Pow! Bang! Comics aren’t just for kids anymore, Batman! You’re all smart, literary people, though, so I’m guessing you probably knew that already. Not only are comics not just for kids anymore (were they ever?), but they’ve recently become quite trendy somehow. There’s now a plethora of wonderful books to choose from, all intelligently written and often with beautiful artwork besides. At long last, we seem to have arrived at the union of words and pictures. And now, for a limited time only, you have the opportunity to be the first kid on your block to read them. Gee, that’s swell!

But, I hear some of you protesting, I haven’t read any comics since my Calvin and Hobbes phase at age eleven. Surely I can’t get used to them again! Balderdash. Let’s take a moment to look at some of the many ways you can start reading comics as painlessly as possible. I, too, once thought as you did, and now I can’t get enough of the confounded things. Your journey begins in the next paragraph.

Where shall we start first? Well, where better than Scott McCloud‘s remarkable book Understanding Comics? McCloud’s book was first published in 1993, when the stigma against comics was even greater than it is now (it’s still here, there’s no point in denying it). The book is written in a comic format, so you can learn about comics while you’re reading one–that’s like two books for the price of one! Or something like that. In any case, McCloud knows more about how comics work than anybody, so no matter how much prior exposure to comics you’ve had you’re sure to learn something. Furthermore, you’ll have a good time throughout, because McCloud is funny guy. At the end of the book you’ll feel like an expert, and be all charged up to tackle the next few items on your reading list:

We’ll start you out on the classics, how does that sound? You like classics, right? Good. The classic “graphic novels” are almost certainly Art Spiegelman’s Maus and Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, which are both amazingly famous and neither of  which are novels. (This is part of the reason I have no love for term “graphic novel,” in that it’s frequently innacurate.) These are both biographical comics, Maus being the story of Spiegelman’s father’s experiences in the Holocaust, and Persepolis being Satrapi’s memoir of growing up in Iran. They’re both deep, emotional, and unsettling. That’s why everyone likes them, aside from the fact that they’re about Important True-Life Issues.

Once you’re through with those you’ll probably be ready for something a bit more lighthearted, so let’s move on to Jeff Smith’s Bone series. The complete work weighs in at about 1300 pages, which is pretty impressive for one guy. That is a lot of drawings. The story is a whimsical fantasy about the cartoony Bone cousins getting wrapped up in a complicated Tolkienesque epic involving dragons, knights, and large hairy monsters. Many have praised it for its subtle satirical qualities, but it’s also just an exciting and amusing adventure. Read it and then give it to your little sister, she’ll like it too.

Okay, fun time’s over, let’s move on and see if there’s a comic about depression and the dark side of the American dream, those classic themes. Enter Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware. This novel follows the mundane adventures of Jimmy Corrigan as he travels from the city to suburbia to meet his estranged father for the first time. Throughout the book Ware plays on the banality of American living, faithfully reproducing kitschy signage and the incredibly dull conversations of day-to-day life. This is interspersed with excerpts from Jimmy’s extremely hyperactive imagination (ingeniously intertwined in a way that can make it hard to differentiate reality from fantasy) and the parallel life of his nearly-centenarian grandfather. Jimmy Corrigan is a tough nut to crack, but well worth the effort.

This concludes your brief introduction to the exciting world of comics. Where you go next is up to you. If you hurry you can even become an expert before everyone else does. Amaze your friends!