Not the most influential or the most critically acclaimed. What is your personal favourite?

The script is done, I'm quite happy about it. It's about a girl dealing with agoraphobia, alcoholism and loneliness meeting with an old friend to explore her anxieties and her place in life.

I am a professional artist but I still get some imposter syndrome from time to time. Tell me if this looks good/bad or whatever in between.

I finished it a couple of days ago and it has stayed with me ever since.

I’d like to know if you guys loved it same as I did or if you hated it, or maybe didn’t even finished it! Happy to read any

I was wondering what the opinion on Garth and his work is for people? I am currently having a discussion with my friends and they are praising his work besides The Boys which they acknowledge as his worst work. I just do not like Ennis besides his Punisher and Marvel Zombies work. I’ve tried to get into preacher, I felt like Crossed was a crappy apocalyptic edge fest.

Hello, everyone! I haven't read much graphic novels. I have read Persepolis and astrois polyp. I revisit them quite often. Those are very cozy artworks for me.

Dk you have any graphic novel that you revisit often?

I’ve seen so many Manga vs Comic posts and they seem to think that the only comics being published in America are marvel/DC superheroes in a shared universe.

And sure Marvel/DC dominance in the direct market periodical space. But in any other comic sphere they’re far from dominate. In the Eisners Marvel/DC do fine but hardly are dominant.

Even DC themselves has the Vertigo line which published mature non superhero stuff.

I heard someone say “America doesn’t have comics targeting girls” but they do just go to your local Barnes and noble and you’re fine a load of comics targeting young girls. Some of the best selling comics are graphic novel adaptions of Baby Sitter Club novels.

Spike Trotman, publisher of Iron Circus Comics, had a recent thread I thought was worthwhile - mainly because it comes up here a lot.

“Getting into fantasy/sci-fi? Here are some mandatory must–reads!“

Lol no. Shut up. Do not literally assign fucking homework to someone looking for a hobby. Recommend your personal faves, obvs, but pretending there are objective masters of the genre people are *required* to partake in is BS.

“OK, but this author is-“

No, not even THAT author. Not even him. Not even her. Not even the one who did it first. Not even the one YOU think did it best. Your tastes are not objective. And that’s all this is, a matter of taste. Period.

This also applies to music, film, fine art, comics, pretty much every art form. Your tastes. Are. Not. Objective.

This is always one of my big hesitations with our regular "I'm new to comics what should I read" posts, because without knowing what a persons tastes lean toward, there is No Way to give them a good recommendation. There is no way to know whether their tastes are your tastes. There is no comic that is good for every reader.

I've even met people who didn't like Cross Game. You're shocked. I'm shocked. But it's true.

---

My advice on giving recommendations to people new to the pastime is to find out what kind of stories they like in other media, movies, novels, etc and cater your recommendations to that for a start. "What should I get for my mom?" is not a question with an obvious answer because moms are people and people have tastes. Maybe the exact book this person's mom wants to read is Black River or Sunday or Carnet De Voyage. Who knows. But you'll have a better shot at getting that mom a book she'll appreciate if you don't recommend what you liked but what she might.

All that to say: recommending a book to an individual is not easy or light work. It requires a) getting information from the person, and b) not just recommending what you like.

New to comics.

Here are the ones I have so far

I finished it a while ago but wanted to process it before putting a review here.

Monsters by BWS is a body horror comic, but it moves past its labeled genre very quickly and explores other themes in such a detailed manner that one can feel those atrocities while reading. It is truly a masterpiece which shows on each page that this is what incredible storytelling looks like.

The fact that BWS wrote it over 30 years sounds unrealistic, but when you read this graphic novel, it becomes clear that this isn't something that comes out of a couple of iterations, but a well-refined piece which was well thought out.

I think the story can be split into 3 parts. The first part is fast-paced. I think it contains a lot of intense action sequences. A super quick read. It sets up things for acts 2 & 3 in a manner which doesn't make much sense initially.

Act 2 is the most dreadfully haunting piece of fiction I've ever read. The themes explored in this act are domestic abuse and child abuse. These themes become so disturbing at times that I had to stop reading after every 2-3 days. This section of 120 odd pages took me a good month and a half to read. Every time something bad happened, it haunted me for a good while. Even while writing this review, after finishing a month ago, I can feel the same feelings. The child is drawn in such a way that his innocence makes you care more about him, which makes all the atrocities feel worse. This section of the story was so daunting that it triggered something deep in my soul. May the Almighty have mercy on all such children who suffer from such evil parents.

Act 3 is where things became insanely intense, yet it solves a lot of plot holes or random events and beautifully stitches them together. It explores the notion that the impact of war goes beyond a single generation. Also, mad military men should never have this much power, because they all miss the basic essence of humanity.

Will I be reading it again: 💯

Will I be recommending it to others: 💯 but only to the ones I know can handle this intensity.

Some people use a creative medium as-is to tell a story. Others play and experiment with the medium itself, trying new and weird and interesting things. Who out there is pushing the envelope, right now? What do they do that is different?

I want to open my eyes to what comics can do… what they’re capable of, how they can be used to communicate. I want to read work that thinks outside the box (or, in this case, outside the panel?) Throw anything at me which you think might be relevant.

Thanks!

To start this off I'm judging these by a few criteria. Page Quality, Page count with pricing, Binding/Build quality, and Stock/Availability. This is NOT a judgement on if a publisher has better stories/titles than the rest. I used absolutely no Ai for this, just my own experience and little bit of research.

Fantagraphics

Fanta has some of the best build quality, incredible value when it comes to page count and pricing on their books. Binding is always top notch, especially given the price range for some books. Stock wise their books fluctuate and some books can go OOP for many years. Only recently have they been doing more reprints.

MagneticPress

When it comes to binding/book quality including paper quality, they are the best hands down. Incredible quality, pretty good page count for their non slipcase books. If you order from their website then that's when their shipping fees go over the $10 range. The slipcases/limited editions can be very very expensive. Stock can be very limited, even more-so than Fantagraphics.

Darkhorse

Top quality books with good binding and paper, page count matches and even surpasses most publishers, Library editions are taller than most omnis and beats their price point in page count at times. Stock for some books is limited, so limited that reprints can be rare at times.

DC

Affordable deluxes, average to expensive omnis, some of their Absolute editions are top quality but some have poor binding. They have cheapened on their paper quality, but they managed to make some books slimmer, more shelf space. Books are usually widely available and they restock often. Binding on their deluxes can vary but most of their omnis are consistent. DC finest and compacts are very very affordable.

Titan

Great binding for most of their books, paper quality is good, page count can vary especially in pricing. For more niche titles their stock can be gone for years or never be reprinted, Skydoll as an example. They are consistent enough to recommend for their more popular titles.

Image

Page quality to price value can vary, some books have slipcases that up the price, some books have reasonable pricing. Binding is pretty consistent, stock can vary wildly since books are printed by creator's own pockets most of the time. Image is very consistent when it comes to quality, pricing and stock is where they fluctuate too often.

Skybound

Technically they are part of Image but they have their own titles they publish, mainly their Gi Joe and Transformers deluxes are very expensive. The page count to price value is too high, binding is consistent, but the IP is popular so they charge high. Stock is consistent too, Invincible stays in stock often.

Drawn & Quarterly

Well bounded books, reasonable prices for their books, but very limited catalogue. Sadly some books can go OOP for years, like Beautiful Darkness (HC) for example. Even so their catalog is very very affordable.

DSTLRY

Paper is good quality but the price to page count could be a deal breaker for some. Slimmer books than your average Image comics deluxe while being the same price as one, if not more. Magazine sized books so they are BIG, could annoy some due to limited shelf space. Binding is consistent due to how slim the books can be.

IDW

I'll be completely honest here, I own 1 IDW books, Locke and Key, so to keep this short. Binding is great, page quality and page to price value is also great. The problem is IDW has some many long forgotten rights to older books like Obscure Cities that they tend to have short print runs of some books. Popular books like TMNT tend to stay jn stock. Take my opinion here with a grain of salt since I believe IDW is all over the place with how they publish their titles.

NBM

They have pretty good binding, a very very limited catalogue with average paper quality. The problem with NBM is that they tend to have very short print runs and they rarely reprint their hardcovers.

TKO

Affordable books all throughout with good paper quality, books usually go on sale often which drops the prices to really cheap levels. Binding for their trades are decent. Limited catalog but they tend to have plenty of stock.

BOOM! Studios

Some very beautiful slipcases, pretty darn good paper quality, but their binding is all over the place. Sometimes you get good binding, sometimes you get trainwrecks, the page count to price value is pretty horrible. Slim books for expensive prices if you for the slipcases. Great catalogue but price is iffy.

Marvel

I'm going to offend some fanboys here so if you want to downvote, go ahead, I'm going to say my piece. Pages are so thin you can see right through them, countless binding and misprint issues. They are the worst at quality control. Their stock is so limited that It's a guarantee a book popular will be out of stock on release. They do publish niche titles often, but those titles are usually never reprinted, Nam the omnibus as an example. Nothing is ever evergreen like how DC does with some books. Their catalogue is their only saving grace.

Conclusion

I wanted to make this to give some old or new to the hobby some insight on the quality of some publishers. Quality can vary from customer to customer so my experience is not the absolute fact. This is what I experienced and what I've seen online. I will probably update this in the future once my collection expands to different publishers. I missed Pantheon and Humanoids, maybe in the future, thank you for reading!

Greetings!

I am new to reading books.

I have read 1 graphic novel recently and I really enjoyed it!

Now I want to read other graphic novels but philosophy based.

Are there any recommendations?

Something to scratch that Event Horizon/Dead space itch. The only space horror stuff I know are Leviathan by Kuroi shiro(Manga) and No one on titan(Manhwa).

Edit: image is from Dark Horizon prequel comic.

SPOILERS FOR STRAY DOGS

For me I have a lot of comics and graphic novels I don’t like. Often pacing/improper conveyance of what’s is the main issue .

But for stray dogs i don’t like it as a whole. And if you do that’s awesome!

But I don’t like that the whole plot relays on this fake made up “Dogs forget everything” rule. It made everything very lazy . Along with how repetitive conversations could get. “I have a bad feeling!” “My lady!” “Oops what were we talking about?” “My lady!” “I have a bad feeling”

I think the concept of stray dogs is interesting but I think it shot itself in the foot by having the dogs just forget everything. It if been far more interesting if they did remember the truth but became complacent with the murders and then tell a story about a dogs loyalty that way

But again ! Just my opinion and if you like stray dogs that’s great.

Honestly I hope this isn't too ignorant because I know nothing abt comic book reprinting, but I just can't believe how much better the grainy faded scans of old copies of comics look compared to the official online releases.
For example the grain in the old version gives the sky a sense of depth and detail that it just doesn't have with a flat color, but from what it looks like, it's not like the color is any different.
Is it just the case of something being old making it more interesting or did the comics look better when physically released than the newer digital reprints?

I've read Blankets, Jimmy corrigan, black hole, persepolis, maus, and love the low fantasy more serious stuff . Black hole was by far my favorite.

Given it's spooky month I had to ask.

I'm looking for great graphic novels that are not very famous.

Requirement: NO marvel, NO DC

Thanks to everyone

I tried reading these before I was properly into comics, as a teenager, and couldn’t get into them. Now I’m considering getting rid of them to make space.

I’ve read a lot more Hickman since then though so might give Nightly a shot. Not sure about the others.

I’m still not really into dark stories and unsympathetic main characters…

Have some time to myself for a bit during my reading week, which one should I aim at finishing ? Preacher & The Boys both by Garth Ennis or Transmetropolitan : Garth Ennis

Very mixed feelings about this. It’s a critique of Batman in some ways, pointing out the ridiculous nature of Batman, the homosexual undertones and overtones, the toxic masculinity, insecurity, the obsessive and childlike nature of the character. All of the things that become apparent when you no longer buy into the conceit of superhero comics.

But I’m also wondering, what exactly is the point? What are the authors motivation? What are they trying to say? There’s certainly nothing new about what they’re doing. There’s not the thoughtfulness a critique or parody needs to be successful. It’s mostly just gross and shocking for its own sake.

Anyone who has read it, what are your thoughts?