Marvel Chronology Project

I'm especially loving the current Mister Miracle series by Tom King and Mitch Gerads--it's incredibly dark, and not really a conventional sort of adventure story, but it uses the Jack Kirby stories (and a lot of his actual writing!) as a springboard to go in a completely different direction. It's mostly about depression and PTSD, really, but it's also weirdly hilarious sometimes.

And Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie's The Wicked + The Divine continues to be my favorite ongoing series--they just dropped a string of GIGANTIC plot twists they've been building up to for years. It's very much a superhero comic in some ways, and not at all in some ways. (The characters don't have costumes, but they do have instantly identifiable fashion styles...) Lots of super-enjoyable formal play in McKelvie's artwork, too. Col. Fury, I think you mentioned you enjoyed their Young Avengers a lot, and I bet you'd dig this too if you aren't reading it already.

The Hunger, Scooby Apocalypse, Walking Dead.

Hmmm... Suddenly seeing a pattern here.

I'm way behind on my non-Marvel reading (and my Marvel reading), but I have been enjoying Savage Dragon (as always), Walking Dead, Invincible, Heavy Metal, the Hellboy stuff, the Army of Darkness stuff and Dark Horse's Conan (I am caught up on those last two). Oh, and TMNT.

I recently read John Lewis' MARCH, which was excellent.

I thought Dark Knight III was great.

I've heard really good things about the current Mister Miracle series and I've always liked the character (there's a Kirby issue where he has to escape from a skyscraper which is fantastic), so I'll probably pick up the collection when it's finished. If older stuff counts, then pretty much all of the Kirby Fourth World/New Gods stuff (also Byrne's Fourth World and Simonson's Orion). Also OMAC, both the Kirby version and the '80s John Byrne version.

I've also heard really good things about both Saga and The Wicked + The Divine. Santa Claus got me the first Wicked trade so I do plan on reading it eventually. I've been told by a number of people that since I liked Gillen & McKelvie's Young Avengers so much that I'll also really like this one (I'm sure I will). I'm sure I'll get to Wicked before Saga.

I've also heard that both Scooby Apocalypse and Flintstones are really good, but cripes. There's only so many hours in a month, you know?

This doesn't really fit the criteria since it's almost 40 years old and technically published by Marvel, but I recently (like, this past weekend) finished my collection of Epic Illustrated (Marvel's attempt at doing something like Heavy Metal, basically), which I'm looking forward to reading.

I'm also behind on my non-Marvel reading. Just running thru my list sort of alphabetically, in recent years i've really enjoyed Afterlife with Archie and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina from Archie Comics. Afterlife with Archie is a great story about Jughead becoming a zombie and infecting most of Riverdale, while Archie leads a Walking Dead like exodus of survivors. Many regular characters get zombiefied or killed, and Archie comes of age. Highly entertaining. Sabrina is set in the 1960's and is also a dark coming of age story.

Bad Medicine, 2012 from Oni Press had me intrigued, and i was hoping to see more than the initial 5 issue run.

Dark Horse's 2013-2015 run of Captain Midnight was pretty good, and had a web site you could check out, which had X-Files style sightings of the mysterious Black Sky bad guys, which i've never seen before, or since.

Avatar's Crossed by Garth Ennis and Jacen Burrows is highly recommended to anyone who enjoys really gross zombie-like action. It's definitely over the edge and not for the little ones to see. Very graphic art.

Boom's Deathmatch was very enjoyable. It takes a group of Marvel-like heroes, and places them in a Contest of Champions style situation, where they are paired off and forced to battle to the death, until the Spider-Man look-alike figures out what's really happening.

It's been a fair few years now, but i have to mention Jim Starlin's Dreadstar in all of it's various forms. Starlin at his best in my opinion.

Pretty well everything published by Zenescope - Grimm Fairy Tales and it's off-shoots. They have some of the best artwork in comics anywhere, and continuity between various titles that makes Marvel look like complete amateurs. If we start the Zenescope Chronology Project, it would be way easier. My favorite character is Agent Red.

I've been getting every issue of Haunted Horror, which is a great reprint mag for 1940's and 50's pre-code horror stories. Even though i'm behind on my reading, i always put that one out to read.

All of the Warlord of Mars series put out by Dynamite are worth a read. Excellent fantasy series for Burroughs fans and anyone who enjoys a good read and good artwork.

This one probably should have gone to the top of the list - Kieron Gillen's Mercury Heat from Avatar Press. One of the best comics i've ever read. Highly recommended to anyone who enjoys science fiction crossed with police action. Can't wait for someone to pick this up for a movie.

I enjoy most comics produced by Dynamite, but Miss Fury by Rob Williams was a stand out. The current Red Sonja series has been a fun ride across America on a motor cycle, while Sonja's been trapped in our time.

Boom's Planet of the Apes series has been consistently entertaining. Sir Edward Grey, Witchfinder is one of the better titles from Dark Horse.

Last and definitely not least is Ed Brubaker & Steve Epting's Velvet from Image. One of the best, if not the best noir crime series i have ever had the pleasure of reading.

Enough rambling from me, on to someone else...

I haven't read a bad thing from Gillen yet; maybe I'll check out Mercury Heat one of these days...

I highly recommend it, Daron. The art is very graphic, however, so not for the squeamish, and it sort of has a tie-in to Crossed towards the end of the run, but it's a full-on futuristic crime action series, with a well-characterised female lead, and some excellent sf ideas..

Yeah, Saga's consistently a joy--it's kind of the Comic Everybody Likes, but Vaughan and Staples' level of craft is just off the charts. A friend of mine describes it as "The Princess Bride in space," which isn't wrong. As for that recent Flintstones series, I'm pretty happy that it existed; I wish the plotting had been stronger, but it really was clever, both totally irreverent about and faithful-in-spirit to the Flintstones of 50 years ago.

I also love Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky's "Sex Criminals" a lot (and I am amused that that of all things led to its artist writing Spectacular Spider-Man and Marvel Two-In-One), though the past couple of arcs have moved the series' tone from "brainy hilarity" to "sharp cringe comedy" to "sharp cringe emotional stabbing."

Despite every instinct that tells me it's a terrible idea in a lot of ways, I am absolutely riveted by Doomsday Clock so far.

Best original graphic novel I've read in the past year is probably Emil Ferris's "My Favorite Thing Is Monsters," which is... if you can imagine early Creepy/Eerie filtered through Lynda Barry... no, that's not a good way of putting it. Anyway, she draws spectacularly well.

My Favorite Thing Is Monsters is "set in late '60s Chicago and is filled with B-movie horror and pulp monster magazine iconography." Well crap, that sounds like it's right up my alley.

I've heard good things about Sex Criminals, and I like both Fraction and Zdarsky, so probably one of these days.

I picked up a copy of Mercury Heat. Now the trick is finding time to read it...

My favorite non-Marvel comic is "The Boys" by Garth Ennis. Can't wait to see a television series!

Suddenly, amazingly, my time is starting to open up a little bit. I just read the Vision (which I really liked) by Tom King & Walta; if the Vision is anything to judge by then I'm also going to like Mister Miracle. I'm looking forward to that but I really think I'm going to wait for the trade.

I also read Mercury Heat and really liked that one. Who knew that Murder, She Wrote would have so much influence on a story set on Mercury?

Good stuff!

I just powered through about nine years worth of Hellboy/BPRD/misc. comics (how did I fall so far behind?). Kind of worth it, though, because I didn't have to wait five years for some of the plots to wrap up.

Now it's time to read about 100 issues of the Walking Dead...

Hey Daron, couldn't help noticing that you're catching up on your reading while us newbies thrash out Secret Wars to Civil War II.

Ha! Yeah...

I know how I am, though. I tend to start one project, get most of the way through it, start to get distracted by other things, and then before I know it I'm in the middle of seven different whatevers at the same time. THIS YEAR WILL BE DIFFERENT (he tries to convince himself, fully aware he's in the middle of four different things at the moment). I'm nearing the end of this particular thing, though. Which, of course, means my non-Marvels will start to pile up and then I'll have to go through all this again in about eight or nine years.

You guys are doing great so far, but don't worry. Once I don't have this distraction staring at me I plan to blow up everything you guys have worked out so far.

yeah - i'm kind of expecting that..!

Hope you're prepared for war (a secret civil war)..