Books like Vulnerability Is My Superpower — picked by fans

I immediately loved Jake’s comics. The art style and humor is right up my alley.

They’re a perfect intersection of print comics like The Far Side and online ones like The Perry Bible Fellowship.

The internet seems especially suited for timely comics that don’t always age well, they’re scrolled past and never read again, but this collection is perfect for print because the comics are timeless and worth repeat reading.  

Joshua has a really unique sense of humor that’s accompanied by absolutely stunning art.

The comics are really worth admiring in print, not to get lost amongst the sea of online ‘content’.

Both Joshua and I write comics that give readers a glimpse into the animal kingdom and I love seeing how our interpretations of the same world can differ, through our comedic voices and art… and yes, his work is art.

If you’re a parent, Fowl Language comics are really relatable, almost too relatable.

I think that a lot of stuff on the internet coasts on just being relatable and nothing else, but Brian doesn’t simply present us with a familiar situation, he makes it funny.

The observation isn’t what’s unique, it’s the unexpected joke and comedic tone that makes Brian’s comics so great.

I remember discovering The Perry Bible Fellowship while I was in college.

It was like nothing I had ever seen before, like some underground secret being passed between friends. The comics were clever, vulgar, sometimes graphic, and always funny.

As a long-time reader of the Funnies Pages in newspapers, Nicholas’ comics opened my eyes to what comics could be in the age of the internet. The Perry Bible Fellowship inspired me, along with an entire generation of cartoonists, to start their own comics.

My comic might not look like it was influenced by Nicholas’ work, but it sparked my imagination and led me to rediscover my love for comic strips.

I’ll admit that I don’t like the term ‘webcomic’, they’re all comics, whether they’re online or in print. And while I might have a preference, one format isn’t inferior to the other, after all—the internet has been an invaluable tool… show more.

It’s about a girl, Eliza, who created a super successful webcomic. IRL, Eliza is shy and withdrawn so when she meets a boy who loves her comics she doesn’t tell him that she’s the creator. This book is so now and reminds me of the importance of showing your true self and embracing your gifts. 

As a friend sputtered to me over a voice call: “I don’t understand. It’s free to read online; where is everybody?!” 

I agree wholeheartedly. O Human Star is that rare breed: a webcomic taken up over a decade ago, thoroughly plotted from the start, executed with masterful grace and gravitas by an author who loved it enough to do it justice. While executing this story of gay and trans self-understanding, Delliquanti themself realized they were trans, so the pronouns in my (signed!!) copies are different based on when they came out. Finding even a well-written cis gay man was hard in 2012, let alone such a deeply loving story about the entire LGBT community—and all that is to say nothing of the robots. Trans robots FTW!

Randall Munroe is the creator of the online comic xkcd. He’s a really funny guy who also happens to be crazy smart and knowledgeable about, well, just about anything science and tech, it seems.

In this book, he tackles critical questions, like how fast can you hit a speed bump while driving and live, and if there was a robot apocalypse, how long would humanity last? You see? Really critical questions.

This is more a grab it off the shelf, put your feet up, pick a random page, and have fun type of read rather than a cover-to-cover read (although, confession, I did, more than once), and it’s a whole lot of really smart fun.

Randall Munroe brings a magic combination of impressive science and fun cartoons that make me laugh. I found this book great fun throughout.

As I read Randall's absurd methods of solving problems—for example, literally moving a house by lifting it with multiple helicopters —I also have a sense that I'm actually learning, if not helpful science exactly, at least intelligent ways of thinking about problems.

Munroe had a job building robots at NASA—reading the book, you can tell he's a brilliant guy—and his charming and disarming distinctive stick men picture style keeps things fun all the way through.

As a cartoonist, the convention scene has always been nostalgic to me, and serves as the perfect backdrop for this slow-burning romance about a guy who cosplays and a girl who writes comics. Manga and anime, love and heartbreak, pocky and ramune, this love story hits all the nerdy notes in just the right way. 

This is the least book-like book on this list, to the point where it’s difficult for me to even pitch the plot. In short, it’s a comic about four children who play a video game that turns out to have the power to destroy and reshape multiple universes.

The printed comic edition of the story is only one of several mediums it’s taken on, with the book acting as a translation for fragments of forum posts, web pages, animations, and even video games.

I added it because it rewrote my brain chemistry on what a story is, forcing me to confront how prose changes across mediums and accessibility. It’s the very definition of metafiction, and to me, it was worth it.