Items20The creator’s order
  1. 1The Boys (2007)The Boys (2007)Published Jan 1, 2007The Boys, the full 72-issue run by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, 2006 to 2012 If the Prime Video series felt savage, the comic is meaner, filthier and more openly satirical. DC's Wildstorm imprint dropped it after six issues, and Dynamite picked it up from issue 7 with the same creative team,…0
  2. 2InvincibleInvincibleThe animated series is faithful enough that the comic can feel like a spoiler sheet, but it is the complete story: 144 issues from 2003 to 2018, with a deliberate ending Robert Kirkman built toward. Ryan Ottley drew most of the run after co-creator Cory Walker's opening issues, and his clean,…0
  3. 3The Walking Dead (2003)The Walking Dead (2003)Published Jan 1, 2003After years of television and a string of spin-offs, the comic is the version with a shape. Robert Kirkman ran it for 193 issues, with Charlie Adlard drawing most of them in stark black and white, and ended it without warning: Image even solicited fake issues 194 and 195 so the finale would land as…0
  4. 4Watchmen (1986)Watchmen (1986) 8.9/10 on Open LibraryPublished Jan 1, 1986HBO's Watchmen is not an adaptation at all but a continuation, set 34 years after the comic and built on the assumption that you know it. That makes Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's 12 issues the essential companion: the show's twists, symbols and returning characters only carry their full weight once…0
  5. 5Preludes & Nocturnes (1991)Preludes & Nocturnes (1991) 8.6/10 on Open LibraryPublished Jan 1, 1991The Sandman, starting with volume one, Preludes & Nocturnes Netflix's series follows the comic closely, so the reason to read it is the art. Neil Gaiman's story passed through a rotating cast of artists from one collection to the next, and the shifts in style, from the horror-comic grit of this…0
  6. 6The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite (2007)The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite (2007)Published Jan 1, 2007The Umbrella Academy, starting with Apocalypse Suite Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá's comic is far stranger and faster than the Netflix show. The first season followed this opening volume while borrowing from the second, Dallas, but where television spends hours on family drama, the comic throws out a…0
  7. 7Preacher (1995)Preacher (1995)Published Jan 1, 1995The television version reshuffled Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon's story so heavily that the comic is close to a new experience. Over 66 issues for Vertigo, it becomes a road story across America, with a preacher setting out to find God and confront him, and its jokes, blasphemy and violence go well…0
  8. 8Locke & Key (2008)Locke & Key (2008)Published Jan 1, 2008Locke & Key, the collected volumes by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodríguez Netflix turned this into a spooky family fantasy for a younger audience; the comic is a horror story first. It is far more violent, and it keeps the heavier material the series softened, from a mother still struggling with…0
  9. 9Sweet Tooth (2009)Sweet Tooth (2009)Published Jan 1, 2009The Netflix show is a gentle fairy tale. Jeff Lemire's comic, published by Vertigo from 2009 to 2013, is not: it is a grim post-apocalyptic road story that tips into horror, and it is far less sweet than the title suggests. Lemire wrote and drew it himself, and his scratchy, unpolished line suits a…0
  10. 10Y: The Last Man (2002)Y: The Last Man (2002)Published Jan 1, 2002FX on Hulu canceled its adaptation after a single season, so if you started it, this is the only way to find out how the story ends. Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra's series ran for 60 issues from 2002 to 2008, following the last man left alive after every other mammal with a Y chromosome dies at…0