Everyone I’ve polled on the subject (other than Lou and Harborwolf) have said that Whedon’s Astonishing gets deadly boring 10 issues in or so. OTOH, that’s coming from a much more seasoned comics audience than Shirley, most of whom have read the Claremont stuff. YMMV.
–Cliffy
By far your best bet is to go to the Comic book shop locator and type in your zipcode. Unless you live 3 hours outside of Yellowknife or something like that, the nearest comic book shop is going to be a lot closer than you think.
Go talk to one of the gee- I mean sales associates there and give him or her a feel for what you want. Pick up some of the Trade Paperbacks and backissues, flip through them, find exactly what you want. They’ll be more than happy to help.
Oh yeah, and welcome to the fold.
I’m going to cautiously quote myself and bump this hijack. The above-quoted link goes to a compendium called “40 Years of the X-Men Collector’s Edition.” It’s a Win/Mac DVD apparently, that contains (it claims) all the X-men books from 9/63 - 8/05.
Does anybody own this? Has anybody checked this thing out? Is it just sacrilege to read comics on the computer? Also, there’s apparently an Avengers and a Fantastic Four compendium as well. Any Dopers with first-hand experience?
Well to be fair, I’ve only read through #12 (in the TPBs).
I’m up to date on Astonishing (#15) and it’s held my interest. It’s certainly less of a continuity wade than any of the other titles have ever been, and I’ve been reading since Longshot was a member and they lived in the outback. Whedon keeps the characters true and the dialogue paced well.
I don’t own it myself, but I thought I would clarify that it only contains Uncanny X-Men comics.
Pick up the collections of Grant Morrison’s New X-men. One of my favourite comic series ever, period. The great oversized hardcover editions are out of print (I had the first two and just had to buy the third on Ebay for 60 bucks :rolleyes: ) but you can still buy the softcover trades and apparently a deluxe hardcover spanning the whole series is in the works.
I’ve never seen them first hand, but I know people who’ve gotten them. I find it difficult to read comics on a computer – given my monitor size and my eyesight, they’re impossible to read unless I zoom in to see about a third of a page at a time, which hampers the flow if the artist has constructed the page well. Also, the company created the discs by just scanning in old comics – there’s quite a bit of charm there IMO because you get to see the old ads and letters pages, which don’t appear in other reprints, and you get original color in all its garish, poorly registered glory – but I’ve heard that occasionally you’ll come across a bad scan. Although this is rare and, IIRC, plagues the Spider-Man discs more than FF or X-Men. But if you’re someone who doesn’t mind reading comics on the computer, I’d say this is a great value.
Also, cckerberos makes an important point – this is just the run of the series now titled Uncanny X-Men, which started in 1963. Other Marvel comics which cross over with the X-Men aren’t represented (except for FF and Spidey crossovers if you’ve also bought those discs). I don’t think this is much of a problem through Claremont’s classic run. There are things you’ll miss that happened in New Mutants as Uncanny approaches #200, but off the top of my head I don’t think of much that’ll cause a problem. (It’s worse the other way around, trying to read the first two years of New Mutants without concurrently reading X-Men.) But after issue #200 or so, it will get to be frustrating as that was the era of the summer crossover – each summer all the X-books (Uncanny X-Men, X-Factor, and later X-Force and ‘Adjectiveless’ X-Men) would gte together for some big event and you often had to read every issue to get the story. You’ll be missing stuff in the first crossover, the Mutant Massacre, and as things progress, you’ll be getting stories in the 250’s or early 300’s that are nigh incomprehensible without access to other books. All that said, IMHO Claremont had lost a step by then, and the summer crossover doesn’t become oppressive until later, after he’s well and truly crapped out (the next big one, Fall of the Mutants, is pretty self contained), so I wouldn’t think this is a big problem – some of the shitty stories at the end of Claremont’s run and beyond will be tough to read because you don’t have access to spin-offs, while most of the shitty stories will be there complete. IMO you’re not missing much either way. Most of the good stuff and all of the really good stuff happens before spin-off mania became a problem.
–Cliffy
I found this on ebay, and was wondering what the thoughts were of true comic bookophiles ( what the hell do you guys call yourselves, anyways?)
Would this be blaspheming in the highest sense? Am I unworthy?
There’s nothing wrong with reading comics on a computer, so long as you’re someone who doesn’t mind reading off a screen (and, as Cliffy mentioned, you have good eyesight and a fairly large monitor).
I should caution you about dvd comic collections on eBay. This one is legit, but there are a number of bootleg discs on eBay which consist of (illegally) scanned comics such as this one. Tip offs are mentions of the .cbr format and CDisplay.
cckerberos, what makes you think the first one is legit? It would be difficult to make a .cbr or .cbz file into a .pdf file.
I assume they use the .pdf format since it’s more accessible.
Whoops, never mind. Found it on amazon.com. My mistake.
Let me tell you 2 things about Ultimate X-Men:
They are targeted at teenagers and tweens. Don’t let anyone tell you they’re not; they are. They are chock-full of current events, pop-culture references, and what is arguably an awful lot of product placement. The X-Men are teenagers (which is nothing new), but they really act like it. Modern, annoying teenagers. Brian K. Vaughn’s issues are some of the most egregrious examples of this, and it pains me to say that because I’m a big fan of Y: The Last Man and Ex Machina.
I know all this because I’ve read almost every damn issue. Go figure.
Not that it matters now, but that should say “it wouldn’t be difficult”
That’s what turned me off to most of the Ultimate stuff I’ve read. It tries too hard to be (pop) culturally-relevant. Too much slang, too much celebrity name-dropping. Bendis got off to a wicked cool start in Ultimate Spider-Man, but I haven’t bothered to read it since the first TPB. I didn’t care for Millar’s Ultimate X-Men or The Ultimates at all – he seems to think that making everyone into bastards = character development.
That’s why I recommended Astonishing X-Men. Love Whedon or hate him, he really has a good handle on what makes the X-Men so special and enduring, and writes them as icons, yet very human at the same time. And it doesn’t get any prettier than John Cassaday’s artwork with Laura Martin’s coloring.
I decided to take the moral high road and not take a chance on the cd thing.
I think the artists and writers should be given money for their works or my money should be going to an honest seller.
anyways, I nipped off to Borders and was able to cop a squat in the comic book section and read one Xman issue. That was a nice time. Didn’t buy a thing.
I am bookmarking this thread for future reference when I need to expand my comic book knowledge.
Now the question remains, at what point does one become an official comic book geek? Not that I aspire to reach that low…er…high… Is there some kind of high water pants mark moment or is it a near flame war argument over Golzanaka Ultimate Series vs. Golzanaka Original Series VS The New Ultra Team Golzanaka. and which super hero-ine/ mutant is the most hittable.
I feel pimples breaking out on my face…
Oh, and one cannot take a laptop into the john or curl up in bed with it and read the comics. Tain’t natural.
I completely agree. I still pick up the Ulitmate X-Men TPBs as they show up at the library because they’re such quick and easy reads, but I think not being a huge X-Men fan in general helps make them more tolerable to me. I just can’t stomach Ultimate Spider-Man, The Ultimates, or Ultimate FF, and that whole Ultimate Galactus fiasco is just right out the door.
The Essential X-Men Vol. 1 did absolutely nothing for me as a newbie having only seen the movies. I think the b&w takes a lot out of the comic, to be honest.
I think you’re officially a comic book geek at the moment when you want to (er, worry about?) be called a comic book geek. I doubt many other comic geeks will take you seriously until you’ve read Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Dark Knight Returns, Maus, Sandman, and Essential X-Men vol 2. because, for better or worse, those are essential to “cultural literacy” amongst adult fans of the medium, but feel free to call yourself one of the faithful at any time. Welcome! You may wish to grab yourself a copy of Understanding Comics, which is a light, entertaining, and informative graphic novel about the medium, but read it for pleasure rather than because it sounds “important.”
Or you could head straight to pedantry with exchanges like these:
I’ve always considered a long comic book story originally published in one volume as an original graphic novel (OGN), a compilation of previous material from multiple issues as a trade paperback* (TPB), and used graphic novel (GN) as be a generic term that covers both.