Not sure about you guys, but I think Hush is one of the best Batman villains in the last decade or so. The original arc with Loeb, Lee, and Williams is masterful, methinks.

Agreed, I loved this arc and it will totally fit Chis Nolan's rendition of Batman. It's very psychological and not as cheesy as some of the other vilains. A shame it will end with The Dark Knight Rises.

I'm torn on Hush. My initial reaction to that story (and the character) was "I fucking love it," but looking back it was kinda predictable and entirely ridiculous, so it didn't really resonate with me very well. If you've read anything else by Loeb, you know he has a bad habit of trying to shove EVERY iconic character in a mythos (dead or not) into a single story, even if it means casting logic to the wind. Though, how much logic can one expect in the realm of comics? But I mean c'mon,

That being said, Hush was very entertaining and absolutely gorgeous to look at. Say what you will about Jim Lee, he's the most popular artist in comics for a reason. The colors were incredible, too.

On the subject of Batman, is anyone reading the 'new 52!' Batman series? The one by Snyder and Capullo? I was skeptical at first, but this whole Court of the Owls thing has got me fucking hooked.

Also, for anyone who is a fan of horror comics, Clive Barker and H.R. Giger - check out the new IDW series Monocyte. It's basically a big blowjob to the Barker and Giger styles of writing and art, but it works. Gorgeous book. Pretty disturbing content. And the pages smell nice.

You know, I was really hoping for Hush in The Dark Knight Rises. He totally fits into the realism of Nolan's Batman, granted, he's not that big of a household name to most. Still....it's fucking Hush.

I agree that Hush is one of the more interesting and well thought Batman characters in recent history.

On a completely unrelated topic, do you guys listen to metal when u read? I find it kind of enhances the experience, even more so when the music really matches up with the panels.

One of my friends is a talented artist, so sometimes we will just hang out, listen to metal, and he'll draw whatever fan-fic. bullshit im thinking of. I especially find that listening to Amogh Symphony really brings out a comic "spirit" so to say.

Schaus maybe you should cover up that bit about the end of Hush with the spoiler function? If someone stumbles in here and hasn't read Hush but planned to it could be a bit of a bummer to find some spoilers.

But on the other subject, I only listen to metal if I'm reading certain books. Spawn: The Dark Ages, or any Spawn really, goes very well with metal. A lot of the space opera arcs are great with metal, too. Sometimes I'll nerd out and throw on an old Elfman Batman OST when I read Batman, but other than that I prefer silence.

Haha yea, definitely put a spoiler tag on that Schaus2.

oh shit! my bad, I just typed and ran to work.

btw, is anyone psyched for new Age of Apocalypse ongoing?

Age of Apocalypse is awesome, which reminds me I outta pick up the collected issues sometime...

Holy shit!! Checking out Blacksad now, haha it's actually really good!! Thanks for the recommendation, I'm really enjoying it

Glad you're enjoying it. It's a very good series, propelled mostly by the fantastic artwork.

Yeah, the artwork is killer. I felt really weird at first reading it because although I consider myself pretty open-minded overall, I felt like I was reading a graphic novel for furries which kind of turned me off. However, after a few pages I got over it and have just finished the second issue, seriously good shit! Great characters, writing, art, and concept. Keep up the recommendations everyone! I'm fairly new to the whole graphic novel "scene" so I'm finding this thread to be pretty enlightening

I've been reading the Dark Horse Conan series, which has been really awesome. Does anyone know of any other good Conan comics? The Marvel ones look gay.

There are no other good Conan series. Check out Warlord from DC. It's contemporary with the old Conan crap and it's actually good, provided you like the aggressively wordy style of those days and the stock pulp action and pacing...

Otherwise, just look up Darkhorse's other Howard stuff: Kull and Solomon Kane, both great

All that discussion we had about Hush prompted me to buy Heart of Hush. I definitely enjoyed it. Frank Miller's Batman:Year One is really interesting too, good stuff.

Not really a comic book guy but have the Johnny The Homicidal Maniac (Jhonen Vasquez) directors edition book which I love. I read the Lenore (Roman Dirge) comics a few years ago when in college quite enjoyed them. Very childish / goth but quite fun nonetheless.

I definately urge anyone with a dark sense of humour to read JTHM! And also Squee! (also by Jhonen Vasquez).

I blame Vasquez personally for the advent of horribly lazy character design and art in comics these days.

So do I, John. I actually posted a little rant about Vasquez in the previous comic book thread we had in this forum. Seems like he really popularized barely being able to draw.

EDIT: Actually, it was in the last free-for-all thread that I posted my two cents on Vasquez. Here it is:

Todd McFarlane was part of the terrible 90's artists to arise in Marvel with the likes of Rob Liefeld, who's art was very much like McFalrane's and similarly shitty. He had very poor understanding of anatomy and his most-well known comic was largely a rip-off of Marvel's Ghost Rider, not that he was the only one ripping off of other comics in Image.
I'd much rather read anything drawn by Vasquez than McFarlane.

McFarlane was nowhere near anatomically correct, but that's not what makes an artist great. If I want uber-realism, I'll just look at Alex Ross all day. It's possible to be an awesome artist. McFarlane was a great artist while still being kinda nuts. Not every amazing artist is super-realistic (Basil Wolverton), but not every surreal piece of loopy artwork is good (most of Vasquez's stuff). Todds drawings had a frantic energy to them that nobody else had.

I don't really see the Liefeld/McFarlane comparison. Liefield's stuff was always huge and bulky and veiny whereas McFarlane's was way more fluid. And he can draw circles around Vasquez, certainly. Vasquez basically took the Tim Burton style, made it a bit grittier, and that was all. Only a few steps above newspaper comics, in my opinion. I mean its cool and all, but for a medium that is as reliant on art as comics are, he just doesn't cut it. At least McFarlane can create a living story with his artwork.

I actually mistook some Spawn comics for something Liefeld had shat out. It's pure 90's dreck. His art consisted of the same staples that Liefeld used: poor understanding of anatomy, terrible hatching over everything, and not an original thought in his head. Even that new comic he did was a cross between Spider-Man and Venom. Vasquez, unlike his copycats, understood that that he was a poor artist and started experimenting with lighting and composition, two words that McFarlane has probably never heard of.

His 'experimenting with light and composition' never produced anything better than what McFarlane put out, just a bunch of shadowy stick figures. And as far as I can tell, what you call '90s dreck' was pretty much started by McFarlane, so I'd say he's an original, even if the trend he started was kinda lame.

It was largely pioneered by Liefeld, which was really a gross exaggeration of existing trends in comic book art styles. McFarlane was a business man before an artist, and a successful one at that
.

I haven't gotten around to reading any of Vasquez's works unless you want to count watching Invader Zim on occasion, but I do remember reading the first volume of Lenore in high school. I'd love to track that down again as it was quite entertaining and got me to think more about my own ideas for a comic series. Of course, I'd also be contributing to the "modern artists can't draw" trope so I may need to find someone else to work with on that...

I don't know if these people can draw or not. I honestly think most of them can, but they choose to suck because that's what's "cool" nowadays, which is worse...

I spotted Moore's Neonomicon in a book shop a while ago and couldn't resist picking up a mix of Moore+Lovecraft. It's next on my list, anyway, and I'll start it once I finish Zot!. Anyone familiar?

Lovecraft in comic form has never worked out well for whatever reason. Probably because the writers are always so in love with his writing that they include way too much of it. Never been a really good artist doing a Lovecraft comic either, for some reason.

The perfect Lovecraft comic would be almost silent with great art. Maybe traditional drawings for the earth and humans paired with photo-realistic digital art for the cosmic horrors?

Hands down, the most overrated comic artist in the history of the medium, even more than Frank Miller. He couldn't carry Infantino's, Romita's, Wood's, Gil Kane's or Kurt Schafffenberger's pencil cases with his full splash page swinging pieces that left Spider-Man pretty much visually impairing and certainly lacking in story.

i got back into comics after a 15 year hiatus. I've been reading Goon and Elephantmen, buying graphic novels from both. Both series are amazing. I'm hoping Gwar comics come back.

I've been reading James Robinson's 90s Starman books. His recent DC stuff has been terrible, but I'm enjoying this so far.

Oh yeah? I've heard that Starman is good. What's up with it?

Anyone read the Nikopol Trilogy? Definitely worth your time.

Well, I haven't really bothered to read anything from DC since Blackest Night, or anything from Marvel since around the time of Brand New Day. Should I bother getting back in? I'm a bit skeptical about the "New 52", they were doing some good stuff in the old one.

As for the Todd McFarlane discussion... well, I'm no fan of that 90's style of artwork, and of course, he can't write to save his ass (let me just say, Spawn got a lot better once he started to step away from it). Jim Lee, Erik Larsen and Marc Silvestri were all better artists. But he has at least gotten better (as have all the others I mentioned), whereas Rob Liefeld stayed the same, so that's a point in his favor. Plus he makes awesome action figures.

Silvestri is the man - the work he and Ennis did on The Darkness is fucking supreme.

One day in my life as a corporate raider I did a hostile takeover of Marvel Comics!

My first act as owner and editor was to make the issue of Spider-Man where Doctor Doom cries over the WTC canon permanently! I also added a rule to the corporate charter forbidding writers from making any alternate universes where Doom didn't cry!

My second act was to retcon One More Day in real life, by finding and destroying all copies of every Spider-Man comic where he's married to Mary Jane and deleting the info from Wikipedia!

My third and final act was to cash in all my stock immediately before selling every Marvel character and trademark to Image comics! Then I threw my tennis sweater around my neck and drove my golden Cadillac into the sunset!

Putting down Todd McFarlane? I can understand not liking Frank Miller's blocky drawings, but Todd McFarlane?! For shame, FOR SHAME.

I like Todd's early stuff when he drew the Amazing Spider-Man and when he wrote and drew adjectiveless Spider-Man and Spawn, but recently, haven't really been into the guy.

I like the new Ultimate Comics Spider-Man written by Brian Michael Bendis that's out right now, but they just changed artists and the new one is just okay. I haven't gotten into the New 52 as much as I should have though. I've heard some good things about that.

One thing I'm tired of these days is all of these pointless crossovers. It was okay at first, but House of M was dull, Civil War sucked, and the less I say about Countdown, the better. I wish Marvel and DC would just let their titles run on their own for a while. I would also like it if they fire Dan DiDio and Joe Quesada, but I don't think that will happen anytime soon.

Not to derail, but I can't believe how bad this Uncanny X-Force arc has been. They went from the epic that was The Dark Angel Saga to this? The book is about mutants fighting mutant threats, preferably with pointy things, not fantasy battles and bad art. The only bright point has been AoA Nightcrawler, though Deadpool did get some good scenes in the last issue. It's sad to say this because I love Rick Remender but I can't wait until this is over.

Supposedly the Hip Hop artist MF DOOM is releasing a comic book soon... starring himself. Can anyone confirm this?

I can't get over the fact how much the man loves retconning really stupid stuff, introducing über-powered characters who are that only because of the rule of cool (and plot devices) as well as having such a hard-on for certain characters, a lot of them of his own making/re-imagining.