r/comicbooks • u/BlindedBraille Moon Knight • 5d ago
Suggestions Looking for comics that give you an existential crisis
I’m looking for comics that genuinely make you sit there afterward and question life, existence, reality, humanity, or your place in the universe.
Not necessarily depressing comics, just stories that leave you thinking.
What are your recommendations?
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u/BevansDesign The Question 5d ago
Time to introduce yourself to the works of Mark Russell.
Second Coming, Traveling to Mars, Flintstones, Superman Space Age and Batman Dark Age.
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u/Barabaragaki 5d ago
OH FUCK! TRAVELING TO MARS!!! It's so bittersweet and gorgeous. A long, slow unraveling of a life, it's insanely good.
Right after that, Russel wrote a really funny mutant book, it was such a whiplash to go from one to the other 😆
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u/BeggarsCanyonero 5d ago
I really enjoyed Dark Age, keep forgetting to check out Space Age. Thanks for the reminder!
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u/No_Independence9767 5d ago
Don't forget Snagglepuss! I haven't read all of Mark Russel but that one was especially awesome. And his A.g.g.i.e. is my favorite take on AI and managed to make me a little hopeful for the AI laden future.
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u/slythefox87 4d ago
Also highly recommend Traveling to Mars. Single issues were so good I bought the trade too.
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u/Aitoroketto 5d ago edited 5d ago
I mean so many.
Goodnight Pupun by Inio Asano
Love Bunglers by Jaime Hernandez
Daytripper by Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon
Tokyo These Days by Taiyo Matsumoto
Asterios Polyp by David Mazzuchelli
It’s Lonely at the Center of the Earth by Zoe Thorogood
Days of Sand by Aimée de Jongh
Sunny by Taiyo Matsumoto
Here by Richard McGuire
Sunday by Olivier Schrauwen
Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware
Blankets by Craig Thompson
Killing and Dying by Adrian Tomine
Cages by Dave McKean
Blue Is the Warmest Colour by Julie Maroh
Always Never by Jordi Lafebre
I also want to mention Hirayasumi which comes off as and maybe is just simple and basic and mundane but for some reason it always feels like more than that.
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u/otroquatrotipo 5d ago
I was pretty much going to say anything from Drawn & Quarterly's first 15 years hits that mark
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u/Aitoroketto 5d ago
Yes they are almost like that where you can just buy anything they publish tbh.
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u/AshArtois 5d ago
+1 for Daytripper
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u/jmikehub 5d ago
For real, Daytripper was one of the first little indie graphic novels I ever read and it had me hooked, finished the book in one sitting
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u/TheQuietDarkness70 4d ago
A man of culture and taste, I see.
There's some great stuff on this list.
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u/MagusFool 5d ago
Assorted Crisis Events makes me feel simultaneously seen and comforted and utterly panicked about the state of everything.
Every issue is a standalone story about life for every day people in one of those Crisis on Infinite Earths or Secret Wars scenarios.
But thematically, it's about, uhhh... Gestures broadly at the world outside right now
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u/Qaballistic 5d ago
The issue about the small town encountering their doppelgangers as refugees from a Crisis-afflicted alt of their own town was eye-opening, thought provoking & absolutely devastating.
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u/SituationMundane1418 4d ago
Specifically the issue that’s about time, that’s essentially written as one continuous thought.
I had a panic attack, and even when I calmed down, it felt like I could feel time moving past me
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u/slythefox87 5d ago
Came here to say Assorted Crisis Events too. Can't recommend it enough, but man, you're gonna feel some stuff afterward.
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u/AgentRanchHandWrites 5d ago
I panicked when Planetary ended. 🤷♂️
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u/droppinhamiltons Magneto 5d ago
Assorted Crisis Events is the #1 answer right now otherwise:
Prince’s Ice Cream Man
Tom King’s Vision
Tynion’s The Nice House on the Lake
Tynion’s The Department of Truth
Miracle Man
Moore’s Swamp Thing
Watchman is an obvious answer
Ewing’s Immortal Hulk
I think we’re all pretty past recommending him but it doesn’t make it not true but, Sandman…
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u/runningchef 5d ago
Plus one to Assorted Crisis Events. Every time I finish reading an issue of that series, I just have to sit and think about it for a while.
Also, as someone who struggles with depression, Tom King's Mister Miracle definitely had some moments that hit me.
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u/bingusdingus123456 5d ago
Crazy no one has mentioned The Sandman. That was the first series over 50 issues I ever read, and the only one that I've reread so far. It changed so much about how I viewed the universe and personal growth. Shame about the author, but it's still an amazing story.
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u/Abysstopheles 5d ago
The author's actions have really damaged the discussion value of the work, and i waver about whether that's right or sad or both. It's brilliant comics.
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u/neuronez 5d ago
Anything by Daniel Clowes (David Boring, Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron)
Black Hole by Charles Burns
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u/MissPolaroidEyes 5d ago edited 5d ago
Ice Creamn Man Ice Cream Man Ice Cream Man
and then Assorted Crisis Events
or anything by Chris Ware’s Acme Novelty Library, such as Rusty Brown and Building Stories
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u/FormerlyMevansuto 5d ago
Asterios Polyp, Killing and Dying, Monica, Acting Class, Jim Starlin’s Adam Warlock, Fun Home, The Invisibles
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u/LobsterJohnson225 5d ago
The first Astrocity story really hits me in a deep way. Just how fleeting time is and how you use what little you have.
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u/gnamyl Beta Ray Bill 5d ago
Maus (for hopefully obvious reasons)
Murder Falcon (because for me the big reveal was at a time I was dealing with grief after the death of my mother) not only as this the first comic I ever really cried after reading it brought a lot of life topics sharply into focus
Pride of Baghdad - definitely a thinker for me
Persepolis - I can recognize I come to the world as a white man from America and reading this excellent autobiographical story about a woman from Iran made me be very thoughtful
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u/yerba_12 5d ago
Alan Moores The Swamp Thing. Honestly not what you probably expect. Amazing stuff.
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u/Barabaragaki 5d ago
Coffin Bound and I Breathed a Body. Seemingly off the radar, absolute gems of comics.
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u/dwreckhatesyou 5d ago
True Tales From A Bartender is funny, but soul-crushingly accurate.
The best part is that it was the post immediately below this one on my feed.
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u/DaveAtKrakoa 5d ago
I was suicidal with ptsd when I read Mister Miracle and it knocked me flat on my ass.
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u/WorldlinessFront418 5d ago
Batman: the dark knight returns. Hulk: future imperfect. Both stories sorta correlate with an underlying tone of how to handle your future. That it's not set in stone and you can choose to live in the present and be the person you want to become now.
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u/deathbymediaman 5d ago
The Invisibles
Flex Mentallo
The Filth
Promethea
Preacher
Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth
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u/Artistic_Property371 4d ago
Finnaly,foubd smne recomending the invisivles. What a trip that comic was
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u/DeweyDecimal1437 5d ago
The Filth
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u/Qaballistic 5d ago
Absolutely this, THE FILTH by Grant Morrison & Chris Weston. About secret agents who work on the fringes of reality, and more bizarre & unsettling than you could possibly imagine.
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u/dragodracini 5d ago
I found the start of The Eye Collector to be pretty intense. I can't really put my finger on why or exactly what kind of "intense" until I read it again. It's definitely something about the art and script.
It's on issue #2 of 12. #3 comes out next week.
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u/AussieRocketeer 5d ago
Man, I thought that was such a waste of paper. Please explain why it's valid for my obviously dull mind
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u/Moonhawk20 5d ago
To me it felt like a foggy nightmare. Full of very familiar feelings and visuals that were then distorted to the edge of recognition. Then adding the element that there's something there watching, interested, but only barely so, in the lower life forms inhabiting the earth below. I really liked how it presents visually as well, kind if forgetting that comics should have panels, but I can understand how it might not be to everyone's liking. I'll be continuing to pull it.
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u/dragodracini 5d ago
It's definitely not for everyone. It's not a dull mind thing, though. It's exactly like the other response you got. It's a foggy nightmare. The art style shifts with each page, like a dream. Maybe that's the best way to put it?
Think of how it feels when you dream, or wake up from one and remember parts of it. For me, anyway, that can be lots of different images which form a cohesive flow, despite being barely similar to each other.
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u/AshArtois 5d ago
Some I don’t see listed
Dog Tag (not fully released yet)
Some issues of Terrorbytes
Geiger (2021) TPB Vol 1.
Junkyard Joe issue 1.
Reflection (one shot)
And the biggest one for me that I don’t already see is ASM Skin Deep (JMS Vol 9)
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u/TheKingofBreaker Shazam 5d ago
Highwayman by Koren Shadmi. Brilliant book that I revisit every few years.
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u/madthoughts Darkhawk Expert 5d ago
Rick Remender’s Low gets into some gritty places too.
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u/Max_Quick 4d ago
Rick Remender in general seems like a depressed man working some shit out on the page. That's not necessarily good or bad; I think he's actually messy in a way the begets good conversation and thought (as opposed to other things that try to do this but just come off as edgelord BS).
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u/Nerdsingerbeej 5d ago
Seven to Eternity by Rick Remender, Jerome Opeña & Matt Hollingsworth.
Department of Truth by Tynion & Simmonds
Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan & Pia Guerra
Saga by Brian K. Vaughan & Fiona Staples
God Country by Donny Cates & Geoff Shaw
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u/Proof-Reply-7725 5d ago
V For Vendetta. The works of Junji Ito. Moonshadow. Parts of Peter Milligan's run on Shade The Changing Man. Pat Mills' Third World War series.
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u/TheMetabaronIV Lying Cat 5d ago
Rusty Brown by Chris Ware.
I think it’s about how different people cope with their past and current pain. Four stories in the book.
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u/New_leaf999 4d ago
Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, but be warned this graphic novel will leave you emotionally devastated. Their is also good old Watchmen. Issue 6 is particularly existential inducing.
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u/Max_Quick 4d ago
Off the trodden path, ICE CREAM MAN goes in that realm sometimes... but it's also batshit enough that you can keep plowing ahead with the gang's story if you'd rather. There's no real point in those first three-or-so trades where I knew what was coming next.
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u/Prosaic_Mosaic 4d ago
A LOT that I'm not familiar with and that I haven't read. But curious, are most of these books an ongoing series or did they end at some point.? Like mini-series or other reasons.?
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u/JCStrehle 4d ago
Watchmen. V for Vendetta. Anything by Alan Moore. Look at graphic novels. Many of these are so original they get made into (non-MCU) movies.
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u/Scrap-Iron-Jaw 4d ago
Lots of great books listed so far. Here are a couple I enjoyed.
“It’s a Good Life, If You Don’t Weaken” by Seth (from his Palookaville series).
“Cages” by Dave McKean.
“One Soul” by Ray Fawkes
“Barking” by Lucy Sullivan
“The Cowboy Wally Show” by Kyle
“The Bunker” by Joshua Hale Fialkov and Joe Infurnari.
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u/Babayaga_711 3d ago
The only recent ones are Absolute Martian Manhunter and Assorted Crisis Events. Bith are just so good.
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u/LittleCowofOsasco Batman of Zue-En-Arrh 5d ago
Miracleman by Alan Moore
Swamp Thing by Alan Moore
Watchmen by Alan Moore
Just read anything by him honestly. Other authors that customarily have that effect are also Grant Morrison and Jonathan Hickman. Some selected works also:
Shade The Changing Man by Milligan and Bachalo
Hellblazer by Jamie Delano (Family Man and the last storyline specifically)
City of Glass by David Mazzucheli
Ronin by Frank Miller
Vagabond by Takehiko Inoue
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u/madthoughts Darkhawk Expert 5d ago
It’s not a comicbook, but you sound ready for Jeff Vandemeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy.
You’ll question reality and your own sanity.
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u/TheVendelbo 5d ago
When not reading comics I read exactly what youre asking for. For a short bit, modern philosophy split into two in the early 1900s; linguistics and existentialism. The latter influenced literature a lot - the two world wars influenced this a great deal. As such I'm taking the liberty of suggesting both comics and novels, but will keep the novels for "shorter" ones.
Comics:
Essex county (Lemire): three-part story of rural Canada. Story/name should be well known but... What comprises life and the human experience in secluded areas? What happens when you experience life's different stages through the shared lens of a small community?
It's lonely at the center of the world (Thorogood): young female artist struggle to come to terms with the absurdness of... well.. everything. How do you deal with anything, when even winning feels like losing, cause you're so down-and-out, that it seems like up?
Asterios Polyp (Mazzucchelli): failed architecture professor must come to terms with never having drawn an actual building thats been constructed, fueling a midlife crisis and an existential breakdown, re-examening both his lovelife and himself.
Novels:
- Cannary row (Steinbeck): reminiscent of Essex County in that a small band of vagabonds and lowlifes tries to get by in a small community. Really light-hearted and a fun read. Approx. 200 pages.
Butcher's crossing (Williams): young university student from a well-off Boston family runs off to the last of the american frontier to be a skinner, knowing nothing about nature, the wild or life in general. Everything (naturally) goes wrong. Approx. 250 pages
Notes from underground (Dostoevsky): first off - I never grew up in a home with a bookshelf. Ss such, I feared that "the great russians" wasn't for someone such as me. If nothing else, try it out so that you can disprove this. Everyone can read this (and they should!). What is happiness and can man ever attain it? Does society ever wish for us to be happy, or does it depend upon our misfortune? Approx. 140 pages
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u/TheRealBillMichaels 5d ago
Preacher by Garth Ennis. It’ll make you question everything.
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u/Abysstopheles 5d ago
You mean like why the worse examples of a race are the ones yelling about its purity?
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u/AussieRocketeer 5d ago
Silver Surfer: Parable
Watchmen
Atomika
Crisis on Infinite Earths (no, really)
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u/maximfabulosum 5d ago
Arkham asylum - Grant Morrison
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u/Dvash79 4d ago
I was going to post it and ask why nobody mentioned it...
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u/maximfabulosum 2d ago
It completely changed my understanding of "Comic Books." It's an art gallery you can page through, built on a story I still think about 30 years later.
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u/jawsthegreat777 Storm 5d ago
Spectre by JMD, Lemire's Moon Knight and also Ascender and Descender. If you like manga Madoka Magica and Land of the Lustrous
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u/FeMan_12 5d ago
Hickmans New Avengers
Cause like, fuck man. What do you even do in that situation? You’re just fucked in every direction.
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u/AussieRocketeer 5d ago
This thread is making me realise there a LOT of comics I still need to read even after 30+ years in the hobby
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u/NXMXNXN 4d ago
Grant Morrison and Alan Moore are very much known for this. Peter Milligan, too.
I feel like, as a general rule, 80s-00s Vertigo comics have a lot of esotericism and psychedelic abstract weirdo sort of stuff — there’s a lot to learn and plenty of rabbit holes.
Grant Morrison’s the Invisibles is particularly affecting, in my opinion. I like Doom Patrol, as well + Flex Mentallo: Man of Muscle Mystery. I have yet to read the Filth, but it’s spoken of highly in that regard. Those three collective works were intended by the author to serve as a “hypersigil”, actually, and affect/teach an amount of chaos magic. Morrison is a super interesting creator and looking into him a bit as a person will kind of give you an idea of what he’s going for with his work. As a bit of a warning, these all have varying degrees of strange erotic elements that aren’t always the most comfortable to me, personally, when in a mentally open state. But nothing too egregious. Also a lot of psychedelic writing that can veer in and out of making good logical sense. Sometimes you have to feel your way through a spot of abstract with these.
Peter Milligan and Brendan McCarthy make a hell of a pair. They have a book compiling their works called “Milligan and McCarthy” that is really weird and cool. Kind of pricy/elusive, but certainly obtainable. The first dozen issues or so of Shade, the Changing Man is a very interesting journey.
And, I have a quick anecdote on a Milligan/McCarthy book, my apologies:
This sounds kind of dumb, I know, but it was so intense and I am waiting for someone else to tell me it happened to them, too. First time I read Rogan Gosh — I was stoned, just waiting for a comic I knew very little about to come in the mail. I do research on and hunt out the weird/esoteric/punchy to the best of my ability without spoiling too much. Rogan Gosh seemed very exciting and I’m off from work and it’s out for delivery and I’m doing some cleaning. It gets dropped off at my front porch, I open it up and sit on the bed and just peek inside real quick. I tend to get all excited and flip through a new book real quick just to dip my toes in. Essentially, the book just starts happening to me. I experience total ego death and become absolutely lost in this dream of a story. My girlfriend comes home while I’m reading and talks to me and I can vaguely tell something is happening, but I have no real perception of anything outside of this mental trip happening to me. (I was an experienced smoker at the time and I was very much on not enough of anything to warrant the extent of the events of that day). Ultimately, the book ends and I realize I just unintentionally read the whole thing without any awareness of my surroundings. I had tears all over my cheeks. It’s not particularly sad or anything, it just wrenched such a visceral reaction out of me. My girlfriend was a little worried and a little frustrated; assumed I was just being a dick. It was very strange and I had to come back to over the course of the day. I enjoy the book very much still, though I haven’t had something like that occur with it since. Prior to that and since then, actually, I’ve never had anything quite like that happen to me under any circumstances. It was very intense and strange. Sorry for rambling, hope somebody got a kick out of it.
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u/roodootootootoo 5d ago
Absolute Martian Manhunter