50 Things I Love About Comics

By popular request...

Can a request be deemed popular when it originates from one person? Surely it can when a single person makes up over a quarter of readership.

These are not in any order - to rank such a thing would be madness. There is probably 50.



Getting to see Wolverine cut loose once every five years, and using that to fuel my love of the character during the dull, over-exposed interim.

Transmetroplitan - recently [accurately] described online as "basically porn for journalism majors".

Grant Morrison's energetic brain in general.

All-Star Superman: Joy on page! Joy on page!

My childhood status as a 'Marvel zombie', and how it opens up a wealth of unread stories from all other sources.

The smell of a new graphic novel. Really get your nose up into the spine and you'll know what I mean. Bliss.

All-Star Batman, and how it trumped repeated use of the word "goddamm" with a 'printing error' that described Black Canary as a "cunt".

Highschool conversations about how Wolverine could be properly killed.

Neil Gaiman's Sandman = masterpiece. Collected the trades out-of-order over a few years and read them as I went. Sitting down at the end and re-reading it all from start to finish inspired a feeling I can sadly never repeat.

Finding a great comic run, now completed, that I've never read. Reading the whole thing in a weekend.

The rare occasion in which I find someone to talk to about something I've just read and am entirely jazzed about.

The Spiderman Clone Saga. Sure, it's dross that lasted for ever and ever and ever and ever, but it occurred when I was a kid actually collecting monthly comics. I loved it's massively overcomplicated bulk with all my heart.

The movie Spiderman 2. Loved the first one, but the three-dimensionality of the fights in the sequel captured the character's abilities in spectacular fashion.

Alan Moore's Miracleman. Read it while quite drunk. Spent weeks picking up bits of my mind.

Nextwave.

The Dark Knight, and the general 'comic book films can be taken seriously and be awesome' vibe that it represents.

Watchmen. Every list needs Watchmen. It really is that good. I've got the graphic novel and the Absolute edition. The Absolute is a sight to behold, but reading from it inspires shooting neck pain.

The Comic Geek Speak podcast + community. Vicarious comic talk ftw!

The Iron Man film. Funtacular!

Tracking online discussion of the generally negative portrayal of women in comics, and seeing the male readership fail to see the issue time and time again.

The Age of Apocalypse. Man, I ate that up.

Realising that the 'comics crash of the '90s', regarded by all as the medium's darkest days, was the exact period in which I was reading and loving everything. Nowhere to go but up!

Any time a hero becomes a vampire - I've seen this happen to Wolverine, Batman and Storm. All good.

Internally rationalising breaks in continuity. I love making all this stuff fit with leaps of logic that make sense to only me.

Alternate versions of comic book characters, particularly Spiderman 2099 and the Kal-El Batman.

Casanova. A comic that is unabashedly a comic but also transcends what is traditionally achieved in a comic. Also? Sentences like that.

I must admit that I enjoy the escapism of superhero comics, especially the 'hero plucked out of obscurity' type of thing.

Any comic that can make me go 'no way!' in my brain. For example; The Authority.

Blankets: The only comic to make me cry.

When a writer and artist really figure it out and work together in concert, rather than producing an illustrated novel.

Lettering that is wacky and evocative, yet not impossible to read. See Arkham Asylum for an example that skirts close to illegibility, yet I feel pulls it off.

Mulling over Alan Moore's work for weeks after having read it. Some of it can be a bit of an unenergetic slog, but it pays dividends.

Seeing comic storylines hit the mainstream headlines, such as when Cap died or when Spidey unmasked. Such an odd experience.

Witnessing the bizarre hoops comics can jump through to restore the status quo after any change.

I really like it when mutants have a single, clearly-defined power that they can leverage to achieve a number of things. Wolverine cheats because he's got a few abilities, but Magneto? "Mastery of magnetism", and he does all sorts of stuff.

Spiderman's frankly terrible catalogue of villains. Vulture, Shocker, Paste Pot Pete. Fitting for the character.

As cheesy as they are, I love What-if comics in which everybody dies.

I rarely get to visit comic shops. When I do I love browsing for hours to find the perfect trade to lay my $30 on.

Imaginative takes on the unique point of view characters have. I loved that X-Factor issue in which Quicksilver laments his super speed, and how it leads him to view the rest of the world as moving painfully slow.

Animal Man. The metafictional elements were inspired, but I totally dug on his having a family, and his decision to wear a jacket over his costume because, well, I think we all would if we were in a spandex suit.

John Romita Jr's artwork. As a kid I found it kind of blocky and simplistic, but these days I kind of think it's the perfect comic book artwork.

The Marvel: Ultimate Alliance and X-Men: Legends video games, as well as that old school X-Men scrolling four-player beat 'em up game you used to find in arcades. Just give me the characters I love and a legion of asshats to punch and I'm golden.

Batman's rogues gallery. Best villains in comics. Hush, which reeks of "I want to get all these baddies up in here", works because of this.

Holding spirited debates about what superpower would be the best to have [It's telepathy/telekinesis].

Multiple Man sending his duplicates out to see the world for him.

The first 30 or so issues of Invincible.

The Joker when he is written how I like - as a cruel psychopath who is terrifying to all around, but laughing all the while.

They way that someone can ask an innocent question about why a character is doing something, and responding with "well, that depends on which continuity you adhere to, and we really need to start back in 1984."

Reading about how things could've been, eg: Wolverine was to be an evolved wolverine, Peter Parker would've been a clone.

Any time someone is punched through a building.