Comic Books

I never got into comic books when I was growing up. I don’t know why. I have an uncle who was really into comic books. He had probably a few thousand of them, he had taken them out of his parents house and brought them to his house. He joked about how he was going to "retire on these someday". One night it rained a monsoon, the comics were sitting too close to the window and the window decided to leak, every last book was water damaged. The perfect storm indeed. I had looked at the comics before their destruction but for some reason it never took.

So anyways a couple of years ago I was on Amazon and this book caught my eye, Watchmen. It was under a category of graphic novels and for $20 I wanted to read what was touted as “the greatest comic book ever written”. Well after getting a couple of chapters into it I realized this is what has been missing from comics for me. The graphic novel pulled the whole series together into one book. With regular comic issue format if I found a comic I liked I would have to search for the next issue in the series but not with the graphic novel it is all there. Not to mention the first real comic I ever read was Watchmen. I read it again and again. And now the movie is coming out, how lucky am I?

Since my initial read of Watchmen some of the book I have read are Batman: Year One, this was an awesome book as well. It's a Frank Miller "reboot" of how batman began. The story ends with a mention to a new villian threatening to contaminate Gotham reservoir but to my knowledge the series fas never continued. Kingdom Come was my first read of many of the superheroes I know and love from other mediums. The story was interesting and compelling. And the art work was unbelievable, I think it was done by Alex Ross in water color.

I have a long list of GN I want to read, from the Terminator Omnibus to Martha Washington to pretty much any Batman. Crisis on Infinite Earths, Indiana Jones, V for Vendetta, Hell Boy Collection, Ronin the list goes on and on.

I heard a writer saying Watchmen was like a gateway drug into the graphic novel medium, boy he was right in my case.

If anyone reads this and knows of a GN I might like please leave a comment, Thanks.

M