Comic Book Resources

I thoroughly enjoy the all ages lines from DC and Marvel. I personally subscribe to Brave and the Bold and Shazam (plus the recently ended Supergirl) and get Tiny Titans for my 8 year old and Super Friends for my 3 year old. I also subscribe to MA Avengers and MA Marvel Superheroes and will soon be adding MA Spider-Man. I also pick up the random X-Men or Wolverine First Class for my 8 year old. I end up reading them all and sharing "mine" with my kids. We all enjoy them. These are truly examples of books that can be enjoyed by all ages. I wish that the big two published more of them and that they were the norm and not the exception.

My 4 year old daughter has been reading Super Friends for about a year now and has been exposed to such great stories as this one as well as the Jesters League of America issue. I have a complete run of Marvel Adventures Avengers and will be adding Marvel Adventures Spider-Man with the commencement of Paul Tobin's quasi-continuity run on the book. I'll put "Goom Got Game!", "Doom, Where's My Car?", the all-MODOC issue of Avengers, and "Ego, the Loving Planet" up against anything Marvel's published in the last ten years. Oh yes, and "My name is Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four. These are my toasters."

I love the Marvel Adventures line, and the Brave & the Bold & Shazam titles. I believe the real reason that these titles shine can be boiled down to two words:

"Editorial interference."

The mainstream super-hero title are so caught up with tying into this or that event that none of the writers have room to breathe and really stretch themselves to tell the most entertaining stories they can. There are exceptions, of course (Bendis, JMS, Johns & Morrison), but I think most writers get assigned to a title, then they spend the next several months trying to tell the story they want to tell (probably the one they pitched that got them the gig in the first place) around the different events and crossovers their editors and publishers thrust upon them.

The kids lines flourish because they fly under the radar of the mainstreams. The writers can go absolutely crazy with their stories because, for the editors, they "don't count."

But kids titles have been better than their mainstream counterparts for years. Any comicbook set in the "Timmverse" is leagues beyond their mainstream counterparts, and those were some pretty strong years for Batman, Superman & the Justice League.

Unfortunately, I don't think it'll last. Sometime in the next few months Marvel Adventures is introducing continuity to Spider-Man. Hopefully it'll continue to be fun, but I bet the quality of the stories begins to decline as they become "more important."

The next issue of Super Friends is out this week.

Both Super Friends and Tiny Titans are excellent comics for kids.

What is especially great about Tiny Titans is that Deathstroke is the principal of the school. What's great about that is that my friend's favorite character is Deathstroke, and words unfit for kids come out of his mouth every time I show his Deathstroke as Principal Slade. HAH!

Great article, I love the kid lines and I hope they're doing well. I could not agree more about the heaviness of the adult lines. I've been complaining about it for a while now. Just look at Marvel as a whole. When was the last time there wasn't a universe wide disaster in progress. Civil War, the Mutant Events, Skrull Invasion, and now Dark Reign.

My favorite comics when I was a kid were when the Beast and Wonder Man came home drunk, or when Peter Parker stood in line to register for classes. These types of stories make the huge events so much more dramatic. Maybe if they took a brek now and then they wouldn't have to kill off characters just to make it interesting.

I picked up a ton of trades of the MA Avengers and FF4 and I have to say they are the best thing I've picked up in a while. Honestly these are probably some of the best comics Marvel is putting out.

That Jacopo's art is fantastic. I hope he goes places. Then again, he's drawing the best stories at Marvel, so perhaps he doesn't need to.

DC and Marvel's all-ages books are the cleverest superhero tales around.

The Marvel Adventures and Johnny DC books aren't operating under some ridiculous mindset that thinks superhero comics have to be "mature" and "serious," that's why.

" The Marvel Adventures and Johnny DC books aren’t operating under some ridiculous mindset that thinks superhero comics have to be “mature” and “serious,” that’s why. "

No, but they certainly can be, and have been, with successful results. That so many " mature and serious " comics have been bad is the result of superficial writing and bandwagon mentalities, not because superheroes have to be light-hearted and kid-friendly.

I would like to see more reviews of these books that espouse their merits based simply on the fact that they're good, without treating them as a refuge away from the changes of the mainline comics.

Aw, maybe I've been reading the wrong funnybooks!

It was Saturday morning cartoons, Spider-Ham, What-The--?! and a lone, beat-up issue #2 of Not Brand Ecch! that got me interested in all of these crazy characters in the first place.

Remember when a 15 page Batman story was a complete story? Or even 12 pages under Archie Goodwin?

All I ask is that you tell me a story- dammit! Complete in one issue- Is that so much to ask?

For a long time there the Marvel Adventures line was the only place you could get a good Avengers story (though it appears that Mighty is showing potential under Slott).

Actually that same is true for Spider-Man. The “real” Spider-Man comics did a huge sweeping reboot to “fix” things and they STILL aren’t able to tell stories as well as MA Spidey.

"The Super Friends tell him they wanted to get him something special for his birthday, so they got him a mystery."

I guess everything old is new again: Sue Dibny gave one of those to her husband in a nice little story over thirty years ago!

Sadly, thanks to Bendis, when I see Tigra in a comic now, all I can think of is a snarky comment involving that issue's villain sneaking into her apartment and beating the crap out of her to "prove a point." I'm glad to see her getting used in a series and in a fashion that is more in tune with how superhero comics used to be, and in the usual fun nature of her particular character...

And this is why most of my subscribed titles are Johnny DC and Marvel Adventures.

If I want something dark, complex, serious - I'll read Fables, 100 Bullets, Queen & Country, Madame Xanadu. Closest thing to blend of the two is Jeff Parker's Agents of Atlas.

I'm still not as big a fan of Super Friends as I was of JLU, since that one featured a wider cast and was a good way of introducing (slightly older) kids to heroes they may not have heard of / appreciated. I didn't understand the logic in not publishing both, and I still don't. As Peter David noted in an interview about Young Justice, you need to have that middle ground of comics between the kid-oriented Adventures stuff and the mainstream line, and JLU fit into that niche nicely.

Nice touch how "The Unknoiwn" is pretty obviously dressed up as The Phantasm, though.

I recently introduced my four year old daughter to the DC Superfriends title -- when I say introduced, I mean she went to the comic store with me, pointed at the issue on the "kid friendly" rack, and said, "I want that one." It was the issue with the Super Pets, and she loves it. In the past week and a half its been at our home, she has requested it be read to her at least ten times, sometimes back to back. And best of all, she has such a desire to be able to read it herself that she has almost memorized the whole book from all the multiple readings, and will almost surely be recognizing some of the words soon out of context, if she doesn't already.

And honestly, I loved it too. I'm sure to pick up the more of this title (Tiny Titans is already on my pull list) for my daughter. As for the Marvel Adventure books, they seem to be aimed just slightly older, and don't draw my daughter's interest to the same degree, but maybe I'll give an issue or two a try anyway.

Here's a question I want answered:

Why are the uniforms for the MA Fantastic Four exponentially more awesome than the ones for the mainstream FF? I've been waiting for the mainstream FF to adopt the more sleek costumes of the MA FF for years.

Remember the baseball games at Xavier's School and The Thing's floating poker game? I miss those.

Umm, are any of you actually reading, say, New Avengers or Amazing Spider-Man?

Yes, there is a lot of crisis-sized world changing drama going on, but there's a lot of funny stuff, too. One reason why Bendis takes so long to tell a story is that his style is packed with dialogue scenes , and for my money it's often very funny and in character. I grant you, there's not been so many (if any) stories set on the Avengers's day off, but the idea seems to be that Bendis mixes up the banter that made those stories fun alongside the Universe-shattering stuff that apparently makes people buy comics. See also the vast majority of Brand New Day, which is light and fun and action-packed where JMS's spidey was gritty and action-packed.

'Dark Reign' may involve a lot of killing, but it's also pretty funny. I mean, we're not supposed to take it seriously, surely??

Which is not to diss the younger line - all credit to those comics for being excellent.
Alex F

Superfriends is one of the least fun in Johnny DC. The best DC puts out is Tiny Titans and Supergirl:Cosmic Adventures

" Which is not to diss the younger line - all credit to those comics for being excellent.
Alex F "

I agree; there's no reason that mature comics can't be fun. Dan Slott espoused this very well by discussing how Watchmen is something people have enjoyed even more than they've studied.

Your examples of Bendis' Avengers are also accurate; I mean, he and Finch took a full page to show Luke Cage waiting on the elevator to get back to the skyscraper Ninja fight, complete with elevator music sound effects in the background.

Well, I think I'm too adult now to fully enjoy either comic (Why was Tigra so sure wishes always go wrong? And the art in the Super Friends story makes them look too much like toys, which may be intentional) but they were nice, and if I *had* been a kid I probably would''ve loved both, so mission accomplished.

There used to be a time where there was a balance in the comics, not too silly but not too dark, either. That really started to change in the 90's, but it wasn't until the "DiDio Era" began that I no longer felt safe reading DC's comic, since dismemberments and other such stuff started showing anywhere without warning. I don't mind it if DC publishes comics for those who like such things, but they should limit it to specific titles so those of us turned off by it won't run into them in places like Teen Titans and such. Really, is that too much to ask? Marvel's not doing it and they seem to be selling OK. So it's definitely a DC editorial thing. And they wonder why some fans are mad at them.

>>The best DC puts out is Tiny Titans and Supergirl:Cosmic Adventures.

Alas, Cosmic Adventures is over & done. It was only a limited. (Unless that's changed & I missed it. Which would be great.)

Amazing Spider-Man

It's not that the kids lines are funny. There are--well, not "plenty"-- but certainly SOME mainstream titles that have humor in them.

It's that the kids titles don't take themselves so seriously. That's different. Mainstream super-hero comics are so busy being "realistic" that there's no sense of joy or wonder in them anymore, just "With great power comes great responsibility." Modern super-hero comics are all about moral judgments and ramifications. And sometimes, all you want is a little "Biff! Pow!" with your lunch.

One of my all time favorite stories was a 6-pager at the back of a World's Finest comic. Supes and Bats had been bickering of late over Batman's decision to quit the JLA and head up his own team(The Outsiders). That issues main story had the Outsiders and JLA guest star for a huge battle, and the 6-pager took place immediately afterward. Supes and Bats found a local dive bar to talk out thier differences over glasses of milk as drunken roughnecks tried to start a fight with them...Batman took them all down without leaving his chair or even missing a beat in the conversation. I laughed myself silly over that one and now that I'm all grown up I would probably laugh myself silly all over again if I still had the issue to reread.

If only the mainstream comics were still doing stories like that

" It’s that the kids titles don’t take themselves so seriously. That’s different. Mainstream super-hero comics are so busy being “realistic” that there’s no sense of joy or wonder in them anymore, just “With great power comes great responsibility.” Modern super-hero comics are all about moral judgments and ramifications. And sometimes, all you want is a little “Biff! Pow!” with your lunch. "

But if you think that modern superhero comics are at fault for always taking themselves so seriously, couldn't the reverse be true that these kid comics can't take themselves seriously period? We're not talking about individual stories anymore, but overall trends, and too often that leads to generalizations against good comics.

Grant Morrison manages to be both haunting and goofy at least some of the time in almost every title he writes and that certainly includes his X-Men. See #121, "Psychic Rescue in Progress", which of course also depends on Quitely.

[...] COMICS SHOULD BE GOOD! made mention of a coupla “kids comics” that writer Greg Burgas said “embarrass the ‘adult’ comics that the Big Two bring out. They’re solid superhero stories that don’t require a second mortgage and months of your time to read.” Burgas was talking about MARVEL ADVENTURES: THE AVENGERS #36 and DC SUPER FRIENDS #15, but his thoughts got me thinking about a recent purchase of mine -  SONIC THE HEDGEHOG #200… …which put a spin (pardon the pun) on the hero-versus-archnemesis dynamic that I don’t think I’ve seen before. In fact, the title of the story seems to indicate as much even before the opening bell. [...]