h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I reckon the best comic series ever was The Sandman. Or Watchmen. Or The Dark Knight Returns. Well, one of the three. Probably. I'm sure someone will disagree with me...

I'm not sure about it being the greatest - these things are subjective - but The Phantom deserves to be on any list of greats.

May I suggest you change the heading for this article to "Comics, cartoons, art and everything" - or something similar. That way anyone placing any of those words in the h2g2 search engine will be directed here and you will get more feedback.

I suppose it's all a question of how you define greatness. Certainly in terms of longevity Phantom deserves a mention but there's things like (not to sound too snobbish) artistic quality and the degree of penetration into the mainstream (ooh err) to consider. Thanks for the tip on the title. I'm giving it some thought.

I would have thought that 'The Funny Pages' originally referred to newspaper strips, so it could be a misleading title to use here; irony is difficult to convey in print! Anyway, not all comics are funny. Stan and Jack may have got turned away from Reed and Sue's wedding, but over the years the odd moment of drama has crept in. As for The Ghost Who Walks, ni recent years his comicbook appearances haven't lit any fires, though Don Newton's work at Charlton was rather fine. Newspaper adventure strips are difficult to do these days, with limits on space and indeed the number of weeks that a continuity can run, but the Phantom deserves kudos for longevity, certainly. My favourite current titles? As I think I mentioned somewhere else there's The Savage Dragon, and how about Usagi Yojimbo and indeed Rising Stars, written & created by the man who brought us Babylon 5?

Well, I'm open to suggestions as to a possible name change; I'd like to keep it succinct yet comprehensive (nice and easy, then). I have to confess I don't read much outside of DC/Vertigo but I'm a big fan of Garth Ennis and a friend swears by Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I didn't know JMS was writing a new title; I used to be a big fan of his 3-4 years ago but his attitude to the press etc regarding the last year of B5 and Crusade kind of turned me away from him.

I think (despite the people who will most likely yell at me and tell me no) that "The Tick" deserves to be on this list. It makes a commentary on comic books and society that I feel needs to be noticed, and it's executed with a good deal more style than other superhero parodies. Also, the work of Jhonen Vasquez needs to be mentioned. Despite the somewhat graphic nature (one of his titles is called "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac" to give you some idea), or perhaps because of it, his long-limbed characters have a darkness and a haunting quality to them that makes them well worth noticing. And just on a side note, both of these comics are black & white as opposed to color.

I've only seen the Tick cartoon but that was excellent. Must confess I'm not familiar with Jhonen Vasquez at all. Most of the stuff I read is embarrassingly mainstream. The only B&W I followed was Bryan Talbot's Luther Arkwright series which manages to be infuriatingly incomprehensible and jaw-droppingly brilliant simultaneously.

Cerebus the Aardvark has to have a mentioned

The cartoon series did a fairly accurate portrayal of the overall feel and style of the comics, but they changed the characters a bit and edited out some of the more amusing characters. As for Jhonen, find some of his stuff and read it. You'll either be highly amused or thoroughly repulsed. There is no grey area.

my votes go for...
Sandman, Watchmen, From hell by alan moore, Maus I and II...
all wonderful comics...

The trouble with the original Tick comics was that there weren't very many of them before Ben got seduced by the lure of animation, but they got reprinted so often that it ought to be possible to find a few in cheap back issue boxes. As for JMS's 'Rising Stars', it is up to #4 now, and looking very promising; slightly reminiscent of Watchmen in parts, but in no way a copy. It is published by Image and Top Cow, so I expect a perfect-bound reprint of the first couple of issues will come along Real Soon Now. Considering titles for life, the universe and this whole darn forum, if "funny" is out, is "comic" still a little off-putting... or is "graphic", as in graphic novels, if slightly pretentious, the way to go, as in "Graphic Results", "Graphic Descriptions", that sort of thing? When the initial h2g2 front page plug expires, how does one attract visitors? Try to get into the "most visited forums" list I guess.

I only set the forum up, what do other people think about Graphic Descriptions as a possible title? I'll go with the majority. If one or two of you could mention it on your homepages it might bring a few new contributors, but of course that's up to you. I'll keep an eye out for the Rising Stars TPB but my regular order eats a fair chunk of my budget (even when - as is fairly common - my store is a bit erratic when it comes to making sure all my titles go in my drawer...).

A second for Cerebus: can comic books be considered art? Dave Simms ought to know. The Cerebus comics are imaginative, funny, and have some fantastic illustration.

Anyone here read Normalman? our hero is the only person without super powers on a planet full of superheros.
I was lucky enough to be at the comic store when the 3-D anniversery issue came out. Yippie!

Sounds a bit like the Monty Python Bicycle-Repair-Man sketch. "See how he uses a spanner to tighten that nut!!!"

How about Grant Morrison's excellent superhero parody Zenith from 2000AD, or the Invisibles, which was less than subtley ripped off to become The Matrix?

And also worthy of a mention is "Zot!".

Isn't it nice that so many people can suggest such a diverse range of titles under this heading? Zot! is indeed sadly missed, but Scott's book on 'Understanding Comics' is a spookily interesting look at how our particular medium works.

I've not read a huge amount of the Invisibles but it didn't strike me as being terrifically like Matrix. If anything it seemed to be a fairly dodgy amalgam of bits from Fortean Times, Sandman, and The Adventures of Luther Arkwright. The whole anti-establishment tone seemed a bit strained. Not nearly as impressive as some of Morrison's JLA run. Did anyone else read Aztek The Ultimate Man? One of the best books of recent years, surely.

What about Marhall Law, too? A good parody from Pat Mills, and not containing too much of his chaos/new age rants that killed his 2000AD output stone dead - well, at least until it showed up in Toxic.

It suddenly occurred to me that I'd forgot to mention Green Lantern: Mosaic, a subtle treasure DC put out from 92-93 (-ish). Occasionally the scripts were as thoughtful and insightful as any of the more famous Vertigo series.