Recommendations

I was just listening to Mara enthusing about Giant Days on last week's Talking Comics and thought the following might make for a decent recommendation...

I also love Giant Days, and on digging a little to try and find more I was pretty astonished to find out the John Allison has been making webcomics set in this same universe for 19 (nineteen!) years now. Very little of it features the same characters as Giant Days (there was a stand-alone three-issue run several years ago which is great - especially the coup in the Indie society featuring the World's best cape and David Gedge's car..., and Esther was a fairly minor supporting character in an earlier series) and all of it other than the recent Boom series is drawn as well as written by Allison. Those first three issues are available as Giant Days Year One on Comixology, btw.

My recommendation, though, is for Bad Machinery which is a series of linked stories featuring a cast who start out as just pre-teen and have so far aged very believably to around 15 - there are also some really great adult supporting characters. Ostensibly they are mystery stories with a little bit of the supernatural stirred in, but mostly they're brilliant character comedies with a cast who all have very distinct voices.

They are all still available to read as webcomics at www.scarygoround.com/ with a brief preamble introducing the character followed by 8 complete "Cases" so far - the ninth is currently being published daily. Just hit "Back to the very beginning..." on the front page to go to the start of the preamble.

If you want to make sure John Allison gets some money instead (and why not?) the first three volume of Bad Machinery have been published by Oni Press (in print and on Comixology) with the fourth to follow very soon. Not only do you get the warm fuzzy feeling of supporting the creator, but you also get a hilarious illustrated glossary at the back of each volume sure to help any readers unfortunate enough never to have lived in Northern England.

Also, much less funny but very touching indeed is Learning To Fly, which features some of the adults from his Bad Machinery and Scary-Go-Round back when they were leaving school and making big (and mostly bad) life decisions.

if anyone is looking for some manga to read then i HIGHLY recommend a series called Goodnight Punpun (Oyasumi Punpun). It's kind of hard to explain and it's really out there but essentially it's following a kid (depicted as a bird) and his life from childhood to his 20's. anyway, it's really heartfelt and resonant and deals with a lot of existential issues and OMG THE FEELS!.....maybe TOO many feels because I actually had to take a break in between reading sessions because i got emotional overload which i didn't know was a thing for me until i read this. lol.

mara and maria, especially i think you ladies would really like it. it hasn't come out in america (i think it might eventually -- it's too good to only be printed in japanese) so i had to read it online but if it ever comes overseas it's definitely worthy of adding to a collection.

Lindsey,

I'm also a fairly new convert to the Stephanie Brown Batgirl, and all thanks to Our Ms. Cooke! I was buying and enjoying random single issues of the Stephanie Brown Batgirl, but even though they're not that expensive, they are hard to find. I then figured to go "trade", and although I scored the first two at reasonable cost, the third one was out of my price range! I finally found one used, and have a plan to binge read the entire run in the very near future.

Good luck on your quest!

Although I am loving Marvel's Secret Wars and much of their current line, so many other publishers are offering terrific genre stories. A few iam digging right now: We Can Never Go Home, like Bonnie and Clyde with powers, Revival, which I prefer to The Walking Dead, and Copperhead, a crazy sci-fi western

woo! shout out for Empty Zone this week! this has been a beautiful book and a genre you just don't see. I think the creator described it as cyberpunk horror. Just when I thought i was the only one reading it!