Tag: Comics

Beyond Dreams: What to read when you’ve finished The Sandman

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Once you’ve finished a series as large in scope as The Sandman (the comic, the Netflix show, or the audio drama), it can be hard to know what to seek out next. Befitting for a series about a god of dreams and stories, Neil Gaiman’s ten-volume opus covers a massive breadth of genres, styles and subject matter, and every reader is bound to get something different out of the series.

So with that in mind, here’s a list of recommendations for what to read after you finish The Sandman, based on the various genres and themes the series covers: fantasy, superheroes, the power of stories, art, mythology, and much, much more.

How about some other long-running, contemporary fantasy series?

Fables series on our catalogueHellBlazer on our catalogueLucifer series on our catalogue, created by Mike CareyBooks of Magic series catalogue link

Where to begin:

Fables [1] : legends in exile / Willingham, Bill – Every fairy tale character ever, from Snow White to the Big Bad Wolf, lives in secret in a neighbourhood in New York. One of the longest-running Vertigo series at over 25 volumes (and it recently came back last year).

John Constantine, Hellblazer [1] : original sins / Delano, Jamie – Read the adventures of Vertigo’s foul-mouthed, chain-smoking ‘workday warlock’ from the beginning!

Lucifer. Book one / Carey, Mike – The first Lucifer series, where the Morningstar does God’s dirty work while hiding out in a piano bar in Los Angeles.

The books of magic / Gaiman, Neil – Another Gaiman-penned series, about a young boy’s journey to become the greatest wizard of all time (seven years before Harry Potter did it!)

What I like most about The Sandman is its theme of the power of stories! Got anything like that?

Animal Man series by Grant Robinson on the catalogueEnigma by Peter MilliganFlex Mentallo series linkEternity Girl

Where to begin:

Animal Man by Grant Morrison. Book one / Morrison, Grant – Superhero Buddy Baker learns that he is a comic book character and confronts his writer after he suffers a series of tragedies.

Enigma : the definitive edition / Milligan, Peter – Characters from a classic comic book come to life, forcing an old fan to come to terms with his identity.

Flex Mentallo : man of muscle mystery / Morrison, Grant – A Charles Atlas-style superhero has to save the boy who created him from encroaching teenage angst.

Eternity Girl / Visaggio, Magdalene – In a riff on ‘Façade’ from the Dream Country volume of The Sandman, an immortal superheroine has to decide whether she wants to end her life by destroying the universe.

Morpheus is so compelling! I want to read more stories about modern, moody gods!

The Wicked + the Divine seriesLore Olympus seriesBacchus series by Eddie CampbellLaila Starr series

Where to begin:

The wicked + the divine. Vol. 1, The Faust act / Gillen, Kieron – Every 90 years, 12 gods reappear on Earth to inspire mankind. In 2014, they reappear as pop stars, and young fangirl Laura will do anything to become one of them.

Lore Olympus. Volume one / Smythe, Rachel – A collection of the popular Webtoon comic by New Zealand artist Rachel Smythe, featuring a modernised take on the myth of Hades and Persephone.

Bacchus. Volume one of two / Campbell, Eddie – The Greek god of wine lives out his life as a barfly in England, swapping stories with mortals and gods alike.

Infinity Gauntlet / Starlin, Jim – Thanos has gathered all the Infinity Gems, but what will he do with his newfound omnipotence? And will anything he does with his power impress his true love, the mistress Death?

The many deaths of Laila Starr [1] / V, Ram – An avatar of death finds herself out of a job when a mortal boy is born who will go on to discover immortality.

So, if Sandman is a comic about literature, are there comics about OTHER arts?

Doom Patron seriesPlanetary series Phonogram series linkDie series, by Kieran Gillen

Where to begin:

Doom Patrol. Book one / Morrison, Grant – Features the story “The Painting that Ate Paris”, where the Patrol fight the outsider artist-influenced supervillain team The Brotherhood of Dada.

Planetary. Book one / Ellis, Warren – An X-Files style series about a group of ‘spacetime archaeologists’ investigating the secret history of the world, which turns out to resemble the plots of old pulp sci-fi stories.

The complete Phonogram / Gillen, Kieron – In a world where people can weaponize their favourite songs as magical spells, rival covens of ‘phonomancers’ compete against each other for peak music snobbery.

Die. Volume 1, Fantasy heartbreaker / Gillen, Kieron – A group of 40-somethings return to the magical fantasy world they role-played in as kids and come to terms with the decisions they made there, while also examining the people and inventions that made roleplay fantasy possible.

Never mind all that highfalutin stuff, I want more of the horror! The HORROR!!!

Continue reading “Beyond Dreams: What to read when you’ve finished The Sandman” →

If ye be worthy, peruse our Reading Guide to Thor: Love and Thunder!

Gus

July sees the release of Thor: Love and Thunder, the fourth film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Thor series, and the second directed by Aotearoa’s own Taika Waititi. The plot of Love and Thunder is based around characters and concepts from the recent Thor comics, including the villain Gorr the God Butcher, and Jane Foster becoming worthy of Mjolnir.

This ‘run’ on Thor, written by Jason Aaron and primarily drawn by Esad Ribic and Russell Dauterman, was critically beloved for its dazzling art, its bold plot twists and its cosmic scope. However, while it was all written by the same writer, during its run between 2013 to 2019 the Thor series itself was rebooted not once, not twice, but four separate times, making it difficult to know which ‘Thor Volume One’ to start from. So to help you prepare for the new film and guide you through the Thor comic’s many reinventions, we’ve put together this mighty reading guide!

First series: Thor, God of Thunder meets the God Butcher

Beginning in 2013, Thor: God of Thunder by Jason Aaron and artist Esad Ribic introduces Gorr, the God Butcher (played by Christian Bale in Thor: Love and Thunder), an vengeful alien who wants to destroy every god across time and space. To stop him, Thor teams up with his younger self from his Viking days and an older, surlier All-Father Thor from the future.

Thor, God of Thunder [1] : the God Butcher / Aaron, Jason (also on Libby)

Thor, God of Thunder [2] : Godbomb / Aaron, Jason (also on Libby)

Thor, God of Thunder [3] : the accursed / Aaron, Jason (also on Libby)

Thor, God of Thunder [4] : the last days of Midgard / Aaron, Jason (also on Libby)

 

Original Sin – Thor becomes unworthy

Jason Aaron also wrote Original Sin, a crossover series where the Marvel heroes uncover secrets about their pasts while investigating the death of the Watcher. During this series, Thor learns a devastating truth that causes him to become unworthy of wielding Mjolnir, setting the stage for a new Thor to arrive.

Original sin : Thor & Loki : the tenth realm / Aaron, Jason

Original sin. Who shot the Watcher? / Aaron, Jason


Second series: Who is The Mighty Thor?

With Thor now unworthy of wielding Mjolnir, the hammer goes to Doctor Jane Foster, Thor’s ex-girlfriend, and she headlines a new series as The Mighty Thor. In her first series running for two volumes, written again by Aaron and drawn by Russell Dauterman, she fights the minotaur CEO Dario Agger and reveals her identity to the superhero community. After being teleported to Battleworld during Secret Wars, she joins the Thor Corps, a police force made entirely of Thor variants from across the multiverse.

Thor : the goddess of thunder / Aaron, Jason (also on Libby)

Thor [2] : who holds the hammer? / Aaron, Jason

Secret wars / Hickman, Jonathan


Third series: The Mighty and the Unworthy

The Mighty Thor reboots again after Secret Wars, again with Jane Foster as the Mighty Thor, which ran for five volumes. Meanwhile, the original Thor (now going by ‘Odinson’) gets his own limited series called The Unworthy Thor as he struggles with his identity following the loss of his hammer.

The mighty Thor [1] : thunder in her veins / Aaron, Jason (also on Libby)

The mighty Thor [2] : Lords of Midgard / Aaron, Jason (also on Libby)

The mighty Thor [3] : the Asgard/Shi’ar war / Aaron, Jason (also on Libby)

The unworthy Thor / Aaron, Jason 

The mighty Thor [4] : the war Thor / Aaron, Jason (also on Libby)

The Mighty Thor [5] : the death of the Mighty Thor / Aaron, Jason (also on Libby)

Final series: The War of the Realms

Jason Aaron’s final Thor series has Thor Odinson reclaim Mjolnir as his enemies from across the Nine Realms band together to invade Midgard. This results in the The War of the Realms, bringing Aaron’s near-decade long run on the God of Thunder, and now also Goddess of Thunder, to a close.

Thor [1] : God of Thunder reborn / Aaron, Jason (also on Libby)

Thor [2] : road to war of the realms / Aaron, Jason (also on Libby)

The war of the realms / Aaron, Jason

Thor [3] : war’s end / Aaron, Jason


But wait, there’s Thor!

Except not quite! To wrap up a few plot threads, Aaron definitively ends his Thor run with the miniseries King Thor, featuring Thor’s future self from all the way back in the first series. Meanwhile, Jane Foster gains a new weapon called Undrjarn the All-Weapon and becomes a new Valkyrie.

King Thor / Aaron, Jason

Valkyrie : Jane Foster [1] : the sacred and the profane / Ewing, Al (also on Libby)

Valkyrie : Jane Foster [2] : / Ewing, Al (also on Libby)

What’s next for Waititi?

Taika Waititi’s next comic-to-film project is an adaptation of The Incal, a French science-fiction comic by famed writer and director Alejandro Jodorowsky and legendary artist Moebius, about a down-on-his-luck detective who gets embroiled in a cosmic prophecy. You can also read it in its original six-issue run on Libby starting here. Waititi is also attached to direct the long-gestating film of the classic cyberpunk manga Akira, which runs for six volumes.

 

Comics in Conversation with Literature: The Immortal Hulk – Part 3

Gus

The Immortal Hulk is the newest comic to feature Dr Bruce Banner and his green alter ego. Since the series’ debut in 2018, it’s become a massive hit with fans and critics. Written by Al Ewing and drawn by Joe Bennett, the series centres on a new revelation about the character: Bruce Banner can die but the Hulk cannot, which makes them, as the title suggests, immortal.

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks to this undead twist, Ewing and Bennett use the story opportunity to turn Hulk into a horror book. The newly-minted Immortal Hulk battles such terrors as radioactive zombies, paranormal possessions, city-destroying kaiju, the Devil, the legions of Hell, and — my personal favourite — Xemnu the Titan, a cyborg yeti alien who can manipulate people’s memories through smartphones.

The other unique angle to The Immortal Hulk is that every issue opens with a quote from a famous book or writer, chosen by Ewing to give thematic weight to each issue and something for the audience to ponder on a close reading. Below, I’ve picked out some of the best opening quotations from volumes seven to nine of The Immortal Hulk, and linked them to the works of their respective writers so you can find them in our collection.

If you want to read the comic first, you can order the first volume here or read it on Overdrive here. Check out the previous editions of this blog (Part One and Part Two) to read about all the references in the first six volumes. If you’ve read up to volume seven, reserve it here.

“And from this mind I will not flee, but to you all that misjudge me, I do protest as ye may see, that I am as I am and so will I be” – Collected poems / Wyatt, Thomas

The quote that opens Volume 7 is the final line from Sir Thomas Wyatt’s poem, “The recured Lover exulteth in his Freedom, and voweth to remain free until Death“, a poem about defining one’s identity in the face of other narratives forced upon it. Volume 7 also introduces Xemnu the Titan to the series (who first appeared as ‘Xemnu the Living Hulk’ in Journey into Mystery #62 from 1960). The Roxxon corporation exploits Xemnu’s ability to hypnotise people through media like televisions and smartphones to make everyone forget the Hulk existed, including Banner himself, and plant a false memory in the public consciousness that Xemnu was always the Hulk. With the other personas of the Hulk locked up in Banner’s mind, it falls to the child-like ‘Savage Hulk’ to remind Banner who he is: that ‘Hulk is Hulk’.

Continue reading “Comics in Conversation with Literature: The Immortal Hulk – Part 3” →

Task Force Xceptional: A Dirty Half-Dozen Recommendations for DC’s second-chance Squad

Gus

The story of the Suicide Squad is one of second-chances. When DC Comics relaunched all their series following the Crisis on Infinite Earths event in 1986, a lot of characters were left untouched, particularly a lot of the minor villain characters like Captain Boomerang, Deadshot, and Count Vertigo. Inspired by The Dirty Dozen, writers John Ostrander and Kim Yale and artist Luke McDonnell gave these characters a new lease on life as Task Force X, a team of super-criminal prisoners doing covert missions for the government in exchange for shorter prison sentences. The team is supposed to be both deniable and expendable, a fact that their leader, the aggressively pragmatic federal agent Amanda Waller, rarely lets them forget. Many team members would wind up losing their lives over the course of the series, a rare thrill in a medium where characters rarely stayed dead for good. Though the series has been retooled and rebooted numerous times since 1986, it’s so good a premise that it rarely stays gone for good.

Now the team is getting a second-chance at a movie with James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad this August, which is said to be directly inspired by both the original 80s run and The Dirty Dozen, so we’ve assembled a rag-tag ‘dirty half-dozen’ recommendations to get you prepped. Whether you’re interested in the origins of the team or just want to see how many people King Shark can eat in one issue, we’ve got you covered!

Suicide Squad [4] : the Janus directive / Ostrander, John
When Amanda Waller begins to send out Task Force X for her own secret agenda, it draws the attention of every covert ops organisation in the DC Universe, and bring the hammer down in response. Little do all they know that Waller is being manipulated by another mysterious higher power. Part of the classic Ostrander/Yale/McDonnell run, The Janus Directive was one of the defining arcs of the original 80s series.

Suicide Squad. Volume 4, Discipline and punish / Kot, Ales
The highlight of the ‘New 52’ run on Suicide Squad is Ales Kot’s all-too-brief tenure on the book from 2014. After several missions gone awry, the team gains a consultant in the form of James Gordon Jr., the ‘recovering psychopath’ son of Commissioner Gordon, to help them better acclimate to prison life and find out what motivates them. Discipline and Punish (named for Michel Foucault’s book about the institutional origin of prisons) takes a more psychological spin on the team reminiscent of The Silence of the Lambs while still managing to be fun and breezy, a rare balance that Kot nails so well you wish they stuck around longer.

Suicide Squad : hell to pay / Parker, Jeff
Based on the animated film of the same name, Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay follows the team being recruited to obtain a mystical artifact that seems too good to be true; a ‘Get Out of Hell Free’ card that allows the holder to completely absolve themselves from eternal damnation. Of course, sending a bunch of hardened criminals with rap-sheets longer than Plastic Man’s arm after such as card is quickly revealed to be as short-sighted an endeavour as it sounds, but it makes for a great exploration of the characters as they come to terms with their past deeds.

Suicide Squad. Vol. 1, The black vault / Williams, Rob
Part of the DC Rebirth initiative and drawn by DC boss Jim Lee, this run of Suicide Squad ties in closer to the then-recent David Ayer film. The team’s first mission sees them trying to break their newest potential recruit out of the ‘The Black Vault’, a secret Russian prison guarded by its own Suicide Squad, the equally dangerous Annihilation Brigade. A alum of Britain’s premier anthology comic 2000 AD, Rob Williams’ writing is a perfect blend of over-the-top action and gallows humour that makes for a great Suicide Squad story.

Justice League vs. Suicide Squad / Williamson, Joshua
Sooner or later, the Suicide Squad comes into conflict with the Justice League, who aren’t exactly pleased that the villains they work so hard to put away are out on the streets and being co-opted by the government. One of the better DC Comics crossovers in recent memory (I also rated it in my Justice League recommendations), it’s genuinely impressive that every member of both teams gets a moment to shine, a hard task for a brief series with two massive casts slammed together.

Suicide Squad : bad blood / Taylor, Tom
The most recent Suicide Squad run sees the team behind the smash hit series Injustice: Gods Among Us, writer Tom Taylor and artist Bruno Redondo, take the reins. Once again under new management, the Squad is tasked with defeating and recruiting a team of anarchist superhumans called ‘The Revolutionaries’, allowing the creative team to introduce a slew of new characters to the DCU, any one of whom are bound to be a fan’s new favourite (mine being the out-of-shape speedster Jog and the Indigenous Australian tracker Thylacine).  Taylor’s signature humour and knack for great plot twists and Redondo’s expressive art that defined Injustice make this short run on the series one a must-read.

Comics in Conversation with Literature: The Immortal Hulk – Part 2

Gus

Read Part one in this blog series

The Immortal Hulk is the newest comic to feature Dr Bruce Banner and his green alter ego, and since the series’ debut in 2018, it’s become a massive hit with fans and critics. Written by Al Ewing and drawn by Joe Bennett, the series centres on a new revelation about the character: Bruce Banner can die but the Hulk cannot, which makes them, as the title suggests, immortal.

Thanks to this undead twist, Ewing and Bennett use the story opportunity to turn Hulk into a horror book. The newly-minted Immortal Hulk battles such terrors as radioactive zombies, paranormal possessions, city-destroying kaiju, the Devil, the legions of Hell, and — my personal favourite — Xemnu the Titan, a cyborg yeti alien who can manipulate people’s memories through smartphones.

The other unique angle to The Immortal Hulk is that every issue opens with a quote from a famous book or writer, chosen by Ewing to give thematic weight to each issue and something for the audience to ponder on a close reading. Below, I’ve picked out some of the best opening quotations from volumes four to six of The Immortal Hulk, and linked them to the works of their respective writers so you can find them in our collection.

If you want to read the comic first, you can order the first volume here or read it on Overdrive here (and check out the previous edition of this blog to read about all the references in the first three volumes). If you’ve read up to volume four, order it here or read it on Overdrive here.

Opening Quotations from The Immortal Hulk

Behold: I cry out of wrong, but I am not heard. I cry aloud, but there is no judgement.

The Book of Job

Catalogue link for The book of Job : a contest of moral imaginations / Newsom, CarolThe Book of Job is one of the most discussed books of the Bible, and also the one most frequently quoted in The Immortal Hulk. In the Book, God tests the faith of a pious man, Job, by robbing him of all his family and possessions, and when Job tries to know why God has punished him, he is only shown how much he doesn’t know. Ewing returns to Job as a motif whenever the Immortal Hulk is being tested, whether it be by shady government black-ops hunting him down, the return of old enemies, or with his own inner turmoil.

Nothing valued is here. What is here is dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.

Catalogue link for The age of radiance : the epic rise and dramatic fall of the Atomic Era / Nelson, CraigThese phrases aren’t from a work of literature, but from the United States Department of Energy. A growing concern in the organisation is how to warn people in the far future to stay away from nuclear waste disposal sites; these phrases were written to help design pictographs that best symbolise the danger represented by radiation to potentially illiterate future humans. Ewing uses these phrases as opening quotes in the issue where Shadow Base, the government black site hunting the Hulk, create a new version of the classic Hulk foe The Abomination, not knowing the danger they are getting into by creating a Hulk of their own.

I would eat his heart in the marketplace

Catalogue link for Much ado about nothing / Shakespeare, William A running theme in The Immortal Hulk is anger, particularly the double standard invoked when women express it as opposed to men. In issue 19, Bruce Banner’s ex-wife Betty returns as the Red Harpy, a giant crimson bird-woman set on revenge against the Hulk for all the ways he ruined her life. The opening quote of the issue is an expression by Much Ado‘s character Beatrice, wishing that she had a man’s social privilege to publicly hold a man to task for slandering her friend. In Red Harpy’s case, however, she decides to take Beatrice’s metaphor very, very literally…

That stony law I stamp to dust, and scatter religion abroad to the four winds as a torn book, & none shall gather the leaves…

Catalogue link for William Blake, selected poetryIn issue 26, after defeating and taking over Shadow Base, the Hulk decides to use its resources to launch a revolution against the powers-that-be, stating that he wants to ‘end the human world’. His friends and allies, however, are skeptical at whether Hulk’s mission will prove effective. Ewing once more returns to poet and artist William Blake, this time citing a passage from his America: A Prophecy, a book of poetry written about the revelatory potential of the American Revolution.

Such is the condition of organic nature! Whose first law might be expressed in the words, ‘Eat or be eaten!’

Catalogue link for Erasmus Darwin : a life of unequalled achievementIn issue 29, the CEO of the Roxxon corporation sends out a wave of giant monsters to attack Phoenix, Arizona to discredit Bruce Banner and prop up Roxxon’s own Hulk, Xemnu the Titan, as a hero. They are heralded by the above line, a poetic description of nature’s voracity by naturalist Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles) from his book Phytologia. It proves literal too, as one monster eats the Hulk whole, leaving him to fight its car-sized internal parasites.

O’Brien’s looking skittish, but he’ll be fine once his blood’s up. Harryhausen is raring to go. Oh–and they didn’t feed Lovecraft today…

The four giant monsters that attack Phoenix all have codenames referencing Hollywood visual effects artists and horror writers:

Catalogue link: King Kong Catalogue link: Clash of the Titans Catalogue link: The complete fiction of H. P. Lovecraft Catalogue link: The vintage Ray Bradbury

Comics in Conversation with Cinema: Justice League – The Director’s Cuts (Part 2)

Gus

After years of fan campaigning, Zack Snyder’s Justice League has finally arrived on our screens. The newly expanded film restores the initial vision of the auteur director behind 300, Watchmen and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and is loosely based on Justice League: Origin by Geoff Johns and Jim Lee.

But there are many Justice League stories worthy of adaptation into film, just as there are many directors who would be perfect to adapt them. Here are another six picks for Justice League comics based on which directors would be best to adapt them into movies. Read the first batch of recommendations here.

The people vs. the Justice League and Justice lost

Suggested director: Spike Lee (Do the Right Thing, Blackkklansman)

What happens when the Justice League get in the way of real justice? Many writers have tried to do the ‘what if superheroes had to deal with the REAL issues’ story and failed, but in The People vs the Justice League, Christopher Priest and Pete Woods are able to make the real world/superhero world conflict compelling without one side diminishing the other. Featuring a disgruntled fanboy villain, a rival Justice League more interested in community action than punching bad guys, and a parody of Black Panther who uses the League’s downed satellite base to start a war between two African nations, this topical two volume run has plenty of material for a smart, trenchant director like Spike Lee to make into a great movie.

JLA: Trial by Fire

Suggested director: Sam Raimi (Spider-Man, The Evil Dead)

After trying to overcome his fatal weakness to fire, Martian Manhunter accidentally awakens a hostile ancestral personality in himself known as ‘Fernus the Burning Martian’, who wants nothing more than Earth’s total destruction. Trial by Fire, by writer Joe Kelly and artist Doug Mahnke, starts with a demonic possession mystery that spirals out into a world-ending threat, and it rides an interesting middle ground between horror story and superhero epic. That’s why Sam Raimi, director of both great superhero movies and great horror movies, would really make this story sing if he were the one adapting it.

Formerly known as the Justice League

Suggested director: Taika Waititi (Thor: Ragnarok, What We Do In The Shadows)

In the late 80s, Justice League was written by Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis, and artist Kevin Maguire, who turned the book into a superhero ensemble comedy featuring lesser known heroes like Blue Beetle, Booster Gold and Elongated Man. Formerly Known as… has that creative team return to the characters (now called the ‘Super Buddies’) who have fallen on hard times and operate out of a strip mall. Taika Waititi is an easy pick for the only explicitly comedic Justice League, but I chose him for this story because he also excels at writing people with high opinions of themselves trying to reclaim their dignity in the face of adversity; think of the aristocratic vampires of What We Do in the Shadows reduced to living in a dilapidated flat or Thor struggling with his self-worth after his hammer is destroyed in Thor: Ragnarok.

JLA: Rock of Ages

Suggested director: Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight trilogy, Interstellar)

Rock of Ages is another blockbuster-size JLA story from Grant Morrison and Howard Porter, in which the JLA face a crisis on two fronts: a corporate takeover-style threat from the Injustice Gang, and trying to prevent a map of all space-time from falling into the hands of the despotic alien Darkseid. Christopher Nolan is a filmmaker obsessed with time: how we fight against it (Dunkirk), what it robs from us (Interstellar), and how we could weaponise it for our benefit (Tenet). Rock of Ages has all the sort of mind-bending space-time headiness Nolan loves to play with, plus it has a lot of good Batman moments as well, so it would be a return to form for him in more ways than one.

Justice League vs. Suicide Squad

Suggested director: The Russo brothers (Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame)

The Russo brothers had the monumental task of bringing ten years of a superhero universe to a conclusion with Infinity War and Endgame, and if fan response and box-office speaks for anything, they succeeded with flying colours. They’re the only duo who would be up to the task to adapt Justice League vs Suicide Squad, which like their previous superhero efforts features a huge and complex story, loads of characters, and centres around a villain pursuing a gem for ultimate power. They might be repeating themselves, but if they did it twice before, then third time is just another charm.

JLA: Heaven’s Ladder

Suggested director: The Wachowski siblings (The Matrix, Cloud Atlas)

One of the weirder stories from the 90s JLA run, Heaven’s Ladder (by Mark Waid and Bryan Hitch) follows the Justice League trying to save Earth after it has been stolen by immortal aliens called ‘Quantum Mechanics’ who want to build their own afterlife using the cultural ideas of Heaven from various alien worlds. It’s a far-out concept, but one that hits on a lot of the shared themes of the films of Lana and Lilly Wachowski, like the fusing of spirituality with science-fiction in The Matrix or the idea of the soul transcending cultural boundaries from Cloud Atlas.