the mermaid cafe

Apparently, today I am having ALL the feelings, or at least talking about ALL the feelings about Batman, particularly in terms of who I ship him with, and also how I actually do really like him, but only when he knows he's being melodramatic and is faintly awkward about it but can't help himself, and someone else is around to take the piss (Alfred is really good at this, but also Clark, Lois, Diana, Selina, Barbara, Dick, and occasionally Ollie). Because I really can't stand grimdark emotionally unavailable Bruce, but I like it when he makes his fumbling attempts to reach out and everyone around him just accepts him for the emotionally stunted goober he is and occasionally hugs him and he pretends to hate it but everybody knows he totally eats it up deep inside. I think it was brynnmck who said that at a certain point, you're just like, "Yes, Bruce, you are vengeance. *pat pat* You are the night. *hair ruffle* Yes, you are." I am at that point. I want to shake him and hug him at the same time.

I haven't really read much where Bruce is the main focus of attention, just No Man's Land and Murderer/Fugitive. And, I guess, The Return of Bruce Wayne. Well, and Superman/Batman, but that is more about how married they are than anything else. I mean, it's right there in the title.

Is anyone interested in my recs based on my, um, 11 months of reading superhero comics? (I can't believe that at this late date, I have become someone who reads superhero comics†. It's just funny to me.)

Of all the stuff I've read so far, I would absolutely recommend No Man's Land and Bruce Wayne: Murderer/Fugitive, as far as Batman-centric stories go; both feature various Batfamily members and both handle the ensemble well (plus, you get some awesome Huntress in NML).

I would also recommend Blue Beetle (I am really afraid of what the reboot is going to do to Jaime et al., though I guess I should be glad he survived it at all) and Gotham Central wholeheartedly. They're both self-contained and they're both fantastic in completely different ways (those links go to my original posts about each). And I think they would appeal to people, like me, who aren't sure they want to get involved, because ugh continuity and endless story arcs that only hit the reset button on characters and an ever-revolving cast of writers so you never know what you're gonna get, plus all the editorial jiggery-pokery of retcons and reboots etc. They're also not actually typical of superhero comics, at least of what I've read so far.

Also, if you read No Man's Land, certain events in that resonate very loudly in Gotham Central, which is a nice bit of continuity I appreciated. And you get the awesomeness of Renee Montoya and Cris Allen.

I also found Steph's run as Batgirl a really good read, and again, it's pretty self-contained, so you don't need to know what is going on in other books or anything. And it's only 24 issues long *sniff*. (Blue Beetle and Gotham Central are also pretty short.)

I especially recommend Batgirl v3 if you are a Buffy fan - it shares that sensibility, imo. Blue Beetle also has that kind of genre savvy thing going on. If you are a fan of Homicide, you will probably really like Gotham Central, which is like Homicide, except in a place where the police have to also contend with costumed criminals and vigilantes.

Batwoman: Elegy is also really good, but while the art is gorgeous, I found it really hard to parse. So I guess that is a slightly qualified rec, if you, like me, have difficulty reading the art in comics. On the upside, all of that is still canon for the reboot, if I understand things correctly (not guaranteed, since the whole thing is kind of a clusterfuck), and hopefully Kate will continue to be badass for a long time to come.

If you are interested in Jason Todd, I would recommend Under the Hood, but I actually think the movie is better? It's actually what made me interested in reading the comics (well, after I watched my way through a lot of the DCAU), and it cuts out a lot of confusing continuity stuff, which isn't really necessary, though in the movie, you don't get the pathos of Jason crying for Bruce as he claws his way out of his grave, nor do you get told that he was actually trying to save his mom, even after she sold him out to the Joker. If you like Under the Hood, you should definitely read Red Hood: The Lost Days, or, as I like to call it, Lots of Close-ups of Jason's Eyes. I would avoid pretty much everything else Jason has shown up in post-revival, though, if you like him in these books.

While I loved Ultimate Spider-Man, I can't recommend it unless you are someone who doesn't mind unrelenting sadness and unhappy endings, because wow, it is sad. And also, Captain America is a huge assface in it.

To wash the bad taste of that away, I recommend the Captain America: Man Out of Time miniseries (sad Cap is sad!), and also Captain America vol. 5, which is where you get the awesome-tastic Winter Soldier storyline for Bucky. While there are a bunch of crossover/tie-in thingies to big events, I didn't bother to track the rest of those down and I managed to get along fine. Also, it contains Nomad: Girl Without a World as a backup, and I really enjoyed Rikki's story. And I feel Truth: Red, White and Black is also a necessary read, though the art does not match the gravity of the story.

And of course, I recommend Tiny Titans.

There's other stuff I've enjoyed (most of which I've posted about *waves at tags in sidebar*), and I still have so much I'm planning to read, but these are the things that I feel are absolutely worth reading, even if you think you're not into superhero comics, mostly because they're good, and for the most part, finite stories (or, at least, they have a point at which you can stop reading and be satisfied with the story, in the case of Captain America). Quite a few of them are things I've actually spent money on and felt it was totally worth it.

† I've phrased it that way since I'd read other comics previously - Sandman, Lucifer, Fables, Y: The Last Man etc., but even my time in XMM didn't make me want to read the comics. It was totally Under the Red Hood that did that.

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