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| Sunday, September 16, 2007 01:31 PM |
| Fifty Things I Love About Comics |
 by Fëanor |
I saw this meme on the ISB and I wanted to do my own version, but it's taken me a long time to piece it together, especially since I felt it really needed to be illustrated. Unfortunately, I don't have a scanner, so it was a matter of me sitting upstairs, going through all my books, taking photos, uploading them, resizing them in Photoshop, etc. Sadly, I didn't get all the photos I really wanted, and the ones I did get didn't come out as well as I wanted, but I think I put together some pretty good stuff.
Also, this was an interesting exercise that made me think seriously about just what it is about comics that does fascinate me so much. And it might help other people understand why I've become so obsessed with them lately.
1. Batman. Why? Batman is hardcore.
2. Darwyn Cooke. An amazing talent. Not everything he's done has been fantastic, but the fact that he can both write and draw comics so incredibly well really blows me away. His visual style has a wonderful retro feel to it, his writing is effective, and he would be on this list even if he never created anything else except the amazing masterpiece that is DC: The New Frontier.
 Art by Darwyn Cooke, from his New Frontier, of course
3. Warren Ellis. This guy is a walking atom bomb of comic book writing talent. His stuff is just ridiculously good: disturbing, thought-provoking, intelligent, action-packed, funny, and full of mind-blowing ideas. He gets the closest of anybody else on this list of being able to write pure comics, that are made of nothing but awesome.
 From Warren Ellis' Nextwave, art by Stuart Immonen
4. Alan Moore. A crazed messiah of writing talent. Sometimes he gets too wordy and too clever and too obsessed with getting across his ideas in all of their intricate detail. But the rest of the time he just puts out jaw-droppingly amazing art disguised in the form of comic books. His Watchmen is an incredible piece of comics history, his League of Extraordinary Gentleman books are soul-shatteringly disturbing and wrong and amazing, his From Hell will haunt and transform you.
5. Joss Whedon. You know him. You love him. One of the pantheon of geek gods. The master of clever, funny dialogue and a fountain of great ideas and moving stories.
6. Matt Fraction. He's a bit hit or miss as a writer, but nevertheless quite amazing when he does hit. For Punisher War Journal #4 alone he should be hailed as the next great comics talent, but his work on Iron Fist and The Order shouldn't be overlooked, either.
7. Grant Morrison. Again, a bit hit or miss, but still ridiculously talented. His New X-Men is a brilliant recreation and rebirth of a fantastic old series. And then there's the surreal, groundbreaking The Invisibles.
8. Planetary. Keeping the world strange. Because we like it that way.
 From Warren Ellis' Planetary, art by John Cassaday
9. They're short. I'm the kind of guy who rarely has more than 15 or 20 minutes to spend on entertainment, and that's about how long it takes to read one comic book.
10. New ones are coming out every week. I'm the kind of guy who needs to be entertained constantly, and there's a constant stream of new comics being published.
11. They're like a modern mythology, with a pantheon of Gods and a set of important stories that are repeatedly retold. There's something comforting about seeing the same mythic figures reappearing, and going through similar trials.
12. They're like little movies or TV shows that you can carry around in your backpack and watch whenever you want.
13. Frank Miller. He's done some questionable things lately, but he'll always be one of the top guys in my book for stuff like 300, Batman: Return of the Dark Knight, Batman: Year One, and Sin City. He can write comics well, and draw them very well, and that's impressive.
 From Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns
14. Mike Mignola. He created Hellboy. For that alone he would make this list, but he also created a whole amazing universe for Hellboy to tromp around in, populated by tons of other amazing characters. And he created Amazing Screw-On Head, and Lobster Johnson, and pitted Batman against Cthulhu and Jack the Ripper. He's another of the few guys who can both write and draw comics, and do them both really, incredibly well. His ideas are fantastic, his images and portraits are weird and breathtaking and amazing. He's one of the great ones.
 From Mignola's Hellboy, naturally
15. Neil Gaiman. Do I even need to say why? He's another god of geeks. People gush about Sandman all the time because it really is an incredible piece of work and a huge landmark in the history of comics.
16. Peter David. The one guy I know of in comics today who can write Spider-Man the right way - funny!
17. Greg Pak. I'm not an expert on his work, but I love what he's doing in Hulk, and I love the way he writes Amadeus Cho.
18. Brian K. Vaughan. He has great ideas, and most of the time he can even follow them up with well-executed stories. See Runaways, Ex Machina, his current work on Buffy.
19. Big giant super fights of doom.
 From Warren Ellis' Planetary, art by John Cassaday
20. Paul Pope. There are only a few guys I know of in comics who are adept at both drawing them and writing them (and all of them are on this list), and of those, this guy is probably the best at it. I've never seen a panel or page of his that didn't immediately blow me away with its artistry. And his stories are always fascinating, complex, moving, and involving. He's one of the true masters of the art.
 From Paul Pope's Batman: Year 100
21. KRAKA-BA-DOOM!!!
22. Lizard men and ninjas are commonplace.
 From Grant Morrison's All-Star Superman, with art by Frank Quitely
23. They have monkeys. And gorillas. And apes. And they're often giant. Or radioactive. Or robots. Or they have guns.
 Mike Mignola's Hellboy
24. Dinosaurs and monsters and other giant things are constantly fighting each other.
25. Hellboy. There may not be a better character, with better stories about him, in the whole of comics. He's a demon with a giant arm of stone who was summoned from hell to bring about the end of the world - but he'd rather fight monsters with his gun and eat pancakes. Plus, he says "Jeez!" and "Crap!" a lot.
 Mignola's Hellboy again
26. Just superheroes in general. I mean, what an awesome concept. People with incredible abilities using them for good.
27. Explosions. Violence!! The brutal, hilarious violence.
28. Iron Fist. He knows kung fu. And he's sort of almost immortal. That rocks.
29. They're pretty.
30. They have everything that you want in a story, and nothing you don't. They're kick-ass sci-fi fantasy action stories that go at a mile a minute and don't let up for one single second, and rarely do people stop for long periods to talk about their feelings.
31. There are impossibly gorgeous babes popping up all the time wearing almost nothing. Sometimes this is also one of the things I really DON'T like about comics. But other times it's pretty nice. Especially when the women are also strong characters and kick butt.
32. The Incredible Hulk. He's a giant, ugly, out of control monster who just wants to be left alone - and he's the hero. That's brilliant. Inside, of course, there's still an intelligent human in there, trying to get out. But it's when he turns into the big green monster and takes out all his (and our) rage and frustration on the world that we love him the best.
33. Incredibly huge, ridiculously amazing stuff can happen in them that it would be way too expensive to do in a movie, and that would probably come out looking lame anyway.
34. They're just fun. That's what they're all about.
35. They're funny. They don't take themselves too seriously.
36. They can inspire awe.
37. Amadeus Cho. I just love this character. His ability is that he's the seventh smartest person on the planet, and he can hack anything to get what he wants. That includes computers, but also people, and physics. He can take down a six-foot tall killing machine with the careful application of a pebble. He can get people to follow him on an impossible crusade, even after revealing he's stolen millions of dollars from them. He's a ballsy little bastard and I love him.
38. In comics, ghost policemen come back for revenge and fire flaming bullets that can make 90 degree turns and blow up gangster's faces.
39. Frank Quitely. An amazing artist, with really warm, organic, breathtaking work.
40. Ariel Olivetti. His painterly work raises comics to the level of an art form.
41. Even when comics are bad, you can still enjoy them. Because you're only out a couple of bucks, and the short time it took you to read the thing, and now you know you don't have to collect that comic anymore, or read that writer anymore, and you can make fun of the book for being so crappy.
42. Supervillains. Superheroes are awesome, but supervillains are sometimes even cooler. These are people with incredible abilities who are using them to do all the things you secretly want to do. And they usually say really clever, biting things while doing them.
43. Nova. I didn't know there was great space opera in comics until I found this book. Sci-fi action to the extreme!
44. Buffy! Yes, your favorite fictional characters can live on and have more fun and wacky adventures in comics. Brilliant!
45. The X-Men, and mutants in general. Yeah, a lot of the time their story is just a ridiculous soap opera, and everybody is constantly dying and coming back and having sex with each other. But the rest of the time, you've got a whole huge gang of interesting, unique characters dealing with complex issues that mirror real issues of class, race, and age in our own society. And they have laser eyes and kick butt and stuff.
46. The Fantastic Four. A superhero team that's also a dysfunctional family! And every member is an interesting character with his/her own interesting powers, flaws, strengths, and weaknesses.
47. Spider-Man. The one and only wise-cracking, web-slinging, angst-ridden, teen superhero. He kicks butt, takes names, makes jokes, and then feels guilty about it and gets hated for it later. He's sort of a male, proto-Buffy.
48. Superman. Yeah, Superman. He started it all, and although for many years I thought him a boring, one-dimensional character, I've come to love him a great deal. Big old boy scout that he is.
 From Darwyn Cooke's New Frontier
49. The Punisher. Nearly the opposite of Superman as far as heroes go, but just as interesting and lovable in his own way.
50. Captain America. Usually I am not a big fan of patriotism and nationalism, but there's something about Captain America I just can't help but love. He's ridiculous, but there's also nobility, purity, and tragedy to him that really grabs me. Plus, he does stuff like jump onto a jet while it's flying by, and when the pilot reacts by saying, "Holy shit!" he says, "Keep flying, son. And watch that potty mouth." |
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