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Comics: A Beginners’ Guide: Girls’ Comics
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I neglected comics aimed at girls when I wrote the first 25 parts of this series. I’m male, and I read few comics for girls when I was young. I have had some entertainment looking back later, from the extraordinary extremes they went to to tort[…]

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Comics: A Beginner’s Guide: Crime/Suspense Thrillers
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I usually start with my favourite work under consideration, but for the last entry in the series, I am saving the best for last. Crime is obviously central to countless comics, but I am not really talking about the superhero comic, not Alan Moore&#82[…]

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Comics: A Beginner’s Guide: Earliest Superheroes
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Frankly, there wasn’t so much in the early years of superhero comics that holds up well now. Jack Kirby’s early work, including Captain America, is worth a look, but he got much better later on. There’s some good art on some of DC&#[…]

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Comics: A Beginner’s Guide: Humour Comics
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Although those who know it in recent years might be surprised at this, most of the best humour comic artists link back to Mad. Don’t let the formulaic banality of so much of the recent material deter you. Mad was started by EC Comics in 1952 &#[…]

Comics: A Beginner’s Guide: Adventure Comics
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Who is the greatest comic artist ever? Obviously that is unanswerable, but my top choice would be Alex Toth. This is partly because he was magnificent in every style he used, and he did it all – superheroes, romance, horror, funny animals, war,[…]

Comics: A Beginner’s Guide: Westerns
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I can’t say this is a genre that I think has seen many of comics’ great peaks – some of the best comes in bits and pieces here and there: old stories in comics by various publishers by Alex Toth and Jack Kirby and the like. Frankly,[…]

Comics: A Beginner’s Guide: Underground Addendum
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One of the greats of underground comix, mentioned in the post you’ll see linked at the right, is Gilbert Shelton, creator of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, among other things. I wanted to put up this extra post for two reasons:
1. The Fabul[…]

Comics: A Beginner’s Guide: Recent Superheroes
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I covered Grant Morrison a few entries ago, but there are some other terrific talents producing superhero stories these days.
The other writer I follow most faithfully is Mark Millar. Again, I should declare a bias, as many years ago I gave him his s[…]

Comics: A Beginner’s Guide: Indie Comics
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Don’t let any perfectly sensible distaste for indie music let my terminology here deter you. I’m using it to collect a few creators I want to mention who can’t be pegged into a genre easily, perhaps more akin to modern underground c[…]

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Comics: A Beginner’s Guide: Koike & Kojima
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If you like Kurosawa’s samurai movies, it’s a very good bet that you’ll like Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima’s comics – it’s the closest movie/comics match this side of Sin City, which is kind of cheating given Frank[…]

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