Anonymous asked: Dear Ron, I'm a lover of mainstream comics, especially DC, Batman in particular. I hate getting sucked into all the daft spinoffs but don't have the patience for a storyline to end and go to trade. What trades/one offs do you rcommend to distract me so I don't feel the urge to read Rob Robin and Batgirl, thinking I'm missing someone big

Sorry for the delay!

As you know, I’m not a huge fan of superheroes. BUT! There are some exceptions…

I really, really like Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev’s run on Daredevil from a couple of years back. Incredible art and a reality-grounded story (for the most part) that strips the character back to a core concept - how does a blind vigilante who is also an attorney get away with breaking the law? And what happens when his identity is revealed to the world?

It’s a great story, and can be bought in trades or hardbacks.

Similarly great is Ed Brubaker’s fantastic Captain America story from the last few years, dealing with bringing back to comics-life the character of Bucky Barnes, Cap’s boy sidekick from WW2. Only this time he is just about the coolest and most bad-ass character in Marvel-dom. Again, it’s all out there in trades, with the proviso that Brubaker is STILL telling this story up past issue #50. It’s well worth reading though.

Over at DC… I’ve heard a LOAD of great things about Green Lantern, but to be perfectly honest I’ve never really been able to get into ANY cosmic character beyond Captain Marvel. It could well be worth a look-see though, especially because Geoff Johns has written ALL of it, and he’s pretty much the driving force in the DC Universe alongside Grant Morrison.

You have read all of Grant Morrison’s Batman stuff, yes?

Non-superhero - Fables gets my vote at the minute, as does Scalped, Ex Machina and Y the Last Man - all of these are brilliant series, however the first two are still going on.

As for one-offs… Brian K Vaughan’s Pride of Baghdad is brilliant - the story off a group of four lions who escape Baghdad zoo following the Shock and Awe bombings. It’s obviously a pretty thinly veiled criticism of American foreign policy, but at the same time a well written and beautifully illustrated book.

Queen & Country from ONI PRESS by Greg Rucka is also a worthy addition to any bookshelf. It’s a hard boiled spy thriller set in the modern world that concentrates on a female ‘minder’ - a highly trained MI6 officer. You can get the whole series in 4 Definitive Editions (smaller size books, but actually pretty thick - really good value). It’s black and white and well researched.

Any of that take your fancy?

phatbassline asked: Hello Sir
Would say I am new to comics and would like to get deeper into the abyss...

Dont think i have the patience to go for weekly issues - all in trade form.
Might actually be easier to tell you what i have read and the reasoning....

Started with a chance copy of 'Preacher'...Completed the series then in a few weeks.
Started to follow the Vertigo tag...
Then DMZ - just finished the collection - Loved it!
2 issues into Y the last man
4 into 100 Bullets
Watchmen
Batman - Dark Knight Returns
Palestine

Thats my lot....So any idea what i should look for next?
Cheers

Assuming you read yesterday’s recommendation of Fables, since you seem to like Vertigo stuff I’ll give you some more from that stable.

At the minute my favourite Vertigo series is Scalped. I’ll probably do a much more in depth post about it sometime soon.

It’s a hardboiled crime series about Dashiell Bad Horse, a young Indian man who’s just returned to the reservation he grew up on. He’s actually come back as an agent of the FBI to investigate the activities of Chief Lincoln Red Crow. 

The series explores Dash’s relationship with Red Crow’s seriously messed up daughter as he attempts to keep his cover, beat drug addiction and try to serve as a reservation law-man.

The writing is fantastic - Jason Aaron does a great job of showing all the different aspects of life on a reservation, as well as exploring the problems that Indians face as their culture, land and history goes the way of the Dodo. 

Check it out if you like noir fiction, strong dialogue and TV shows like The Sopranos and Deadwood.

I’ll think of more stuff you should read soon… but you should definitely continue with Y the Last Man - it’s a fantastic series.

jaisewell asked: My lover recently got slightly obsessed with the League of extraordinary gentlemen. Is there anything she can read until the next part of century comes out?

Fables is one of those series with a premise that sounds like such a simple idea that it couldn’t be any good. 

All the characters from all the fairy stories you read growing up have been exiled from their ‘Homelands’ - the fictional worlds they inhabited - by the mysterious Adversary. They’ve settled in New York, in a magically hidden part they’ve christened Fabletown.

Bill Willingham and Mark Buckingham have created a world where they can set any kind of story. The first volume is largely a murder-mystery, investigated by the town sheriff, Bigby Wolf. Or Big Bad Wolf as he was known in the Homelands. The mayor is Old King Cole. Deputy Mayor is Snow White. You see where this is going…

Virtually every single character is a reference to some children’s story or other - pigs, cats, crows, security guards - all have been the stars of their own tale at some point in their past lives.

It’s a great series for anyone who’s into large casts, epic story-telling and really sharp dialogue. Some stories are capers, some are romances. There’s war, and there’s espionage. And there’s sex (plenty of it in fact) and violence (aye, and that too).

It’s up to Volume 13 now in the paperbacks, and I must say that I’ve enjoyed it consistently the whole time.

You can get the first volume of Fables, or all of them, from Amazon here.

Just in case anyone who doesn’t already know me from Twitter or wherever finds this blog, here’s the other comics related thing I do. It’s a weekly (ha!) podcast where myself, Scott and PJ talk about comics and other bullshit. It’s also pretty funny when it’s at its best.

You can get it at iTunes too. Rock on!

I’m up for recommending comics to anyone. 

So, if you’re into sci-fi, or comedy, or westerns, or period dramas, or kitchen sink dramas, or biographies, or relationships…

Basically, if you aren’t into comics but would like to be, and you already dig certain tpes of stories, let me know and I’ll see what I can suggest. 

The best way to go about this is the ‘ANY QUESTIONS’ link at the top of this page. As long as your amenable to it, I’ll post the answer as a new entry.

If you’re already into a particular writer of comics, or a particular book or series and want to know where to go next, well, I’ll try and help you too!

Everyone with me? Then shoot!

Anonymous asked: Any robot, time travel, bizarre twist comics with stories that wrap in a few issues? No Lost-style years of story to plough through to get to the mystery.

You could check out Alan Moore’s Complete Future Shocks  for a start, collected in one volume here.

It includes a LOT of short stories (3-6 pages) with clever twists. Some of them are REALLY clever or funny. Some of them are thought provoking. Some are just daft! However, you get a lot of reading in that one book.

One single volume Time Travel story that’s really, really great is Too Cool To Be Forgotten - a guy goes to a therapist to help him stop smoking, and after hypnosis finds himself in his body in high-school in the 80s. In effect, he gets a do-over on being a teenager. Obviously inspired by Back To The Future, but also really moving in places. Get it here - it’s a great book!

You might be sick of the hype for the upcoming Scott Pilgrim movie, but there’s a reason why comics fans are so excited. The books are just about the most fun comics out there at the minute.

They follow the ups and downs of Scott Pilgrim, bass player and general layabout. In short, he meets a girl, falls in love, makes social faux-pas left, right and centre…

Sounds crap, yeah? Well, it’s great for a load of reasons. 

1. The art is super-stylised manga-esque, yet the writer/artist Bryan Lee O’Malley has an uncanny knack for getting characters to emote with way fewer lines than most artists. Even if you think you don’t like manga, or that it’s for girls, or whatever - you have to give Scott Pilgrim a chance. I was wary myself, to be honest, but I’ve fallen deeply in love with it. Many of you are sporting Pilgrim Avatars in your Twitter feeds. Embrace it. 

2. It’s hilariously funny. Scott is an idiot, yet charming with it. His circle of friends and the life he leads seem to provide pant loads of opportunity for humour. One of the few books that is genuinely hard to read in public for fear of people looking at you like you’re some kind of loon.

3. It’s frigging weird. Without giving away any spoilers, the end of the first volume takes the story in a VERY off-beat direction. It’s such a bizarre twist that I just started laughing out loud when I realised I was reading something that comes from a very different place to other comics.

Look, it’s really cheap to buy it. I’ll post an affiliate link here - I’m going to make all my links Amazon ones, so if you buy something I’ll get a teeny tiny bit of scratch for it. Not much. Not much at all to be honest. But it’ll give me incentive to keep doing this.

BUY SCOTT PILGRIM Vol 1!