Interested in Comics, but Not Sure Where to Start?

Comic book adaptations are taking over TV and movies. And that shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who’s been in proximity to a screen of any kind in the past five years. Between them, Marvel and DC’s films have earned nearly $20 billion dollars. And those movies are fun! I mean, some of them are. Let’s be honest, one of those companies is doing a lot better than the other.

But the jump from enjoying your favorite characters on a big screen to seeing how they work on the page can feel overwhelming. Where do you start with a super hero who’s been around for 80 years?

So here are six stories that stand on their own and can make a great first step into the world of comics.

Batman: The Long Halloween (Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale): This story is all the best parts of Batman summed up in one little book: the detective work, the unbreakable spirit, and all your favorite arch-nemeses are here. If there’s one Batman comic I would recommend to absolutely everyone, it’s this.

All-Star Superman (Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely): A while back I talked about the common pop-culture idea that Superman is boring. He has too many powers. He’s too good. This series turned our calculations on their head by giving Superman EVEN MORE powers… that are killing him. This is a really fun series of stories with sometimes wacky premises (at one point someone basically says “The Lizard People from the Center of the Earth,” and nods, like this was the only logical conclusion), but also gives our favorite Kryptonian the ultimate human conflict: how do you live when you know for a fact you’re going to die?

Avengers Arena (Dennis Hopeless and Kev Walker): Hopscotching across company lines to Marvel is a fun little series I loved discussing with one of my best friends in college. Avengers Arena takes some minor, teen heroes (some you might recognize from Hulu’s Runaways series) and decides to do a Hunger Games with them. Despite having a cast that I largely knew nothing about, I didn’t feel lost in the backstories or the lore when I jumped into this one. The stakes are high. People die. As the main villain says, “Welcome to Murder World.”

Vision (Tom King and Gabriel Hernandez Walter): Wandavision blew a lot of people away the last few months, and I certainly enjoyed the ride, but I still feel like Tom King did “superhero in the suburbs” better with this series, where Vision, in order to feel normal, builds a wife and two children and moves to a suburb of Washington D.C. The series tackles the ideas of family, being different, and the unsolvable mysteries of human life. I used to teach this in my AP Lang class. Check it out.

Joe the Barbarian (Grant Morrison and Sean Murpy): You know those old kids movies where a kid hits their head, and then goes on a magical adventure and learns about themself, and then they wake up and return to the new world with confidence? This is like that, only the main character is split between the fantasy world and the knowledge that he’s in the real world going into a diabetic coma, and if he doesn’t get help, he dies. There’s gorgeous art, so much imagination, and all the fantasy trappings you would want, with real conflicts at the core of the story. Love it.

Persepolis (Marjane Satrapi): Taking a break from heroes and fantasy, this story is an autobiographical comic about growing up during and after the Iranian Revolution. It’s a terrific two-part series that shines a light on a part of history that my high school education completely glossed over, with a great sense of humor and drama and simple, effective art. It’s a great reminder that comics don’t need to put the universe on the line to keep readers interested. They just have to tell a damn good story. This one does.

And of course there’s American Born Chinese and Superman Smashes the Klan! by Gene Yuen Lang, which I’ve talked about before. Happy reading, everyone!