I'm primarily a manga fan. And while I can admit a good chunk of manga is total slop, the reason I love it way more than western comics despite being fundamentally the same artform is that, with websites like myanimelist and anilist it's super easy to find manga that are actually good and appeal to me based on the consensus of what's the most popular/most acclaimed manga, what's most similar to other stuff, sorting by specific genres and subgenres, etcetera.
Every time I try to get into western comics I fail because there aren't any equivalent websites or resources. I mainly use Goodreads. Which is fricking god awful because of how skewed the demographics of that site are but also just in how badly designed it is in general. And so every comic I've read has just been underwhelming as frick because it's not what I'm looking for.
How do you guys find the comics you guys like? If recommendation threads are against the rules, this isn't one. I'm not looking for the stuff people like, I'm looking for how people FIND the stuff they like.
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I realized good comics from the big 2 don't exist so I've given up.
Yeah but there's gotta be comics outside marvel/dc in the same way there's comics outside of something like Shonen Jump, right?
Incorrect. DC has produced a lot of great comics from the mid 80s into the 90s. The Marvel logo is a seal of shit though.
>>MY team good, other team BAD
Nah, DC is fricking shit, just like your opinions
Don't get buttmad, marveldrone.
It depends, what kind of comics are you looking for? Don't read DC or Marvel, those are trauma porn propaganda. Don't waste your time on it.
Anything that actually has a focus on being well written beyond just looking mildly cool. Most of what I've read--Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, Bone, The Incal, Black Hole, The Invisibles--they don't really focus on having deep characters or complex themes as much as they do just have a superficial aesthetic of being kind of cool visually and conceptually.
Though then there's the only problem, where most graphic novels which focus on being "literary" end up being extremely dull narratively like Asterios Polyp or Big Questions or any non-fiction biographical stuff which I have no interest in if it's not Maus.
Alan Moore's stuff I love because it manages to do both, in the same way that my favorite manga manages to do both. It's both interesting in terms of raw plot and concepts, while not sacrificing actually having great writing. Am I making sense?
Cerebus has really good characters
>How do you guys find the comics you guys like?
Honestly, I go to the comic shop/bookstore and flip through stuff that looks appealing to me.
I don't think there's any user based site where you could find such guides. My best bet would be finding some reviewers that have tastes alongside yours and follow them.
I got a lot of recs out of the Cartoonist Kayfabe channel (RIP Ed). They focus on art mostly, but they flip through the comics so you get a feeling whether it's something you'd be into or not, regardless of their opinion. I think Living The Line is good for that as well, though I'm not as familiar with their content.
I know you're not asking for recs, but let me namedrop Love & Rockets, The Eternaut, Blacksad, Alack Sinner and King of Nekropolis, just to have a sampling of different type of stuff.
If you think manga has "deep characters or complex themes", but somehow Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, Bone, The Incal, Black Hole, and The Invisibles don't then there is no helping you. The problem isn't comics, the problem is you being a weeb with unbelievably bad tastes.
Some manga has, as well as some comics have as well. He's asking how to find those comics that do, like the Alan Moore ones he mentioned.
The thread isn't about Asian vs Western comics. Is about quality stuff, which exists everywhere but can be tricky to find because both in Japan as in the Western markets, usually the things that get pushed the most are fricking garbage.
>bad tastes
>tastes
begone esl
I liked most of these but they still underwhelmed me.
Bone was a solid high fantasy adventure story, but nothing deeper than that.
The Incal was totally carried by Moebius' artwork while the actual plot fails to elaborate further on any of the thematic ideas it brings up. And the characters were totally forgettable.
Black Hole is like an American Uzumaki--it's a solid horror story that rides mostly on unnerving symbolism and body horror, but it doesn't go further than that.
I fricking loved JTHM's artwork since I watched Zim as a kid but you're kidding yourself if you think it's anything more than edgelord shlock. Very much so enoyable edgelord shlock, but still edgelord shlock.
The Invisibles was the only one of these I outright disliked, it just kept throwing shit at you without any cohesion whatsoever expecting you to think it's somehow deep because DUDE THE GOVERNMENT IS LIKE CONTROLLING YOUR MIND AND THEY'RE ALIENS ALSO or some shit. Maybe I'm just close-minded to the DC style, I dunno.
Genuinely would like to hear your interpretation of the characters/themes in these because I can't see the appeal being in those areas as opposed to just their aesthetics
NTA but which mangas do you like and why do you think they're deep?
My tastes falls into either edgy psychological stuff (Nijigahara Holograph, Homunculus, Flowers of Evil) or political conspiracies (Akira, Billy Bat, Eden: It's an Endless World)
Something like Homunculus for example devotes a ton of time into exploring the internal psychology of its characters. Experiences which inform the people they are today, how their insecurities affect their behaviors towards both themselves and others, what their motivations and desires are, the nuances in their personalities. Each character feels really fleshed out and purposeful. Julie from The Maxx (i've only watched the mtv miniseries) and From Hell's depiction of Jack the Ripper are examples of stuff I think are good examples of this in western comics.
Something like Akira is extremely deliberate in its worldbuilding and narrative, not just in that it's a well-thought out and cool setting, but that every decision made in how the society and politics work and how they evolve over the course of the story all work to further what the story is conveying thematically. Kaneda and his friends aren't a biker gang because motorcycles and crime warfare is badass, they're a biker gang because it's a deliberate reflection of the rise of delinquent culture in 1980s Japan. Tetsuo doesn't become evil because the story requires a threatening central antagonist, it's because he's representative of power's innately corruptive nature. Neo-Tokyo doesn't explode halfway through the manga because the spread art of buildings crashing into each other is kickass, it's there because thematically, the story is about human evolution, and how cycles of death and rebirth are part of this evolution.
Try American splendor for an in-depth character study, there's tons of indie comics like this, like idk "a complete lowlife" by an early brubaker just off the top of my head
And something like Akira is kinda hard to find, even within manga
Maybe try the metabarons, I liked its story a little better than the incal
Your tastes are a bit outside my wheelhouse since I don't really read manga like that in the first place (other than Hiroki Endo, and obviously Akira is a classic).
The closest I can come up with is Miss Don't Touch Me. And maybe check out Jason Lutes.
Anyway, I already mentioned libraries, but I suppose I browse the Comics Journal occasionally, although I mostly do it for interviews rather than their book reviews.
Also if I find something on the obscure end that I like, I'm not above trawling tbharchive for mentions of it, to see if thread chatter including it brings up any other rarities.
Have you read BLAST?
Flowers of Evil is horrid, the characters are paper thin and as deep as a puddle.
Anyway, keep up the Alan Moore stuff, Swamp Thing, Promethea, Miracleman (avoid the recent censored and recolored editions) and then try Sandman, Enigma, The Nao of Brown, Moonshadow, but mostly just stick to manga, there are plenty of stuff still out there for you especially if you can't read japanese and have to wait for translations. Like try Soil along with the author's other works.
I heard a lot about Akira but it was really poor conceptually. The japs really struggle with high concept fiction i have noticed. Something like the Incal could never come from there.
I also dislike how the seemingly literary manga are really shallow in their writing. It took me the same time to get through 38 chapters of Akira than it did getting through 2 chapters of Providence, and providence isn't even that wordy.
If you like Akira you should read Domu: A Child's Dream by same
>mangas
>it just kept throwing shit at you without any cohesion whatsoever
That's Grant Morrison in a nutshell.
ignore his shit recommendations
look up
-michael deforge (particularly familiar faces & big kids)
-matthew thurber (particularly 1-800 mouse & informaniacs)
-olivier schrauwen
you might also like charles burns (black hole) or daniel clowes (death ray)
in fact i think you would also quite like daniel clowes' comic Ice Haven, more so than death ray. it has a bit of a similar quality to watchmen where the world is highly detailed and everything links up, and you notice new stuff each time you reread it. the setting is normal reality, but the way of telling the story is conceptually interesting.
since i just saw you say you like nijigahara holograph
, i am even more convinced that ice haven is a great comic for you
Ice Haven isn't even a quarter as good as Nijigahara Holograph.
I think it is better personally. The puzzle within the story is a little more subtle, and there is a larger range of interesting characters (though they are in less dramatic narratives and say less). I think Nijigahara Holograph makes a clearer distinction between good and bad people that gives it a slight YA feeling compared to Ice Haven, where everyone feels very real and multidimensional.
>"ignore his shit recommendations (which include Black Hole)"
>"you might also like charles burns (black hole)"
I wouldn't take any reading recs from this guy
Read the easy Morrison first. Try All Star Superman. Don't take it badly but I think your tastes are still super normie in what you expect from comics. I have yet to read any manga that really hold up against Providence or even the Sandman in terms of concepts and themes.
Alternatively, you can also try Frank miller's sin city or Daredevil.
For me, it's been more than a decade of trial and error. I started with those types of lists you describe, but quickly gravitated towards more and more niche stuff, which I would stumble upon in old comics blogs and download sites, going by covers and synopses. There are some highly-recommended, massively-acclaimed comics I still haven't read, which I'll get around to when I feel like it.
Alan Moore is kind of a rare beast in the west that manages to make very interesting and very entertaining comics.
I find Asterios Polyp highly enjoyable, but I realize that it lacks a big "oomph".
>Anything that actually has a focus on being well written beyond just looking mildly cool.
So you’re talking in meaningless generalities and just are pissy that everything isn’t catering to your entirely narrow, subjective tastes.
Shakara
Y: The Last Man and Ex Machina by Brian K Vaughan are well written but not literary. There's a focus on character, which is I think what you're after.
There are certainly a lot of Alan Moore comics you've never read that you would like.
There are definitely non-fiction comics you'd like other than Maus. Maus is great, and it was pioneering, but it's not one-of-a-kind.
BKV applies that quirky television writing shit to his comics.
What the hell are you talking about? The invisibles and Black hole are way more complex in its themes and characterization than 99% of manga. The Incal is so imaginatively batshit it makes berserk (admittedly very overrated fantasy) look like slice of life.
Incal is shit next to Berserk.
Lmao. Berserk is a goddamn shonen but with rape scenes. It is probably the most uninspired fantasy story that got famous in forever (maybe GoT is its competitor). OTOH the incal is a goddamn trip. It is an allegory, it shouldn't need to have realistic, human characters. It works with archetypes. The exchange is that its ideas need to be extremely heady and imaginative and it succeeds brilliantly.
There's also moebius who is leagues above any manga artist ever.
>it shouldn't need
What a goddamn excuse. Incal is not good, period. It's not well written and it doesn't have good character work it's just "dude lmao so trippy like dune lol" and Dune is shit anyway. Artwise too Berserk is far far above Incal so it doesn't even have visuals.
>berserk
>above incal
Look at that homie
He is a manchild. I heard so much about Vagabond having God tier art only to find that the mangaka was a dimestore moebius.
The only people who really rate berserk are either ugly smelly weebs who have never read anything beyond shonen or edgy 14 year olds. Your brain is too small for allegory. Allegory works with character archetypes because it is high concept. It deals with gradiose themes. High concept is too difficult for mangakas and their audiences alike. The best attempt in manga was probably phoenix (not that shonen crap, Akira) and even something like Sandman makes it look like a comic for people with 8th grade tier mental faculties.
I am not insulting manga. They have their own uniwue aesthetic and appeal. But manga is not cerebral fiction in the same way some western comics aspire to be. Manga fans consider Berserk to be peak characterization, but from any literary metric Berserk won't be above young adult fiction.
>The only people who really rate berserk are either ugly smelly weebs who have never read anything beyond shonen or edgy 14 year olds.
I mean... this kinda projecting isn't even worth a reply but I will admit that seeing you folk smelling your own farts and trying to hop on your high horse all while your empire crumbles and manga continues to dominate and grow is pure comedy gold.
Manga dominates because the nerdscape is almost completely dominated by midwits now. They want complexity and depth but their brains aren't capable of comprehending actual complexity and depth. They want to be told that their pond is as deep as the sea.
Ditto why books and novels are dying as well. You got butthurt over it, but the real reason is simply rooted in how these comics are made. Someone who both draws and writes is likely not going to be as good as someone who just writes. Both industries churn out trash for 90% of their output, but in that 10% that is good, the difference is staggering. Same reason why Frank miller even at his best wrote somewhat shallow character dramas. He takes his lead from manga and focuses on things manga did well. Akira is my biggest disappointment of last year. I was expecting something on the level of industry greats like Moore, Morrison or Sim. But it reads like a college student with just a primer on history and philosophy and an admittedly good aesthetic attempted to write a story he considers to be deep.
Anime generally doesn't have the same problem. Case in point: Serial Experiments Lain.
>Manga dominates
Indeed. Now sit down. Be humble.
>this colorless comic earned so much more than the colored ones!
Unlike you I don't care about the western comic industry succeeding or dying. All my tastes are niche. When comics go niche, they will ironically increase in quality which is exactly what I want.
I have no dog in this. I am saying as it is. There is not a single manga that comes anywhere near the density of say Alan Moore's Miracleman. There exists no manga that can top the panelling in Pax Americana, which I was going to recommend but the Op's brain seems too small for heady, non-linear narratives.
>I have no dog in this
You clearly do, and it's embarassing seeing you like this talking about "mature fictions for mature people like you" when Cinemaphile is fast to mock your kind and then you try to prop up the fact that people that write and draw simply can't be as good as people that only do one of them because... because they just can't!
In terms of writers you can barely string together a handful of names and what you have is the gods of capeshit Moore and Morrison? and then you try to attack a demographic (that you probably think is a genre)? I'm not even gonna shitpost by trying to insist like Swamp Thing is capeshit and I'll give it to you that it's not and it's actually great but look beyond the Watchmen and the Miraclemen and you have Lost Girls, you have LoEG which crashed and burned, you have Killing Joke which Cinemaphile despises with a passion or all the crap at Avatar before Providence. Same with Morrison who went so hard into capeshit and then just crashed and burned out of the industry with duds like Green Lantern and Superman & The Authority. You cry about lack of depth in manga but you refuse to engage with them beyond surface level even though you know something like Pax Americana requires you to. Beyond those, who do you have? Hickman? John's? BKV? Remender? Bendis???
OP himself named Homunculus and there's stuff like Freesia, Tokyo Kaido or No. 5 that require you to look at things beyond surface level to get the themes and concepts but you would prefer simply dismissing them because "dirty nips" and because you're jealous of the fact that people can both draw and write while you can do neither.
There are less than 20 truly great writers in western comics and even then they're fairly inconsistent.
Take a deep breath and let go if the anger.
Providence is a masterpiece though. A deep character work that puts all manga to shame while also being really high concept fiction. Very inventive in its structure and writing as well. Morrison produced so much good shit outside of the big 2 as well. Nameless is great, flex mentallo is great, We3 is great.
>There are less than 20 truly great writers in western comics
That's true, but the fact that you don't understand how large that number is for any given moment of time is proof you don't have the slightest idea about truly deep fiction in this medium. I like the japs, that contrary is a ridiculous claim. I even like anime in general. But Mangakas are not good writers. There is not a single great mangaka working today who can be called a storytelling genius in his medium. There might have been no one like that Tezuka even. (Phoenix is still great and has an incredible charm to it precisely because of its simplicity).
>OP himself named Homunculus and there's stuff like Freesia, Tokyo Kaido or No. 5 that require you to look at things beyond surface level to get the themes and concepts
Subtlety alone does not make for great art. That is basic ass shit. This is the problem between us. Your concept of great art is extremely primitive. It swears by the checklist concept. That a work needs to have have complex flawed characters, an engaging storyline and development for it to be good. This was a metric invented for plebs because they couldn't into the intangibility of great art. I am not gonna pretend that even the best writers in comics reach this level, they don't. They are still only comic book writers, but they are way closer to it than where mangakas are. I have seen the time when assassination classroom was all the rage. You couldn't possibly think that's a deep work, even in its genre.
>That's true
On the other hand there are hundreds of great mangaka. Japan wins again.
Lmao. Great to readers of shonen and soap operas probably. There is not a single great, artistically intelligent mangaka working today.
I have also read Blame! Btw. What horseshit. A manga with so little dialogue and high sci-fi should at least try to be imaginative.
>soap operas
Aka western comics.
Absolutely. But there are diamonds in western comics that simply don't exist in manga.
I didn't say subtlety I said willingness to engage with the concepts and history presented in the story, Flex Mentallo that you used as an example is perfect here because people unfamiliar with those archetypes and concepts will not get a lot out of the story. I understand that you're biased but you need to let go of the anger because you're fighting a lost war.
I am not angry lol. I am even looking forward to the day comics become niche because then great passion projects will become the norm. The only guy angry here is you because I called you out on your midwit tastes. You seriously don't think that I am defending capeshit. But I will definitely defend something like All Star Superman because it is levels above most serious manga.
>I am even looking forward to the day comics become niche
That day has arrive lmao.
Not yet. It will arrive when the big 2 finally die and Vertigo goes on to become its own publisher.
Speaking of Vertigo, Hellblazer would be up OP's alley. Good character work with high concept execution that doesn't really exist in manga.
Btw Remender is mid, but he created Mind MGMT which is levels above manga you think of as deep. You can try it sometime.
>Btw Remender is mid, but he created Mind MGMT
How embarassing for you...
Not as much as you weebs. Read it once you develop some taste.
Dumbass... look it up again.
Okay I fricked up. I always get confused with lemire, remender, kindt and other new wave guys. But the point stands, Kindt is also mid except for this one book that is much better than its manga counterparts. There are also guys like peter milligan and carey.
Gotham Central by Brubaker is better than most seinen manga.
No, it's not even good.
>Sim
>the guy that his own fans admit half of Cerebus is bad
>half of his fans got on the bandwagon when he got popular
Checks out. They are midwits. In any case, you can't possibly be suggesting that Sim isn't an industry legend. He is worshipped even by mangakas.
>High concept is too difficult for mangakas and their audiences alike.
>I am not insulting manga
Kek. Anyway, Berserk is popular with gym chads and a lot of them get mark of sacrifice tattoos. Incal is legit only popular with smelly dweebs and you know it.
Incal is soon to become a big motion picture
>gym chads
Nice delusion, ugly weeb.
>motion picture
By that hack waititi. Enjoy.
Not happening after thor: love and thunder.
Berserk is ultimately a shonen, but it's really good. Just chill anon
>But manga is not cerebral fiction in the same way some western comics aspire to be
*tips fedora*
Euphoria has washed over my body seeing you annihilate that low IQ weaboo.
I forgot to even mention your asinine remark about the art. Moebius has 10 miuras in his pinky. He completely destroys him realistic artwork and rapes his ass to oblivion when it comes to technically complex designs. Moebius is a big reason why Jodo could go as batshit insane in Incal as he did.
and any of the manga the fricking braindead weebs eat up rip off moebius more than any one western thing. i fricking hate them.
WHAT do you what? Give us genres, themes, and whether or not you care about only reading new/current comics.
What's the western equivalent of Berserk
Garfield
Cerebus, Mike Grell's Warlord, various Conan books.
Those are all good works though.
Invincible
"The X of Y" is a really dumb way of looking at things.
>Reader likes Berserk
>Reader wants to know if there's any other comic similar to it
It's not a difficult concept to grasp.
There isn't one.
>Preacher
>Conan by Busiek and Truman
>Martha Washington
>Y: The Last Man
>Crossed (for the love of god, it's very important you only read the Ennis stories)
Combine those together and you get Berserk.
Have you seen the sorry state Berserk is in these days? Sad stuff.
Berserk ended with Miura's death anything afterwards is fan fiction
Hellboy
Conan (Darkhorse run is the only one I've read so idk how Marvel version fares)
The Goon
Hillbilly
Groo
I would love to recommend you some European comics but I'm still trying to expand on that too
Some shonen with rape? Probably invincible.
Same for music, movies, and other media, look up the creators involved in stuff you like and what else they've worked on/collaborated with others on.
Go on Internet Archive and stop whining.
If something's meaningful then it'll be there.
Chance is really the only way to discover things without getting burnt out.
I wouldn't listen to these people since they are paid to lie and their backgrounds are fabricated.
With western comics you have to pay more attention to the writers/artists because the nature of the industry is that they're constantly getting shuffled around to different IPs. It's very rare for them to have their own character and story that they work from start to finish.
Look into guys like John Romita Sr, Steve Ditko, Frank Miller, Stan Sakai, Kevin Eastman, Peter Laird, and J Scott Campbell. I'd also highly recommend looking into Franco-Belgian comics, there's a lot of good stuff to be found there.
OP says you were groomed for foreign slop, anon. Consider that.
leagueofcomicgeeks.com is kinda similar to myanimelist, anilist, etc. People can write reviews, you can search for creators and stuff
Maybe comicvine has tags, I don't remember
Unironically I find a lot of stuff from the library systems where I live. I also go to the occasional small press con/expo but those are more like spinning a roulette wheel.
I find out comics through LOCG, Win-O, the LCS, or my local library
I read what interests me and like to explore past recommendations and try to find hidden gems
idk man, try looking through some comic book channels on youtube
there's this channel i'm a big fan of called Strange Brain Parts and he's always talking about interesting comics that you don't often see people discussing about. Try checking out some of his videos, maybe you'll find something you like
watchmen sucks.
No, it's great.
>Watchmen bad
Instant opinion discarded.
Bad? No. Overrated? Yes.
>Overrated?
Not even.
>Overrated? Yes.
I accept people not liking it (even if the term "overrated" is largely used by tards).
It's a valid term
>i like manah
>but i want to get in to western
anon, i officially recommend to you Finder by Carla McNeil and Monstress by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda
>how do you guys find comics you like
i've read comics for years so i have it easy, but you should figure out a way you want to start searching.
pick an writer and look up what they've written. pick an artist and see what they've worked on.
if you only want books with mostly art and few words, i can only think of something called Age of Reptiles.
are you looking for capeshit? click on capeshit posts and ask around
you want fantasy? you want science fiction?
also another reason i have it easy is because i have an LCS (a small hole in the wall place) where the owner lets me buy volumes of a series which i trade in for store credit on other things. if you don't know what you like, you have got to look up ways to not spend money on things you don't like or don't want to keep. so look for deals for in store credit if possible, borrow from friends if you promise to take care of and return shit, and also look up what's on readcomicsonline dot i L, which has many ads so get your ad blocker ready
when you come to Cinemaphile, ctrl+F "storytime" and ctrl+F "storytime" in the archive as well
scuse me
>like manGa
get shit used for cheaper
i also forgot to mention there are good eurocomics as well. if you know french, check out the stuff that Olivier Ledroit was involved in
>Monstress by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda
This is awful.
>likes watchmen
>likes manga
Yeah, it's pleb city in here
Sounds like a patrician to me.
Yeah, it's a mess. That's what you get for having staff instead of an auteur but on the other hand it means that the odds of your favorite title being defeated by an iM@S addiction is basically nil.
However, I'll give you my standard advice: read titles from 2000AD if you haven't already. They don't make literary pretenses or take themselves seriously, they're just pulpy action and adventure stories in the vein of pre-code comic books written by people who don't huff their own farts and illustrated by some really excellent artists. I don't know if you're still in your "I take comics seriously" (yes, including manga) phase, but my advice to you is to stop caring and/or expecting anything and just embrace having fun. If something sticks with you, that's great. If it doesn't, then no harm no foul.
SHAKRA
Go to library. Check out any/every graphic novel published by Fantagraphics or Drawn and Quarterly. If they're good check out more work from that author. If they're bad, you're out zero dollars. Repeat till you've read everything in the library worth reading. By then you should have a decent sense of what you like and you can browse comic shops/cons/online shops/torrent sites for more of the same.
If your public library sucks, check the college library. You might not be about to check the books out if you're not a student but you can read them at the library.
Google "best (insert genre) comics/best comics from decade/year x"
Google is useless now, unironically you're better off using Yandex or one of the Bing-powered search engines like DuckDuckGo.
https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/
>How do you guys find the comics you guys like?
There’s this radical new concept called reading and trying out new things based on your personal tastes. Maybe you should try it.
Where can I find good manga? Most of the ones I read are slop
Look for them by demographic, manga written for older audiences are written as ‘seinen’ and tend to be much higher quality than ‘shonen’ meant for young boys.
For starters I’d reccomend ‘The Climber’ a semi-biographical manga based on real-life mountain climber Buntarō Katō and his lifelong journey dealing with loneliness, solo climbing, and depression, in pursuit of his dream, conquering the most difficult mountain to climb K2
I would also recommend ‘A Bride’s Tale’ or ‘Otoyomegatari’, a historical manga focusing on the lives and lifestyles of different geographic settlements along the Silk Road in the late 19th century, giving special importance to the positive role that arranged marriages played in culture across South Asia
Though of course Sports, Biographical or Historical may not be your thing, in which case the boon of the demographic system is that it includes any genre you prefer such as fantasy, adventure, romance or comedy, but those are simply two that I enjoyed and would recommend for the impressive artwork
Seconding 'The Climber'. It's a manga that at first seems like it's going to be a typical sports manga and then gets increasingly literary and psychological.
Look Back and Goodbye, Eri by Fujimoto (Chainsaw Man) are also great in that the storytelling is optimizing for things manga doesn't usually optimize for.
>The Climber
>A Bride's Tale
I've been reading manga forever and I got filtered hard by these.
The Climber started out awful and boring, and when it went to the mountains, it got student film-tier with the visual metaphors. The art is hailed as amazing, but a lot of it is overdetailed and traced.
A Bride's Tale follows the same didactic approach a lot of seinen manga go for that I dislike, and it was also waifugay bait and kind of boring. The art is also highly regarded, but it's mostly people impressed with the patterns.
The Climber mogs american comics.
Nah.
To each their own I suppose. For example in A Bride’s Tale I’m mostly impressed by the art of the natural landscapes and buildings, but I won’t disagree the patterns are most often what’s brought up. That’s especially in early chapters where the pov is at Karluk’s village, which is covered in carpets, which changes to natural landscapes later with the journey to Turkey and especially at the Caspian Sea. I also feel that a didactic approach is almost neccesary in order to make a book that is about late cultures. For example the chapter about Pariya being forced to learn how to knit herself, the importance lay in showing how indispensable a skill that knitting was to Uyghur women, and that it was also a pastime they shared for bonding. And Anis and Shirin’s story, was to show the cultural reasons why a man might take two brides, and an introduction to the forms of female-on-female love that are argued to have existed at the time. But like I said to each their own, it is didactic but I feel that’s somewhat neccesary for what the story is going for.
Fair enough.
The truth that OP won't talk about
Recently I read the bulletproof coffin, it was good. And I discovered it in a recommendation chart posted here. Same thing with Cinemaphile and some shows I liked, because the websites you posted truly hate them (it's not like Cinemaphile isn't mostly like that as well)
Use the archives, Cinemaphile wikis, etc.
Hey, you're posting watchmen because you did read it, right? It's a good comic, read it if you haven't. I also recommend miracleman.
There unironically aren't good manga. Berserk and the Nausicca manga are the best it gets. Anime has far more great works to offer easily, manga only has pulp that might be elevated by an adaptation that improves on it.
W.I.T.C.H. for instance, is an example of a European magical girl comic which is actually as good as magical girl anime. There is no manga in the genre of that quality at all, because manga is inferior.
Manga is far superior to anime.
You hope for articles and mouth to mouth tips.
>How the FRICK do I find graphic novels that are actually good???
Step 1: Buy Watchmen
Step 2: Buy Dark Knight Returns
Step 3: Done! You now have every good graphic novel!
Dark knight Returns sucks.
Better than Watchmen.
No, but TDKR is great.
No, not anywhere close.
>buy
What are you, shitter?
>the only good graphic novels are grimdark capeshit
casual please
>Buy Kingdom Come
>Buy Squadron Supreme
>Buy Earth X trilogy
>Buy Astro City
>Buy Planetary
All terrible.
For you.
Nah they're bad.
Anything from DC or Marvel is automatic shit.
>Watchmen is shit
Get a load of this homosexual. Probably think Invincible is a masterpiece of the medium.
Watchmen is shit and so is that shitty gore big 2 knockoff.
post breasts
You pick one up and look through its pages, either in a store or a public library
>But I'm hikki and only read digital media
How unfortunate
Stupid as it sounds, I use sites like Wikipedia and TVTropes. Not to like give me a summary, but mostly cause they categorize the shit out of everything. That way, if I want to look at a new science fiction book, I look for the ones categorized as that, and any that catch my interests I pick up either with amazon or pirate sites, depending on if I feel like financially supporting or not.
Otherwise, I just ask people what stuff seems good, primarily my friends, and then see if there's a collection of it. That's all, really. The internet has all manner of places to look, even considering the Thread O' Win seems to be gone in general from here.
If you like Alan Moore then read things Alan Moore likes, recommends, or was influenced by. Same as any other artistic medium. Start with Love and Rockets.
Tell us about your taste in fiction and we will recommend you western comics that go with that.
There aren't any, stick to manga.
I have the same struggles OP. It's hard to find comics that are ambitious and skillful in execution. But I'll give you some recs that satisfied me in this regard. Your mileage may vary though. Just pick something that sounds interesting to you.
>Hellboy
>Paper Girls
>Sandman
>Lucifer
>Sex Criminals
>Grendel
>Astro City
>Preacher
>Garth Ennis' war comics (War Stories, Battlefields, etc.)
>Transmetropolitan
>Ex Machina
>The Graveyard Book
>Criminal
Also, I don't know what Moore works you've read, but if you want more:
>Swamp Thing
>Tom Strong
>Promethea
>League of Extraordinary Gentleman
>Lovecraft trilogy (The Courtyard, Neonomicon, Providence)
>Top 10
>Miracleman
>From Hell
Also, for manga, I recommend Kamui. Just shilling that because I want more people to read it 🙂
Also
>We3
>Daytripper
>The Maxx
>Persepolis
>Sunstone (yes really, frick you)
>Conan by Busiek and Truman (don't read any other Conan comics but these)
Seconding Garth Ennis's war comics.
All of Morrison is way more ambitious than any manga ever. Read Nameless.
There is nothing similar to MAL. You need to find few books that you do like, and then a blogger or influencer that shares your tastes to look for more comics you might like.
USA comics are dominated by slop. If you keep seeing the same comics in top 100 lists or being recommended as must reads, they're slop. Everything recommended in this thread is slop, don't read them. Its better to buy comics for pretty pictures. Writing is usually terrible, so you're better off reading comics aimed at children to get cohesive stories. Several artists seem to have a bad habit of dropping the initial story/setting after the first issue, so always read comics before buying them. You'll end up reading most comics online first anyway, because everything worth reading is out of print.
No, comics just are really shitty. They suck.
You don't read comics.
Nobody does. Thats why they make movies.
Maybe this board isn't for you.
Why do they put comics on the cartoon board anyway?
They just copied Cinemaphile, where anime is an 1:1 adaptation of manga
Most likely.
>where anime is an 1:1 adaptation of manga
Lol. Weebs really are moronic
wdym?
All comics? Wow I feel so sorry for you.
It's from a comics website. I feel sorry for your parents and neighbors.
Not bad.
I never got it either.
MAL/ANIDB database is great but it has more blogs about American comics than Japanese comics. You'll find text on pretty much everything, while the language barrier and the time period (most anime fans don't read anything pre-2000) make it harder to find recommendations for non-mainstream stuff. You have to rely on specific fanbases to find recommendations and you'll only find stuff that hasn't been translated yet
Easily
https://comraderecs.tumblr.com/
You could also pick up a guide on the subject like middle of pic rel.
the internet my homie
have a nice day Black person.
It's tough. "Critically acclaimed" western graphic novels all generally only appeal to a certain kind of reader. Meanwhile Mango has such a huge amount of volume and different publishers and back catalog that it is pretty easy to find something that appeals to your tastes while also being well written.
>it is pretty easy to find something that appeals to your tastes while also being well written.
Frick off. It's been a mission.
Just read comics. DUH!
Arrugas (Wrinkles) by Paco Roca
Ok?
Corto Maltese
You really never heard of Comic Vine or half a dozen other comic book websites? You could also try going by word of mouth.
Lol was Orc Stain even updated anytime recently? I was reading it years ago but the updates were taking almost a year each.
No it's been abandoned since then.
How cum you never read western comics in your life before?
You don't.
>What
You don't.
The American industry has a deep trends problem, it likes to follow two equally cheap, shitty paths.
>Capeshit
>Slice of life
Or more vaguely
>Mindless action
>People speaking
You won't mind anything with dry cut dialogue like in manga, anything that is artistically good and not capeshit still suffers from over bearing dialogue for example.
I can't give you recs because of this, it's all so personalized.
My advice?
Read and keep reading.
Eventually you'll adjust to the forms flaws, and find something you like, something that actually does something special, and you can promptly ignore that in the rest of it.
Even if you hate literally everything else.
The same stuff I read as a boy, I hate now, be warned seeking out stuff for being "Good" you eventually learn to hate everything, it's what led to me being a jaded incel piece of shit.
That and being ugly.
The thing is that, as anime started getting popular in the west, 90% of manga was still unavailable to people outside Japan. So people started sharing stuff online and scanlation groups formed. Western comics never had as big of an online community. You mostly have to buy things physically, and the best way to browse a bunch of comics at once is to be in the store looking at them. They're behind the times on that since most manga publishers now have the ability to read manga directly online and in apps in multiple languages.
I don't understand what you gays are fighting over.
There are very few great and enjoyable works between comics and manga, so you should want to read all of them.
What are your top picks?