Whoa. Well, Goldenboy's made some stellar recommendations and done all the work, so I'm just gonna cram in some of my favourites. Not necessarily in the same vein as Runaways, just stuff I like.
Unnecessary advice for comic newbies - Generally speaking, comics are released in individual issues and then, upon the conclusion of a favoured writer's run or a story arc, get reprinted in a Trade Paperback, generally abbreviated to TPB in nerdlier circles - pros, you get more story for your money and don't have to wait week to week, cons you don't get to be the first to read it and you don't get to grope the loverly, loverly cover art. Personally, I wait for the trade paperbacks, because otherwise I miss issues and go nuts.
Now, early in your comic reading career your Publisher Orientation will become clear. There are Marvel people, and there are DC people. Like Elvis and the Beatles, you can
kinda like both, but everybody has a preference. Broadly speaking, Marvel characters tend to be normal people burdened by their differences who want to fit in, DC characters tend to be rich/ alien/ invincible sociopath who don't necessarily want to fit in because they hate everything. Marvel has Spiderman, X Men and Fantastic bloody Four. DC has Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman. Marvel delights in our heroes personal lives; DC is more concerned with the complex morality of super folk having to interact with normal folk. Marvel tends to have a broader spectrum of characters, DC tends to be slightly grittier, and quite a bit more violent. Buffy fans tend to be Marvel people, as Joss Himself is, so the Wonder Woman thing was slightly unexpected.
There's other publishers too, but the Marvel/ DC thing more or less defines your taste in comics.
Now, that settled.
Spin off comics are almost universally awful. It's tempting to pick them up out of curiosity, but do so at your own peril. I keep doing this, and keep being reminded of why it's a bad idea. They play fast and loose with characterisation, the art is usually distractingly weird, and they"˜re obscenely overpriced. The
Buffy/ Angel comics, to be fair, are generally fairly good, but they range from Hey-not-bad to ARGH-MY-EYES!, so unless they're written by Joss Himself, be wary.
Fray is spectacularly good barring some problems with the pacing towards the end. Monumental things happen and pass by because, as I understand it, the comics were so delayed the last bit was a little rushed. Still, excellent. The Silent Hill comics are the worst I've ever read. The (new) Battlestar Galactica comics are actually rather good, it must be said, although if you can figure out which character is supposed to be who based on the art, you'll be doing well. Given how much comics influenced
The Matrix, it's no surprise that The Matrix comics are the best spin offs, doing something genuinely different with each story and using the premise as a starting point for new ideas. Because each story has different authors and artists, they vary a bit, but the quality is high all in all. I highly recommend "˜em.
Alan Moore is indisputably the greatest comic writer, and arguably, writer-full-stop, ever. His stuff is dense, bitter and multi-layered. It's not easy to read, and I wouldn't necessarily recommend him as a starting point, but he's the best there is, so there. The stuff he does can only possibly work in the medium it's in because there's so much going on at once. Notoriously cranky, Moore disassociates himself from adaptations of his work entirely, regardless of merit, and has his name omitted from the credits of any movies made. That hasn't stopped folk trying, and several attempts to translate his books have been made, with uneven results.
V for Vendetta is probably the best adaptation there's been, but that was one of the simplest of his stories, and even then much of the characters' moral complexity was lost. Anyway,
From Hell - which took nearly ten years to write -,
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and John
Constantine were all his creations, but his most important one was
Watchmen. Watchmen is the best there's ever been, and every two years or so somebody tries to make a movie out of it. I don't think it will ever work, because the whole story hinges on an enormous scope of events, characters, subplots, comics-within-comics and arcs coming together at the last minute in a great big pile of genius. Ostensibly about ageing superheroes, actually about"¦ well"¦ everything, but mainly the complexities of right and wrong. I think. Don't be put off by how expensive his books are - it's worth it, I promise you. The man is probably the last true Anarchist.
The
Preacher books are excellent, and a popular starting point. The Preacher of the title is a morally dubious Texan bloke who is trying to literally find God. With lots of guns, swearing, sex and booze. Not for the easily offended, the series has a start and a finish, and plenty in between, but the books stand alone so you can more or less dip in at any point and work out what's going on.
Lenore by Roman Dirge is a dementedly funny gothic series about a cute little dead girl who bears more than a passing resemblance to Tiny Toons' Elmyra. The art both cute and grotesque, and has made her the subject of a gajillion tattoos and avatars, but it's the warped sense of humour that really makes it. Whether she's accidentally killing the Easter Bunny or having yet another discussion about taxidermy - or even Mr. Taxidermy, a bloke with a deer skull for a head, the result of a "medical condition" apparently - she's just too damn cute. You can see some strips at Roman Dirge's Livejournal -
Linky
The Walking Dead is an ongoing series about people trying to survive a Zombocalypse, and I love it. The creators of the series, frustrated at how abruptly zombie movies always end, decided to remedy the problem by never ending. So it's like a soap opera with extra zombies, the practicalities of living with zombies rather than all the dramatic stuff in the immediate aftermath.
X Men has always been my favourite series, but the range is so huge that the standard varies madly. Your best bet is to pick up Trade Paperbacks you"˜ve heard good things about, particularly Joss' stuff and stories from the 1980's heyday. The hair will be weird, and Rogue will have shoulder pads, but the overall quality dipped considerably in the nineties, and it would be no exaggeration to say that Joss' run on X Men has probably saved the brand"˜s reputation. I love
X-Cutioners Song, but most people would recommend the
Dark Phoenix Saga. I used to love Generation X but their series was cancelled a few years ago. However, they were Runaway's direct ancestor and one of their characters, Chamber, crops up later on in the series, so they"˜re worth mentioning.
There's a short
Runaways/ Young Avengers crossover series, but be aware the Runaway's current line-up will be a spoiler in itself and it's not as good as the Runaways' own books.
Sorry about the Wall of Text, I just had time on my hands.
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