Books like Ms. Marvel Volume 1 — picked by fans

This queer memoir takes us to New York City to explore the unfolding queer life of a child of Bengali immigrants in her difficult decision to divest from parents, colleagues, and friends’ expectations for her life. After taking up architecture as a career and attending Harvard to the delight of her parents, Anjali realizes that her real interest lies in creating graphic literature. This coincides with another journey away from the expected future marriage and family toward exploring and affirming her sexuality and attraction to women. In often spare and simple settings with clean lines that let readers fill in the gaps – for example, with picture frames containing blank canvasses rather than pictures – Anjali creates her own pictures, both as a graphic artist and in imagining her own life. 

Love lies at the heart of this fictionalized memoir. A full recipe from Anjali’s father’s repertoire, a culinary interest… show more.

This compelling graphic novel adaptation captures Butler’s Afrofuturist science fiction in its dark-toned palette and relentless movements in and across panels, with pages crammed with characters traveling within and outside of an urban enclave surrounded by gangs and criminals. The red of apocalypse and the California desert saturate pages, signaling current and immanent violence and danger and a landscape in environmental crisis. Through it all, Lauren reflects on how a new vision is required to liberate the oppressed without reproducing the conditions that brought it about. Amidst the bleak and violent scenes, we read excerpts from her Earthseed journaling of an unfolding religion where God is Change.

A futuristic world portrays the ongoing struggles of Black Americans for equity, racial justice, and economic and cultural futures. Its spirituals and Black culture form a new platform for Lauren’s exodus to a new land, a journey fraught with danger and difficult decisions,… show more.

This 4-volume serialized graphic novel tells the story of an Indigenous family across centuries and generations, stretching from Indigenous history before colonialism to ongoing colonial violence in Residential Schools until the present world of a Cree youth in existential crisis as he attempts to take his own life. His mother then guides him on a path of personal healing from his intergenerational trauma through stories about their history and traditions; Edwin’s journey takes him into the heart of ceremony and connection with his culture and history. He discovers his own strength to heal and then offers his father the opportunity to find his own healing path.

In this graphic novel, we are educated about Indigenous history through stories of struggle, resilience, and resurgence across the centuries. As Edwin, guided by his mother, meets with Elders, embraces his Cree identity, and pursues a path of healing through traditional teachings and practices,… show more.

There are lots of graphic novels and memoirs with medical themes, but I want to shine a light on this unique collaboration by brothers who capture their shared experience of schizophrenia, one diagnosed with the condition and the other who accompanies him through difficult navigation of an inadequate health care system and the struggle of managing a disease that isolates individuals and families from their communities.

Each brother works side-by-side to tell their interrelated stories: Olivier is a visual artist, and Clem is an author and playwright. Olivier’s drawings are on the verso, in simple black and white sketches, often unframed, of family holidays, from picnics to Christmas, with obscuring smudges, stiff figures, and unsmiling faces that belie the sun, picnic baskets, and decorated trees of the settings. He draws his world of meetings with doctors, attending group meetings, and struggling to get and hold jobs.

Using text on the… show more.

In The Sidekick Initiative a former sidekick, now middle-aged insurance worker is reluctantly pulled back into the superhero game after the world’s superheroes disappear.

The problem is he not only has a team of washed-up former sidekicks to lead, he’s also got the world’s most powerful supervillains gunning for him and his family.

This was a hilarious story that kept me on the seat of my pants.

In the days after World War II, an alien device explodes in the skies above New York, blanketing the planet with an extraterrestrial virus. Most of the victims die horrible deaths. A smaller percentage – the “Jokers” – find their bodies mutated in various unpredictable ways. And a scant few draw an “Ace” – superpowers without the consequences of a Joker mutation. Wild Cards is the first in a series of “mosaic novels,” books of stories featuring the work of several writers contributing their own pieces of a larger tapestry that helps build and flesh out a remarkable world. The Wild Cards series is perhaps the most elaborate and provocative superhero universe that exists in prose fiction. 

As much as I love comic books, it's always bothered me how many people think comics are superheroes and vice-versa. This was one of the first really successful attempts at doing something… show more.

Sometimes you want your heroes to be serious and sometimes you want them to be wacky.

Andrea Vernon is a series that goes running toward wackiness then sails right past it. The story of a secretary at a private military contractor that specializes in goofy, ridiculous, and terrifying effective superheroes, this is one of the most fun novels I've enjoyed in years.

Andrea is a delightful Lois Lane figure who is stuck being the only normal person in the weirdest office in the world. It reminded me of the old Damage Control comics. 

Clever, comic-book reading, word-loving Flora is more cynical than ever since her parents’ separation. She’s sure her mother loves a shepherdess lamp more than her own daughter. When Flora saves a squirrel sucked up by a neighbor’s vacuum and he returns with super strength and the ability to understand language and write poetry, she finds a kindred spirit. I love this book for its colorful (human and squirrel) characters and subtle exploration of family dynamics. And I love that Flora’s journey, which is emotional rather than physical, isn’t wrapped up with a tidy bow at the end.

This is another masterful creation by Gene Luen Yang! After falling in love with American Born Chinese, this recent work of his did not disappoint. This story based on an old radio play is a tale of self-acceptance and standing up to hatred. Yang brilliantly intertwines the narrative of the Lee family and the issues of discrimination and violence they are faced with moving into a new suburban town along with the struggles of a younger, less experienced Superman coming to terms with being himself, an alien among humans.

Superhero comics are known for hyper-sexualizing female characters and limiting them to one uniform, impossibly curvaceous figure. Valiant’s Faith Herbert is a direct reaction to this, the first plus-sized heroine to star in her own comic as she patrols Los Angeles as the high-flying Zephyr. Beyond this meaningful step for the genre, Houser has written a compelling story and Portela and Sauvage deliver great artwork that brings Faith to life. The character is a game changer for superhero comics, and this first collection of her adventures is such a fun read.