I am not a big comics reader in general and certainly not a big superhero enjoyer, but the thing that got me to go “ok, this is great, I see what people see in it” is All-Star Superman. 100 years of pulp wackiness compressed into a diamond of genuine pathos. It’s a limited story with an actual ending as well, which helps (a lot of what annoys me about normal superhero comics is their mmo-like infinite seriality). Singlehandedly got me to understand the appeal of Superman specifically as a character, who until then seemed the blandest blank slate imaginable. I’d recommend giving it a try on a “if you don’t like this, you probably won’t like any of them” basis.
Otherwise, and I know this is the snooty pop-negative Chuck Klosterman style take, I do find superhero deconstructions to be a lot more entertaining than actual superhero stuff. Watchmen is basically perfect, and I have an affection for Punisher MAX (shock jock bad boy Garth Ennis’ take on the character, who evolves him basically into a pitiless demon avatar of violence, kind of like the new Doomslayer except without all the worldbuilding canon horseshit that ultimately ruined that character) that very few others seem to share. I recommend them.
How screamingly hateful against fat people and trans folks is max because god ennis totally wrote an arc of the pre max comics to have a stand in for a trans woman get brutally mocked and murdered so he’s pretty much on my shit list forever.
every story arc in punisher max is him killing a different ethnic group stereotype and every time a woman speaks it’s the most embarrassing shit. I liked the greg rucka punisher. there was another writer I read that was good only if you enjoy seeing your favorite tactical brands and gear represented, I can’t remember his name but he sucked outside of that quality anyway
as a non-comics-enjoyer for the most part, i only like absolute garbage. i think way, way too much about The Batman Who Laughs, both the character and the book, for being the dumbest 12-year-old-drawing-in-their-trapper-keeper idea carried out to fruition. and taken totally seriously!! like, he almost ends the entire universe, along with a bunch of other “evil batmen” with twists like “what if batman…had a gun??” it’s the worst, i love it.
the thing i find most intriguing about comics is how even these extremely stupid ideas somehow get folded into the larger continuity and become boring. The Batman Who Laughs is Just Another Bad Guy now.
so yeah i think for me it’s only the totally self-serious yet extremely stupid stuff that i like, and once it becomes folded in then i stop caring.
i’m also a big fan of Gambits (the idea not the guy), so any time a plot becomes convoluted to the point of confusion, i’m there for it. plans working out at the last second based on pure chance (but depicted as a careful web of events executed by a master of manipulation (i.e. every fucking batman comic ever made)) is catnip to me. reading something and going “wow that was cool” and then thinking for .0001 seconds and going “wait that was extremely dumb” is something i crave on a deep level
every once in a while there’s a superhero comic i genuinely like for non-garbage reasons - @Godamn_Milkman showed me one where Superman and some random asshole switch places for a while, and it was a really nice story (with great art) about like…being a better person? It was simple but effective. And I can’t remember the friggin name and I can’t find it in a google search so, yeah
but yeah it mostly doesn’t work for me. i get most of what i need by Thinking About (but never finishing) Homestuck, or playing Factorio or whatever. Needlessly complex schemes are available in other media, it turns out.
I do need to get back to reading some of the worst batman stuff though because there’s a level of trash that’s hard to find in anything else.
i’m not going to read it, but i can’t help but admire this level of insanity coming from a large media conglomerate. though thinking about it, they’re probably just trying to replicate morrisonesque stories without having to hire morrison to write them
i actually do like gotham-based stuff a lot, though as the common wisdom goes, batman himself is one of the least interesting parts of that
I ran into this mega asshole from my distant past at the comic store a couple months back, and he was hyped that Azrael was back in the Batman books because it proved DC was no longer trying to be “woke.”
He then went through a bunch of off the shelf issues in a rather rough manner complaining that none of the books at the store were in mint condition.
This guy used to hang out at the local coffee shop and was one of those dudes who would tell obviously bullshit stories about himself to try to impress people. He went on this long long rant the first time I met him about how he was the coolest guy in his college marching band and he single handedly rescued the team’s cheerleaders from drowning in quicksand. Everyone I was there with crept out gradually til I was the only person in the whole shop with him.
There’s another local dude who goes to all the comic cons. He’s an artist but instead of tabling, he aggressively sells predrawn sketches of popular characters out of his trenchcoat Hollywood drug dealer style.
He has a YouTube channel that he forced me to subscribe to on my phone in front of him when he was trying to sell me his Deadpool art. When it eventually popped up in my feed, it was all about how cool that guy who draws those Spider Woman butt covers is. This was immediately before covid, and he then quickly transitioned to these first person videos of him standing really close to people looking for toilet paper in grocery stores.
QUICKSAND WILL ONLY SUCK YOU UP TO LIKE WAIST DEEP ITS TOO DENSE TO DROWN A PERSON. my favorite quicksand fetishist adigun a pollack always freaks out about how media constantly fucks this up
