Can't get enough

I can never, ever get enough of these seven comics:

Aparo Batman

Everybody knows Aparo Batman is the only real Batman but it’s still astonishing how many adventures of the Dark Knight Detective Big Jim actually drew. There is that massive run on Brave and the Bold – which gave him a chance to portray everybody in the DC Univesre with his unique hyper-hard bodies and sexy, sexy eyebrows – but there were also significant portions of the regular and spin-off Batman titles – thousands and thousands of pages worth. While he was often overshadowed by the flash of Neal Adams, he was solid as fuck.

He was getting a bit sloppy around the whole Knightfall thing but he could still draw a great furrowed brow, which more than made up for any stiffness.

And he’s gone now. He died in 2005, leaving behind a massive body of work from his decades of Bat-art. I will always, always buy some Aparo Batman comics if I see them going cheap. Sometimes I just like to go to a comic shop with a good back-issue selection and just look at the covers. They still pop.

Judge Dredd by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra

These gentlemen have been working on the same character for more than three decades and have had the enviable opportunity to develop and grow that character accordingly. Both writer and artist have an unsurpassed sense of storytelling that have gradually evolved over their years in the weekly grind of British comics.

They’re working on Strontium Dog at the moment and that’s almost as brilliant, but after years of collaboration, a Wagner/Ezquerra Dredd story is still something special and always worth looking out for.

Grendel Prime by Matt Wagenr

I always find Grendel Prime far more interesting than Hunter Rose and that makes no sense at all. Rose is a complex man, driven by dark desires and vicious wryness, Prime is a brain in a robot who brings death wherever he goes.

But I still dig the big robot. That singularity of purpose, the way it never, ever stops once it has set its squishy mind to it.

It’s a damn shame the future history of the Grendel universe has lain dormant for so long. It was one of the most fascinating aspects of Wagner’s saga and is still open and ripe for storytelling opportunities.

Wagner hasn’t completely abandoned the entire continuity, with some powerful use of future portents in the most recent Hunter Rose series. So there is always the chance Grendel Prime will come out of the wild again, and I’ll be waiting. While keeping a safe distance.

100 Horrors by Paul Chadwick

I think he got up to number nine. I still have nightmares about the one that featuring an alien ray burrowing through the planet, but most of them made me laugh. Chadwick retains an absolutely singular sense of irony and humour and comics that feature that are always a lot better than the happily preachy ones.

Nikolai Dante, drawn by Simon Fraser

The Tearoom of Despair has already been embarrassingly eager about this 2000ad comic strip and has no desire to bare all like that again.

But as the Adventures of Nikolai Dante rush towards an undoubtedly tragic and spectacular conclusion, every bit of Fraser art is welcomed. John Burns is a fine, fine artist and creators such as Paul Marshall are capable of filling in with style, but Dante has always been Fraser’s strip. It has so much energy and

JLA written by Grant Morrison

I like Hitman more than Preacher, and sometimes I like Morrison’s JLA more than The Invisibles.

And I fucking love the Invisibles.

Love and Rockets

Always the best.