When I was much younger, I used to collect a ton of comics and never really took care of them and as I got older, I stopped collecting and stopped bothering not so much because comics "weren\'t cool" -- and you\'re an idiot if you stop reading anything because it\'s not the "cool" thing to do, but moreso because the medium at the time was in a huge slump with stories and art. There just wasn\'t anything good being put on shelves and prices were jacking up on a monthly basis because the art was more prized then the story and people were buying to collect rather then to read and that\'s a waste in my opinion.
This past summer however, I went ahead and decided to post in some comic book threads on another forum (GAF) and found that a lot of people on there actually have a great deal of respect for the medium and they pointed me in the right direction for what\'s great, what to avoid, and what to look into. Since then, I\'ve picked up so many great stories that I\'ve been able to get Rya, her sister, and two of our good friends into reading them almost religiously. There\'s just so much really good stuff out there that it\'s sad that plenty of them are being ignored.
I even figured with the influx of comic book based films that the medium would take off once again, but I suppose with the few culturally tainted out there, it\'s still not the "cool" thing to do and that\'s pretty dissapointing. Even Road to Perdition came from a comic book wether you realize it or not and there are plenty of other books with stories and characters just as or more intriguing then that.
Anyways, here\'s what I currently read --
Y The Last Man - About the sudden unexplained death of every last y-chromosomed being on the planet except for one human named Yorrick and his Colobus monkey, Ampersand. Intriguing because it examines the world as a whole and its reaction to such a crisis.
Batman
Detective Comics
The Flash
The Pulse - The Dialy Bugle is losing readership by the day and somehow, it needs to keep up with the times give the people what they want, coverage on superheroes by superheroes.
Daredevil
Ultimate Spider-Man
Ultimate X-Men
Ultimates
Fables - A catastrophic event causes the make-believe world of Snow White, Beauty and the Beast and several others to leave their own realm and come, in secret, to the living world of man where they must secretly live in New York as regular human beings with a few surprises here and there.
4 - What if super heroes, like anyone else, needed jobs too? That\'s what this story explores as the Fantastic Four are now evicted from their homes and forced out onto the streets to be productive citizens, not just productive super heroes.
Fantastic Four
Gotham Central
The Sandman - A series of dream-like mature stories fit for any reader interested in the medium. It\'s won several awards for it\'s take on many different aspects of society and the human psyche.
Batman\\Superman
Hellboy
