lukewarmwater

Sandman volume 4 - Seasons of Mists - this is considered by a lot to be as good if not better the dark knight returns and watchmen
Transmetropolitaian - first trade is like 7 bucks
Sin City - a dame to kill for - the best sin city story not told in the movie
Stray Bullets
Caricature by daniel clowes
City of Glass
bone by jeff smith, the first volume is fairly cheap
Torso
Fortune and Glory

okay now some other people might mention the following titlesas being great, but dont get them because they are in fact crap:
batman hush
the ultimates or any ultimate book
30 days of night

kevin75

i am gonnna disagree.

hush wasn't THAT bad. was it the best bats story ever? not by a long shot, but it was entertaining and lee's art, as always, was great.

the ultimates was pretty good as far as updates go. it being the modernization of the avengers, it could've been worse.

30 days of night was just damn cool, as were the sequels.

Rocketdog2000

Excellent, must read Batman story - but not sure if it's really a Graphic Novel. Mainly because it's too short of a story. I'd be more apt to call it a Prestige Format - one shot, but I could be wrong, too. Good story, none the less.

For some other good, but older, Batman stuff, you should also check out the following...

Batman : Dark Knight Returns
Batman : A Death In The Family
Batman : A Lonely Place Of Dying
Batman : Ten Nights Of The Beast
Batman : Venom
Batman : Prey
Batman : Year Two

Along with Watchmen, some of my other favorite, similar style tales

Kingdom Come - possible view of the DC Universe future
Squadron Supreme - a Marvel tale set in parallel universe, that's very much a different take on Justice League styled characters. Also check out any of the recent re-do series based on this Supreme Power.
Stormwatch : Change or Die - set in the Wildstorm universe.

And if you like different takes on similar charcters, ala The Justice League or The Avengers - check out...
Stormwatch : A Finer World, and any of first two series of The Authority trade paperbacks.
JLA : The Nail and JLA : Another Nail - two "elseworld" (Or, alternate, not in continuity) Justice League tales.

Two other exceptional reads from the Wildstorm universe, that are also collected in Trade paperback form are...
Planetary - if you like a good homage to classic comics, movies, literature, pulp novels ...this is your book. One of my all time favorite series, period.
Sleeper - a good 'man undercover infiltaring the enemy' story, with mature overtones.

Not a superhero, but still a great story...
Midnight Nation - written by J. Michael Strazynski (Babylon 5, Rising Stars, Spiderman, Supreme Power), this is a supernatural story about a policeman on a quest to regain something very imporant which was taken from him, the strange world he encounters on the way, and the ultimate confrontation with...? I'll leave that a surprise. If you like(d) Constantine, you'd proabbly dig this, too.

bdshort

Re: the Sandman series. Is this something that should be read in order, or does each volume stand on its own? I've read most of Gaiman's novels (except the newest one that just came out), so I'm definitely interested in this series too.

Brian

Chew

With Sandman, there's a good mix of completely standalone stories and arc stories. Some trades could likely be read out of order, others no.

But, I would say if you're going to read it at all: do so in order.

Ravager61

Has anybody read Palomar? I just go through it and found it very entertaining. Its definately not action or superhero stuff which might turn some off though. I'm also reading the complete bone now and am finding it extremely enjoyable. Oh and Batman : the Dark Night Returns is good if you enjoy Frank Miller or Batman.

Eric D.

Y: The Last Man - simply amazing!
The Walking Dead
The Astonishing X-Men
Runaways
The Flash (start with Blood Will Run if you can get it for a decent price)

bdshort

Just wanted to bring up something interesting I saw the other day. I went to the local library to see if they had any graphic novels for checkout. Went straight to the adult fiction section, and didn't see anything (was looking for Frank Miller stuff), so I checked the computer, and all of their (limited selection) of books is down in the childrens non-fiction section, including a copy of Watchmen! I was thinking I should point out that a lot of these books are not for kids, but I didn't.

Rocketdog2000

Noticed the same thing in the libraries around here, too. People just can't seem to get over the conception that 'comics are for kids' - when in reality, hardly any 'kids' read them at all anymore.