Comic books just really aren’t my thing, but my friend is a fan and recommended **Watchmen **anyway. I’m just about done with it and think it’s so-so, but I’m certainly intrigued with the idea that I’m missing some good stuff in the graphic novel area.
Bonus points if it’s Steampunk, the genre is new to me and this would be a good way to get my feet wet.
I like my literature, well, literary, so I’m not a fan of comic books. But, I do love and heartily recommend Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series. Clever stories, great writing, and artwork that is much superior to what I have seen of typical comics. One of his is the only graphic novel to win a Hugo Award. Good, good literature.
Read some of the late HarveyPekar. He was a very ordinary person who wrote some very extrordinary stuff. Funny, dark, touching. His work introduced me to the graphic novel.
The Amazon list grows, keep 'em coming.
There’s always the Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, by Art Spiegelman. It’s a biography of his father’s life as a Polish Jew during WWII and afterwards.
One assumes you’re not a fan of the medium that produced John Grisham, Stephanie Moore, and “YOU On a Diet” either, hmm?
Anyway, Watchmen isn’t a great comic for a non-comics reader as it’s steeped in allusions from every direction, including many from other comic books.
Sandman is great; start with Volume Four, Season of Mists, and then go back once you’re hooked. The art on the earlier stuff is pretty rough and the writing is much more conventionally horror than what the series evolved into. There’s also an excellent spin-off series about the version of Lucifer developed in Sandman. (Early Sandman also spins some events out of the more mainstream DC comics of the time, but it’s reasonably easy to ignore and it’s all but gone after the first couple volumes.)
Brain Vaughan and Pia Guerra’s Y - The Last Man is great, a picaresque about the last man on Earth (and his monkey) after a plague wipes out every other mammal with a Y chromosome. (No, he doesn’t go around fucking every woman he encounters; most of them try to kill him.)
G. Willow Wilson’s Air is also very interesting, although it peters out by the end.
There certainly is steampunk out there, but it’s not my bag, so I couldn’t tell you what’s worthwhile.
–Cliffy
Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez’s Love and Rockets.
And it you’re looking for steampunk, Phil and Kaja Foglio’s Girl Genius. (Which is also available online.)
I would recommend Y: The Last Man. It is entertaining, funny and exciting and really well done. Most importantly, I think, for someone who isn’t into comics, it is a finished series so there is actually an ending.
The premise is pretty simple: One day nearly every mammal with a Y chromosome just up and dies except for Yorick Brown and his pet monkey.
Edit: Somehow I missed someone else recommending it. I guess I second 
Edit #2: for what it’s worth, I think Watchmen is a bad introduction to comics. It is a love letter to the genre and while the story is good, I think someone who isn’t into comics will find it tough to get through.
I am not much of a fan of graphic novels either, but I love Goodbye Chunky Rice by Craig Thompson. It is touching and poignant. Also, it’s a quick read. Read the reviews and see if you think you’d like it:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37264.Good_bye_Chunky_Rice
I wasn’t disparaging graphic novels; I just prefer print.
“Season Of Mists” is not a bad intro, but I would probably start with “A Game Of You”, as it starts in the mundane and moves to the fantastic, something Gaiman does very well. “Death: The Time of Your Life” is another good intro.
I agree with you about “Watchmen”, though - I could’nt finish it.
The Mrs. pointed me towards this thread, as I’ve been a comic fan since my early teens, and spent 5 years working in a comic store.
I absolutely agree with the comments both regarding Watchmen and Y the Last Man. I will go out on a limb and say outright that Watchmen-in my opinion-is one of the most over-rated graphic novels out there. Of course, Alan Moore has never really done anything I’ve enjoyed, except maaaaaybe V for Vendetta.
Y the Last Man, however, is one I always recommend. I think it’s a good “entry-level” type story, but it’s also clever and intelligent.
Would also recommend the following:
-Fables What if the characters of our childhood fables were real people, living in a secret part of New York? A wonderfully layered series.
-Locke and Key This is a newish series, so it might be the easiest to get into, if only for cost. Devilishly clever horror-type series.
-Queen and Country Female James Bond-type story by Greg Rucka
-Chew Funny little story about a cop who gets psychic impressions from the food he eats. Including suspects.
If you’re looking for single books/shorter series, I’d go with:
-Torso Based on the Cleveland Torso Murders of the 1930’s. Eliot Ness was the officer in charge of the investigation, coming on after the Al Capone case.
-The New Frontier I love Darwyn Cooke’s art (he’s also done Will Eisner’s The Spirit among other things) and the story is retro in its story line and art. Often interesting interpretations of some of the super heroes we think we know.
Sorry for the long list; this is just a topic close to my heart. If I can lure someone into comics, it’s fantastic. I’ve listed no super hero comics (apart from New Frontier). That’s not to say there aren’t great super hero books out there, but if you’re just getting into the medium, I prefer easing people into it through a different door. I think many people dispel comics as something for children and only associate them with super heroes. There’s another level to them entirely that I like to show people.
You really can’t go wrong with The Dark Knight Returns or Marvels; like Watchmen they’re both interesting and unique takes on the comic-book superhero genre.
Seconding Maus. Also, Ghost World is a lot of fun as well. And Persepolis is great, too.
If you’re willing to read manga, Death Note is a great series. It’s considered a really great (yes, even “literary”) series and is super addictive.
Charles Burns’ Black Hole is all kinds of awesome. It’s about a very strange STD afflicting teenagers somewhere in the Pacific northwest during the 1970’s. However that description doesn’t do it justice. Really you should check it out. Also most of Burns’ other books are great too.
Love and Rockets and other stuff by the Hernandez brothers is also worth checking out.
Daniel Clowes has some good stuff too. you may recall the movie Ghost World, which was based on one of his comics. I’ve just finished Ice haven.
There’s a ton of stuff out there which doesn’t involve superheroes.
The Girl Genius GNs are a steampunk must!
I would agree with all of these except Death Note, only because I haven’t read it.
I really enjoyed “Monster” and Battle Royale in manga form, though BR is ultra-violent at times.
Could not get into “Black Hole”. Not sure what I wanted out of it, but it left me wanting something more.
The Mrs. just shouted out, “Ex Machina!” It’s written by the same guy who wrote Y the Last Man. I would also recommend anything written by Ed Brubaker, perhaps starting with “Sleeper”.
From Hell, by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell. Moore is generally acknowledged to be the best writer in comics, and in my view this is by far his best work. It uses the Jack The Ripper killings of 1888 to examine London’s dark and convoluted past, investigating the same sort of territory as prose writers like Peter Ackroyd and Iain Sinclair. Eddie Campbell’s understated artwork evokes Victorian London wonderfully well, and Moore’s treatment of the subject matter is intelligent and meticulously-researched.
All-Star Superman, by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely. Another writer-artist team, this time a couple of Scots. Morrison’s another of the brightest guys in comics right now, and his Superman stories have a real sense of innocent fun about them which I think you might enjoy. Quitely’s art is exquisite, and the two collections of this title are self-contained enough to require no prior knowledge of Superman’s continuity. I’d say this is the best superhero book published in the past ten years or more.
Locas, by Jamie Hernandez. Tales of young Hispanic street-life in the barrios of Los Angles. Hernandez is a hugely talented cartoonist, who draws in the old “Archie” style, but his stories are hip, credible, charming and (sometimes) heartbreaking. He not only draws the most lovable women in comics, but makes them utterly real as characters too.
Beg The Question by Bob Fingerman. Sleazy, low-life tales of life in minumum-wage New York, as Fingerman’s alter-ego in the book tries to scrape a living cartooning for Screw magazine. Not for everyone, and sometimes quite sexually explicit, but it definitely has its merits.
The Treasury of Victorian Murder, by Rick Geary. Geary writes and draws each of these carefully-researched volumes telling the story of a prominent murder from the 1800s. He’s made this period something of a speciality, and depicts it with huge charm. The Lizzie Borden volume is a favourite of mine, but they’re all very good. As with From Hell, these might appeal to the Dickens fan in you.
Palestine, by Joe Sacco. This guy - who both writes and draws the book - has single-handedly invented the new form of comics journalism. He’s visited several of the world’s trouble spots, lived among the people there, and uses his books to describe how they survive the most terrible circumstances. Unlike a TV crew, Sacco can work with nothing more obtrusive than a notebook and a sketchpad. Unlike a print journalist, he can quickly convey the visual details of a scene by drawing it rather than having to rely on long passages of written description. The results are remarkably effective.
There’s loads of other things I could mention - Moore’s Swamp Thing, Morrison’s The Invisbles, Dave Sim’s Cerebus - but that should be enough to get you going.
Once you discover a writer or an artist you like, check out some of their other work, and you might well find something to enjoy in that too. This is a far more reliable guide than trying to follow a particular character from one creative team’s run to another, as each set of creators may have a drastically different approach.
I’ve been recommended Monster, too, based on the fact that I like Death Note so maybe you’ll enjoy DN. Just received the first volume of Monster last night so I’m eager to start on it.
And the Amazon list grows and grows…
This one.
Also, Shazam: the Monster Society of Evil is pretty fun, although targeted more toward kids.