|
|
Veteran
Posts: 207
| This thread was suggested by dustydigger the other day. Lets talk about Science Fiction and Fantasy Comics! - What are the classics of Science Fiction and Fantasy Comics comics?
- Are super hero comics Science Fiction?
- What are your favourite titles and why?
- Will you enjoy SF/F comics just because you read SF/F books?
- Are comics juvenile?
- What are the differences between US and UK comics.
- What interesting non US and UK comics are there?
- What about manga??
- Are foreign comics more likely to be consumed by english speakers as they are easier to translate than books due to them being a visual medium?
Personally I was a huge comic fan in the 80's and have pretty stopped reading comics, no particular reason, it just happened. It could be quite interesting to check out some of the classics and see if they still interest me.
Discuss 
Edited by htaccess 2012-07-04 2:58 AM
| |
| | |
Veteran
Posts: 207
| Any discussion Science Fiction and Fantasy Comics needs to include the works of the British comic 2000AD . There are many great characters, some that are well worth checking out are: Please don't judge Dredd by the movie ...
Edited by htaccess 2012-07-04 3:16 AM
| |
| | |
Veteran
Posts: 207
| <p>Great recommendations <a href="http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2010/08/mind_meld_comics_for_science_fiction_fans/">here</a>. "The Invisibles" and "Transmetropolitan" sound very interesting. I really must dig out my 200AD collection and re-read "The Ballad of Halo Jones". Others that seem to be consistently lauded:</p><ul><li>The Dark Knight Returns</li><li>Watchman</li><li>Sandman</li><li>Top 10</li><li>Akira</li></ul><p>I know Watchman and Akira deserve to be there.</p> | |
| | |
Uber User
Posts: 770
Location: SC, USA | @Htaccess I'm one of those people whom Sandman brought back to comics as an adult. I am also unashamed of my love for Sandman because of its depth of literary allusions and associations. Sandman led me to some of Alan Moore's works. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen has that same depth of allusion, and I think that From Hell is a fantastic piece of work. I always read more DC than Marvel. That's my background
I've been thinking a lot about some of the questions that you raised above because I just finished re-reading Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay for a class that I'm teaching in the Fall. I'm also teaching Marjane Satrapi's The Complete Persepolis in that class. (Like Maus, Persepolis has been accepted as capital "L" literature, not just a comic.) In the same way that I keep harping on the variability and randomness of genre labels, I dislike that fact people think that Arkham Asylum can't be significant work but Maus is.
So I've been thinking a lot about how word and image work together to tell a story and if that form is inherently better, worse (or just different) than narrative writing. Kavalier and Clay raises all sorts of issues concerning the inferiority of superhero comics and the ways that comics evolved from newspaper like strips in a book form to a format that allowed writers and artists to tell stories in different ways. If you have not read Kavalier and Clay, it really is worth the time. Sorry to get all English Professor-y at the end. I've been reading a lot of critical articles in the past two days about comics, so all this is in my head with no place to go until the Fall
The two comic that I want to read that I have not are Transmetropolitan, as you mentioned, and a 2011 one Habibi. It is listed as number 2 on this list. http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-best-comics-of-2011-graphic-nove...
Thanks for starting this discussion.
| |
| | |
Veteran
Posts: 207
| Grr, stupid html check box, I wish I could still edit posts after 30min. @Rhondak101 I still haven't read most for those you mention including all the Alan Moore titles. I have seen the movies, most of which I actually liked and have read most of this 2000AD output. I'm probably in for a treat reading all of these. Also my library seems to actually have a decent graphic novel section There must be very few comics accepted as capital "L" literature, I'm guessing its even harder for a comic than a SF book?
"Heart of Empire" as described here sounds great, has anyone read it? I am also pleased to see Tintin (destination and explorers on the moon) included in some of the lists. I learnt to read reading Tintin and am happy to regard the adventures of Tintin as one of the 20th century's major works
Edited by htaccess 2012-07-05 2:25 AM
| |
| | |
Uber User
Posts: 770
Location: SC, USA | @htaccess As for "Literature" there are about three authors (maybe more that I'm not thinking of) that are canonical: Art Spiegelman, Lynda Barry, and Marjane Satrapi. I read somewhere recently that Spiegelman claims that Maus has been included on 10,000 college syllabi.
The Heart of Empire does sound interesting. I did like The Diamond Age.
One of the interesting titles I've come across in the last couple of years is Unwritten. The comic is about Tommy Taylor whose father wrote a series of Harry Potterish YA books with the protagonist named Tommy Taylor. The father dies mysteriously with an unfinished book. Tommy is grown up, but everyone treats him like the character not himself. I read that the authors got the idea--not from J. K. Rowling--but from A. A. Milne and his use of Christopher Robin. The setting is magical/fantasy, but very interesting. There's a bit of Jasper Fforde in that it seems that characters can leave books and humans can enter books. It's pretty smart. | |
| | |
Uber User
Posts: 263
Location: Gunnison, Colorado | htaccess and Rhonda: I would second all the recommendations on this thread!
Rhonda, if you're interested in how comics "work", check out "Understanding Comics" by Scott McCloud.
Agreed that "The Unwritten" is one of the better current series. I was happy to see it nominated for a Hugo (Hugo voters have gotten criticism from the comics world for past nominations!) Another current SF/F series I've been recommending that just started is Brian K. Vaughan's Saga (from Image Comics). It's a uniquely strange planetary romance.
I've been reading comics pretty consistently since the '80s, when someone gave me copies of a few issues of Alan Moore's Swamp Thing and Dave Sim's Cerebus. From there, I picked up Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns when they came out, and was hooked. I was surprised comics had "grown up" (based on past experience with them), but then why shouldn't they? SF had a similar transformation from its earliest genre days, as fans who loved it as kids grew up and became writers. Many of my favorites over the years have been from DC's Vertigo imprint (along with the comics they were publishing in the '80s that paved the way for Vertigo): Swamp Thing, Doom Patrol, Sandman, Transmetropolitan, Y: The Last Man, The Unwritten...
Sandman was my favorite in the '90s, but for some reason I've never read Gaiman's post-comics work. I guess I still think of him as a comics writer. I waited impatiently for each new issue to come out (especially in the first couple of years), and got my copy of Sandman #1 signed by Gaiman and Dringenberg at a Salt Lake City comic shop in 1990!
The Invisibles (also a Vertigo book) was mentioned above--also one of my favorites, and Grant Morrison is my all-time favorite comics writer, but I'm not sure I'd start with The Invisibles. Better introductions to his work might be Zenith (from 2000 AD, but unfortunately not available in collection because of a rights dispute), Animal Man (a metatextual superhero book that was groundbreaking at the time, especially coming form DC Comics), Arkham Asylum (psychological take on the Batman/Joker relationship, with amazing art by Dave McKean) or Doom Patrol (more reality-questioning superheroes; my weird and wonderful personal favorite comics series). The Invisibles is a much more challenging and personal work, full of allusion, but worth the effort. Since then, Morrison has concentrated more on superheroes, with excellent runs on JLA (Justice League) and, more recently, Batman and Superman. Current issues of Action Comics and Batman Incorporated are worth reading. He also wrote a book last year called Supergods: Our World in the Age of the Superhero, which lays out his personal philosophy in regard to the role of comics and superheroes in our culture, and illuminates his own work in the field (especially the Invisibles--partly inspired by his own metaphysical experiences, and to which he imputes magical effects on his own life!). | |
| | |
Elite Veteran
Posts: 1007
Location: UK | Scott while I was maundering on to you on another thread ,you were already here! lol. Do please think about a blog entry on the subject when you have time.This ignoramus would learn so much from you!.I need to understand just what it is all about,and where is the best entry point for an absolute beginner like me.I just adore scholarly type articles laying out an overview of a topic-any type of topic,I just want to see the peaks and troughs! lol | |
| | |
Uber User
Posts: 263
Location: Gunnison, Colorado | Hi, Dusty. I think the admins would like to keep the blog reserved for book (literature) related stuff, in keeping with the site's focus, but maybe sometime... I can certainly go on all day giving recommendations! | |
| | |
Uber User
Posts: 770
Location: SC, USA | @Scott, I've been running up against the McCloud citation for about a week now. When I return to my academic library (I'm currently visiting the parents in Alabama), I'm going to get a copy of the McCloud book. I've got several citations collected now for Comics and Literature, Comics and History, Comics and Postmodernism....
I jumped on the Sandman bandwagon around issue #30. I have some signed TPBs and the Orpheus issue as well--DragonCon in Atlanta around 1990. I love Gaiman's novels as well because they exhibit that same kind of reference to earlier writers and myths that the Sandman did. If you want to add a book to your list, I'd start with American Gods.
I'm behind on the Unwritten. I think I've read the first three TPBs (but maybe it is only 2).
More later. | |
| | |
Uber User
Posts: 835
Location: The Wilds of Washington | Probably the easiest entry into SF comics, high water marks in a surging sea are Sandman and The Watchmen. The Watchmen is within the genre of the superhero and Watchmen, definitely - the first issues don't count, is not. | |
| | |
Admin
Posts: 3943
Location: Dallas, Texas | I thought it might be worth mentioning that we have The Sandman in our database in case anyone has missed it. Not the kind of thing we usually include but it got in by way of the NPR: Top 100 Science-Fiction, Fantasy Books list. We have the 10 volume omnibus series. When you bind a bunch of comics into a single book do you call it an omnibus? Or does it become a "graphic novel" then? My comic reading experience has been infrequent and spotty at best and I've never been sure of the nomenclature. | |
| | |
Uber User
Posts: 263
Location: Gunnison, Colorado | The nomenclature question opens a big can of worms, because we're dealing with publishers' marketing terms with no agreed-on definitions. It's tough because the vast majority of comics begin as serialized stories of one sort or another, released in chunks of 20-or-so pages, which might then be collected in various formats. Before the late '80s, almost no comics had been collected into books, but the practice slowly grew until now almost everything released is eventually collected.
Publishers refer to unserialized, single-volume stories as "orignal graphic novels," but the graphic novel term has been used for just about any sort of collection, probably because publishers and fans think it sounds more "respectable" than comics, but I'd reserve it for actual graphic NOVELS--stories that may have been serialized originally (as a miniseries or limited series), but which were always intended to have a beginning, middle, and end. Watchmen is the early success story of this type--a self-contained twelve-issue series outside the rest of DC's superhero continuity that was collected into a book that has continued to sell. Even Maus was originally serialized in an ongoing anthology series called "Raw."
A book collecting a portion of an ongoing series (like Sandman), I think of as a collection rather than a graphic novel. You could say that the entire Sandman series (75 issues plus a couple of "specials" , is a graphic novel, since, even though it began as an ongoing series in DC's regular superhero universe continuity, it pretty quickly morphed into a self-contained series of "story arcs" that did reach an eventual conclusion, but I always think of it as a "series." It became the model for lots of subsequent series at DC/Vertigo and smaller companies, because it established that comics could continue to live on as series of book collections long after the original series of "floppies" reached its conclusion. Other successful examples are Y: The Last Man, Fables, and The Walking Dead (the last two still being ongoing, but which presumably will eventually reach an end).
When you get into ongoing superhero series, the novel designation doesn't make sense. Some of these series have run for decades, and been written and drawn by many different people, and are part of a larger superhero "universe" in which everything is connected. There are reprint collections of even some of the oldest comics now, but the original issues were thought of as disposable in their time, and written by people who never conceived that they would be collected and reread. Today, though, even the ongoing superhero series are written with an eye to the "trade" [collection], and tend to be written in "story arcs" of six issues or so, so that they read well in collections, but they are still part of longer ongoing storylines. But even within the superhero world, there are lots of miniseries (outside the regular ongoing series) that are reasonably self-contained, and even original "graphic novels", like Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, which could easily be read as a standalone "novel" by anyone with a general idea of who Batman is. This is why the definitions are so fuzzy.
The publishers usually use "omnibus" to refer to massive collections of 20 or more issues of a series. (DC likes the term "absolute edition" for this sort of book.) I'm looking at the "Fantastic Four Omnibus Vol. 1" on my shelf, which contains the first thirty or so issues of the original Stan Lee/Jack Kirby series in a 1000-page hardback, but these issues are also available as the first three volumes of a series of collections known as "Marvel Masterworks: Fantastic Four". You've got the 10-volume Sandman collection in your database, which I think I've marked as "read", but I really didn't read those books. I read the original 75 issues, and recently reread them in the 4-volume "Absolute Sandman" series, which collects the same material into four massive hardback volumes (with "DVD extras" instead of ten slim paperbacks. In both cases, they're trying to redefine what is actually a "comics series" as some sort of book series, but it can be done (and often is done) in multiple ways.
If you ever decide to include more comics on the site (which I probably just convinced you not to!), the trade paperback collections make the most sense to include (as you did with Sandman). They're the most popular (and reasonably priced) format, and people who've read them in other formats will be able to tell which ones correspond to what they've read.
Got all that? :-)
Edited by Scott Laz 2012-07-08 12:57 PM
| |
| | |
Elite Veteran
Posts: 1007
Location: UK | Finally finished Spiegelman's Maus this week,very very good.Today I was amazed to find Moore and Gibbons Watchmen had just come in the library,so I snapped it up.Having an indulgence day tomorrow,will read Watchmen ,and volumes 8-12 of my bonkers manga Natsui Takaya's Fruits baskets | |
| | |
Uber User
Posts: 835
Location: The Wilds of Washington | If you liked, well, liked might not be the word for it, Maus, then the Adolf series by Tezuka might be a good read for you. It tells the tale of two boys named Adolf, both living in Japan. One is a Jew, the other is the son of a high party German official in Japan. Unlikely friends until the war comes and changes everything. Might be hard to find. I think the last printing was a decade ago.
Edited by gallyangel 2012-07-15 5:00 AM
| |
| | |
| science fiction is very popular in our history...This era is running for last many many thousand years......... | |
| | |
Elite Veteran
Posts: 1007
Location: UK | Well,FINALLY finished Watchmen.I read it in tiny sections over a long period,so a reread is certainly necessary togather up my thoughts.I was definitely most impressed.It is said that Moore wanted this as a showcase for what the comic book form can achieve,and I have to say he succeeded magnificently in this complexly plotted ,multithreaded,multi timespread tale - which also has that gruesome pirate tale as counterpoint! dont know enough to comment on the artwork,I only know it was suitably dark in tone.thus complementing the dark tones of the story lol.And I now know and recogcnise the iconic bloodstained smiley face! lol.Altogether a most engrossing unusual read for me.
Next up,I have ordered Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight returns.Then I think a bit of The Sandman? :0) | |
| | |
Uber User
Posts: 835
Location: The Wilds of Washington | Dustydigger: Sandman, Watchmen, and the Dark Knight returns. That's like ticking off some of the top ten of all time, that is. With the sandman, you have to give Gaiman a bit of time. He was trying to fit the Sandman into the DC universe with the first few episodes, but he got over that impulse and things go quickly from good to great, from great to excellent, and then even to my god, that's unbelievable. Did you know that they're published new watchmen stuff right now? All the main characters have short miniseries running right now. That might clutter or clarify the picture for you. | |
| | |
Uber User
Posts: 263
Location: Gunnison, Colorado | Agreed that those are pretty much the "big three." If you ever look for more Moore, consider V for Vendetta, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, or (if you don't mind a bit of horror) his Swamp Thing series. | |
| | |
| I love to read some favorite science fiction comics...
1 Daredevil
2 Infinite Kung-Fu
3 Witch Doctor
4 Wolverine and the X-Men
5 Feynman | |
| | |
Elite Veteran
Posts: 1007
Location: UK | Not a single volume of Sandman in the library today.When I wasnt looking for them there were at least half a dozen.Got 2 volumes of League of Exrtraordinary Gentlemen and 3 of Swamp Thing to keep me going while waiting for Dark Knight .Swamp Thing looks good fun ! | |
| | |
Regular
Posts: 92
Location: Boston, MA | i just finished reading The Watchmen, my first comics. very good. up until then i couldn't bring myself to like comics - it was difficult to follow both the imagery and text .. i didnt know what to look at first .. hard to explain. i guess, the story saved it for me - very complex, very realistic, very human. emotions one can relate to, difficult questions to keep asking yourself 'what would i do'.
i'm planning to also read Sandman and V for Vendetta. | |
| | |
Uber User
Posts: 263
Location: Gunnison, Colorado | @hihik: That's not surprising. Reading comics takes some getting used to. The image tends to take precedence over the words... Even figuring out exactly how to follow the panel order on the page can be tricky sometimes... | |
| | |
Uber User
Posts: 835
Location: The Wilds of Washington | And just think, the manga lovers have to read right to left since that's how it's all translated from the Japanese these days. Practice practice practice and then it's second nature. | |
| | |
Elite Veteran
Posts: 1007
Location: UK | LOL.I know what younmean.I read quite a bit manga earlier in the year,and last week when I was reading Watchmen I found myself wanting to read right to left,with some confusion! LolI find manga fun,light and relaxing,but I havent been able to read it easily for months,because of my eyes.Hope to get back into the swim in a couple of months.So many books,so little time! | |
| | |
Elite Veteran
Posts: 1007
Location: UK | IJust had a quick peek at Miller's Batman Returns.Of course I am only familiar with the famous old Bob Kane series,an I have to admit being very disconcerted by this version!.I found Watchmen fairly easy to read,because most of the innovation were in content and storytelling.I think I may find the artwork or Miller's book a bit hard to get used too! Oh well,we'll see.
Edited by dustydigger 2012-09-16 3:53 AM
| |
| | |
Elite Veteran
Posts: 1007
Location: UK | I just got Miller's Dark Knight from the library yesterday,but I dont know when I will find time to read it,I still have six books on my TBR for this month,including Jack Kerouac's On The Road,Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House in the Big Woods,Joan Aiken's The Wolves of Willoughby Chase,and supposedly Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars - nearly 7oo pages long! Aarrgghh!.
Just decided to drop Red Mars this month,and use the last weekend of the month for the comics I have on hand
Swamp Thing
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,
The Dark Knight Returns.
Cant wait! | |
| | |
Uber User
Posts: 263
Location: Gunnison, Colorado | I recently finished the last story arc of iZombie, which just wrapped up its 28-issue run, published by DC/Vertigo, written by Chris Roberson, with amazing art by po-part genius (IMHO) Michael Allred. I usually run the other way when I see zombies and vampires (stories about them, that is), but I'll buy anything with art by Allred, and I enjoyed Chris Roberson's attempt to rescue J. Michael Straczinski's ill-advised Superman run a couple of years ago, so I gave this a try, and am glad I did. The horror aspects are parodic anad lighthearted. The storyline is Scooby Doo (and Allred's character designs can be reminiscent of '70s animation, among other influences), only the monster-hunters are good-guy monsters (zombie, werewolf, ghost) who also happen to be awkward twenty-somethings with relationship issues trying to find their way in life (or afterlife). Main character Gwen is the zombie, who works as a gravedigger so she can get access to sustenance without killing anyone. Absorbing the memories of the people whose brains she eats, she takes it as her mission to try to help them out by bringing messages to their loved ones or otherwise trying to fulfill their last requests. But it turns out that Gwen has a much larger destiny, involving coming to a true understanding of her powers, and a crucial role in attempting to prevent the end of the world, brought on by a soul-eating Lovecraftian monster. Meanwhile, her ghost friend tries to find happiness with the Frankensteinish creation of a mad scientist who hopes to use her monster to help trap the Lovecraftian monster (for evil purposes, of course), and her gay werewolf friend tries to find happiness with an aspiring comic book artist who has allowed his body to be used by a mysterious phantom who also has a role in the final battle... Also, there are vampires running a paintball club, ancient conspiracies, and a cigar-chomping chimp with the soul of the werewolf's uncle... And Roberson combines and wraps up all the wild elements of the story in a satisfying and moving conclusion, which is always a difficult trick to pull off in an ongoing serial. (See the endings of Lost and Battlestar Galactica, for some TV examples of this problem.) Vertigo's comics tend toward the dark, but this is a fun, positive story (despite the occasional monster carnage). After having read it as it came out over the last couple of years, I'm looking forward to rereading it straight through.I think there are three trade paperback collections available, and the concluding volume should be out soon. | |
| | |
Elite Veteran
Posts: 1007
Location: UK | Hey,surprise surprise,my library system actually has u Vampire,which is possibly the first in series? The only other Robersons are about Cinderella from Fabletown! lol. | |
| | |
Uber User
Posts: 263
Location: Gunnison, Colorado | Dusty: "uVampire" is the second volume. The first one is called "Dead to the World." Tell your librarian there's not much use having the second without buying the first! The Cinderella book is a spinoff from Bill Willingham's Fables series, which is probably the most popular fantasy comic of the last decade. All the characters from fables have been expelled from their homelands because of a war, and must live in our world, continuing the fight to take back their homeland. I think Cinderella is a spy or secret agent in that story, but I haven't read that one... Fabletown is in the middle of NYC, shielded from the real world by magical spells... (It's not as juvenile as it sounds. It's actually a Vertigo "mature readers" comic.) | |
| | |
Elite Veteran
Posts: 1007
Location: UK | Sadly,the library only has uVampire,.May try the Fables,they sound fun! .Thanks for the info. | |
| | |
| I like Jericho. It's interesting comics. | |
| | |
Member
Posts: 24
Location: New Hampshire | I wander in and out of the realm of comics and graphic novels. The medium fascinates me, and so much of the art is amazing, especially when I think about how each drawing started life as a blank page. Except for the Bat (and I haven't read much about him since the big reveal in Hush), I tend to stay away from the more popular/mainstream superhero characters (Spider Man, X-Men, Superman, etc.), but I recently downloaded most of Marvel 1602 (Comixology was having a sale), and I am intrigued by DC Comics' New 52 http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/The_New_52.
Right now I am reading Neil Gaiman's Books of Magic. The changes in artists between chapters is a little distracting, but I also find it interesting to see different interpretations of the same story and cast of characters right next to each other in the same book.
Black Orchid, another Gaiman story, is near the top of my to read pile, which also includes Watchmen; Sandman; Alabaster: Wolves; Moon Knight; Hopeless, Maine; The Unwritten; Kill Shakespeare; The God Machine; and The Umbrella Academy.
I have the first few volumes of the graphic novelization of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, but I am not sure how I feel about the trend of graphic novelization. (Or maybe it is not a trend, and I am just now noticing it.) It makes me worry that the comics world might be running out of ideas the way that Hollywood seems to be. | |
| | |
Admin
Posts: 3943
Location: Dallas, Texas |  I've been eyeballing that Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? comic for some time. I think I'll head round to the comic shop and pick it up this weekend.
My tastes in comics are more along the lines of adaptations of novels too, rather than super heroes. Of course, I wouldn't read a comic adaptation in lieu of reading the novel but I like to see how the artist and writer interpret the books I've already read or pick up the story and take it elsewhere. Especially if it's something I liked but don't have the time to go back and re-read the original. I recently read Elric: The Balance Lost from Boom and really liked it. Not written by Moorcock but very much in keeping with his style and true to his characters. It has some excellent artwork as you can see from the cover. I also liked Warlord of Mars and Flash Gordon from Dynamite. Some others I've been thinking of trying include Blade Runner, Ender's Game and Buck Rogers. I have a soft spot for the pulp obviously. I've got the first volume of The Sandman already but have not started it yet.
While not from a novel, I have been tempted to try the Firefly comics. Has anyone here read them? I'm a huge fan of the show so that might be setting the bar a bit too high. Incidentally, I came across Virga, an online comic adaptation of Carl Schroeder's excellent novel Sun of Suns, the first book in his Virga series. They're releasing 3 new pages a week online so you can read it free or buy it outright for just $0.99. The art is outstanding and it's a great story. I read the book years ago so I'm using the comic to refresh my memory before I take on the next book in the series.
| |
| | |
Member
Posts: 24
Location: New Hampshire | I finished Books of Magic and recommend it. Fashion Beast by Alan Moore has been added to the to read pile.
The Reason for Dragons by Jeff Stokely, Chris Northrop and The Wizard's Tale by by Kurt Busiek and David Wenzel are great for kids (probably in the middle grade range but quite possibly with wider appeal), as are Jane Yolen's Foiled and Curses! Foiled Again.
Maybe someday the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards can be added to WWEnd. Not all of the recipients are science fiction, fantasy, or horror, but there is strong representation for those genres in the medium of comics. | |
| |
|
Science Fiction and Fantasy Comics