[ SECRET POST #2031 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2031 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 043 secrets from Secret Submission Post #290.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Re: Introduce me to American comics?

[(Anonymous)]

Seconding Finder and Love and Rockets. The tough part with those, I think, is that they've been running for a while for indie comics (ESPECIALLY L&R, which just celebrated its 30th anniversary), and they do change tone/skill/focus over time as well as building up a lot of backstory. What works for people in one volume of stuff might not work for them in another, and then there are readers who want to start in the beginning for the sake of knowing characters, but I'd argue for both series, the stronger work happens later on... Though Finder did recently have a one-volume work, Voice, that functions pretty well as both a standalone and an intro to the world.

L&R is probably a bit tougher -- it had an initial 15-year run, then a break as its creators did more standalone works, and is now 10 years into its 2nd run (subtitled "New Stories"). It's also done by 3 brothers (one of them very on and off) who each have more or less their own "universe" and style. If it's at all helpful: the 1st-run stories that hooked me in were "100 Rooms", "The Lost Women", and "The Death of Speedy", by Jaime Hernandez; and "Heartbreak Soup", "Blood of Palomar", and "Love and Rockets X", by Gilbert. Jaime's work also has the occasional homage/play on superheroes since they exist on the very fringes of his universe, and there's a miniseries in the first 2 issues of the 2nd run that's pretty much a love letter to them.

Also reccing Alison Bechdel's work, especially Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, which I think encapsulates all your bullet points. It's a one-volume memoir, largely about Bechdel's relationship with her father, especially as she comes out as lesbian in her college years and also realizes that her dad is gay and closeted. Growing up in a funeral home business, OCD, and a great deal of literature also come up. Bechdel has also done a follow-up memoir, Are You My Mother?, and the alt-newspaper comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For.

Maybe also Grant Morrison's run on Doom Patrol, which has been fairly recently collected in 6 volumes. DP has had several incarnations, but its through-line is being about superheroes who are regarded as strange or freakish to the rest of the world. Morrison ups the surrealism of the main cast and the villains they fight (sometimes literally, as one of the villain groups is the Brotherhood of Dada), and it's pretty much a dark comedy all-round.

Finally, maybe Alan Moore and Gene Ha/Zander Cannon's run on Top Ten, which is the first 2 collected volumes, which is basically if a crime procedural took place in a city where everyone has some sort of power . Although there's imo some clunky handling of one character's sexuality -- I remember thinking that it came up a bit more than would actually happen irl -- but it's also definitely not all there is to her. The main cast is split about 50-50 between men and women, and there's all sorts of body types in these first volumes (the issues after them kind of drop off in terms of writing and really drop off in art, I think -- lots of samebody and prettifying). It's fun.