run but the first two trades are available.
The Amazing Wolf-Man - Also written by Kirkman. It’s a good-un.
I third Invincible. Best new superhero comic of the past decade. Plus, it’s only run for 60-some issues so it’s easy to catch up on. The entire series is collected in a series of very nice oversized hardcovers.
Oh I might as well say Invincible isn’t bad. The most interesting thing about it is how everything changes every dozen issues. I’m not as taken with as other posters in this thread (I think the book tends to go for the simple cliches a bit too often) but I can’t complain about it.
Green Lantern has been having it’s best run in decades lately by essentially starting over from square one. The only catch is that there’s two books containing parallel stories which puts it at about sixty issues over all at the moment but the new series have only been running about three years. If you like space opera at all then you’ll love what they’ve been doing with Green Lantern; it moves it back toward its Lensman roots.
My brother who never read the convoluted Legion of Superheroes back story was able to get into Mark Waid’s run on the title (which was another reboot). He’s done and they’ve essentially scrapped the reboot so it’s nicely self-contained.
Over on the Marvel side of things there’s The Incredible Herc which doesn’t reference Marvel history as much as mythology. It’s the fun loving Hercules having a buddy movie with a teenager who’s the seventh smarted person on the planet. It’s funny and clever while still being a traditional superhero book.