Recommend me some Graphic Novels !

[Supercereal]

So Recently i borrowed my friends Scott Pilgrim volumes and read them over a saturday. On the Sunday i gave them back with the demand he give me something else to wet my pallet with. He gave me I Kill Giants and Lost at Sea, Having now had the time to devour those as well im looking for any other recommendations for Graphic Novels sort of like these(as my friend had these and nothing else /sadpanda). Any recommendations would be lovely and if you have the time a brief plot or why you think they should be read would be great!

Thanks in advance!

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

Are we talking western comics exclusively or does manga count as well (Scott Pilgrim's manga influences are quite obvious)?

Western:
- Preacher. It's about a man looking for God to make him answer for his crimes. Read it to know why everyone says it's so hard to turn into a tv show. IMO one of the best depictions of male friendship ever. Some of the greatest comic characters ever put on paper.
- Blacksad. It's about a detective in a world where people are animals: cats, dogs, chickens, walruses etc. Phenomenal art, worth reading for it alone, but good stories as well.
- V for Vendetta. It can be a bit hard to follow at times, but it's still one of the great classics and for good reason.
- The Dark Knight Returns. Called the greatest batman comic ever, and really deserves it. And it's pre-nutjob Frank Miller, meaning greatness. Don't bother with the piece of shit sequel though.
- Watchmen. 'Nuff said.
- Batman: The Long Halloween. A spiraling conspiracy and mafia story. It was a heavy influence on Batman Begins, and might be even better than The Dark Knight Returns.

Manga:
- Berserk. It's about a lot of things, but mostly a man seeking revenge and killing daemons in the process. If you have the guts (ba dum tish) to stand tons of gore, rape, body horror and things going horribly wrong for everybody, you're in for one of the greatest fantasy stories ever. Start from chapter 9 right away, you won't miss anything if you don't read the first story arc.
- Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Post-apocalyptic war and fantasy. Much better than the movie.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion. The series about giant robots fighting monsters that isn't really about that. Way way way better than either the series or the remake movies.

 

[Eamar]

V for Vendetta, Watchmen, Sandman.

Not very imaginative choices, I know, but there's a reason they're the most recommended. Solid, intelligent stories that have stood the test of time.

 

[Ratty]

Manga:
- Berserk. It's about a lot of things, but mostly a man seeking revenge and killing daemons in the process. If you have the guts (ba dum tish) to stand tons of gore, rape, body horror and things going horribly wrong for everybody, you're in for one of the greatest fantasy stories ever. Start from chapter 9 right away, you won't miss anything if you don't read the first story arc.

So much this.

Also I want to read Blacksad but haven't gotten the chance. I'll recommend the Usagi Yojimbo series though if you like stories set in fedual Japan, it's another one where most characters happen to be animals.

And for my final recommendation (for now), I suggest you try Lackadaisy.
A beautifully illustrated story about booze runners during alcohol prohibition in 1920s St. Louis

Who happen to all be Cats.

http://www.lackadaisycats.com/archive.php read it, love it, don't look for updates until the next physical volume comes out because they're painfully infrequent.

PS- Also "Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art" is a nice introduction if you're just discovering sequential art.

 

[TakerFoxx]

Well, someone already recommended Sandman (and seriously put it at the top of your list. It's mandatory reading for everyone getting into graphic novels), so put it's spinoff Lucifer on there as well.

Beyond that, there's also Fables, Runaways, and Gail Simon's run on the Secret Six.

 

[PedroSteckecilo]

I'll hit some that others haven't yet instead of just going with the old Standbys

Top Ten: Alan Moore presents a Super Hero Cop Show in comic book form, it's about the sparkling city of Neopolis where all the "science heroes" in the world live out lives as ordinary as they can given the intense strangeness of it all. The officers of Top Ten (the tenth precinct in an Interdimensional Police Organization) are charged with keeping the peace. I'd go with the two main volumes and The 49ers, Smax the Barbarian is super strange and the rest wasn't written by Alan Moore. This is a favorite among people who do and do not love super hero stories, it's got amazing art, a good story and great characters.

Atomic Robo: Proof Positive how brilliant All Ages Comics can be... Atomic Robo is written by Brian Clevenger (of 8-bit Theater fame) and drawn by Scott Wegener. It's about Robo, a Robot invented by Nikola Tesla in 1923 and his adventures across the 20th Century and beyond. It's old-school Doc Savage-esque Pulp Adventure with a great sense of humour and adventure. All of the books tell individual stories that conclude at the end of the trades but there is an ongoing continuity. There are 7 Volumes so far with the 8th coming out soon. It's hard to recommend them individually because dayum... they are all super good.

All Star Superman: Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely present the BEST Superman story ever, it's essentially a 12 Issue/2 Volume limited series about the death of Superman and a general love letter to the best of Superman. The story is that Lex Luthor has succeeded in "killing" Superman by over exposing him to the suns radiation that gives him his power in the first place, thus The Man of Steel is slowly dying but growing smarter and stronger as he does. This is packed to the gills with action, fun and intense humanism.

Mouseguard: Written and Drawn by David Petersen, Mouseguard tells the story of The Mouse Territories and their intrepid protectors, The Mouseguard. The art is gorgeous, the fantasy world of the Mouse Territories is stunning and the sheer DRAMA is pretty damn powerful... think The Secret of Nymh meets Redwall (except the Mice are actually Mouse Sized).

Bone: Written and Drawn by Jeff Smith, Bone is the bizarre combination of the old fashioned cartoons of Walt Kelly and Lord of the Rings and it regularly swings from Goofy Comedy to Dark Epic Fantasy. I would recommend the color version over the black and white, despite Smith's mastery of Black and White, because in color it looks like the most amazing animated film that... isn't actually an animated film.

Shazam versus The Monster Society of Evil: Jeff Smith draws and writes DC Comics' Shazam/Captain Marvel character, its gorgeous, funny, amazing and self contained. Seriously, read this damn book... it's so good and so funny.

Batman: The Long Halloween: My favorite Batman Story, details a year long mystery and goes over the origin of Two Face in exciting new detail. A great examination of Batman as a detective and a key inspiration for The Dark Knight with its depiction of the new Supervillains of Gotham clashing with the old Mafia.

 

[WolfThomas]

I'll hit some that others haven't yet instead of just going with the old Standbys
Top Ten: Alan Moore presents a Super Hero Cop Show in comic book form, it's about the sparkling city of Neopolis where all the "science heroes" in the world live out lives as ordinary as they can given the intense strangeness of it all. The officers of Top Ten (the tenth precinct in an Interdimensional Police Organization) are charged with keeping the peace. I'd go with the two main volumes and The 49ers, Smax the Barbarian is super strange and the rest wasn't written by Alan Moore. This is a favorite among people who do and do not love super hero stories, it's got amazing art, a good story and great characters.

Joe Pi is possibly the best robot character ever written.

 

[Zontar]

Superman: Red Son. Basic plot: in the early 20th century, instead of a farm in the US, Superman lands in Ukraine. In the 1930s things really start to change as he makes his appearance onto the world stage. Follows him through his life and Luther threw his own.

 

[JdA]

The Boys -
good news: superheroes exist.
bad news: most of them are dangerous assholes
great news: the CIA has a group, "the Boys", who monitor the super-assholes and keep them in check.

Fables -
A terrible war forces fairytale creatures into our world. Those who can pass for human (or afford the magic for a glamour to appear as such) live in a neighbourhood in New York City. The ones who can't live in "the farm" upstate. Deals with the Fables trying to survive in the city, make sense of the war, and maybe get back home

Locke & Key -
The Locke family moves to Lovecraft, Mass after the death of their father. The children find various keys imbued with incredible powers. They also find a powerful entity, Dodge, who wants the keys for their own purposes.

 

[Gxas]

No one recommending The Amory Wars [http://theamorywars.com/]?

Claudio Sanchez's (lead singer of Coheed and Cambria) graphic novels that every album they've released is based upon.

Well worth the read, for sure.

 

[Genocidicles]

Spoilered because some of these images are massive:

Spoiler: Chew - A dark cop comedy about an FDA agent who gets psychic impressions from his food.

Spoiler: Saga - A love story set amidst an interstellar war. It's batshit crazy at times.

Spoiler: King City - A weird story about a man living in the eponymous city, who uses his pet cat as a weapon/multitool

Spoiler: Scarlet Traces - A sequel to the War of the Worlds, imagining what would happen to the British Empire if it reverse engineered the martian technology

 

[Therumancer]

I'd also throw out Grand Morrison's "The Invisibles" even if a lot of people don't like that one since it can be kind of confusing and pretentious, understanding it fully involves looking back on it after a few key reveals in the finale which tie the insanity together.

"League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen" is also very good, but it should also be noted that it and it's sequel are NOTHING like the movie which seems to have missed the entire point of the original stories. This incidently applies to pretty much any of the works of Alan Moore (Watchmen, V For Vendetta, etc...) that got turned into movies. Universally the movies had a lot more action but also managed to miss the entire point of the story. For example "V" in "V For Vendetta" is NOT a revolutionary hero out for the people and social justice, nor is the government he's after straightforward bad guys, indeed some of them are far more sympathetic and well intentioned than he is. (V is a psychopathic anarchist, who is pursueing personal revenge at the expense of everything and everyone, hence the title, in the end the point is more or less that neither side was entirely good or bad, and we all get screwed by either extremes of liberty or order, balance being the key). Alan Moore distanced himself from the movie versions of his works because of this (pretty much every Alan Moore inspired movie I know of had him opposing it).

For Collected comics series (Trade Paper Backs) I recommend pretty much anything by Warren Ellis. His work on Planetary and Stormwatch/The Authority back when Wildstorm actually existed is simply put legendary.

People already mentioned most of my favorites.

 

[DementedSheep]

I haven't read the ones you've mentioned so I can't judge what you would like but I'll say a few I liked.

Sandman: It is is always recommend in threads like these for a reason.

Transmetropolitan: It's about a journalist in a futuristic cyberpunk setting. Didn't think I would like this one tbh because the protagonist is jackass but It grew on me. It has 60 issues.


Locke and Key. I read this recently. Its horror comic about some kids (well a kid, and two teens) in house with magic keys and doors and psychopath obsessed with getting one of the keys. it's a horror comic but its uses violence and gore fairly sparingly outside of the start so you don't get overloaded with it and there is a lot of time spent on characterisation. The mother even gets an a whole issue at one point which is heart breaking. It just has a few idiot ball moments and can be unnecessarily wordy at times.

Fable: fairy tale characters driven from their own world into ours. I'm about 30 issues ito this one and I'd recommended it.

There one you can buy or read online free called reMIND which I enjoyed. I drawing a blank on how to explain what's its about without sounding daft though. http://www.remindblog.com/

If you don't mind online ones that aren't finished yet there is Unsounded. It's about a thief girl and intelligent zombie who run across a group transporting illegal materials in the bodies of slaves. Some characters have a....distinct way of talking that can be a bit hard to understand at times and you may or may not like that but it's a good read. http://www.casualvillain.com/Unsounded/

I would recommend the JIM kid loki run. It's 31 issues and has a central plot and an end point (kinda) but you can't really just pick it up and read it. You have to read around to understand WTF is going on since it follows from siege and is tied into fear itself and main Thor comic. It is good though, inconstant and occasionally hideous art aside.

 

[Kalashnikov2092]

Well, here's my throw in:

Batman Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth (By Grant Morrison): A really dark and psychological Arkham tale that features some nightmarish artwork. Seriously, the Joker looks really monstrous in this one. Paints the mythic asylum as something almost alive. Batman has to enter the madhouse on April Fool's Day after a prison riot has given the inmates control. Morrison really knows how to paint a haunting tale in this one. Especially on the sup plot about Amadeus Arkham creating the Asylum and how messed up his life was.

Pluto (Naoki Urasawa): From the same author of also highly praised works Monster and 20th Century Boys, this is a retelling of an old arc from Astro Boy, known as "The Greatest Robot on Earth" arc. It's a really interesting mystery tale involving the strongest robots of the world getting assassinated by some mysterious and deadly foe. But also, this assailant is murdering humans. This is distressing, because only a fiercely powerful robot could take down the robot victims, and robots of this world are bound by the law that they would not kill humans; hardwired this way, actually. So now a robot detective is trying to unravel this dangerous case. Apparently Universal got the rights to make a CGI/Live Action adaptation. Huh. Interesting.

 

[JavaJoeCoffee]

Transmetropolitan: It's about a journalist in a futuristic cyberpunk setting. Didn't think I would like this one tbh because the protagonist is jackass but It grew on me. It has 60 issues.

Locke and Key. I read this recently. Its horror comic about some kids (well a kid, and two teens) in house with magic keys and doors and psychopath obsessed with getting one of the keys. it's a horror comic but its uses violence and gore fairly sparingly outside of the start so you don't get overloaded with it and there is a lot of time spent on characterization.

This ^^^ and this ^^^ also.

I recommend Alan Moore's Promethea, a story about the immeasurable power of stories.

Warren Ellis' Planetary, which is kind of like a an alternate world where the Fantastic Four is evil. Or more specifically it assumes that any group that is so powerful, wealthy and technologically advanced yet lives in a "real" New York full of violence, poverty, and degradation and accomplishes nothing to change the status quo, must be evil.

David Lapham's Stray Bullets is hilarious and horrible by turns. A tale of criminal misfits and the mayhem which follows (and sometimes precedes) them.

Finally, Mike Mignola's Hellboy the comics are far superior and much darker than the movies. Stories are deeply threaded with the myth cycles of Russia, and Scandinavia, as well as overt Lovecraftian homage, and nods to the horror genera up to this day. Very beautiful, stark, and deeply weird, they are some of the most satisfying books I know.

 

[DementedSheep]

I love every time someone asks this questions. Gives me more to add to my want to read when I have the cash list.

 

[Extra-Ordinary]

Well, I was just going to throw in what I'm reading, tell you the concepts and let you see if you like them, but most of mine have already been mentioned so I only have one:

Y: The Last Man

Last man on earth, all the women are still there. Some mysterious plague kills every sperm, fetus, and fully grown anything with a Y chromosome at the exact same time except for *one* man and his monkey which is also male. It's personal favorite of mine, maybe that doesn't sound tantalizing to you but whatever, just throwing that out there.

 

[Auberon]

Invisibles goes a little further than in-series references - Lord Fanny requires knowledge of Aztec(?) pantheon, and that's the first really obscure I've seen from the first two trades in local library.

 

[Supercereal]

Thanks everyone for you imput i shall sift through and give everything a chance. I must say though that Lackadaisy that Ratty suggest as already got me curious from the piece of art, i have heard whispers of Preacher and Sandman before and think that i shall start with those three. As for the Eastern side of things i have read all the berserk i can get my grubby hands on as well as evangelion. once again thanks for all the effort i will keep checking back if anyone has anything else to add to the list

 

[Doctor Teatime]

I recommend Elfquest, it's a fantasy series that's been running on and off since 1978.
The central characters are a tribe of sort-of barbarian elves who are closely allied with wolves who serve as mounts, hunting partners, and friends. It's pretty much the story of them trying to survive in the world and the struggles they go through.

As an added bonus the whole thing is available for free online [http://www.elfquest.com/gallery/OnlineComics3.html], well, everything but the very latest publications. I guess a lot of comics are technically available for free online but this isn't piracy as it's the creators themselves who put these up.

Also, if you do decide to check it out, don't look at the refresher course they have on that page, it's basically just spoilers. Start with The Original Quest and the rest should be in the right order.