.Inspired by Christian and Jerry with their thoughts on enjoying comics but no longer superhero ones.
What are you favourite non-capes titles? They can be Marvel or DC or whoever as long as they aren’t superheroes. ‘Alternative’ supes like Ex Machina or Watchmen or Planetary though not allowed.
My top 10 list in no particular order:
From Hell
Alice in Sunderland
Laika
Strangers in Paradise
Halo Jones
Nikolai Dante
Providence
Charlie’s War
Ghost World
Queen and Country
As someone who drifts in and out of superhero books on a semi-regular basis, here’s a few that have stood out to me over the years. I’m gonna try and not make it all manga, but no promises.
Akira. This is one of my all-time favourite comics, a true epic. Set in the far-off future of 2019, it tells the story of a pair of biker punks who are drawn into a web of intrigue involving anti-government rebels, a secret program to create psychics, and ultimately apocalyptic levels of destruction to Neo-Tokyo. It’s made great by a fantastic cast of characters, a willingness to escalate the stakes on a regular basis, and fantastic art and design that’s been aped and referenced for decades.
PlanetES. I championed the hell out of this back when Tokyopop first localised it, and still love it today. It’s about the crew of a spacecraft that collect debris in Earth orbit to remove navigational hazards, starting out as a series of tight personal stories that move between comical, heartfelt, and aspirational – but it shifts gradually to a larger scope as one of the characters tries to join a historical mission, and the others get involved in an anti-war movement. This is full-on hard SF, with a large amount of scientific rigor (the anime’s producers collaborated with JAXA to ensure realistic depictions of spaceflight, and the Western DVDs have interviews with NASA engineers about orbital debris), but the core of the story is the emotional connections between the characters. The closing monologue is a fantastic piece of writing.
Appleseed. I’m trying to limit myself to one Masamune Shirow work, and I think overall this is the strongest one. Another cyberpunk manga, this one focuses on Deunan Knute and her cyborg partner Briareos Hecatonchires, a pair of former SWAT cops eking out a living in post-WWIV America when they discover the existence of Olympus, an island state that apparently sat out the war and is now the core of the rebuilding process. It seems like a literal eden at first, but it’s very heavily armed and Deunan and Briareos have been brought there for their paramilitary skills, joining a force that blurs the lines between police and special forces. The story dove in and out of the greater political issues, as well as an apparent plan to replace humans with Bioroids – genetically engineered humans who are bred to be more socially responsible and make up 80% of Olympus’ population. But sadly Shirow stopped working on the book in the early 90s and the ongoing plots were never resolved.
The Dirty Pair. Hey, this isn’t manga, it’s just drawn to look like one! Loosely based on a series of Japanese SF novels (which have been adapted into anime a few times), the Dirty Pair is the much-despised nickname of the Lovely Angels, AKA Kei and Yuri – a pair of Trouble Consultants for the Worlds Work Welfare Association. Essentially a two-woman strike force, Kei and Yuri are very good at their jobs… It’s just that where they go, disaster tends to follow. It’s never exactly their fault, and they’re cleared of any charges every time but they do have a bad rep as a result. Originally written by Toren Smith and drawn by Adam Warren, the later stories are written and drawn by Warren on his own. The comics take a harder edge aesthetically than the Japanese incarnations, preferring real (or based on real) firearms, O’Neill Cylinders as orbital habitats, and a sometimes fetishistic delving into different types of ultratech weaponry. But it’s still really, really, really funny.
As an intro point, I highly recommend the third story, “A Plague of Angels”, in which a reporter stays with them in an attempt to write a positive story about the Pair right as an arms deal gone wrong leads to a lecherous body-hopping terrorist getting control of a mech with a gravity bomb and a holographic disguise system; Kei and Yuri reveal they starred in a badly dubbed Kung Fu movie; Epic by Faith no More is sung drunkenly at Karaoke, and they never do reveal why their uniforms are bikinis…
The Invisibles. I mean, come on. It’s basically a Robert Anton Wilson novel mixed with some exploitation movies, 70s cult TV, and a whole load of drugs. And a long the way it makes a lot of good points about how accepting any ideology at face value is.
Top 10? Tough nugget. A lot of good stuff exist in something of a grey area, like Seaguy and Planetary. But I’ll refrain from those, since superheroes are involved. Here goes:
If one of the picks doesn’t count for some reason, I’ll shoehorn in We3.
Jesus. Okay, I’ll try. But I may make some changes to this list repeatedly.
Asterix – Childhood favourite, and still as funny and great on rereading (even though it’s never been the same after Goscinny’s death).
The Sandman – got me back into comics in the nineties. It’s still moving to me on a very personal level.
Enigma – Shade is kind of a superhero comic, but I loved this one just as much. Milligan did some incredible work back then.
Wait, Enigma is a superhero comic, too! Fuck! Okay, let’s say Skreemer.
From Hell – Close call between this one and Extraordinary Gentlemen, but in the end, From Hell is just such an incredible work on every level.
The Invisibles – Just so ambitious in the things Morrison wanted to do. Trippy Moorcock-style adventure, catalogue of conspiracy theories along the lines of Illuminatus!, explaining magic, working with anarchic ideology, creating a spell for Morrison’s own life… and so much more.
Preacher – For those bits we mentioned in the other thread, mainly.
Shortcomings – Sort of stands in for all of Adrian Tomine’s work. He’s an incredible writer of slice-of-life stories, as good as anyone working in any form. Love all of his books.
Transmetropolitan – I like a lot of Ellis’ work, especially when he’s doing sci-fi. But Transmet is still his best.
Bone – I’ll never understand how Smith was able to create something that is so funny and at the same time such a serious fantasy adventure, and so touching.
Strangers in Paradise – These people all felt like such close friends for a while. I know I will revisit them one day, and have just as much fun with them.
Had to kick out Saga, Understanding Comics and Maus. And there’s probably a lot I am forgetting…
I’m gonna try and not make it all manga, but no promises.
Functionist lapdog! I might not be Tarn (more like Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz) but I can be pretty annoying… Amend your list! Add Transformers!
I agree by the way, Punisher Max/Fury and Sandman do not count as superhero comics even though technically they are (kind of) in the universes.
Consensus has been reached!? Surely this spells doom for the board!
I just did my top 10, you can do more or less if you want.
Consider my list my top 11 then, with We3 in it. No, wait…. Top12, with Transmetropolitan too.
Am I allowed Tintin even though Snowy is a superdog?
The Invisibles is one I should re-read. I read it all as it came out but I think rather lost track. It deserves a binge read, I found after re-reading Sandman last year it’s much cleverer than I thought with all the foreshadowing of where the story is heading.
Am I allowed Tintin even though Snowy is a superdog?
Tintin is definitely allowed.
So is Lucky Luke, which is a clear contender for my #13
The ‘Nam
I’m generally not into war stories (whether that’s comics or films or whatever other medium) but The Nam really grabbed. I picked it up due to its connection to GI Joe – it was a spin-off, of sorts, of Larry Hama’s origina GI Joe run. Not in specific story terms, but in style and tone. The premise of the series was a down-to-earth retelling of the Vietnam war from the perspective of one unit, shown in real time. Every issue would be set a month after the last (meaning they’re usually stand-alone slice of life stories, but a couple cheated the timeline slightly) and that meant, if you were reading it as published, characters would move in and out of the book/unit at the same rate they would have in the real world.
Although Hama didn’t write the series, he was its first editor and he chose Doug Murray, a vet, to write it. Murray captures what I like to call the “cynical realist” tone of Hama’s GI Joe and transplants it into a real situation where characters actually can – and frequently do – die*, often in senseless and unheroic ways. It doesn’t glamourise or sentimentalise the war at all, but at the same time, it isn’t entirely ashamed of it. It’s very much positioned with the perspective of your average American GI, thrown unwillingly into a conflict far remove from everything he knows for a cause he barely understands. It’s a world away from the “daring night raid about Nazi strongholds” cliche of Commando.
The characters in the book are superb and all feel legitimate. You quickly grow to care about them and their fates. The rotation of them has a profound effect on the nature of the unit and thus the book. The cast in issue 30-odd is completely different to that of issue 2 and while that does bring changes, they still feel like the same unit, because you’ve seen that evolution. Murray also takes the opportunity to follow up on a few of the characters back in the world, after their tour of duty has ended, which is a nice touch.
Unfortunately, the book got shafted by editorial changes around issue 40 odd. The plan had been to do the full war in real time, but Murray was forced to do an issue featuring some Marvel superheroes, to boost sales (it’s actually far better than it should be, with Sgt Mike Ice Philips despondently looking through the comics left behind by one of his former troopers and imagining what it’d be like if super-heroes were real before dismissing it as kids stuff, with Murray creating a greater point about Ice being a hero to his men), which was largely derided (even in the letters page of the last issue, years later, it was still getting flack). Then the real time gimmick was dropped, to do longer stories before Murray was booted off the title in favour of sub-Clancy wannabes like Chuck Dixon, telling Commando-esque bollocks. Near the end it became a more valid, but still inferior IMO, war journalist story, mopping up the end of the war.
But those first 40-odd issues are definitely worth a read (1-30 are in tpb).
*To be fair, characters die in the Joe comics too, just rarely the ones that matter.
I’m gonna try and not make it all manga, but no promises.
Functionist lapdog! I might not be Tarn (more like Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz) but I can be pretty annoying… Amend your list! Add Transformers!
Are you saying you’d like a post about why many different Transformers comics are great? Because I can do that…
The Invisibles is one I should re-read. I read it all as it came out but I think rather lost track. It deserves a binge read, I found after re-reading Sandman last year it’s much cleverer than I thought with all the foreshadowing of where the story is heading.
I did a reread of all the trades, while cross-referencing with Anarchy in the UK a couple of years ago, it was a really interesting way to read the book.
Lone Wolf and Cub – It starts off small and ends as this epic clash.
Most Brubaker-Phillips collaborations
Queen & Country
Scorpion – Wish Cinebook would get around to issuing the rest of it.
A glance through my bookshelves is going to help me on this one.
Berlin: I read this recently and thought it was an astounding piece of work, not just for how long it took to put together in real-time but also for how brilliantly the whole thing builds and comes together. So many disparate characters and storylines and yet it all comes into focus – it’s like The Wire for pre-WWII Berlin, but it also has slightly concerning echoes that resonate in the present day. Like every other element of it, though, these things aren’t overplayed. This is one of the best handlings of the rise of Nazism that I’ve ever seen, as it’s all presented as a very understandable progression rooted in social and economic factors of the time, rather than being a looming shadow of monstrous inhuman types like the Nazis of a lot of fiction. This book left a big impact on me and it deserves to be mentioned in more of these types of conversations. Plus, that kind of consistency in art (and coherence in general) over more than two decades of creation is impressive.
Asterios Polyp: David Mazzucchelli is famous for Batman Year One and Daredevil Born Again, but more people should read his real masterwork. This is a great example of a comic that isn’t brilliant because of the story its telling but because of the techniques that are used to bring it to life. It’s vibrant, innovative stuff, and while it was pretty popular for a while I haven’t heard it mentioned recently. It should be!
Daytripper: Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba’s series of vignettes has a dark twist at its heart, but that heart is so huge that it’s still an overwhelmingly life-affirming book. Beautiful and sad and funny and heartbreaking all at once. I’m not ashamed to admit it’s one of the few comics to have made me shed a tear.
Will Eisner’s Contract With God Trilogy: Yeah yeah, everyone puts this on their serious ‘great graphic novels’ list. But it actually is very good, and not just because of the way it innovated the format. There are three stories here that are actually all fairly different, and while the title story and A Life Force are both very good – both in terms of the stories and the artistry – it’s the last one, Dropsie Avenue, that really sticks in my head. Its multi-generational sweep is really something, and I love the brilliant way in which it depicts the evolution of a specific neighbourhood (similar to what Alan Moore did in Jerusalem, although not quite as out-there) through a series of vignettes that show how human behaviours and social trends (and prejudices) repeat and echo down the ages. The Spirit should probably be on my list too, as that’s where Eisner really cuts loose and shows off, but those stories don’t have the heart of the Contract With God books.
Brubaker & Phillips: I’m not going to do an entry for each individual series, but I think Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’ non-superhero work is genuinely up there with the best comics of all time. The pacing and control of the comics page, the rhythms of the stories, the way the art chooses what to show and what not to show, the way the two creators work together as a single team, it’s all just great. Criminal will probably go down as their masterwork but Fatale and Kill Or Be Killed are up there too, and even their ‘lesser’ books like The Fade Out and Incognito are great.
Akira: what Lorcan said. Stunning, particularly the jaw-dropping art.
From Hell: Again, this has already been covered, but what a book! So dense and thoroughly researched, but so elegant in the way it’s presented, with some amazing showstopping sequences that totally transcend the type of comic you think it’s going to be. I saw that Campbell put out a coloured version recently, but it just looks wrong to me. His art is impressive enough in black and white, and Moore has maybe never aimed higher with his ambitions (and that’s saying something.)
Sin City: well I had to have one Frank Miller book on there, and for all that Sin City has been mocked and parodied and become somewhat uncool over the years, I still think you’ll be hard pressed to find a comic with such a clear sense of its own style. People have criticised it as style-over-substance, but for me the style IS the substance, and I can look at its pages endlessly to see how Miller creates the effects that he does (the big original-art book that Dark Horse put out a couple of years back was wonderful in this respect. Seeing all the white-out and pencil lines shows you so much more about how these high-contrast pages were constructed.)
Honorable mentions:
The Invisibles: this is one that I come and go on. I loved it when I first read it, but weirdly I found it tougher going on my second, possibly because the various mysteries and teases didn’t work in the same way once you know where everything is going. I need to give it another go and see if my opinion has changed yet again.
Maus: yes it is great, but somehow it never quite ‘got’ me. While I can appreciate how clever and groundbreaking it is, it’s not something that I’ve felt the urge to return to in a long time. Similar to Sandman, which I admired more than truly enjoyed.
Persepolis: in terms of comics educating you and opening up a new world to you, this has got to be near the top of the list. Don’t let the relatively crude art style fool you – this is both a great memoir and also a really interesting examination of history through a very personal lens.
There are probably loads that I’ve forgotten and I’ll kick myself afterwards, but these are the first ones that sprang to mind.
There’s a swedish Biographic GN called “Smålands Mörker” (Småland is a province in Sweden so it’s “Småland’s Darkness” in english) by Henrik Bromander. It’s about a guy moving to my old hometown, Nässjö, and it’s about how he struggles with lonelines, with his issues, with drugs and all the while he’s becoming more and more involved with fascist groups in the nearby municipalities and at the same time exploring his homosexuality. It’s an epic, with crime, violence, betrayal, all that. And it feels so real.
I’m adding it to the discussion, but I think I should re-read it because it’s been a few years now. Unsure whether you could get it in english.
Oooh Daytripper is a really good one I forgot. Persepolis too.
On the documentary from anything by Joe Sacco and ‘March’ the story of the US civil rights movement via John Lewis are really good.
I agree by the way, Punisher Max/Fury and Sandman do not count as superhero comics even though technically they are (kind of) in the universes. Enigma and Shade rightly do count – they fall into the ‘alternative’ or innovative superhero stuff but capes and powers all the same.
This is where the definition of “superhero” gets kind of dicey.
The Punisher has a codename, a costume, a bunch of hardware, and tragic backstory that fuels his obsession with revenge, so he’s not functionally different from Batman, even though the stories could be Mac Bolan: The Executioner-style adventure novels. (And, if I’m not mistaken, Marvel actually cribbed the Mac Bolan character when they made The Punisher.)
And Milligan’s Shade the Changing Man could easily be a science fiction novel in the Philip K. Dick or Moorcock mold if it wasn’t a comic book, and nobody would think it was superhero tale in any way. Enigma is a lot close to being a traditional superhero, though.
And then there’s stuff like American Flagg! and Grendel that, on the surface, look like they could be run-of-the-mill superheroes, but aren’t really.
Yeah but to be honest I am not hugely interested in this being dominated by that debate again. There’s a fair argument that James Bond is a superhero etc.
However for the Max run of Punisher that we’re discussing I don’t think it is, I think it’s massively removed from 99% of Batman comics. Other Punisher runs are more, where he wears a full costume and battles Bullseye and not a t-shirt and trench coat and fights organised crime.
We can quibble the detail but it’s less interesting than nominating cool comics which is the main aim here.
my initial list includes 61 separate titles. dating as far back as the first CONAN THE BARBARIAN series from Marvel in the early 1970s, followed by TOMB OF DRACULA and MASTER OF KUNG FU, and leading up to my current infatuations with the current independent books from Brubaker and Rucka and Hickman. Not sure if I should just post the whole list, or whittle it down to my Top 10.
Post the whole list otherwise you’ll feel guilty for the ones you leave out. You wouldn’t want them to grow sentient and judgemental and sneak up on you whilst you sleep.
Oooh Daytripper is a really good one I forgot. Persepolis too.
Yeah, I probably would have added Daytripper if I’d remembered it in that moment. And Berlin and Asterios Polyp are fantastic, too. Dave makes a great list.
Daytripper is the book I most frequently buy as a gift for people who have never read a proper comic.
Alice in Sunderland is quite a unique one. It’s essentially a documentary in comics form. A documentary about Lewis Carroll and his links to the north east of England.
Which admittedly sounds as boring as hell but in actuality I couldn’t put it down. It’s beautifully illustrated and full of interesting stuff. Bryan Talbot is largely unsung in comics but he’s a real innovator from being one of the pioneers of steampunk to creating this. There are plenty of other factual comics but like Joe Sacco’s stuff or Persepolis or March they are written in memoir form.
Scott McCloud did the bit of addressing the audience directly within the book in Understanding Comics but that’s something that’s about the artform, whereas this is essentially a history book.
In a similar vein, one that I keep meaning to check out is Logicomix (about the life of Bertrand Russell).
I actually have a copy on my shelf – bizarrely, my dad (who isn’t a comics reader) got sent a copy by mistake when someone messed up an online order, so he gave it to me – but I just haven’t got around to it yet. But I’ve heard good things.
In no particular order, but grouped together for convenience; if you prefer a short “best-of” list, just look at the first title in each group (titles with a * are ones that you may consider “superhero”, but I choose not to):
’70s Marvel titles: CONAN THE BARBARIAN, MASTER OF KUNG FU, TOMB OF DRACULA — included to show that even the Big Two publishers used to do more than just superheroes (Marvel also published Westerns, War, and Humor books, but by the time I got into comics those genres were mostly reprints of earlier works); also included to reveal that, even that far back, I was looking for alternatives to Spidey and Batman.
Ed Brubaker with Sean Phillips and other artists: CRIMINAL, SCENE OF THE CRIME, GOTHAM CENTRAL*, FATALE, THE FADE OUT, VELVET — I will read just about any non-Big Two work by Brubaker, just because I love his style and because of the additional stuff he includes in the back pages of each issue that reveal his love for the medium of comics and for the genre of crime/noir fiction.
Greg Rucka: LAZARUS, QUEEN & COUNTRY, STUMPTOWN, GOTHAM CENTRAL*, WHITEOUT, BLACK MAGICK — as with Brubaker, I will read just about any of Rucka’s independent work, for the same reasons as with Brubaker above. The main difference between the two is that Rucka’s main characters are usually women.
Mike Mignola: The HELLBOY family of titles, as well as BALTIMORE, JOE GOLEM, AMAZING SCREW-ON HEAD — no surprise here, I’ve been a big fan of Mignola since Hellboy’s debut as part of the “Legends” imprint at Dark Horse in the ’90s.
Warren Ellis: GLOBAL FREQUENCY, FREAK ANGELS*, TREES, INJECTION and more — Ellis is a guy with a lot of exciting ideas, too many of which start off strong but never reach their conclusion (boredom? ennui? financial decisions?); but when he follows through, we get something like GF or his free on-line series Freak Angels that was so excellent that I bought the entire series in TPB when they became available.
Jonathan Hickman: EAST OF WEST, RED MASS FOR MARS, PAX ROMANA, BLACK MONDAY MURDERS, DYING AND THE DEAD — Hickman is another guy with great concepts, and he pairs himself with talented artists who bring those ideas to vivid life. Most of his non-superhero work consists of short, finite stories of four issues or so, but East of West is his 45-issue magnum opus, and I’m thrilled that it was able to reach its conclusion.
Robert Kirkman: OUTCAST, THE WALKING DEAD — I’m not a fan of everything Kirkman has done, but sometimes he hits all the right buttons, as with these two series. Outcast has the right blend of character relationships and pure creepiness.
Frank Miller: SIN CITY, 300, GIVE ME LIBERTY — Miller has been a big influence in showing how to write superhero books for adults, but he should be remembered primarily for creating the world of Sin City and the characters who inhabit it.
Brian K. Vaughan: EX MACHINA*, SAGA, Y: THE LAST MAN, PAPER GIRLS, PRIDE OF BAGHDAD — BKV; need I say more?
FABLES — Bill Willingham crafted a great sweeping saga using characters we know from childhood, but presenting them as fully developed people (and other lifeforms).
LEAVE IT TO CHANCE — James Robinson and Paul Smith broke my heart when they stopped publishing this book. Worth searching for if you’re not familiar with it.
GIDEON FALLS — One of the books I’m currently enjoying (and sorely missing during the Diamond shutdown), Jeff Lemire and Andrea Sorrentino are creating one of the best things on the market today, one that can send chills up my spine with a single image. You should all be reading this one.
And even though I wanted to keep the list to 12 groups, I need to make this a Baker’s Dozen by including the early work of Brian Bendis, including TORSO and JINX, as well as his non-supes Marvel book THE PULSE*, which was their answer to DC’s “Gotham Central” that deserved a bigger audience and a greater commitment from the publisher.
That’s it; I’m done.
The Invisibles – Grant Morrison, Steve Yeowell, Phil Jimenez, et. al – My all-time favorite comic. I just read it at the right age. Perhaps no other work of art has influenced my world view more. We’re all connected, people!
The Sandman – Neil Gaiman, Sam Kieth, Jill Thompson, et. al – Gaiman at his best. Dream and the Endless are characters like no other. I’m always stunned all over again whenever I read this. Surprisingly scary in places, too.
Stray Bullets – David Lapham – Blue Velvet as a sprawling, generation-spanning road epic. I love it. Criminally underrated and under read. One of the most brilliant explorations of the psychological impacts of cycles of violence.
Akira – Katsuhiro Otomo – What Lorcan said. Plus it’s a very moving and heartbreaking story about an entire generation that’s been traumatized.
From Hell – Alan Moore & Eddie Campbell – An autopsy of an era, and a look at how the rot that grew in it persists with us to this day. A virtuoso work in writing and art.
Monster – Naoki Urasawa – One of the greatest explorations of ethics and morality I’ve ever read, with tight, compelling plotting that rivals Alan Moore’s best works. A true epic.
Scalped – Jason Aaron, R.M. Guera, John Paul Leon, et. al – One of my favorite crime sagas in any medium. Loaded with brilliant characters and I love the arcs that look at the same events from multiple perspectives.
The Adventures of Luther Arkwright – Bryan Talbot – Exactly the kind of thing I want from comics–and fiction in general. Talbot is a true heavyweight. I love how layered this book is, and how Talbot just drops you into the middle of his sprawling multiversal epic.
100 Bullets – Brian Azzarello & Eduardo Risso – I’m not a huge Azzarello fan but this is one of the great comics of this century. Azzarello & Risso create an entire world, a hideous funhouse mirror reflection of our own, as well as the genre of noir.
The Filth – Grant Morrison & Chris Weston – Maybe Morrison’s strongest writing, and Weston’s grotesque, hyper-detailed art is some of my favorite in all of comics. The pair expertly examine the links between personal despair and fascism. But beyond its thematic content, this book is like if Eraserhead were a cop movie. What’s not to love?
Sin City: The Hard Goodbye – Frank Miller – A perfect comic. Miller’s art has never looked better. Marv is one of the great characters in comics.
Nijigahara Holograph – Inio Asano – This comic will depress the hell out of you but it’s very worthwhile. An unsettling, horrific exploration of the idea of eternal recurrence.
Lone Sloane – Philippe Druillet & Jacques Lob – Maybe the best drawn comic there’s ever been. A sci-fi epic that’s been cribbed from for decades, most notably by Star Wars (Slone is a dead ringer for Han Solo).
The World of Edena – Moebius – The other best drawn comic there’s ever been. I could pore over the pages of this comic for hours.
BLAME! – Tsutomu Nihei – I’m only halfway through with this but it’s already clear it’s a masterpiece. No one draws architecture like Nihei.
Prince of Cats – Ron Wimberly – A hip-hop retelling of Romeo & Juliet, transplanted to 1980s Brooklyn, from the perspective of Juliet’s cousin Tybalt. An under-sung masterpiece. Be sure to look for it in over-sized form, not the puny paperback that Vertigo released it as initially.
Ronin – Frank Miller – One of the coolest comics that’s ever been made. Miller’s not short on masterpieces but this is one of the best. A very moving love story, and one of the best examples I can think of in art of blending Eastern and Western influences.
PRIDE OF BAGHDAD
I forgot about that. That was really good.
Not sure if it fits in this thread for being a bit uneven, unnecessarily graphic in that Ennish way, but…. Rover, Red, Charlie was a fresh take on the zombie apocalypse (told from the perspective of three dogs), overall very funny and at times even poignant in it’s portrayal of the relationships fostered between humans (feeders) and their proverbial best friends. It had heart, too. An unusual amount for an Ennis zombie story.
Now that I mention it, I’ve actually enjoyed Crossed and its different narratives over several titles a lot more than I’ve enjoyed The Walking Dead and other apoca-zombie-lypse type comics. Especially Crossed+100‘s first arc by Moore was very, very good. I don’t like it because of depictions of gore and sexually graphic nature but rather in spite of it. My take is that it’s there to show us exactly how fucked up society has become and that it’s basically impossible to cope with.
I like that there’s no real explanation to what happened. There is no longer narrative. It’s not about building character. It’s not about survival. Crossed is never a story about survivors. It’s stories of how people try and fail to cope with the uncopeable by clinging to hope in a hopeless situation and how they survive certain death. But it is certain. The Crossed always wins.
Another mention to Crossed+100, I recommend reading it even if you’re not into Crossed. If not for the good story in the first arc, the actual characters or your mandatory love for Alan Moore then for the really interesting devolution of language it conveys and how reason goes with it (kinda reminds me of how the war boys speak in Mad Max, but more nuanced and in actual dialogue rather than a series of battlecries).
Ronin – Frank Miller – One of the coolest comics that’s ever been made. Miller’s not short on masterpieces but this is one of the best. A very moving love story, and one of the best examples I can think of in art of blending Eastern and Western influences.
Kicking myself for forgetting this.
Another mention to Crossed+100, I recommend reading it even if you’re not into Crossed. If not for the good story in the first arc, the actual characters or your mandatory love for Alan Moore then for the really interesting devolution of language it conveys and how reason goes with it (kinda reminds me of how the war boys speak in Mad Max, but more nuanced and in actual dialogue rather than a series of battlecries).
Yeah, the language stuff in this was lots of fun.
Not sure if it fits in this thread for being a bit uneven, unnecessarily graphic in that Ennish way, but…. Rover, Red, Charlie was a fresh take on the zombie apocalypse (told from the perspective of three dogs), overall very funny and at times even poignant in it’s portrayal of the relationships fostered between humans (feeders) and their proverbial best friends. It had heart, too. An unusual amount for an Ennis zombie story.
This was brilliant – especially the depiction of dogs and…. cats.
I stand by my opinion that Ennis’ original Crossed mini- series, with Jacen Burrows art, is criminally underrated. Get passed the “shock & awe” of the first couple of issues and it’s a pretty affecting look at humanity’s foibles. With a beautiful touching ending.
Great thread, folks. I want to join in, but Jerry’s post above pretty much covers everything I’d want to mention!
A couple of others for consideration:
Southern Bastards by Aaron & Latour – a startling plot twist in #4, brilliantly sets up this engrossing crime thriller, set in the Deep South.
American Vampire by Snyder & Albuquerque – a fun journey through vampire lore and 20th century Americana.
Tokyo Ghost – come for the brilliant Murphy artwork; stay for Remender’s on point thesis on the connected world.
Hellblazer – 300 issues plus of one fantastic run after another; Delano, Ennis, Jenkins, Ellis, Azzarello, Carey, Milligan, and more.
Judge Dredd – behind the sci fi absurdity and satire, is an angry political heart, with thrilling action and adventure.
Alice in Sunderland is quite a unique one. It’s essentially a documentary in comics form. A documentary about Lewis Carroll and his links to the north east of England. Which admittedly sounds as boring as hell but in actuality I couldn’t put it down. It’s beautifully illustrated and full of interesting stuff. Bryan Talbot is largely unsung in comics but he’s a real innovator from being one of the pioneers of steampunk to creating this. There are plenty of other factual comics but like Joe Sacco’s stuff or Persepolis or March they are written in memoir form.
Talbot’s wife Mary is an academic and writer, and has collaborated with him on a couple of comics. They were at Worldcon last year and while I didn’t manage to see him at all, she was on the panel on a talk about politics in art I attended and basically spent the time chatting with Jim Fitzpatrick and they were fantastic together.
Yeah a lot of his most recent books are written by or with her. Very good they are too. Your post reminds me I should get ‘Rain’, their latest one.
Yeah a lot of his most recent books are written by or with her. Very good they are too. Your post reminds me I should get ‘Rain’, their latest one.
You really should – it’s quite distinct from the others, opting for a landscape page layout.
This was brilliant – especially the depiction of dogs and…. cats.
The chickens. Such perfect. Very fit. What’s this? SHIT!
So I anders talked to me, asking about some good manga without superheroes, and that got me interested in just fanboying over some things I like in front of complete strangers. I’ll arrange it in descending order depending on my general opinion of quality, but don’t read too much into it.
Berserk
This one shouldn’t really need any introduction; it is a classic for good reasons! A dark gritty fantasy story with great art. What I think is exceptional, especially in the origin story, is how much is told through body language and facial expressions instead of dialogue; complex characters act in contradictory ways and it’s deeply engaging.
20th Century Boys, 21st Century Boys
An intricate story that weaves together events in different time periods. It’s quite out there storywise and hard to explain. It’s by Urasawa Naoki, the person behind Monster, which was mentioned earlier. Basically som kids make up stories when they are young which later start happening when they are adults. We follow them as they try to figure out what’s actually going on. Thematically relevant to our current global predicament.
Planetes and Vinland Saga
Planetes, also mentioned above, is an interesting and poetic story that starts of as a slice of life in space, but goes into some philosophial ruminations about isolation, trauma and life/death.
Vinland Saga is by the same author and is more action oriented, a tale set in the viking times. It also has a poetic flare and changes tone quite much as the main character matures through it. We follow a young icelandic boy as he gets swept up with some mercenaries, growing up in war and violence.
Nausicaa of the valley of the wind
In my opinion the best work by Miyazaki (the guy who did those ghibli movies, yes). Post-apocalyptic story, somewhat messianic, centering on the inanity of human conflict in the vaster context of ecology
Vagabond, Real, Slam Dunk
All works by Inoue Takehiko are great; mostly famous for his samurai manga Vagabond which really blurs the line between classical ink painting and comic book, it starts of looking fantastic, and it ends in some of the best painted scenes I have ever seen. A historical manga about Miyamoto Musashi, probably the most famous swordsman in japanese history, it mostly fictional, but it draws heavy inspiration from Musashi’s treatise on martial arts.
Slam Dunk is more of a typical underdog story about a misfit who joins a basketball team in school, exciting, but nothing revolutionary. Real is more interesting, focusing on wheelchair basketball and has more mature subject matter.
National Quiz
In the future Japan is a dictatorship by game show, the National Quiz. The winner gets one wish, the loser are sent to labor camps. What can you wish? Well, if you want eifel tower in your backyard, the japanese army will make that happen. Satire like this is rare in manga!
To you, the eternal (fumetsu no anata e) and Koe no Katachi
Fumetsu is a strange story about an object that learns through contact and becomes conscious through imitating living things it encounters. It’s a story about an immortal that lives through ages, it’s about the people he meets and the loss he feels at outliving those he loves.
Koe no Katachi deals with themes about bullying, it follows a boy who meets a deaf girl who he treats really badly, and then seeing the consequences of his actions and how to deal with that responsibilty
Welcome to the NHK
A story about a hikikomori (a shut-in, that never dares to leave his appartment because he fears meeting other people) and how he get’s pulled out of his normal shut-in life to do stuff like joining death cults and making porn games. Completely crazy, but surprisingly poignant.
Touch, H2, Cross Game, Rough, Katsu! and other works by Adachi Mitsuru
These are slightly silly, yet cozy, love stories/dramas mostly centered around baseball and other sports. Adachi has a special style of understated slapstick that is quite charming.
Narutaru.
I’m not quite sure how to explain this one, because it has a strange tonal dissonance between a cutesy art-style that is quite mellow, but with sudden bouts of violence that makes it kind of creepy and scary.
Gunnm (Battle Angel Alita)
It’s a pretty great story, I’m sure most are familiar with it in some way or another. I love it because of the transhumanist themes and how the story widens in scope over time.
Homunculus
A guy gets a trepanation on his forehead to open his third eye, then he starts seeing some scary auras around people. Very well written and well drawn.
Shingeki no Kyojin
“Attack on Titan is good” is basically a meme by itself, but it is good, and has consistently kept an engaging narrative that keeps you guessing. It seems to be nearing its conclusion soon, but yeah, well worth reading. I think the anime feels a bit too slow compared to the manga.
Angel Densetsu
The nicest and gentlest boy just so happens to look hella evil and becomes the local Delinquent Legend unbeknownst to him.
John must really like you guys. The reply I got was a .txt-file attached to an e-mail – a clean, bulleted list of 42 manga titles, sometimes with the creators name added.
John must really like you guys. The reply I got was a .txt-file attached to an e-mail – a clean, bulleted list of 42 manga titles, sometimes with the creators name added.
It’s only because he doesn’t know us yet.
20th Century Boys, 21st Century Boys An intricate story that weaves together events in different time periods. It’s quite out there storywise and hard to explain. It’s by Urasawa Naoki, the person behind Monster, which was mentioned earlier. Basically som kids make up stories when they are young which later start happening when they are adults. We follow them as they try to figure out what’s actually going on. Thematically relevant to our current global predicament.
I love everything by Urasawa Naoki. I don’t know if Pluto has been mentioned yet but that’s definitely up there too. I think he can do anything in comics.
Edit: Now I think about it though a comic based on Astro Boy is a superhero one really so we’ll leave it 21st Century Boys and Monster.
@garjones, Yeah, I also really like Happy and Yawara by him, but haven’t read them to completion so I don’t want to recommend them without reservations. Happy is like an exploration of injustice toward an undesering who everybody is jealous of. Makes me so mad when I read it. But Yeah, Urasawa just keeps laying golden eggs! I haven’t looked into Billy the Bat yet, but it seems inspired by western comics.
@Christian. Yes yes YES give in to the space debris!
Vikram’s recommendation of Vertigo Hellblazer is a good one, I’m kicking myself for leaving it out. Over the last few months I read all 300 issues for the first time, having only ever read the Ennis, Delano, & Milligan runs.
One of these days I’ll write about it in the Trades thread but long story short, the three runs I had already read are the cream of the crop, but Carey’s is a strong #4, Azzarello’s grew on me and has great art, Jenkins’ is mixed but more good than bad and his one-/two-parters are strong, Diggle’s was fun and I wish it’d been longer, and Ellis’s didn’t really click with me but has some solid moments and he laid the groundwork for the runs to follow. The only one I didn’t like was Denise Mina’s but hers was thankfully a short one.
John Constantine is really a great character. Not breaking any new ground with that observation but it’s fascinating watching him grow in real time, make the same mistakes over and over again like any of us, and also reflect the political inclinations of whoever’s writing him. His best writers bring their personalities to the character instead of simply telling dark urban fantasy stories.
John Constantine is my favourite comics character bar none.
But it wouldn’t make my top non-superhero list because it’s just such a mixed quality. I’ve read all of the writers up to Denise Mina and honestly it never got as good again as it was under Delano and then Ennis. (And of course Moore before them, creating and writing the character in Swamp Thing.)
I am still pondering my list but I definitely have to mention Chew.
It is probably John Layman’s magnum opus. It is funny, smart, gut-wrenching and tragic. Rob Guillory‘s cartoony art has more depth that you would expect. It’s a fun and complex series that stuck the landing.
And, of course, it had Poyo!
Most of my favorite comics have already been mentioned, like Asterix, Sandman, Hellblazer and Chew. I would like to nominate two more:
Bloom County — The best newspaper comic strip ever.
Blueberry — The best of the more serious french adventure comics. The plots are clever, and the art is totally awesome.
Si Spurrier’s new Hellblazer is pretty awesome so far; really capturing the vibe of the old Vertigo greats with a 21st century setting.
I’d agree that Delano and then Ennis Hellblazer remains the peak but there have been runs a lot better than the Jenkins/Mina ones since.
I jumped back on from some of Diggle’s run and then Milligan finishing the original title off and they were good comics worth reading (with surprise sequentials from Simon Bisley for a bit). I need to catch up with Spurrier’s, only read the first one but really enjoyed it and yes it was back to the old Vertigo feel as opposed to the ‘all ages’ stuff they messed about with for a few years after the Nu52.
I am still pondering my list but I definitely have to mention Chew.
CHEW was on my shortlist of great nonsuperhero titles, though some could argue that Tony Chu had a superpower. Apparently there is a sequel of sort coming soon:
John Layman and Dan Boultwood Launch Chew Sequel – Chu – From Image Comics
Bloom County — The best newspaper comic strip ever.
If we’re doing comic strips Calvin & Hobbes needs a mention. I’m not 100% sure, but I think I rate it higher than Bloom County. Either way, it’s a close call.
Si Spurrier’s new Hellblazer is pretty awesome so far; really capturing the vibe of the old Vertigo greats with a 21st century setting.
I’m definitely getting the Spurrier Hellblazer when the trade’s out. Loved his Dreaming.
If we’re doing comic strips Calvin & Hobbes needs a mention.
Jesus, yeah, I wasn’t thinking of comic strips or Calvin and Hobbes would definitely have been in there. Just so poignant and beautiful and funny.
Bloom County — The best newspaper comic strip ever.
If we’re doing comic strips Calvin & Hobbes needs a mention. I’m not 100% sure, but I think I rate it higher than Bloom County. Either way, it’s a close call.
Why settle for one, when you can have both at the same time?
Honorable mention to Calvin & Muad’Dib.
Alice in Sunderland is quite a unique one. It’s essentially a documentary in comics form. A documentary about Lewis Carroll and his links to the north east of England. Which admittedly sounds as boring as hell but in actuality I couldn’t put it down. It’s beautifully illustrated and full of interesting stuff. Bryan Talbot is largely unsung in comics but he’s a real innovator from being one of the pioneers of steampunk to creating this.
I always wondered how this would go down with people that didn’t live in Sunderland like I (and Talbot) do*. Granted there’s a lot of “general” subject matter in there, but it’s also inextricably tied in to the town. I mean, I have literally waked the route the conic follows.
But I’ve heard enough from other readers who loved it that I guess it doesn’t matter. I suppose it’s no different from enjoying From Hell even though you don’t live in London, or whatever.
* Full disclosure: I actually live outside Sunderland now, even though I still have an SR postcode due to the post office being stupid 
. But I do live in a village that’s directly featured in book, and just round the corner from the house where Lewis Carrol used to stay.
I’m still rather amazed that my little brother actually showed up to answer the questions I asked him regarding this thread and posted both here and in the presentation thread. He’s known about this forum as far back as I have, really… (I continually talk about this place to my friends and it goes by the elusive name “the forum”).
That’s not the reason I came to post here though. Thorgal is.
I forgot about Thorgal. It’s amazing. The art is absolutely gorgeous. The story, both the over-arching plot of Thorgal and Aaricias destiny and the the short stories themselves are really great. Exciting. Feels fresh and timeless. The characters are great, the love between Aaricia and Thorgal feels… real. Unusually real for the comic format.
And I just absolutely love the blend between sci-fi elements and fantasy. In the early issues, one of the sci-fi characters try to explain that gods are folly. But the gods still actually exist in this narrative. Thorgal is a treasure, and you should read it.
Huh, someone recommended Thorgal to me just yesterday. I hadn’t heard of it before.
Huh, someone recommended Thorgal to me just yesterday.
Must’ve been a smart chap. Probably handsome too. And Keanu kind. I bet he goes John Wick mad from time to time.
edit: Imagine if he’d included a link to free copies of some of the issues. That would’ve been really swell.
edit: Imagine if he’d included a link to free copies of some of the issues. That would’ve been really swell.
I do hope that’s not an admission of p-p-p-piracy
I don’t do piracy. That would be illegal.
I do drugs.
So long as you’re not doing Cake
So long as you’re not doing Cake
I prefer Death.
From what I hear, that can make you jessop jessop jessop jessop jessop jessop jessop jessop jessop, so you’re skating on thin ice.
No idea. I don’t do pirates. I got a bunch of pictures of Harry Radcliffe wearing a cursed hat. Apparently Colin Robinson is energising him. Not sure, I only know a couple Swedish words. All a bit blurry. I fell asleep.
Oops, sorry, I thought this was the thread for Best non-superhero comics. My bad…
So long as you’re not doing Cake
It’s a fucking disgrace
Oops, sorry, I thought this was the thread for Best non-superhero comics. My bad…
As far as I’ve been here, we’ve been pretty good at not completely derailing threads. It was bound to happen. Wanna get back on track?
Iznogoud is a childhood favourite of mine. By Goscinny and Tabary. If you don’t know Iznogoud, it’s about the Grand Vizier of that name, in The Caliphate during the middle ages. He wants to “be Caliph in place of the Caliph” and goes to great lengths to accomplish that. It’s all pretty short stories, and it always ends in Iznogouds inevitable demise as a result of his own quite fallible plans. Often irreversibly so. He never “dies” on screen but he is turned to stone and gold, dropped inside volcanoes, fell through “the 4th hole” and off-panel… the list would go on. But in the next adventure, he’s right back at it. Fun, but not very ground breaking.
Ratte, also a childhood favourite of mine. Swedish slapstick with a slight left political leaning. Published as a newspaper strip between 1970-something to 1985 and collected in several albums. The adventures of a Taxi driver in Stockholm. I recently bought an omnibus of all the albums and the art, particularly the slapstick bits, is really good but the scripts aren’t. They might’ve been better at the time of publication as it deals with a lot of then-current political events and news stories, but seeing as I was born in 1984 most of it fly over my head.
No one has mentioned the Donald and Scrooge McDuck stories by Keno Don Rosa? Especially the Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck deserve a mention in this thread. I don’t particularly like disney comics (Marvel and Star Wars don’t count). Even though I loved them as a child I have a hard time going back to them. I’m not much for Carl Barks either. They just don’t work for me. But Don Rosas stories definitely do. They’re great. The art is miiiilles beyond anything else done with the denizens of Duckburg and so are the stories. Don Rosa conveys so much emotion with these ducks, and the adventures are really imaginative and wild. There’s really nothing like them in-universe. I mean, in one of the Scrooge stories, a character (Scrooges father) actually dies, on-screen. His corpse is right there. That’s gotta be pretty unique. And it’s not gratuitous or unnecessary. It’s beautiful and perfect.
I actually met Don Rosa once, on the national book fair in Sweden. He was very humble and seemed really nice.
Are you saying you’d like a post about why many different Transformers comics are great? Because I can do that…
Ah, go on, go on, go on, go on!
All I did was mention Thorgal.
Descender. I liked Descender. Nguyen’s half-dissolved watercolour art is deliberately sparse at times to focus on subtle character expressions and the exploration of existential loss amidst familiar touchstones – Blade Runner with a touch of Toy Story amongst others. Some panels feel as if they’re set on a minimal theatre set which is fitting given the plot (Kinda Pinocchio’s/Ultron’s There are no strings on me). Whimsical without being over-sentimental. Lemire crafts a personal story against an epic space galaxy background without getting too bogged down in world-building details.
Plus Bandit is a very good dog.
I’ve yet to read the follow-up Ascender, but Lemire’s Sweet Tooth is another good read. And Royal City. And.. Lemire in general.
Oops, sorry, I thought this was the thread for Best non-superhero comics. My bad…
Well keep up, Jerry, will you? I’ll recap: The first issue of Anders Whacking Off to Daniel Radcliffe was great, lots of action, fascinating characters and the plot held up really well. But the second issue was a bit of a disappointment with the story stalling and not much happening, just a lot of incohesive dialogue and people staring. So we’re all waiting for whether the third issue can make sense of it all and save the whole thing.
The good news is I think I actually prefer Ascender.
But the second issue was a bit of a disappointment with the story stalling and not much happening, just a lot of incohesive dialogue and people staring.
Hard disagree. I can really relate to these characters and even if the main character is a bit of an unlikeable twat I still feel for him.
Yo, different train of thought (thank God!): I’ve been catching up on Rachel Rising, which I read some of the early issues and then didn’t keep up with anymore. Discovered they have it in the library (albeit in German translation) and read the third and fourth trades, and yesterday 5-7. Very much looking forward to finishing it.
For those who completely missed it, this was Terry Moore’s horror/sitcom book, focusing on a character coming back from the dead and, like, witches and stuff. The mix of humor and horror is unusual, but it worked really well for me.
Also, this made me look up what Terry Moore is doing right now. Looks like I need to take a look at Strangers in Paradise XXV and at Five Years.
Well, this week marked the 36th anniversary of the released of issue 1 of The Transformers, so I guess it’s a good time to talk about that series and why it means something to me?
Garth Ennis’ collective war stories (War Stories/ Battlefields/ War Is Hell/ Battler Britton/ Dreaming Eagles/ Out Of The Blue/ Sara/ World of Tanks/ Enemy Ace/ Unknown Soldier/ Johnny Red/ various Punisher and Fury stories set in ‘Nam/ etc. etc.) are superb. So well researched. Nuanced. And, immediately engrossing.
Given the sheer number of them there are inevitably recurring themes and a certain repetitiveness at times, but given the variety of locales and conflict arenas, they remain must read for history buffs less well versed in all of this stuff. It also helps make these rather special, whenever they come out, that Ennis is pretty much the only person still working in the genre.
I haven’t read most of those, are there any you’d recommend in particular Vik? My dad is a history buff and he loved Fury: My War Gone By and Dear Billy and I’d like to show him more of that side of Ennis (and read them myself as well). Right now he mainly only reads Brubaker/Phillips stuff for comics but I have a feeling he’d like Ennis just as much.
I’d recommend the original War Stories. It’s like Battlefields but DC paid out for A list artists.
Then try Battelefields from the start. Dear Billy (the second story) is the emotional standout and one of the best things Ennis has ever written but the other stories are great too. I especially like the ones with the Russian female pilots in WW2. Rare enough that we get a story from the Soviet perspective but even more so starring women.
I think Battlefields vol 1 is a great starting point. Three stories, 3 issues each, with three great artists, in a variety of different settings.
Vol 2 and 3 follow a similar pattern, with some recurring characters across all three volumes. These were published by Dynamite.
If those were a success, try Johnny Red (Titan) which is a pseudo sequel to the Russian stories from Battlefields.
And, as Dave said, Sara is a wonderful piece of work too (TKO).
The original two volume DC Vertigo War Stories is a good shout, but may be quite difficult to find now. Avatar reprinted them a few years ago.
Stay well clear of Avatar’s vol 3 and onwards though. At least to begin with. The artwork in those books is pretty horrendous, and detracts from the story, I’m afraid to say.
If your dad enjoyed Fury, Ennis’ two Punisher mini’s Born and Platoon are in a similar vein, featuring Frank Castle’s first and second tours in ‘Nam. There’s a third one, Get Fury, expected soon (hopefully), which will likely tie into My War Gone By too.
The original two volume DC Vertigo War Stories is a good shout, but may be quite difficult to find now. Avatar reprinted them a few years ago.
Looks like it’s still in print. Amazon and Book Depository are showing copies for sale.
Yeah and to clarify the original series was for Vertigo but now published by Avatar. The first two volumes are the Vertigo stuff and Vik is right the artwork takes a steep nosedive from the likes of Gibbons and Weston.
Thanks guys, those recommendations are all really helpful! He likes Russian history so I may try with Sara first. I own the first three Battlefields stories which includes Night Witches so I’ll lend him that one too.
A bunch of the war comics that were big influences on Ennis are available in collections now. Charley’s War is the highlight, written primarily by Pat Mills with art by Joe Colquhon. It follows the exploits of a young British soldier through World War I and then the Russian Civil War, with a less good WWII segment that covered the BEF’s engagement in France and retreat at Dunkirk written by Scott Goodall. Mills’ segments were meticulously researched, and incredibly harsh and brutal. For a kid’s comic – I was reading this at like 5 or 6 – it never shied away from the realities of war, with Charley himself facing hardships and his friends and comrades frequently meeting unfortunate fates. I think all of Mills’ run is available in three volumes.
The original Johnny Red was another Battle strip that I always enjoyed back in the day, and Ennis wrote an updated version of in 2015. Co-created by Tom Tully and Joe Colquhon (again), Titan put out a bunch of collections starting in 2011. Like a lot of the iconic UK comic characters of my youth, there was kind of an epochal moment where a character had a close friend that gets killed during the story, and they’re haunted by that death ever since – For Charley Bourne it was his best mate Ginger, for Johnny Alpha it was Wulf Sternhammer, and for Johnny Red, it was Yakov. I started reading after he died, and when Battle eventually looped around to repeating early stories it was interesting to see their friendship forge and grow, all the while knowing it was doomed.
I need to look for some of those collections. I’ve never really read any of that material, outside of a couple of reprints in the Judge Dredd Megazine (or similar).
