Your MUST-READ Graphic Novel Recommendations

[Shannon]

Only the best of the best need apply. These are my picks for MUST-READ graphic novels. What are yours?

- DC:
Batman: A Death In The Family
Batman: Arkham Asylum - A Serious House On Serious Earth
Batman: Knightfall
Batman: No Man's Land
Batman: The Killing Joke
Superman: Grounded
Superman: The Death Of Superman
Superman: The Return of Superman

- DC Versus Marvel Comics

- Marvel:
Marvels
Spider-Man: Reign

- Other:
The Walking Dead
The Sandman
Irredeemable
Locke & Key
The Cape

[OchrisO]

Most of these are just comic series, but are available in collected "graphic novels."

Preacher by Garth Ennis
One of the most fucked up comics and I love it for it. I have no idea how they are actually going to make this a tv show and get away with it without ruining it.

Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis
This comic gives Preacher a run for its money and I fucking love Warren Ellis.

Black Summer by Warren Ellis
The very first scene of this comic has a super hero killing the President. It only gets more crazy from there.

Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan
A virus hits the world, killing all men except one. This is probably one of my favorite comics of all time. It is so well written.

Ex Machina by Brian K. Vaughan
Ex superhero becomes the mayor of NYC. It follows his life in politics and is quite a unique and interesting story.

Batman: The Long Halloween
This one is quite a good murder mystery of sorts tahtr an in comics form one Halloween to the next.

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
The one Batman story that I feel like everyone should have read already.

DMZ by Brian Wood
Civil War. Long Island is one place in the country where there is a cease fire. A reporter is sent in, gets trapped and learns about the people and chaos inside.

Powers by Brian Michael Bendis
This is a comic about a police precinct that deals with superhero crimes. The first collected set is called "Who Killed Retro Girl?" It is amazingly well written.

Morning Glories by Nick Spencer
I don't even know how to describe this series. It is like a prep school drama combined with Lost. It will constantly make you think and rethink your ideas about the plot. The comic even has a section at the back written by a person who runs a website about the comic taht analyzes the story. I read that section in every issue.

Invincible by Robert Kirkman
This is a superhero book by the man who brought us The Walking Dead. It is every bit as good as TWD and will surprise and horrify you on a regular basis just like TWD.


I'd agree with most of what you have listed as well.

[Shannon]

Preacher - Read the first volume, liked it a lot.

Transmetropolitan - Read the first volume and half of the second volume, didn't like it. I felt it was very words and political. But that's Ellis for ya, lol.

Never heard of Black Summer, Ex Machina, Powers, or Morning Glories. But now they are on my list. :)

Y: The Last Man has been on my to-read list for a while. Sounds incredibly interesting.

Batman: The Long Halloween - Have it, haven't read it yet.

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (as well as the other Miller Batman stuff) - I ... just ... don't ... like it. Don't think less of me, lol. The story itself is a good one, I just don't like the overwordiness of it. Watchmen was the same way. Great story, too wordy.

DMZ - On my list.

Invincible - Loved The Walking Dead. Oh, why isn't that on my list above? Editing now! I have the first eleven volumes but nothing screams out for me to read them yet.

[cit74]

I would add miracleman (Alan Moore and Neil gaiman) - my personal favorite, from mid 80s, they're actually re-releasing the series starting in January - ill wait until they collect them in a absolute format - via marvel

Maus

Sin city - Frank miller

[OchrisO]

Preacher - Read the first volume, liked it a lot.

Transmetropolitan - Read the first volume and half of the second volume, didn't like it. I felt it was very words and political. But that's Ellis for ya, lol.

Never heard of Black Summer, Ex Machina, Powers, or Morning Glories. But now they are on my list. :)

Y: The Last Man has been on my to-read list for a while. Sounds incredibly interesting.

Batman: The Long Halloween - Have it, haven't read it yet.

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (as well as the other Miller Batman stuff) - I ... just ... don't ... like it. Don't think less of me, lol. The story itself is a good one, I just don't like the overwordiness of it. Watchmen was the same way. Great story, too wordy.

DMZ - On my list.

Invincible - Loved The Walking Dead. Oh, why isn't that on my list above? Editing now! I have the first eleven volumes but nothing screams out for me to read them yet.

I've heard a few people say The Dark Knight returns is too wordy. I think it has something to down with layout as well. The way they cram so much on to one page and the manner that they do it can certainly be off putting. You should definitely give The Long Halloween a whirl, though. It is by Jeph Loeb, so you don't have to worry about Frank Miller's Frank Miller-ness running you off. hahaha.

Invincible starts off relatively like a normal hero but if you stick with it a while, it gets pretty crazy.
I am going to just leave a random image from Invincible here under a spoiler tag to try to entice you. haha It doesn't spoil anything because it is hard to tell who is in the image besides Invincible.
http://zurairifm.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/invincible_64page14.jpg
Of those on your list, I'd probably advise shifting Y: The Last man as close to the top as you can. It is well worth it.

[Shannon]

Well that just bumped Invincible up the list some. But really, who headsbutts a guy to death? Strange ...

Also, has anyone here read Crossed? I always try to pick it up on eBay but it always sell for more than I want to pay for it. Supposed it's so fucked up, which I love. :)

[OchrisO]

Haha. Invincible is super pissed and basically in a blind rage in that scene, with good reason.

I read a bit of Crossed. It was ok, but for some reason I didn't get into it as much as his other stuff and I didn't keep up with it. I'm not even sure why, it just didn't pull me in as much as Preacher or The Boys did. Someone else took it over after ten issues, but I am not sure how those went since I bailed.

[Merlin1958]

No "Watchmen"? Hmmmmm


http://imageshack.com/a/img829/8820/4vd8.jpg

[fearless-freak]

The Crow

[DoctorDodge]

Oh yes, I definitely need to read The Crow. The Long Halloween is quite possibly my favourite Batman graphic novel ever (yes, I prefer it to even Returns and Killing Joke), as it's a great epic with heavy film noir inspiration.

I'll recommend some personal 2000AD favourites here:

Judge Dredd: America
This is what turned me from someone who liked Judge Dredd into a huge fan. An epic tragic love story in Mega-City 1, Dredd hardly has that much presence in the story, and it's all the better for it, as he's seen to be more of an antagonistic force of nature; like the Statue of Judgment, he is an oppressive shadow over Mega-City 1. The main characters aren't exactly clear cut heroes either, but they're certainly not villains - even when one becomes a terrorist, we're given damn good reasons for them. The artwork is also fantastic. It's pretty short, but I'd put it up there with Watchmen as one of my favourite graphic novels.

Trifecta
Set in the Dredd universe and featuring the 3 main characters of Judge Dredd, The Simping Detective and Dirty Frank, this is possibly one of the best crossovers I've ever read. What's refreshing is that 2000AD never advertised it as a crossover - being an anthology comic, 2000AD were able to keep it a surprise, starting up what appeared to be 3 completely separate storylines with our characters (even in 3 entirely seperate artstyles, with Dredd being in colour and the other 2 in black and white), before Dredd (quite literally) crashes into another strip. And it works beautifully, finally showing what happens when an epic event affects Mega-City 1 from multiple perspectives. It makes a refreshing change when there's a reason for a crossover other than for simple over-hyped publicity.

Other favourite 2000AD storylines include:

Judge Dredd: The Apocalypse War
Judge Dredd: Necropolis
Judge Dredd: Day of Chaos
Strontium Dog: Portrait of a Mutant
Nikolai Dante (the whole 10 year epic)

[Ari_Racing]

The Long Halloween
The Killing Joke

[Merlin1958]

"Who will watch the watchmen"???? lol

[fernandito]

Shame on you guys for not mentioning Year One yet. One of the most essential Batman books ever.

You could probably make an entire list of just Vertigo published novels, but for the sake keeping a somewhat reigned in list I'll post my favorites
Sandman
The Invisibles
Preacher

[Groomp]

All these Batman recommendations and no one has mentioned The Black Mirror? It's fantastic.

[WeDealInLead]

My entire interest in Batman spans maybe ten books. That's about it. After that it gets too repetitive for me. Same goes for most superheroes. I'll check them out if some of my favourites (Ellis, Gaiman, Whedon, Moore, Morrison) are writing them, but all the crossovers, re-boots, parallel this and that stuff is really uninspired and tiring. I'm a fan of Vertigo and Image books that go for 50-75 issues and wham, bam, thank you m'am, they're done. A lot of these have already been mentioned by others.

I'll add a few recent titles. Some are on-going.

Scalped, The Wake, Trillium, East of West, Prophet, Lazarus, Unwritten, Snyder's run on Swamp Thing, Severed, Sweet Tooth + Underwater Welder. Supergod, No Hero and Blacksummer are an unofficial trilogy to me. Characters aren't the same but Ellis explores the darker side of superheroes and things get ugly.

[WeDealInLead]

Heck, just read everything Warren Ellis did for Avatar.

[DoctorDodge]

My entire interest in Batman spans maybe ten books. That's about it. After that it gets too repetitive for me. Same goes for most superheroes. I'll check them out if some of my favourites (Ellis, Gaiman, Whedon, Moore, Morrison) are writing them, but all the crossovers, re-boots, parallel this and that stuff is really uninspired and tiring. I'm a fan of Vertigo and Image books that go for 50-75 issues and wham, bam, thank you m'am, they're done. A lot of these have already been mentioned by others.

I'll add a few recent titles. Some are on-going.

Scalped, The Wake, Trillium, East of West, Prophet, Lazarus, Unwritten, Snyder's run on Swamp Thing, Severed, Sweet Tooth + Underwater Welder. Supergod, No Hero and Blacksummer are an unofficial trilogy to me. Characters aren't the same but Ellis explores the darker side of superheroes and things get ugly.

Those last 3 sound interesting. The darker side of superheroes, when written well, can be really good.

As for superheroes (or in this case, most ongoing series), this is a key reason why Judge Dredd is the only ongoing character I collect issues of and not just graphic novels. The ongoing complex storylines, the fact that Dredd's world ages in real time more-or-less, and that in over 35 years, there hasn't been a single massive reboot or retcon just makes it so massively appealing. The Complete Case Files series that collects all the stories in order have been pretty successful in the UK imo for a key reason - there are so many storylines that take years to develop and be resolved. One of my favourites in particular was the arc of democracy in Mega-City 1, which took over five years to be resolved.

Currently up to volume 16 of the series, which at this point was being mostly written by Garth Ennis. Now, Ennis is good at writing Dredd, but it's still a massive step down after the solid run both John Wagner and Alan Grant had. Seriously, if you read volumes 05 to 14, it's pretty much a great solid run of brilliant storytelling, action and satire.

[WeDealInLead]

I've had a bunch of those oversized Dredd trades and I dug them all. I've thought about getting all the Case Files but man, that seems like such a daunting task. You mention Ennis, and generally speaking, I'm over him. I fell hard to Preacher, I thought Just a Pilgrim was the shit, the first arc of Crossed was amazing but lately, everything he writes feels like deja vu. I picked up the first issue of Red Team and was reminded of Jennifer Blood. He does write a mean war story so I'll make sure to pick up next Battlefields. Dear Billy was perfect.

[DoctorDodge]

Understandably. Volume 05's probably a good a starting point as any. Not that the first 4 volumes are shit, just that it's got the Apocalypse War in it, and it is epic! I'd say the strip had found its feet by volume 3, possibly even 2.

I definitely do mean to start reading Preacher in order soon, along with The Sandman. Heard plenty of great things about both.