100 Things I Like About Comics

Well, everybody else is doing this and so shall I. Have to hurry up or I’ll also miss jumping off the cliff....

1. Alan Moore (almost everything)
2. Neal Adams
3. Sergio Aragones
4. assaults on narrative causality: time travel, alternate universes, clones, mind swaps, etc.
5. Astro City
6. Barry Ween
7. Peter Bagge
8. Batman
9. being interested in something that’s still not respectable even in a world where academics study horror films, porn and The Simpsons
10. Brian Michael Bendis
11. blogs (I can’t wade through the high noise level of forums but there are numerous top-notch comics blogs)
12. Bone
13. Ernie Bushmiller
14. Calvin & Hobbes
15. Cerebus
16. the first few years of Claremont/Byrne’s X-Men
17. Daniel Clowes
18. Gene Colan
19. “Comics are just words and pictures. You can do anything with words and pictures.”
20. continuity so insanely convoluted that it can’t be sorted out (for example Kang despite Avengers Forever, Supergirl, chunks of X-Men history)
21. covers (they promise so much)
22. Johnny Craig
23. Robert Crumb
24. Daredevil: Born Again
25. Peter David
26. Paul Dini
27. Steve Ditko
28. documentary comics (Joe Sacco, Jaxon, Louis Riel, American Elf, Cartoon History, etc)
29. Doonesbury
30. Evan Dorkin
31. Duckmasters Carl Barks & Don Rosa
32. 80 & 100 Page Giants
33. 80s indies (Grimjack, Scout, Airboy, etc)
34. Will Eisner
35. fanboy-intensive comics that get it right (JLA/Avengers, Priest’s Black Panther, David’s Captain Marvel, etc)
36. Fantagraphics
37. The Far Side
38. finding the gold in dross (Moore’s Swamp Thing and Supreme, Morrison’s Animal Man, Gruenwald’s Squadron Supreme, Simone’s Deadpool, etc)
39. Nick Fury
40. Bill Gaines’ Congressional testimony
41. genres that have to be forced into superhero comics to be commercially viable (crime, soap opera, satire, absurdism, political commentary, etc)
42. Gregory
43. Bill Griffith
44. Hellblazer
45. George Herriman
46. indie anthologies
47. in-jokes
48. Gil Kane
49. Sam Kieth
50. Jack Kirby
51. Joe Kubert
52. Harvey Kurtzman
53. Life in Hell
54. Little Nemo
55. Lone Wolf & Cub
56. Love & Rockets
57. the first few years of Mad
58. manga exploding in the U.S.
59. the Marvel Family (Hoppy? Uncle Marvel? Tawky Tawny? Mr. Mind? Those were the days)
60. Sheldon Mayer
61. Dave McKean
62. metafiction & parodies (Ambush Bug, Byrne’s She-Hulk, the Inferior Five, Squadron Supreme, etc)
63. Mark Millar (esp. The Authority & The Ultimates)
64. Grant Morrison
65. now-dormant genres (comedy, celebrity, Westerns, war, romance, etc)
66. Oni Press
67. opening a big box of comics found cheap on eBay
68. Harvey Pekar
69. Plastic Man (Jack Cole’s and nobody else’s)
70. Pogo
71. pulp recreations (Hellboy, The Goon, Mr. Monster, etc)
72. Queen & Country
73. “realism” for completely non-realistic subjects (Supreme Power, Kingdom Come, Gotham Central, Marvels, etc)
74. reasonably priced reprints (going the gamut from The Complete Peanuts to whatever compilation DC is releasing this month) and especially the general trend towards paperbacks
75. Sandman
76. second-tier companies (Warren, Charlton, Gold Key and so forth)
77. serious or at least historically minded comics mags: The Comics Journal, Alter Ego, Hogan’s Alley, Comic Book Marketplace, Comic Art, Comic Book Artist, etc
78. 70s spookiness (Phantom Stranger when he was actually mysterious, The Spectre when he was nasty, Deadman, The Creeper, The Demon, etc)
79. Bill Sienkiewicz
80. Silver Age goofiness (super pets, Bat-Mite, Bizarro, gorillas, robots, any issue of Lois Lane or Jimmy Olsen, etc)
81. Walt Simonson
82. smart kids that aren’t written for kids (Courtney Crumrin, Hopeless Savages, Runaways, Grayson’s Titans)
83. sound effects
84. Spider-Man
85. Smokey Stover
86. John Stanley
87. Jim Steranko
88. Roger Stern (esp. Avengers: Under Siege)
89. superhero team-ups
90. Osama Tezuka
91. tongue-partly-in-cheek hucksterism of 60s Marvel
92. Alex Toth
93. trivia (it never ends)
94. underground comix (just the idea….)
95. Vertigo at its best (Fables, Books of Magic (though not Gaiman’s original), Y: The Last Man, 100 Bullets)
96. Chris Ware
97. weekly fix at the comics store
98. Al Williamson
99. Basil Wolverton
100. the realization that I could make another 100-item list of stuff that deserves to be here that I haven’t read yet

back to our regularly scheduled programming

There's nothing to get you out of the blogging habit like working a couple of 70+ hour weeks and five weekends in a row. Out of blogging, reading, watching movies, etc.

RIP Hunter Thompson

Clearly getting a lot of coverage in the blogosphere because he pretty much invented blogging, only without computers. I haven't read any of his past few books but the two Fear & Loathings and Great Shark Hunt are among the all-time greats.