Steve's Reads

Some Worthwhile Comics Magazines

The following are magazines I recommend. Some of them are also listed in my Comic Books section (what other people call "graphic novels"), where collections in book form are available. This is still under construction, but all the links should work. The list used to be in order of importance to me, but I decided to give up and make it alphabetical. I've added bunches of books from my current pull list and deleted a bunch (mostly comics like Sandman no longer being published as comics). Hope to get descriptions of the new ones up soon.

: Acme Novelty Library; Age of Bronze; All the Wrong Places; Artbabe; Astro City; Bacchus; Batman: The Gotham Adventures; Beanworld; Berlin; Bone; Box Office Poison; Castle Waiting; Cerebus; Colonia; Concrete; Curse of Dracula; Desert Peach; A Distant Soil; Dust; Galaxion; Geisha; gutwallow; Hepcats; The Invisibles; JLA; Kabuki; Luba; Minimum Wage; The Minx; Naughty Bits; Nevada; Oni Double Feature; Optic Nerve; Paper & Binding; Penny Century; Poison Elves; Preacher; Sandman Mystery Theatre; Sin City; Smith Brown Jones: Alien Accountant; Starman; Strangehaven; Strangers in Paradise; Stray Bullets; Sudden Gravity; Thieves & Kings; Transmetropolitan; Tyrant; Vamps; Wahoo Morris; Wolff & Byrd

Cerebus

What started as a funny-animal spoof of Conan the Barbarian has grown into an epic about politics, religion, society, and the relationships between men and women, telling a single story that will span 300 issues. Cerebus is not a hero, though he sometimes acts in heroic ways. He sometimes acts in villainous ways, as well. In fact, he's not a likable character. And yet, he has a strange charisma, an ability to charm that draws in people who should know better. ''I think everybody knows someone like Cerebus,'' said creator Dave Sim in my interview with him, ''someone who you wish wasn't your friend, who makes you so mad you swear you'll never speak to him again, and then he does something unexpectedly nice and you can't help liking him.'' See myCerebus Page for more info.

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Berlin

I'll admit I don't have a clear idea yet of what this is all about. It's one of the most frustrating comics I know, because it comes out quarterly and it seems to be a pretty long story. Jason Lutes, of the wonderful "Jar of Fools," makes that book look like a warm-up. This is an intricately detailed picture of Berlin in the 1920s, before the rise of Nazism, with an art student and a journalist as our two main characters. I'll tell you more when he tells us more - there have only been four issues so far, and Lutes has used them mostly to set the scene. The art is stunning, the narrative flows easily, the characters look and sound like real people, I can't recommend this book highly enough.

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Bone

The surface of "Pogo" and the depth of "Lord of the Rings." A truly "all ages" comic, which my 10-year-old daughter likes as much as I do. The story begins as Fone Bone, Phoney Bone and Smiley Bone are run out of Boneville due to another of Phoney Bone's schemes blowing up in his face. Separated, the Bones become lost and end up in a strange valley . . . Find out more at the Official BONE Web Page. My review of Bone ran in the Get Out entertainment magazine of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch during a short period in 1995 when I had a regular comics feature there. See the Bone entry on my Recommended Books page for a list of collected volumes.

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Transmetropolitan

Spider Jerusalem is a cyberpunk Hunter Thompson, a man with a weekly column and a wicked sense of humor combined with a knowing attitude just this side of cynicism and a still-detectable shred of idealism he tries hard to hide. Despite appearances, though, he's not the main character in this series. The city he lives in, the world he moves through, that's what the comic's really all about. There is no plot per se, just Spider lurching from one bit of strangeness to the next, as Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson present a truly wacked-out, yet detailed, consistent and scarily believable vision of the future. This is one of the best real science fiction comics magazines I've seen in a long, long time.

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Strangehaven

The more I read this, the better I like it. Very ordinary, and very strange. A man is driving down the road when a woman appears on the road in front of him. Swerving to avoid hitting her, he crashes his car into a tree. The woman, as you might expect, is nowhere to be seen. Finding a town nearby, he stays overnight while getting his car repaired. But when he tries to leave, he finds all roads lead back to Strangehaven. That's just the beginning of the oddness here - all the odder because of the matter-of-fact ordinariness on the surface, including the wonderful drawing of Gary Spencer Millidge. Highly recommended.

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Strangers in Paradise

Francine, David and especially Katchoo are people whose lives Terry Moore has made me care about. A slightly confusing series to catch up with (there have been three different #1s, despite the fact there have been less than 30 issues total), but much of it is available in book form. The first 3-issue mini-series set a very light tone, centering on the collapse of Francine's relationship with Freddie and Katchoo's revenge on him for breaking her heart. With the second series, the stories became more serious, as we began to learn of Katchoo's dark and mysterious past - and that past came back to haunt her. Maida Carpio Scott, who maintains an unofficial Strangers In Paradise Website says "Terry Moore is a genius. His characters have personality, depth and secrets. This book is real, with a twist. The plot is almost secondary to the interaction of the main characters: Katchoo, Francine and David. The interaction has all the nuances and complexities of real relationships - no nuclear families, no high school sweethearts (well not exactly), no shallow friendships..." Except for calling the magazine a book, I agree completely. This is one of the best things out there. Buy it. Read it.

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Oni Double Feature

When I first heard about this, I was more than dubious. I was angry. The idea of breaking each story up into two parts, and pairing the first part of one with the second part of another, forces you to buy something you don't necessarily want in order to get what you do want. The Oni Press people have sneakily parceled out such things as an adaptation of a Neil Gaiman story and the first appearance in a long time anywhere by Bill Sienkewicz with folks you never heard of. I thought of that as cheating. But a funny thing happened after I read some of those things I didn't want to read. I liked them, sometimes more than the piece I had bought the comic for. The sustained level of excellence of this mini-anthology is one example of why Oni Press has become one of the best, if not in fact the best, alternative comics company in the market in a very short time. Go ahead, let them twist your arm. You'll be glad you did. I reviewed this comic in July 1998 in my column, This Week's Good Read.

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Poison Elves

If you think you know what elves are, Drew Hayes wants to introduce you to an entirely different sort of Elf. Lusiphur, is an amoral killer with ears about three feet long and a magic gun that never runs out of bullets. My review of Poison Elves ran in the Get Out entertainment magazine of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch during a short period in 1995 when I had a regular comics feature there. Brad Chamberlain has a Poison Elves Home Page.

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Sandman Mystery Theatre

As the shadows of war gather in Europe, a man disturbed by dreams becomes a costumed vigilante. A very dark look at a 1930s superhero, without most of the superheroic trappings. This is not for kids. Grim violence and frank sex are only the obvious reasons. The developing relationship between Wesley and Diane is one of the most interesting and mature in comics. This has been canceled, but I'm leaving it here for a while anyway. I know telling you to go out and buy 70 back issues of a comic that didn't sell well enough to get anything beyond the first four issues collected in a trade paperback is useless, but this series really deserved better. I enjoy Preacher, but why people snatch up Preacher trade paperbacks like they were precious gems and never showed enough interest in this series to get even a second TPB published is a mystery to me.

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The Invisibles

The ultimate conspiracy comic. If you liked the Illuminati trilogy, if you're sure that aliens landed in Roswell, JFK was killed by someone other than Lee Harvey Oswald, or that Elvis is still alive, this comic is for you. Best Man Down, a site devoted to the Invisibles, is the product of a fellow Geocity citizen. Another good Invisibles Page is BARBELITH, which includes extensive annotations. Scripta Mira is devoted to all things Grant Morrison-y.

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Naughty Bits

A comic that has an episode entitled "Bitchy Bitch Gets Laid" is not one for the kiddies, obviously, but adults of all genders can enjoy this well-written comic. Bitingly funny, may make males wince occasionally. Strong sexual content in nearly every issue puts this in the "adults only" category, which always steams me considering the nearly constant graphic violence in some comics that are supposedly OK for kids. I also reviewed Naughty Bits for Get Out, the entertainment magazine of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, during a short period in 1995 when I had a regular comics feature there. There is an Official Roberta Gregory Website.

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A Distant Soil

I've been with Colleen Doran since the fourth issue of her current series. The history of "A Distant Soil" is convoluted, since some of it had been printed and even collected in graphic novel format years ago, but she wasn't satisfied with it, nor with the way she was treated by the publishers, so she decided to start over and self-publish the book, redrawing much of it rather than just reprinting it. This is space opera on a grand scale. It opens with two children with some kind of mental powers escaping from an apparently governmental organization trying to use them for their powers. It turns out they're the children of an alien who lived on earth many years, an alien whose powers were a threat to the hierarchy of his home planet, which ruled a galactic empire. The daughter in particular is a threat to the Avatar, ruler of Ovanan, because she has the power to replace him. Since with the last issue (#22 as I write this) the main storyline seems to be coming to a climax, it's probably a good idea to either wait and see what she does once it's tied up or start from the beginning with the collected book, "A Distant Soil: The Gathering."

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Thieves & Kings

Mark Oakley, also known as M'Oak, writes and illustrates a story that, while not exactly reminiscent of Tolkien, certainly fits one critic's description of "Lord of the Rings" as "a fairy tale somehow gotten out of hand." In the early days it was noticeable mainly for being apparently inspired by Dave Sim's experiments with illustrated text pages mixed with straight comics. Right from the start, however, it was clear that we were involved in an intricate tale taking place in an invented world with a rich and deep background. While Bone and Cerebus started simple and gradually deepened, this story hit the ground running. Matt Brooks has a wonderful, though unofficial, Thieves & Kings Web Page, while M'Oak maintains a simpler site where you can order stuff.

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Astro City

One of the few superhero comics I buy regularly. Nobody does it better than Kurt Busiek. An entire superhero universe in one magazine. And what a universe! Busiek focuses on the human and the personal, whether he's detailing the daily life of a little girl who happens to have been born into the Furst Family (think Fantastic Four, sort of) or a young boy who wants to be a superhero (the recently completed 6-issue tale that was the longest story so far). OK, when you come down to it it's guys (and gals) in tights. But it's building on the promise of those early 1960s Marvel comics that, in their own way, humanized superheroes and made them seem more real. Marvel jumped off the track many years ago - or rather built themselves a little cul-de-sac where they keep going around and around in circles. This is where they should have been by now. Great stuff. An unofficial but quite good Astro City Homepage is maintained by fan Martin Wisse.

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Starman

Another of the handful of superhero comics I buy every month (depending on your definition - to hardcore reality folks, "Cerebus" is a superhero comic). Jack Knight is a reluctant superhero who refuses to wear tights. His father, Ted Knight, was the original Starman, a golden age superhero who was one of the lesser lights of the DC pantheon. When he retired, his son David took up the red tights. He was killed in the first issue. Once a year, his ghost visits Jack. James Robinson has a sure hand for characterization, and the supporting players here are a large part of the appeal, from the O'Dare family that has been cops for generations to the Shade, a former (?) villain who shows up with supernatural aid from time to time.

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Batman: The Gotham Adventures

Almost, but not quite, a guilty pleasure. This is the comics magazine based on the animated TV version of Batman. The series has had several names. First, there was "The Batman Adventures" that ran for 25 issues. Then came "Batman and Robin," followed by the "Batman Adventures - The Lost Years" limited series. Now we have "Batman: The Gotham Adventures." This is superheroes like they oughtta be. Simple, direct, heroic. The creators don't take themselves too seriously, but neither do they ridicule their hero by making him camp. And like the great comics of the 60s, they are enjoyable both by young childred and intelligent adults. There are few comics magazines that fit that description these days.

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Bacchus

The continuing saga of the 4,000-year-old god of wine, with both new chapters and reprints of old material each month. Eddie Campbell is one of the brightest stars in the new universe of comics creators who pay little attention to the antics of overly muscled guys in spandex. He has lately begun reprinting some of his semi-autobiographical "Alex" stories in the back of Bacchus, as well. These are even better, in my opinion. I wish he had the money & time to do two comics, one for each character.

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Hepcats

I've given up. I can no longer recommend this comic to anyone, and if and when the long-awaited #13 comes out, I'm not sure I care enough anymore to buy it. Though it was one of the best comics around when it came out, Martin Wagner never could be depended on. He did only a dozen issues of this title (originally billed as bi-monthly) from 1989 to 1994. Recently, Wagner decided to give up on self-publishing and signed with Antarctic Press. They were going to republish the first dozen issues on a monthly basis, after which the series would continue in that fashion. Well, even though they were publishing stuff that was already done, the project fell further and further behind. Early in 1998, they promised to catch up by summer by doing two issues a month from February to April. Issue 12 did, I believe, finally come out in August or September, but by then the publisher of Antartic Press was actively soliciting on the Internet newsgroups for anyone who had any contact with Wagner to help him get in touch with him. I assume #13 was still not ready, the first new issue Wagner owed them, more than a year after he signed with them. Fans and shop owners have gotten so frustrated most have given up on Wagner. Denise Voskuil deserves a medal for creating and maintaining HepPage, the official Hepcats website - especially since it began as an unofficial fan site and she receives no remuneration (I hope he's at least given her some free art or something). I used to say that I was in for the long haul, no matter how long between issues, but I don't know. Even though I'm not one of the many people Wagner has literally ripped off over the years, I'm just getting tired of the whole song-and-dance.

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Optic Nerve

Adrian Tomine started out doing mini-comics that created such a stir Drawn & Quarterly picked him up. Short, spare stories of people trying, and usually failing, to connect fill up most of the pages of this comic. There's not much to say about them, really, but they're very good. Tomine has a good eye for the few essential details that will pin down a character or a location, and a good ear for dialogue.

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Concrete

Kidnapped by aliens, a political speechwriter had his brain transplanted into a giant body apparently made of rock. Super-strong and nearly impervious to harm, he is also nearly impervious to touch, hardly feeling anything but loss. Paul Chadwick often uses this book as a platform for his environmental concerns, but it's not simplistic soapbox stuff. Instead, he recently had a story where Concrete was used by a band of ecoterrorists - it was not simply a case of "good guys" and "bad guys," and every individual had his or her own motivations and moral limits. A very interesting series.

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Tyrant

The biography of a T-Rex started well, but when is the next issue coming out? Steve Bissette has gotten nearly as bad as Martin Wagner. Still, if you like dinosaurs, this is the ultimate dinosaur comic.

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Wolff & Byrd

The subtitle is "Counselors of the Macabre." This fun comic focuses on lawyers who specialize in representing ghosts, vampires, and the like and is full of bad puns and other whimsy. Hey, I had to have one funny comic in here.

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Desert Peach

General Rommel's brother a homosexual leading a rag-tag bunch of misfits in the North African desert? Only Donna Barr could make this work. Check out The Desert Peach Annotations.

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Minimum Wage

I'm not sure why I'm not buying this - maybe it's just the fact it hardly ever comes out. Maybe it's even on my list! All I know is that only a couple of issues have come out in the last year, there's a trade paperback out there and every time I've picked one up I've enjoyed it.

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Sin City

Not my cup of tea, but many people swear by it. Frank Miller is the man responsible for The Dark Knight Returns, often cited as a big influence on the first "Batman" movie.

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Stray Bullets

I used to buy this, but I got tired of trying to figure out how the pieces fit together. Each issue features different characters in a different time, but the characters overlap and the time frame, while it switches back and forth, seems to be centering around a few of the recurring characters lives. If I had more money, I'd probably still be buying it. In fact, recent reviews have been so positive and intriguing I may have to start buying it again (and pick up those issues I missed).

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Beanworld

I've never really been able to get into this book, but I have friends who swear by it. I understand it a bit better now that somebody practically forced me to buy and read the first volume of the collected version, and I like it OK and even think it's pretty good, but I just don't understand why some very intelligent people I respect and admire think Larry Marder is a genius of the first caliber - I mean, maybe he is, but I personally don't see any evidence of it here. It's fun, though.

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Acme Novelty Co.

Chris Ware is a talent of the first magnitude. His wit is sharp and incisive, his drawing style clean and direct, and he is justly praised by many, many folks in the alternative comics community. So why don't I buy his books? I'm a little embarrassed about this one, but I just don't like all those little bitty panels. Many of his drawings are deliberately cold and sterile, and that turns me off, too. I can see the value in the work, and I recommend him to other folks. If I had unlimited funds I'd buy all his stuff - and no, if I had unlimited funds I wouldn't buy everything because most of the junk out there I wouldn't waste my time on. Chris Ware will never waste your time, but for purely personal reasons he doesn't make the cut onto my limited buy-list.

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