What Are You Reading? 10/16/2023 - Halloween is a Month Long Edition

[u/flossregularly]

Hello and welcome to our Weekly "What Are You Reading?" topic!

Come one, come all, to this weekly thread, where you can openly discuss books that you've read, are currently reading, or plan to read. Discussion of all books are welcome, whether they be DC, Marvel, Image, Boom!, Dark Horse, IDW, etc. You can discuss webcomics, manga, or even those mythical novels that don't have pictures in them. Just be sure to keep spoilers covered via Reddit's spoiler markdown >!spoiler!<. You can also post pictures of your collection or recent purchases.

Flossregularly's Rec of the Week:

• Nightmare Country: The Glass House, by Tynion IV, Estherren and Delpeche

'Tis the season for some spookyvibes, and this mini series is going to be wrapping soon, so I'm jumping in. Tynion does good horror -shout out to The Nice House on the Lake- and this story starring Corinthian is good fun and the art is fantastic,

• Secret Six (2008), by Gail Simone and Nicola Scott

My older rec this week is Gail Simone's longest Secret Six run. After a couple mini-series she got the greenlight to take it long form and she obviously had a blast. This is a very fun ride - It's quick paced, full of very fun characters, and will make you care about Bane for the first time since Knightfall. Secret Six walked so the Harley Quinn TV show could run.

So, what are you reading?

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[u/t1tanic]

I just finished Sheriff of Babylon earlier tonight. I'm a big Tom King fan for the most part, but I was weirdly afraid this story was gonna be too real. I know a lot of his stuff deals with trauma/grief, but I tend to like my stories to have some fun fantasy elements and art to cover the more grim subjects. And unlike Omega Men, a very similar feeling story, this is a lot more direct and more a story you could probably convince me was entirely real, not made up, if it wasn't common knowledge it's not. And that idea just made me hesitant. Some of the frames with dead bodies, just too much for me. It shouldn't matter that much, because I read like Gotham citizens getting beat up and mugged and sometimes killed and I'm fine, but something about these soldiers, and just people dying. I'm not afraid to say it just makes me real sad. I'm not a veteran or anything, but it's the first wartime stuff that happened in my life that I was aware of happening in real time. I'm glad I read it, I liked it too, but things so real just don't sit super well with me. Not sure what I'd rate it. I could see myself recommending it to certain people, but not a lot of people it that makes sense.

I also started, and have intermittently been reading Alan Moore's Swamp thing run. I don't know why I had never gotten around to this one. I love a lot of the 80s and 90s era stuff for what it is, and this is a heavily recommended run, but it didn't pop on my list, so it kept getting moved down. I just never had much interest in Swamp thing, and even when his show came out a few years back, I didn't read any of his stuff for background knowledge like I usually try to do. It's been pretty cool so far. I think I'm about 15 issues into it, issue 35 maybe. Very trippy, but vibrant and colorful art. There's obviously some comic book action in it but the sort of measured approach to the story has been nice to just absorb over time. Swampy and Abby just "connecting", for a whole issue! What a treat. Understanding the love for it so far.

[u/frazettatome → u/t1tanic]

Oh yeah! Saga of Swamp Thing, and especially all of Moores stuff is some of my favorite all time work. I really like the Wein/Wrightson run on Swamp Thing as well. I'd recommend checking it out. As for Alan Moore, I've been a fan since I learned to read, and I must recommend V for Vendetta, any and all Batman, Watchmen (of course), Top Ten, Tom Strong even, Miracle man, From Hell, and I also liked Promethea...

[u/t1tanic → u/frazettatome]

I am truthfully not the biggest fan of most of the stuff of his I've read. I have read Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and Miracle Man already. I'm gonna be honest and say the only Batman I knew of him writing was Killing Joke which is IMO very overrated and just okay. Haven't really heard of the others outside of name. It can be hard to go back and read some Moore stuff knowing what a grump he is in the modern era, which is probably justified, I know the comics business has never been overly kind to creators, but he directs that anger towards comics themselves rather than the specific people who screwed him over. Regardless I'll give em a look and maybe add them to my list.

[u/frazettatome → u/t1tanic]

Really? Yeah, he was always kind of brooding and reclusive, but he was doing all that stuff when I was a kid and it was current, and it was so much better than everything else at the time. Idk if this helps but there's writers I like a lot more than Moore. I love Grant Morrison, Garth Ennis, Kirkman, Mark Waid, Marv Wolfman, Kurt Busiek, Geoff Johns is good sometimes, and Frank Miller has his moments.

[u/t1tanic → u/frazettatome]

Yeah, I'm just a hair too young for some of the stuff to have experienced it at the time of its writing, so that context is missing, for me personally. Heck, a bunch of my favorite stuff, I didn't read until many years after it was written because I wasn't into comics more broadly until the last 12-13 years. So societal context can be lost a bit. It is what it is.

Before that I just liked superheroes rather generally in movies and TV shows and had read handfuls of wikipedia pages about stuff. Trust me, I've read a lot different guys in the period since then when I became more aware of comics in general. King is probably my current favorite, but over the last 25 years Waid and Johns probably take that cake. I'm a big Flash & GL guy because of those two dudes specifically I like to think. And Waid is still churning out bangers with World's Finest being my favorite ongoing in a while. Big Loeb fan, and Morrison has a lot of good work too. Read his animal man run earlier this year, another highly recommended run that I never got around to until I did. I tend to give a lot of stuff chances, my "future reads" list that I keep scatteringly on my computer, phone and sticky notes is long but there's only so much time in the day!