Daily December #2 - Favorite Comics

[topaz119]

My favorite comics, for ladymercury_10

So, I'm going to interpret this rather broadly, because there are comics I'm reading now and then favorites from a long time ago and I am crap at picking just one favorite of anything…

X-Men – This is the title that got me into comics (and subsequently made me want to beat someone senseless, but you know, these things happen more often than is generally supposed in the world of comics.) I started reading in the mid-70s and got hooked almost as easily as I did on daytime soaps, because whooboy, do I love me some long-arc stories (for the younger/non-US crowd, nighttime TV at the time was completely episodic. There were a few mini-series where a story (usually adapted from a novel) got a longer than 2-hour treatment, but generally the shows told a story and the characters never mentioned it again, even in shows where kids were growing up and (presumably) learning from their mistakes. Hill Street Blues was the first show I remember that arced their plots, but I was in college for that.) Jean Grey, Scot Summers and Logan were like freaking catnip to me, not in the least because Jean (and Storm) were full-fledged members of the X-Men and there weren't a lot of female protagonists in adventure stories at the time (though, y'know, it's not like we're rolling in them now...) And then came the Dark Phoenix arc which is arguably the defining moment of the X-Men and which made me want to gut somebody (Jean is toooooo powerful and we (meaning the old white guys) have to save her from herself because strong-women==scaaaarrrry, and oh, whoops, maybe we should have told her something BEFORE the nuclear shitstorm killed her/broke down the barriers in her brain and turned everything we were so scared of loose on her? YA THINK?) I kinda had to stop reading for a while and never quite got back into it, but for a lot of my teenage years, whenever I could get a bus into the city and the comic book shops near the universities, I would read madly for hours.

The Dark Knight Returns (Batman, Frank Miller) – I'm old enough that when I was a kid, 'Batman' meant the campy show on tv, which bears no resemblance to the actual character as he was written for decades before that. TDKR brought the character back, but in a way that wasn't a reboot—it was an older, very bitter Bruce (which given the backstory isn't all that big of a surprise) and heroes weren't really supposed to be like this. Some people had a punk/goth stage; I had the Dark Knight. ::shrugs::

The Name of the Rose (Black Widow, Marjorie Liu) – You might think I'm writing the MCU Black Widow, but at best I'm writing her with Liu's version as her back story. I can (and do) ignore vast swathes of comics-canon (byeeee, Ultimates; later, Daredevil), but the Natasha who not only doesn't get fridged when she's literally naked in a freezer but who transcends the kickass-female trope and goes out of her way to take care of people – yeah, I don't see that getting out of my head for, like, ever.

The Runaways holds a special place in my comics-loving heart because it's the title that got my kids into the world of words & pictures alongside me. I liked it enough on its own, but any time I can combine something I enjoy with something where my teenage sons are willing to be seen in public with me, it's a total win.

Girl Genius – I've track of our intrepid heroine, but for a long time she was my steampunk fix in the middle of all the superheroes. She's really so charming and fun.

Currently, I'm very much in the Hawkeye/Black Widow/Captain Marvel loop. Hawkeye 19 made me all teary and expect the final few issues of Fraction's run to make me flat-out cry; Edmondson's Black Widow makes me ache for Natasha and her ledger; and I was grooving on Captain Marvel punching dinosaurs and snarking with Steve Rogers long before I watched KSD deliver the keynote at DragonCon this year and then run herself halfway into the ground to celebrate Carol and her Corps, but that surely didn't hurt.

I'm also loving Saga (Brian K Vaughn & Fiona Staples) for the world-building and the loving, functional relationship in the middle of an insane situation. Plus, I can't resist freaking non-fannish types out with a comic book that has a non-sexualized, non-human nursing mother/baby on the cover.

For the near future, I kind of got myself attached to Jessica Drew while I was researching/writing ask ourselves what road to take, so I'm looking forward to the new Spiderwoman solo title that came out at the end of November. I'm also planning on checking out the (not actually so) new Storm title and possibly the new Wonder Woman. 

So... That was a lot more than I thought I had to say on the topic, :D.

Comments

[endeni]

/I started reading in the mid-70s and got hooked almost as easily as I did on daytime soaps/ - Well, but comics *are* soaps, aren't they? They are, like, infinitely long and characters die and come back to life in improbable ways every time. :D
Oh, The Runaways! ♥ Eh, I was older than its target teenage audience when I read it too but, oh, so delicious. It made me remember why I loved Buffy so much, among other things.
Oh, I'm so behind on Hawkeye - maybe that's because I'm dreading the end too and I keep thinking that if I leave myself some more issues to read it won't be so tough when the end comes...
But I'm also behind with Saga (which I just adore) and that's because when I started reading it I went through dozen of issues in one go and then time passed and now I'm afraid that to properly appreciate the latest issues I'll have to go back and re-read everything in case I forgot some detail or the other (LOL, what a chore, right?) and I haven't had the time to do so lately...

[escritoireazul]

You are making me want to read all of these, immediately. Especially The Name of the Rose.

[topaz119]

Oh, that is definitely one of my top 5 all-time arcs. The art is great (ignore the cover) and the story is soso good. Natasha is just so layered and complex and strong, and not just physically. I know some people coming in from the MCU have trouble with the Bucky/Nat, but it's still such an awesome story.

[topaz119]

Oh, they totally are soaps! But when I used to say that, people would get so offended. Soap operas are for stupid housewives! Comics are nothing like that! blah, blah, blah, yeah, right. Stan Lee gives *great* soap! :D

A lot of the last few Hawkeye issues have been Kate-focused, with Clint's story only coming back in on #19. (That was a LONG cliffhanger from #15, but wow, what a payoff.)

My older kids were right in the target demographic for Runaways and they ate it up. Now they're all into webcomics (Wyrm??) which get dissected in excruciating detail at dinner.

[lilacsigil]

The Name of the Rose was so complicated and good.

I got into comics in the mid-80s, so I had to read back to the Phoenix Saga, and I think knowing that Jean comes back made the whole thing much less infuriating.

[endeni]

/A lot of the last few Hawkeye issues have been Kate-focused/ - OMG, really? That's just lovely! ♥

[st_aurafina]

Oh, the Name of the Rose! <3 so much.

lilacsigil was my gateway to comics, and I'm so glad.

And Saga is totally on my to-read list. I want to read it; just need time.

[topaz119]

Yes! She goes off to make her way on her own (and takes Lucky with her.) I think the upcoming trade is called L.A. Woman -- all about the stuff she deals with and how it ties back to things that she and Clint have gone through/are going through.

[topaz119]

The Name of the Rose is what comics aspire to be, for real.

I can remember sitting at a barbecue, sometime in the late 80s/possibly as late as fall of 1990, with the office group I hung out with (engineers & SOs, so very nerdy/geeky) and the women all somehow having read X-Men in high school/college and all of us so furious about Jean and the cop-out they took to have a strong, powerful woman be *so* powerful that the only way they could think of to deal with her was to kill her off. The guys were standing around with these semi-stunned looks on their faces, so shocked at how personally betrayed we were. By that point we knew she was back, but it was still impossible for us to get past the anger. It had to be almost 10 years after the original story, I think, but wow, did it affect us.

[topaz119]

Our lives are always so much better with the fun kind of enablers, right?

Saga is really cool -- I think it keeps getting better and better, the more you read, which is always a good thing.

[endeni]

Wow, that's awesome!
And on a unrelated note, talking about Jean being too powerful/scary, and the old white guys having to save her from herself, I just had an "House of M" flashback. LOL, in that case it was Wanda instead of Jean but I guess Marvel hasn't changed much in the intervening years... *shakes head*

[sperrywink]

Wow, I didn't know you had such a long history with comics! I never got into them when I was a kid. I am all about the words- pictures I would skip over, so comics never gripped me.

[topaz119]

I was never really in any of the comics fandoms--there was a lot of tension between the X-Men comic-verse and movie-verse groups and that turned me off. I read some there, but popslash stole my heart at that point in my arc of participatory fandoms. The MCU is a different story and that's made it more fun to get in and write. I just mush everything together. And then I discovered comics on my iPad and wow, talk about enabling... Two taps and I've got anything I want. (Plus: Renner. I'm blaming him for everything these days.)

[topaz119]

Yup, it's a trope that really, seriously needs to be retired. Stat.

[ladymercury-10.livejournal.com]

The Dark Knight Returns was one of the first Batman things I read and I enjoyed it a lot. Carrie Kelley is absolutely darling. <3

Also, Saga! I am super excited for vol. 4 to come out so I can get it from the library. :P

[topaz119.livejournal.com]

TDKR really is good--I can't watch Nolan's movies w/o thinking about it, even though the storylines aren't all that close. I think it's just the atmosphere it invokes and how it made Batman not-stupid and campy again.

I'm waiting for the next Saga, too--I have been trying hard not to buy stuff lately (like, the last year or so) and have been making extensive use of the library. It's so much easier now that everything's computerized.

[matchboximpala.livejournal.com]

I have downloaded Saga and someday I am going to get around to reading it -- too much fanfic and other books on my kindle. I haven't even read all the Buffy and Firefly comics I have downloaded!

[topaz119.livejournal.com]

Saga is right on that sweet spot of amazing art and a compelling story that makes comics into such a unique medium. It's not a movie, it's not text, it's not even illustrated text, it's how the words and pictures add up to more than the individual parts (both of which are excellent.)

and, yay, I can use my very old Darkhorse!Buffy icon for you!