ExMachina
fails the turing test
Anyone else follow Western comics at all? I got back into them a few years back... and while I rarely pick up individual issues outside of a few series (get most of them in trades now), I keep up fairly well with the general goings-on in the DC universe, and to a lesser extent, the Marvel universe. I'm mainly a fan of the Batfamily, so thus my bias towards DC. :P
Some series I'd recommend to anyone, comic book fan or not...
Self-Contained (no connection with the DCU or MU)
DC/Marvel Series
Batfamily (it's really only ongoing Batman that gets crossover heavy, Detective and most of these complete stories stand on their own)
*read these if you want to get to know the stories that inspired Batman Begins and The Dark Knight
Some series I'd recommend to anyone, comic book fan or not...
Self-Contained (no connection with the DCU or MU)
- Alan Moore - Watchmen (complete)
- Brian K. Vaughan - Y the Last Man (complete)
- Bill Willingham - Fables (ongoing)
- Neil Gaiman - The Sandman (complete; really light referencing of DCU)
- Mike Mignola - Hellboy (miniseries and one-shots)
DC/Marvel Series
- Brian K. Vaughan, Joss Whedon, Terry Moore - Runaways (ongoing)
- Gail Simone - Wonder Woman (ongoing; I've never been a big WW fan but Simone's just that good)
- Keith Giffen, John Rogers - Blue Beetle (ongoing; basically a series with all the appeal of the teenage Spider-Man era)
Batfamily (it's really only ongoing Batman that gets crossover heavy, Detective and most of these complete stories stand on their own)
- Frank Miller - Batman: Year One (complete)*
- Frank Miller - The Dark Knight Returns (complete)
- Alan Moore - The Killing Joke (complete)*
- Jeph Loeb - the Long Halloween (complete)*
- Greg Rucka, Ed Brubaker - Gotham Central (complete)
- Paul Dini - Detective Comics (Dini's one of the main creative forces behind Batman: The Animated Series, so if you liked that, you'll like his run on 'Tec)
*read these if you want to get to know the stories that inspired Batman Begins and The Dark Knight