Don't Stop Laughing with These Addictive Comic Book Series

Summer is comics season: blockbusters from Marvel and DC are in theatres, fans are gearing up for Comic-Con in San Diego, and, if nothing else, your friendly neighbourhood comic store or library is ready to give an air-conditioned Fortress of Solitude where you can escape the sweltering streets.

So, it's the ideal moment for our fantastic summer reader poll, in which we invited you to tell us about your favourite comics and graphic novels a few months ago. We put together an incredible team of critics and creators to help us narrow down over 7,000 nominations to this final list of best comic books for all ages and preferences, from young readers to adults-only.

Of course, this isn't a comprehensive list of the "greatest," "most significant," or "most influential" best comics. 

So, look around to locate some old favourites – and some new ones.

1. Nimona

Nimona blossoms into something much richer and deeper as it grows from a fun story about an irrepressible girl with mysterious talents who worms her way into a job as the sidekick to her town's designated evil to something much richer and more profound. 

The story is lifted even further by Noelle Stevenson's energetic line work, which creates a universe where temp agencies handle evil-sidekick positions and fantasy-armoured bad guys plot to attack modern-looking city skylines with genetically enhanced dragons.

2. Watchmen

Everything you've heard about this graphic novel, which debuted in 1986 as a 12-issue series, is accurate. It was revolutionary; it transformed the game. Yet, there's a reason it's still shoved into the hands of individuals who have never read a comic before. Alan Moore's skewed take on the American superhero — "What if they were horny, insecure sociopaths?" — shows its age, evidenced by the slew of inferior, grim-and-gritty copies. 

However, whether conveying the intimate (a momentary facial expression during a couple's dispute) or the cosmic, Dave Gibbons' art, set out in that careful, nine-panel grid, still works remarkably well (a crystalline clockwork castle rising out of the red dust of Mars).

3. Maus: A Survivors Tale

You're probably not surprised to find this book on this list. We're NPR. Therefore, this is a comics list. We get it. 

However, Art Spiegelman's two-volume historical narrative was not simply grandfathered in. It received many votes because it remains a standout achievement in both conceit and craft. A remarkable book whose phenomenal success included the first Pulitzer Prize for a graphic novel helped propel dingy comics stores into the literary mainstream.

4. Daytripper

The book's subject — how death retroactively shapes a person's life — belies the sense of hope that permeates every panel of Brazilian twin brothers Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba's expressive and tragic story. 

We meet an obituary writer at various ages in each chapter and follow him through some of the most important days of his life, each of which — incongruously, mysteriously — ends with his death.

We read the obituary he would have written for himself with each death, which falls short of capturing the chapter's rich imagery, emotional complexity, and lyrical language. But that is precisely the point: death's cruel insistence on reducing lives to narrative arcs, on reducing people's lives to plot beats and act breaks. Daytripper results from a clear-eyed viewpoint that only appears when death is acknowledged rather than avoided, rejected, or railed against. And they hugged.

5. This One Summer

Comics portraying uncomfortable young guys navigating puberty are plentiful, making sense given that the genre seems tailor-made to address the anxiety, self-consciousness, and other fleeting emotions accompanying puberty. 

But only a few comics have tackled the journey from girlhood to womanhood, and none have done so as delicately and thoughtfully as Mariko Tamaki's and Jillian Tamaki's This One Summer.

The novel, about two girls whose families have spent summers at the same lake for years, vividly illustrates when everything changes — when voiced and unsaid emotions begin to colour and distort a childhood bond, when long-simmering jealously, fear and wrath suddenly boil over. 

It's more than a coming-of-age narrative; it's a wonderfully constructed, heartbreaking, and achingly true examination of two young women — one who believes she's ready for life, the other who wants to stay a child for a little longer.