You might consider reading through this thread.
Since the Cafe Society thread is still active, I have merged this new thread from General Questions with it.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
thus making this post:
highly amusing. 
You could also try another library if that is possible. I’d recommend checking out at least 2 of a series at a time. If it’s manga, don’t worry if you can’t start with book 1 -although I would try to check out consecutive copies: check out volume 3&4 or 6&7, etc. If you like the story, circle back to the beginning.
I find it useful to follow author/writer/creators rather than titles. eg:
Neil Gaiman (Sandman)
Frank Miller (Daredevil: Born Again, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Martha Washington)
Alan Moore (Watchman, Top 10, Miracleman)
… and others.
In Japan, manga series are typically penned by a single author, so that advice doesn’t apply as much. Recommendations:
Death Note (writer Tsugumi Ohba and artist Takeshi Obata, both exceptional though the artist’s talents are subtler)
Monster (Naoki Urasawa)
Full Metal Alchemist (Better to start at Vol 2, as it is more representative than Vol 1. Often the artist takes a while to find their voice. The author’s earlier series were not as good, IMHO.)
Emma (Kaoru Mori)
Some of the stuff is available on online. In fact in the case of Emma, some of it will only be available online.
There’s an excellent guide to manga written a couple of years back:
Manga: The Complete Guide by Jason Thompson http://www.amazon.com/Manga-Complete-Guide-Jason-Thompson/dp/0345485904/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1343635399&sr=1-1-catcorr&keywords=guide+manga+thompson
Anything that you’ve read before that you liked/disliked? Why?
Hi, I wanted to post an update. I think Wednesday…? I picked up a ton of books at the library, and have been reading pretty diligently all weekend. I read every day, some, so I’ve made quite some progress.
First, the negatives:
- ** Hellboy ** - boring, surprisingly. Not enough dialogue, and too much WHAM! BAM! and huge pages of pictures. The pictures are pretty enough, and I like Hellboy a lot, but he’s a little too simple-minded for me.
- I also couldn’t read Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. The whole thing is Black and White and nearly pencil drawings at that. If I am going to read comic books why would I want ones without any good drawings in them?
The positive:
- **Y the Last Man **is fantastic and I’ve already finished four books of it and am working on the fifth. I requested the next 5.
-
Watchmen was indeed much, much better than the movie. A lot of digressions which weren’t that great, but a heavy amount of dialogue in almost every panel, a haunting and graphic world, and I understood the Comedian and Nite Owl much better. I still felt like Nite Owl and Silk Spectre got their crappy romance all over my comic books, to coin a phrase, but I understood that more, too.
-**Tales of Cthulu **- very cool and beautiful artwork. - **The Killing Joke **- far, far darker than I ever thought Batman could be, even darker than the current movies. I mean, the treatment of Barbara Gordon was really surprising to me. Good, though.
-
Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck was entertaining, though it got tedious long before the end.
So pretty good turnaround, on the whole. I have not started Sandman yet, as I got so into Y The Last Man** I didn’t want to start another series. I started reading Planet Hulk. It’s got similar problems to** Hellboy**. Big and dumb (or in this case, angsty, though he’s got a point) is not really my thing - I prefer intelligence. But I’m only about 10-15 pages in, so I’m going to finish it before I make my final judgement.
So, thanks! Look how well I’m doing.
Enjoy Sandman.
I don’t recall if it’s been mentioned yet in this thread, but I’ll recommend James Robinson’s Starman. I was hesitant to mention it myself because it so heavily uses DC Universe history (most of which has been written out in this “New 52”), but your most recent comments make you sound like less of a comic book novice than I originally took you for, and if you can manage Sandman (which you indicate you plan to tackle after Y the Last Man, which I agree is wonderful), you ought to be able to handle Starman. It not only super-hero action/adventure, but family drama and world-building (well, city-building) fictional history. I think you’ll enjoy it.
cmkeller, I may be a comic book virgin (well - not anymore) but I know how much of the stuff I like is based on comic books. People think it’s only SUPES but if you really get down to the nitty-gritty it is amazing how much is based on comic books, comes directly from comic books, or has comic books based on it!
Interesting differences in perspective from mine I’m always amazed how artistic tastes and desires are so subjective. In my case, I think Nausicaa has some of the finest drawing ever put to the page. I also felt the artwork in Watchmen was lifeless and dull and soon felt myself simply reading the text without caring about the art.
I admit, I hate boring black and white. I generally avoid black and white movies, too. Yes, this makes me a heathen and uncultured and unsophisticated. I feel, I have these rods and cones in my eyes to see beautiful, brilliant colors. Life is too short for b&w. 
I discovered that at a library sale. It was one installment of the thick little books. They have the individual 22 page comics at comic cons and comic shops but I think the better value is the little books. Very good comic by the way.
Anything by JM DeMatteis & Keith Giffen. Together.
Justice League International, I Can’t Believe It’s Not The Justice League, Formerly Known as the Justice League, The Defenders, Metal Men, Hero Squared.
Alan Moore’s 1963.
80s anthology comics like Alien Worlds, Alien Encounters, Death Rattle, Ray Bradbury Comics.
Then there’s We3, Akira, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Ghost In The Shell.
I also like Maison Ikkoku. Only have one volume so I need to get more.
Anyways, comicons are fun but you’re right, only if you know what you’re looking for since nothing is categorized by genre, but instead alphabatized. I’ve only been to one but the cheap deals you get are worth the crowd.
Here’s my list of comics you might like:
Comedy
Justice League International by Giffen, DeMatteis & Kevin Maguire
Hero Squared
I Can’t Believe It’s Not the Justice League
Formerly Known as the Justice League
Science Fiction
Ray Bradbuy Comics
Aliens (series II)
Terminator: The Burning Earth
Alien Encounters
Alien Worlds
Death Rattle
Akira
Ghost In The Shell
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (haven’t read it but it’s dystopian)
Weird Science
We3
Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol
Horror
Hellraiser from Epic Comics, now being reprinted at comic shops as Hellraiser Chronicles
Tales Of Terror
Twisted Tales
Superhero
The Dark Knight Returns
Batman: Dark Knight, Dark City
Batman-Legends of the Dark Knight:Faces
Batman-Legends of the Dark Knight: Going Sane
Green Lantern:The Sinestro Corps War(it’s fun but compared to the rest you really need to know the characters history)
Daredevil: The Elektra Saga
Elektra: Assassin
Elektra Lives Again (has to be read in that order)
Superman-For the Man Who Has Everything
Superman-Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow
Supreme-Story of the Year
Glory #0, 1, 2
Promethea
Miracleman
1963
Supervillain
Grendel-Devil By The Deed
Grendel-Devil’s Legacy (not as good as the first but interesting)
Grendel-The Devil Inside
Grendel-God and The Devil (dystopian)
Batman/Grendel
Strange Surreal
Flaming Carrot
Graphic Muzik
Graphique Muzique
Madman
Flex Mentallo Man of Mystery
To give the actual answer to that, it comes down to the difference between manga and comics.
Both mediums started out as children’s fare, nearly a century ago, but there’s two massive differences between the US and Japan which caused a divergence in the medium.
The big differences are that Tezuka Osamu made an adult, animated film, whereas Walt Disney never did, and that in Japan, public transportation is and has been the way that people get to work for the last 60 years.
In the US, comic books evolved in such a way as to continue to attract child audiences. They added color to attract them and sold advertising space to help offset the cost so that little kids could afford it.
But in Japan, middle-aged and even elderly business men had nothing to do for 1-2 hours every day but to read on the train. Because of Tezuka Osamu, they had grown up with the impression that animation and comics could be an adult medium. Of course, school kids also ride the train to school, so there is an even more sizable audience for kids and teens manga, but still adult manga has been a sizable market for decades. More importantly, the overall market for manga has been vastly huger on a per capita basis in Japan than it has been here. To produce the mass quantity of manga that it takes to fill 1-2 hours of a person’s day, day in and day out, according to the desires of a wide and varied audience of both sexes makes the possibility of doing nicely colored comics entirely unfeasible.
Minus the import of Japanese animation and comics, it’s likely that American comics would have taken another decade or two to start targeting adult audiences. Even as is, there is still a singular focus on superheroes and making works for a male-only audience. Japan has been producing a wider array of stories, for more audiences, for far longer. The art might not be in color, but there is more variation in art style.
Watchmen was considered game-changing because it pointed out how limited the medium was, as it was being used in the US. To a Japanese person reading it, that wouldn’t have been a big revelation.
By all of which, I’m not saying that you’re a bad person because you’re limiting yourself to “the shiny”, but I do think that you should consider muscling through and getting used to black and white, speed-drawn works. There’s a vast body of good works in the manga world that you’ll be losing. These days, there’s probably a sufficiently rounded body of adult-oriented, high quality works for men, in American comics, such that there isn’t necessarily any advantage to also picking up manga. But there’s a distinct lack of stuff for women or “anyone in the family”, like Nausica.
Again, I recommend Daytripper. Intelligent, thought provoking, moving, and colorful. I think it has everything you’re looking for.
You can see samples of the artwork here.
A good series that hasn’t been mentioned is Powers by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming. It’s a superhero comic but it’s not part of the Marvel or DC world so it’s self-contained (although it was partly published by Marvel). The central characters are Christian Walker, a former superhero who lost his powers and now works as a cop, and his partner Deena Pilgrim. They’re assigned to a unit that handles superpower-related crimes. There are currently thirteen collections of the series (or five hardcover collections). And there are plans to make it into a TV series so you can get in ahead of that.
Everyone so far has talked about graphic novels and trades, which makes a lot of sense and is how nearly everyone gets into comics nowadays. But let me make a plug for monthlies. I got into monthlies with the DC reboot and I find them surprisingly fun. It’s a different experience waiting to read the next chapter each month and speculating about what’s going to happen, and in some ways it’s more immersive, since you get occasional mentions of things in other books and brief crossovers. (I thought those would be annoying, and they can be, but when they’re well done, they give you a sense of the stories taking place in a larger world without requiring extra knowledge. And with the internet, it’s really easy to see who a character is and what you need to know about them.)
As has been mentioned, DC rebooted pretty much everything in September, and they’re coming out with the first trade collections now. In two months, they’re celebrating the 1 year anniversary of the relaunch with “0 issues” that take place in the past and lead into new stories, and they’re meant to be good jumping-on points for people wanting to try new comics.
As a general rule, I’ve discovered a couple of things about monthly superhero comics. Any time a new writer starts on a comic is usually a good place to start. Also, comics are a bit like soap operas or old fashioned Doctor Who stories–the end of each story leads into the next one (even when a new writer starts, he might have to tie up the loose ends from the end of the last story), but once you start a new story, there really isn’t typically that much you need to know (with some exceptions). Most superhero comics run stories over about six issues or so, so even if you start in the middle of a story, you won’t be lost for that many issues. Also, most mainstream superhero stories are still light entertainment. In the worst case, it’s like walking into a showing of The Avengers half an hour late–sure you’ll have missed a lot, but it’s not like walking into the middle of Inception.
Recommendations from current DC: Action Comics (Grant Morrinson’s take on Golden Age Superman!), Batman & Robin, Batman Incorporated (started pre-reboot, but doesn’t matter), Dial H (China Mieville–very strange, very fun!), Wonder Woman (excellent!), Demon Knights (Medeval fantasy comedy by one of the writers of Doctor Who).
Cool. I like Hellboy but I haven’t bothered to read all of them. Which collection did you read? The strength of the comic lies in Mignola’s artwork and sensibility. Lovecraftian, but with a certain odd humor. Good for a laff in my view.
I’m a manga freak. But I admit I’ve only read a couple of this series. Very dense older-style drawings. Probably not a good entry point-- though I imagine its wholesomeness puts it in quite a few libraries. Yes, it’s a classic and I’ll probably get around to it someday (I’m a fanatic after all). But I can see your point.
Try Death Note or even Hikaru No Go. Read 2 volumes. Yes, it’s black and white, but it’s not as dense. Avoid Negima! - very detailed drawings. If you still don’t like it… hey no worries. Comics are for unsophisticates anyway. 
I will however shove Gaiman’s Sandman down your throat. Good stuff.
True. That said, the manga market peaked in Japan during the 1990s. Cell phones have apparently displaced a lot of manga among commuters.
Well, no. The big difference between how comics are viewed in America, and how they’re viewed in pretty much every other nation in the world, is entirely down to the influence of Fredric Wertham, and creation by the comic publishers of theComic Code Authority in reaction to the threat of a congressional crackdown on the industry. Essentially, at the point where, in other cultures, comics were maturing along with their readers, and becoming a fully fledged art form, American comics were enjoined from presenting any topic that wasn’t appropriate for the youngest of children. When readers began to mature out of the kid-friendly comics, there was no more mature material for them to graduate to, and most people abandoned comics altogether by the time they were teenagers. It wasn’t until the early seventies that comics began to break free of the kiddie ghetto, and while the CCA is now defunct, American comics still haven’t entirely shaken off the stigma of “kid’s stuff.”
I copied all of the suggestions here into a Word document. i figure I’ll work through it slowly. It’ll probably take me a year, at least. But I do have a question.
A couple of you guys recommended Superman comics. I really, really don’t like Superman. I absolutely hate Lois Lane and Margo Kidder. I don’t like Superman’s goody-two-shoes schtick; I prefer my heroes darker.
However, that doesn’t mean I absolutely won’t try them, if you think some of the stories might be a bit darker or more interesting. If they are all about Supervillain causes trouble! Superman tries to save the day! Superman gets hit by Kryptonite. Superman recovers! Superman saves the day!
Ugh, can you tell my complete and utter dislike for it? Way. Too. Pretty boy.