If you own The Gallumaufry in Trade Paperback, then you clearly have access to information mere mortals would kill for. Or at least maim.

I'd probably narrow down to only two Miller books at the most. And If I included three Alan Moore series', one of them would be Halo Jones.

Needs more Wagner. I'd go with Grendel over Mage, for the variety of storytelling styles if nothing else. [The last two Comico arcs being infuriatingly not-yet-in-trades is not enough of a strike against.]

And Cerebus would definately belong, largely on the strength of the portion published in the 80's and early 90's.

Well, yes, technically, Gallimaufry isn't collected in bookshelf form, but, hey, the other two volumes are available (or were recently available).

The Ballad of Halo Jones didn't really do it for me. It was overall pretty pessimistic; the ending seemed prefunctory and bitter.

Cerebus nearly squeaked on the list on the strength of High Society, but it certainly can't be recommended as a whole.

I'd really recommend adding the Eddie Campbell "Alec" series to the list, especially "The King Canute Crowd" and "How To Be an Artist". All of Campbell's semi-autobiographical stuff is excellent, and they use the comic format to tell stories that are very different from most books being published. Highly, highly recommended books.

I'd include Animal Man. I think in its own way it's as important as Doom Patrol.

Well, Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck is a definite candidate for the list. Something by Eisner should be in there; the trick is deciding what. I would include Grimjack if the trades had the Munden's Bar stories in them; but unfortunatly they don't. (The Munden's stories are what push Grimjack from "very good" to "great" for me; they let the whole idea of Cynosure get explored properly.) Maus would qualify as essential simply because it won the pulitzer prize: any comic so good as to blast past the biases has earned it place. Understanding Comics is something everybody with a serious interest in the field should read; but I don't know if I think everybody needs a copy for their own library.

Those are just some books I would expect to see on a shelf of "essential" books; which is not quite the same as saying they are essential. No one comic is completely vital, IMO.

I think one thing to be wary of is including too many works by one author. Lord knows Alan Moore makes great comics - that's why I have almost a whole shelf full of his works - but if one shelf is all you're going to get then I think it's good to have variety.

I'm not going to comment on all of the ones I'll throw out there since some have already been mentioned.

Watchmen
Sandman and Murder Mysteries - I always tack on that latter story because it's practically a prequel to the whole thing, and it's an excellent standalone story in its own right.
Maus
Marvels - The counterpoint to Watchmen. Superheroes at their most awe-inspiring instead of their most dysfunctional. Concise and enthralling.
Phoenix - Tezuka at his best. Large range of genres, themes, and levels of craft.
The Incal/Metabarons - Those crazy Europeans.
Safe Area Gorazde/Palestine - Inspiring examples of what can be accomplished in comics as well as cautionary tales just as affecting and perpetually relevant Maus.
Grendel: Devils & Deaths
Akira

Some others that I don't have time to type stuff about now because I spent too much time culling a much bigger list: We3, Animal Man, Asterix, Dark Knight Returns, Understanding Comics, V for Vendetta, Buddha, ElfQuest (the original quest), Ring of the Nibelung (P. Craig Russell version), Transmetropolitan, Preacher, Nausicaä

And just for good measure some currently-ongoing series that I didn't really feel could be compared to works that have been finished: Usagi Yojimbo, Age of Bronze, Stray Bullets, Astro City, Planetary

Tales from the Beanworld is a personal fav. Poison Elves had a lot going for it. Is there an Omaha the Cat Dancer Graphic Novel?

I'd like to say Planetary. Maybe in a few years.

Hmm. So the qualifications are 'acclaimed,' 'influential,' and 'available in TPBs?'

I'd swap out Cowboy Wally for Why I Hate Saturn. I think the latter has stronger writing and art, and I don't think the former is more influential. (Honestly, I'm not sure either is influential enough to fit the list, but they're both undeniably fun.)

I suppose Watchmen has to be there purely for reasons of influence, but I'd rather have Gruenwald's Squadron Supreme. Or they can both be there, if we can expand the list.

Morrison's Invisibles nicely encapsulates much of his other work, plus it's a big tribute to the turn of the millennium. Seems appropriate.

Maus needs to be there. It's undeniably acclaimed and influential.

Maus should be on this list for three reasons, since you asked. The first is that it's one of the finest Holocaust narratives ever created in any medium. The second is that it's formally a striking piece of work; there are things that Spiegleman does which couldn't be done in any other medium. The third is that it points to an entire unexplored continent of comics, the non-fiction comic book that isn't a how-to or an unforgivable simplification. (Larry Gonick's terrific "Cartoon History/Cartoon Guides" are less groundbreaking because they are, explicitly, introductory works; Maus is as fully realized as Night or Night and Fog.)

The other comic which stands beside Maus is Safe Area Gorazde by Joe Sacco, which is everything a film documentary of war would want to be and more.

This list of graphic novels is much broader than what you're looking for, but it is a fast way to an instant bookshelf.

Since you've got the modern DC essentials pretty well covered (and yeah, Animal Man is a must even if your friend doesn't know what the Crisis was), I'll suggest a few Marvels:

The Dark Pheonix Saga: Because if Andy started reading superhero comics in the 1980s, most of the comics he read were aspiring to be this.
Thor Legends: Walt Simonson: Because it's probably the best damn Marvel comic of the period, and one of their best ever.
Daredevil Visionaries: Frank Miller: For pretty much the same reasons. Don't cut Born Again to make room, though.
Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD: The Steranko collections must be seen to be believed.

If he likes those, then it might be time to move on to the Essentials, Marvel Masterworks, etc.

Tsk, no Great Darkness Saga?

Rather than "The Dark Phoenix Saga", I'd put on several volumes of _Essential X-Men_ -- to wit, the ones that cover the Claremont run from #94-137. As a story, "Dark Phoenix" was a spearpoint; and all of the previous stories pretty much from #96 on represent the spear's shaft. The point alone doesn't carry enough weight behind it to have the full impact.

"Essential" for what?

For getting a grasp of comics as a hobby or artform? Then it's a canon quertion and who knows. I mean, I've never read Daredevil: Born Again, Top Ten, for the most part, or most of Buck Godot, and I feel like I am have some claim on being at least a semi-serious comics fan comics fan.

Essential for impressing comics fans? Well, I don't think that's actually possible, because some bozo is always going to disagree with one of your choices, and if someone has just gone out and bought the books, they aren't going to be able to defend their choices. I can explain why I own a copy of, say, The Wake (given to me by Priest) and not Top Ten (never bothered reading it.)

Essential as decor? Comics as a sort of conversation piece? Then pick them on the basis of how well they match your couch. But include a Peanuts collection in case a civilian tries to read it.

The only true way to build a bookshel is to read some comics and pick what you like.

"Is there an Omaha the Cat Dancer Graphic Novel?"

Vols 1-5 published by Kitchen Sink Press; Vol 6 by Fantagraphics. ISBNs:

0878160310
0878169493
0878160868
0878161228
0878162577
1560971797

Animal Man: In some ways, more experimental than Doom Patrol, and certainly a companion piece. I favored Doom Patrol on my list because I think it's more entertaining, but that doesn't exclude Animal Man; the list isn't fixed length.

Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck is, unfortunately, a specialty taste, at least in America. Without previous exposure to the Disney Ducks, it's less attractive. It is, however, essential on my shelf.

Marvels: I'm fairly cool to Marvels these days; it's not near as sophisticated in storycraft as Moore or Miller. Really, its outstanding achievement is Ross's art, which was impressive as hell in the day, but nowadays, tends to irritates me with its plastic immobile hair.

Preacher: Almost makes it on to my list. It's entertaining, violent, sexy, profane; obsessed with ethics (via machismo, which if you eliminate sexism from is nothing but ethics); furious at God; and just a whole damn lot of fun. But it's also, and this is the key word, immature. Viscerally an enormously successful work of entertainment, but about as stylized and applicable to the real world as Harold and the Purple Crayon.

I love Tales of the Beanworld, and I've never seen a comic more successful with people who don't read comics, but it's decades out of print.

Why I Hate Saturn is good, but Cowboy Wally is a lot funnier. WIHS also is pretty hard to re-read, at least for me.

Squadron Supreme is a good Marvel essential. It uses purely traditional genre storytelling, but it goes well outside the traditional genre boundaries. Better ending than Watchmen!

Dark Phoenix Saga (or Essential X-Men): As a foundational document, it's crucial. But this isn't really a historical list, or it would be heavily dominated by Superman and Batman Greatest volumes. My experience is that I didn't read DPS as a beginning comics reader, I only read it in full after the high points of the mid-80s as an experienced comics reader, and in that light, it doesn't compare as well. It's entirely likely that many of the best achievements of the 1980s couldn't have occurred without Claremont/Byrne's footsteps to lead them, but it just doesn't work for me as an essential.

Tyg: I mentioned GDS in an aside in the main text; I love it, but I think it's a specialty taste.

Mike: "Essential" in the sense that you would be very unhappy if you didn't have them on your shelves, where you could take them down and reread them when you wanted, but culled in an attempt to prefer universal attraction over idiosyncratic attraction. As for "the only true way to build a bookshel is to read some comics and pick what you like", mostly what this list is aiming for is a bunch of suggestions for comics to read to see if one likes.

Oh, if there's a cheap New Teen Titans volume, that probably goes on the list at least as soon as Dark Phoenix.

Sin City, volume 1, by Frank Miller, is worth at least a look. A distinctive art style works seamlessly with a relentlessly nihilistic hard-boiled crime story. Subsequent volumes are more of the same, which grows less with each step. Or you could see the movie, which has lots of pretty girls, but is otherwise the comics. In any case, nothing else by Miller after he started Sin City is worth dog drool.

In particular, absolutely avoid The Dark Knight Strikes Again, a "they backed a truckload of money up to my house" sequel to DKR, and Batman & Robin, a "they backed another truckload of money up to my house" sequel to B:Y1 that is being interpreted as a really uninteresting and unfunny comedy because it's so hard to believe that it could be meant seriously.

I'm going to agree with Mike that the only things on your comic book shelf that are truly "Essential" are those big black and white reprints of Marvel books. (That's a joke, son. Laugh!)

But if someone asked me to recommend some really good books, in addition to the various candidates that have been floated, let me add a couple of nominations:

Iron Man: Demon in a Bottle This previously saw print as The Power of Iron Man and before that as Iron Man issues 120-128. It's currently out of print, but Marvel has announced that they will be bringing it back into print. Really, the whole Michilenie/Layton run is great (both of them for that matter, and the O'Neill run they bookended, too), but most of it is unavailable except through back issue bins.

Fanatastic Four Visionaries: John Byrne: Say what you want about Byrne, his run on Fantastic Four is just solid A-1 superhero comics work.

Stuck Rubber Baby: I think it belongs in the same conversation as Maus and Safe Area Gorazde.

Preacher really is good. Greg mentioned it up front, but didn't actually nominate it. Nobody else has, either, so I'll step up and do so.

To follow up to my own post, let me apologize to Ralf, who did nominate Preacher (in my defense, he burried it in a string cite).

Also, there are not one but three cheap volumes of New Teen Titans: one reprinting the Judas contract, one reprinting the Trigon story from the first few issues of the Baxter volume, and one reprinting the pre-Crisis "Who is Donna Troy" and the post-Crisis "Who is Wonder Girl," along with Donna Troy's wedding to Terry Long. There's also a NTT Archive, but that's not really cheap.

I was going to suggest New Teen Titans, but none of the TPBs currently in print are ideal. "The Judas Contract" was terrific, of course, but its punch depends on reading the previous forty issues, even moreso than "The Dark Phoenix Saga." You can pick up the DPS with the Hellfire Club storyline, right where the trade begins, and see all of the important parts of the story unfold; I can't imagine reading "The Judas Contract" without first seeing Terra's recruitment and betrayal.

A numbered series of trades covering everything up to and including "The Judas Contract," or even Donna's wedding, would be a really, really smart thing for DC to do.

I like the kind of comics that freely mix humor, oddity and the superhero in no particular order. For me, foundational to my love of the quirky comic would be the collected Bob Burden work "The Flaming Carrot." Ut!

For the same reason, "The Tick: Naked City" is another must have. Now that I have gotten into "The Goon" (thanks to the Howling site), I have a new list of books to put on the shelf.

One way for me to look at this list is these are the kind of books I lend out to friends from my collection to let them see what kind of stuff I enjoy. I have many of those also mentioned above (Squadron Supreme, Watchmen, V, Daredevil, etc.) but the fun/odd/goofy ones are picked up more than any, it seems.

I would concur that this list could easily be expanded to include strips like Calvin and Hobbes, Pre-history of the Far Side (fun way to...sort of...do a autobiography) and some of the ealier Berkley Breathed Bloom County books along with classics like the Peanuts.

A numbered series of trades covering everything up to and including "The Judas Contract," or even Donna's wedding, would be a really, really smart thing for DC to do.

Would it be? I mean, would it sell? [How well did the Donna Troy Trade collecting two excellent stories from that era along with an exercible 5-issue arc from the title's nadir do?]

You know, I picked up the Donna Troy TPB on the strength of the Who is Wonder Girl story and the wedding. For years, I had heard the Who is Donna Troy story was just awful, so I didn't expect much. When I read it, though, I thought it was OK. Sure, it wasn't great. It wasn't a story for the ages. But it was good, solid journeyman superhero comics. Does it have such a bad reputation because it pales in the shadow of Who is Wonder Girl? Or is there some colossal flaw I'm just not seeing?

FTR, Who is Donna Troy still makes me misty-eyed.

So, it's a recruit ment question? What books would you give to someone to make them like comics?

Okay, thorw out Stuck Rubber Baby because it almost made me want to stop.

Peanuts Treasury because it's a gateway strip.

Swamp Thing because it can take you to horror or supers. Start with Moore if he's got a college degree and Wein/Pasko if he doesn't.

The Icon and Quantum and Woody tpbs if he can find them at bookfinder will give him a sense of what mainstream superheroes look like when they aren't done by the big two.

From there, it's pretty easy for him to find his own way. The Peanuts collection will tell him what to look for in the newspaper.

Swamp Thing crosses over with Bats and Superman. Plus Moore is the ancestor of Morrison.

Gaim is a dead end, so avoid giving him that because it won't lead him anywhere.

Maus, Watchmen, what have you, well, you don't have to recommend those because he can go anywhere and be told to read them.

People have covered most contenders for the list. I can only come up with a few more.

JM DeMatteis and Jon J Muth's Moonshadow. It's not to everyone's taste, but has gorgeous art and is historically important due to its publication date. Originally published by Marvel in mid-eighties, but came back as a Vertigo mini again in the nineties.

Likewise, I greatly adore my copy of Muth's Dracula graphic novel. Also originally published by Marvel I believe, but my copy comes from arthouse publisher NBM. Heavily dependent on the Langella version play/movie, but with its own interpretation. It's simply beautiful.

For more cheesey fun there is the Armor Wars TPB from Iron Man. There was absolutely no comic I look forward to more than Iron Man when this story started. Very powerful with good art by Doc Bright and top notch storytelling. Not important as art, but near the pinnacle for enjoyable superhero stories.

Is there a TPB for Roger Stern Amazing Spider-Man run, or at least his Hobgoblin stories? There should be.

Most Marvel Graphic Novels were not worth the prestige format, but at least two were: The Death of Captain Marvel and God Loves, Man Kills. Both emotionally powerful and well done.

I know various people who love the Nick Fury vs SHIELD series/TPB. Your mileage may vary.

Avengers Forever is a great story and a real treat for fans of the team, although some find the miutiae of comics lore contained therein slightly offputting. However, it does not detract from the power of the plot or the characters.

Elektra: Assassin by Miller and Siekiewicz.

Mike: at risk of providing a straight line, are Lucifer, Books of Magic, and the 90s-to-modern Vertigo line 'nowhere'?

Jason: 1. I found each issue of 'Who is Wonder Girl' to be a powerful sophoric at the time, and have since learned that its potency is undiminished. 2. Unlike most of the other retcons and revision that have plagued the character, the one at the center of this series was completely and totally unnecessary. Her origin was working fine at that point, and this didn't add anything of value. And, finally, 3. The Titans books already had a perfectly good outer-space adjunct contninuity centered around Starfire. They didn't need another, infinitely more boring one to ensure that half of their rare space-based stories would be squandered...

The sticker price might not say "cheap trade," but if you are doing an "Essential" list for the 80s and 90s, it should include Palomar and Locas.

Barring those, the old trades Chelo's Burden, Blood of Palomar, or Death of Speedy capture seminal tales from Los. Bros. Hernandez.

I don't know about Flaming Carrot. I love it, but I think that's more of a specialty taste than Great Darkness Saga, which I'd add to the list, anyway.

Jason, who told you "Who Is Donna Troy" was awful? I'll admit that I haven't spent a lot of time with the original Wolfman/Perez run on NTT since it came out, but that was certainly one of the highlights of a strong series. Is there an underground critical consensus against the story of which I'm just unaware?

I've gotten confused, and I think other people have, too.

In the original NTT run, there was a story that explained who the orphan was who Wonder Woman found, took to Paradise Island and who became Wonder Girl. This story was fantastic and everybody thinks so.

In the second NTT run, there was a long and pointless story that created a post-Crisis origin for Wonder Girl, reinventing her as some Greek Titan wannabe named "Troia". It sucked and most people think so.

Which one is "Who is Donna Troy?" and which one is "Who is Wonder Girl?"

Doug, I may be mixing up which story has which title.

The single pre-Crisis issue in which Dick Grayson does some detective work and reunites Donna Troy with her birth mother is universally believed to be a great story, and I agree that it is. I think this is "Who is Wonder Girl."

The 5-part post-Crisis story in which it is revealed that Donna Troy was given powers by the Titans of Myth, and in which the NTT travel to the planet of the Titans of Myth to defend them from an attack is almost universally reviled. I thought it was decent -- not a story for the ages, by any means, but not bad, either. I think this is "Who is Donna Troy."

I'll also note that Jeff R.'s points 2 and 3 seem intimately tied to the concept of NTT as an ongoing, monthly title. My only exposure to the team is what I've read 20 or more years after the fact, so it doesn't bother me that the story goofed up Donna's origin (it was already long FUBAR'ed by the time I "met" her) or squandered potential good Wolfman/Perez Starfire stories (by the time I ever saw the book, it was really bad. So any potential good Wolfman/Perez "Starfire in space" stories were destined to forever remain potential.)

I goofed up. "Who is Wonder Girl" is the 5-part series of dubious quality from 1988. Link

"Who is Donna Troy" is the single issue of agreed quality from 1984. Link

Now you've got it. In defense of "Who is Wonder Girl", once Wonder Woman got yanked from continuity, Wonder Girl became a casualty of retconitude. All of the Crisis patch stories that I remember reeked.

I said:

Gaiman is a dead end, so avoid giving him that because it won't lead him anywhere.

Jeff said:

Mike: at risk of providing a straight line, are Lucifer, Books of Magic, and the 90s-to-modern Vertigo line 'nowhere'?

I respond:

Nowhere good, anyway. If we're providing a gateway, then the comics have to lead to other, better or at least equal, comics. If you like Batman, you'll go to Spider-man which will lead you to Daredevil which will lead you to Miller which will lead you to Sin City.

If you like Sandman, that is fine, but it leads, as you say, to the Vertigo Sandman imitators which were, frankly, pretentious crap which should have DC thanking God every day that Treebeard isn't around to take vengeance for the paper.

I mean, I don't know why everyone liked Preacher, but it was stupid, ugly, bizarre and badly written and plotted. I don't care if Cassidy is the toughest Irish vampire around. It reeks of theological ignorance and stupidity. I'm surprised the ink stunk on the page.

Greg--I think you've muddled the premise of the post a bit. Selecting "Essentials" isn't the same as selecting for "universal attraction;" I daresay that the two are almost mutually exclusive, since greatness so rarely appeals to the lowest common denominator. (I.e., Citizen Kane is a Great film. Citizen Kane will not go over well with the Bubbas of East Texas, who will prefer to watch the meretricious and loathesome Armageddon)

Besides, I can't tell whether you want an Essentials of superhero comics or (more ambitiously) an Essentials of the comics medium. To be honest, the latter is a much more attractive prospect for me to contemplate; how many times, on Usenet and the Web, have we seen a "Best Of Superhero Comics" thread? But an informed discussion of the Best Of Medium...that I'd like to see, if only because I know nothing about manga, couldn't tell you what the best funny animal story is (for all of me, the best of Fox and Crow are better than Carl Barks' work), and have not delved into a lot of the supposed best of modern independent comics. An informed discussion of the Best Of Medium would be an education for me and point me toward a lot of books I'm unaware of or have barely heard of.

Randomly: I like Bendis' work, but Kane is a better crime comic than Jinx (or, gods forbid, the self-parodic Sin City, which gives every indication that Miller read Spillane but not Hammett or Chandler) and is an Essential. I find the greatest joy in invention and creation, the greatest sense of "Oh, this is so cool, I'm having so much fun writing this," in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. (I'm hardly objective on the series, of course, but I think I'd see that joy of invention even if I hadn't done the annotations). Greg described Preacher as immature; I'd describe the superhero work of Wolfman, Claremont, and much of Busiek as suitable for immature ("not fully grown or developed") tastes. I can still enjoy Teen Titans and X-Men and Astro City, but by every critical standard I use to judge fiction (intelligence of dialogue, depth of characterization, subtlety of human understanding, sophistication of plot, and so on) they are nowhere near as good as other works. I thought X-Men and Teen Titans were great when I was a teenager. Now...? I think they are clumsily-handled, obvious in their development, and simplistic in characterization. They are the potato chips of superhero comics: fun to eat, but not to be compared with a full-course meal.

I've read few comics which did as good a job of conveying the impression of a specific time, place, and culture as Nabiel Kanan's Exit and Jaime Hernandez's Love and Rockets did, or which captured magical realism as well as Gilbert Hernandez's Love and Rockets did. (Strangehaven came close). Beneath the surface glitz and infatuation with gun-fu of Invisibles there is as furious a denunciation of the cruelty of modern life as can be found in superhero comics, which is what makes the ending so powerful; Morrison's heroes don't fight to maintain the status quo or out of a psychotic drive to punish, they fight to change society itself. (Morrison's "We made gods and jailers because we felt small and ashamed and alone...we let them try us and judge us and, like sheep to slaughter, we allowed ourselves to be sentence. See! Now! Our sentence is up!" is a kind of eloquence rarely approached in mainstream comics, although for pure poetry Valerie's letter in V still wins).

Animal Man was not an extremely entertaining and an empassioned piece of pro-animal rights propaganda, but it was the most skillful execution of metafictional horror *in any medium*. Transmetropolitan as Essential sf comics. Maus and Safe Area Gorazde as Essential examples of comics which can tackle real-life concerns, and do it well.

I could go on.

Mike--You might as well say that reading Lee and Kirby leads to reading Avengers Forever, and therefore people shouldn't read Fantastic Four. I think Sandman is an Essential both for innate quality and for its influence; that it leads the unwary to read bad Gaiman imitators should not stop Sandman from being listed as an Essential, any more than the existence of Terry Brooks should stop anyone from listing Lord of the Rings as Essential.

I actually don't think FF leads anywhere good. I'd recommend the Essential Avengers or X-men first. I was addressing comics as gateway, and on that basis if you read, say, Books of Magic after Sandman, you're going to stop reading because , well, it sucked.

Jess: Animal Man was not an extremely entertaining and an empassioned piece of pro-animal rights propaganda, but it was the most skillful execution of metafictional horror *in any medium*.

Oh yes, definitely. I don't think anyone would recommend Animal Man for the animal rights stuff. Morrison even seems to disavow it as too heavy-handed at the end of his run.

Regarding "gateway" comics, I don't really see the point in holding off on the good stuff in fear that the new reader will only be disappointed in the future. There's enough other good stuff so that they shouldn't get bored. If they do happen to get bored with things you are recommending to them, then that's fine too.

Jess: I probably have muddled things, but that's OK. I'm looking for a superfluity of opinions, and if different people bring different things to the table, that's good.

"Universal attraction" may be too much. I may be looking for something closer to "consensus quality"--the idea that most people with critical judgment faculties will agree that this book has merit.

The person this post is aimed at probably has more superhero tendencies than not, but again, I'm at least as interested in seeing what people have to recommend. (E.g., no one mentioned 100 Bullets or much of anything else recent--is that a statement of quality, or a statement of who this audience is?)

The problem with the Best of Medium discussion is that it's awfully difficult to compare things from different genres. There's almost no point in arguing between The Tick and A History of Violence, since few readers are going to even consider reading both superhero parody and hard-boiled mystery.

I sympathize, by the way, with your mention of manga--I, too, have virtually no idea what I might like to read among the extraordinary volume of selections now available.

I admit I'm a little surprised that it's taken till now to bring up LoEG; I had somewhat deliberately omitted it, even though it's among my favorite Moore work. Its major flaw, I think, is that it's a bit too formalist in nature; it feels like an exercise in storycraft, an experiment in mapping the rules of superhero groups to mannered Victorian characters, and the power of the story is accordingly damped.

You may have noticed that I also did not list X-Men, Astro City, LSH, or Teen Titans in my first tier. I love 'em, but I love 'em because of who I was in 1980, not who I am now. I have different criteria now. (Sometimes, as with Astro City, that criterion is "make me feel like I did in 1980".)

I considered mentioning LoEG, but I already had a 'too much Moore for such a small overall list' thing going on. I think your original post encouraged people to focus on 80's-to-early-90's works [even if you broke that focus by including Top Ten.]

Recent stuff: I'm less than halfway through reading it, but if it holds up, Queen and Country is a contender. I'd at least consider putting Morrison's JLA run ahead of the other nominees, although I haven't read Doom Patrol. I tend to dislike overuse of metafiction, so wouldn't put Animal Man on the list at all.

We've been through this before; I'd put Girl Genius up at almost the level of Buck Godot, certainly on list of the size we're approaching.

At the same size it gets to be time to let Transmetropolitan in, although probably with the same sort of damning faint praise Greg gave Sandman.

There are bad Sandman imitations, but I don't think that Preacher has ever been one--it was often bad, but the only way in which it was a Sandman imitation was that it was an ongoing Vertigo series. For the most part Lucifer hasn't been a bad Sandman imiatator either; it's certainly not possible to imagine it without Sandman as a starter, but it's a very different, and very good, work now. Mike Carey's earliest Vertigo works--say, the original Lucifer miniseries or the dreadful Petrefax--were as baldly imitative of Gaiman as, say, Gaiman's early fantasy works were of Alan Moore; but it's very much its own book now.

And the idea that something has to "lead" to something else to be worth reading is just inane. Should one not read A Confederacy of Dunces because Toole killed himself, skip To Kill a Mockingbird because Harper Lee said everything she had to say in one novel, or abstain from Catch-22 because nothing else by Heller was even half as good? Kyle Baker could have left the field after Cowboy Wally and it would still be a landmark; art spiegleman more or less did leave the field after Maus (exceptions noted) and it still is a landmark.

Greg:

There's almost no point in arguing between The Tick and A History of Violence, since few readers are going to even consider reading both superhero parody and hard-boiled mystery.

Except, of course, for those of us who do, including you. Why would you assume that someone who is willing to read superhero stories wouldn't be willing to read mysteries, or vice-versa?

Mike: You wrote: "I actually don't think FF leads anywhere good. I'd recommend the Essential Avengers or X-men first. I was addressing comics as gateway, and on that basis if you read, say, Books of Magic after Sandman, you're going to stop reading because , well, it sucked."

Really? This may be my own limitation, but--if I read something good, and then read something bad in the same genre, I don't stop reading in that genre, I keep looking until I find more good stuff. Do you think newbie readers will be more discouraged by bad superhero comics than encouraged by the good ones?

Greg: I didn't mention 100 Bullets because I haven't read it. It certainly got good reviews, but I think I mentally lumped it in with Stray Bullets, which I found unimpressive.

You wrote: "The problem with the Best of Medium discussion is that it's awfully difficult to compare things from different genres. There's almost no point in arguing between The Tick and A History of Violence, since few readers are going to even consider reading both superhero parody and hard-boiled mystery."

True, but I think we can compare how well each succeeds in its aims and how much (if at all) it transcends the limitations of genre to become more universal, the way we do in, for example, comparing players of very different positions in sports.

You wrote: "I admit I'm a little surprised that it's taken till now to bring up LoEG; I had somewhat deliberately omitted it, even though it's among my favorite Moore work. Its major flaw, I think, is that it's a bit too formalist in nature; it feels like an exercise in storycraft, an experiment in mapping the rules of superhero groups to mannered Victorian characters, and the power of the story is accordingly damped."

Different strokes, of course. I think League works very well simply as a story, and I think Moore's use of the characters isn't so much a mapping of the rules of superheroics as it is a commentary on Victorian mores, among other things. (I think I wrote about that here, months back). I find a fair amount of characterization in League--more, or at least more satisfyingly, than in most of the superhero comics of the Big Two. But that may be because Moore is so much better than other writers at creating the maximum of characterization in the minimum of words and panels.

Jeff: I don't think Morrison overused metafiction in Animal Man. The metafictional horror was the point of the second half of the series, and I think Morrison modulated its use; we had hints of it before the end, but the "I can see you!" moment was transcendent for me. But varying mileage, etc.

Kevin:

Except, of course, for those of us who do, including you. Why would you assume that someone who is willing to read superhero stories wouldn't be willing to read mysteries, or vice-versa?

My error. What I probably meant was something along the lines of different genres require different critical evaluations, and idiosyncratic differences in the basis of critical evaluation between individuals are magnified once you begin venturing outside a single genre. Learning how to evaluate someone else's critical evaluation with respect to your own tastes is difficult enough.

So probably the idea I meant to drill down to was something like saying that a Best of Medium list can't be narrower than the number of genres present in the medium; it's really a set of Best of Genre lists.

Or something like that. Probably I was just bloviating.

Greg: no one mentioned 100 Bullets or much of anything else recent--is that a statement of quality, or a statement of who this audience is?

I think it's just an indication that it's hard to judge if recent comics will hold up over time. They're still too close too try and view objectively. The "that was new and cool" factor may be coloring people's perceptions.

It's also pretty hard for an unfinished comic to be judged. Rising Stars showed promise but did not deliver, and I would say the opposite of Morrison's Animal Man. I certainly enjoy 100 Bullets a lot, but until it's in the can it can always be screwed up. I wouldn't be averse to eventually including it in a similar list when it's done given what has already been published.

Greg: There's almost no point in arguing between The Tick and A History of Violence, since few readers are going to even consider reading both superhero parody and hard-boiled mystery.

Exactly. You watch the Tick cartoon on tv and see A History of Violence on movie screens. ;-) No pesky reading necessary.

And what are the tags for making the little quote-y blocks?

Jess:

Don't get me wrong; I like LoEG, as I said, and I enjoy its story and characters. Compare to, say, Watchmen, which has enough formalism to stun a buffalo. As a heavily-left-brained guy, I like formalism. It only starts to bother me when the skeleton it builds is left unfleshed. Like I said, LoEG just feels a bit more academic, more an exercise or experiment, than some of Moore's other works.

Ralf: <blockquote> and </blockquote>

Greg, more eloquent words were never spoken.

Kevin: I think "inane" is strong. "Stupid," maybe? In any event, if someone wants to skip _Mockingbird_, they're volunteering to fail 9th grade English. If they want to reasd catch-22, they'll find out about it.

A gateway is something that leads peopel to find out more for themselves. I'm not saying that you shouldn't give someone who wants to read a good comic book Sandman. I'm saying that if you are talking to someone who wants to be a comic book fan a book, you should give him one that won't lead to him looking for other stuff and finding crap. There's no comic like, say Morrison's Animal Man. And the followup story was kind crappy.

Otoh, if you give him a Swamp Thing volume, all the volumes of Swamp Thing are good. And if you go elsewhere, then you do hit Sandman, and then if you hit other Vertigo stuff you've already read two good comic so you might be more inclined to try other stuff.

A gateway relies on the person to pick out stuff himself,

Greg: Well, your impression of a book is not something anyone can tell you you're wrong for having--but I can say that Moore certainly viewed it with joy rather than as an exercise. That you didn't receive that impression is a valid ground for complaint/criticism.

Mike: Do you think a newbie would be more likely to follow a character or a creator? I'm interested in your responses because the newbie you describe is so different from me that I'm getting a much different perspective. It would never occur to me, as an adult newcomer to comics, to follow a character; I'd follow a creator, which would lessen the chance of finding crap. I'd follow characters, too, of course, but I'd put more emphasis on creators.

I don't know that I would call Morrison's Animal Man essential; I think you need a solid grounding in superhero comics in general for it to really work properly. "Transcendent" is the right word for the "I can see you" scene, though. The first time I read that, my immediate reaction was to snap my own head around and see what was behind me. Just incredible.

Jess: Depends on how savvy they are. Also where they're getting the books. A comic shop owner probably knows his stock fairly well, and he can be a reasonable guide, if he's willing. If he's just at the local Barnes and Noble, well, how are the trades organized, if at all? By company? By title? No regard for creator at all, possibly even within the same volume. Additionally, it's sort of an alien experience. Like when I was looking for that comic book for my confederate at Chi con. She didn't know there were different versions of Superman, how to look for the creators, how to search through boxes, etc. We search fruitlessly for 3 hours while I let her take the lead. I found it myself in fifteen minutes the next day.

So, you go to a bookstore, you find books organized by subject and then by author order...except magazines and comics.

You go to Best Buy, you find music by type and artist, but movies by title, but at least for movies I have some sense of what I'm looking for. I know Nicole Kidman and Tom Hanks and Billy Wilder.

Comics? Well, I know Superman and Batman and Spiderman and Snoopy, but does that help?Dozens of different people create those. The Greatest Joker Stories Ever Told is different than The Dark Knight Returns in a way that Support Your Local Sheriff is not different from Support Your Local Gunfighter.

I think the Morrison run on Animal Man is about the worst mainstream gateway comic I can think of. Much of it depends on a strong familiarity with Crisis and pre-Crisis characters, and is as much a specific creative rebuttal of a specific publishing event as it is an exercise in metafiction. The actual "statement" it makes in the end - if it's making any statement at all - is that creators can be cruel and capricious to their creations, that "bad things happen to good characters," which is hardly a profound observation. The stylistic tricks used to get there are neat, but are hardly groundbreaking - breaking the fourth wall, characters meeting their authors, etc. had been done ad nauseum in books and film long before then, and often with far more subtlety. My point being that someone introduced to Animal Man today wouldn't find its metafiction that impressive; we're a culture that swims in self-commentary.

Aside from the "Coyote Gospels" issue - which I always thought was the best metafiction issue by far - the strongest stories in Animal Man are the ones that dealt with the toll of being even a third- or fourth-tier superhero or villain: the death of the Red Mask, Mirror Master's invasion of Animal Man's home, the arc covering his family's murder and its consequences. The time travel issue was utterly chilling, an inverted ghost story populated by characters we know are phantoms but simply haven't died yet. That this dramatic arc is truncated by a series of Crisis in-jokes and some dime store postmodernism is a bit of a shame.

As for the "Essential" factor, Animal Man certainly has value for its influence - it helped kicked off a wave of metafiction and inter-comic commentary within mainstream superhero comics - but on the merits doesn't hold up all that well. Doom Patrol is a much better example of good early Morrison.

Chary said:

A gateway is something that leads people to find out more for themselves. I'm not saying that you shouldn't give someone who wants to read a good comic book Sandman. I'm saying that if you are talking to someone who wants to be a comic book fan a book, you should give him one that won't lead to him looking for other stuff and finding crap. There's no comic like, say Morrison's Animal Man. And the followup story was kind crappy.

Okay, that makes your point somewhat clearer. There are actually a bunch of places to go from Morrison & Truog's Animal Man, including many of Morrison's later works--Doom Patrol, JLA, the earlier Zenith, if you can find it, and for those willing to wrestle with a story, Invisibles and Flex Mentallo. And I'm close to putting Morrison's New X-Men on the same pedastal, though it's a lousy gateway--first, because it's very reliant on at least a passing familiarity with earlier X-stories, though that level of knowledge can be gained from the first three X-movies; and second because it might fool you into thinking that there are other X-books which are nearly as good.

Some of Warren Ellis's superhero titles--especially Stormwatch, but emphatically not The Authority--can scratch some of the itches of which Animal Man makes you aware.

Through the other gate, the number of people who have started or returned to reading comics with Sandman is very high, and I think there are intelligent follows-up--like rieber & Gross's Books of Magic and Horrocks and Case's Hunter (which I can't share your assessment of, at all); Carey et al's Lucifer; large chunks of Hellblazer; and many non-DC fantasy, dark fantasy, or horror titles--even the better parts of Dr. Strange. Also, Sandman can point back towards Swamp Thing as easily as that title points forward to Sandman; people don't always read things in the order written, nor should they be expected to. All in all, I find that a literary chain more satisfying than anything that might end up at Sin City.

I don't think I've ever met someone who decided they want to be a comic book fan. To me that sounds as strange as me waking up one day and deciding I want to like country music now.

My intentions when giving people certain comics is always because I think they may enjoy that particular story. If there are no other stories like the one I'm giving them, I assume they will have other interests which may be more fruitfully represented.

I'm not really sure why the conversation seems to have veered into "gateway" comics, when the original question seemed pretty clear in that the friend in question explicitly didn't want that. As I read it, he just seemed to want a shelf's worth of comics that were generally regarded as pretty good.

Animal Man makes use of previous characters, but doesn't -depend- on them in the way so many trainspotting comics it. The comics can be enjoyed without knowing who Captain Triumph was or even grokking everything about Vandal Savage. Buddy and his family are the main characters, after all, and they are largely Morrison's creation. The main concerns of the comic are animal rights and Buddy's emotional state, not recovering the obscure Whatsit that appeared in a single issue of Avengers in the 1970s.

"Breaking the fourth wall, characters meeting their authors, etc. had been done ad nauseum in books and film long before then, and often with far more subtlety. My point being that someone introduced to Animal Man today wouldn't find its metafiction that impressive; we're a culture that swims in self-commentary."

Metafiction predates Morrison, obviously, but characters threatening the reader (not the author, the reader) had not--not with the skill of Morrison. It hasn't been done as well since. And self-commentary is not metafiction, as you should know. What Morrison did--the horror aspect of metafiction--was rare, and his handling of it was exceptional.

And I think Morrison's run on Animal Man holds up better as a sustained narrative, starting with his first story and ending with his last, than Morrison's run on Doom Patrol. I enjoyed the hell out of Doom Patrol, and it gave me my best experience ever as a writer of letters to comic books, but the series is much more modular/sectional than Animal Man.

Ralf: If you don't want to talk about gateway comics, it's not like we have a press gang here.

Absolutely, Jess. There are stretches of Doom Patrol that merely play the same notes over again--most infamously the space story with Rhea--but every one of Animal Man's 26 issues (plus the Secret Origins) is built towards the same story. It offers the kind of self-contained plot perfect for a new reader (and really, how many readers did Buddy Baker have prior to the series anyway?).

As for the Crisis references and such, while those are fun for the fanboy trainspotter Morrison provides enough information via Hightower, Hayden, and other characters that anybody can follow along. (Worst case, they'll miss a good Marv Wolfman joke.) Nor is Morrison concerned with rebutting a specific publishing event so much as he's concerned with the condition of being manipulated and punished by a remote and inscrutable higher power. If you don't detect a statement in that, one that far transcends the world of DC comics, you're being willfully obtuse. (The issue that garners almost universal praise, the Coyote Gospel? That's the entire 26-issue plot, stripped of its ornaments and told to us right up front, like a magician performing his trick while hiding the gimmick in plain sight.)

And I agree with Ralf, Kevin, et al, this "gateway" stuff is a digression introduced late in the thread; this isn't about recruitment, it's about building an instant canon to catch up somebody who's missed the last fifteen years.

Picking up a point waaaaayyyyy back in the thread...

Jeff asks: How well did the Donna Troy Trade collecting two excellent stories from that era along with an execrable 5-issue arc from the title's nadir do?

That question probably answers itself. In any case, it's not the right measure. The Donna Troy trade was aimed at readers made curious about the character's torturous history by the lead-in to Infinite Crisis: pure short-term appeal, aimed only at current fans and probably not even comprehensible or interesting to many of them.

The Wolfman/Perez run, up through "The Judas Contract" or Donna's wedding, is preteen comic book crack and it features characters who are more recognizable now than ever before. DC should have a full line of trades or digests ready for when the cartoon viewers graduate to middle school. They'd probably do fairly well among adult fans, too, either those who wanted to replace aging back issues or find out what they'd missed; I'd guess they'd sell on par with Marvel's Byrne FF or Simonson Thor collections. A full Wolfman/Perez Teen Titans run would be a perennial seller and would probably pull in new readers today as easily (if not in as massive numbers) as it did in 1980.

...although maybe they should do some kind of "special edition" to digitally remove all the disco collars and man-perms...

I would personally argue that Cerebus is as essential as anything in comics...

Two trades that have been missed, both anthology types:
Neil Gaiman's Midnight Days - Gaiman taking on Sandman, Golden Age Sandman, Swamp Thing and John Constantine. A mixed bag of stuff but good as far as that 'gateway' thing goes.

The revised edition of Across The Universe that's coming out soon (with a new name), adding Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow and The Killing Joke to an already excellent collection.

I'd also say that the trades of Fables are worth considering, although that depends very much on the politics of the reader (Willingham's right-wingisms infuriate me).

V For Vendetta really needs to be on there.

Preacher is immature, yes, but it's *wonderfully* immature, and far better than a lot of the attempts at 'maturity' that are so prevalent in the medium. It's certainly no less mature than Transmetropolitan, as well... My girlfriend, who generally has a little disdain for comics (she'll read anything by Moore or Gaiman, and liked some of Cerebus a lot, but doesn't seek them out) absolutely *adored* Preacher, the only major comic work she sat down and read from beginning to end in a day or two...

Rick Veitch's The Maximortal would be an essential were it not for the scatalogical humour ('craptonite') that mars an otherwise wonderful story.

Morrison's New X-Men stuff - I disagree with it being necessary to have read a lot of X-Men stories. I'd never read an X-Men comic before starting these, and only seen one of the films, and had no problem. Admittedly, I have the basic comic-fan-osmosis knowledge of them, but it's still very, very new-reader-friendly. Having said that, I don't think it's among the very best the medium has to offer. Good second-tier stuff though. For Morrison I'd go with Animal Man or The Invisibles (or 7 Soldiers if it's ever traded).

A nitpicking, Usenet-style response to Andrew:

Morrison's New X-Men stuff - I disagree with it being necessary to have read a lot of X-Men stories.

Well, perhaps you might note that I was careful to not say that; I specifically said "it's very reliant on at least a passing familiarity with earlier X-stories, though that level of knowledge can be gained from the first three X-movies".

That was partially a joke--after all, no one in the universe has yet seen the first three X-movies. But even seeing one or two of them will bring one enough up to speed on the context to be able to follow New X-Men. Someone who doesn't have even that degree of knowledge will probably flounder.

I think that the more familiarity one has with what went before, the more outstanding Morrison's run seems; he's not just telling a good story, but telling a good story using tools which seemed hopelessly tarnished and which reveals the long-forgotten silver and gold under the stains. Which is a distinctively shared-universe joy, which is why I tend to think of it as a landmark. (There's a lot of the same thrill in his JLA, but I think New X-Men is the more coherent and satisfying work.)

Marc: If you don't want to talk about gateway comics, it's not like we have a press gang here.

Hi. My name is Andy, and it was my conversation with Greg that spawned this discussion.

Thanks to the many Howling Curmudgeons for their excellent comments and suggestions. I now have a great list of things to try out.

For the record, many of the things discussed here are already owned by me. Having roomed with Rick Jones in college, I acquired much of his comics taste, and many of the titles discussed here were in evidence at that time. In fact, it's just possible that our freshman year, individual issues of Watchmen were coming out; I have a distinct memory of Rick gurgling with joy over *something*...

I have never owned a comic book in my life (unless you want to count the dozen or so that an uncle bought me and were thrown in a box and never seen again), but looking over Rick's shoulder gave me an appreciation for the medium. Reading things like Doom Patrol ("THIS!") and Miracleman caused my head to explode, and I still consider Watchmen one of the richest, most engaging tales I've read in any format.

I can't say exactly what I was looking for by asking for trade paperback 'Essentials', other than an organic inquiry along the lines of "Knowing what you know about the things I like, what else is out there?" I shall be running down lots of these suggestions in the coming weeks.

One thing I own that I haven't seen mentioned here: Kings In Disguise, by Vance and Burr. Social consciousness along the lines of Maus -- excellently executed, recommended by me.

Much obliged, comics dudes!

Metafiction predates Morrison, obviously, but characters threatening the reader (not the author, the reader) had not--not with the skill of Morrison.

Are you kidding me? Have you ever read any Calvino? Barthelme? Borges? Hell, the characters on Monty frigging Python threatened the viewers! This was old hat outside of comic books by the time Animal Man had been done, and I found Morrison's handling of it, for the most part, to be kind of ham-handed. It was the novelty of seeing it in a mainstream funnybook that grabbed most readers' attentions at the time.

Animal Man makes use of previous characters, but doesn't -depend- on them in the way so many trainspotting comics it.

Animal Man certainly depends on a knowledge of "Crisis on Infinite Earths." The constant references to Crisis, previous continuity, "Earth-17 butterflies" and so forth fly over the heads of new comic readers, who aren't going to be aware of DC's decades of pre-Crisis continuity and multiple Supermen. When the Crime Syndicate is introduced, they're specifically introduced as tragic figures because of their role as characters who were deleted in Crisis. There isn't enough information within Animal Man itself to appreciate this fully; the "Second Crisis" arc in Animal Man is presented explicitly as a critique of, and companion piece to, Crisis on Infinite Earths, and makes little sense without it.

Nor is Morrison concerned with rebutting a specific publishing event so much as he's concerned with the condition of being manipulated and punished by a remote and inscrutable higher power. If you don't detect a statement in that, one that far transcends the world of DC comics, you're being willfully obtuse.

No, I really don't think "Animal Man" transcends the world of DC comics. By the end of the book, Morrison manages to deflate "The Coyote Gospels." While issue 5 takes metafiction and turns it into an allegory for the problem of evil, issue 26 takes the problem of evil and turns it into metafiction, and strips the story of emotional resonance in an attempt to make some quirky little jokes about the comics business. Morrison fails to see that Animal Man's railing at the universe for the death of his family already hits at issues that transcend comic books. However, once their deaths are explained explicitly as the story arc of a hack writer looking to make a name for himself by tormenting an obscure character, we fall out of a world which parallels our own - in which bad shit just happens to us because there is no kind and all-powerful god- and we're squarely in a world of fiction, where bad shit is carefully scripted because it makes for a more compelling story.

(This would leave us with the rather silly moral that it's bad for writers to write bad things happening to their characters - a message that Morrison clearly doesn't believe, as it would make Morrison the villain not only of Animal Man, but of Doom Patrol, JLA, New X-Men, and every book he's written so far - so say nothing of our role as his willing accomplices. While we're at it, has anyone arrested J.K. Rowling yet? She has a much wider audience, and for Christ's sake, she just killed [spoiler deleted, as the book's only a couple of months old--gpm]!)

Probably my biggest complaint about Morrison's Animal Man is that it ends not as Animal Man's story but, weirdly enough, as Morrison's. We conclude with Morrison walking wistfully along a river recalling an anecdote from his childhood that, earlier in the series, was attributed to a supporting character. This is included purely, it seems, to underscore the fact that these characters spring from Morrison, that they're basically Morrison's creations, or at least are presently the product of his work, and only have the thoughts and motivations he puts into them - as he also pointed out earlier, Animal Man's environmental concerns only stem from Morrison's own. By closing with Morrison and this scene, instead of one which would traditionally feature the title character, Morrison retroactively becomes his characters. He makes the story his story, and it changes from the story of Buddy Baker and his family to the story of Grant Morrison and his cat. This, to put it mildly, is a bit of a bait and switch.

Metafiction always creates a distance between the reader and the character, because it necessarily reminds us that the character isn't real. Creating a metafictional superhero wasn't necessarily a bad idea, but mixing metafictional content in with a family drama meant to connect with the character was a mistake, and makes Animal Man a book that's sloppy and uneven at best.

While issue 5 takes metafiction and turns it into an allegory for the problem of evil, issue 26 takes the problem of evil and turns it into metafiction, and strips the story of emotional resonance in an attempt to make some quirky little jokes about the comics business.

It would be just as easy to reverse this formulation--to say that issue 5 makes quirky little jokes about Warner Bros. cartoons while issue 26 and its build-up connect the problem of evil more vividly to human lives--but that would be just as reductive. In fact, both issues are about art and life. This multivalence is an asset, not a problem.

This would leave us with the rather silly moral that it's bad for writers to write bad things happening to their characters

That would be rather silly, if that were all there was to it. At its most minute and comics-centric, Morrison issues an argument for fantastic art over the tawdry sadism that was then (and still is) passed off as "realism," but even that argument extends beyond DC comics to art in general; DC's transformation simply provides the occasion for making the argument. A reader can still come away with Morrison's rejection of sado-realism whether or not they recognize the Crime Syndicate (let alone the New Statesmen).

As for the inevitable divergence between Morrison and God, well, that's to the work's advantage--once he starts down the metafictional path it would be dishonest for him not to acknolwedge the difference. This isn't necessarily a breakdown of the comic's theology, though; in casting himself as a demiurgic power who can only manipulate or torment other creators' creations, he turns the work-for-hire comic writer into the kind of gnostic deity that would figure so prominently in The Invisibles and other recent works. That is, the obviously fictional world Buddy Baker discovers he inhabits is not so different from the other, less overtly fictional worlds Morrison has created; the confrontation with a demiurge has some meaning for him even if it may not for you.

it ends not as Animal Man's story but, weirdly enough, as Morrison's...

The same might be said of a series for which I have far less patience and affection, Gaiman's Sandman, although I did enjoy its final issue as well. (Not as much as the final Animal Man.) This isn't an unreasonable ending to expect from a series about fiction. He'd been hinting at it since the fifth issue (the first issue plotted as part of an ongoing series)--how is that a bait and switch? Given that we still get a conclusion and a denouement for Buddy's 26-issue journey, the claim is an overstatement.

Metafiction always creates a distance between the reader and the character, because it necessarily reminds us that the character isn't real.

Except that Morrison uses it to establish a similarity between Buddy's predicaments and our own, getting us much closer to this third-rate never-was superhero than we'd probably like. That's part of the comic's considerable achievements.

Now, I don't expect a word of this to change your opinion of Animal Man--but to claim that it has nothing to say is patently ridiculous. The very fact of this discussion disproves that; we couldn't even mount this kind of analysis, let alone disputed analysis, over a majority of the works mentioned thus far.

"Are you kidding me? Have you ever read any Calvino? Barthelme? Borges?"

Why, yes, actually--at least as many as you have, if not more. Also the secondary critical work on metafiction and the anthology Metahorror, which Morrison's work preceded. But what Morrison did that none of them managed was achieve metahorror *in a restricted space*. None of those worthies had the limitations of the comic book. Which is why the best comic book writing is like poetry and is appositely compared with poetry--it faces similar restrictions of space. And Morrison achieved what he did, and did it as well as he did, in the face of limitations which Calvino et al. did not. Which may be why you found it "ham-handed;" Morrison had to present the threat more directly and didn't have the luxury of space and subtlety which prose authors did and do. But Morrison made the threat not just direct but transgressive within the genre strictures, which Calvino et al. never did.

"Animal Man certainly depends on a knowledge of "Crisis on Infinite Earths." The constant references to Crisis, previous continuity, "Earth-17 butterflies" and so forth fly over the heads of new comic readers, who aren't going to be aware of DC's decades of pre-Crisis continuity and multiple Supermen. When the Crime Syndicate is introduced, they're specifically introduced as tragic figures because of their role as characters who were deleted in Crisis. There isn't enough information within Animal Man itself to appreciate this fully; the "Second Crisis" arc in Animal Man is presented explicitly as a critique of, and companion piece to, Crisis on Infinite Earths, and makes little sense without it."

Actually, no, it doesn't -depend- on knowledge of those things. Knowledge of those things adds to reader pleasure, but Animal Man is fully enjoyable without knowledge of the background of those figures--the reader simply processes them as background characters. Comics like Kingdom Come are dependent on the readers' knowledge of Captain Marvel. Animal Man can easily be enjoyed without knowing about Crisis. There is a difference between knowledge which complements a story and knowledge without which a story cannot function or be enjoyed, and the figures in Animal Man are almost entirely of the former and not of the latter category.

"This would leave us with the rather silly moral that it's bad for writers to write bad things happening to their characters"

Morrison is not limiting himself to that moral. He's drawing a comparison between how writers treat their characters and how people treat animals, and making a statement of ethics not only with Buddy Baker's actions but with Morrison's own. One of the dominant themes--if not the dominant theme--off Animal Man is mercy, and our responsibility as autonomous individuals for how we treat others. Buddy forces himself to act mercifully toward animals; Coyote Jesus sacrifices himself for his people (and what is that sacrifice if not, arguably, the most compelling act of mercy and compassion in comics?); Hightower sacrifices himself for the continuum; and Morrison is finally forced to exercise the same mercy toward Buddy. Morrison's statements and actions at the end of his run on the series invites the reader to ask him- or herself if s/he is acting with a similar mercy toward others.

*That* is not silly. That is a challenge to the reader. And it's a damn sight more relevant and pressing a question than most comic books pose.

Just as an aside: While not necessary for enjoyment of Animal Man; I absolutly love the issue of Suicide Squad where Morrison is brought in and killed. (I think it was the War of the Gods tie-in issue.) A brillant little coda and/or tribute to Morrison's Animal Man run; which does its own bit to further twist the rules.

Greg wrote:

The person this post is aimed at probably has more superhero tendencies than not, but again, I'm at least as interested in seeing what people have to recommend. (E.g., no one mentioned 100 Bullets or much of anything else recent--is that a statement of quality, or a statement of who this audience is?)

For me, it's partly the title of this thread. I'm not sure I'd call 100 Bullets or any other current series essential or anything you have to have, but parts of it are enjoyable enough. For various reasons, I've only read up through #50, so the pace of the series might have picked up, but I'm finding its meandering frustrating, how it's very slowly doling out information about the overarching story. Some of the individual arcs are quite good, but it seems like, after 50 issues, we don't have much more than an introduction of characters and an outline of the conflict. (As I say, though, I'm about a year-and-a-half behind, so that may have changed). That said, I'd probably recommend Hang Up on the Hang Low as the best arc, with a secondary recommendation for the first arc that set everything up.

I'm also enjoying Fables, though I'd find it hard to pull out individual arcs for GN recommendations. It builds on itself, so I'd suggest starting at the beginning and moving through from there.

A press gang came to my house and forced me to respond to the following comment:

I actually don't think FF leads anywhere good. I'd recommend the Essential Avengers or X-men first.

Where do Avengers and X-Men lead that Fantastic Four doesn't? My initial assumption would be that FF actually leads to Avengers and X-Men. What are the dead ends and other bad things FF takes you to?

It occurs to me, a weekend later, that it isn't that I dislike metafiction, merely that I find it hilarious. And so, when someone attempts to take it seriously or pretend that it is some great and 'transcendent' insight, I cannot help but view it as the utterly pretentious twaddle that it is...

Perhaps Chuck Jones ruined me for Animal Man and Voice of the Fire, but, honestly, I don't think there's any there there to miss...

Metafiction has its place, I think, and it certainly has its proponents; I don't think one can convincingly argue that, e.g., Borges is a dull, shallow thinker. Metafiction may not work for you, but that doesn't necessarily remove it from consideration altogether.

In comparison, I find the idea "how do you know what is real?" to be at least as absurd as you find metafiction, and that opinion has closed off virtually the entirety of the Phillip K. Dick corpus to me, but I don't begrudge people who like Blade Runner.

Doug: Well, The Essential FF is pretty self-contained, though it does lead you to Silver Surfer, Sub-mariner and probably New Gods. My problem is that I find it inferior in many ways to Sper-man, Dr. Strange and the Avengers. Additionally, the Avengers has a host of new characters. The FF has, well, four. And they fight all the time. I like the Fantastic Four but I don't think they sing, if you will, as much as some of the other stuff.

Greg: I thought you said the press gang was going to leave the actual Curmudgeons alone?

No, just the senior Curmudgeons.

Hey; I said it has it's place...in Comedy. We're talking about a subgenre that inevitably has, lurking somewhere in the threads, a serious category error going on, and watching someone try to smoke a picture of a pipe is funny. [So including 'Animal Man' would only work if, as Eric suggested you also included the punchline; John Ostrander having 'Grant Morrison' gunned down in Nicaragua in the Suicide Squad/Doom Patrol special. Which isn't likely to get reprinted any time soon.]

I'll merely say that there are some seriously credentialled people around these parts for whom metafiction is a topic of meritorious consideration; you run the risk of making yourself look like an IDer looks to a biologist by loudly insisting that it isn't.

Mike: If the Lee & Kirby FF just doesn't work for you, I can accept that, but why would it probably lead to Kirby work from another company but not more Lee & Kirby Marvel work? If FF appearances by Sub-Mariner and Silver Surfer might lead you to those series, why wouldn't similar appearances by the Hulk, the Avengers, and the X-Men not lead you there?

I thought the perk of no press gangs would work on a handshake basis, but I should have had it written into the contract. My bad.

All things considered, I think this thread has probably gotten plenty large and we've accomplished my original goals, so I'm going to close it out.

It's been a productive discussion and I hope some of the other Curmudgeons step up to start more in-depth looks at some of the issues.