therealdeadshot said:.
Haha, well said, often, for the sake of the poor title character I prayed he would get to unleash his violence on the idiots around him.
He often did !
One of my favorite scenes in CEREBUS is in issue 6, where a drugged-into-blissfulness Cerebus is in a tavern and sees Jaka dance for the first time, and immediately falls in love with her.
After she walks off stage, Cerebus inquires about her to a barbarian mercenary.
The barbarian replies:
"Jaka?!? That WHORE ?!? What do you want with her, eh midget ?!?"
Cerebus boils over with anger and reacts with his fists to the insult, and the action is observed from across the bar. One guy inquires what's going on, and another replies: "Looks like some borealean mercenary is getting clobbered by a herd of grey teddy bears."
Cut to Cerebus stomping on the mercenary who insulted Jaka.
MERCENARY: "Like I said, I think you'll make a cute couple."
This was the best such scene for me, but there are many later scenes where Cerebus takes out people who annoy him in one punch.
Usually with hilarious effect.
Cerebus is smaller than all the other characters, but he's always portrayed as having absolute control over the situation.
Another favorite of mine is in CEREBUS 17 & 18, where Cerebus and a band of pillaging thugs wipes out a village, and then there's no time to hide all the bodies when merchants with soldiers appear outside the city gates.
So they concoct a story about a plague.
And Cerebus scams them for all their gold, alleging that the piles of bloody corpses were caused by a plague, and offers the merchant a miracle-cure, in exchange for everything the merchant had on him. The pacing is intelligent and very well played, how the humor just builds and builds, and I've never seen anything funnier on a printed page.
Another series that I think would be appealing to a non-comics reader, and particularly a girl, is the 1987 JUSTICE LEAGUE series (and continued as JLI, and the spinoff JLE, with a number of other Specials, Annuals, and QUARTERLY's.)
I'd like to see the entire 60-issue series, plus all the spin-offs reprinted in collected trade editions.
But heck, they're very available in their original form. Last time I saw them in the back-issue bins, they were 1.00 each.
Watsonwil, over on the DC boards, once described JLI as "the Seinfeld of comics", and I think that's pretty close to the mark. Much of the series is the personalities of the characters, and how they play off each other, with snowballing effect.
Although it spins off into a lot of books, it's pretty much self-contained without smothering continuity, and easy to get in on from the beginning.
I really enjoyed the recent six-issue FORMERLY KNOWN AS THE JUSTICE LEAGUE series.
Which would be another great starting point, if not JUSTICE LEAGUE # 1, from 1987.
I also have the trade of these issues, with nicer paper and printing.
Another favorite of mine is JUSTICE LEAGUE ANNUAL # 4 ("Justice League Antarctica") which would be another great starting point, a great self-contained story. BWAHAHAHA !!!
