Do you people enjoy comic books?

[Endymion]

After seeing Batman the Dark knight my interest towards comic books have been steadily increasing and I decided to pick up a batman graphic novel. I was stunned by how deep the story and characters were and decided to start reading Batman comics. And yes, they are simply marvelous!
reading a good comic book can be an awesome experience, sometimes better than reading a good book.
I am currently reading Batman and Vertigo.
So, do you read comic books?

 

[Reaver]

I used to read them, haven't in a while but I have a great collection of Mint Condition Graphic Novel Series such as Eastman & Laird's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Wendy and Richard Pini's Elf Quest, "A Death In the Family" Batman series where Robin (Jason Todd) is killed by the Joker and Knightfall, where Batman is defeated by Bane.

 

[Kelise]

I read comics, graphic novels and manga, as well as get some of the print editions of webcomics, such as Gunnerkrigg Court and Sinfest.

My preferred comics are Peanuts and Calvin & Hobbes. I sniffled for longer than a week when Charles M. Schulz died, he was my absolute hero.

Preferred graphic novels are Batman, but mostly Jeph Loeb style such as Long Halloween and Hush, which would easily be my favourite Batman comic of all time.
30 Days of Night was mostly okay, same with Fables though I'm not really enjoying any of the spin offs. Anything that Ben Templesmith has anything to do with - Wormwood, Criminal Macabre, Fell, Singularity 7 and so on is usually very decent.
Cable & Deadpool is pretty awesome, as is Runaways - what I've read of it so far, at least. Haven't really enjoyed many of the X-men comics I've read, same for Spider-man. Eh, Batman girl at heart.

As for manga, my tastes change. With all the art I read, it needs to be of a certain style for me to want to read it, which is why I tend to enjoy Joph Loeb's Batman as he's generally always with the holiness that is Jim Lee. So my main manga preferences tend to be things by CLAMP, as they possibly have the highest quality at the moment. THough Bisco Hatori's work is also generally a favourite, as is Arina Tanemura.

At last count I had 400 graphic novels and manga - not including comics. I don't know when that count was even taken, though. I'm just looking forward for my partner and I to get out own place, so our libraries can be combined - he's into graphic novels more than I am, so am looking forward to the book explosion.

 

[Endymion]

Yeah, Hush and Long Halloween are simply marvelous.
I would like to recommend A killing Joke and Batman year one ( my favorite) as well as watchmen.
I have tried to read manga but haven't really found anything great.
Jeph Loeb has done some X-men comics as well but they are to violent for my taste.
Batman rules the world of comic books!

 

[Penpilot]

I started reading comics when I was 10 yrs-old. Stopped collecting over ten years ago, but once it's in your blood, it really never leaves. I still try to keep up in a very broad scope. At one time I was just a few issues shy of a the entire modern run of the X-men. Of course, then I stopped collecting. Going back in the way back machine, some of my off the beaten path favorites are as follows

Squadron Supreme (Original 80's mini-series): Marvel's takes their team of Justice League analogues and puts them in a situation where they have to take control of the world and try to and create a utopia of it in one year. It deals with the moral dilemmas of doing such a thing and they don't take the easy way out. This darker tale came out before Watchmen made dark superheroes cool.

Hero Alliance (Again from the 80's): I bet nobody's heard of this one. It was an independently published comic that dealt with the day-to-day personal lives of superheroes rather than the big dust ups between them and the super-villains.

Ok now for some stuff more current,

Astro City: A lot like Hero Alliance, but with more action and better. But it's still character oriented stories that take you more into the nooks and crannies of a superhero populated world. There's not one continuous arc in the book but lots of smaller ones. There's an arc about a old super-villain getting out of jail after many years and how he tries to integrate back into society.

Powers (currently in the works to be a TV show): This focuses on two police detectives who investigate super powered crimes in a superhero populated world. First story is the investigation of the murder of Retro-girl, one of the most powerful superheroes on the planet.

The Walking Dead: I don't think this one needs to be explained.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

I read some comics as a kid, but I never really got into it. There's a lot of comic book characters that I like, and I find the backstories and mythologies interesting, but I think mainly comic books never struck me as an efficient use of my entertainment dollars; I blow through the average comic book in about 2 or 3 minutes, because I really just read the dialogue and follow what happens with the story. I know a lot of people love to look over every panel at all the cool art, but that never really interested me. As a result, I end up paying a prorated rate of about $60/hour for comic book entertainment, roughly ten times as expensive as going to a movie

That said, comic books strike some sort of primal nerve, but I strongly dislike the fact that comics (especially Marvel and DC comics) more or less run on and on forever and repeat the same stories over and over. I realize that for financial reasons, perennial characters like Wolverine and Spider-Man and Batman will never, ever go away, but to me that just weakens their ability to tell compelling stories. It's sort of like they're compelling characters who aren't doing anything interesting.

EDIT: Wanted to add that there's a small number of comics I really like, and almost all of them ran for finite durations and then ended permanently. Cerebus (before Dave Sim went insane), Preacher, a few others. And there's a whole grip of webcomics that I really enjoy, although all the ones that run on forever, I eventually get tired of. I read Sluggy Freelance for 12 years before giving up finally. I still have a lot of fond memories of that strip, but eventually you run the entire gamut of what can be done with a set of characters, and it's time to move on.

 

[Penpilot]

That said, comic books strike some sort of primal nerve, but I strongly dislike the fact that comics (especially Marvel and DC comics) more or less run on and on forever and repeat the same stories over and over. I realize that for financial reasons, perennial characters like Wolverine and Spider-Man and Batman will never, ever go away, but to me that just weakens their ability to tell compelling stories. It's sort of like they're compelling characters who aren't doing anything interesting.

I totally understand where you're coming from, but for me that was part of the charm of comics that ran for extended periods. Writers would make references to the past and for me it gave the comic a sense of history. Now to deal with the problem of having this historical baggage, comics in general and DC in particular, reboot. And in DC's case they did it to their entire continuity. Personally, I don't like this. If you're a talented enough writer you can work within established boundaries and still tell a compelling story. You just have to work at it.

 

[Endymion]

I totally understand where you're coming from, but for me that was part of the charm of comics that ran for extended periods. Writers would make references to the past and for me it gave the comic a sense of history. Now to deal with the problem of having this historical baggage, comics in general and DC in particular, reboot. And in DC's case they did it to their entire continuity. Personally, I don't like this. If you're a talented enough writer you can work within established boundaries and still tell a compelling story. You just have to work at it.

The new 52 is great. It helps some of the new readers to begin reading and they didn't reboot the whole backstory, just some small details.
In the original Aquaman series he was just a joke. He could talk to fish (honestly, fishes can't talk) and swim really fast and thats about it. He lacked also any depth (see what I did there? No? Damn!).
In the new 52 he can't talk to fishes but he can control them mentally. Also Superman's strength are more limited making him more vulnerable which is great.
Batman the new 52 is great (court of owls). One of the greatest main stream stories ever.
They are all still doing those references and all that great stuff (is it really so important?) but now they have removed some of the problems the characters and the stories had. Of course it is a matter of opinion.

 

[Penpilot]

They are all still doing those references and all that great stuff (is it really so important?) but now they have removed some of the problems the characters and the stories had. Of course it is a matter of opinion.

The references story wise aren't really that important, but they're little nods to the long time readers. As I said they give readers a sense of history, that there were important things that happened before the current story arc. Obviously I'm a bit sceptical, but that's because the "fixing" of problems, specifically with DC, has been the excuse for sweeping change. If memory serves, first there was Crisis on Infinite Earths, then Zero Hour, then 52, and now the new 52. To me it's become a bit of an over used gimmick, an excuse to reboot so they don't have to think too hard on working around issues.

But I say this without having read any of the rebooted books. And there's the very real possibility that I'm just he old man shouting "get off my lawn" to everyone that walks by while mumbling about how everything was so much better in the old days.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

Well, part of it comes from the fact that the comic book audience is, by and large, extremely cyclical. The primary audience for mainstream comics (teenage boys) tend to read comics for a year or two before moving on to something else. So you really can recycle stories every couple of years. Yeah, there's the fanatics who grow up but keep reading everything, who will scoff, but from a business standpoint, you don't really need to come up with anything new.

Yeah, it's possible to write compelling stories within the limitations of the world you've been given, but eventually so much history is built up that you're just too constrained and it becomes extremely difficult to work around it, which is why they started rebooting things every few years.

 

[soulless]

I started with Neil Gaiman's Sandman from the library when I was a teenager, then not much until after the first two X-Men films and I found an X-Men comic, that soon expanded into Avengers as well, and the odd trade collection to cover the important Marvel stuff. I hardly touch DC, although Batman: The Killing Joke was awesome.

 

[Devor]

I don't enjoy comic books, and I think that's unfortunate because I really enjoy comic book characters, and even the plots. It's really just the medium I don't enjoy. I just don't find still frames do anything for me.

 

[dragonangel517]

When I was a kid, once a month my mom would take us to the used book store, where she traded 2 for 1. We always went home with a big bag full of comics, too. Us kids didn't get to pick and chose, so the assortment could be heavy on Batman and Superman one month, the Archies the next.

Once I was old enough to get a job, I started buying them new. Batman was my favorite. Unfortunately, I was not smart enough to save any of them. I remember buying a large over sized one that pitted DC's Superman against Marvel's Spiderman. Probably worth a fortune now.

In my thirties, I discovered comics again, with Witchblade, and The Darkness. I still have all those, some mint.

I don't currently read comics but I still love them.