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Any recommendations? I've heard the Vision had a good run last year

Ever heard of From Hell?

Not till now, though I do love Moore when he's in good form

Batman: Hong Kong was the first DC comic book I ever read. I was about 6, so I didn't understand half of what was happening, but I've read it several times since over the course of my early teens and loved it every time. I don't know how it holds up, now that I'm old and wise, but it's high quality enough that 1/3rd of the frames are actually painted rather than drawn, and I remember it to this day. I've seen very, very few graphic novels since* that match it in the intensity and badassity of its action. Not necessarily the scale of the violence, but the back-and-forth, the visceral nature of what's happening. That's where it shines. It's also a pretty decent mystery as well. Definitely captures the Noir mood of the better Batman comics, tells a dark story, manages to work in Wuxia elements, and the art style is badass incarnate.

Aesthetically, I feel, they managed to make Batman the perfect blend of imposing and campy, so he can still have his dark glare and his shadow that blots out the moon, but he still definitely looks like a superhero. Rather than other "Intimidating" versions of batman, like the one that jabbed Joker in the eye with his 'rang and the one in Serious House on Serious Earth, this Bruce actually stands upright and isn't afraid to step out into better lighting conditions. What really does all this for the design is his cape, and the way that lighting is used to highlight it, which was probably the most fun any realism-focussed Batman artist has ever had drawing anything ever. Check it out, it's fucking amazing how they use that thing in the art. I was entranced, even as a little kid who didn't know anything about why things were designed to look a certain way.

*And I think I've read Spiderman's first run-in with Tombstone before this, (And I mean first, this was the 60's Tombstone with the green suit and the mask.) This was the one where Spiderman gets tossed around for the better part of 2 issues by a horde of gangsters, but outsmarts the elites one by one and beats the crap out of them all, forcing Tombstone to retreat when the cops show up and start mopping dudes into the baddy wagon. The action in B:HK edged that one out by a small but noticeable margin, imho.

Batman Hong Kong duly noted (tips hat)

Ah, wait, shit, it's not from the past 5 years.

I need to stop trusting what the forum front page says about titles and read shit for myself.

Nah, that's fine, changed the ask towards good graphic novels of any time period, so all is well :)

Well, now that all time periods are up for grabs, I hear the Bayeux Tapestry is pretty good. Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights is pretty funny and spooky at the same time.

I walked into that one. Atleast you didn't recommend cave paintings :p

I'll add some of the highlights of my comic experience

Outstanding
Watchmen
Superman: Red Son
Superman: Secret Identity

Great
Fables up to episode 100 or so (quality dropped after that)
Top Ten
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Books 1 & 2)
The Dark Knight Strikes Back
The Dark Knight Strikes Back Again
All Star Superman
Elseworlds: The Nail (and the sequel)

Good
Identity Crisis

Superhero Stuff (Some of other popular graphic novels in this category have already been mentioned)

Old Man Logan

Batman & Dracula Trilogy

Wanted

Indy Stuff

Winterworld

Iron Empires

Just a Pilgrim

The Redeemer (Maybe you read this one already?)

Ulli and Marquand: Mordheim, City of the Damned

Vecna: Hand of the Revenant (It's good, but it sucks that this is unfinished and only the one was made)

Series

Sin City

Stuff of Legends (Not sure if this is finished yet, or if it unfortunately ended too soon)

Battle Pope

The Goon

 

There's probably more stuff I'm forgetting, but most of the graphic novels by a Norwegian cartoonist that just goes by the name "Jason" are often pretty good as well.

Thanks for that substantial list, looks like I've got my reading hitlist locked in now

I just realized you said graphic novels from the past 5 years and most of these I mentioned are certainly more than 5 years old.

Then again you have stuff like Watchmen and Superman: Red Son up there too.

Yeah, the original idea was the catch up on what's new since work started, then I realized after your list that there's some good stuff from before 5 years that's worth getting into. I'm surprised you didn't mention Lost Gals or Promethea (I never got it myself, but still).

Also, between new and old content with high ratings, ALWAYS prefer the old, it's lasted longer, meaning it had quality to justify a continued high score

Lol, Alan Moore’s infamous Lost Girls. That’s basically Rule 34 with Alice, Dorothy and Wendy. I think I scanned through it once in the store once to see what all the fuss was about, but not really my thing.

Haven’t read Promethea either, really other than the Watchmen and The Killing Joke I’m not actually into Alan Moore’s stuff that much. I wasn’t even into V For Vendetta.

I probably have more stuff from Frank Miller, Garth Ennis and Mark Millar, if we're going with the "heavy weight" comic authors.

Well the beauty of girls is that, subject to interpretation, the entire story is a question of just how much is allowed under art, and how much crosses over into R34. For all its fanservice, it had a sensible deconstruction of a number of social mores, yet walked the edge between artistic and exploitative fairly well. The balancing was the appeal to that story.

Not a fan of V for Vendetta myself. Yep, your trio of authors does pack a punch.

Yeah I just had to correct my post, since I put “Mark Miller” twice, when I meant to say Frank Miller.

The reason why I figured you might have read The Redeemer graphic novel though is in that insanity ending of The Devourer, you had a few lines going on about purging the unclean with holy fire and saying “You are the Redeemer!” And that’s basically what the protagonist does in that comic.

I'll be honest, that was pure coincidence. I had 12 hours left till the deadline and only the endings left to finish. I just looked at the clock and said - you know, let's have fun with this insanity business. That entire ending was written in one go (and unfortunately like the entire rest of the work) and never proofread. 

That ending was the most fun I had making that entire game, just subverting and undermining Jaeger (an otherwise totally respectable character) in every way possible and setting everything on fire (because in that frame of mind you just don't do surgical work). Loved deflating her anger as it went on, and finally have her end pretty much lucid, her anger deflating like a balloon on the way (ergo the final words in black and not red). Oh, and fourth wall breaking as well, that was a fun ending indeed :)

You should read Tower of God. It's not *exactly* a visual novel because the only way to read it is online in long, vertical strips. However, it has superb art, characters, and action scenes.

Same problem, looking for bounded stories to read, absorb, and complete. Webseries which need to be read in a row are pretty hard to get into for me. In any case, thanks for the suggestion

Whoa wait, you use LINE Webtoon too!

Ava's demon is not exactly a graphic novel, but the art is amazing and the characters are pretty intriguing. Gunnerkrig Court is another interesting one, but it's a little slow in pacing.

I got through to 65 in Ava... and then quit when I realized there were only 1500 left... the art is fantastic, and the plot may well get intriguing, but it's fairly hard to watch 1500 pics in a one by one loading format >_<

Thanks for the recommendation though :)

You reminded me, I read The Killing Joke when I was 7. Didn't sleep tight that night, creeped me out. As far as recommendations go, I suggest Tomboy, Invincible, Get Jiro, Scott Pilgrim, Preacher, and there is this website full of webcomics if you're interested: hiveworks. I like Atomic Robo and Astral Aves in particular.

Ever read Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth by Grant Morrison? It's like Killing Joke, but it causes sleepless nights in first-time readers up into the middle-teens.

As far as hiveworks go, I really like Manly Guys doing Manly Things. Despite the title, it really shines in humanizing the tropes for hypermasculine badasses in video games in pretty complex and hilarious ways.

Guess 8 year old me is going to suffer a bit more then. Also, yeah, even the address is hilarious (thepunchlineismachismo.com), have you read Whomp? You'll hate it!

I'm intrigued. Explain this 'Whomp' to me...

Whomp: the butt comic!! It's about the writer's self deprecating humor depicting him trying to create self deprecating butt humor.

Can't be worse than New52 Lobo.

Actually, it's funny, I was just trying to make a joke, as the author himself constantly "states" his comics are shit. In fact, the comics' ads say things like "Everything Whomp is awful", or  "Whomp is trash".

*Scott Pilgrim Series

*Batman Incorporated

*Level Up

American Born Chinese

Why is this Happening?

Multiverse (DC)

Convergence (DC)

*Walking Dead Compendium One

The Scott Pilgrim movie was enjoyable, are the comics more of the same or different?

Noticed Batman Inc when it came out, is it complete or an ongoing franchise? Also, is it self contained or does it wind up getting interrupted by larger DC events going on?

My target is to find self-sufficient comics, I don't have the time to invest into ongoing series (the entire continuity mess just gets annoying, swore off long events after Darkest Night/Brightest Day)

Thanks for the recommendations

First comic is the same as the movie, the others are rather compressed versions in the movie.

The Umbrella Academy series is pretty good.

Looks interesting, will check it out

You should try Manga. Great stuff.

I do respect that there's probably some exceptional manga work out there, but my preference remains graphic novels > comics > manga (exceptions do break the rules)

You mean all three are not the same!? I thought Graphic Novel = Comic and Manga.

No, Graphic novels are finite, complete stories (such as Watchmen 1-12) while comics can go all the way up to episode 600 and beyond (E.g. Wonderwoman/Batman). Think of Graphic Novels as comics that only contain one arc (and no crossovers from other comics), so you can read everything in the story and move on with a sense of closure that you don't get in most comics/manga.

Out of interest, because I've not really thought about it before, where do you draw the line? Isn't every series a comic until it finishes?

I understand Watchmen falling under graphic novel, but what about things like The Sandman? It ran multiple stories in such a format that it could have gone on to 600 and beyond, but the author decided to give it a proper ending. Does that make it a comic or a graphic novel?

Ideally, Graphic Novels should wrap up within 25 discrete sub-comics, and must contain the entirety of a storyline (no crossovers or plugs for other comics). If the author has an extended plotline like Fables (150 episodes + a couple of one shots), I consider each arc to be a constituent of the larger story, and the whole thing is a (gigantic) graphic novel. However, I subjectively would consider exceptionally long works to be more of a comic series proper with an ending, 150 episodes is pretty much beyond stretching it, except in the rare case that there are no arcs, or all arcs are heavily interconnected.

Another way to view it in that light, is that if there's a contiguous thread (you leave the story in one chapter and pick a random later chapter and the same story is being explored, not necessarily in the direct foreground), it's a Graphic Novel (for Fables it was the entire Fabletown saga, which eventually became the Bigby saga). What I call comics violate this thread of continued storytelling, in that they shift the storytelling to an unrelated direction, or just reboot everything with a chaotic crossover strategy (to get more sales).

Another one that you might be interested in is Kingdom Come. (DC Superhero stuff)

Heard good things about that one but never found it. Picked up a couple of your other recommendations, will go through them over the next few weeks.

Gene Luen Yang is a pretty cool dude. His stuff deals with life (but also Chinese-American-ness). 

I just read Two Brothers by Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon. Like spicy, sort of Spanish family drama? Read Two Brothers. I was hooked.

Also, I know it's not in the last 5 years (the stories are from the 1970's) but Abandon the Old in Tokyo by Yoshihiro Tatsumi is nothing less then beautiful. It's nostalgic, but in that wonderful, haunting gekiga way. The stories haven't left me (specifically the "Beloved Monkey").

Oh! And before I forget! I've been trying to get my friends to read Natsume Ono's Not Simple but for some reason, they won't. It's an affecting story that you should try out. It's one of those stories that make you remember that one detail, and then another, and then you cry... Lot's of people get turned off by the art, but I like it. It works for it.