We hope you are staying safe and healthy during this unprecedented COVID-19 crisis. In times of uncertainty, we often turn to comforting re-reads and escapist entertainment. As such, we've decided to highlight a few beloved, critically acclaimed graphic novel series that have multiple trade paperback collections currently in print and that we think you will love getting lost in. Many local, independently owned comic shops are still shipping online store purchases and offering delivery and curbside pick up. We hope these recommendations will inspire you to reach out to a local shop to purchase—you can find many of them listed by location here.
CHEW by John Layman & Rob Guillory
Tony Chu is a detective with a secret. A weird secret. Tony Chu is Cibopathic, which means he gets psychic impressions from whatever he eats. It also means he's a hell of a detective, as long as he doesn't mind nibbling on the corpse of a murder victim to figure out whodunit, and why. He's been brought on by the Special Crimes Division of the FDA, the most powerful law enforcement agency on the planet, to investigate their strangest, sickest, and most bizarre cases.
MONSTRESS by Marjorie Liu & Sana Takeda
A teenage girl struggles to overcome the trauma of war in an alternate, matriarchal 1900s Asia that’s brimming with arcane dangers. This task is made all the more difficult by her mysterious psychic link to an eldritch monster of tremendous power—a connection that will transform them both, and place them in the crosshairs of both human and otherworldly powers
SKYWARD by Joe Henderson & Lee Garbett
One day, gravity on Earth suddenly became a fraction of what it is now. Twenty years later, humanity has adapted to its new low-gravity reality. And to Willa Fowler, who was born just after G-day, it’s pretty awesome. You can fly through the air! I mean, sure, you can also die if you jump too high. So you just don’t jump too high. And maybe don’t get mixed up in your dad’s secret plan to bring gravity back that could get you killed…
LAZARUS by Greg Rucka & Michael Lark
In a dystopian near-future, government is a quaint concept, resources are coveted, and possession is 100% of the law. A handful of Families rule, jealously guarding what they have and exploiting the Waste who struggle to survive in their domains. Forever Carlyle defends her family's holdings through deception and force as their protector, their Lazarus.
SNOTGIRL by Bryan Lee O'Malley & Leslie Hung
Lottie Person is a glamorous fashion blogger living her best life—at least that’s what she wants you to think. The truth is, her friends are terrible people, her boyfriend traded her up for someone younger, her allergies are out of control, and she may or may not have killed somebody!
SAGA by Brian K. Vaughan & Fiona Staples
SAGA is the story of Hazel, a child born to star-crossed parents from opposite sides of a never-ending galactic war. Now, Hazel's fugitive family must risk everything to find a peaceful future in a harsh universe that values destruction over creation. Fantasy and science fiction are wed like never before in a sexy, subversive drama for adults that Entertainment Weekly called, "The kind of comic you get when truly talented superstar creators are given the freedom to produce their dream book."
REVIVAL by Tim Seeley & Mike Norton
For one day in rural central Wisconsin, the dead came back to life. Now it's up to Officer Dana Cypress to deal with the media scrutiny, religious zealots, and government quarantine that has come with them. In a town where the living have to learn to deal with those who are supposed to be dead, Officer Cypress must solve a brutal murder, and everyone, alive or undead, is a suspect.
ALEX + ADA by Jonathan Luna & Sarah Vaughn
A sci-fi drama set in the near future. The last thing in the world Alex wanted was an X5, the latest in realistic androids. But after Ada is dropped into his life, he discovers she is more than just a robot.
FEAR AGENT by Rick Remender & Tony Moore
Veteran fans and new recruits alike can experience the whiskey-soaked, laser-scorched life of Heath Huston, the galaxy’s last Fear Agent. Loaded with never-before-seen scripts, variant covers, designs, and concept art. When down-and-out alien exterminator Heath Huston stumbles upon an extraterrestrial plot to commit genocide against the human species, he must put down the bottle and resume his role as a peacekeeper...the last Fear Agent!
DESCENDER by Jeff Lemire & Dustin Nguyen
One young robot’s struggle to stay alive in a universe where all androids have been outlawed and bounty hunters lurk on every planet. A rip-roaring and heart-felt cosmic odyssey that pits humanity against machine, and world against world, to create a sprawling space opera from the creators of Trillium, Sweet Tooth, and Little Gotham.
ICE CREAM MAN by W. Maxwell Prince & Martín Morazzo
Chocolate, vanilla, existential horror, drug addiction, musical fantasy…there's a flavor for everyone's misery. ICE CREAM MAN is a genre-defying comic book series featuring disparate 'one-shot' tales of sorrow, wonder, and redemption. Each installment features its own cast of strange characters, dealing with their own special sundae of suffering. And on the periphery of all of them, like the twinkly music of his colorful truck, is the Ice Cream Man-a weaver of stories, a purveyor of sweet treats. Friend. Foe. God. Demon. The man who, with a snap of his fingers-lickety split!-can change the course of your life forever.
COPRA by Michel Fiffe
They’re ugly. They’re mean. But up until today, they’ve always been loyal. So when one of their own betrays them, COPRA has no choice but to turn their nightmarish skills back on everyone who ever even looked at them funny.
DEADLY CLASS by Rick Remender & Wes Craig
It’s 1987. Marcus Lopez hates school. His grades suck. The jocks are hassling his friends. He can’t focus in class. But the jocks are the children of Joseph Stalin’s top assassin, the teachers are members of an ancient league of assassins, the class he’s failing is “Dismemberment 101,” and his crush has a doubledigit body count. Welcome to the most brutal high school on earth, where the world’s top crime families send the next generation of assassins to be trained. Murder is an art. Killing is a craft. At Kings Dominion School for the Deadly Arts, the dagger in your back isn’t always metaphorical.
CRIMINAL by Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips
A new take on noir that turned the heist story on its head and created a whole new underworld for BRUBAKER & PHILLIPS to explore.
THE WICKED + THE DIVINE by Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie
Every ninety years, twelve gods incarnate as humans. They are loved. They are hated. In two years, they are dead.
NAILBITER by Joshua Williamson & Mike Henderson
"Where do serial killers come from?" and why has Buckaroo, Oregon given birth to sixteen of the most vile serial killers in the world? NSA Agent Nicholas Finch needs to solve that mystery in order to save his friend, and he'll have to team up with the infamous Edward "Nailbiter" Warren to do it. JOSHUA WILLIAMSON & MIKE HENDERSON deliver a mystery that mixes Twin Peaks with the horror of Se7en!
KICK-ASS by Mark Millar & John Romita Jr.
Relive what happens when Dave Lizewski asks himself "How come nobody's ever become a superhero before?" and makes his teenage superhero daydreams an ass-kicking reality.
THE MANHATTAN PROJECTS by Jonathan Hickman & Nick Pitarra
What if the research and development department created to produce the first atomic bomb was a front for a series of other, more unusual, programs?
EAST OF WEST by Jonathan Hickman & Nick Dragotta
This is the world. It is not the one we wanted, but it is the one we deserved. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse roam the Earth, signaling the End Times for humanity, and our best hope for life, lies in DEATH.
STRAY BULLETS by David Lapham
STRAY BULLETS took the comic book industry by storm when it debuted in 1995 and won multiple Eisner Awards. Overnight, its harrowing portrayal of contemporary life became required reading and influenced a generation of cartoonists.
I HATE FAIRYLAND by Skottie Young
An Adventure Time/Alice in Wonderland-style epic that smashes its cute little face against grown-up Tank Girl/ Deadpool-esque violent madness. Follow Gert, a forty-year-old woman in a six-year-old’s body, who has been stuck in the magical world of Fairyland for nearly thirty years. Join her and her giant battleaxe on a delightfully bloodsoaked journey to see who will survive the girl who HATES FAIRYLAND.
FATALE by Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips
Josephine is cursed, and in a series that darkly blends American crime noir with unnamed Lovecraftian horrors, we follow her from 1950s San Francisco, where crooked cops hide deeper evils, to mid-'70s L.A., where burnt-out actors and ex-cult groupies are caught in a web around a satanic snuff film...and in the middle of it all is Josephine, with a power to die or kill for.
PAPER GIRLS by Brian K. Vaughan & Cliff Chiang
In the early hours after Halloween of 1988, four 12-year-old newspaper delivery girls uncover the most important story of all time. Suburban drama and otherworldly mysteries collide in this critically acclaimed story about nostalgia, first jobs, and the last days of childhood.
THE WALKING DEAD by Robert Kirkman & Charlie Adlard
An epidemic of apocalyptic proportions has swept the globe, causing the dead to rise and feed on the living. In a matter of months, society has crumbled: There is no government, no grocery stores, no mail delivery, no cable TV. Rick Grimes finds himself one of the few survivors in this terrifying future. A couple months ago he was a small town cop who had never fired a shot and only ever saw one dead body. Separated from his family, he must now sort through all the death and confusion to try and find his wife and son. In a world ruled by the dead, we are forced to finally begin living.