Totally Awesome Comics That Aren't The Big Two
 

And you don't need to throw in Atomic Robo, because, come on. It's just implied.

If you like Star Wars but don't want to see Luke Skywalker And Friends Save The Day for the fifteen billionth time Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is completely great. Lots of throwbacks to the original series, the games, and all around fun Star Wars stuff.

Transformers comics are great too, despite Simon Furman's obsessive ellipses.

I enjoy a lot of Warren Ellis' not-DC/Marvel work. A lot of it has his habit of introducing big ideas then falling short on the execution but even accounting for that they're still quite good. Fell starts off as an exploration of alienation and urban decay that rapidly decays into rote cop drama but it's rote cop drama with enough unconventional touches that it holds my interest. Black Summer starts out as a story about a superhero assassinating the president then promptly becomes a story about a group of superheroes being hunted down by the US government like a million other such stories but it's a really good superheroes being hunted down by the US government story and there's still an off-chance Ellis might do something actually deep with his original concept. Anna Mercury reminds me a lot of Planetary which is always a positive; there's a whole thing about imaginary universes at war with each other with our real Earth in the crossfire or something like that. It's either totally great or shit which I'll make up my mind on as soon as I figure out what in the hell is going.

Black Summer, I only got the first issue but it peaked my interest. Do you know if there's a TPB for it?

Also The Boys is awesome if you want to see what would happen if you filtered the DC universe through a pulp, darker, black-comedy esque light by a guy who hates superheroes. Each issue has one morbidly hilarious thing that happens in it, be it a girl's arms ripped off by a careless superhero, or a bible-raised uber-christian superhero forced to blow the entire Justice League, and the like.

I would sooner subject myself to All Star Batman and Robin than to The Boys. Everything that everyone has ever told me about it translates roughly to "If you like spending part of each month wallowing in festering, fetid pigshit, you should read The Boys." If someone could ever relate to me a purportedly hilarious moment from this book where the punchline isn't "Bitches and faggots, amirite! LOLOL," then I might be inclined to reconsider my opinion. So far this has not occurred.

Buffy season 8 and Fray.

Nuff said.

FABLES FABLES FABLES FABLES

Fables is a pretty nifty series which is essentially about fairy tale characters.

Except they had to flee their homeland because of The Adversary taking the place over and are hanging out mainly in a little community in New York, trying to figure out a way to not get invaded and take their homelands back.

To give you an idea of what its like, the first issue has the sherriff, the Big Bad Wolf, investigating the murder of Rose Red.

Also, there's only one Prince Charming. He... he... got divorced a lot.

Later events include being attacked by an army of wodden soldiers that apparently a captured Gepetto was forced to make and Little Boy Blue singlehandedly invading the Homelands. I guess having the vorpal sword helps.

I disagree and, more than anything else, don't really get the connection to "Bitches and faggots amirite" to The Boys, but I get the feeling this'd just be another comic we're totally at odds with, so eh, okay, I'll wallow in festering pig shit if that's really the comparison you're going with.

Haha, Prince Charming. Fables is quite good.

Honestly Fifth I haven't read past the first trade which ends with issue....8 and there's only 9 issues apparently. But it still seems about alienation, especially the big story of issue 8. I'd say it's way too soon to tell it's degraded into something else or not.

The Boys is one of those comics that has enough nudity, violence, etc that puts people off it yet somehow it manages to still put a serious story that's pretty good in places and alright in most of the others. I mean when you get right down to it it's built on one concept and it is this; What if pretty much every super being were ordinary bastards like you meet on the street? And it works, because if you plucked people off the street and made them better physically in nearly every way and told them they were awesome and gave them ridiculous amounts of money if they so chose to do it they'd probably be dicks in 99% of the situations. There are good ones- Starlight, Tek Knight, Love Sausage...but most of them pretty much do what they feel like.

It may sound good in theory, but I gotta be honest with ya, reading Preacher made me lose any trust in Garth Ennis' ability to restrain himself from abandoning his entire concept as soon as there's the slightest chance to insert inbreeding jokes.

How many issues of Black Summer are out by now, anyway? I just remembered I haven't gotten my ass down to the comic book store in months and I hope they'll hold those for me.

I didn't enjoy Preacher, either. The heavy these guys are cool those guys suck can be pulled off but honestly Jesse and his crowd only differed that they didn't murder a ton of people, just a few.