Oh yeah, Queen & Country gets a big thumbs up. Be warned, it moves into prose novels after several volumes and they’re not as well written, although by no means bad. The best thing to do, though, would be to check out Whiteout by Rucka and Steve Lieber; it’s the first appearance of the main character in Q&C (although for Hollywood licensing reasons, it’s claimed that they’re two different characters) and it’s an excellent read.
Black Hole is amazing.
–Cliffy
I enjoyed the Battle Royale manga, but there’s a very serious issue with the localization.
It’s not a straight translation - Giffen was given a lot of leeway in his adapting, and decided to put in a ‘reality show’ aspect that wasn’t in the original - which worked ok for the first few volumes, which is all he’d seen when started. But once the plot really gets going, the fact that the kids’ movements aren’t being tracked in that much detail turns out to be kind of important, requiring him to jump through some hoops to make the story work.
I would anti-recommend Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns, Marvels, or The New Frontier for the OP. They’re all great works - but they’re not for somebody who doesn’t like comic books. All of these works assume the reader has already read several hundred more traditional superhero comic books and they are deconstructing those traditions. Somebody who isn’t familiar with comic books in general isn’t going to understand the point of these works.
Well, if we define “comic books” as superhero books like Batman et al., then I, who don’t like them, vastly enjoyed Sandman, Transmetropolitan, *Preacher *and The Invisibles.
Which, when you think about it, all involve superheroes. Just no capes.
Oh, almost forgot: I admit I also had a kick about* Black Summer*, a short series about government engineered superheroes, or rather the aftermath of said team when one of them decides to off the President of the USA in the name of JUSTICE!
Kind of like *Watchmen *with more War on Terror. And 'splosions.
Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth, by Chris Ware.
See, now I’m thinking of all these books I’d recommend!
-Powers
-Blue Monday
-The Walking Dead
-Wasteland
If you don’t mind humor mixed in with your steampunk, and you don’t mind picking the webcomic arcs out of a blog, you should try The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage.
That’s the link to the Origin, which is short. The author is a movie effects artist and wasn’t intending to start a webcomic. She did the original (now the origin) as a favor for a friend who was promoting Lovelace Day. Then she got swamped by fans.
Oh, it would also help if you don’t mind footnotes and bibliographies.
Mike Mignola’s Hellboy is excellent stuff, not traditional super-hero but still working with some of its tropes. And the art is tremendous.
The first volume is on sale for less than $8.
Non-superhero
The Buddy Bradley stories from Hate.
I’m having a hard time believing a non-comic book guy would enjoy many of the above suggestions. You’re generally getting a list of comics that Barnes & Noble is willing to stock which means they are middle-of-the-road lowest-common-denominator stuff.
I’ll second Harvey Pekar’s stuff and Maus. The rest of the suggestions are standard comic book fare with broader appeal. If you don’t like comics, you won’t like Batman; no matter who writes it or draws it.
I don’t like comics in general. But I’ve recently begun reading Locke and Key because I like Joe Hill. This comic I like.
I’m not much of a comics reader, but I do like certain ones very much. I’ll echo the recommendations for Sandman, Fables, and Y: The Last Man. Also, the Death spinoffs from Sandman. Sandman’s Death is a beautiful, compassionate woman, who is actually quite friendly. I will cautiously echo Preacher.
And I will offer you, at absolutely NO CHARGE, the comicization of the first book or two of the Myth Adventure series: airshipentertainment.com . Seriously, give it a try. Foglio did a great job of translating the books into comics.
I am not a huge comic reader but I enjoyed Watchmen. I must have missed some of the allusions but it certainly can be enjoyed by someone who isn’t steeped in comic book lore.
I am surprised no one has mentioned the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen also by Allan Moore especially since it has steampunk elements. Basically it’s about a bunch of famous Victorian characters like Captain Nemo, Alan Quartermain, etc who join forces to save Britain from various threats.
I also enjoyed Y: the Last Man.
And for something completely different:
Doll - A set of short sci-fi stories that show how crazy humans are from the vantage of their robot servants. (To be warned: Sad, disturbing)
Aqua Knight - A fun, yet philosophical tale about an ocean-going knight and her adventures. (Includes mild Steampunk)
Blame! - Almost entirely free of dialogue, this is a sci-fi tale about a man wandering a vast nothingness full of inhuman creatures, looking for the last clean DNA in the world.
Aqua - A very pleasant tale of life in a New Venice, on the planet Mars. There is no story, so much as slices of the life of a young woman who has very simple and warming journeys.
I wouldn’t recommend Sandman. It comes across as thinking it’s way more clever than it actually is and when you see references to the Justice League and shit in a story that’s ostensibly trying to take itself seriously it just evokes eyerolls.
You should give Girl Genius a try - it’s not exactly steampunk: it has a lot of fantasy elements to it, but it’s very, very good. And you can read the entire thing for free online. Updates with a new page three times a week, MWF.
I don’t recall Sandman ever using superhero characters like the Justice League. Could you cite an example?
When Dream is looking for one of his items of power (I think the crystal), he encounters Martian Manhunter and learns it was stored in a JLA storage shed somewhere.
Very first book. After his imprisonment a number of his magic items had been scattered around the world. For one of those items he had help from John Constantine and another had fallen into the hands of the Justice League. It’s as if they felt the need to give a shout out to superheroes from the DC universe in order to give the comic legitimacy. I hadn’t known before going in that Sandman took place in the DC universe and could only give a massive sigh when I learned that it was midway through the book. It doesn’t matter if not much time is spent on DC superheroes later in the series- the well has been tainted for me.
Edit: Just browsing through the Wiki page I’m finding references to appearances and crossovers with Green Arrow, Scarecrow, Batman, Hawkman, Clark Kent, Black Spider, etc.