Annotations for DC comic books
(including Vertigo, Elseworlds, etc.)
NEW! BIG NEWS!
Gary Greenwood has created some great annotations for DC's universe-changing
Infinite Crisis. He's
also followed them up with annotations for
Final Crisis,
as well as
Blackest
Night. Finally (as if that wasn't enough!), he's started
The Annotated DC
Project which will eventually hold notes on most if not all of the big DC
summer crossover series from years gone by. For now it has notes on
Crisis on Infinite Earths and
Zero Hour: Crisis in Time.
David Goldfarb and Greg Morrow wrote complete annotations for Neil Gaiman's
popular (and deservedly so)
Sandman. The
annotations are hosted by Ralf Hildebrandt
here
in a different layout (by
graphic novel); this latter site also has all of them in a single zip file.
Also, as noted above, Ng Kiat Han has annotated Sandman #75.
David Goldfarb also compiled annotations for Gaiman's
The Books of Magic
mini-series.
Jess Nevins has put together an amazing run of annotations (see the
Alan Moore Annotations section of the site for
more of his work).
Three of his annotations focus on DC mini-series:
-
The Kingdom Come mini-series:
Issue #1,
Issue #2,
Issue #3, and
Issue #4. [Note: for more on Kingdom Come, Alphonso Mason did some
very funny pseudo-parody annotations of
Lethargic Lad #3,
which in itself was a parody issue of the Kingdom Come series.]
- The Kingdom Come mini-series sequel (including
Kingdom #1 and
Kingdom #2,
Kid
Flash #1,
Nightstar #1,
Offspring #1,
Planet Krypton #1, and
Son of the Bat
#1)
-
Justice League of America: The Nail (a.k.a., JLA: The Nail). This
was a 3-issue mini-series:
Issue #1, Issue #2, and
Issue #3.
Jess has given me permission to mirror
his annotations, so they're hosted here. If you're into the Golden Age, you
should also take a trip to
his site,
as it has lots of Golden Age information on it.
Adrian Brown has started doing some pretty extensive annotations for
Hellblazer, starting with #175. He's also done #3, separately.
Steve Higgins has done a very nice job with both summaries and annotations
for Batman: The
Long Halloween (by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale). I'm particularly excited
about this one as I just picked up the graphic novel....
Julian Darius of Sequart.com has done annotations for the movie
Batman
Begins, with a scene by scene look commenting heavily on the comics
precedents. Direct links to all 6 parts:
Part 1,
Part 2,
Part 3,
Part 4, Part 5,
and Part 6.
Note: Julian expanded his
annotations
on the film "Batman Begins" to include essays, box office numbers of all of
the Batman films, and a section about previous attempts to bring the failing
Batman film franchise back from the dead. The book, titled Batman
Begins and the Comics is for sale at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble's
website, as well as "fine bookstores throughout the country".
Congratulation to Julian!
Aaron Severson (who wrote the Supreme annotations, see
Alan Moore Annotations), has also written
extensive annotations for
Superman & Batman: Generations (An Imaginary Tale). Click
here to download the
zipped Word file. (If you'd like it unzipped, click
here instead.)
Note that the annotations are 42 pages; the uncompressed
Word file is 292K, while
the zipped version is
only 75K. Either way, if you're on a 28.8 modem the download may take a
couple of minutes.
Ido Reif has begun to annotate Y:
the Last Man, an excellent series if you haven't been reading it. He's
already done issues #1-6.
Matt Peckham has
annotated
The Sandman: Endless Nights Special,
which is hosted here at Enjolrasworld. He has also written annotations for
issue #1 of Mike Cary's
The Unwritten.
Jackie Williams
has written (and recently updated) annotations to Peter David's "Fallen Angel" series.
They even include some comments from Peter David himself. Click for
issue #1,
#2,
#3,
#4,
#5,
#6, and
#7.
Ng Kiat Han has
annotated Sandman #75.
Neil's (the man himself) quote on these annotations: "enjoyed your
annotations, and I thought they were competent and fairly solid."
Scott Hollifield compiled extensive annotations for the 1993/1994 four issue Elseworlds mini-series
"The
Golden Age: A Different Look at a Different Era", written by James
Robinson and illustrated by Paul Martin. It took me forever to find the
annotations for the fourth book, but I am happy to say that the complete version
is now available
here.
Another Elseworld story that has been well annotated is
Elseworld's
Finest: Supergirl & Batgirl, written by Barbara Kesel and illustrated by
Matt Haley and Tom Simmons. Urac Daria Sigma did the annotations.
If you're into both Batman and Elseworld stories, Loki Carbis has done some
nice annotations for
Batman: Holy Terror, written by Alan Brennert & Norm Breyfogle.
The Invisibles has received a lot of attention.
Jay Babcock has pulled together annotations and plot synopses for Volume 1
(issues 1-25) and Volume 2 (issues 1-21).
Ted Faber has
also written some annotations, which go up to Volume 3 #12 (so far).
Finally, at The Bomb -- an
excellent site dedicated solely to The Invisibles -- there's an episode guide
that includes annotations and a whole bunch of other stuff.
Greg Plantamura (who also did the Swamp Thing annotations, see
Alan Moore Annotations) has done an
annotation for the
Uncle Sam mini-series. You can find it
here.
Jonathan Woodward has annotated:
-
The Crisis on
Infinite Earths series, and
-
Flex Mentallo
(written by Grant Morrison)
-
Animal Man and its
Crisis Relevance (incredibly helpful for anyone reading Morrison's Animal
Man run, especially if they haven't read DC's Crisis stuff)
Flex Mentallo
was also annotated by Jason Craft at this
site.
An amazing collection of annotations all centering around The
Doom Patrol
(since it's 1963 inception!) have been written by Lou Mougin, Tom Ripley, Robert
Kelly, William Sherman, John Bullough, and Kyle Seifried. You can find
their site here.
The mini-series Lucifer: The Morningstar Option had 2 of its first 3 issues
annotated by David Hawkins. Here are the links to
Issue #1 and
Issue #2.
Dylan Verheul has written
annotations to Neil Gaiman's
Death: the High
Cost of Living #1.
The Comix-fan
website has annotations for the DC/Marvel cross-over event JLA/Avengers, issues
#1-4, with notes to all the hidden (and not so hidden)
references. Links:
JLA/Avengers #1,
JLA/Avengers
#2,
JLA/Avengers
#3,
JLA/Avengers
#4.
Lee Seitz annotated Atari Force as well as the related Star Raiders graphic
novel (which was DC's first graphic novel). You can get the annotations
here.
Doctor Quantum has annotated
Captain Carrot
and His Amazing Zoo Crew #1-#7, as well as the preview in New Teen Titans
#16.
Doug Atkinson annotated
Ambush Bug from DC Comics Presents #52, #59, #81, and Action Comics #560.
Andrew Solovay annotated
Stanley And His Monster #1.
Sanjay Shah and
YourMomsBasement.com have started
a new column where they break down comic book runs that "usually get passed
over". Their first guide is for the Denny O'Neil & Denys Cowen's volume of
The Question (published by DC Comics in 1986). They break down all 36
issues, citing the creators' influences,
here.
Jason Pomerantz
has done an analysis of
Identity Crisis #1,
Identity Crisis #2, and
Identity Crisis #3.
Matt Peckham (of
Lucifer fan site and annotation fame) has started annotating Si Spencer and Neil
Gaiman's Books of Magick monthly, from the beginning. Here are annotations to
#1.
He also has a new blogsite about
the series.
Matt Peckham has
begun to annotate the Lucifer series, written by Mike Carey. On
his
annotations page, he already
has the annotations for the three issue mini-series
Sandman
Presents: Lucifer (the Morningstar Option)
#1,
#2, and
#3. He's also begun to annotate the current monthly
Lucifer
issues (48 and 49 are up)...
Note: Available soon from
Wildside Press is Matt's
"Lightbringer: A Guide to Mike Carey's Lucifer"!
Anything I'm missing?
Let me know!
since the Aug. 18th '03 Site Redesign
