I’ve broken the annotations into 3 parts because the listing was long enough to make the page load slowly on slower connections:
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Annotations for Alan Moore comic books (all publishers) |
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Annotations for DC comic books (including Vertigo, Elseworlds, etc.) |
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Annotations for all other comic books (including Marvel and Independents) |
Annotations for DC comic books (including Vertigo, Elseworlds, etc.)
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 fromWildside Press is Matt’s “Lightbringer: A Guide to Mike Carey’s Lucifer”!