There are plenty of things on your Warren Ellis list I want to read, but nothing on Tim’s Geoff Johns list (well, maybe 52 and the Flash). Of the things I have read on either list, Transmet and Nextwave are genius (no hyperbole) and Fell is really good, while Infinite Crisis was painful. I recently read Down, and that was fun.

As for the Batman/Bateman thing, I can now mention that I didn’t like Christian Bale as Batman. I think Hugh Jackman would have been much better. It’s a pity he was already Wolverine. I honestly don’t think Bale is a very good actor. He was good as Bateman, but it seems to me that every character he plays is a variation on cold/emotionless/really serious guy. I think Keaton was a better Batman/Bruce, suprising as that was.

-As a work, I’d include Bone with Love and Rockets as stories that laid storytelling ‘how to’ groundwork for writers of today. On the downside too many writers have taken the worst aspects of Watchmen, Sandman and Dark Knight Returns as the how to and that has led to a lot of comic fun being lost….

-Count me in on the trade thing. Things like the Strangers In Paradise pocket books linking picture binding, the color scheme binding on Y the Last Man and even the trippy-ness of how marvel and dc binds their runs like Avengers and JSA look really cool.

Right now, it seems like it’s following Battlestar: Galactica (wrestling with serious allegorical issues, overall sense of grimness, supposedly has an endgoal in mind but really doesn’t) which is fine, but…there’s no fun to it.

You didn’t think BSG was fun?
Moral compromises, the death of the individual to for the good of the group, characters slowly becoming what they hate – you don’t think that’s fun?

Something it would have in common with Galactica; I kept wondering how they seemed to be barely spaceworthy yet still have a steady supply of booze.

Like all good soldiers and sailors, setting up a still is first priority!

Just saying…

isn’t that Daredevil run the Velvet Underground of comics?

I would say no because although that Miller DD run was influential and popular, I don’t think it was crude enough to make a lot of people think they could jump in and do the same thing. I’d say some people even found it intimidating. When I watch VU documentaries, one of the things people praise about the album is how it “democratized” rock music and made people feel like you didn’t have to be a great genius technician in order to say what you wanted to say. It paved the way for music to be democratized even further and made even more crude by punk rock.

Also, Lou’s solo 70′s work would be a decent comparison to the success of mainstream TMNT. Both were much more popular than the work that preceded it, but were less satisfying in the end. Or maybe I’m just talking out my ass – who knows?

Who’d be the Roxy Music of comics?

Cheers,

B

As I’ve always heard it, the quote about no one bought their albums but everyone who did started a band is attributed to Brian Eno. I would point out that a lot of the early NYC punks, Jonathan Richman, Sonic Youth, Nirvana, etc, all have said they dug the VU or covered songs of theirs. So as someone said, they are sort of influential by proxy. Although none of my examples are really people who do music that the kids listen to today. Also, as I think T said, the crudeness, the “I can do that” factor helped with the VU. I’m sure, too, that Eno as producer for things like U2 got something of the influence to the masses. Somehow. There’s also the idea that everyone who bought the VU loved it and wanted to do the same thing, and there’s comics like that.

So I’d agree that early TMNT, with the torrent of parodies and the B&W explosion of the late 80s would be analogous.

Love and Rockets, I don’t know. I suppose they led to the Fantagraphics (hm, what’s a similar term for “house style” that would fit here?) type stuff, and that in turn led to the kinds of comics that mainstream media tends to cover or review.

Maybe Maus/Raw? or Weirdo? I’d say those would be comics that never made waves in most comics stores, but everyone who was into them went on to make comics. Again, influence by proxy.

Elfquest?

But my vote is still with Cerebus, as I’m a big fan of that. Apparently not a lot of other people are of the Cerebus Archive, as Diamond appears to be dropping it and Dave Sim is printing/distributing it through ComiXpress. But I’d say there was a “circle” of people who saw what Dave did, and said, hey, self publishing is a viable option. Like Martin Wagner, James Owen, (hmm, go elsewhere for examples), Colleen Doran, Terry Moore and Jeff Smith. By the early 90s when these people were really gearing up and going strong, Dave and Cerebus had established that you could do this, and have a degree of “fame”, although most people in most comics store don’t know about Cerebus. A kind of influence by proxy, as I’m sure there’s people who saw what Jeff and Terry did and started comics themselves.

Anyone know what ever happened to Martin Wagner? I dug Hepcats.

Or Mark Oakley and Thieves and Kings? It wasn’t really my cup of tea, but it had it’s moments.

Yes, I COULD look things up online, but I’m lazy.

TMNT isn’t VU because more people know who Splinter is than who Lou Reed is. And also because TMNT never led to artistic expansion.

Is there something like that in comics?

Everyone who read Young Liars is cooler than everyone who didn’t.

Not much more than Ellis drunk having fun — but aren’t those the sort of things that stay with you sometimes?

I often think about that one.
If the ending had been stronger, it would have been great.
Heck, I wish the bugger was writing it as an ongoing.