Comics are the great overlooked medium – the source of countless household-name franchises, yet simultaneously ignored or dismissed by wider culture. However, some comics are so great that they break that rule, making fans out of anyone who encounters them.
For this list, we’re looking for the comics that receive the most love from everyone who reads them, not just the most widely read (a feat that’s often more attributable to brand recognition than quality.)
We’re also excluding comic strips like Garfield and Calvin and Hobbes, European bandes dessinées and manga, either because they deserve their own lists or because they’re different enough that it doesn’t make sense to compare them to American graphic novels.
All-Star Superman (2005-2008)
Created by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely
Let’s deal with the obvious entry first – the most beloved superhero comic of all time. Morrison embraces Superman lore past and present, crafting a semi-anthology patterned after the twelve labors of Hercules.
Morrison has long been a proponent of the idea that superheroes act as exemplars for regular people to try and live up to, depicting a Superman without restraint or reserve – superlative in his strength, intellect and, above all, kindness.
The iconic moment in All-Star Superman #10 where Supes prevents the suicide of a young woman is widely considered the greatest superhero moment of all time, and has been credited by some fans with saving their own lives.
Saga (2012-Ongoing)
Created by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples
Saga is the life story of a young girl born to lovestruck deserters from rival sides of a galaxy-spanning war. The series is famous for its unexpected twists, including major character deaths and shock time jumps.
Visually gorgeous, narratively satisfying and insightful in its depiction of deeply flawed characters, Saga made headlines when some retailers refused to display the first volume due to its cover image of protagonist Hazel breastfeeding as a baby.
Sex positive, defiantly inclusive and anti-war, Saga fans’ biggest complaint about the series is that it’s taken some lengthy hiatuses – a recommendation all by itself.
Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art (1993)
Created by Scott McCloud
Yes, there are comic documentaries, as lauded cartoonist Scott McCloud takes readers through the theory and history of sequential art. Countless would-be comic creators have sought out Understanding Comics to hone their craft, but McCloud’s comic is so compelling and insightful that anyone who picks it up will read to the end and find their eyes opened to the role images play in their life.
McCloud makes the most of the comic medium, effortlessly jumping between exacting infographics and casual flights of fancy, with each lesson also functioning as its own example. Understanding Comics is some of the most fun you can have with a graphic novel, while also spilling the secrets of the medium.
Love and Rockets (1982-Ongoing)
Created by Gilbert Hernández, Jaime Hernández and Mario Hernández
Love and Rockets is a series like nothing else – essentially a shared universe wherein the sibling creators depict a variety of different characters who age in real time. Stories center around the Central American village of Palomar and a Southern Californian friendship group, with slice of life themes set against a sci-fi/magical realism backdrop.
Love and Rockets prefaced the modern webcomic in its longterm, grounded storytelling, but has become something far more as the decades have passed – an incomparable character study that has matured and evolved with its creators and their intertwined vision.
Something Is Killing the Children (2019-Ongoing)
Created by James Tynion IV and Werther Dell’Edera
Something Is Killing the Children takes place in a world where mysterious monsters regularly consume children while remaining invisible and unknown to adults. The story follows Erica Slaughter – a wandering monster hunter who tracks down and ends child-slayings, accompanied by a talking stuffed animal.
One of the most successful creator-owned comics of all time, Something Is Killing the Children proved so popular that it has expanded into a shared universe (explored in comics like House of Slaughter and the novel Hope Is a Knife), with both live-action and animated adaptations coming soon.
Writer James Tynion IV will likely be remembered as the definitive comic creator of the 2020s, with The Department of Truth and The Nice House on the Lake offering very different flavors of horror that deserve just as much love as SIKTC (if not more.)
Hellboy (1994-Ongoing)
Created by Mike Mignola and John Byrne
Hellboy isn’t a franchise you simply like – it’s one you love. Mignola’s comic universe drops a no-nonsense, two-fisted hero into a world of seductive, vaporous folklore and allows the two to bring out the best in each other.
Mignola’s gorgeous art and industry-best page composition could almost convince you you’re reading an anthology of the most haunting stories from around the world, before Hellboy bursts through the nearest wall wrestling a werewolf, grounding the tale in the perspective of an everyday guy who just wants to wrap up his monster-hunting job so he can get home and eat pancakes.
The most well-known part of the franchise by dint of beginning it, Hellboy: Seed of Destruction spawned a decades-long series of Hellboy stories, as well as an entire universe of spin-off series – freaky police procedural B.P.R.D.; Edgar Allan Poe-tinged Sir Edward Grey, Witchfinder; and pulp-inspired Lobster Johnson. No movie adaptation has ever come close to doing Hellboy justice, including Guillermo del Toro’s celebrated duology.
Bone (1991-2004)
Created by Jeff Smith
Bone takes the perfect premise of “what if the characters from Looney Tunes were dropped into the world of Lord of the Rings?” and then refuses to let either one crowd out the other.
Fone Bone and his friends become beacons of innocence in a world that genuinely needs heroes, as encroaching evil threatens to consume the big, wide world they’ve only just discovered. In that context, the series’ humor becomes not just comic relief, but a way of connecting the characters back to the innocence they brought with them.
Bone is among the most fêted comics of all time, with ten Eisner Awards and eleven Harvey Awards across its publication.
Watchmen (1986-1987)
Created by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
A dark ‘whodunnit’ set in a world where costumed adventurers have been banned from public life, Watchmen changed the comic industry forever – albeit not in the way co-creator Alan Moore wanted.
Moore’s magnum opus (since painfully disavowed by its writer) is an excoriating takedown of superhero fiction, as just one genuinely superpowered individual brings the world to the precipice of nuclear war, not because of his actions but because of his mere existence.
Watchmen is the sacred cow of comics that many have tried to humble, and yet Moore’s dense, humane storytelling and Dave Gibbons’ art – tinged with nostalgia for a retro-future that never happened – deny every attempt. The only graphic novel ever featured on Time‘s list of the 100 Best Novels, Watchmen remains, as it has always been, a masterpiece.
Batman: Year One
Created by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli
Batman is one of the most elastic characters in fiction: equally at home in the campy ’60s TV show and the brooding psychosexual horror of Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth. Somewhere between the two, and at the heart of the character, is Batman: Year One.
Year One tells the story of Bruce Wayne’s first year in costume, as his mercilessly self-critical narration contrasts with the iconic urban legend he’s trying to create. A noir story at its core, Batman: Year One turns Gotham into a real place with neon-drenched streets and deadly back alleys.
Multiple adaptations have tried to bring the spirit of Year One to the screen, but they’ve all failed. David Mazzucchelli and Richmond Lewis’ peerless art is the ultimate example of what comics can do that no other medium is capable of – the experience of sequential, ‘moving’ art without a single wasted image.
Maus: A Survivor’s Tale (1991)
Created by Art Spiegelman
A quasi-autobiography, Maus adapts Spiegelman’s interviews with his father Valdek about his experiences during the Holocaust, as well as the troubled father/son bond between the two. It’s deeply personal yet achingly relatable, exploring the experience, memory and legacy of genocide.
Spiegelman famously depicts the humans in his story as animals to multifaceted effect, but this hasn’t stopped frequent attempts to censor or ban the work on the premise of its violence, profanity and minimal nudity, maintaining its red-hot status in public discourse since its first publication.
The discussion of whether comics count as true art is facile, but if evidence is needed, Maus ends all debate.
Those are our picks for the ten most widely beloved comics of all time – let us know in the comments below whether you agree with our picks, and what other titles belong on this list.
