[Spacebar]

What I really don't like is the bi weekly issues system. I wish they would just release the trade and that's it. With all of these bi weekly issues they have so many deadlines and everything gets half ass done.

[Razgriz-Specter]

Reboots, Mindwipes, Writers with selective memory.

[Sunflower]

One of the things I personally hate is how Scottish or Southern (North America southern) speech is written out in comics. I just cannot stand how hard these assholes are trying and mangling words. UGH.

Recently I've been re-reading some of Image's launch books first arcs and such. Oh man, some of the things I didn't bat an eye at when I was a kid is absolutely insane now.

[kswiston]

They do, I admit, and I feel that the Shonen superhero crap is as just as terrible to read (Bleach, One Piece, etc are all shit). But they aren't as dominating in the Japanese market as compared to Marvel and DC's superhero stuff. There tends to be way more stories about ordinary people in extraordinary situations. Out of curiosity, are there american equivalents to say, sport comics or chess comics or even cooking comics?

Admittedly I have only read a handful of Manga series, and I stopped reading Manga close to a decade ago. However, from what I read, even those manga that featured ordinary things like cooking eventually turned into characters with ultra cooking powers. Look at Yakitate Japan. Yes the book is about baking, but it has samurai bakers, super scientist bakers, mystical bakers, etc.

I can't think of american comics that are strictly about sports or chess off the top of my head, but there are a lot of series about ordinary people doing things that are not supernatural, or at least no more supernatural than the things in those manga you described.

Queen and Country
The Essex County trilogy
Blue Monday
Scalped
100 Bullets and Y the Last Man to an extent

There are also a ton of Sci Fi and Fantasy series that have nothing to do with superheroes

Pax Romana is a series where a future version Catholic Church discovers the secret of time travel, and decides to send a force armed with futuristic equipment into the Roman era to ensure the rise of Catholicism.

Most people have heard of Alan Moore and V for Vendetta or From Hell. His League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Prometheus, and Top 10 series are more superhero-ish but in a way that most people can enjoy, even if you usually don't like the genre.

[Charoncaori]

Admittedly I have only read a handful of Manga series, and I stopped reading Manga close to a decade ago. However, from what I read, even those manga that featured ordinary things like cooking eventually turned into characters with ultra cooking powers. Look at Yakitate Japan. Yes the book is about baking, but it has samurai bakers, super scientist bakers, mystical bakers, etc.

Yakitate parodies shonen tropes. There are plenty of manga about more down-to-earth subjects that run from the exaggerated (kami no shizuku) to the everyday (nodame cantabile, march comes in like a lion) where that crap doesn't happen. That's because everyone in Japan reads comics, not because the genre is inherently more mature or anything.

My issue with western comics is women. Almost every time I try to read a comic, I'll be enjoying myself and the second a woman shows up I want to smack the author over the head with a copy of The Sandman. Inconsistant characterization is an issue with the entire superhero genre, but it happens most often with female characters. It pulls me out of a story faster than reversing the polarity.

[bjork]

Mark Millar

Only work of his I've read is Kick-Ass and part of Kick-Ass 2, but the attempt at being edgy with the overdone cursing is just ridiculous. And I'm not opposed to cursing, but it's just too much. It's like, "Fuck, my fuckin' name is the Fuckerfucker. Why the fuck why? Fuck, because I fuckin' fuck fuckers, fucker!" Just so dumb.

[News Bot]

Ugly art, constant retcons, never-ending stories, etc.

This. Particularly the story issues. Comics seem completely incoherent to me outside of individual plot arcs.

[the chris]

Carlie. Cooper.

What makes her a little more annoying to me is that she happens to share her first name with Joe Quesada's daughter.

[Ignatz Mouse]

The way creators are treated

The value proposition of comics-- $3-$4 for 1/6th of a story

The emphasis on shared universes. The concept itself is fine, the need to have everything connect up all the time, every issue and crossover at least once a year is just damaned annoying. I don't care about your "universe" I care about your story and characters.

[notworksafe]

Mark Millar
Frank Quitely doing art for any "big" hero book
Gambit
People who read only Marvel/DC and proclaim that comics are dead/lame/unoriginal/all superheroes

[EchosMyron1]

Comics have a unique narrative tradition with certain features (retcons, resets) that would be unacceptable/unheard of in any other storytelling medium. But it's accepted by the fans because they're used to it, and they are the only demographic that actually buys comics so the big names (Marvel/DC) have no reason to change the way they do things.* Not that non-traditional storytelling methods are necessarily a bad thing, but from my point of view all the retcons, continuity tie-ins, etc., seem like marketing gimmicks rather than genuine attempts to tell a better story. That's what I hate most about comics, I think. Too much of it is governed by marketing.

Shitty writing and a terrible over-reliance on established characters/series. It's similar to how the videogame industry has become so reliant on trotting out sequel after sequel, but it's even worse with comics. It's just not appealing for someone trying to get into comics. Also, there's no way I'll ever get into comics since they tend to do the same ol' characters time and time again, and as a result there's no point getting engaged in a character's struggles since it's so common for them to just be written back to life as a clone or some nonsense. Edit: This too. I tried reading Civil War and found myself giggling at how seriously it took a mind-bogglingly stupid story.*²

*Not actually true. wasn't the whole point of New 52 that DC felt it did need to change things? Also more people than DC/Marvel fans buy comics

*² Man, people should branch out. There's a lot of great stuff.

It's hard to resist posting a preachy list of comics to read. The "comics = (Marvel/DC) Super-Hero comics" mode of thought is so prevalent. I didn't expect it to be as much on this forum. It's not even like these issues people are listing are incorrect, they're just problems with a specific genre of comic's. Not comic's themselves.

This looks great! And my library has a copy. :D

It's a really fun comic. James Turner is great. I haven't read his most recent new series, but Rex Libris and Nil: A Land Beyond Belief are both awesome.

[ReiGun]

*² Man, people should branch out. There's a lot of great stuff. It's hard to resist posting a preachy list of comics to read. The "comics = (Marvel/DC) Super-Hero comics" mode of thought is so prevalent. I didn't expect it to be as much on this forum. It's not even like these issues people are listing are incorrect, they're just problems with a specific genre of comic's. Not comic's themselves.

Agreed. Don't get me wrong. I love my cape books (for all the silliness that exist in the genre), but a lot of the issues people are posting about and saying are keeping them from western comics could be overcome by simply ignoring the superhero genre and looking elsewhere.

[Ignatz Mouse]

Agreed. Don't get me wrong. I love my cape books (for all the silliness that exist in the genre), but a lot of the issues people are posting about and saying are keeping them from western comics could be overcome by simply ignoring the superhero genre and looking elsewhere.

Yep. My compaints are abotu superhero books alone.

My problem with non-super books is finding good ones to read. Such small print runs, little of no marketing, and I'm out of the loop.

[MisterHero]

That's not accurate at all.

It really isn't.

Superheroes are the bread-and-butter of the industry. Other popular genres like war, westerns, romance, sci-fi, exist but superheroes are the face of American comic books. They can be the most creative of the genres if used properly.

Censorship, dumb editorial decisions and retcons can't undo all the good stuff that's been written over the decades.

[highluxury]

It's like you're reading my mind. That and awful traced art. Salvador Larocca and Greg Land immediately come to mind when I think of it.

Disgusting.

This is one of the reason why I always endorse original art styles. Realistic comics/manga are so prone to plagarism. I really look down on artists who conjure stuff like the example above. Doing that involves no skill whatsoever.

Original strokes and styles make things more unique with your own personal touch and talent.

-----------------------

What Im tired of in comics though? Guns? yes, guns. The constant overuse of guns.

Hate to bring up a stereotype but american comic artists have such a hard on for guns in all sizes. That, and Im tired of the constant use of ending most superheroes with -man or -woman.

Pretty much the only american comics Im fond of and respect is Hellboy and Frank Miller's graphic novels.

[SmellyHands]

People who read only Marvel/DC and proclaim that comics are dead/lame/unoriginal/all superheroes

Pretty much this. Although, when you say DC, you should make sure you're excluding Vertigo. The Vertigo imprint is still reliably putting out good stuff.

[notworksafe]

Pretty much this. Although, when you say DC, you should make sure you're excluding Vertigo. The Vertigo imprint is still reliably putting out good stuff.

Well I'm not trying to imply that Marvel/DC are bad, just that only reading stuff from those publishers doesn't give you anything close to a full perspective on some of the cooler comics that are coming out now.

What Im tired of in comics though? Guns? yes, guns. The constant overuse of guns. Hate to bring up a stereotype but american comic artists have such a hard on for guns in all sizes. That, and Im tired of the constant use of ending most superheroes with -man or -woman. Pretty much the only american comics Im fond of and respect is Hellboy and Frank Miller's graphic novels.

Don't like guns but like Miller? Don't like -man/-woman but like Hellboy?

[highluxury]

Don't like guns but like Miller? Don't like -man/-woman but like Hellboy?

Yeah, I shouldve noted it comes off as contradictory, so that makes me a hypocrite. I enjoy Mignola and Miller for their style.

Also, as largely mentioned by many here: never ending stories. I wonder how long its gonna take before Batmans and Supermans neverending battle ends.

[sparky2112]

Superheroes.

Me, I could kiss you.

[the chris]

Some more of Larroca's tracing

[Sunflower]

Some more of Larroca's tracing

You've GOT to be joking. Got to be. Holy christ :D

[EchosMyron1]

Some more of Larroca's tracing

lol Holy shit, are there any more of these?

[Kai Dracon]

Disgusting. This is one of the reason why I always endorse original art styles. Realistic comics/manga are so prone to plagarism. I really look down on artists who conjure stuff like the example above. Doing that involves no skill whatsoever. Original strokes and styles make things more unique with your own personal touch and talent.

Perhaps its just my memory, but this issue with ridiculous amounts of traced art seemed to come to a head in the 90s, and coincided with the X-Treme Angry Asshole superhero trend. The art style of those comics (Comics The Image Way?) was super busy and detailed, beyond realistic to exaggerated realism, to emphasize the ugly and extreme attitude of the characters.

But the problem with super realistic art is that it just takes too long to pencil within the rigorous schedule of comics. I am under the impression that the average comic penciler must fully layout and pencil a minimum of 2 pages a day, not counting special pieces like a splash page with one big panel on it or a two-page splash spread.

Even the best artists are hard pressed to conceive, layout, and pencil 2 pages full of realistic characters in a day. If no thumbnail work or detailed layouts have been created during the scripting stage, the comic artist must do a whole lot of prep work and experimentation before starting to finish the pencils.

And so American comics drawn in the realistic styles have come to depend on a rotating selection of:

1. Rushed, boring layouts full of composition mistakes like tangents and badly framed characters.

2. Original art that isn't traced, but has bad anatomy or lifeless body language and stock character expressions.

3. Traced panels. People are angry over traced panels on some sort of philosophical level, like the integrity of the artist, but forget about that. What really matters is how it impacts the quality of the visual storytelling. The problem with photo-tracing after a google image search, is that the artist rarely finds a random photograph that looks great as comic art. A realistic person, yes, but comic art requires a careful form of exaggeration and strategic gesture to help create a sense of a story in motion in still art, and to maintain the narrative between panels. Traced art ends up looking like a bunch of individual illustrations on the page.

I have a trouble enjoying most big name American comics these days because comics are not just novels that have pretty pictures attached to them. To get into Scott McCloud territory, comics are their own unique thing. The combination of sequential images and words are different from any other medium, creating a unique experience even in the brain of the reader. But the bad compositions, photographic staging of panels and characters, and cramped, rushed drawings of characters and body language neuters the power of the medium.

I actually like a lot of Japanese comics that Americans would probably take a shit on because they are offended by funny faces and "it's not real people", as even in dead-average manga, you're more likely to find artists expressing themselves far more than in mainstream American comics.

[Sunflower]

Definitely needs to be re-posted in here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR2CVpYXm4Q

Worst AND YET sort of best.

[Jake Tower]

You don't like Bendis-style dialogue? Iron Man: "We've stopped you before Thanos!" Thanos: "You've already lost. This thing? It's done."

And this is a splash page with panels of 'pregnant silence'

[ViewtifulJC]

And this is a splash page with panels of 'pregnant silence'

$3.99 book! 20 pages!

Bendis, everybody

[Rafa=FedKilla]

Don't forget the 24 panels on one page of alternating facial expressions!

[EchosMyron1]

I haven't read anything Bendis has done outside of Ultimate Spider-Man. But I like Ultimate Spider-Man. He did make iceman say "woof" though.

[Goldrush]

In comics, I hate when status quo changing events happen to characters outside their main book. A recent example is Richter from X-Factor. After tens of issues of dealing with his power loss in X-Factor, he got it back in the pages of The Children's Crusade, a book that have no direct ties.

[the chris]

3. Traced panels. People are angry over traced panels on some sort of philosophical level, like the integrity of the artist, but forget about that. What really matters is how it impacts the quality of the visual storytelling. The problem with photo-tracing after a google image search, is that the artist rarely finds a random photograph that looks great as comic art. A realistic person, yes, but comic art requires a careful form of exaggeration and strategic gesture to help create a sense of a story in motion in still art, and to maintain the narrative between panels. Traced art ends up looking like a bunch of individual illustrations on the page. I have a trouble enjoying most big name American comics these days because comics are not just novels that have pretty pictures attached to them. To get into Scott McCloud territory, comics are their own unique thing. The combination of sequential images and words are different from any other medium, creating a unique experience even in the brain of the reader. But the bad compositions, photographic staging of panels and characters, and cramped, rushed drawings of characters and body language neuters the power of the medium.

As much as I shit on Larroca at least the images that he traces makes sense in context to the story he is drawing. Greg Land uses the same traced images over and over and it ruins the flow of the story.

This is supposed to be Sue Storm finding out that her long thought dead mother is actually alive.


Colossus attending a Raiders game(his helmet is also traced from Russell Crowe's helmet in Gladiator.)

[zoukka]

I just saw one of my favorite ever villain....Doctor Doom.....shed a tear for 9/11.... DA FUQ is this SHIT?!?

It's called propaganda.

[Staccat0]

Robert Kirkman's lack of faith in his readers and artists on The Walking Dead. He clearly believes that readers can't read between the lines or that the artist can convey anything in visuals. Instead he has every damn character monologue about their feelings all the time and over explain every damn thing that's happening.

Yup and I'm over it. I'll be bailing out at issue 100

Bad lettering when they just put seemingly random words in bold that don't really follow regular kinds of emphasis.

This is really weird and confusing. Agreed.

[kame-sennin]

Definitely needs to be re-posted in here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR2CVpYXm4Q Worst AND YET sort of best.

Stan Lee trolling Rob Liefeld is gold.

I have a trouble enjoying most big name American comics these days because comics are not just novels that have pretty pictures attached to them. To get into Scott McCloud territory, comics are their own unique thing. The combination of sequential images and words are different from any other medium, creating a unique experience even in the brain of the reader. But the bad compositions, photographic staging of panels and characters, and cramped, rushed drawings of characters and body language neuters the power of the medium. I actually like a lot of Japanese comics that Americans would probably take a shit on because they are offended by funny faces and "it's not real people", as even in dead-average manga, you're more likely to find artists expressing themselves far more than in mainstream American comics.

*slow clap*

[Gentleman Jack]

Don't forget the 24 panels on one page of alternating facial expressions!

To me, 27 panels over 3 pages of Herr Starr in front of a mirror is one of the funniest things Preacher has ever done.

[the chris]

It's called propaganda.

I think it was more J Michael Straczynski's writing being really heavy-handed sometimes.

To me, 27 panels over 3 pages of Herr Starr in front of a mirror is one of the funniest things Preacher has ever done.

As much as I don't like Dillon on superhero books he's great on stuff like Preacher and Hellblazer. Maguire is still king for drawing faces though.

[zoukka]

Also the whole industrialized way of drawing comics is as far from art as possible. Same goes for some manga.

God damn those traced pseudo-realistic styles look terrible.

[Slayven]

Not enough teamups with Spiderman.

[EchosMyron1]

Also the whole industrialized way of drawing comics is as far from art as possible. Same goes for some manga. God damn those traced pseudo-realistic styles look terrible.

What are you talking about man? All anything needs to look great is some blaringly shiny coloring. I love it when skin & fabric look like metal.

Definitely needs to be re-posted in here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR2CVpYXm4Q Worst AND YET sort of best.

lml @ Rob being so in to that character, he even kept on drawing after the show ended!

[shadyspace]

Ennis' Punisher MAX run ending.

[GungHo]

Reboots/resurrections/reimaginings, etc.

Just let them die and come up with your own goddamn stories.

[Raging Spaniard]

That's not accurate at all.

All superheroes are visually distinct then?

Ok yes Spider-Man is skinny sure. Ill admit thats a stretch. Now tell me how the faces of all those people are different except for their hair, go.

And dont give me that "depends on the artist" bs, thats a specification in a thread that is all about generalization. If its according to the writer, artist and editor then theres nothing people should dislike about comics because anything they dislike is always remedied by a good creator.

[Parallax]

All superheroes are visually distinct then? Ok yes Spider-Man is skinny sure. Ill admit thats a stretch. Now tell me how the faces of all those people are different except for their hair, go. And dont give me that "depends on the artist" bs, thats a specification in a thread that is all about generalization. If its according to the writer, artist and editor then theres nothing people should dislike about comics because anything they dislike is always remedied by a good creator.

the thing is that the characters you listed share very few similarities when it comes to their personalities. like i said before, spider man, daredevil, and the green lanterns are night and day when it comes to personalities.

and really? what artist can draw distinct faces for characters without them looking like caricatures, or happen to be covered in fur?

[Slayven]

the thing is that the characters you listed share very few similarities when it comes to their personalities. like i said before, spider man, daredevil, and the green lanterns are night and day when it comes to personalities. and really? what artist can draw distinct faces for characters without them looking like caricatures, or happen to be covered in fur?

How awesome would it be for Spiderman, Daredevil, and Guy to hangout for a night. Guy could be talking about his problems with Ice, and Matt just give him the black guy stare. Cause that is how fucked up his relationships are.

[Parallax]

How awesome would it be for Spiderman, Daredevil, and Guy to hangout for a night. Guy could be talking about his problems with Ice, and Matt just give him the black guy stare. Cause that is how fucked up his relationships are.

with two of the universe shitting champions sitting next to him, it would be hard for guy to compete.

[NotTheGuyYouKill]

There hasn't been an issue #10 of Fell yet

Fucking this. I fell in love with that book and then after Issue 9, absolutely nothing. Plus, it doesn't seem like he's ever going back to it.

[BenjaminBirdie]

That's because the other stuff isn't interesting.

lol scalped

[BenjaminBirdie]

So, all these Quitely haters, when you say he's one of the worst things about comics, do you not even see the level of craftsmanship, even if you don't like the style?

[Parallax]

So, all these Quitely haters, when you say he's one of the worst things about comics, do you not even see the level of craftsmanship, even if you don't like the style?

craftmanship?

[BenjaminBirdie]

craftmanship?

Skill?

Sheer ability to draw the shit out of everything in such incredible detail?

[Gordon Fearman]

Watchmen is DC. Also, I think most people or at least comic fans are aware of all the more popular Japanese super hero comics and Image stuff.

Watchmen is Vertigo which exists in a very separate continuity from regular DC. Or at least it did until Flashpoint.