There seems to be a lot of crossover between comic fans and video game fans, but there are a lot more gamers than there are comic geeks. I’ve been reading comics since I was a kid, and the artform has only continued to improve. If you are at all curious about comics, here are five books worth reading right now.
Locke & Key
After their father is brutally murdered, the three Locke children relocate to an estate in Lovecraft, Massachusetts. The children quickly discover that their new home is not what it seems as they find keys that open doors to the spirit realm, fix broken objects, and allow one to remove memories from their own head. Written by Joe Hill and illustrated by Gabriel Rodriguez, Locke and Key is both beautiful in its artistry and haunting in its storytelling. Read more here.
Batman
DC Comics' 52 reboot helped relaunch the company’s entire line, but Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s Batman might be the best of the bunch. The current run revolves around the Court of Owls, a mysterious secret organization embedded into the very architecture and history of Gotham City. When Batman begins to investigate a few mysterious murders, he quickly finds himself caught in the Owl’s snare. This story is still running in the pages of DC’s Batman, but I can’t wait to see how it finishes. The first trade comes out in May.
Chew
Tony Chu isn’t your average police detective; he’s a special agent at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. He’s also a Cibopath, meaning he gets psychic impressions every time he eats something. He can eat a carrot and learn about where it was grown and the kinds of chemicals used in its production, or he can chow down on a dead body and receive memories of the last moments of a suspect’s life. Chew is charmingly gory and bizarrely humorous. The first several trades are already out, so catch up now before the rest of the world learns about this brilliant comic.
Ultimate Spider-Man
In 2000, Brian Michael Bendis helped Marvel relaunch Spider-Man with a series that stripped away the character’s continuity and focused on what made Spider-Man special. Over a decade later the book was still going strong, but the new charcter had developed his own mythos, so Marvel did the unthinkable; they killed Spider-Man. The new Ultimate Spider-Man line follows Miles Morales, a lower-class teenager who discovers that he has many of Spider-Man’s classic powers. How Morales chooses to respond to his new-found responsibilities is just as engaging as the classic hero he was born from.
Preacher
I figured I’d throw at least one classic in here. If you think comics are all about superheroes in spandex then Preacher can set you straight. Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon tell the story of an unlikely preacher who becomes possessed by a supernatural entity that grants him the power to tell anyone what to do. So what does this man of the cloth decide to do? He teams up with a hard-drinking Irish vampire and an invincible undead cowboy and sets off to kill God. Just buy it.