May 1st is Free Comic Book Day at your local bookstore or comic/game store and this means you can get a taste of the state of comics today if you haven’t read them in a long time or are new to the whole idea. As a kid I read Archie comics and others, but I never tried many of the superhero style ones. Now the industry has grown and expanded into a wide range of choices. You can still read about the adventures of Spiderman or the X-men, or perhaps Batman, but there are now all sorts of new stories that have come to light and new styles of telling them. There are teenagers with superpowers in Runaways, there is the story of the last man on earth in Y and there are countless interpretations of comic book stories. Then there are graphic novels, a term that the literary crowd seems to use to differentiate more story-centered comic books. These can be everything from a tale about lions that escaped from the Baghdad zoo, to a woman’s tale of her childhood in Iran. These graphic novels have become extremely popular with the hipster crowd that may never have even read a comic book but they are of the same lineage. The artists and writers who work on Batman are as dedicated these days to telling a complex and entertaining tale, as the people who write and design their more upmarket graphic novels.
Several of my favourites deserve a little more in depth introduction:
Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi.
Persepolis details the author’s childhood in Iran during the beginning of the Iranian revolution. As conditions worsen, the teenage author is sent to live with a family friend in Paris and has a hard time adjusting to life in Europe and how society perceives her as an Iranian. It’s beautifully drawn, laugh out loud funny and alternately heart wrenching. The author portrays Iran and it’s people with a warm, but realistically frustrated tone. The story is very worthwhile read.
Street Angel, by Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca
Jesse Sanchez is 12 years old and lives in a hellish ghetto where she is the only one who can deal with vicious ninjas, demons and all sorts of other surprises. She uses martials arts and skateboard skills to battle evil. I love this one with the fantasy life Jesse has made for herself and the fabulous drawings that show how dangerous and grim her neighbourhood is. I would have been very proud to have written this comic book.
Watchmen, by Alan Moore, artist Dave Gibbons, and colorist John Higgins
Watchmen is set in an alternate 1985 America in which costumed superheroes are part of the fabric of everyday society, and the “Doomsday Clock” – which charts the USA’s tension with the Soviet Union – is permanently set at five minutes to midnight. When one of his former colleagues (The Comedian) is murdered, the masked vigilante Rorschach sets out to uncover a plot to kill and discredit all past and present superheroes. Along with Dr. Manhattan, Nite Owl II & Silk Spectre II, they all set out to prevent their own destruction, but in doing so discover a deeper and far more diabolical plot. It’s a fantastic read and I’m glad I was introduced to it.
So head on over to your local comic book store tomorrow and see what the world of the comic book has to offer in 2010. You might be surprised at what you find.
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Finally I was done and I hauled my prizes home and when my husband woke up, we did it all over again. Cheap books are more than my willpower can stand, so we now have to buy another bookshelf soon, or we’re going to be stacking them on the floor. I took some pics of the wonderful chaos so you can get a sense of how big it was. 
