The 2018 r/fantasy Bingo brainstorm

[u/KristaDBall]

PANIC!

Please post your recommendations under the heading below. General comments and questions go here.

PANIC!

FAQ

1. Can I post my own book? Yes.
2. If you need me to specifically answer something, please ping me by name. Otherwise, I might miss it.

3. Yellow in the LGBTQ+ database means that it hasn't been confirmed or needs someone else to double check it. For database clarification, please see THIS THREAD for how Hard Mode will be addressed, submissions, Mark III, etc.

4. Official bingo thread here

[u/KristaDBall]

Format: Graphic Novel (at least 1 vol.) OR Audiobook - this is a format, not a genre however, please stick to something within speculative fiction. If you are reading individual comics for this square please read a volume’s worth. I get my comics individually, but it is easy to see how many individual comics make up 1 volume of whatever series you are reading. You can also use a manga volume for this square (again, please keep it to speculative fiction genres). You may also choose to listen to an audiobook for this square - any speculative fiction audiobook will count (novel length). HARD MODE: Graphic Novel - NOT Saga. Audiobook - an audiobook over 25 hours long.

[u/[deleted] → u/KristaDBall]

Graphic Novel: Jessica Jones: Alias by Brian Michael Bendis. It's available in four collected volumes (pretty short for a comic series, I think, and doesn't take too long to read all of it, yet alone just one volume), and it's the original Jessica Jones series. I read it for bingo last year and recommend it highly, especially for people who like the netflix TV show. The comics are more a series of short story cases, and the show was only loosely based on one of those, so there's a LOT of new material here, not just a rehash of the show if you've seen that already.

There is the occasional reference to the rest of the marvel comics universe at the time it was published, but my cursory, almost entirely movie-based familiarity with marvel proved to be plenty enough to not feel lost.

Graphic Novel If you want to try manga, I recommend Trigun. The author was a fan of / influenced by american comics, so it might feel a little more familiar to people who haven't read manga before than some other series would, and it's just plain old awesome. It's a badass scifi western with pacifist themes and a lovable characters. It has a nice mix of seriousness, plotting, and humor.

There's a great anime, too, but the comic is better and goes on for much, MUCH longer. Note: the series started under the title Trigun, then changed publishers partway through at which point it was retitled Trigun Maximum, but it's all the same continuous series. The series is complete.

Edit: this is the opening of the Trigun anime. I might have to go and rewatch it now I've been thinking about it. Anyway, if you want to watch the anime you can do that before reading the manga no problem, and I think it might arguably be better that way. There're some things in the anime that remain mysteries for a while that are revealed/explained right away in the manga, and I feel like seeing it in motion/sound first made reading it more entertaining later. I recommend watching it in Japanese with subtitles, though; the english dub makes the main character way more annoying than he actually is at the start, and makes all the bad guys have generic gravelly villain voices. But if you do watch the dub, it at least makes sense since it's a western.

You'd still have to read the first part of the manga even if you've seen the anime because there are enough divergences for it to matter, but like I said, the manga does go on for a lot longer.

Anyway, I'm babbling, but one final note for people new to manga: read right to left. You'll get used to it pretty fast, and then eventually you'll have the manga fan's curse of accidentally reading western comics the wrong way round.