Sooo..... Comic books. Anyone else think most of them are kinda teribble?

[y1fella]

Wait!!!!!! Don't flame just yet! Let me say my opinion first.
I don't hate the medium of comic books. I like the format of comic books just not the content. I like plenty of comic books. Scott pilgrim, Watchmen and that halo graphic novel was cool (elites are awesome). But the majority of comics are about super heroes which in and of it self isn't a bad thing. But the story's they get up to and the things they do is just this jumbled mess of barely related events that they just string together with barely relevant time travel and inter dimensional sub plots. Dc is particularly guilty of this.
I don't hate comic but I rarely find any that I like. Does anyone share a similar opinion? Could someone recommend me a series?

 

[Jonny49]

I do see your point, then again with characters lasting for over 50 years, your probably going to end up with several stinkers now and then.

 

[Technicolor]

Well Sturgeon's Law states that 90 percent of everything is shit, and comic books are no exception. I am not intimately knowledgeable about comics but I do have two great graphic novels (I just love that term, it sounds so snooty) that I love to death.

Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore's Watchmen (The comic is better than the movie in my opinion). Both comics did bring the unfortunate "darker and edger" stage of comics in the 90's but they are still classics.

 

[GodsAndFishes]

I think like most things comics need to have an end. If there is no end then you end up like the big comics today with retcon after retcon or warping storylines to attempt to fit in with something that happened over 50 years ago. (Plus with so much backstory its nigh impossible for new readers to catch up).

 

[Arkhangelsk]

The only comic books I read are The Sandman series. And it's awesome. But I guess not every comic book is as good.

 

[y1fella]

I do see your point, then again with characters lasting for over 50 years, your probably going to end up with several stinkers now and then.

Batman's a cool character right? But does he really need a sub plot that turns him into a pirate and caveman?
Why don't they just end some of the older series and intorduce some new charachter?

 

[Thaius]

Congratulations, you discovered the second and most famous part of <url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_law>Sturgeon's Law. It's true of everything, not just comic books.

 

[BreakfastMan]

No, not really. While Marvel and DC may be guilty of super-convoluted plots, there are plenty of other amazing comics that do not focus on super-heroes or impenetrable continuity dependent plots. Here are some easy to get into but still excellent series that I wholeheartedly recommend to anyone:

Fables (and spin-off)
Hellboy (and spin-off)
Transmetropolitan
Y: The last man
The Umbrella Academy

 

[Axolotl]

Yeah alot of them are fairly bad, mainly because alot of mainstream ones simply don't want to try doing anything new (and when they do it just ends up being even worse).

That's why I mainly stick to stuff by British "auteur" writers.

 

[KalosCast]

If you're talking about things like Batman, who have existed for about 70 years now in many different continuities, with dozens of writers and dozens more artists, I think a few bad stories here and there are something you can assume is going to happen.

90% of everything is crap, but it sounds like you honestly have never read a superhero comic book.

 

[ComicsAreWeird]

I have to disagree. Sure, there´s a lot of crap ou there, but to say that most are terrible isnt accurate. If you read Vertigo, Dark Horse and Image books you´ll find plenty of variety outside the mainstream spandex superheroes. A few examples:

-Infinite Vacation
-Killer of Demons
-Criminal
-Northlanders
-Morning Glories
-The Walking Dead
-Invincible
-The Umbrella Academy
-The Stand
-The Dark Tower
-Nemesis
-Superior
-Scott Pilgrim
-The Astounding Wolf-man
-Sea Bear and Grizzly Shark

And these are recent examples. I could add Sandman, Preacher, 100 Bullets, Fables, Y the last man, ex machina, runaways, midnight nation, watchmen, etc...

 

[KuwaSanjuro]

Start reading Batman, like The Killing Joke, Hush, Dark Knight Returns or Batman: Year One, even though they're technically graphic novels (I don't fully know the difference but never mind) but they're all really good. Like any medium you have good and bad, for every Danny Boyle film they're is a Michael Bay film (as an example).

 

[Clockwork Scarecrow.]

I was really into Marvel exclusively for about a year but I got out of it after a while and have become fairly disenfranchised with the... erm... franchise since.

 

[purf]

What you might want to try:

100 Bullets
Y: The Last Man (already mentioned)
DMZ

edit: also, you might want to listen to what KuwaSanjuro mentioned: there are some brilliant Batman comics around

 

[GiantRaven]

Dear god.

Go read:

Preacher
Transmetropolitan
The Walking Dead
Chew
Y: The Last Man
Fables
American Vampire
We3
The Filth
Maus
The League of Extrodinary Gentlemen
And many other great comics that are slipping my mind right now.

Then try and come back to peddle your nonsense about comics are a) all about superheroes and b) are 'kinda terrible'.

Batman's a cool character right? But does he really need a sub plot that turns him into a pirate and caveman?
Why don't they just end some of the older series and intorduce some new charachter?

Sure, why not? It was pretty cool and went a lot deeper than that in terms of plot.

 

[TehCookie]

That's why I read manga. I wouldn't mind reading American comics if I could find ones that don't involve superheros, and has a lot of character development.

 

[GiantRaven]

That's why I read manga. I wouldn't mind reading American comics if I could find ones that don't involve superheros, and has a lot of character development.

Fan of zombies? Read The Walking Dead. That basically exists on the premises of character development.

 

[badgersprite]

You're not wrong. I like superhero comics, and I know they're mostly crap (with plenty of exceptions, sure).

Superhero comics have the same problem video games do; for the most part, they only really know how to tell one kind of story, and that story is kind of stuck in the "Saturday Morning Cartoon" mindset of solving your problems with fighting and having inane plot twists that try to make everything more interesting, and usually fail.

When it comes to longstanding comic books, you also wind up having the same problem fanfiction ultimately has - different people writing an existing story and characters without being at all familiar with the continuity or characters they're writing about. A lot of comic book writers wind up writing for series they don't know all that much about, so they wind up getting characters totally wrong, or perceiving them totally differently from previous writers, which results in characters being wildly inconsistent and OOC. See, for example, "Cassandra Cain turns evil." Just Google that and witness the fan outrage. Or just pick up two different Wonder Woman comics and see the treatment she's gotten.

Anyway, yeah, I still love comics, even if superhero comics can be cheesy and bad a lot of the time. There are still plenty of genuinely good ones out there, like Fifty Two. And there are plenty more great comics that aren't superhero based at all and hence don't fall into these same traps, or have decades of continuity to wrestle with.

Not saying you have to like superhero comic book stories, but I just figured it's easier to get a handle on why you might not like them once you know the issues behind the scenes.

 

[GiantRaven]

"Cassandra Cain turns evil."

I have one thing to say and one thing only. That one thing is "UURRRRGHHHHHHHHHHHH". -.-