A new passion for comic books?
- Filed under: Comic Books, Personal
- Date: Jan 30,2008
Recently I’ve been catching up on a bunch of episodes of my favourite video podcast, The Totally Rad Show. I’ve seen a few previous episodes where the trio reviewed some comic books and graphic novels, and it sparked an interest. Sure, I read a few random comics as a kid, mostly Marvel comics like the X-Men and Spiderman, but never really took it seriously. For some reason, I never found superhero comics very interesting. I guess I didn’t quite ‘get it’ with all the men and women running around in capes and tights. Perhaps that influenced my opinion of comics in general, which is why I never fully got into them. However, I’ve just made an interesting discovery.
There are many, many, more comics and graphic novels that aren’t about superheroes than I first thought. In fact, there’s a whole bunch of comics with more adult themes and weird, dark and fascinating stories that really appeal to me. A lot of them are from DC’s publishing line called Vertigo, but there’s also plenty of others as well. I was simply amazed with the sheer amount of non-superhero books that are out there.
Why hadn’t I heard of these earlier?! Well, probably because I fell into the trap that is “comics = superhero stories”. It’s a common misconception. I’d imagine most people who aren’t into comics think of them this way, and I was no exception. Comics have a lot of prejudice against them. I never thought about it enough or was interested in it enough to bother doing any research, and because of that, I missed out on a lot of good stories.
So, recently I’ve been doing my research. iFanboy, another great podcast from Revision3, really helped me in figuring out what comics I should start with, and the kind of stuff that’s more suited to my taste. They have a couple of episodes called ‘Five’ and ‘Another Five’ that give a short review on the must-read comic books out there.
Needless to say, after hearing of all these titles, I felt like a kid in a candy store. I now have a list of comic book titles that’s almost a metre long, and I plan to read them all at some point. I wanted to dip my toes into the vast sea of comics with something that would really pull me in. So, I ordered the first two trade paperbacks of Y: The Last Man. They should arrive sometime this week.
I’ve also made a decision to buy trades as much as possible, as buying individual issues could get a tad expensive and harder to store. And I’ll be honest, I’m impatient and would rather read multiple issues together at once.
After I’ve finished Y: The Last Man, and possibly a few others (such as Preacher) then who knows…. I might even try some superhero comics. Perhaps Batman or the X-Men. The only problem here is that there’s already so much history in the Marvel and DC universes, it’s often daunting and feels impossible to catch up. I’ve decided I don’t really care about the continuity, and I don’t mind (and probably prefer) reading standalone stories, as long as they’re good stories. I mean, that’s what it’s all about, right?
I feel like a kid again, and it’s great.
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