he handed me Watchmen (the graphic novel that 'revolutionized the comic book industry').
Wooooow. It was really incredible.
Watchmen is quite simply the greatest superhero comic ever written. There simply aren't any contenders that come close. (Although if I had to name some, I'd mention
The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller,
Batman: The Killing Joke by Moore and
Astro City by Kurt Busiek). If it wasn't for Art Spiegelman's
Maus,
Watchmen would have my vote for greatest comic ever.
Five Other Great Comic
Books:
-Neil Gaiman's
The Sandman: Perhaps the single best comic book for literary types who think that comic books are beneath them, and the only major comic I know of where Shakespeare is a semi-recurring character
-
Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis- Especially the volume
Lonely City, the first chapter of which I can hardly read without getting misty-eyed, despite the fact that generally it's an incredibly funny book. Basicly, it's the story of a journalist, very-closely based on the great Hunter S. Thompson, stuck in a city he hates sometime in the relatively-near future.
-
The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen by the incomprable Alan Moore- Perhaps even more literate than
The Sandman, and an incredibly fun read, provided you've brushed up on your nineteenth century literature before reading.
-Grant Morrison's run on
JLA. The most fun you'll ever have reading the adventures of Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, The Flash, Wonder Woman, Aquaman and the rest of DC's superheros. Morrison's work on
New X-Men is also sensational- the best works about Marvel's Mutants since the hey-day of Chris Claremont.
-Another Alan Moore selection, but I have to mention his story "For The Man Who Has Everything". It's easily the best Superman story I've ever read, and one of the single best issues ever published of any comic.