Welcome to Gaia! ::

Fuc*ing nerd. LOL.

~

I've always been interested about The Goon, but not enough so to do a 5 second quick Wik check on it. Can you tell me more about it, Dr. Kennings?

So I bashed on Spawn a bit in the other thread.

I feel like expanding on this a tiny bit.

Short answer:

Spawn is to comic books in the 90's

as

Limp Bizkit is to rock in the 90's

Longer answer:
Comics have had a history of getting actual thought-provoking stories with adult, serious, and sometimes violent themes since probably about the 70's or so (most likely earlier but the ball was definitely rolling by then). In the 80's, however, three books shook up comics and essentially changed everything forever: Alan Moore's Watchmen, Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, and Art Spielgelman's Maus. These three "graphic novels" (whatev) were dark, serious, and highly acclaimed. Watchmen is even listed in Time Magezine's "All Time 100 Greatest Novels". Comics can be literature now! Oh hey, here's a bunch of older comics that also qualify! Oh my! Maybe this can be a legitimate medium! Maybe even art!

However...some folks saw the "darker" aspects of these books and those that followed and capitalized by...putting in more blood, violence, gratuitous cleavage, and grimacing grimmy grim anti-heroes. This came to a peak during the 90's, where Wolverine, Punisher, and Ghost Rider were crossing over with as many comics as they could and Cable, the mutant hero who's mutant powers were apparently having f*ck-huge awful muscle-ly proportions, big-guns, pouches and belts everywhere, and the inability to make a facial expression that wasn't...well, this mad

And out of this came....Spawn. A black patriotic military wetworks assassin who dies on a mission at the hands of his partner, waking up in hell, and promising to lead hell's army in exchange for being able to see his wife again, and sent back to Earth without his memories as a "Hellspawn". That actually sounds pretty interesting!

No, wait, it's just him being grim, dark, and violent. Oh look, he's using big-a** guns to blow the f*ck out of a big ol' cyborg. Oh, hey, angels are big-tittied cackling demon hunters. Ooh, he said a bad word.

And it totally took itself seriously while doing most of this.

And everyone ate it up.

And then the comics industry went belly up in the mid-90's.

I'm not saying that Spawn killed comics. There are in fact a whole buttload of factors that you can read about all over the internet such as trying to pass off regular comics as collector items (thus, all those comics you'll see at a used book store that are pretty worthless)

But Spawn sure as hell didn't help.

Aw s**t, I just realized how much of this kind of reminds me of video games....

This sounds exactly like the type of absurdist humor I prefer. Ok, I'll give it a for reals check...Umm, where should I start with this one, Sir Kenneth of Dukesearlshire?

Felt like making some new recommendations. Less DC/Marvel crap, more...whatever...stuff for folks that usually read manga I guess.

If you dig Clint Eastwood's cowboy flicks (especially the Man With No Name trilogy) along with maybe some bleaker westerns, (and maybe Japanese comics like Lone Wolf and Cub and Samurai Executioner) I'd highly recommend Jonah Hex. Forget about that really really silly movie that no one watched (or the fact that it's a DC comic). Despite it being part of what most would consider a dead genre, it's a really strong, sometimes bleak, series about the deformed bounty hunter and former Confederate soldier and all-round means son-of-a-b***h Jonah Hex as he travels the wild west, running down and killing the worst the west have to offer. I haven't read much of it myself but it's "episodic" nature means you can usually jump in at almost any volume/story.

If you dig shonen comics like Dragonball, Naruto, Yu Yu Hakusho, etc, I'd like to recommend Invincible from Image comics and Ultimate Spider-Man from Marvel. Both are one continuous story with various arcs and big-bads, handled by one writer their entire runs thus far, and, most importantly, are self-contained worlds (though Ultimate Spider-Man will occasionally feature other Ultimate versions of different heroes).

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v53/kenshiro28/Comics/115_ultimate_comics_spider_man_7.jpg
Ultimate Spider-Man is a retelling/reboot of Spider-Man with his origins set in the early 2000's with more modern interpretations of various villains and characters so you don't need to know a damn thing about the old comics. It's also funny as hell. It's also a bit more realistic with it's character depictions. The Green Goblin is straight-up sociopathic, with the Ultimate version filled with voices in his head, Harry, his son, absolutely damaged goods, Kingpin, a crimeboss who has no time for this super hero crap, Electro, nothing but a super-powered thug-for-hire, and so on and so forth. I'd at least recommend reading the first volume at a bookstore if you have the time or inclination.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v53/kenshiro28/Comics/Invincible8.jpg
Invincible is another hero book, this time from the creator and writer of The Walking Dead. It starts out relatively vanilla: Mark is the son of a uper powered alien named Omni-Man, a Superman analogue and one of the world's greatest heroes. Suddenly, Mark's own powers start manifesting and he decides to follow his father's footsteps, fighting villains, meeting and befriending local teenage heroes, etc. Just another, if well-written super hero book.

Then a bunch of the world's heroes are brutally murdered and a huge twist is introduced (spoilers)his father was actually sent to Earth to scout it, wipe out it's strongest warriors, and prime it for alien conquest (end spoilers). Kirkman continuously ups the ante as the series goes on (of course) while throwing an occasional humor bone here and there. There's a bunch of spin-offs too but they're completely optional and arn't really required to enjoy Invincible. Enjoy the absolutely awesome supporting cast and brutal villains. Good stuff.