Just a few recent comic book (etc.) recommendation threads

October 7, 2018 5:01 PM

Gail Simone (Twitter, 10/07/2018): "So today, I ask, what was the most recent comic you read that you really enjoyed?" Zen Cho (Twitter, 05/29/2018): "What's your favourite cheerful book by a PoC author? Graphic novels, comics & manga count. Extra points for female creators!" Sara Saab (Twitter, 06/15/2018): "Tell me about one book you read one time that gave you a feeling that life was big and meaningful and transcendent?" Goblin Barbarian (AskMe, 08/11/2018), "Manga for Adult Women." Abraham Riesman (Vulture, 06/07/2018): "The Best Comics of 2018 (So Far)." Brandi Bailey (Book Riot, 05/04/2018): "Feminist Graphic Nonfiction."
posted by Wobbuffet (14 comments total)

I spotted Sita’s Ramayana on the YA graphic novel shelf and grabbed it immediately. Gorgeous, gorgeous art by Moyna Chitrakar!

My transcendent books remain Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway and Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels. Other lives, other places, other minds.
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:13 PM on October 7, 2018

My favorite GNs this year so far are Soft X-Ray/Mindhunters, Art Comic, Woman World, and Passing for Human. I haven’t read it yet, but Sabrina is up for a frggin Man Booker Prize. Most of those are from Canadian publishers.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 6:09 PM on October 7, 2018

I really wish I had more money to spend on comics.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 8:01 PM on October 7, 2018 [1 favorite]

I used to think that way, but then I sat down and calculated what I spend on comics compared to other essentials like food, housing, and clothes, and I realized that they’re really not that expensive.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 8:13 PM on October 7, 2018 [1 favorite]

Playing Spider-Man on PS4 just about all of last week while staying with my dear old Mum, I started getting an itch to get back into comics, but it's such a slippery and expensive slope for me, and having already acquired and then rid myself of two reasonably good collections at different periods of my life, it feels a bit tail-chasey (and also so rife with disappointment).

What I'd love is a cross-publisher compilation of "Year's Best Comics", like they do with essays and short fiction and sci-fi anthologies etc. I don't care if it's Image, DC, Marvel, Valiant, indies, just all the cream of the crop 32-pagers in a big fuck-off brick of an anthology. (And, you know, if there's no single best issue in your run, because it's a gap-filly "decompressed" meandering buck-earner, then you're doing comics wrong.) Get on it, somebody (unless such a thing already exists).
posted by turbid dahlia at 8:19 PM on October 7, 2018 [1 favorite]

Oh goddess. Why don’t I have more time to read???
posted by greermahoney at 11:33 PM on October 7, 2018

For the Love of God, Marie!
posted by hoodrich at 12:43 AM on October 8, 2018

I'd like to put in a good word here for "House of Whispers", part of Vertigo's "Sandman Universe" promotion, written by Nalo Hopkinson, with art by Domonike Stanton. There's only been one issue so far, but it that one issue was fucking amazing.
posted by Ipsifendus at 6:44 AM on October 8, 2018

Contemplating a Soska sisters FPP, but for now, news that is relevant to this post: Soska twins to pen new Black Widow comic.
posted by DrAstroZoom at 7:21 AM on October 8, 2018

I really wish I had more money to spend on comics.

I've had good luck with my local library; there's at least a couple folks working there who keep an eye out for good graphic lit to stock, and who ask me what I'd like to see the system order when I bring odd titles up to the checkout counter. I'm gonna point them to this thread next time I'm there. Thanks, Wobbufet, this is great.
posted by mediareport at 7:22 AM on October 8, 2018 [1 favorite]

What I'd love is a cross-publisher compilation of "Year's Best Comics", like they do with essays and short fiction and sci-fi anthologies etc.

This exists! The Best American Comics series is an annual anthology; the excellent Phoebe Gloeckner co-edited the 2018 edition. Not much superheroics, but generally solid anthologies full of unusual stuff.
posted by mediareport at 7:32 AM on October 8, 2018 [2 favorites]

Sabrina (the Man Booker Prize one) is a strange book. I think it's good, but it's a very melancholy affair, and it seems a surprise from someone so young. The characters are all supposed to be about 30, but they all seem broken and defeated in a way I would associate with people who had been in the world a very long time. I don't know that I actually liked the comic. I do admire the craft that went into it. And the patience. It's mostly a very visually dreary story -- I believe by design. Frankly, I think drawing it would be boring as fuck. Maybe I didn't really like Sabrina that much, tbh. I didn't enjoy it, but I do appreciate it.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 10:50 AM on October 8, 2018

For those looking for something in the traditional, capes and cowls genre, I'm really enjoying the current run of Hawkman. The creative team has decided to fix all of the character's continuity problems (and boy have there been piles over the years). The approach is an old-school retroactive continuity one (the good kind, as exemplified by Roy and Dann Thomas' run on titles like All-Star Squadron and Infinity Inc.) not the let's wipe out all the character's history and reboot the timeline kind. There is also some really beautiful art that does a great job of storytelling.
posted by sardonyx at 2:06 PM on October 9, 2018

If I may make a plug for my own "comic book," Male Tears: a necrotic culture's poisoned puke.
posted by AndNeverWell at 7:59 AM on October 11, 2018