Do People Still Read Comics?

[Scarim Coral]

While I like Comic book but I can't afford to buy them which include trade comics for most of the time (I did bought Watchmen before the film was out). I have recently been borrowing comic books from my local library mainly Dc and Marvel.
So far from the library I read- DC Kingdom Come, Invincible vol 8, Runaways vol 8, The Dark Knight return, Wonder Woman Love and Murder, Incredible Hulk (prelude to Planet Hulk) and more to come.
If I had the cash I would buy more. My best mate on the other hand is a huge comic book fan and can't get enough of it (he also can't afford to buy any new ones).

 

[Jezzy54]

Let's see, I'm currently getting Brightest Day, Green Lantern, Green Lantern Corps, Green Lantern: Emerald Warriors, The Flash, Batman Incorporated, Batman: The Dark Knight, Red Robin, Superboy, Zatanna, Freedom Fighters, Birds of Prey, Secret Six, Knight and Squire, Jonah Hex, Silent Hill: Past Life, and Deadpool. That's just the recent single issues.

 

[Dr. Pepper Unlimited]

People still read them. One of my friends has hundreds of them. He buys them by the dozen. It's quite a collection I must say.

 

[vongola_mist_daemon]

to be honest im hooked on manga so I don't have time for comics and i dont really like heroes like superman he is kind of overpowered so I do not classify him as a hero

 

[GodofDisaster]

I'm sure people still read them. I myself use to read the punisher, spiderman and the X-men a lot of it is very dark.

Although now a days I mostly just read Manga and university media research books.

 

[Crazed_Puppeteer]

Actually, the graphic narrative (comic/autobiography) Persepolis is a book everyone is reading in my English class. I've been a fan of comics in the past, but haven't read that many. The ones I have read (Watchmen, Bone series, Persepolis obviously) are quite good.

 

[Jezzy54]

(looks at pile of Fables graphic novels) ...yes, yes they do.

Anything by vertigo is pretty awesome, too bad the main DCU is just horrible.

Okay, that's bullshit right there. For one, it's nearly impossible for everything under one imprint to be good. It's fine to like Vertigo in general, but it's not guaranteed quality. Second, read Geoff Johns' Green Lantern. It's probably the best superhero comic going right now, and there's plenty more good DCU stuff. It's just that when DCU comics are bad, they tend to be really bad. Just don't read those ones.

I used to read alot of comics at uni. Now not so much. Maybe the odd one or two titles but nothing extensive. Tbh, there isn't much in the way of good comics currently.

As a side note i started out as a marvel fan and then moved over to dc. does that make me bad?

No. I did the same thing because Marvel isn't really all that good right now. I'm sure there's good stuff there (other than Deadpool), but stuff like One More Day, Civil War and nearly anything by Brian Michael Bendis really puts me off.

 

[nyeeh]

I read a lot of DC comics, though I don't buy them as much these days. The only series i follow with any regularity right now is Batman (and even then, only through the trade paperbacks). If you try to collect every superhero comic, you become poor real quick.

With that said, occasionally I will find a series I go crazy over. For a recent example there is a certain comic that I adore and have been fanatically buying in bulk over the past few months:

Peanuts.

I avoided it for the longest time (my thinking was "How can a Newspaper comic be any good?"). However, last year I actually started reading it after someone got me the Peanuts 60th Anniversary Book and I got hooked. over the course of several months I have since bought:

(1) A ton of 'The Complete Peanuts' volumes on my shelf which I am quickly plowing through.
(2) Several miscelaneous books I got cheap (such as 'You Really Don't Look 50 Charlie Brown')
(3) A number of the Animated shorts based on the strips (plus a few Vince Guaraldi soundtracks)
(4) Just ordered 'The Essential Calvin and Hobbes' (another newspaper comic I never read) because I noticed it has a forward by Peanuts creator Charles Schultz.

...Yeah I think I have a problem. Of course, my biggest worry is if Calvin and Hobbes is any good, I could potentially enter another spending frenzy.

 

[TheSchizoid]

I stopped reading comics a while ago when I had much less money and the local shops I went to closed up. When Joss Wheadon gave us Buffy: Season 8 in comic book form I started getting that. Season 8 then led to the new Angel series and then even more comics (I so missed Green Lantern!). I actually just got a new shipment of comics today (I prefer hard copies to digital and will cry a river should paper ever go away). I had been getting way too many lately so I've been trying to cut down on the books I get and try to wait until mini-series come to me in trade form (like the current run of Kick Ass 2 and Brightest Day). So, for me anyway, yes comics still matter and I still read them.

 

[Jonny49]

I love reading comics, I just don't buy them a regularly as I would like to.

 

[mikev7.0]

The only time I really read fiction is when my freind who is a collector brings over a bag with like 18 different comics in it that are from about 6 different titles and all comprise ONE story. I'm lucky he does this because it has to be a major pain in the butt to keep track of what title your story is going to be in!

Anyway the two this year have been "Shadowland" which was excellent, and "Chaos War" again it's great but I wish they sold them all under the same title. I know they do this to get people interested in other titles but it seems like a cheap shot.

That having been said, my favorite Superheroes actually come from D.C. like a lot of people I no longer experience modern mythology from the books but the D.C. animated movies are some of my favorites. First Flight, Wonder Woman, and Superman/Batman Public Enemies were great and the New Frontier is sure to be a loved classic. I'm also a big fan of the Justice League and Teen Titans animated series. I've seen some Brave and the Bold and it's also good stuff just more self contained and less episodic. It also had one of the best Blue Beetle stories ever told and it did it without using Booster Gold!

I think games (video and tabletop), animation and movies are doing the right thing with the characters in that they are not so concerned with the preservation of continuity (the Justice League animated series had the Phantasm in it for chissakes.....) which for characters with hundreds of stories is just ridiculous.

My favorite story though has to be a graphic novel called Quiver written by Kevin Smith. If you love the D.C. characters, I think you'll love that story.

 

[vongola_mist_daemon]

lol I don't think I can read comics any more im used to the manga back to front setting

 

[jaoblia]

Comics Have really left the mainstream for a couple of reasons, but one i see alot is the abundance of contnuity to things that happened 20 years ago.
Example being, i'm at my local comic book store to expand my horizons past the Star Wars comics, so i grab a Spider Man paper back and open it to see what its all about, woth buying etc, and nearly every panel, the characters mentioned some comic that was ATLEAST 10 YEARS AGO.
Since then i'm still only reading my usual Star Wars because of This, alot of my freinds agree with me to. Thats atleast how I see it.

 

[SketchyFK]

(looks at pile of Fables graphic novels) ...yes, yes they do.

Anything by vertigo is pretty awesome, too bad the main DCU is just horrible.

Okay, that's bullshit right there. For one, it's nearly impossible for everything under one imprint to be good. It's fine to like Vertigo in general, but it's not guaranteed quality. Second, read Geoff Johns' Green Lantern. It's probably the best superhero comic going right now, and there's plenty more good DCU stuff. It's just that when DCU comics are bad, they tend to be really bad. Just don't read those ones.

I used to read alot of comics at uni. Now not so much. Maybe the odd one or two titles but nothing extensive. Tbh, there isn't much in the way of good comics currently.

As a side note i started out as a marvel fan and then moved over to dc. does that make me bad?

No. I did the same thing because Marvel isn't really all that good right now. I'm sure there's good stuff there (other than Deadpool), but stuff like One More Day, Civil War and nearly anything by Brian Michael Bendis really puts me off.

I jumped into reading marvel when planet hulk was around. I completely skipped OMD and Civil War. Used to read deadpool but then he got overused. The only title which I have read and has stayed good (since i started reading it) was the x-force team (starting with x-23) and continued on till the new deadpool and psycloke was introduced. But marvel really doesn't have much to offer atm.

DC got me reading at blackest night. Stuck with it despite how long it was but fell off whitest day. Both of them i feel are trades.

Now the new batman n robin, red robin (especially) <3 some beautifully crazy stuff going on there.

 

[Gruevy]

Not as much as I used to, but I'll still torrent the odd Crisis crossover if I find it interesting and set aside a weekend for a long comics binge, then check the Marvel or DC wiki to fill in the blanks.

 

[wizard_joe88]

I personally love comic, for some reason I've gotten into the dark horse star wars comics (I'm not a major star wars fan, but the universe seemed easier to approach than DC or Marvel), and aside from iron man, I don't read any of the marvel/dc stuff, mostly just the losers, the walking dead, umbrella chronicles, and watchman

 

[Blitzwarp]

I still read comics, but only the ones from the 1960's to the 1980's, most of which are conveniently collected for me in graphic novels. I find modern comics too stupidly depressing, and a lot of them develop story-lines akin to soap operas, which just does not appeal to me in any way. I don't want to read about a fallen superhero dealing with a crack addiction whilst falling behind in maintenance payments to his wife or whatever, I want to read stupidly unrealistic stories about how flying around the world really fast can reverse time. :]

 

[ComicsAreWeird]

Here´s a few i´m currently reading... Infinite Vacation, Northlanders, Superior, Walking Dead, Umbrella Academy, etc. The "lesser" publishers like Dark Horse, Image and Oni Press are putting out some great work out there.
Marvel has great stuff like the adaptation of Stephen Kings´ The Stand and The Dark Tower...and DC is doing great with its Vertigo line and Green Lantern and Batman and Robin.

There´s a lot of great comics out there. It´s too bad they dont get enough recognition. Comics are indeed in a popularity crisis, but not for lack of quality.

 

[Taffette19]

I

As a side note i started out as a marvel fan and then moved over to dc. does that make me bad?

No that makes you sensible