COMICS LIKE WHAT YOU LIKE: I get a lot of people asking me, essentially, What’s a nice girl like you doing in a semi-comics blog like this? This is because people generally think of comics (a medium) as superheroes (a genre–even a subgenre); see below for more on that. So I figured what I’d do is go through the really fun/powerful comics I own and tell you what they’re like, and if they’re like what you like, maybe you should check them out! Adding the visual storytelling really does change the shape of the stories in a way I find totally intriguing–if you like the ways movies differ from books, you probably will also like the ways comics differ from books.

So, in alphabetical order, and with no attempt to keep genres together:

Brian Bendis, Alias: “Sweet Smell of Success” meets the chick version of a Graham Greene antihero. The visual acuity of Lee Miller, the ferocious dialogue of “Gilda” run through a shredder. (Is that one of those meaningless critic-sentences? I hope not. What I mean is that the content of the dialogue is as furious as in the best noir, but the style is more realistic, less repartee-ish. Some people are distracted and irked by Bendis’s attempts to mimic real speech patterns while making his dialogue much snappier than what real people say; I think it’s the best of both worlds, and it definitely makes me more attentive to how people talk out here in real reality. Oh, reminding me! if you like Pat Cadigan’s Mindplayers you have no excuse for not picking up Alias. Alias is better.)

Grant Morrison’s Animal Man is like Jorge Borges goes to Disney World with Peter Singer. Crazy metafictional stuff, less symmetrical than Borges but, frankly, more fun. Fans of The Counterlife might also dig this. What you should do to know if you want to read it: a) read this column (which spoils significant bits of plot, but which does give you a great sense of why this comic is cool) or b) stand in a comics shop and read “The Coyote Gospel,” from the first book.

Brian Bendis, Daredevil: “Sweet Smell of Success” maybe? Am I just saying that because I like both DD and “SSOS” a lot? Bendis in general has a real SSOS feel, and it’s probably my favorite noir, so that’s high praise.

Wendy and Richard Pini, ElfQuest books 1 through 4 (but not after): What’s your favorite children’s fantasy epic? Artistically better than the Alanna books, more blunt and contemporary (yes, despite the elves) than Lord of the Rings. Get this for a kid you know, then read it yourself before you wrap it. (Am I right in thinking they re-colored the new editions? Try to get the old ones, if so.)

Carla Speed McNeil, Finder: Sin-Eater 1 and 2: Samuel R. Delany, only with more vivid characters. I wish I had more to say about this, since if you like science fiction or want to read about gender or guilt this is a must-read.

Human Target: Final Cut: “The Usual Suspects,” or “L.A. Confidential.” Slick neo-noir-y-type-thing. Fun, not wildly meaningful, but fun. It has plot/theme points in common with both those movies.

Like a River: I can’t think of anything this is “like,” but it’s a ramshackle Russian story of little lives, exploring the chasm between father and son. You know what it really reminds me of, sort of? Patti Smith’s song “Birdland.” And “Elegy.” Both together.

Los Bros. Hernandez, Love and Rockets: Hard to describe this series, in part because it does everything it does about a million times better than anyone else attempting the same genres in different media. So… imagine if magical realism were good, instead of crap like it mostly is. Imagine if telenovelas grabbed your heart and squeezed, kept you on the edge of your seat with real psychological insight and real human drama rather than sentiment, cliched suspense, and melodrama. Imagine how you felt when you heard that first punk record, then the second one, and it was like a whole world of people insane the way you were just opened up. Then imagine if someone remembered that feeling and grew up anyway. Mix one shot “Cheap Tragedies” with two shots Flannery O’Connor and a jigger of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, and shoot. Best place to start is maybe The Death of Speedy?

Alan Moore, A Small Killing: Brightness Falls in the hallucinatory style of Marc Chagall doing the design for “Jacob’s Ladder,” and with the attention to sexual corruption of “The Ice Storm.” A small but harsh story.

Brian Bendis, Torso: If you like true crime and/or those newspaper noirs starring Edward G. Robinson, you will almost certainly like this. Next try Bendis’s Jinx (better overall, more visually distinctive, but with a flaccid midsection and a short bit of most interest to superhero fans) or Goldfish (lowlife criminal/family drama).

EDITED TO ADD: Junji Ito, Uzumaki vol. 1 (I wasn’t so into 2 and 3, but you might be): Eerie, haunting horror. Not “Misery” or even “Blair Witch”-style horror; much weirder than that. Very Japanese Magritte, with an assist from the titles and music of “Vertigo”??? The Hitchcock it feels most like is “The Birds.”

Alan Moore, Watchmen: You know, I don’t really know what to compare this to–which is a good sign. My advice is to check out some of the other stuff on this list, or on somebody else’s comics list, and if you don’t react weirdly just to the whole pictures plus words combination, read this. Does for superhero comics what Measure for Measure did for Elizabethan romantic comedy–does that help? Probably not. It’s much more hopeful than M4M but has some of the same sense of drawing out the corruption underlying a genre. And just as you should read M4M even if you’ve never read Eliz. rom. com.s, in part because ERCs’ sensibilities still shape our perceptions of romance, so you should read Watchmen even if you’re not into superhero comics, in part because superhero comics’ sensibilities–like it or not–still shape our perceptions of power.