I like reading manga. A lot. The comic thing? I’ve never gotten into it. Not even close.
Any recommendations?
Chuck out any recommendations you like, but for me personally? I’m not a big fan of the superhero thing. Not traditional superhero stuff anyway. But this is a recommendation post for everyone!
Drop them in the comments below.
Comments
71 responses to “Tell Us Dammit: Recommend Some Comic Books”
Promethea
Kabuki
Preacher
Planetary
Richard Stark’s Parker
Criminal
Sleeper
Saga
Y The Last Man
Ex Machina
We 3
The Invisibles
Asterios Polyp
The Goon
Punk Rock Jesus
Clan Destine
Peaceful Tomorrows
Undad
The Lesser Evil
Hellboy
The Maxx
Thanks, man!
Inb4shane
Excellent suggestions!
I don’t read that much in the way of comics, but what I’ve read recently (and all of it is ongoing, suckers, well, sort of ongoing. I don’t really understand what DC and Marvel are doing with their booties at the moment) that was cool:
Saga, surprising literally nobody who has paid any attention to the comic book scene of the last few years.
I also like Ms. Marvel, because Kamala Khan is just straight up fun.
And New 52 (not that new anymore, is it?) Batgirl is pretty rad, though I’ve only read like 20 issues of it because I’m slack.
Oh, and to continue the line of “I only read comics that are recommended by everybody/hipsters” Y:The Last Man is a cool dude.
Jesus I’m generic.
Prophet!
Read if you think you like weird, organic-science, future, sci-fi
http://www.bookdepository.com/Prophet-Remission-1-Brandon-Graham/9781607066118
https://www.comixology.com/Prophet/comics-series/7416?ref=c2VhcmNoL2luZGV4L2Rlc2t0b3Avc2xpZGVyTGlzdC9zZXJpZXNTbGlkZXI
The Tick! Definitely not traditional superhero, and there’s only 12 of them.
Scott Pilgrim is also different, and I’ve seen good things about Bryan Lee O’Malley’s new one on this very site.
The complete works of Shane W. Smith.
http://shanewsmith.com/
Thanks, man!
(For the record, and in the interest of full disclosure, Cakesmith appears in not one, but two of my books.)
@cakesmith
https://www.dropbox.com/s/c7u4hgnusn4ob7b/cakesmith.jpg?dl=0
Complete with sexy attire in one of them
Saga
Sex Criminals
SEX
Empowered
The Dirty Pair
+1 Empowered or the (now kinda old) Dirty Pair
(see my comment below)
The Walking Dead… Miles better than the TV show (Although the latter half of season 5 is a return to form with some scenes lifted from the comic almost word for word and frame for frame)
Robert Kirkman (writer of the walking dead) has a bunch of great other stuff.
Outcast – a more grown up story about demonic possession and exorism
Invincible – the only super hero comic you should ever read. A fantastic ‘twist’ of a clichéd setting.
Usagi Yojimbo
Seconds and Scott Pilgrim
Soulfire
Amala’s Blade
I Love Trouble
Bravest Warriors
Axe Cop
Aphrodite IX is pretty good too.
The wicked and the divine
FBP
The Manhattan Projects
The Lesser evil
Hellblazer
Undad
The Nightly News
Should I start with Hellblazer from the beginning? I’m a huge Ennis fan and just want to read his run. Will I miss anything if I go straight to his run?
Invincible
Really well written, crisp art. A refreshing take on the superhero genre.
As a bonus, plenty of back catalogue to keep you busy when you get hopelessly hooked.
Unconventional heroes.
I second Tick
Marshall Law
Groo
Bone
Sin City (the original Marv story)
if you can find it Roachmill (late 80’s early 90s)
Accident Man ( a strip from I think 2000AD mid 90s)
got some good times from Lobo too
heaps out there, go looking
Nowhere Men
Lazarus
Saga
Sex Criminals
Southern Bastards
Black Science
Velvet
East of West
I got Marvel Unlimited with a free trial but I’m just not feeling the superhero stuff (except for TV shows/movies), even with the authors of stuff I like.
Mark, have you read any VERTIGO stuff? To every comic reader, this list is going to look a little cliche, but it’s because this stuff is still some of the best work out there. They’re the books I direct everyone to, when asked about non-superhero comic books.
#1 – SCALPED: Holy shit, this book! Set on a Native American reservation plagued by a criminal element choking the community to extinction, the “hero” of the story, Dashiell Bad Horse, returns to his home after 15 years to right the wrongs of the past (I literally can’t say anymore without spoiling something, don’t read about it before starting!) Buckle up, cos this one pulls no punches.
Read SCALPED if you enjoyed: True Detective, American History X, A Good Day to Die.
#2 – Y: The Last Man: Stories in this book have been borrowed by a lot of TV shows recently, so much so we’ll probably never get a YTLM TV show of it’s own. Easy to read start-to-end; finale payoff is AMAZING.
Read Y: THE LAST MAN if you enjoyed any of the following: The Walking Dead (TV), Dies The Fire, good road trip stories, strong female characters.
#3 – PREACHER: Preacher is at the top of so many lists, it makes comic readers eyes roll. But it’s because it’s that great. I will admit however, it IS starting to date a little, but more so with younger audiences who don’t understand the 90’s style; for you, it’s perfect =P
Read PREACHER if you enjoyed any of the following: Dogma, The Stand, Unforgiven, Interview With The Vampire
I know you said no superhero stuff, but there is some really amazing stuff that pretends to be Superhero books, but has a whole lot more going on. For example:
#4 – THE BOYS: You might love this because it’s got a lot U.K. inspiration in it. In short; The superheroes in this book are obnoxious pansy dickhead that take a top-secret drug that gives them their super-powers. The Boys are a small, tight knit group of legit hard-asses who also take that drug, so they can police the superhero community… and they REALLY enjoy their job.
Read THE BOYS is you enjoyed: Lock Stock/Snatch, Watchmen, Reservoir Dogs.
#5 – INVINCIBLE: This thing is drawn like a silver-age superhero book meets The Incredibles and the whole first trade-paperback (TPB) reads like it too. But it’s a trick; this story is as gruesome as all the other ones I’ve listed above. There’s a big Holy Shit! moment in trade#2 and by #3 you’ll be spinning. INVINCIBLE is great and is really showing other superhero writers to get out of the box.
Read INVINCIBLE if you enjoyed: Heroes, Joss Whedon shows.
There’s about 6 months of reading, so I’ll stop there haha
I’m reading a lot of the Millarworld stuff atm, most of which have been made in to movies now. The cool thing is Mark Millar has confirmed that are all set in the same universe. It does have heroes and villains but I find it different to the usual DC/Marvel stuff, much more full on and somewhat grounded.
– Kick-Ass 1-3
– HitGirl
– Wanted (Better than the movie)
– The Secret Service: Kingsman (Also better than the movie)
– Nemesis (The premise being: what if Batman was a c*&t?)
– Superior
Also enjoyed –
– Who is Jake Ellis?
– Where is Jake Ellis?
which is like a cross between a Bourne flick and supernatural thriller
Speaking of comics, with the recent trailer dropping for Suicide Squad, I’m keen to read more about them. Can anyone recommend a good comic as a starting point?
Kick-Ass should be stopped at volume 1. Volumes 2 & 3 plus Hit-Girl are just cheap cash ins due to the popularity of the first movie
Didn’t know Kingsman had a book though, must check that out
I’m the other way, I thought the movie was better than the comic , but then preferred the sequel comics to the sequel movie.
And to be fair, everything Millar does is a driven by a love of cash.
yeh the Kingsman book is just called The Secret Service
You REALLY need to stay away from Superhero books anyway. Both Marvel and DC are in weird transitional stages, trying new ideas that may or may not pay off in the long run. I have Harley Quinn, Starfire & Bizzaro in my recommendations only because the writers (Amanda Conner & Jimmy Palmiotti) are doing all 3 books and have a very different take on the characters while telling fun stories with them.
– The Walking Dead
– Army of Darkness (Basically anything Evil Dead based)
– Evil Ernie (Dynamic’s reboot)
– Fight Club 2
– He-Man and The Masters of The Universe (DC’s 2012 reboot. 3 volumes so far, but wellworth the read)
– Jem and The Holograms (Modern take on the 80s version, but keeps the 80s style.)
– Sex Criminals
– Zombie Tramp
– Harley Quinn (Get the 90s version and the modern version)
– Starfire (New series)
– Bizzaro (New Series)
– Constantine
– Ghostbusters
– Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
– The Boys
– Y: The Last Man (A MUST READ)
– Transmetropolitan (ALSO A MUST READ)
UNDAD.
THE LESSER EVIL.
PEACEFUL TOMORROWS.
THE GAME.
JAMES FLAMESTAR AND THE STARGAZERS.
I’m not into the superhero vibe at all. Even though there is quality work in the field, I can’t really get into it. I’ve tried many times. Can’t do it.
Brian K Vaughan’s work is almost always a lock.
Y: The Last Man is one of the best things in comics and incredibly accessible.
Scott McCloud’s The Sculptor – all the feels.
Bruce Mutard’s The Silence – a cerebral look into the art world, and interrogation of the concept of art
You could also try Dark Horse Comics. They have a lot of comics based on movies, and also a lot of comics that eventually became movies. To name a few think Hellboy, Darkman, The Mask, Aliens, Predator (and VS), Sin City, Next Men. I haven’t kept up with it for a while but they must have some new stuff
I’m enjoying East of West.
Preacher
Y The Last Man
Ex Machina
Transmetroplitan
Rogue Trooper
Sin City
100 Bullets
Garth Ennis’s Punisher run
Locke and Key
sex criminals, the unwritten, y: the last man, black science, deadly class. if you’re down for something a little different: hicksville by dylan horrocks (from new zealand, fucken sick), wizzywig by ed piskor, the sculptor by scott mccloud, shortcomings by adrian tomine, heavy liquid by paul pope and several others i could go on for days about!
Saga
Locke and Key
Sandman
Y: The Last Man
Beyond that, try out Marvel Unlimited and drink all you can.
Also, The Lesser Evil.
The manhattan projects
Letter 44
The chimpanzee complex
I am reading a great comic at the moment.
If you love the old 2000AD art styles, you will love this, and it is set in Future Melbourne.
The B&W art style is just gorgeous. Highly recommended.
What’s it called?
Whoops, From Above by Craig Bruyn. Fromabovecomicbook.blogspot.com
I only just saw this post. I’ve read this book, and enjoyed it. Craig is one of the nicest guys, too – definitely worthy of support.
Fray was pretty good. It’s a short comic series set in the cyberpunk future of the Buffy universe.
Sandman and V For Vendetta are classics I’d recommend for non-superhero comics fans. Sandman has small touches of it early on but it’s really unlike most things you’ll read across any genre. I’d steer clear of recommendations for things like Swamp Thing and Marvel/Miracleman because what makes them good is the way in which they play around with superhero conventions and the nature of origins.
In terms of modern stuff, The Wicked + The Divine is pretty good mainly because of what Kieron Gillen brings to it. The Walking Dead has a very The Last Of Us tone, much better than the TV show. And as everyone else has said, Sex Criminals is really good. Saga felt a bit overhyped to me.
Sandman is number one for mine, though.
“Sex Criminals” and the “The Wicked + The Divine” are probably my favourite reads at the moment.
Empowered – Adam Warren was one of the first that brought manga to the west with his version of the Dirty Pair. He does sci-fi pop-culture western manga better than anybody and when you throw into the mix a study of superherodom and hard drinking ninja magic on top of a whole load of NSFW it makes a fun read. 🙂
Most of mine have already been mentioned but I’ll add a few.
Chew
Fables
Manifest Destiny
Sheltered
I got the first volume of Chew and loved it.
I think it’d make a great HBO series.
The Sandman series by Neil Gaiman (and lots of different artists). Very dark, extremely well written. If you’ve read and enjoyed any of Neil Gaiman’s books (especially American Gods), you’ll love them.
+1 for Sandman – Definitely worth your time.
Yes to Sandman!
I have to admit that I’m a bit of a Marvel junkie so I probably won’t be much help, but if you did decide to go down that route…
The style of the older stuff is a lot different to the newer stuff. I usually recommend that people start out with Essential Spider-Man 2&3, Dark Phoenix saga, Secret Wars, Infinity Gauntlet/War/Crusade, and Onslaught. I also liked a lot of the “What If” titles as they’re a quick fix with a different take that takes a lot of lot of risks that you can’t do with continuity responsibilities normally. And along those lines, you have things like Aliens vs Predator(vs Robocop vs Terminator). There’s even a Predator vs Archie short series that recently came out.
There are a lot of different forms of pop culture that overlap too… like if you liked the Avengers movie, there is also the cartoon which is really good/accessible, and the comics. If you hate them? You probably will hate all versions too. Maybe try Deadpool too. =)
100 Bullets is a fantastic noir series with great art and a simple but intriguing premise, where people with an axe to grind are given the means and free reign to extract their revenge. With bullets. 100 of them, in fact. In case you were wondering.
Zombies vs Robots
The Walking Dead
Transmetropolitan
uuuuh great, totally draw blanks now on names. I’ll look them up when I get home.
Spider Jerusalem is one of my heroes.
All-Star Superman – If you’ve never read Superman or have no urge to, just read this one. Makes Superman more human than any other story, and it has literally brought me to tears on multiple occassions. Also Clark Kent totally doesn’t look like Superman in Glasses.
Saga – Everyone has said Saga, why aren’t you reading Saga already?
Kingdom Come – Story of the Justice League saving the world from the children of super heroes. Art work is stunning.
I’m at work, so I’ll come back with more
Note: Not quite what was asked for, but I only really read super hero comics, with some exceptions, lol.
Just finished All Star Superman. Worth a read. I’m used to be more of a Batman fan before the new52, since then I’ve branched out to other characters (Not a big fan of the new Bat continuity, although Court of Owls was pretty OK IMO). My other favourites include:
– Batman: DKR
– Batman: HUSH
– Batman: The Killing Joke
– Batman: R.I.P
– Smallville season 11 (Only really cool to read if you were a fan of the series I suppose.)
Graphic novels are a good way to start. All the following will provide.
-Watchmen
-V for Vendetta
-Johnny the homicidal maniac
-Hellblazer
-Sandman
-Groo
-Squee
-2000 AD
-The Killing Joke
Hell yes! Goddamn i loved Johnny the Homicidal Maniac and The Book of Squee! The much younger, speed-fkd, industrial me forced any poor bastard who drifted into our group to read them. I even have a nail-bunny tattoo! Z?
+1 Watchmen – and see what the movie was really about!
Basically haven’t read any apart from both Watchmen (the movie took out almost everything I liked about it and exaggerated the few parts I didn’t, i.e. the fighting) and V for Vendetta (didn’t mind the movie too much, it was pretty good, the comic/ graphic novel is much slower and more fleshed out though, much more to my taste for it). I kinda want to get back into The Phantom, I really liked it as a kid, no idea how it would hold up though.
So yeah, this list is kind of like the default as far as reading comics go, kinda like Death Note and Cowboy Bebop are similarly default if you’re getting into anime (I have watched more than that, but those are the two series everyone tells me to watch when I say I haven’t watched much, and for good reason too, I really liked both).
I’m not really a comic book fan myself, either. But I am a Stephen King fan and I quite enjoyed the Marvel comics adaptations of some of his work (The Dark Tower and The Stand). Not as good as the books they’re inspired by – The Dark Tower, in particular, I found was pretty up and down, probably because so much of it was filling in gaps in the original storyline rather than adapting what was already there. But The Stand quite impressed me in the way it was able to condense most of the major events of a very long novel down into a much shorter comic book series.
locke & key is written by king’s son.
He’s written some good stuff, too… I liked his short story collection, 20th Century Ghosts. I enjoyed Horns, too – haven’t seen the movie, but from what I hear he’s also following in his father’s footsteps in terms of mediocre film adaptations of his work 😛
Y The last man is what I always give people to get them into comics.
At the moment I am loving
Saga
Southern Bastards
Birthright
Whenever someone asks me to recommend comics I usually say:
Y: the last man
preacher
locke & key
northlanders
sandman
All are finished up, easy to obtain and none of them have complicated arcs or content you can miss out on. out of the ones mentioned I think Locke & Key is hugely under rated but it may change if they eventually make it in to a movie franchise.
The only ongoing series I keep up with these days is the walking dead and chew (through trades though). I’ve lost interest in everything else lately.
I used to be strictly Marvel reader until I found others just as good if not better
The Boys…cannot stress that enough
Daredevil…Bendis Maleev run
The trial of Punisher
Identity Crisis
Kingdom Come
Age of Apocalypse
Injustice – Gods Among us
Hellblazer
The Victories
StormWatch
+1 for everyone that said Y the Last man, 100 Bullets, Preacher, Sandman and the Walking Dead.
Nausicca
The memoirs of Dan dare
Preacher is my all-time favourite series. Its dark, gory, twisted, hilarious and extremely well written.
Saga is one of (if not the best) series going around at the moment, and with good reason.
Other than that you should take a lot into some series published by Image. There’s a lot of unique and interesting titles and every image series releases the first trade paperback for only $10 so its really easy to get into. Personally I’d recommend Manifest Destiny or East of West.
Outcast, colder, harrow County and wytches if you like supernatural stuff with creepy artwork. Also Dr mcninja and axecop for online funny stuff
Sandman, Chew, Slain
I’m going to go outside the DC/Marvel universes…
For superhero fare that is the best there is and not of the known universes, read Robert Kirkman’s – Invincible.
https://www.comixology.com/Invincible/comics-series/684?ref=c2VhcmNoL2luZGV4L2Rlc2t0b3Avc2xpZGVyTGlzdC9zZXJpZXNTbGlkZXI
It’s gritty, violent, touching, compelling, political and finely crafted. IT would make an awesome anime and a terrible TV series.
For some different horror I suggest Scott Snyder’s (DC writer extraordinaire) Wytches
https://www.comixology.com/Wytches/comics-series/26096?ref=c2VhcmNoL2luZGV4L2Rlc2t0b3Avc2xpZGVyTGlzdC9zZXJpZXNTbGlkZXI
A very spooky story with some incredible work from Jock.
With the love affair that Australian TV has with cooking, I suggest trying the new comic called Starve from Brian Wood.
https://www.comixology.com/Wytches/comics-series/26096?ref=c2VhcmNoL2luZGV4L2Rlc2t0b3Avc2xpZGVyTGlzdC9zZXJpZXNTbGlkZXI
Think Running Man mixed with Iron Chef. It’s only 2 issues in and it’s a very unique story.
Being British, you’ll know and may have read Judge Dredd. I always found 2000AD’s method of multiple stories per issue a headache to keep track of so the US version’s of some Dredd story’s are great. Complete issues with a good long arc.
https://www.comixology.com/Wytches/comics-series/26096?ref=c2VhcmNoL2luZGV4L2Rlc2t0b3Avc2xpZGVyTGlzdC9zZXJpZXNTbGlkZXI
Black Science by Rick Remender, is a great story based on sliding through parallel world and dealing with the consequences. The art from Matteo Scarlera and Dean White give it a sharp visual edginess awash in bold colours.
https://www.comixology.com/Black-Science/comics-series/11970?ref=Y29taWMvdmlldy9kZXNrdG9wL2JyZWFkY3J1bWJz
Lastly, Prophet. MF’ing Prophet. https://www.comixology.com/Prophet/comics-series/7416 Written by 4 different artists with intertwining stories that were a revival (#21 onwards) of a god awful 90’s comic. It’s better than Saga, but it is harder than Saga. I love Saga but Prophet is another level.
My go to answers are always The Killing Joke and Watchmen but I’m not exactly experienced in comics as I should be.