Here's the deal, I got an Amazon gift card for Christmas and I decided I'd like to buy 2 or 3 graphic novels so I'm looking for suggestions. I'm already going to get All Star Superman so you can leave that one off.

I'd like to get something about Superman, Flash, Justice League or Justice Society but feel free to list anything else you feel is a stand out story. Every one I have now is Batman or Green Lantern so that's why they are left off the list.

If you are willing to expand beyond DC or even outside the realm of Super-Heroes I can suggest some amazing books like:
*Fables
*Powers
*Criminal
*Scalped
*Northlanders


If you really want to stay with the big name DC staples I would check out:

*JLA by Grant Morrison (his first year or so of issues are collected in nice large format tpb volumes now).
*Flash: Return of Barry Allen (one of the first Flash storylines by Geoff Johns and probably the true starting point of how DC got to where they stand today).
*JLA: the Nail (an Elseworlds story and probably one of the best non-Batman books under that banner. Well worth tracking down.)
*Batwoman: Elegy by Greg Rucka and JH Williams III. Seriously, a great beginning.

Any questions? Let me know.

Well I'm glad someone finally responded haha. I looked at those first two you listed and I'm considering both. I'll have to check out that last two. And I'd really like to stay with DC. It's hard enough for me to sit down long enough to read at all so I stick with what I know.

You can't go wrong with Justice League: The Nail.

Might I also recommend "Superman: For All Seasons" or entitled very similarly to that. Beautiful art and story.

Justice League/Avengers is a great romp.

Have you read New Frontier? It's an homage to the Silver Age of DC, but has a very JL feel to it.

And if you haven't read Kingdom Come, stop reading and order it ASAP.

I came across For all seasons in my searching, looks intriguing. I haven't read New Frontier but I saw that movie. Is the book a lot better? And my wife bought me Kingdom Come a few years ago. Very good indeed. And I have to say the Avengers crossover definitely caught my eye haha.

Yes, the book is better than the movie.

Isn't that always the case?

True, but if you didn't care for the movie, you probably won't like the books. The movie captured the tone of the graphic novels quite well and did include all the action scenes to the best of my knowledge.

If you want to stick with DC, the two most consistent books I enjoyed over the past decade have been:

1. JLA by Grant Morrison = #1 thru 41 of the run started roughly in 1997. I think the series has now restarted 2wice since then. While looking at this, there is also a crossover called DC 1 Million that goes in the middle of this. The core of that story is DC 1 Million issues 1,2,3,4 and JLA 1 Million. Although other issues add some cool background and details.

2. Superman Batman by Jeff Loeb = #1 through #25. The Superman Batman movies Public Enemies and Apocalpse translate the first 2 arcs of the book. If you like these, I highly recommend one of Loeb's earlier Superman stories, "Emperor Joker".

You could also consider Marvel. I recently ran across a sale of slightly damaged graphic novels for $3 each and was pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed volume 2 of Young Avengers.

I forgot about Batman/Superman...that's a good idea too. And I read some Avengers comics a while back that I really liked but I could not for the life of me ever find them again so i don't know where they came from.

I don't recall the name (and laziness is kicking in here)...but the final 5-6 issue run of the Linda Danvers Supergirl Storyline=one of the best ever.


Note: looked it up (on half.com)

http://product.half.ebay.com/Supergirl- ... 68&tg=info

GREAT GREAT story.

Joel...Superfriend's #2 is great. Those Superman/Batman were good.

Some of the morrison stuff was great (tower of Babel), some of it I didn't like. But it's worth checking out.

Also, I bet your local library can hook you up with some trades.

Bunger - Tower of Babel was written by Mark Waid. It was the first big story after Morrison's run.

Morrison ended with "World War 3" in issue 41. 42 was written by someone else. With 43 Waid took over as the regular writer until 60. Joe Kelly took over with 61. I was not overly happy with Waid's run. Kelly's run has 2 gems. First was a story called the "Obsidian Age". There are seeds to it starting with 61 or 62, but it the real prequel is 66-67. The story itself runs from 68 to 75? Not exactly sure. The team gets sent to the past and finds a similar team from back then and we get to see Batman's "plan B". The second gem is "The Burning", which features the Martian Manhunter trying to overcome his fear of fire and discovering something completely unexpected involving the Guardians.

That's right, it was. It's been so long since I've read that.

I did enjoy the World War story.

I actually hated that Martian Manhunter story.