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18 Comics Comics Creators Want You to Read
It’s one thing to get book recommendations from your friends. Getting them from people who actually make stories for a living is something else entirely.
At this year’s New York Comic-Con, comics creators Kieron Gillen (The Wicked + The Divine), Elsa Charretier (Unstoppable Wasp), and Jeremy Whitley (Princeless) convened the “Get Started Reading Comics” panel to recommend their favorite books—and we were all ears! Whether you like The Simpsons, Jupiter Ascending, historical nonfiction, or all of the above and more, here’s what these industry pros think you should have on your bookshelf.
Go-to recommendations
Whitley: “If you’re looking for something superhero-related, I always recommend Kieron Gillen’s [and Jamie McKelvie’s] Young Avengers, because it’s a fantastic book and very easy to pick up and jump into.”
Charretier: Moon Girl by Amy Reeder, Brandon Montclare, and Natacha Bustos. “It’s a great book for younger readers–not just female readers, but boys too. It’s a STEM book, it’s really entertaining, it’s well written, the art’s fantastic, and I think it’s a great entry point for younger readers.”
Gillen: “I don’t really have one set of recommendations, it’s always the start of a conversation….[but] Finder by Carla Speed McNeil. Always Finder.“
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If you like The Simpsons and existentialism
Whitley: “There’s the really obvious recommendation, that there are Simpsons Comics [published] by Bongo.”
Charretier: Jughead by Chip Zdarsky and Erica Henderson. “Anything that Chip does, actually.”
Gillen: NextWave: Agents of H.A.T.E. by Warren Ellis and Stuart Immonen. “It basically saved my life in a really, really crappy year.”
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If you like dystopian literature
Gillen: “Bitch Planet [written by Kelly Sue DeConnick] is the premiere dystopia at the moment, I would say.”
Charretier: A.D.: After Death by Scott Snyder and Jeff Lemire. “It’s a great book, really moving.”
Whitley: Rocket Girl by Brandon Montclare and Amy Reeder. “It’s a light dystopia…it’s very difficult to describe from a timeline perspective, but it’s a beautiful comic.”
If you want to get started with Marvel or DC Comics
Charretier: “Everything that Tim Sale did with Jeph Loeb. The Long Halloween….[and they] did a bunch of books for DC. There’s Spider-Man: Blue, Daredevil: Yellow, and Hulk: Gray. Those are really good.”
Whitley: “I think weirdly, every series Matt Fraction did in his time at Marvel is really great in that respect. His Invincible Iron Man, if you’ve seen the first Iron Man movie, it’s designed to jump into that without being tied directly to it….Matt focuses on character so much that there’ll be Marvel Universe stuff that comes in and out of the book, but it can bounce off the story. If you want to pursue it, you can.”
Gillen: “The New Frontier by Darwyn Cooke would be another example of a really good standalone book, and so beautiful.”
If you like history, memoir, and other nonfiction
Gillen: Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths by Shigeru Mizuki. “[It’s about Mizuki’s] time serving in the Japanese army, where he lost his arm. It’s an incredible book, because he paints himself as a complete incompetent—he’s always being told off by his superiors and being abused by them, but he always kind of blames himself for being lazy. There’s an incredible almost Charlie Brown-ness to it.”
Whitley: Nanjing by Ethan Young. “It’s this perspective that I don’t think people in America know very much about, and that was really interesting.”
If you like over-the-top science fiction
Gillen: The Metabarons by Alejandro Jodorowsky and Juan Gimenez. “It’s so problematic, but it’s beautiful and frenzied. The Metabarons is the most berserk thing you’ll ever read.”
What comics would you recommend to these creators? Tell us in the comments!