I'm really liking the style and tone of this one. Are there any others that come to mind like "Here"?
IMO it's kind of a one-of-a-kind book. In terms of the story focusing on one physical location through time, I was recently recommended a GN called Park Bench by Christophe Chabouté. I haven't read it yet, but it focuses on one specific park bench through a long time frame. If the formal layout and design of McGuire's panels appeals to you, you might enjoy the work of Chris Ware (Jimmy Corrigan et al).
Thanks for the tip. Will look into that one too. Maybe not necessarily the same story but in terms of minimalist style are there any others like it? It felt more like an art book than a graphic novel (minimal text and all about the visuals). Is there a minimalist style in graphic novels?
Chris Ware would definitely qualify as "minimalist". You might like Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli. If I think of anything else, I'll post it here. There are definitely more "minimalist" comics and GN's out there but they're not springing to mind at the moment.
Why is Marvel retconning 55-60 year old heroes? Scott, Jean & Wolverine: The Poly X-Men Relationship May Have a Queer Twist
That seems to be the general direction comic books are going. I found out today that, according to various YouTube videos, that 5G (Fifth Generation) is going to result a large number of characters being replaced with new versions. See the following video:
Marvel went nuts with the replacement characters in 2015-2016 or so. The originals eventually came back, as usual.
Just create new characters that meet whatever creed, sexuality, religion, etc. important to the writer. That's the consensus anyway. Same. There have been way too many universe shattering/ re-shaping events over the last 15-20 years.
Right? I spent about five years trying to get back into mainstream superhero comics and failed completely. This was around the time of Infinite Crisis and the first "52" and Marvel's Civil War. It seems like there's a huge crossover event every summer, after which "nothing will ever be the same", to the point where it's impossible to just read one or two titles in sequence and enjoy them. When they did a crossover event in the Ultimate Marvel series (which was supposed to consist of titles that you could just pick up and read without knowing 40 years of backstory), I called it a day. Fortunately, there are still plenty of great non-superhero comics being published, so I can still find something to read, and like Daniel Plainview, I always enjoy going back and re-reading something from the Bronze Age.
Me too. I tried and initially enjoyed DC Rebirth. It was supposed to bring it all together again thanks in part to Wally West - The Flash (my favorite speedster). The most surprising element that I really enjoyed was the addition of Jonathan Kent - Superboy. I'm not really a Superman fan, but I was now reading TWO of his titles. At peak, I was reading 8 titles for a few months before the company started to go off the rails again. Especially when Brian Bendis aged up Jonathan for no other reason than disliking Clark & Lois' family dynamic. Then the Dark Metal thing followed by Doomsday clock. Yeah... I'm done. Image comics has been my go to for refreshingly good reading.
Yeah, Image has really been great since about the time Walking Dead started to get popular. They've had a lot of entertaining and intelligent comics that don't require you to buy 25 titles a month just to keep up. They seem to have improved a lot as the quality of Vertigo titles dropped (although I loved The Unwritten).
I bailed out in the 90's at the time of the "Heroes Reborn" fiasco (derailing a mighty fine run on Captain America by Waid and Garney). My book list was getting smaller and smaller since the late 80's. The loud and obnoxious artwork was a major turnoff. Women with enormous breasts. Men with giant arms and tiny heads. Liefeld. And four words per page didn't help. Splash page after splash page. Nobody knew how to tell a story anymore. At the end the only thing I read was Jeff Smith's "Bone". And when that was over I had no reason to go to the comic shop ever again. And I was ok with that. Years later I was in a supermarket and saw Captain America #1 on the shelf by Ed Brubaker. I flipped through it and thought it looked pretty interesting. So I rolled the dice on it and got hooked. And the book was great... until everything had to come to a screeching halt so Captain America could (spoiler alert) "die". Bucky took over as Cap and it was still a decent read but got more and more annoying, until one day they announced that the Captain America series was getting renumbered and would confusingly resume at #600. I tried to stick with it. Then they say now you have to buy "Captain American Reborn" mini-series to follow the story. Sigh. Then they say, oh, Steve Rogers is returning, the book is being rebooted again, here's an exciting new issue #1 and the Captain America series you've been reading will now be called "Captain America and Bucky". If you are a subscriber to this book, well, tough ****. I couldn't take it any more. I threw in the towel once again. These books are for a new generation of readers, not me. If I have a craving I'll just re-read old Defenders and Iron Fist comics from the 70's and be content. If there isn't a Hostess ad in the book I'm not interested in reading it. Excelsior.
Not unlike my experience. Brubaker was one of the best writers of superhero comics that Marvel had in the 2000's. His run on Captain America was great. His run on Daredevil was great. Bendis and Maleev's run on Daredevil was great. But it always gets mucked up by whatever crossover event is happening that year. I couldn't believe that they even shoehorned in a "Civil War" reference into Neil Gaiman's Eternals series. Also, 70s Defenders was the best.
Funny enough, Civil War was what started to lure me back to comics in 2006 after about a 10 year absence (I had a pull list at a comic store in the 90's about halfway up to my teen years until I got sick of the state of all comics at the time). That, and Grant Morrison on Batman also in 2006 I really enjoyed. I still think Civil War was a good read, though everyone was acting widely out of character and it led to some very bad things (like the Spider-Man unmasking to the public subplot that upended his title for years). I think the Marvel movie improved on the Civil War concept a lot. Marvel Publishing did say they were going to easy up on the events for awhile a few years ago. They had the War Of The Realms thing last year, and they have one on tap for this year. But they're easy enough to ignore if you just want to follow your character.
Michael Rose wrote the following as part of a post: I strongly agree! DC Comics has had seven universe-altering events since 1985 (Crisis On Infinite Earths, Zero Hour - Crisis In Time, The Kingdom, Infinite Crisis, Convergence, Flashpoint, and Doomsday Clock [which led to DC Rebirth]) and, with the exception of Crisis On Infinite Earths, each has layered complexity on top of complexity. This makes it difficult for both new readers and older readers and drives them away. Part of the problem stems from the desire to keep some of the old continuity while also changing things. As an example, they completely rebooted Superman after Crisis On Infinite Earths and one of the changes was that he was never a Superboy. This led to completely rebooting The Legion Of Super-Heroes because Superboy was a member of the Legion and the Creative Team worked for years fixing the continuity problems created by this change, and they eventually just had to give up and wipe out everything and start again (at the time they commented that they were spending more time trying to fix continuity problems than telling stories).
I'm currently going back through the Scott Synder/Greg Capullo run on Batman from the Court of Owls onward. I find it very enjoyable both in storyline and artwork. JohnK
Amazing run—one of my favorite on the character ever. Also remained quite strong for its duration of around 50 issues. One of the best Batman runs. What I’ve read of the duo’s Last Knight miniseries is very good as well.
I started reading comics in earnest late 50's-early 60's! I was so dissapointed by the 'nu52', especially the treatment of Superman, that it actually completely soured my entire view of the medium, I left them ALL behind! Of all the books, I tried hanging with the Snyder/Capulo Batman, as they did some great work that 1st year. But then came some storyline of bats on a motorcycle followed with a Jim Gordon as Bats and I bailed! I haven't even walked into my local comics store for many years! While I've never seen anything saying so, I've always felt like I wasnt/haven't been the only one. I'd be real curious to know the number of old-timers that left comics thanks to the new 52! ....and btw, of course, the new 52 has been undone and redone so many times that calling it a failure at this point is a bit redundant!
Brubaker's latest run of Criminal, drawn impeccably by Sean Phillips, was spectacular. A crime comic could not be done any better.
Image has had a couple of great reads lately, Middlewest and Criminal tops for me among them. Invisible Kingdom from Dark Horse has also been a great sci-fi read.
Yeah, all of Brubaker and Phillips' stuff is amazing (Sleeper, Femme Fatale, etc.). Their last two standalone graphic novels are as good as anything they've done (My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies and Bad Weekend).
