Five Comics for People Who Don't Read Comics

I've always loved trying to recommend comics to people I know who don't read them. Unfortunately, it can be hard to work naturally into a conversation. So, rather than try to force-feed recommendations to friends I think I'll just put some up here from time to time. This is by no means a comprehensive list, just the first five that occurred to me.

1. "Bone" by Jeff Smith
I've seen this series get described as Disney meets Lord of the Rings (in a good way). I think a more accurate description might be Walt Kelley's Pogo meets Arthurian Legend. The great thing about Bone is, that it's accessible to younger readers, but has enough complexity to it to be a satisfying read for older readers as well. I read this comic years ago as it was coming out in individual issues. It was bi-monthly for most of its run and the wait between issues could be excruciating. At some point I'm going to have to get the One Volume Edition and see how the series reads all at once.

2. "Mouse Guard" by David Petersen
Mouse Guard is a lot like Bone in that, if you just take a surface glance at it you see a bunch of mice running around with medieval weapons and dress and dismiss it as a kiddie book. What keeps the book from being that is that Petersen takes his characters seriously. They talk and act like you would expect people to talk and act and they live in a deadly serious world with none of the silly conventions you might find in a typical "funny animal" book.

3. "Strangers in Paradise" by Terry Moore
Strangers in Paradise (or SiP as it is sometimes referred) is a difficult series to describe. Quite a lot happened over the course of the series, tragedy, triumph, flash forwards, flashbacks, bits of prose mixed in here and there, a side-trip or two outside the main characters, even an ongoing plot involving a powerful criminal syndicate. Ultimately, though, it all boils down to the relationship between the two main characters, Francine and Katchoo. This comics is all about the characters and their complicated, ever-changing relationships with each other.

4. "Sandman Mystery Theater"
I had a little trouble coming up with a "by" line for this comic. Over the course of its run, Sandman Mystery Theater had two different writers and at least a couple of different artists. That said, the quality of the series remained high throughout the run of the series. Sandman Mystery Theater straddles the line between noir-ish crime comic and standard superhero comic. The Sandman of the title is a costumed adventurer from the '30's (when these stories are set), who has what I think is the coolest costume in all of hero-dom (consisting of a fedora, gas mask, business suit and trench coat), but this series puts him in a very real, very dark and grimy world. Sandman is typically paired against serial killers and other "normal" psychopaths rather than the costumed loonies superheroes normally face, and true to its title, there is usually a true mystery to be solved in resolving the case of each storyline.

5. "DC: The New Frontier" by Darwyn Cooke
This comic is the closest to a traditional superhero story that I've put on this list. The story takes DC's Silver Age superheroes (Flash, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, etc.) and shows their emergence and coming together to face a threat to all mankind (like I said, traditional superhero stuff). The story is set at the time these characters originally made their appearances in comics, the 1950's, so it takes the light-hearted superhero adventure and layers on the troubles of the real world at the time; the Korean War, the Cold War, HUAC, racial discrimination, and instability in Southeast Asia. It makes for a wonderfully rich story and has already been adapted into an animated film "Justice League: The New Frontier."