Batman books

[Canadouche]

I realize this is the Batman Books thread, but since Bort is the defender of The Last Son, can he, (or anyone else) recommend some Superman stories that might make me find the character compelling? I'll admit I've known Superman mostly through other mediums and his appearances in comics where he's not the central character, so I'm mostly ignorant of his own stories. I read most of the "Death of Superman" stuff back in the day when I could sneak them out of my brother's collection before he noticed and got pissed, and I've also read All-Star Superman because, well, Grant Morrison. Other than that, I'm a blank Superman slate.

Superman: For All Seasons. A really great mini-series that I enjoyed tremendously. Might be my favorite Superman story ever.

The John Byrne issues in which Superman fights General Zod is a pretty good read, too.

[SKO]

It has been brought to my attention that TEC and SKO have never seen Cartoon Network's original run of the Justice League and Justice League Unlimited serieses.

If you've got any interest in the Justice League (and if you don't why are you reading this?) I can't recommend these enough.  The first two seasons focus on 7 members with last two seasons expanding the League to include all sorts of B-Listers.  In fact, if DC wants to just scrap the live action movies and pick the series back up, that'd be aces.

I watched Justice League: Doom yesterday. It's one of the PG-13 DC Animated Universe films (like Year One and Red Hood) but it includes nearly all of the writing team and the voice actors from Batman: TAS, Superman TAS, and this Justice League cartoon. The plot revolves around someone hacking into the Batcomputer and using Batman's own contingency plans for taking down the members of the JLA if they ever went rogue. Pretty good film.

You can find the whole thing in good quality in two parts here: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xorhxx_justice-league-doom-part-1_shortfilms and http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xorji6_justice-league-doom-part-2_shortfilms

[J. Walter Weatherman]

It has been brought to my attention that TEC and SKO have never seen Cartoon Network's original run of the Justice League and Justice League Unlimited serieses.

If you've got any interest in the Justice League (and if you don't why are you reading this?) I can't recommend these enough.  The first two seasons focus on 7 members with last two seasons expanding the League to include all sorts of B-Listers.  In fact, if DC wants to just scrap the live action movies and pick the series back up, that'd be aces.

I watched Justice League: Doom yesterday. It's one of the PG-13 DC Animated Universe films (like Year One and Red Hood) but it includes nearly all of the writing team and the voice actors from Batman: TAS, Superman TAS, and this Justice League cartoon. The plot revolves around someone hacking into the Batcomputer and using Batman's own contingency plans for taking down the members of the JLA if they ever went rogue. Pretty good film.

You can find the whole thing in good quality in two parts here: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xorhxx_justice-league-doom-part-1_shortfilms and http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xorji6_justice-league-doom-part-2_shortfilms

Intrepid Reader: TDubbs

Cartoons are the coolest.

[SKO]

It has been brought to my attention that TEC and SKO have never seen Cartoon Network's original run of the Justice League and Justice League Unlimited serieses.

If you've got any interest in the Justice League (and if you don't why are you reading this?) I can't recommend these enough.  The first two seasons focus on 7 members with last two seasons expanding the League to include all sorts of B-Listers.  In fact, if DC wants to just scrap the live action movies and pick the series back up, that'd be aces.

I watched Justice League: Doom yesterday. It's one of the PG-13 DC Animated Universe films (like Year One and Red Hood) but it includes nearly all of the writing team and the voice actors from Batman: TAS, Superman TAS, and this Justice League cartoon. The plot revolves around someone hacking into the Batcomputer and using Batman's own contingency plans for taking down the members of the JLA if they ever went rogue. Pretty good film.

You can find the whole thing in good quality in two parts here: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xorhxx_justice-league-doom-part-1_shortfilms and http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xorji6_justice-league-doom-part-2_shortfilms

Intrepid Reader: TDubbs

Cartoons are the coolest.

Can we hate on Thrill for killing this thread? Anybody ready/seen anything good lately? I watched Green Lantern because I was drunk and bored and it cost me a dollar and my friend was all "it can't be That bad, can it?" It was.

[J. Walter Weatherman]

It has been brought to my attention that TEC and SKO have never seen Cartoon Network's original run of the Justice League and Justice League Unlimited serieses.

If you've got any interest in the Justice League (and if you don't why are you reading this?) I can't recommend these enough.  The first two seasons focus on 7 members with last two seasons expanding the League to include all sorts of B-Listers.  In fact, if DC wants to just scrap the live action movies and pick the series back up, that'd be aces.

I watched Justice League: Doom yesterday. It's one of the PG-13 DC Animated Universe films (like Year One and Red Hood) but it includes nearly all of the writing team and the voice actors from Batman: TAS, Superman TAS, and this Justice League cartoon. The plot revolves around someone hacking into the Batcomputer and using Batman's own contingency plans for taking down the members of the JLA if they ever went rogue. Pretty good film.

You can find the whole thing in good quality in two parts here: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xorhxx_justice-league-doom-part-1_shortfilms and http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xorji6_justice-league-doom-part-2_shortfilms

Intrepid Reader: TDubbs

Cartoons are the coolest.

Can we hate on Thrill for killing this thread?

Intrepid Reader: TDubbs

Maybe you could ask Captain Archer and Professor Cartoon to cartoon me to death.

[Bort]

It has been brought to my attention that TEC and SKO have never seen Cartoon Network's original run of the Justice League and Justice League Unlimited serieses.

If you've got any interest in the Justice League (and if you don't why are you reading this?) I can't recommend these enough.  The first two seasons focus on 7 members with last two seasons expanding the League to include all sorts of B-Listers.  In fact, if DC wants to just scrap the live action movies and pick the series back up, that'd be aces.

I watched Justice League: Doom yesterday. It's one of the PG-13 DC Animated Universe films (like Year One and Red Hood) but it includes nearly all of the writing team and the voice actors from Batman: TAS, Superman TAS, and this Justice League cartoon. The plot revolves around someone hacking into the Batcomputer and using Batman's own contingency plans for taking down the members of the JLA if they ever went rogue. Pretty good film.

You can find the whole thing in good quality in two parts here: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xorhxx_justice-league-doom-part-1_shortfilms and http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xorji6_justice-league-doom-part-2_shortfilms

Intrepid Reader: TDubbs

Cartoons are the coolest.

Can we hate on Thrill for killing this thread?

Intrepid Reader: TDubbs

Maybe you could ask Captain Archer and Professor Cartoon to cartoon me to death.

Intrepid Reader: TDubbs

Who let the faggot nerd into the cartoon nerd thread?

[CT III]

Garth Ennis hates superheroes, but he manages to both nail Superman's strengths and weaknesses in Hitman #34. Hitman is worth reading in its entirety, but this standalone issue won an Eisner with good cause.

SKO - my suggestion if you like DC characters is to branch out.  There are some excellent Batman and Superman stories suggested here, but a lot of the best stuff in DC was produced when a creator was given one of the more obscure or lesser titles and given free reign on it.

Stuff I'd recommend:

Hitman - an excellent title authored by Garth Ennis, I believe the full series was re-released a few years ago in several volumes.

Suicide Squad - terrific series about supervillains who take on covert missions for the US Government in exchange for reduced prison sentences.  John Ostrander's run in the late 80's/early 90's was outstanding but later iterations remain solid.

Grant Morrison's stints on Doom Patrol and Animal Man defy description, but should definitely be read.

I'm also partial to Justice League International, which came about when JM DeMatteis and Keith Giffen were given the Justice League to write but for various reasons were not allowed to utilize Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash or Aquaman.  I think the resulting series was a lot more fun than the standard "WE ARE GODS LOOKING DOWN ON EARTH" stuff that the JLA books tend to traffic in.

[Bort]

Garth Ennis hates superheroes, but he manages to both nail Superman's strengths and weaknesses in Hitman #34. Hitman is worth reading in its entirety, but this standalone issue won an Eisner with good cause.

SKO - my suggestion if you like DC characters is to branch out.  There are some excellent Batman and Superman stories suggested here, but a lot of the best stuff in DC was produced when a creator was given one of the more obscure or lesser titles and given free reign on it.

Stuff I'd recommend:

Hitman - an excellent title authored by Garth Ennis, I believe the full series was re-released a few years ago in several volumes.

Suicide Squad - terrific series about supervillains who take on covert missions for the US Government in exchange for reduced prison sentences.  John Ostrander's run in the late 80's/early 90's was outstanding but later iterations remain solid.

Grant Morrison's stints on Doom Patrol and Animal Man defy description, but should definitely be read.

I'm also partial to Justice League International, which came about when JM DeMatteis and Keith Giffen were given the Justice League to write but for various reasons were not allowed to utilize Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash or Aquaman.  I think the resulting series was a lot more fun than the standard "WE ARE GODS LOOKING DOWN ON EARTH" stuff that the JLA books tend to traffic in.

CT gives good advice.

One rather recent series that I would also recommend is Secret Six. It's got a bit of that Claremont soap-opera feel, in a good way. It's a team of mostly also-ran villains who basically end up working together out of necessity, with all the bickering, alliances, and betrayals you might expect.

[Slaky]

I cracked open Arkham Asylum and the art bothers the shit out of me. I can't get into it at all. Did anyone have that problem?

[J. Walter Weatherman]

I cracked open Arkham Asylum and the art bothers the shit out of me. I can't get into it at all. Did anyone have that problem?

Intrepid Reader: Goth Bort

God help you if you ever speak ill of my beloved Sandman...

[J. Walter Weatherman]

I cracked open Arkham Asylum and the art bothers the shit out of me. I can't get into it at all. Did anyone have that problem?

More seriously, here' the artist himself on that...

http://www.comicscareer.com/?page_id=55

Comics Career: When you say you’re not happy with what you’ve done, is that in terms of material, doing superhero work, or a feeling that your own artwork wasn’t up to par?

McKean: Pretty much everything. I was never happy doing superhero stuff because I’ve never liked them. And the more I did it, the more I realized that I couldn’t do it even as a job. I couldn’t get out of bed in the morning – couldn’t work up the enthusiasm to do it – because I didn’t believe in it. If somebody’s doing superhero comics, and they really love it, and it’s what they always want to do, fine, more power to them, but not for me.

Comics Career: Was Arkham Asylum something of a breaking point?

McKean: It was kind of a breaking point in as much as at the beginning of it I thought if could push it as far as I could in the direction that I wanted to go – this sort of very abstracted work and dense atmosphere. I tried not to accept any of the ground rules at face value.

When Grant first came up with the story he didn’t know who was going to be drawing it, so it was a very traditional Batman story. But, it had Robin in it, and I didn’t like that at all. At one point he was Bruce Wayne, and I didn’t want that either because I don’t believe in the character as a human being. I like the idea of him being sort of a cross between man and an animal, and I think as a mythic story that’s kind of interesting.

We chopped it and changed it around. It became sort of a symbolic play. We piled all this stuff on top of it, and dressed it up in its best clothes, and sent it out. Then I sat down afterwards and realized, “Why? Why bother? It’s such an absurd thing to do.” It’s like suddenly realizing the fact that you’re desperately trying to work around the subject matter – trying to make the book despite the subject, rather than because of it. At the end of the day, if you really love to do Batman comics, then that’s probably the best thing to do. Not liking them, and then trying to make something out of them is just a waste of time.
 
Also, by the end of it I’d really begun to think that this whole thing about four-color comics with very, very overpainted, lavish illustrations in every panel just didn’t work. It hampers the storytelling. It does everything wrong. It’s very difficult to have any enthusiasm about it after that.

Comics Career: So you really came to the point that it seemed like the art was working against the story?

McKean: Yeah, definitely. Especially in this case. There was so little content there. I mean, it does nobody any good at all to realize that Batman is a psychopath. Who cares?

Comics Career: There isn’t much world-shaking significance in the fact.

McKean: Exactly.

[Slaky]

I cracked open Arkham Asylum and the art bothers the shit out of me. I can't get into it at all. Did anyone have that problem?

More seriously, here' the artist himself on that...

http://www.comicscareer.com/?page_id=55

Comics Career: When you say you’re not happy with what you’ve done, is that in terms of material, doing superhero work, or a feeling that your own artwork wasn’t up to par?

McKean: Pretty much everything. I was never happy doing superhero stuff because I’ve never liked them. And the more I did it, the more I realized that I couldn’t do it even as a job. I couldn’t get out of bed in the morning – couldn’t work up the enthusiasm to do it – because I didn’t believe in it. If somebody’s doing superhero comics, and they really love it, and it’s what they always want to do, fine, more power to them, but not for me.

Comics Career: Was Arkham Asylum something of a breaking point?

McKean: It was kind of a breaking point in as much as at the beginning of it I thought if could push it as far as I could in the direction that I wanted to go – this sort of very abstracted work and dense atmosphere. I tried not to accept any of the ground rules at face value.

When Grant first came up with the story he didn’t know who was going to be drawing it, so it was a very traditional Batman story. But, it had Robin in it, and I didn’t like that at all. At one point he was Bruce Wayne, and I didn’t want that either because I don’t believe in the character as a human being. I like the idea of him being sort of a cross between man and an animal, and I think as a mythic story that’s kind of interesting.

We chopped it and changed it around. It became sort of a symbolic play. We piled all this stuff on top of it, and dressed it up in its best clothes, and sent it out. Then I sat down afterwards and realized, “Why? Why bother? It’s such an absurd thing to do.” It’s like suddenly realizing the fact that you’re desperately trying to work around the subject matter – trying to make the book despite the subject, rather than because of it. At the end of the day, if you really love to do Batman comics, then that’s probably the best thing to do. Not liking them, and then trying to make something out of them is just a waste of time.
 
Also, by the end of it I’d really begun to think that this whole thing about four-color comics with very, very overpainted, lavish illustrations in every panel just didn’t work. It hampers the storytelling. It does everything wrong. It’s very difficult to have any enthusiasm about it after that.

Comics Career: So you really came to the point that it seemed like the art was working against the story?

McKean: Yeah, definitely. Especially in this case. There was so little content there. I mean, it does nobody any good at all to realize that Batman is a psychopath. Who cares?

Comics Career: There isn’t much world-shaking significance in the fact.

McKean: Exactly.

Well I guess I won't be finishing that, then.

[Bort]

I vaguely remember McKean at the time was the hotshot artist, and Grant Morrison was some unknown guy who did Doom Patrol. The art does detract. McKean works better as a cover artist.

But the words are worth it.

[J. Walter Weatherman]

I vaguely remember McKean at the time was the hotshot artist, and Grant Morrison was some unknown guy who did Doom Patrol. The art does detract. McKean works better as a cover artist.

But the words are worth it.

Is an audiobook version available?

[Bort]

I vaguely remember McKean at the time was the hotshot artist, and Grant Morrison was some unknown guy who did Doom Patrol. The art does detract. McKean works better as a cover artist.

But the words are worth it.

Is an audiobook version available?

I can make you an abridged one, as long as you don't mind a tape of me yelling "Fuck you, Tank" over and over in a loop.