absolute beginner's questions

Miller Daredevil starts wonky but picks up quick.

I don't know if the Strange Apparitions trade is still in print

OOP and very expensive.

'90s X-Men was actually decent for a little while. Age Of Apocalypse might be the wall you don't want to breach unless you're a super-fan. Bishop's Crossing is a good jumping-on point of the issues immediately following Claremont's departure. Fatal Attractions is probably a less good jumping-on point, as it collects stuff from about two years later and is a crossover involving all of the X-titles from that time. From the looks of it, Mutant Genesis 2.0 would actually be the best companion volume, as it collects the X-Men issues that were released at the same time as the issues of Uncanny collected in Bishop's Crossing. Helpful hint: they printed sooooo much of this stuff at the time that almost all of it is still available really cheap in back issues.

Okay, I just did some hardcore nerd work for you. If you're interested in reading post-Claremont '90s X-stuff up through the first crossover, here's what I'd recommend beyond the two books in my previous post:

-The first three Peter David X-Factor Visionaries trades (collecting 71-83). Good stuff that still holds up and pretty directly informs David's current run on X-Factor.
-The X-Force collections A Force To Be Reckoned With and Under The Gun (collecting 1-15). Mind you, although it gets better as it progresses, this is mostly Liefeld stuff. You have been warned.
-X-Cutioner's Song (collecting the following issues of all four titles).

If you're not feeling it at that point, it might be worth moving to a different era.

Greatly appreciated! I'm working may way through claremonts 80's stuff and just trying to plan ahead. Things look pretty messy after he's done and I don't want to guess and check so those are a huge help.
The glimpses I got of the artwork of Fatal Attractions are what had me intrigued.

Frank Miller's Daredevil is dope. Note that he doesn't officially become writer until about 10 issues into the run, at first just doing the artwork, but you might as well go for the whole ride as he gradually gets into the plotting. After you've finished his first run, you'll want to pick up the miniseries Elektra: Assassin as well as his return arc, Born Again, which is probably his crowning achievement here. Then if you still want more you can get his "Year One" of Daredevil, The Man Without Fear miniseries.

Fatal Attractions has about seven different artists, so I'm not sure which caught your eye. Quesada on X-Factor and Capullo on X-Force are the only ones I can think of that stand out. They both started on their respective titles around the time of X-Cutioner's Song and neither lasted much past Fatal Attractions (about a year). Oh, Romita, Jr. might've been on Uncanny by that point, too. I guess '90s X-art generally looked pretty good for a couple of years there until it went into the shitter.

Then if you still want more you can get his "Year One" of Daredevil, The Man Without Fear miniseries.

don't do this, it is a pointless comic and not very good

otm

I kinda hate Romita's art too

i used to as well, actually, but he got better in the 2000s. (and/or was helped by better inkers/colorists/technology)

for readers i recommend and use Comic Zeal for ipad and Ehon for the mac
reading comics on an iphone or on a panel-by-panel basis is madness
I would second all of mordy's choices and recommend most of Legends of the Dark Knight and Batman Black and White and Gotham Central

miller more or less stopped doing anything of interest immediately following sin city tho ymmv
the daredevil run is canonic, dark knight really doesn't hold up.

torranced Strange Apparitions over the weekend, looking forward to reading it

Look forward to learning that Marshall Rogers didn't "lose it" in the late '80s, he really couldn't ever draw properly

miller more or less stopped doing anything of interest immediately following sin city tho ymmv

specifically after the DHP run, not the decade+ of subsequent series

(I call Give Me Liberty #1 as his last sort-of-interesting / sort-of-good work. By the fourth issue you could see 90s Miller in full flowering.)

the daredevil run is canonic, dark knight really doesn't hold up.

Dark Knight holds up exactly as well as it did in 1987 - formally clever* & thrilling, gorgeous to look at (Varley), operatically overblown in a really fun way, seethingly right-wing & nigh-fascist 5 microns below the surface.

*heavily influenced by American Flagg, but Miller did process those lessons and develop an incredible sense of pacing & panel rhythm along with the grid variation, talking screens & quick cutting.

i agree that the first book of sin city is the cut off point; the other books and Liberty have moments but they're often horrible

it's very very hard for me to see dark knight the same way as i did when it first came out as i got copies about a year after the release and those babies are catnip for a thirteen year old. they're all but unreadable now but v v pretty btw.

my longer form miller flowchart is roughly as follows (the importance of Darrow, Gibbons, Mazzucchelli, Jansen is hard to understate):
daredevil first run > daredevil second run > ronin > Sin City v.1 up to big fat kill >hard boiled > year one > martha washington > rusty and the big guy > elektra > later sin city > wolverine > Dark Knight > DK2 > all star batman and robin

"hard to overstate"

http://thegoldenagesite.blogspot.ie/2013/11/marshall-rogers-batman-portfolio-1981.html

I haven't seen much Marshall Rogers, but this stuff is pretty good.

Jeez, when it comes to a lot of the art you'll have to tolerate from mid-80s onward superhero comics, Romita Jr is a godsend. Tim Sale, Walter Simonson, Jerry Ordway, Chris Weston and Alan Davis are talented too. Mike Weiringo and Ed McGuinness have quite pleasant cartoony styles but don't know how often you're likely to bump into them if you're looking for storylines. I don't think Kevin Nowlan ever done a proper "run" on any superhero but he's good.

Rogers' artwork got more anatomically wayward the further he got away from Terry Austin, but I like the architectural flamboyance of his best work, and even have a fondness for Detectives Inc

Agree that JR JR only got really good after DareDevil Year One, but for a while he was easily Marvel's best, most consistent superhero artist