Are Modern Mainstream Comics Worth Reading?

Civil War was a big deal. It was something that affected Marvel's entire line, and had major repercussions. Pleasant Hill looks like it's just going to be a select number of books telling a story that, yes, will probably feature the heroes in conflict early on, but will end up with them working together to defeat the real threat.

Though it does seem to be a 16-part story, which is pretty big. However, it does seem to be using the X-Men style for an event: Telling the story through multiple titles, rather than one big title and other titles having to tie into it. So even though it's 16 parts, plus a 5-issue Uncanny Inhumans tie-in, when you compare it to how they normally do events, it's a lot smaller. Compare it to, say, Axis. That one was 9 parts of the main title, a 7-part "March to Axis" across four titles, plus 35 tie-in issues of 14 titles. And that one was relatively small, compared to a lot of other events. 21 issues compared to 41. Pleasant Hill is definitely a lot smaller than usual events.

I don't blame you not reading events. I don't give a damn about them, either. But I do get the impression Marvel is scaling them back, just a bit.

Maybe. And part of me actually considered just skipping the events and reading the individual titles anyway. But chances are, if I didn't read the event, then I might be lost as to what's going on a given individual title, so what would be the point?

Ms.Marvel isn't too reliant on events, is it? Does anyone know of any other titles that are or should be fairly standalone?

Ms. Marvel's been pretty standalone so far, Secret Wars notwithstanding. Squirrel Girl is standalone, though it does have an upcoming crossover with Howard the Duck. Vision will presumably be self-contained, given the premise. Angela is doing its own thing. I would assume Mighty Thor will tie into other comics at some point, but so far, it's doing its own thing. Ultimates, we'll have to wait and see, though I can definitely see it doing tie-ins on any major cosmic events. Hellcat will probably be self-contained. Mockingbird will probably be self-contained. Carnage is self-contained. The three Spider-lady titles - Spider-Woman, Silk, Spider-Gwen - are all fairly self-contained, but do have a crossover planned. Karnak is by Warren Ellis, so the only way it would tie into something else is if Ellis decreed it so.

Plenty of other titles seem pretty self-contained, as well, actually. It's tough to tell. I do have a feeling that Marvel knows how tired people were getting of the big events derailing every book, and how frustrated a lot of readers were getting with it. So I think they will try to be better about that, at least for a little while, and give each title room to breathe on its own. Crossovers will still happen, but I think they'll be a little more voluntary. For example, Squirrel Girl and Howard the Duck are crossing over because the creators like each other and they're both funny books about animal-themed characters so it makes sense. Even Pleasant Hill was probably a matter of writers volunteering rather than being drafted.

I'm kind of weary about Howard The Duck because just looking at it - the design of Howard is lifted from the '86 flop; not the 70s comic book, which had him drawn very differently.

Has Beverly Switzler or anyone else from the classic version made an appearance yet?

I'm of the understanding that even though Disney owns Marvel now (or perhaps even more now because of the greater control Disney currently has) Howard still can't look at all like Donald, that is, like his original version.

What I can find on the Internet says that Disney threatened legal action because Howard looked vaguely like Donald and didn't wear pants; they put pants on him and that shut them up.

Nah, no one from the Gerber run has shown up yet. Zdarsky and Quinones are building a new supporting cast for him, which so far includes a punk Skrull girl and Aunt May. I will say the current book is nothing like Gerber's run. The Gerber run was a satire on modern life, and it was very experimental and bizarre. The current run is really just a comedic comic book. Having read Gerber's run, I find it difficult to enjoy the Zdarksy/Quinones run.

Willow Wilson deliberately put Kamala in New Jersey rather than New York proper to have her be an outsider, someone on the fringes dealing with her own things and not part of the epic soap operas at the core of the Marvel universe.

It does spin out of Inhumanity, but I didn't read that and I had no trouble understanding Ms Marvel; it's just a case of "Girl gets hit by some sort of alien mist and suddenly has superpowers. You can read this other comic if you really want to know where it came from, but if not, don't worry, it doesn't matter."

One thing I will say is to get the trades, both because they flow better and because they include Ms Marvel's occasional appearances in other titles.

edited 30th Nov '15 11:44:55 AM by VampireBuddha

Just gonna' say that the new Howard The Duck comic is fantastic. Seriously. It's funny and oddly genuine. Squirrelgirl is also pretty great, but the art is weird.

Doctor Strange is good right now too, but in a more conventional manner.

Hmm. I wanted to somehow bring up Shocket Raccoon and Linda the Duck, but can't make it work organically. Howard The Duck has characters called Shocket Raccoon and Linda the Duck. It's exactly what it sounds like, and yet is still entertaining.

edited 3rd Dec '15 10:24:48 AM by Zeromaeus

Well tat all depends. I'm not a My Little Pony fan but I've heard noting but good things, I hear the Buffy/Angel season extension has been nothing if not lovingly done, although I've been burned by season extension comics like Reboot(which I think was free at least).

I'm almost always a fan of Transformers. Yeah, I'd say worth it, though I haven't been doing comics with any regularity since 2013. I think the Godzilla tie in was my last modern mainstream endeavor...well Dark Legacy, but just how old that is slips my memory.

Now if by mainstream you mean superheroes, particularly of Marvel and DC, I'd say no. I'm not even saying modern Marvel is worse than classic Marvel, in fact most of what I hate about the company seems to have existed for most of its history, just that fatigue set in. I like a lot of the characters but can no longer get invested, the interesting story arc seem further between, books I did latch onto got canceled in favor of ones I wouldn't touch, altered by a crossover, retconned by a new writer, absorbed into other books that didn't keep the plot going. Those characters/teams I don't want to see, pretty sure they are the minority but they seem to ever go away. I think Marvel is a fan base, writer base, an everything I just don't relate to but like characters of for reasons I'm not even sure I fully understand.

DC I don't really hate but also don't have history with. I've just never really gotten invested. I think the only time I was really into Superman was as a little kid and even then that was mostly because he was dead and I wanted to see which of the four "new" supermen would "win"...I was into one of the Vertigo titles, about The Endless, but I haven't heard anything to draw me back to the imprint since.

On the whole though, sequential art is a medium full of potential, one that can make things that just don't work in live action look great. I don't really want to turn people off from it in any form and if mainstream comic is all that's available to you, well go for it.

Just to clarify, when I say 'mainstream', yeah, I mainly mean Marvel and DC. There's a reason they're called 'The Big Two', and when people say 'mainstream comics', they don't usually mean much else other than them.

Still though, since I last posted in this topic, I've managed to sort things out, and have largely made peace with my overall departure from modern mainstream comics. I haven't given them up completely; I've started reading Ms.Marvel, and I'm glad I did, because it's pretty darn good. (I don't think it's Gods' gift to humanity like some people do, but whatever.) And there might be a few other modern mainstream comics I'll pick up as well. But I've mostly stopped reading Modern Marvel, and have instead gone back to read more of their massive backlog. I'm reading through Defenders right now, and while the first 20 odd issues are... not that great, it becomes a tour de force when Gerber comes on board.

I think though that part of the reason why I don't read much outside of mainstream comics is because I barely know any comics outside of the mainstream ones. I've tried to find handy lists of 'must-read indies', but so far, I've got bubkus aside from Hellboy. At least with Marvel and DC, you can get a general consensus of what runs are worth reading, but that doesn't seem to be the case with indie comic series.

I think there are plenty of indie titles with plenty of consensus on being Must-Reads. Depends on one's tastes, of course, but really, finding indie titles to love is actually pretty easy. And generally, one indie comic will lead to another. You might start with Scott Pilgrim, move onto Phonogram (start with The Singles Club!), which brings you back to Blue Monday, and then onto Hopeless Savages. That sort of thing. Because you read one book, and they recommend another book they love, and then you notice the editor on this book wrote that book so you check it out and the art blows you away so you check out another book the artist did, which has such great writing that you check out another book by that writer.

I think with Marvel and DC, readers are hampered, to a degree, by faithfulness to certain characters. People are less likely to follow specific creators for the Big Two. You have people who read Iron Man. That's what they read, they don't care who's writing it, they're reading it, and even though they may have loved Matt Fraction's Iron Man they wouldn't pick up his Defenders.

Indie comics don't have that problem. There are some long-running indie characters, sure. But by and large, with indie comics, people are reading the creators. And I think that makes it easier to just do free-association stuff, or to take a chance on something people won't stop talking about. This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki, was on quite a few lists of the best comics of 2014, so I checked it out, and I enjoyed it. I mentioned Hopeless Savages and Blue Monday earlier, and they both led me to a lot of other books.

Goodreads is a pretty decent resource for that sort of thing. It's not great. I've seen some recommendations that made absolutely no sense based on anything I had ever read in my life. But I think it's a great place to get started.

Or just hit up your local library's graphic novel section and grab whatever looks interesting.

Marvel has been kind of branching out into different genres recently, so that not all of their comics are simply superheroics. If you like these genres, check out these books:

Humor:

• Howard the Duck by Chip Zdarsky and Joe Quinones
• Unbeatable Squirrel Girl by Ryan North and Erica Henderson
• Astonishing Ant-Man by Nick Spencer and Roman Rosanas
• Patsy Walker, a.k.a. Hellcat! by Kate Leth and Brittney Williams

Fantasy:

• Angela: Queen of Hel by Marguerite Bennet, Kim Jacinto, and Stephanie Hans
• Weirdworld by Sam Humphries and Mike del Mundo

Urban Fantasy:

• Doctor Strange by Jason Aaron and Chris Bachalo
• Scarlet Witch by James Robinson and multiple artists

Teen/Young Adult:

• Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur by Amy Reeder, Brandon Montclare, and Natacha Bustos
• Ms Marvel by G. Willow Wilson

Horror/Suspense:

• The Vision by Tom King and Gabriel Hernandez Walta

I'd pretty much recommend this entire list, but if you want to read a truly unexpected book that is really, really, really good, please read The Vision.

edited 10th Jan '16 9:41:23 PM by alliterator

Saga is the big current one, though some people think it's lost some steam.

there's also Black Science, Sweet Tooth, East of West, Southern Bastards, Descender (HIGHLY recommend this one in particular), and a few other books which I frequently see being praised in r/comicbooks. It's worth keeping in mind that the "indie" comics scene is typically very adult-oriented, though there are some lighter and more fun books to find as well.

In general, Image and Dark Horse (the former in particular) are the go-to's for critically acclaimed books nowadays.

there is of course always a wealth of franco-belgian comics to read as well, with Blacksad being a standout modern example.

also, i read the first few issues of howard and can recommend it in good conscience. it's funny and the art's not bad either.

edited 11th Jan '16 9:21:56 AM by wehrmacht

Have you ever noticed that the mainstream comic companies are retooling all their old properties that superhero fans probably wouldn't be interested in, and they're doing them so strangely?

Case in point - Sugar And Spike. The original was Rugrats before Rugrats, essentially. The retool has made them private detectives who work in the DC Universe for the superheroes.

Props for originality, I guess.

Sex Criminals is surprisingly good for something that sounds like softcore porn (it isn't).

I finally got around to reading the first volume or two (depending on whether you go by English or French numbering) of Requiem Vampire Knight, and HO MY GODD! Olivier Ledroit paints like a man let loose, as if H. R. Giger and Kevin O'Neill channelled H. P. Lovecraft and Mœbius to draw the Warp. It is glorious! Plus Pat Mills is actually subtle in a few places. The two of them work really well together.

edited 11th Jan '16 2:35:55 PM by VampireBuddha

Which is really a bit of a disappointment, especially given that the original Sugar and Spike (by the great Sheldon Meyer) was great. One of the great kid's comics of all time. I don't know who could do the original concept justice today, but it'd be nice to see someone give it a whirl...

I expect we'll see a lot of retooling of old brands (like that isn't stating the obvious). Outlay probably isn't too significant for a property they already own, and it allows them to maintain copyright.

I've enjoyed Blacksad, I'll admit more for the art than the stories. The stories are okay, but they lack a bit for me...it feels more like they're playing at noir rather than really comitted to it.

edited 11th Jan '16 11:32:49 AM by Robbery

I don't think there'd be a comic company that'd even try an idea like that today. It doesn't sell to the demographics they want.

Did DC ever do anything with the hosts of their old horror comics after Plop in the 70s? (Now that was a comic book - Sergio Aragones! Basil Wolverton! Wally Wood! And all doing the artwork... But I digress...) I daresay they could use them in the next reboot they come up with.

What I'd like to see somebody reboot, from any company, are the characters Fletcher Hanks came up with back in the 40s, just to see what somebody could make out of that. It'll probably never be as good as what Hanks originally came up with but it'd be an interesting experiment.

edited 11th Jan '16 12:03:15 PM by Aldo930

yes, that's more or less my own opinion.

the stories in blacksad are functional and enjoyable, but they're very typical noir storylines. if it wasn't for the amazing art and visual storytelling, it'd probably be a pretty ho-hum book.

Some companies have tried to do Fantomah (did I spell that right?) before. I dunno, though...Hanks work was so idiosyncratic that unless you couched the whole thing in his style, there almost wouldn't be any point. If you tried to make his characters in anyway normal you'd destroy them. Grant Morrison could probably write something as weird, but it'd be Morrison-weird, rather than Hanks "I''m by all reports an abusive ass and likely have persecution anxiety and seriously twisted notions of morality" weird.

Well, we all know that Cain, Able and Eve showed up in Sandman... as did the three witches (I remeber Cynthia, the maiden, and Mordred, the crone, but I can't think of the "mother's" name), The Phantom Stranger became a bonafide super hero...Madame Xanadu showed up in the 80's Spectre comic, and Charity became a supporting player in James Robinson's Starman...

edited 11th Jan '16 11:01:48 PM by Robbery

It really would be pretty much a lark, like trying to chug a whole keg of beer.

I'd had no idea they brought them back. At least they haven't been forgotten.

DC's original House of Mystery was frequently great stuff. Hard to believe it became a licensed Elvira comic shortly before the end (Elvira's House of Mystery).

I'd say Vertigo is definitely worth a look if nothing else.

Ms. Marvel is the single best book being put on by the Big Two right now.

I also lurv me some Howard the Duck and Unbeatable Squirrel Girl. It ended a while ago, but Superior Foes of Spider-Man was also fantastic.