Where should I go after Mage?

>>95066974
The Maxx and Nexus.

>>95067108
I've read the first issue of The Maxx now. The story seems interesting, but I was looking for something more grounded. I get enough of the shiny bright coloured big muscly superhero thing from the big two. Also, Maxx's costume design is just fucking horrible. I'll probably continue reading it at some point in the future, but doesn't seem like what I'm looking for right now.

And Nexus looks like it's a big space war adventure kinda thing, which, again, is not really what I'm looking for right now.

>>95066974
Astro City
Badger
Ex Machina
Irredeemable

File: American Flagg 05.jpg (272KB, 900x1364px) Image search: [Google]

272KB, 900x1364px

Nexus
Badger
Madman
Empowered
Tom Strong
Rocketeer
Jon Sable: Freelance
Zot!
Quantum and Woody by Priest and Bright

File: TeenAngel.jpg (583KB, 1067x1600px) Image search: [Google]

583KB, 1067x1600px

>>95067805
I don't really know why you're looking for grounded stuff. Superheroes as a whole are not grounded, regardless of whether they're big two or not big two.

Both The Maxx and Nexus are superb. Nexus in particular is one of my favourite comics ever (I'm not the anon you're responding to either). It does have goofy moments but the essential concept is so metal, and Steve Rude - maybe the best superhero artist ever - and Mike Baron knock it out of the park constantly.

What you're recommended here >>95067905 >>95068021 is all fine though. If you prefer something Irredeemable to Nexus you should IMO kill yourself, but whatever That's a huge range of recs: Zot is kind of teen slice-of-life more than anything, Astro City is Kurt Busiek building up a consistently realised superhero world over decades, Madman is like what Freakazoid ripped off.

I'd throw in my hat for Top 10 and Grimjack too. You probably want to look at just about anything First Comics put out, and I notice you haven't mentioned Wildstorm which was a huge non-big two superhero universe for a long time (before it was incorporated into DC). There's a new attempt to make a supers universe imprint just now, with Catalyst from Lion Forge. Maybe heck that out.

>>95066974
Bone and Hellboy.

>>95068495
Astro City, Top 10, the Wildstorm stuff, Madman, Tom Strong and Zot are already stuff I'm planning on reading, and I'll probably love them once I do, and the same thing goes with probably most the other stuff recommended here. It's just that they're all normal cape comics. Yeah maybe they're some of the best cape comics, but I'm not looking for stuff with the general capeshit feel to them.

Mage felt different than any other cape comic I've ever read, except maybe the first few issues of PAD's X-factor. Yeah there are people with super powers and there's magic, and there are monster and shit, but the book feels more like a grounded crime noir, or some pulp stuff rather than general cape comics. Even O'neil's Question feels more like a cape comic than Mage does, and Question is a straight out fucking pulp crime comic. The feel of Mage was closer to stuff like We Can Never Go Home, Sex Criminals, Rossmo's Proof, Rasputin and Drumhellar, than it was to cape comics. Stuff like those, where there are magic, monsters, super powers etc but the story is still grounded and is about the people more than it is about those things, that's the stuff I'm looking for more of, I guess.

>>95070466
Nexus' basic pitch is what if the Punisher was the son of a genocidal intergalactic communist dictator driven to murder the galaxy's greatest criminals by the maddening dreams of an alien god.

It's not really a normal cape comic and I can't recommend it to you more highly. I don't rate Mage above Nexus.

Curse Words is a fun book.

Otherwise I'd ask your local comic book retailer what their recommendations are.

>>95071981
And I guess I should say that it does have these weird goofy arcs and back-ups and straight up cape battle moments, but it's also got huge parts about society in the weird future Earth polity it images, the outcast society that springs up on Nexus' asteroid, and a generic high octane soap opera focus on all the people in Nexus' life.

Nexus does the scene where Dr. Manhattan raises structures out of the ground on Mars about 4 years before Moore and Gibbons actually did it.

>>95066974
>capeshit esque comics with a unique feel
Try for anything Vertigo, namely Swamp Thing, Sandman or Morrison's Doom Patrol.
And for the sake of naming a comic with a unique feel to it, read Seven Soldiers by Morrison. It not only feels different than most of his works, but different than most comics.