I have a very brief collection of graphic novels, and I want to buy some new stuff. So does anyone have some recommendents? Not only for me, but for everyone. Just name some, even if they already are very well known. I's also like to know cool manga-titles. Please help me out here :)

there is a book called Graphic novels, its a list of tons of great comics and what they are about. Manga included. Everybody should get it and just get the books they are interested in first and then get the ones they are curious about and then eventually read the ones they dont think theyd like.


Amazon page for the book i mentioned.

Keep in mind that I have a pretty alternative taste and I don't really like manga so you won't get any of that from me. You can do a search on google for these and find some good information.

Calvin and Hobbes collection: I forgot the official name, but it collects every Calvin and Hobbes comic which arguably one of the best comic strips of the 80s/90s.

Peanuts Collection: Forgot the name as well, but it collects every peanuts comic. It's being released twice a year and covers every strip within a five year period (the final collection won't come out until 2019 or something!)

Bone Series
-Bone Complete Collection: includes all 1200+ pages of Jeff Smith's fantasy epic. This is what got me into comics as I never really followed the super hero bit.
-Rose: Prequel to bone, expertly colored by Charles Vess
-Stupid, Stupid, Rat Tails: Another Bone prequel with fantastic writing.

McSweeny's Quarterly Collection: A collection of the best comics of the year/quarter. It's always hardbound with a fantastic layout and usually some sort of interactive cover sleave. It features some well written and rare articles, interviews, and pictures by comic book artists.

Krazy and Ignatz: 500 pages of Krazy Kat! You can buy it at Fantagraphics. I don't know if they're still selling the collection as they only printed 1000 copies.

Little Nemo in Slumberland: Collects the entire nemo collection. A very underrated sunday comic strip that was quite surreal and whimsical in the early 1910s. It spawned a pretty good movie but it's a lot rarer than the collected comic.

Jhonen Vasquez's work: This guy was also a favorite of mine. He doesn't do so much work anymore but his earlier stuff always kept me entertained with his unique style of subversive (and sometimes subliminal) humor and dark plotlines.
-Johnny the Homicidal Maniac Directors Cut
-Squee
-i feel sick: a rare series (only 2 issues were published)
-Jellyfist
-Filler Bunny
-The Bad Art Collection
-Invader Zim (not a comic book, but a good cartoon series out on DVD)

El Superbeasto: Rob Zombies work. It's been collected. Very raunchy, but it's pretty lengthy with good retro humor.

Hellboy: A tongue-in-cheek series that humerously satires the cliches of the horror and superhero genre while still remaining very serious.
-Seed of Destruction
-Wake the Devil
-The Chained Coffin and Others
-The Right Hand of Doom
-The Conqueror Worm
-Strange Places
NOTE: There are numerous Hellboy spinoffs as well as a movie (which is pretty good) and animated made-for-tv/dvd movies (which are also pretty good).

Watchmen: Pretty much redefined the "hero" genre. In my opinion, you can't make comics without reading this. It has some of the best writing I've ever seen even outside of comics and the ending is one of the most satisfying things you're likely to read. It'll most likely change the way you look at your own work.

Whiteout

V for Vendetta

The Road to Perdition

A History of Violence

Fables: A fantastic continuing series that creates a story around a world populated by characters from myths like Bigby, the Big Bad Wolf.

Ronin

Sin City

Courtney Crumrin: This series is pretty excellent. It's kind of like a dark harry potter starring a female in a victorian style neighborhood as she deals with creatures of the night.
-Night Things
-Coven of Mystics
-Twilight Kingdom

Soulwind: Good luck finding this as it was printed in stupidly low quantities (I bought one of the last copies off of Amazon). Maybe Onipress will reprint it because it's a fantastic tale that combines science fiction and fantasy well.

Amelia Rules!: A cute comic geared towards children but with a playful tone and writing style.

Age of Bronze: Excellent retelling of the Trojan war with spectacular black and white drawings.

Scott Pilgrim: A humerous romance/manga style series that combines pop culture with believable characters. Definitely worth a read.
-Precious Little Life
-Vs. The World
-Infinite Sadness


Mouse Guard: An incredibly beautiful story that reminds me a lot of the Redwall series. Some of the best coloring work around.

Aliens Omnibus: Collects the original Aliens comic books that expanded the universe of the original Movie and inspired the following sequels.

Street Angel: A dark, violent, and humerous tale about a homeless 11 year old skateboarder who fights ninjas and ancient gods. It pokes fun at the superhero genre while still remaining unique and original.

Serenity Rose: A little bit wordy, but tells the story of an estranged witch who lives in a town full of tourists and idiots. Riddled with teenage angst!

Lenore: Roman Dirge is like Vasquez lite; he makes some good work but I'm that big of a fan.
-Wedgies
-Cooties
-Noogies

Bardin the Superrealist: Good luck finding this one too (I've never been able to find it outside of Singapore). Very crazy and surreal but with some excellent and intelligent writing.

Outlaw Nation

Ferro City: A sort of sci-fi crack at noir stories.

The Originals: Touching story by Dave Gibbons but has a little too much cursing.

Battle Royale: The only manga on my list. This has touched me in every way mainly because of the incredibly dark and ironic humor within it.

There's a lot I'm forgetting, but these are the ones that come to my mind first. If you like more alternative or "hip" comics (as some people like to call them) then I suggest you check these out. I'm a fan of the more "experimental/indie comics" so I'll post more as they come to mind.

Powers: Hard-boiled cop drama with superheroes. Think NYPD blue with cases that involve capes. Written by Brian Michael Bendis (i.e. great dialogue) and illustrated by Mike Oeming (i.e. great Bruce Timm-style art).

100 Bullets: If your life was a mess and a complete stranger gave you undeniable proof of who's to blame, a gun and 100 untraceable bullets, would you kill the person who ruined your life? Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso AKA one of the greatest comic book artists of all time take that idea and somehow spin it into a complex story about an international criminal organization. Got a bit weaker recently, but it's still better than most books out there, and Risso's art alone is worth it.

Arkham Asylum: Grant Morrison and Dave McKean made the best comic of all time, and nobody's ever topped it. Mind-blowing stuff.

Bite Club: Vampires as an ethnic minority. Sex, drugs, violence and cops. Sounds cheesy and exploitative, and it is, but it's also really well written and the art kicks ass.

Cerebus: Dave Sim sat down one day in the late 70s and said he would draw 300 consecutive issues of his Cerebus series. Then he did it. It's all available in phonebook-sized paperbacks, and at least up to and including "Rick's Story", it's among the greatest comics ever made. Unfortunately Sim eventually kinda... turned into a woman-hating, paranoid religious fanatic. Which doesn't mean his comics have to be bad (Crumb isn't exactly a nice person either, but he's a brilliant creator), but towards the end, it affected the comic more and more, to the point where it became so much about Sim's world view, and in a very forced and clumsy way, that it was just... bad writing. The art was always great, though.

Also, everything angry_black_guy suggested that I'm familiar with is great, so I'd assume the stuff I haven't read myself is good too.

Okay some (or maybe even all!) of these have been listed before (in which case consider them "seconded"!)

Watchmen. A masterpiece. Possibly the first and almost certainly the best imagining of what a world in which super heroes are real might actually be like. Cleverly plotted with any number of intriguing sub-plots and characters with personality. Oh, and it's fun to read.

The Dark Knight Returns. Demonstrates that a comic book character can have real psychological depth. Doubly impressive since the character concerned is Batman who - thanks to the TV series - was generally regarded by the public at large at that time as a pretty camp hero. Oh, and the tone (not the story) inspired the tone of Tim Burton's Batman movies, too.

Maus. Story of a son re-telling the life story of his father, a Holocaust survivor. Has its moments of genuine horror (obviously) but the crowning achievement is that it paints the characters in such a way that, at times, it can make you laugh, too. Out loud. I doubt you'll find a heavier theme in any graphic novel and, if you do, I'm pretty certain it won't be as entertaining.

Sandman. Eleven volumes in total and not all work equally well. The artwork in particular doesn't always suit the story and some parts read more like an illustrated short story rather than a comic. But the amazing thing about these books is the range of the subject matter. Fairies, history, Greek mythology, whimsy and horror are all here. Plus the character of Death presented as a teenage girl, Goth in attire but perky, bright and full of wonder at the world. What more could you want?!

DAJB nailed some of my favorites. All of those are must-haves.

Check out Hellblazer, The Walking Dead, and volume two of Daredevil as well.

My favorite manga is Case Closed. Not to everyone's tastes, but it is a great choice for any fans of classic murder mysteries.

i have to add in:

X-men - god loves man kills. it's one of my favorite xmen books and it's what xmen2 was based on.

I look out mainly for artwork, and so I'll buy just about anything in any language if I feel the drawings are stunning or out of the realm of conventional graphic novels and manga. If I can read it, that's always a huge plus.

Some really interesting manga include work by Kiriko Nananan (Blue, etc), which is now available in English and has some of the most exquisite drawing in a graphic novel period. I haven't had the chance to completely read the new translation, but I would recommend it on the artwork alone. Another one is Beautiful World by Naito Yamada. Again, I haven't read it per se and it's only available, to my knowledge, in French and Japanese, however if you can find anything about it it's worth it. Her style is unique and fluid.

Speaking of stuff you can only get in French . . Many really interesting manga seem to be neglected by English translators but are in French. I don't exactly have an encyclopedic knowledge of what to look out for, but I do own a lovely man-hwa (sp?) called 'nouilles tchaijang' that is published in full watercolour.

There is a huge variety of French comics from France and Belgium as well. They're hard to get hold of outside of 'la francophonie' as it were, but they are certainly for sale in places like Quebec or online. One I stumbled across is called 'Muchacho' by Emmanuelle LePage, a popular bande dessinée artist and writer. It's certainly the best comic book I've ever seen for art and story combined. The painted artwork is practically out of this world. If only it were available in translation! 'Muchacho', I guess along with Nananan's 'Blue' is one of the few graphic novels I've seen that manage to portray complicated subject matter in a believable way using illustration, etc. I'm sure you can find some examples online.

And . . I really enjoyed the graphic novel 'Fun Home' by Alison Bechdel. Blankets is nice as well, though I can't recall the author - I'm sure someone else will. And umm yeah. Best advice, don't limit yourself to just one country or style, they all have something to offer.

Sudden Gravity by Greg Ruth. Creepy ass story but told with beautiful ballpoint pen work.
And just finished Postcards..which I can't even begin to recommend highly...so...so high!
Jason Rodriguez was the editor and the brains behind the project.

'tangle' by o-nigiri.com
'Air gear' by o'great

have fun.

I recomend the following if you like action comics:
Trigun and Trigun Maximum by Nightow
Battle Angel Alita and BAA Last Order by Yukito Kishirow
Final Girl by David Hutchinson (if you like horror)

hm....
here are my manga recommendations:
1.) Fullmetal Alchemist~ it's an obvious one, but it's really a classic, with excellent art and a very intricate plotline that seems quite literary in its scope and its detailed psychoanalysis of the main characters. oh, but readers will probably feel the same disappointment that I did when they find out what a homunculus REALLY is--

this thing. XP ew.

2.) Only the Ring Finger Knows~ it's yaoi (GASP!!!) and very predictable, but there's something really sweet about it, and the art (admittedly generic) has a really great sense of aesthetics to it.

3.) Welcome to the NHK~ there's a lot of fanservice in this comic, but the underlying story is very relatable, and the main character is so defiantly unique and flawed that you can't help but empathize with him. It's realistic, too, so the emphasis is on the internal rather than external events.

I have more rec's, but I have to get to class... -_-.

Sharknife. Corey Lewis.
Scott Pilgrim. Bryan Lee O'Malley.
King City. Brandon Graham.

OH I FORGOT TO MENTION!!!

4.) Misfit Assassins! haha?

I agree Fullmetal Alchemist is a good one, I also liked Devil & Devil, not so popular, but so far it is my favorite.

If you like cyberpunk, there's nothing like Gunm (Gun Dreams, or Battle Angel Alita), I loved it.

Gakuen shojo I would recomend Love Hina, it's another of my favorites.
I's is also a good one.

But everything depends on what are your likes and dislikes.

Thank you all, I'll print out all of the titles mentioned on this page and go to my local comic book store with them. I already knew most of the titles actually, but have yet to buy them. I'm a real manga-noob so those tips are real handy :)

Things of these lists that I already own: Calvin and Hobbes (some of them, together with my brother I have the whole collection), Bone vol. 1, Jhonen Vasquez stuff (JTHM, Squee, Everything can be beaten, bad art collection and 2 Invader Zim DVD's ;) ), Watchmen (ofcourse), Lenore vol. 1 and 2, 100 Bullets vol. 1 and ofcourse I've already read some Misfit Assassins on the internet.
I seem to know/like a lot of the things angry_black_guy mentioned (also love Little Nemo, I really SHOULD buy a collection of it) so I'm curious about your other titles.

I'm sort of surprised no one mentioned Craig Thomson's "Blankets," it's one of the most gorgeous graphic novels I've ever read. Even if it is a bit emotionally draining it's still well-written and well-drawn and a very worth-while read. If anthologies count as graphic novels "Flight" is very good too.