This Question Reader Needs Some Answers

[ourchair]

Most of my friends know what a big fan I am of the animated incarnation(s) of The Question (yes, even his minimal appearances in Brave and the Bold), so I recently received some trades for my birthday.

So after many years of consideration, I've decided to start purchasing trades and comics of The Question. The thing is, I don't know where to start. I now have Vol. 5: Riddles, which is part of the Denny O'Neil run and 'Pipeline' the Renee Montoya story featured as a back-up feature in Detective Comics by Greg Rucka and Cully Hamner.

The biggest problem I have isn't how hard it is to find a good bibliography. Researching that is easy. The challenge is that my brain really isn't good at navigating the DC trade section at the bookstore I also work for. So what are the good trades I can purchase, and if you've read any of them what are your thoughts?

 

[thee great one]

Apparently the O'Neil run is the best Question stories. I have not read them yet but they seem to be only run collected.

Renee stories as The Question start in 52, then Pipeline and The Five Books Of Blood, then Final Crisis Revelations.

 

[ProjectX2]

Rick Veitch and Tommy Lee Edwards did a six issue Question mini-series a few years ago that I remember being pretty interesting. He was an urban shaman and I think it was all about psychogeography.

Unfortunately, it's out of print.

 

[Zombipanda]

The Question's easy. There's four periods.

I understand Ditko's stuff to be pretty much a stumping post for objectivism, and pretty passable.

I'd start with O'Neil's run. For one, it was collected in six volumes in the last five years. More importantly, it's excellent. It's self contained, bereft of crossover, and a generally excellent example of a self contained long form narrative. There's a definitive beginning, middle, and end. And it's great. If they had let the character rest after this series, like they did with Starman, I'd be perfectly fine with that.

Following that, there was a six issue miniseries by Rick Veitch in the early 2000's. I haven't read it and it's long out of print, so neither of us will likely read it. The reviews were bad, but the concepts interest me. Like Proj said, urban shamanism and psychogeorgraphy, and Rick Veitch is awesome. So if you do manage to find it, tell me what you think.

Then there's the Rucka take on the character, which is a lot more piece meal. 52 (collected) features the original Question training Renee Montoya to be the new Question. It was followed by a miniseries called The Five Books of Blood (also collected) which follows on some of the dangling plot threads from 52. Then she had a small but fairly important role in Final Crisis and a spin-off miniseries (both collected). And finally a truncated back-up in the Batwoman run of Detective Comics (also collected, I think?).

So, in summary, four versions of the character, none of which seem to have that much in common with each other.

There's the Ditko pulp Randian avenger.
The O'Neil Zen humanist.
The Rucka version, who actually follows pretty well out of the O'Neil take, but also most closely resembles the DCAU version.
Then the Montoya legacy character, who fights werewolves and crime cultists.