My 10 year old loves graphic novels and comic books. A few years ago the Dope turned us on to the Marvel Adventures series, which was great. He reads things like Missile Mouse and Lunch Lady and I’m looking for more of them to read. He likes fantasy (he’s currently reading Harry Potter and the Percy Jackson series), and loves mythology (Greek and Norse so far) and superheroes. Anything else good out there?
Amulet is something my 9 year old boy absolutely loved!
Knights of the Lunch Table is a charming retelling of the Arthurian legends set in a modern elementary school.
He loved Bone, but he seemed to lose interest after the 7th issue. I may have to buy that one on my own to find out how it ends.
Stan Sakai’s Usagi Yojimbo series rocks all kind of socks: Japanese myth and history retold with uncutesy animals, and drawn with an astonishing level of painstaking felicity. And ninjas. My boy devoured them.
eta Missile Mouse is very heavily derivative of UY, but lacks the narrative depth.
I was reading stephen king when I was 10. Those are pretty graphic!
What?
We’ve tried Bone. My 7 year old likes it but I only liked Big Johnson Bones Tall Tales. Amulet and Usagi Yojimbo look very interesting. He’s really into Avatar right now too.
We have the first volume of Knights of the Lunch Table; I keep forgetting about it. I just saw it last night in his room. Maybe we should get some more.
I think Stephen King is definitely out. He’s too scary for me.
How about Asterix?
And Tintin.
If he’s into Greek myths there are a few at Amazon like:
My boys of 8 and 10 like them, as do I.
My 10 year old is reading (my copy of) Watchmen… but, errmmm… I’m not sure I can actually recommend that… 
OTOH he’s read through and really enjoyed all of my wife’s Elfquest graphic novels; they might be a bit more what you’re looking for.
I really liked Night Owls by the Timony Twins. There is some scary content (vampires and mummies and a villain who snatches faces), and there is implied premarital sex (one woman is shown in her boyfriend’s bed, and is apparently naked under the sheet, but all the viewer sees is naked head, arms, and legs). However, the art is VERY good, and there are a couple of fairy tale references, and the whole comic is pretty funny.
The comic is set mostly in 1920s New York, though there’s a flashback to about a decade earlier. You’d probably have to explain what a speakeasy was, and bootleggers.
I also have the graphic novel version of *The Colour of Magic *and The Light Fantastic (the first two novels of Pratchett’s Discworld series). This could lead to the youngster wanting to read the non-graphic versions, and then the rest of the series.
I think my son read Maus by Art Spiegelman at roughly that age. Here is a review at a nice site where all the books are reviewed by 10 - 15 year olds.
Antoher vote for the originally French Asterix and TinTin. Both are quite educational. Also, the comics based on Karl May’s Western books. A big hit with kids here has been for fourty years Suske and Wiske, translated into English as Willy and Wanda.
I heartily recommend Thor the Mighty Avenger, volumes 1 and 2, by Roger Landridge and Chris Samnee. It’s geared for younger readers without talking down to them, sort of an uncluttered take on Thor’s first few weeks as a modern superhero, with his first meetings (i.e. fights) with Iron Man, Namor and others at the dawn of the Marvel age. It’s a lot of fun and a visual delight.
Another possibility–if your son isn’t averse to female protagonists-- is Leave It to Chance by James Robinson and Paul Smith. Chance is the 10-year-old daughter of a Dr. Strange-type magician, who’d rather she stayed at home and steered clear of the family business. Not gonna happen. This is exactly as fun (and as well-drawn) as the Thor book mentioned earlier. It’s collected in three volumes.
The “Marvel Essentials” line is cheap, black-and-white reprint of comics from the 60s and 70s. He might dig the earliest Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, or either iteration of Uncanny X-Men.
I just bought the collected Wednesday Comics from DC; the writing is generally good and the art is excellent. This was designed to get younger readers interested in DC Comics, from the most popular characters to some fairly obscure ones (Kamandi, Metal Men, Adam Strange, etc.) in a classic Sunday Funnies format, with each strip taking up a full-sized (tabloid) newspaper page. It’s about fifty bucks, but worth it, IMO. Kamandi is drawn in a “Prince Valiant” style by Ryan Sook, an odd combination that works surprisingly well.
The comic book store in our neighbourhood, The Beguiling, just opened a second store especially for young readers, called Little Island. Turns out they have a web page and a blog…
It has been fantastic to walk there, with the kids and the dog, where the kids get to talk to an impossibly cool 20ish person who totally gets books and comic books, and enthusiastically talks about what the kids are reading. My daughter didn’t really need much encouragement, but it has been tremendous for my son.
Runaways is quite good, but there is some killing.
Superman is great for kids.
The Carl Barks Uncle Scrooge stuff is amazing, but might be too ‘young’ for your kid.
Wow, these are great. Grey, we have all of those books and they are great. I hadn’t even thought of Asterix and Tintin.
Neither of my kids like very scary things so I’ll have to look into those you’ve called scary. Thanks so much for the recommendations! I have a lot to look at.
Le Ministre de l’au-delà, i wish I lived near that store. It looks amazing.
We have Maus and its sequel, but I don’t know if he’s ready for that yet. We just saw the children’s exhibit at the Holocaust Museum and that might be his limit at the moment. Thanks for the book review site; that looks like an excellent resource.
Just thought of these, they’re doing up the Orson Scott Card Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow series in graphic novel form. Really good work so far, and they’ve got several books into it so far.
If you can get:
Thorgal - a fantasy story taking place loosely among the Vikings
XIII(Treize = Thirteen) - a conspiracy story taking place in an alternate US (seen through the eyes of French-Belgians - you might find their take on the US interesting). The first events are mirroring the JFK assasination, the Rosenberg trials and similar.
Yoko Tsuno - a female Japanese electronic engineer who knows Karate and has adventures in space and on Earth.
Blake and Mortimer - a very interesting series because it has the look and feel of the 1920s or so: two English gentlemen, one an Army officer, the other a doctor, have weird adventures.
Valerian and Veronique - space time traveller agents to keep things good.
Those are all serious stories with good art. Some funny ones:
Colonel Clifton - British secret service written by the French as loving parody.
Boule et Bill - not really albums, but single-page jokes of a boy and his dog
Gaston - M’Enfin! (What?!) officially an errand boy for a comic publisher (yes, it’s a bit meta), he’s mainly busy with sleeping, making horrible music, inventing weird stuff, cooking and wooing his secret love. Cooking and inventing regularly result in stuff blowing up. This one is probably funny for adults who work in an office of any kind, too.
I’m sure I’ve forgotten several of my favourites…
Zompist has many reviews of comics - not all suited for 10-year olds, naturally, but some apply, and some could be interesting later.
If Mangas inspire many teens to learn japanese, maybe the Franco-Belgians inspire your kid to learn French?
Oh yes, Lucky Luke of course! The lonesome cowboy, written by French-belgian Morris - though he had spent time in the US and done research.
Done in comic cartoon style, but with serious history as background (Calamity Jane, Judge Roy, The Emperor of San Francisco, …)
The dumbest dog of the Wild West, Rantaplan, is a spin-off from that.
Another funny animal, though in South America, is of course theMarsupilami, also a spin-off, this case from Spiriou and Fantasio.