Why I don't buy many American comics...

[kirinn]

So I pick up this free comic from Marvel at the local comic shop's checkout counter. It turns out it's actually about 20 pages of dense narrative summary. Being interminably curious, I read the whole thing anyway. It turns out to be a condensation of (judging from the notes in the back) around 100 volumes spread over a dozen different Marvel

Comments

[tiercel]

The only good books left at Marvel:

http://community.livejournal.com/scans_daily/tag/marvel+adventures

Sample:
http://community.livejournal.com/scans_daily/5881857.html
http://community.livejournal.com/scans_daily/6682636.html

[kirinn]

Ow. My brain.

[tiercel]

Hee hee hee.

[thegreyghost]

To be fair, these are mainstream superhero comics, which--for the most part--still suck hard. Usually it's worth making an exception when they have limited miniseries since the limited size allows little room for convolution. There's tons of awesome indie American comics out there too.

[kirinn]

Sure, it's not like I actually have an anti-American comics buying policy or anything. Really, what it boils down to is almost everything I enjoy is done in creator-owned concepts, which is a rarer model for American authors/publishers than it is for Japanese or British ones. It's the whole long-range-plot by committee that really screws over the superhero franchises in my eyes.

[kurai_seraphim]

Just read Deadpool. That's all that matters. Marvel realized in the 90s that they could have giant universe-spanning plots to force people to either buy hundreds of comics to get one plot or dig through the compiliation volumes that get released a few months later.

I downloaded a torrent of Civil War a year ago and still haven't gotten through it. I lost interest at some point when the slow moving plot (due to all stories more or less happening at once) overcame my brain.