Next Wave: Agents of H.A.T.E.

An absolutely BRILLIANT series satirizing every cliche in superhero comics and poking fun at some of Marvel's sillier characters from Machine Man, Modok, Devil Dinosaur & Moon Boy and all of the zany Psychedelic Steranko-influenced hijinks of the late 60's Spy movies, NEXTWAVE concerns a bunch of C-List Superheroes banded together to go against their own evil organization when they find they're trying to "take over the world", fighting against impossible odds even while fighting amongst each other and their own self-loathing and short-comings!! A True MASTERPIECE!

Desolation Jones: Made In England

I saw a copy of this on sale for a mere 3 bucks and thought it couldn't hurt to grab it, and BOY was I blown away by this series! Great art, cool characters and an intriguing story to boot! Too bad they never went any further with this title than these issues, it might have become something even grander!

Afterlife With Archie

Greg recommended this one for me but I have to say as an Archie fan how much I DIDN'T like it. These characters had nothing to do with the beloved Archie characters outside of their names.

Amazing Spider-Man #130-200

Daredevil:The Man Without Fear #16-232

John Byrne's Next Men #0-44

John Byrne's next men sure had its ups an downs but I read it religiously from its initial 30+0 issues with Dark Horse and through its new IDW series in 2010 and concluding series Next-Men: Aftermath (retroactively numbered as 31-44), 

While it didn't end on a very strong note (quite frankly, more of a whimper) it still is a series with characters I really, really love and care about and I will always take Next Men out and read again from time to time.

The Invincible Iron Man #1-150

Captain America #225-255

I first got into Captain America with the infamous Roger Stern/John Byrne arc starting in issue #247 and loved it so much that I eventually collected every issue all the way back to issue 225 and even now and then I love taking this run out and re-reading them again. Some highs, some lows, but all great reading and the Stern/Byrne issues #247-255 are some of the best comics ever made!

X-Men: The Hidden Years #1-22

I'll be the first to admit that John Byrne's series about what took place between the cancellation of X-Men #66 and the restart with the new X-Men in Giant Size X-Men #1 is hit and miss, but hey, where else are you going to see Byrne drawing our favorite mutants again? For me it was worth it and despite mis-steps like placing the storyline in current 2000's timeline and creating potential paradoxical situations (like having them team up with Storm months before Professor X even discovered her), it's still a fun read and besides, no one can draw the X-men like Byrne!

Beasts Of Burden: Animal Rites

I've loved artist Jill Thompson ever since her stint in my still favorite Sandman arc BRIEF LIVES and so when my friend told me about a new series she was illustrating featuring a team of sleuthing dogs (the titulars 'beasts") of a rustic town (Burden Hill) how could I refuse? And as written by Evan Dorkin, this series was as fun and imaginative as I'd hoped!

Alpha Flight #1-28

Although almost completely overshadowed by his work on the Uncanny X-Men, John Byrne's Alpha Flight run from issue 1-28 are, in my opinion, some of the finest stories he's written, with strong and imaginative characters, groups, powers and plot devices, the only drawback being that he left right in the middle of its final arc! Nonetheless, It's till a series run I love taking out and reading again, so, so good!

Godzilla, King Of The Monsters #1-24

GODZILLA was the very first comic that I read that wasn't of the Richie Rich/ Archie Comics variety, and it is pleasing to dig these comics out and discover that the stories that thrilled me and blew me way as a kid still hold up today- they are still fantastic tales I can still read with passion and excitement!

Dreadstar #1-38

I first discovered Vanth Dreadstar in the pages of EPIC Magazine, as my friend was a big fan of the serial, but it wasn't until a regular comic came out (under EPIC Magazine's new line Epic Comics) that I really became a huge fan myself! Ifollowed the comic for its whole initial run, including its' jump to First Comics, until writer/creator Jim Starlin kind of moved away from illustrating it and finally giving up writing it as well.

I never got into the later Peter David written stuff (though I'm a big fan of his), but the Starlin stories are a joy to return to and re-read every so often, and I felt it was the time to re-life the exploits of Vanth Dreadstar and his Galactic Crew!

Heartland

I initially picked this one up because it was done by the incredible team of Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon, and though I was first surprised to find it wasn't a super-hero comic per se, I was soon taken in by the powerful and emotional story of Hellblazer character Kit Ryan and her life and childhood in Northern Ireland. VERY moving story.

The Pro

AHAHAHA, A wonderfully crass and bawdy take on the super-hero genre much like the similarly flavoured MARSHALL LAW where archetypical super-beings run rampant all over the world and a skewed eye is taken on what it would be like if these heroes got a dose of darkened reality, The Pro follows the exploits of a harried, foul-mouthed woman with child who suddenly becomes the latest super-heroine on the block, and the rude, crude and outlandish things she does once empowered!
Another Comic I love re-reading over and over again!

The Eaters

An absolutely AWESOME Vertigo one-shot story, this one from Peter Milligan and Dean Normston about a tight-knit and loving family of cannibals and the perils they face as EATERS.  A fun (if VERY black-humoured) comic I LOVE re-reading over and over again!

Hellblazer #47-93,129-133 + Special

As you can see, I'm a big fan of Garth Ennis' run on Hellblazer, especially his collaboration with Steve Dillon on art. and after reading the trade "Dangerous Habits", I began buying the individual issues starting with #47 to issue 93, with one Special in between, and later when Garth Ennis returned with Mike Higgins for issues 129-133.

Hellblazer: Dangerous Habits

The beginning of the Garth Ennis/Steve Dillon run of Hellblazer, this trade was so damn good that I ended up buying every individual issue that followed it!

Hellblazer: Original Sins

I was a HUGE fan of the Garth Ennis/Steve Dillon Hellblazer stories (the first Constantine book ever read was the Fear and Loathing trade) so I had to get original sins, which collected the very first Jamie Delano Hellblazer stories,  just so I could experience where it all came from, the characters, the country and the whole mythos of the John Constantine legend, and this first book is pretty great!

Fantastic Four #120-233

I've read and re-read the Lee/Kirby and Lee/Buscema stories (Issue 1-119) and the later John Byrne run (#236-291) so many times that I know them like the back of my hand, but aside from the pivotal Doctor Doom story arc in 196-200 and the Galactus/Sphinx Storyline in 203-214, there were quite a very issues in the late Silver Age/Early Bronze age that I didn't know too well...so I decided to dig them all out and re-read them again in order, from issue 120 all the way to issue 233! Was really refreshing, some of them I'd only read maybe once before, and ending it on the excellent Byrne "Mission for a Dead Man"was a great way to end it!

The Complete Peanuts 1950-1990

Yeah, I dedicated about six weeks of evening reading to reading the entire Peanuts strips from 1950 all the way to 1990 in chronological order. yeah i know there was more after that but i have no sentimental attachment to those so never got the collections surrounding those years.
Man, how I loved these comics growing up. probably the single most important comics of my life, if I think about it. These strips and Richard Scarry storybooks made me the Graphic Novel/Comic Book aficionado I am today!

Love and Rockets, Vol.6

Back To Palomar once again with Los Bros Hernandez....

The Kite Runner

Second time reading this Graphic Novel version of the powerful Khaled Hosseini novel, with amazing art by Fabio Celoni and Mirka Andolfo.

Hard Boiled Defective Stories

Aw Man, Charles Burns' awesome stories of El Borbah, the Wrestling Detective were some of my favorite things about Heavy metal magazine back in the 80's, and when i found out they'd put 'em all together in one cool collection, I knew i just had to have it! Besides the four stories featured in the pages of Heavy Metal, (Robot Love, Dead meat, Living In The Ice Age andBone Voyage) they even featured one I don't remember seeing before, "Love In Vein"!

This is one collection I read and re-read again constantly!!!

Neil Young's Greendale

Second time reading this Graphic Novel take on Neil Young's Greendale album, by Joshua Dysart and Cliff Chiang and it's even better the second time around! My copy is signed by Josh Dysart and therein lies an interesting tale...
When I first met my friend Gerg, he offhandedly mentioned that he didn't like Neil Young and I snorted and said "Then you can go to Hell!" He was stunned by such a passionate retort from me, but as a huge Neil Young fan I'd been hearing from people who groused that they hated his voice, "He Can't Sing!", etc. all my life, and had just been reading earlier that day about Def Leppard's Joe Elliot putting Neil down too, so my gumption was up!
We laughed about it, and as we became close friends, we would occasionally remember that time, and jokingly say "Never diss Neil Young in front of Z!!"HAHAHA!
 Anyway, one day back in late 2010 or so ,Gerg was visiting his local comic book shop, and that day they had an in-store signing with writer Joshua Dysart, promoting Greendale! Seeing the title, on the cover, Gerg remembered how much I liked Neil Young and decided to not only get me a copy of the book, but have Dysart autograph it as well!
When Gerg went up to Dysart, he explained about me, who really liked Neil Young and how I got mad at him cause he said he didn't. "So you don't like Neil Young?" Dysart asked Gerg, who admitted he didn't. Dysart laughed, and signed the book to me:"Z, your friend here sucks!" LOLOL!