So I saw that this thread's been going for a while, and I posted on some things that never get mentioned, so I wanna bring them up again with maybe some opinion that might attract attention to them.
Shadowhawk was fucking brilliant. For those who never read, it was made by early Image when they were just formulating the Spawn hype/buzz/mania/eventual fucking crash that shouldn't surprise anyone... *ahem* Was written with a mystery angle, where a vigilante superhero is any one of a number of... suspects, and you go through the first volume never knowing who your hero is. Meanwhile, they're almost a sort of Batman who partakes in killing their victims... And while the mystery is continuing, our protagonist is fighting criminals, super-villians who market themselves as a sort of 'super-powered' mafia extorting the city and attempting to offer 'protection', a sort of 'copycat' who's obsessed with murdering interracial couples, various mutants, police, citizens who mistake them as a serial killer due to their copycat and the general unsavoriness of their vengeance... Makes The Punisher look as meatheaded as it gets reduced to by it's more 'unsavory' fans. Also...
Issues 150-225 of this, fucking crack. Unintentionally awful in certain places (Rogers telling Falcon "Don't sell me any of that jive..." should go down as one of the 10 greatest moments in humiliating writing in Marvel), yet really entertaining, also has some of the last Kirby moments, with some weirdly dated yet fascinating character designs.
Again, more Kirby. This is actually dated as hell, and really shit, but was weird fun as a kid.
I was bantering with Luka about anime/manga once, but I maintain, you have to fully embrace them NOT through the more compelling, brilliant forms (Akira, Anything Miyazaki turned into a film, etc.) but through the gateway drugs. Like, anyone can have 500 opinions on Akira, which to me, is laborous, dull, and really shitty character design...
Whereas, before they blew their load and started chasing the cash, CLAMP are a fucking brilliant studio at negotiating art with commerce. The stuff is obviously angled towards teenage girls, but the dramatic character designs, occasional brilliant scenery, and this awkward blend of... light-hearted feminism (save X/1999, who as an anime, the score has a BRILLIANT avant-garde jazz/classical score that I'd recommend even detached from it's namesake) married to slightly half-baked yet fascinating sort of esoteric themes. x/1999 deals with apololyptic quasi-Christian vibes, yet unlike the obvious selfishness of say, the more beloved Evangelion, it was always more focused on Kamui (the protagonist's) absolute fear of killing his best friend (essentially his Judas). Very reminiscent of The Last Temptation Of Christ in some ways... After the main run, xxxHolic was good, but when they released Tsubasa... the game was obviously over, and they just wanted to fulfill obligations.
I can't stress this enough; Mobile Suit Gundam, either as an anime or as a Manga, is ART mistaken as Saturday Morning Cartoon fodder. Yes, it's giant robots slamming into each other in space, with lazer swords... But there's no mistaking the symbolism of a battleship being staffed with a military crew that is about 1/5th teenagers who've been 'impressed' by their protectors in order to fight off their foes to protect the ship and the robot that led to them becoming war orphans.
It's a little 70's in the design, which means it's still manga that wears the Disney influence on it's sleeve and not fully developed, but the writing is so post-war Japan. In a kind of Star Wars-esque cliche, the hero and his arch-nemesis are these psychic 'supermen' who serve as superior pilots for their respective sides of the military; but as opposed to Skywalker, the protagonist, Amuro, is blatantly in a constant state of abuse, and any adolescent indulgences get removed quickly due to the pressures of war. There's a scene in the early episodes where he's got to shoot some oncoming missile threatening to destroy the ship his friends live on... Since he's only just learned the damn thing, he's missing constantly, and then he screams out "PLEASE HIT IT!" and either in Japanese or English, it basically comes out as half-desperation half-tantrum. It basically spirals off into about 30 or so spin-offs, with the original spirit getting diluted further and further and varying levels of success, but the original is authentically great, and a real landmark in manga.
I'm not going to pretend Fushigi Yuugi is all that, but it's some serious skill on Yuu Watase's part to turn Shinto esotericism into an actually compelling aspect to teen romance/fantasy/adventure. Ceres, Celestial Legend was also rather good, but I can barely remember it beyond that, so don't take my word for it.
Also, the whole Marvel 2099 series seems like a gigantic tragedy. Spiderman as a selfish junkie... brilliant. A new X-Men led by a healer with DID, only to end up joining up with Magneto... Brilliant. A Punisher... who was just about the exact same thing as before, except bigger guns. Okay, not that big a step. But still, I totally suffer childhood nostalgia over this absolute tragedy. They should've given a lot more time into this.
Also, repeating myself one more time, and not drawing this out because I ran out of steam with the manga ranting... 100 Bullets is a brilliant one-off concept marred by a cheap but amusing 'war against the illuminati' plot; the existence of Scourge Of The Underworld >>> any fucking Deadpool run/in-joke; Runaways is right now the most improperly used weapon in Marvel's arsenal, I can't even remember 80% of the fucking anime/manga I used to foam at the mouth over in my teens before the boom became unbearable... And yeah, that's about it.
