I bought the four issue Magik mini-series years ago simply because Illyana Rasputin is one of my favorite characters. The very first comic I ever read happened to be Uncanny X-Men #303, the Death of Illyana. That was a heavy story for a kid to dive into, but I was left with a deep fascination of Magik and how she came to be.
Read MoreMy recommendation for quarantine reading is Judas, written by Jeff Loveness with art by Jakub Rebelka. Judas tells the story of the man who betrayed Christ from his perspective. His descent into Hell, as with most descents into Hell, gives Judas the opportunity for some existential reflection. Judas reflects on the nature of belief and faith and how they reduced him (and therefore us) to characters in a narrative. How he managed to make himself useful, even at the expense of his own soul. Beautifully drawn and written, Judas is intellectual but full of feeling. It is cerebral, but spiritual at the same time. It's a haunting read that stays with you long after you've finished.
Read MoreWhenever I have to recommend a comic to someone, I always have to evangelize my favorite comic of all time (and one that is criminally under-read and underrated): Midnight Nation by J. Michael Straczynski and Gary Frank. Published by Top Cow at the turn of the century, it follows LAPD detective David Grey as he literally loses his soul and ends up in the “In-Between” – the place where lost souls and forgotten people live. He’s provided a guide in Laurel, a tragic being forced to spend eternity living and sacrificing for the lost, and he is told he has one year to walk cross-country to New York in order to reclaim his soul. If he doesn’t, he’ll turn into one of the horrors that stalk him on his journey.
Read MoreI’ll recommend something that I think everyone who loves comics should read. It may come as no surprise: Charles Burn’s Black Hole. This sublime tome of teenage sex, angst, and body horror took ten years to make and it shows. It’ll disturb you within the opening pages, but you won’t be able to put it down.
Read MoreI think that some of the best true crime stories being told, though, are in comics. I think that this is something often overlooked, but hopefully people will really take notice. One of the books that I hope will turn that tide is TWO DEAD (Oni Press), by Van Jensen and Nate Powell.
Read MoreMy gateway drug into comics was Ultimate Spider-Man by Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley. Bagley is probably my number one art influence, and the book’s modern takes on classic stories and villains are all great. However, the best part of it for me is the end of Peter Parker’s storyline.
Read MoreWe’ve all seen our share of mega-giant universe shaking event comics. And while 2005’s Infinite Crisis wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, what happened afterwards most certainly was. Every book in the DC line jumped forward one year. What happened in the missing year? That is the story of 52, an unprecedented weekly series that brought together a veritable Justice League of comics talent: Grant Morrison, Geoff Johns, Greg Rucka & Mark Waid co-writing with Keith Giffen on layouts. Together, they told a sweeping tale that encapsulated the whole of the DC Universe, and turned into a living, breathing, changing character in its own right.
Read MoreFirst and foremost, I hope everybody it safe and healthy, and doing the best they can with the quarantine measures in place. The need to keep ourselves entertained is more keen than ever. So my reading recommendation is my favorite comic from last year, now available as a collected edition: These Savage Shores, written by Ram V, drawn by Sumit Kumar, colored by Vittorio Astone, lettered by Aditya Bidikar, and published by Vault Comics.
Read MoreI wanted to reach deep into the catacombs of my comic book knowledge and pull out something extremely obscure so as to impress the insightful readers of this wonderful site.
Read MoreHigh school ended. Watching my friends crop off into relationships or go off to college, kind of left me in a weird headspace. At the time, it just seemed better to sit and figure things out until I had a plan. In the winter of 2001, the highlight of my life was two chili dogs for $3.50 and a trip to the flea market every Wednesday. What began as a way to score Johnny Cash records transpired into sifting through bins of sallow comics, which is where I picked up American Splendor #4, which I still own.
Read MoreThese times call for a lot of things, from helping your kids get through school from your living room to donating time and money to those in need. It can be a lot to handle and it’s not always easy. What is easy is using a tired cliche, but sometimes: laughter really is the best medicine. This is where my recommendation comes in. Shirtless Bear Fighter.
Read MoreIf there's any emotion we can all relate to right now it’s feeling disillusioned and jaded with the people whom we’re meant to view as heroes, and ZENITH: PHASE 01 (and the subsequent three "phases" that follow that follow it) by Grant Morrison and Steve Yeowell are here to cradle those feelings in a warm blanket made of Generation X powered apathy. Zenith manages to act as the perfect follow-up to a post-Alan Moore era of comics where heroes are not all they’re chalked up to be and evolves from being a parody of celebrity culture to a full-on parody of American superhero culture. I
Read MoreWhen people talk about the big boundary-pushing genre comics work of the 1980s, they always mention Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns, but American Flagg – which began publication three years before those works – has had even further reaching impact on the medium and beyond, seeing as techniques that writer/artist Howard Chaykin pioneered (the use of television screens as panels, for instance) were later famously used in those other epochal comics.
Read MoreCartoonist Beth Barnett recommends Golden Kamuy, a tale of high adventure and survival on the Japanese frontier! Created by Satoru Noda More about Golden Kamuy. In the early twentieth century, Russo-Japanese War veteran Saichi Sugimoto searches the wilderness of the Japanese frontier of Hokkaido for a hoard of hidden gold.
Read MoreI’m an artist. The stuff I love has more to do with the art and storytelling than the script (fun fact: artists are writers too, we just use pictures, haha). Storytelling is the most important thing to me – I need to be able to read the book just by looking at the pictures. Everything else after that is just bonus.
Read MoreONE comic for a quarantine of this magnitude? I say thee NAY! A single title be not enough for this Ragnarok which doth engulf us…and so lo, I must pick TWO! Both of my choices are inspired—in very different ways—by the original Marvel titles created and pioneered by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, and refined by Roy Thomas and his many collaborators, in the early to mid 1960s.
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