So I'd like to start reading comics...

Cafe Society
1

As a kid, my parents would occaisionally pick up some comic books for me, but they never did it regularly or consistently enough for me to actually follow any series. Now, I’ve found all my old comics (except my DC vs Marvel trade paperback… :() and would like to actually get into them again. I don’t really have much preference for particular superhoes, but I did a little looking online and found a couple promising series that are starting up soon: JLA: Classified and New Avengers.

I chose the former because I’ve been exposed to the Justice League the most–thanks to Cartoon Network–and at least have a decent understanding about the characters. I chose the latter because it seems like a good mix of Marvel heroes (though I don’t see Thor–one of my favorites–on that cover; I thought he was in the Avengers?). Also, does Dr. Fate have his own series? From what I’ve seen and heard, he’s pretty cool, but I haven’t seen a Dr. Fate comic listed.

So, comic fans, do you think these choices are a good idea? Do you think my potential endeavor itself is a good idea? Is there a lot of background I’d have to catch up on for this? I’m assuming there probably is, but because these are both starting off as #1’s, they’re good jumping-in points, yes?

What do you think? Should I or shouldn’t I?

Dirx

2

I don’t know anything about either series but as someone who was a casual fan growing up and is getting back into them a bit as well, I can’t recommend Ultimate X-Men enough. It’s a reboot of the X storyline and set in a slightly alternate universe with different histories and, in some cases, powers and abilities. Great series… I’ve read about three or four of its early TPBs.

I assume the other Ultimate lines (Spidey and Avengers, most notably) are as good if you like them as well but as an X fan, they take precedence.

3

The Avengers title is simply The Ultimates.

And yes, it and Ultimate Spiderman are every bit as good as Ultimate X-Men. I haven’t read Ultimate Fantastic Four or Ultimate Daredevil and Elektra yet, so I can’t comment on them.

4

Consider JSA.
It’s DC’s WW2 Golden Aged heroes, or their heirs.

Try Usagi Yojimbo. It’s not what you think. Get one of the Trade Paperback collections. Just do it.

5

Content is irrelevant as you will get plenty of good, solid recommendations concerning which spandex heroes you just have to have or which comic book creators suck. I, on the other hand, will give you advice of a financial nature, designed for maximum return on your entertainment dollar, as well as keeping your collection in excellent condition years from now. To ANYONE who’s just starting out collecting comics…

Buy as many used trade paperback collections (tpbs) as you can.

Trade paperbacks are individual comic books bundled together by a story arc, title run, character, writer/artist team or some other theme. Most collections have stood the test of time and are, by FAR and large, dependably enjoyable reads.

You could pay full price for the latest ubermensch story hot off the rack, but why bother? Wait a year, and if they’re any good at all, get them used or deeply discounted in trade paperback form. I buy many of my tpbs via Overstock.com --up to %50 off-- and as little as $1 shipping. I’ve gotten the occassional steal from shrewd buys on Amazon.com and eBay, too.

Colections store better. Its harder to misplace key parts to a storyline.

Yessir, shop cheap by buying used. Double your buying power and the quality of your purchases.

6

I don’t really read comics much, but that’s because there are way too many oriented around superheroes, which I think was way past its use-by-date sometime around 1967.

I suggest you read comics not based around superheroes at all. Try some of the darker or more comedic comics, the ‘sequential art’, the ‘graphic novels’, etc.

7

I agree with Askia. Don’t bother with individual titles until you’re sure you’ll like them - start out with the trade paperbacks. I also second Askia on the buying used thing. My local comic shop has a bunch of used trades at half their cover price.

If you’re looking to get into JLA, you can start with the JLA: New World Order book, which reprints the first 4 (?) issues of the latest JLA series. It’ll give you decent-to-good rundowns of the major characters (if you’re a fan of the cartoon, the only one you’ll miss is Hawkgirl) and it’s not a bad story. From there you can decide if you want to read the rest of the JLA books (they’re collected into trades almost as soon as storylines are finished). And I’d definitely reccomend taking a look at them before you buy them, because, for some reason, JLA has had a tendency to really, really suck for the past 3 or so years.

If you want to start right into the current JLA, you might want to see if you can pick up #107 and #108, which were recently released and start a 6 (?) part storyline in which the JLA battle their evil counterparts, the Crime Syndicate of Amerika. Although, again, you might just want to wait for the trade. On that note, if you’re looking for a good JLA story, you can try the JLA: Earth 2 graphic novel.

You mentioned Dr. Fate: he had a mini-series of his own… a year or two again. I don’t believe it was collected into a trade. You might be able to hunt it down if you’re really inclined. He also regularly appears in JSA. A warning, though: the current Dr. Fate is a mess. His backstory will require way more explanation than you probably care about.

The jury’s still out on what kind of book New Avengers is going to bed. I second the reccomendation to check out Marvel’s Ultimate books. If you fee like dropping a chunk of change, there’s a huge collection of Ultimate Spider-Man available at places like Barnes & Noble that collects almost everything that’s been published so far for $50 (or cheaper if it’s on sale). You get a metric ton of story, and Ultimate Spider-Man is a great title, especially at the beginning. You also have the advantage of not needing to know anything about anyone when you start.

A nice thing about the current market is that you can get almost anything you want relatively easily. Spend a while reading the trades at Barnes & Noble and see what you like.

8

I used to be like GuanoLad, and looked down my nose at the spandex comics, but lately, I’ve been getting over that. Like Roger Ebert says, it’s not what the comic is about, but how it is about it that makes it good. And there are some superhero comics out there being penned by some damned good writers.

I will have to say, however, that Ultimate X-Men is not one of them. I’ve picked up TPBs for three of the Ultimate series, and X-Men was far and away the worst. I liked a lot of the twists on the old characters, but found it to be poorly executed and not particularly believable, even by the standards of a universe where people can shoot laser beams out of their eyes.

I liked the idea of Wolverine working as Magneto’s undercover assassin, trying to get close to Professor X, but the resolution to that arc was just pathetic. “I’m in love, and have seen the errors of my ways! I’m an X-Man now!” I mean, you know he’s going to end up switching sides no matter what, but they didn’t even try to make his change of heart convincing. He should have put Charles into the hospital and/or killed another X-Man, and then have had to prove that he’d changed his ways. That would have been drama, this was just wankery.

If you want to read a good X-Men comic, check out Grant Morrison’s New X-Men. The plot relies on a lot of backstory, almost none of which I know, but I still found it to be massive good fun with some serious dramatic chops.

I also got the first couple Ultimate Spider-man comics. They’re okay. Possibly, it didn’t help that I started reading them at the same time I started reading J. Michael Staczynski’s run on Spider-man, and it just couldn’t hope to compare. Still, decent stuff.

The one that really blew me away was the Ultimate Fantastic Four. I never read any of the original 4F club, so maybe that helped, but I found it taut, engaging, witty, and the characters drew me in almost immediately. Especially Ben Grimm. This series I’m definetly sticking with. I’ll probably check out the Avengers comic, too, just because that’s another major property I’m not very familiar with.

'Course, what I really want is an Ultimate Dr. Strange.

9

I found it to be exactly the opposite. I started out liking J. Michael’s run but after a while the characterisations (especially for Mary Jane) started to get very thin and it got very repetetive. It seems that once a book Spidey pushed himself to his very limits and beyond, after having to break off a date with MJ to fight crime. Got very boring very fast.

10

Everyone feel free to disregard my opinion on this, because I know I’m in a very minor minority, but I think The Ultimates really sucks. A lot.

Gorgeous artwork, which is definitely worth looking at (if you want some Hitch artwork on JLA, you can check out … well, the name escapes me, but it’s a big tabloid-sized thing he did a couple years ago) and some interesting takes on characters (I like all the Iron Man stuff - well, except that he doesn’t really get to do much, from what I’ve seen - and I’ll probably be picking up Ultimate Iron Man when it starts). But man, I found the writing to be juvenile, predictable, and lame. It might just be that I’m too attached to the original versions of the characters to really get into it, but yetch, I just really, really dislike The Ultimates.

Again, I don’t actually know anyone else who feels this way (outside of the internet, anyway), so make of that what you will.

11

I can definitly see that, but to me, the book’s other strengths more than made up for it.

12

I found the art in The Ultimates to be pretty much crap.

Iron Man and Giant Man in particular. Both seemed to have one or two stock facial shots which were used over and over again. The one most overused in both cases being a cocky smile. Fury wasn’t much better. The artists in UX-Men and USpider-Man handled him better. (I’m also not sure I buy the artist’s claim that Fury was the only one based on a real person. I swear he had a picture of Val Kilmer up for reference for Pym.)

It was pretty, to be sure, but suited to posters and covers, not the interior of a book.

13

As I understand it, JLA: Classified is a sort of flashback anthology series. Each story arc tells a previously untold story from the JLA’s past, freeing the writers to use any incarnation of the JLA they like. The core JLA book just started with a new creative team led by writer Kurt Busiek, which means good things for the series.

The New Avengers is being written by Brian Michael Bendis, a very prolific writer who writes Ultimate Spider-Man. He wrote the Avengers Disassembled crossover, which I didn’t particularly care for, and I really don’t like the idea of putting the two most over-exposed characters in the Marvel universe into the Avengers, but he’s a good enough writer that I’m willing to give it a chance. I wouldn’t be expecting Thor to show up any time soon, though (not much of a spoiler, but I’ll put in in a box anyway):

He was killed off in his own title a month or two ago.

Trade paperbacks are an excellent idea, and an excellent way to get long storylines, especially big crossovers.

Two books that look to be good that got recent reboots are Iron Man and *The Legion of Superheroes.

Iron Man is being written by Warren Ellis, who is a top notch writer, and the artwork for issue 1 was very nice. The character’s back story / origin is retold in enough detail for the reader to understand what’s going on while still introducing the newest conflict.

Legion is apparently a complete reboot. At the end of the previous run (in Teen Titans / Legion special),

The previous incarnation of the Legion disappaers into an interdimensional rift and apparently ceases to exist. The timeline is reset so that the Legion is just forming or just recently formed. This is exactly what happened the last time (Legion, vol. 4; #60) the Legion was rebooted.

This newest version is being written by Mark Waid, who is a very solid writer of mainstream superhero comics; his run on the core Fantastic Four is easily the best since John Byrne’s back in the 80’s. The first couple of stories from Waid’s run on FF are available in trade paperback.

For non-superhero stuff, I’d recommend Walking Dead, Fables, and Y: The Last Man. All are very well written with good artwork, and all have convenient trade paperbacks that will get you caught up quickly on the storylines.

14

Maybe I should rethink this idea. It’s sounding a hell of a lot more confusing than I thought. You guys have all totally lost me.

15

Don’t lose hope.

As for your OP, I say go for it. I’d maybe replace **JLA: Classified ** with just plain ol’ **JLA ** (or even JSA, if you want to kick it old school). The JLA recently started a new arc where they fight the Crime Syndicate of Amerika, and alternate reality version of themselves. It should echo nicely with what you’ve been seeing on Cartoon Network. And since the **New Avengers ** is a new title that’s getting a lot of high expectations, that’s a good start as well.

The best thing about those books for you might be their large ensemble. If there are any characters that spin off into a larger interest on your part, you can chase them off into other books.

I’ll also mention Superman/Batman, which hasn’t been listed. It started a new arc two weeks ago, and should be available. It’s an excellent book that got me started back into comics this summer.

16

It can be complicated, but it doesn’t have to be. You have two ways to go with this. You can pick on-going series or pick up trade paperbacks.

Let’s look at on-going series first.

You’ve got the right idea in trying to find books that are starting off brand new so that you don’t have to know any backstory to understand what’s going on.

The New Avengers is a good choice. It’s a new start with a new writer–Brian Michael Bendis–who got to hand pick the team members he wanted to write about.

JLA: Classified will be telling previous stories of the JLA. The advantage is that there won’t be any long term storylines to follow. The disadvantage is that it may require some previous knowledge of the JLA to follow along.

Iron Man just started with a brand new #1, and no knowledge of the character is required to follow along, and with a top notch writer (Warren Ellis).

Captain America likewise is getting a new start with a new writer (Ed Brubaker).

Legion of Superheroes is also starting with a brand new #1. Again, no previous knowledge is necessary to jump right in–the Legion universe has been “rebooted”, meaning that they’ve thrown out all previous continuity and started brand new from day one.

For other series, the best thing to do is look for a good “jumping on” point. Usually, this means starting at the beginning of a new story line or when a new creative team takes over.

JLA #107 would be a good example. The new creative team started a new storyline, with no detailed background knowledge necessary to get into the story. JLA is also a good book for the casual reader because of its lineup. Five of the seven core characters (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Aquaman) have their own books, so the writers can’t really engage in a lot of soap opera type personal drama, and are forced to concentrate on superhero adventure.

Hulk #77 would be a good place to get into that book–the previous writer just wrapped up a very long, complex storyline. The new writer, Peter David, is one of the best writers the Hulk ever had.

You’ll want to stay away from both of the big two’s core frachises. The Batman family of books is a complex soap opera that would be very daunting for a newcomer to delve into. If you are a fan of Batman, however, there is an alternative.

Likewise, I’d advise against trying to get into the core X-Men books from Marvel. It’s also a complex soap opera, but with a good deal less coherency between the various books (there’s roughly a dozen). Each writer seems to be doing whatever he wants with whatever characters he likes, without regard to what the others are doing.

The exception to this is Astonishing X-Men. Sharp writing by Joss Whedon showcases a small, effective superhero team with much less soap opera-ish crap hung onto it. The first six issues are available for a reasonable price (and will soon be released in trade paperback), and a new story arc starts with #7.

Trade Paperbacks

Trade paperbacks collect multiple issue (usually 4-6 issues) storylines. Every storyline from the current run of JLA is now, or soon will be, available. The big advantage of trades is that you get the whole story at once. JLA is a good one for this, especially since, unlike a subscription, it enables you to skip the truly horrid, and hopefully soon to be forgotten, Chuck Austen storyline (Pain of the Gods) that was just completed.

If you like Batman, trades are by far the best way to go. The Batman writers love long, complex crossovers that require you to buy a dozen different titles to get the whole story. The most recent was War Games, which was 24 issues spread out over some 10 different titles. By far the best way to read this is to wait for the trade paperbacks (there will be three of them) and buy those.
This arc wasn’t even the longest. A few years back, there was an arc (No Man’s Land) that covered some 40-50 issues. It’s a good read, and available in trade (you’d want to get Contagion, Cataclysm, and No Man’s Land books 1-5.

Others have covered the Ultimate line of trades (Spider-Man and X-Men), so I’ll just agree with them.

17

Ok, that’s the kind of break-down explanation I needed, thanks. I think I’ll go ahead and try out The New Avengers and either JLA or Legion of Superhoes. After I get into it, I can chase after individual characters if they interest me enough, as Munch suggested. I’ll probably also browse through trade paperbacks and see if I find anything I’m interested in.

Thanks for all your help! We’ll see how it goes.

18

I’ve recently got back into comics via tpbs and hardcover collections. Picked up the New X-Men hcs and enjoyed them until the final arc which revealed that the interesting character of Xorn was really Magneto in disguise. :rolleyes: Very disappointing after the excellent stories that had come before. To add insult to injury, this final arc is literally hard to follow - I had to reread it several times just to make sense of what was going on. Bleh.

Another recommendation: the hardcover collection featuring of The Fantastic Four with stories written by Mark Waid. Great stuff! A second hc is forthcoming.