The Church Of Comic Books

[brnleague99]

This is the place...for you comic book "geeks" and "freaks" to unite and spread your gospel. As a comic book fanatic since 1987 with a personal collection of over 2500 books I was very surprised that this forum has NO comic book thread. So I fixed that.

A couple of days ago, I was in my local comic book haunt looking for Azrael #1 and Blackest Night: Superman #3 (neither of which they had) when I stumbled across a Boom Studios release called Die Hard: Year One and I thought..."an extended universe for the Die Hard movies, that's awesome." So I bought it. And liked it enough to give it a shoutout.

http://www.boom-studios.net/die-hard-ye ... ver-a.html

It's July 4th, 1976, and rookie NYPD officer John McClane (along with the rest of New York) is awaiting the Bicentennial celebration, little suspecting that he will soon be sucked into a case involving killer cops and a soulless mobster.

Pick this one up. It's a four-parter and looks damned promising.

[Don Alexander]

Ah, a new thred to de-virginize!

I've never been a big comic book fan or collector at all. Once read a bit of Mickey Mouse and Donald duck... One reasonably prized possesion I love is "The New Teen Titans" origin story from 1982.

Here at work, all I have is the awesome French series "Chronicles of the Black Moon" as well as Jeff Smith's Bone.

I was more into comic strips, with Calvin & Hobbes my utter fave, and I have like the first 35 Garfield books.

[JVDifferent]

I own absolutely everything written by Jhonen Vasquez (of Invader Zim fame) and it is all as fucked up and delightful as I imagined. Here's a listylist...

Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: About an absolute whackjob, Johnny, who kills people for their blood. Said blood is then painted on a wall in Johnny's house in order to appease a demonic moose that hides behind it. And only the colour of fresh blood will do, so Johnny has to keep killing people.
I Feel Sick: About a girl Johnny dates for a very brief period, before he tried to kill her.
Squee!: About a little innocent boy who is unfortunate enough to live in the house next to Johnny. Sadly, Johnny treats him better as a person than his own father does.
Filler Bunny: Vasquez gives himself only 24 hours to write these comics. He is called Filler Bunny because he has terrible things done to him in order to fill the pages.
The Bad Art Collection: About critters who all have terrible things done to them. The difference between this and other pieces of Vasquez's work is that it they are all drawn badly intentionally.
Everything Can Be Beaten: A single little book about a creature whose purpose in life is to beat kittens into a pulp with a meat-hammer. He has a brief existential crisis, but comes to the understanding that he doesn't have to restrict himself to kittens alone. (If I remember the storyline correctly, it's been a while).

[ExplodingJoe]

Filler Bunny is the only Vasquez stuff I ever really liked... I always felt like he tried to hard on the rest. It worked in a cartoon, but comics aren't meant to be wordy.

[Dirty n Evil]

Not only am I an attendee of the Church of Comic Books, but I think the fact I used to actually manage one years ago makes me a Bishop or a Cardinal or something. Okay, an Evil Cardinal.

Working at the book store that I do, I have the freedom of reading many comic books off the racks as they come in or pick up a graphic novel collection for something we don't get regularly. Most recently I read the ending to Ultimatum: Ultimate Spider-Man (the one title in the entire Ultimate line I did enjoy) and was very, very, very unhappy with the ending. The book that I'm most enjoying at the moment? New Avengers simply because I'm enjoying seeing how Spidey's banter when he's a lone hero can seem witty, but when he's in a group it makes him seem flakey and irritates others... I find it quite humorous.

[Azrael]

The only American style comic book I ever got religious about was WaRP's Elfquest. And to this day those little Wolfriders are the only elves I can stand. I dabbled with a few other titles, namely G. I. Joe, Punisher and of course X-Men in there plethora of incarnations and spin-pffs, but never could get the wherewithal to keep up.

[zgwortz]

During the mid-late 80s and early 90s, I collected comic books avidly. The local comic book store kept a list of comics to pull for each of their frequent customers - mine would typically be around 30 or more a month.

I have a close to complete Chris Claremont run on X-Men. I have the original Watchmen and V for Vendetta comics. I have most of the early Ninja High School books, including several signed copies of the first three issues. I have a lot of the early manga translations from Viz and others. (I was heavily into anime at the time as well...) And I also have a lot of worthless stuff, like the complete run of Dazzler.

All of it is still in my house, individually bagged, packed into over 25 of the long comic book boxes. One of these decades, I may get around to selling some of it.

[Dirty n Evil]

Ninja High School, eh? Yeah, that had some really funny stuff in that series. I'm always surprised that Ben Dunn and spin-off artist Robert DeJesus never did more. Although I have seen Ben Dunn put his name to one of those "How to draw in the manga style" books in the cartooning section of my bookstore.

[zgwortz]

Yeah, it was funny. Even though it started as a bit of a take-off of a Rumiko Takahashi manga and anime series called Urusei Yatsura. I was (and still am, kind of) a big fan of UY back in the day, so when NHS was released and I heard about it through the anime grapevine, I had to get it. Since the original 3 comic run wasn't widely distributed, I needed to actually send a check direct to the publisher to get those issues. (And Ben Dunn kindly signed them, and even wrote a very brief memo back thanking me for the support... ) They were later reprinted when they got a new publisher and the series continued.

[JVDifferent]

Mein gott I would kill for the original Watchmen and V For Vendetta issues!

[ExplodingJoe]

my favorite comic, that I wish I had, was from the old marvel "what if" series.

It was "What if the Punisher was Captain America?", that issue was great.

[Dirty n Evil]

There was an issue of What If that my friends and I still chuckle about over a decade later. It was "What if Professor X became the Juggernaut?" It wasn't that the story was so good or bad, but simply because how the artist in question drew Charles Xavier as the Juggernaut... not only was it humorous to see a bulked up, muscular Professor X, but also the artist attempted to show the extra body mass in Xavier's head too. But with Chuckles being bald and all that, it just made him appear to have this giant flesh pumpkin head look that was sooooo funny.

[Azrael]

Mein gott I would kill for the original Watchmen and V For Vendetta issues!

Well now JVD's friends know what to get her for Christmas. *hint, hint*

[zgwortz]

** Hires a bodyguard to protect myself from JVD's murderous acquisition impulses... **

I may actually have two complete sets of V for Vendetta -- I'd have to check. That came out during the period where I was getting multiple copies of things I thought would have good resale value later.

One of these years I *really* have to go through that collection, sort it, and catalogue it. I'm sure I've got some other stuff buried in there that people would ooh and aah over.

[Dirty n Evil]

I have to admit I have a few things that few other people would be that terribly interested in... I have nearly complete runs of both Rom: The Spaceknight and Moon Knight (his first three series). I even have the first two issues of Speedball. Now, I also heavily collected the X-Men at the time, so I have a lot of key issues that over time have become integral to the history of many characters. Oh, and I own the Avengers Annual that was the first appearance of Rogue, too. But like Zgwortz, I have them in unsorted long boxes that I haven't gone through in ages.