innocentfreak

I tend to read a lot, but lately for some reason I have been debating on getting back into comics especially now that I have an iPad. I think stumbling across a long box in my closet I forgot about might have something to do with it.

It has been years, late 90s probably, since I bought or looked at anything.
Back when I was buying, I tended to buy a lot of books from Image and Sirius and a few other companies that skip my mind. I tended to skip Marvel and DC books, but I don't remember why. It might have been the paper at the time, but no clue since it was so long ago. I am also just going off memory and most of the books in the long box were from Image.

I figured I would start with a few TPBs I can possibly get from the local library and just see if the interest is truly there. I would prefer more recent stuff from the last 10-15 years or so since I never got into the old books. I was always an art whore so if I couldn't get into the art I skipped the book. Unfortunately I doubt that has changed. Any suggestions?

fujishig

I think the general response from the long-time comic addicts around here is... nooo! turn back while you still can!

But if you're still there, I'd say it depends. Are you looking for mainly superhero stuff?

Assuming superheros:
DC just relaunched their entire line. You can pick up the various #1s on the Comixology app for a dollar off of cover, and that should give you a decent sampling of what's out there. At this point, I'm assuming you're looking to pick up stuff that's ongoing, so that's the way to go.

Marvel changes their status quo every year or so, the last event being Fear Itself; you might want to try to pick that up (it does have great art) and see if you're even remotely interested in what's going on. If you're after the core characters, I'd recommend reading Brubaker's Captain America, Fraction's iron Man, or JMS's Thor run. There are also a few Avengers titles, but they vary depending on what you're into. I can't really recommend a Spidey book since I haven't read them in years. The various X-titles just got a reboot so you have Wolverine and the X-Men and Uncanny X-men coming out of the X-men Schism event. If you want a special-ops flavor of X-men I'd recommend the latest runs of X-Force and Uncanny X-Force.

If you want a largely independent superhero title, there's Invincible, from the same guy that does Walking Dead.

If you just want a great story that doesn't necessarily tie in with an ongoing book, I can recommend some other stuff too.

If you don't want superheroes, there's a ton of stuff, but you'll have to narrow the focus a little.

innocentfreak

Thanks. I am definitely not looking to get into collecting. I am just looking for something I can read occasionally on my iPad before bed when I am between books or don't feel like anything heavy. This is also why I am thinking of TPBs which my library might have on hand since this could just be like a slight itch I need to scratch lol.

I was always kind of into the superhero stuff, but fantasy, horror, and paranormal works also. I was never into the sci-fi though work also.

If anything I would say for now I would probably skip ongoing. I have missed so much that I figured it would be worth reading some story arcs that have completed to see if they even interest me. I know like the Marvel Civil War was just starting when I quit reading so I don't know if it is worth reading.

My problem is I don't even know what is out there these days. I need to go back by my parents place and look through my long boxes to see what I still have to see what I used to read. Knowing me I still have books in there I never got to.

I realize this isn't a great help. Are there any good comic book sites that let you browse the covers and maybe a couple of pages of the book to see the art?

davidh777

Good idea to try your library. You can get a pretty representative sense of a series from reading a trade or two. To follow up what fujishig was saying, Invincible and The Walking Dead are both worth a look--two ongoing series that I've gotten hooked on. Also by that same creator is The Astounding Wolf-Man, which had a free premiere issue on Comixology a while back. I've gotten a number of random freebies for mobile devices there.

Also take a look at Y: The Last Man, which is a completed series in 10 trades.

For Spidey, I devoured a few volumes of Ultimate Spider-Man, which is a modern reboot that doesn't require previous knowledge, and Spidey has tended to get the best reviews of the Ultimate universe.

madcougar

Yes. The library is a good start. Also see if you have a buddy who is willing to lend you his books.

I tend to avoid the X-Men as there's so much... mythology, that it bogs me down. I honestly can't keep up (or at least I couldn't afford to keep up). For this reason I really liked books like the Ultimates and stuff in the Ultimate universe where things tend to be a little tighter.

I've enjoyed some of the Green Lantern stuff in the last eight years or so (Rebirth, Sinestro Corp Wars, Blackest Night, Brightest Day), but again there's so much of that stuff that it's really easy to get lost. I would suggest you use Wikipedia to fill in the holes should that happen. It's impossible to hunt down every single trade in a series if not just because of cost, because some of this stuff falls out of print very quickly.

Like someone else mentioned The Walking Dead is great, although there's a pretty big drop off in the writing and quality of the story after the first eight trade paperbacks.

kgrogers1979

If you are willing to go single issues, you can find them dirt cheap on ebay. In fact, I just bought the entire Green Lantern volume 4, #1-67 going from Rebirth up to Flashpoint, for $50 just a few days ago. I had never read any Green Lantern before, and just decided to buy it on a whim.

fujishig

Yeah, if you don't want to get sucked into ongoing stuff, avoid X-men, Avengers, etc.

Download the Comixology app on your ipad and check out the sales. Also, like I said, the various new 52 series are all a dollar off after a month, so you can look through the #1 issues and see which ones look interesting. They should be easy to jump onto (since that was the point of the whole reboot) but I haven't read much of them myself, so I can't tell you for certain.

Invincible is available on Comixology, in collections and ongoing. The first collection of four issues is only 5.99, but I really recommend reading up to the second collection (7.99) to see if you like it. Walking Dead is also available on there.

Comixology often has sales. For instance every monday there's a 1 day 99c sale on select Marvel titles. Right now, there's a one day sale on Infinity Gauntlet (though that was a while ago so I'm sure you've read it). To me, the 99c pricepoint is good enough for me to sample stuff that I maybe otherwise wouldn't have tried.

Have you read Warren Ellis and John Cassaday's Planetary? It was coming out while you were collecting but it had a looong hiatus. It touches a variety of genres, but is IMHO very very good. Alan Moore's ABC line (Promethea, League of Extraordinary Gentleman, Top 10, Tom Strong) is also great. All Star Superman is probably the best Superman series in... forever?

Another option, which will unfortunately not work on your iPad, is to get a one month sub to Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited, a flash-based site that has a pretty large archive of Marvel comics (they intentionally do not put the latest titles on there, but there is enough there to scratch your itch and see what you've been missing).

It feels like Fables has been carrying the Vertigo line for some time, and is worth a look if you like fantasy.

Supermallet

I particularly love Ex Machina, from the author of Y: The Last Man. A very smart, intriguing comic. I also definitely recommend Walking Dead. Scott Pilgrim recently finished and is available in six small volumes.

A really good trade from the Marvel universe that is self contained is Neil Gaiman's Marvel 1602. There's also Marvel Zombies, which I think they've run into the ground, but the first trade is fun.

Hellboy is another great title, that's Dark Horse. Should be easy to find the trades from that. The Goon is another very good Dark Horse title.

Travis McClain

I sort of got back into comics myself in the last two years, largely by way of picking up really cheap back issues at Half Price Books. I've checked out some TPBs and graphic novels from my local library, too, but it wasn't until the DC New 52 relaunch that I approached anything current. I dig two titles quite a lot and I've stuck with a third through five issues (I have #6, waiting to be read).

I don't want to expand from those three ongoing titles or get back to my glory days of buying, like, seven books a week but what I found I enjoyed most was going back and finding all the things I meant to read but never had the time or money to get into at the time. In my case, that's meant things like Bone, Strangers in Paradise and The Tick, and graphic novels like The Tale of One Bad Rat and Maus. Whatever was ever on your To Read list, the good news is, it's still out there waiting to be read and while comic shops are reporting a boost in monthly sales thanks to DC right now, it's still very much a reader's market so far as back issues are concerned. I've found quite a lot of things in the quarter bins that would have gone for thrice their cover price once upon a time.

boredsilly

I cannot recommend using the library to get back into comics enough. It's free, so there is no barrier of entry (price), so you can try anything. There is a lot of good stuff out there just waiting for you to eat up.

And if you have a good library system, they will have a lot of series in trade that you can mainline, instead of having to wait like those who read them month to month (Y The Last Man, Fables, DMZ, Preacher, Ultimate Spider-Man, Alias, etc).

innocentfreak

Well so far I started with Marvel Civil War. I am definitely digging it so far even though I am missing some back story. I am about seven comics in.

It is disappointing though to see digital comics not taking a page out of Steam's handbook. I found Comixology, but even the sale prices feel high to me for old books. Of course since I have an iPad the Marvel subscription won't work since it is desktop and flashbased.

I think my biggest challenge will be what to read and more importantly what order. I can't seem to find a good comic book site that does TiVo like suggestions or Netflix recommendations off of ratings. Also it would be nice if it gave some clue as to what to read in what order.

Boba Fett

I thought Marvel had their own app?

innocentfreak

It looks like Marvel and DC have their own App, but they are also synced with Comixology so if you buy in either Marvel or DC it shows up in Comixology. I don't think it works the other way though.

Dark Horse, Image, Arcana and Graphicly all have their own app from what I can tell.

Supermallet

Just use Comixology. It's the same app as Marvel/DC, only not branded. Anything you buy from Comixology works in the app.

fujishig

This is not completely true. If you buy a Marvel comic from the Comixology App, you cannot download it again from the Marvel app without paying for it again. If you buy it from the Marvel app it is available in both. DC works both ways, only Marvel is like this, which is why it's been speculated for a long time that someday marvel is going to do their own thing without comixology... otherwise why keep the purchases separate?

Supermallet

Anything you buy from Comixology works in the Comixology app. Why use the Marvel app if you're already using Comixology, which offers comics from multiple publishers?

boredsilly

It's not hard to find suggestions on what to read, but for a netflix style recommendation thing, I find Amazon to be ok. It's not perfect, but it is a good way to find things that are related to what you liked thanks to the amazon suggestions.

The order of books isn't so hard, since most of them have volume numbers on them. I can be tricky figuring out to read in relation to other series though.

Adam Tyner

I haven't bought anything from the Marvel app (well, maybe a few $0.99 back issues, but whatever), although the app does have 3 or 4 free comics that are posted every Tuesday. They're usually terrible, but still...free! I don't think those issues are free on Comixology, and even if they are, they'd be a lot tougher to find than they are in the Marvel app (just since there aren't 48,000 free indie books/previews to get in the way; the sort-by-date is really weird for these free Marvel books too).

fumanstan

I really liked Civil War, although I never read any of the billion other side stories. As someone that mostly just read a bunch of trade paperbacks to catch up, I thought House of M is a good read for some info before Civil War if you didn't read it, and then into Secret Invasion and Siege to cover the major Marvel stories going on that are nicely collected.

davidh777

Yeah, sometimes I use Amazon for similarities, though they're limited by their data. E.g., if you look at some omnibus pre-orders, they'll most likely be paired with similar pre-orders, like how most Oscar pre-order movies will be matched together since that's what the same people are ordering. Once you get a few years of purchases, the data smooths out a little, e.g., pairing Green Lantern with more GL, etc.

This can be tricky, though, since trades can be sporadic. I was getting really into Nightwing a few years ago and got some trades only to find out that after a certain point they just... stopped and subsequent issues were not collected.

brayzie

Promethea by Alan Moore. Probably one of the better books out there. I stayed away from it initially because I thought it was going to be some dense, boring book about magic. It is about magic, but it's more like what-if-Wonder Woman-was-based-in-magic-and-also-written-extremely-well.

The Next Issue Project #1An oversized Image issue that features modern artists doing stories based on very obscure Golden Age characters as well as new stories. The best story is Stardust, the Super Wizard, which is almost like a prescuror to Miracleman.

Green Lantern
Specifically REBIRTH and SINESTRO CORPS WAR. The best all around DC comic run the company's put out in years. Nothing groundbreaking but really fun.

Tomorrow Stories
An anthology title featuring various on-going characters, all written by Alan Moore, and drawn by different artists. The covers and characters look a little old fashioned but the stories are pretty clever.

Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader
Neil Gaiman doing his version of the last Batman story. Not Sandman level, but definitely above the standard superhero fare.

Astonishing X-Men
I wasn't around to experience the well regarded Claremont/Byrne run but I imagine this series is a close approximation to what it felt like to be reading X-Men back then. Excellent artwork and very interesting storylines.

boredsilly

Oh yeah, or you can have the opposite thing happen like what's going on with the post One More Day Spidey trades. They, for reasons I will never understand, don't have volume numbers on the spine. I think that's crazy because there are SO MANY trades of Spidey, it is easy to get turned around. But for most books this shouldn't be an issue.

fujishig

A lot of books, especially of long running series, don't have volume numbers on the spine (for instance, X-men). If you really want to get those in order, I suggest looking up a reading guide, which seems really dumb but other than looking up every volume on Amazon and noting down which issues they contain, that's all you can do. Plus, Marvel pretty much runs their trade division like a larger pamphlet division, meaning that even though all the volumes should theoretically be available to buy, they often have holes and/or go out of print really quickly.

Travis McClain

Another handy way to keep up with which collected editions you need is to use comicbookdb.com. There's also a rating system there, but I haven't paid enough attention to it to get a feel for how helpful it is.

innocentfreak

cool I will check them out.

I am also trying to find a hot deal type site like cheapassgamer for comics and comic book trades paperbacks/hardcovers, but no such luck yet.