Comics Cosmos – ‘Tis the Season

It seems appropriate to provide a bit of a gift guide for those who have comicbook fans in their lives, but no idea what to get them. After all, not every geek is into comics (shocker!), so it can be a bit overwhelming and confusing to try and sort through what to get those who love them. Of course, individual fandoms vary, but here are some ideas to hopefully help you out. 

Superheroes

For fans of Marvel, the hardcover Secret Wars is a great addition to any library. At just over 300 pages, it collects all nine issues of Secret Wars, as well as issue 0 from Free Comic Book Day. Vision Vol. 1 is a great trade paperback that gives a taste of superhero life and what it’s like to attempt to be “human” when you’re not. And, of course, the Merc with a Mouth is also worth giving, and Spider-Man/Deadpool Vol. 1 and Hawkeye vs Deadpool are both good choices. Or if your recipient is into the art side of things, there’s Marvel: The Hip-Hop Covers Vol. 1 or Marvel Comics: 75 Years of Cover Art.

On the DC side of things, there’s a Batman boxed set available with classic storylines for The Court of Owls, City of Owls and Death of the Family. And as this year was Wonder Woman’s 75th, there’s a 300-page hardbound Wonder Woman: A Celebration of 75 Years covering the characters history. Plus, the DC Rebirth Omnibus collects each Rebirth special from 21 different series.

The Independent

If your comic reader is not into flights and tights, getting away from the big two publishers is the way to go. Image has some good series, like the paranormal Outcast (which is now a tv show), the difficult to describe but obviously for mature audiences Sex Criminals and maidens-for-hire of Rat Queens (all of which titles have three volumes out in trades). Then there’s I Hate Fairyland, which is definitely for someone not into pretty princesses. And multiple volumes of The Wicked + The Divine would be appreciated by any reader into gods on earth fantasy plotlines.

Dark Horse has the collected Fight Club 2 by Chuck Palahniuk, who decided to do something a little different when producing the sequel to his incredibly popular Fight Club novel  – he made it a comic. And in somewhat the same vein of brutality, Aftershock Comics has American Monster Vol. 1, a tale of murder, torture and anger.

A Little More Serious

If you know a comics fan who enjoys biographies, there’s a great new translation out of a French graphic novel about the life of the man once known as Cassius Clay called, appropriately, Muhammad Ali. Then there’s the award-winning trilogy March, about the civil rights movement in the US.

For anyone into old school Hollywood, the graphic novel The Fade Out from Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips follows the early days of the Blacklist. And for a book about comics that actually has no comics in it, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon is a good bet, following the fictional lives of a couple of creators that mirrors, to some extent, the beginnings of the comicbooks industry.

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