Watching my son become a veracious graphic novel reader is one of the purest delights of my entire adult life. After several years of only very gently pushing Marvel superhero toys to replace or join his dinosaurs (didn’t take), offering to read him the Marvel encyclopedia instead of the Pokedex in kindergarten (wasn’t interested), and trying to get his first words to be “All Hail Doctor Doom” (that one worked, Doom be praised), turns out I just calmly needed to wait for him to learn to read and I wouldn’t be able to tear him away from comics.
My wife and I have always enjoyed reading to the kids, but in Kindergarten (somewhere in the 5 to 6 year old range) my son started blazing through books on his own and hasn’t looked back. Every week now is full of library visits filling up our basket with as many Magic Treehouse chapter books and comics that we can carry.
Below you’ll find our favorites through less than two years of his reading journey. Keep in mind, this is quite different than my own personal favorite comics. Although that list includes popular all-ages fare like Jeff Smith’s Bone, my kids haven’t been quite ready to dive into that one yet (although I did talk him into me reading some short stories from the Tall Tales collection!). So you can check out the CBH best comics of all time for assorted all ages or middle grade picks that I think sit among the best of the best, but this list is pure, unADULTurated kid-friendly comics.
Investigators
While it’s not the series of kids graphic novels that has most thoroughly become an identity (and here, I am course talking about our identity as parents), John Patrick Green’s Investigators were our first shared love, and remain a favorite. Investigators follows Mango and Brash, two Alligators and agents of S.U.I.T., as they stop evil schemes, take on myriad disguises, and throw out more puns than a dad on the last leg of his six pack. It’s funny, heartfelt, and quite good at teaching wordplay in the English language. Plus, even though the anthropomorphic investigators travel through sewer pipes to get to their secret base and exit-and-enter through toilets, the series is lighter on potty humor than most of the comparable comics (this is for you, not the kids!).
If your little one enjoys Investigators – and I’ll be baffled if they don’t! – the spinoff series, Agents of SUIT is a must. Plus, the spinoffs are co-written with Dr. McNinja and Gwenpool creator Christopher Hastings, guaranteeing an extra infusion of zany antics.
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Why your Kid Will Love It: Goofy alligators and animals crack jokes and stop light-hearted crimes.
Why you’ll love it: More puns per part than just about any comic, and super fun to read together.
Dogman
There have been three major obsessions that permeated our household through seven years: Dinosaurs, Pokemon, and Dogman. Nothing has done more to fan the flames of my son’s love of reading than Dav Pilkey’s irreverent, comedic, and frequently inane Dogman. It’s the kind of comic that as an adult I completely didn’t understand (I’ve read Bone, and you good sir, are NO BONE *dog whimpers*), and after watching my 6 going on 7 year old read, I completely endorse. Pilkey fully embraces the wackiness, potty humor, and attention spans of new readers, and has created a comics universe unlike anything else in the young reader space.
Odds are that if your kids haven’t already started Dogman, you’ll soon be asking “what are other comics like Dogman?” It’s straight up the young reader standard. For my money, once your child hits their 75th read of “A Tale of Two Kitties,” they’ll be asking you the same. I’d highly recommend Dogman: The Musical as an extra soundtrack during this phase (Genuinely baffled how this didn’t win all the Tonys) , as well as the next item on the list!
Why your Kid Will Love It: Flip O Ramas! Sniffin’ butts! Dogman!
Why you’ll love it: God, it’s great seeing a kid read the same book 50 times!
Cat Kid Comic Club
I was very skeptical when I heard there was a Dogman spinoff comic, but it’s my favorite of Pilkey’s works. My boys love them, and we’re going to grow up on a whole generation of new comic book creators who got their start pouring over these pages. Where Dogman was the start of my kid’s voracious appetite to read comics, Cat Kid Comic Club was the start of his desire to make comics. The spinoff graphic novels are endlessly positive and inspiring, encouraging kids everywhere, with any interests, to make their own stories. It’s full of good advice, too, both big picture and small, with insights on how to draw, creating with perspective, and the benefits of failing (the club’s first assignment is to make a super bad comic!).
Plus, Cat Kid Comic Club highlights how meta Pilkey’s work can get, which is quite fun to see introduced for a whole new generation of young readers. Dogman is itself crafted by Harold and George, two tween creators (also the duo famously responsible for Pilkey’s first mega-hit, Captain Underpants). And then within that creation, you have the comics made by the kids of Cat Kid Comic Club. It’s a creative explosion of different styles of comics with Pilkey inhabiting the persona, tone and style of each child’s attempted first comics.
Why your Kid Will Love It: More Dogman Universe!
Why you’ll love it: Few kids graphic novels are better at encouraging children to make their own art.
Calvin & Hobbes
Finally, something for you and the kids! For my wedding, my brother-in-law got my wife and I the complete hardcover collection of Bill Watterson’s iconic newspaper comic strip. I cracked a strip every once in a blue moon, but it wasn’t until my son hit kindergarten that I considered maybe it’d be fun to read them together. I’m so glad I did because it turns out we both love reading Calvin & Hobbes together.
There are plenty of Watterson’s musings that fly over the kiddo’s heads, but mostly the lil’ stinker’s parent-pranks, schoolyard antics, and incredible imaginative transformations completely captivate my boys. No joke, if my 7 year old is about to melt down, I can just quietly slide a volume of Calvin & Hobbes his way, and an hour later he’ll be pouring over it none the wiser. It’s one of man’s greatest discoveries since fire.
Why your Kid Will Love It: Calvin is a 6 year old menace with an unstoppable imagination. Just like your little one.
Why you’ll love it: Bill Watterson’s work is one of the 15 best comic books of all time!
Hilo
When I interviewed Brian Michael Bendis earlier this year, he told me one of his favorite tricks to raising kids, and encouraging their passions, was that instead of telling them how much you think they’ll like a work of art, to just leave it laying around their space. Their natural curiosity will pull them into obsession in a way their developing realization that their parents are deeply uncool would never allow! This is how I got my son hooked on Hilo by Judd Winnick, leaving the first volume on his pillow, and then watching him go off to the races!
Winnick’s Hilo is the story of a young alien cyborg crashed to Earth, and the kids who find him and discover their own bravery with family, friends and school along the way. It’s a wonderful combination of silly and heartfelt, with a host of aliens, robots, and a diverse cast of characters.
Why your Kid Will Love It: Hilo’s confusion at humanity is quite funny to kids, and the catchphrase “Outstanding!” during crashes plays very well at the playground.
Why you’ll love it: Judd Winnick cut his oats writing Marvel’s Exiles and knows how to craft some compelling comics.
Spider-Man: Cosmic Chaos / Spidey and his Amazing Friends
One of the most common questions parents have is where to find all the Marvel superhero comics for kids (or, you know, DC comics for kids, I don’t want to make this political!). We’ve covered this on CBH in the past, but honestly, now that I have young readers, I fully realize how confusing and oddly challenging it can be to find proper Marvel comics for kids. The animated Spidey and His Amazing Friends is one of the first pieces of superhero media that connected with my kids (my dreams of watching 90’s X-Men and Batman with toddlers have been thoroughly dashed to date), and there are good, simple versions of these comics for new readers. The last few years, Marvel has even made print versions available for Free Comic Book Day at your local comic book store. (For the DC version, the DC Super Hero Girls line of comics are really well regarded!)
A little more under the radar, Marvel has outsourced their young readers comics to a variety of different publishers (I simply do not have time to get into this!), and Abrams Comics recently released Spider-Man: Cosmic Chaos from Mike Maihack. This is the third volume in Maihack’s Mighty Marvel Team-Up series, and it’s excellent early readers versions of Spidey from a talented author and illustrator. Too many kids versions of Marvel comics are just watered down facsimiles of better stories, but these are truly high quality original work designed for your kids.
(As a bonus recommendation, we’ve enjoyed watching the newer Moon Girl & Devil Dinosaur on Disney+ as a family, and there’s a new young readers graphic novel out now called Moon Girl & Devil Dinosaur: Wreck and Roll!)
Why your Kid Will Love It: Find me the kid who doesn’t want to put on a Spidey costume and jump off the couch.
Why you’ll love it: You get to share your passion for supes and comics with the kids!
Mayor Good Boy
During 1st-grade summer break, we set up a slip ‘n slide in the backyard, and watched with fascinated horror as our sweet innocent first-grader asked us to record only to yelp, “Hey, it’s your boy, like and subscribe,” before doing some sweet moves down the slick water. When I asked him – with impressive calm, restraint! – where he learned the phrase, he sweetly said, “From Mayor Good Boy!” You know, the graphic novel about a town with a dog for a mayor, which I purchased from author Dave Scheidt at Chicago Comic Con after he assured me it would be great for fans of Dogman. I’ve created a Gen Alpha influencer, and entirely through encouraging his love of reading!
The real takeaway, of course, is that my kids love reading Mayor Good Boy – now 3 books deep into the series – to the point that it’s influencing their catchphrases.
Why your Kid Will Love It: My oldest says, “When they go to the zoo all the animals escape and you get to see all the animals. Literally. I love that.”
Why you’ll love it: Cute, heartfelt and great for dog lovers.
The Mighty Bite
One of the clearest indicators that I’ve shifted from cool young bachelor to cool young father/bachelor is my eagerness to receive review copies of graphic novels has shifted dramatically to books my kids might love. I hit the jackpot with Nathan Hale’s The Mighty Bite, a goofball graphic novel where a crew of prehistoric creatures mostly try to get internet famous. It’s in the Dogman vein of silliness and compelling characters, and my boys love both the first book and the sequel, The Mighty Bite: Walrus Brawl at the Mall.
Apart from famously regretting that he had but one life to live for his country, Hale is most well-known for the series of American history graphic novels Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales. These seem quite good for young readers as well, although I can’t vouch for them personally!
Why your Kid Will Love It: Dinosaur-adjacent characters who act like tiny little nuts.
Why you’ll love it: You’ll be looking for “books like Dogman” for most of your waking hours, and this hits the bill.
Paker’s Review: I like Amber because it reminds of a Crocodile, and I like reptiles.
Dinosaur Sanctuary
I think Itaru Kinoshita’s Dinosaur Sanctuary is the first manga I bought for myself with the expectation that I could also read or share with the kids. The Seven Seas series is “What if Jurassic Park didn’t always go to hell,” with a focus on the zookeepers who care for the dinosaurs that were discovered on an island in 1946. It’s a great way for kids to get their dinosaur fix without the scares of Jurassic World, and Kinoshita crafts a sweet look at the young caretakers who keep these rare creatures in health.
Realistically, Dinosaur Sanctuary is written for all ages, meaning the pacing and vocabulary can be a bit advanced for younger readers. Nonetheless, it’s a good challenge, and an enjoyable shared read.
Why your Kid Will Love It: Dinosaurs! Zoos! Dinosaur Zoooooooooos!
Why you’ll love it: It’s nice to mix in some genuine all ages manga with the kiddos!
Pokémon: Sword and Shield
When I first tried reading manga, I read Attack on Titan backwards for 17 pages before I realized what was happening. This will never happen to my kids, not because I’ll teach them, but because Pokémon manga exists. There are loads more Pokémon manga to choose from, and they all seem to capture virtually the same spirit of the more familiar anime. We started with the 10 volume Sword and Shield series manga since that’s the video game we started with as well.
This is a good, clean easy series of first reads that accomplishes its one mission critical objective: Lots of Pokémon and battles!
Why your Kid Will Love It: A chance to relive their Pokémon adventures from the anime or video games.
Why you’ll love it: I want to be the very best, like no one ever was BUM BuM BUM to catch them is my request, to train them is my cause DAD DANCES EVERYWHERE
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Saturday Morning Adventures
One of our Uncles introduced TMNT Shredder’s Revenge to the boys on Switch (great early video game to play as a family!), and it was off to the sewers from there. While I quite like IDW’s Ninja Turtles comics (the Sophie Campbell run is particularly radical), they’re decidedly not for young readers. The Saturday Morning Adventures collections recapture the vibe, spirit and characters of the 1987 cartoon, and the cartoon theme song you know and love. Erik Burnham and Tim Lattie make sure to fill the pages with all the old faves – Shredder, Bebop, Rocksteady, Casey Jones – in kid-friendly fair.
If your kids grew up on different animated Turtles fair, it’s pretty easy to find collections that capture the designs and attitude of later generations. For example, my boys have primarily caught the 2018 Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on Netflix, and there’s a complete adventures comic book collection as well.
Why your Kid Will Love It: Leonardo’s cool, Donatello does machines
Why you’ll love it: Raphael is cool but crude (gimme a break), Michelangelo is a party dude (PAAAARRRRTTAAAAYYYY!)
Dinosaur Explorers
When I was a kid, my parents wouldn’t let me watch Power Rangers (and frankly, I’ve never recovered). I think most 90s kids in religious households have some variation of this – I’ve heard it from Rugrats to The Simpsons. As a cool, hot millennial, I’ve obviously held out against restraining media for silly reasons like “it will turn you into a violent ninja.” Dinosaur Explorers pushes those limits.
This series of graphic novels is the absolute leader in “Comics I can’t stand but my kid really likes.” One of the primary reasons he likes it is the kids say words he’s not allowed to (don’t worry, this is of the ‘S-word = Stupid’ variety). But also this is a quick fix of Carcharodontosaurus v. Camarasaurus action, and when you love dinos like these kids do, that’s always gonna hit.
Why your Kid Will Love It: Dinosaurs battling everywhere and it speaks their language.
Why you’ll love it: You won’t, but your kid will be in their room reading for half an hour, and take the win where you can, right?
Cretaceous / Jurassic
If your household is anything like ours, you haven’t seen the floor in years, and you can never have enough dinosaur books. Cretaceous and Jurassic are two of our favorite all dinos all the time works. Despite the similar era-based names, they’re from entirely different publishers and artists. Cretaceous is from Todd Galusha and Oni Press (the publisher of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World), and is a wordless story focusing on a lost T-Rex. Jurassic is from Ted Rechlin and Rextooth Studios, and alternates between stories of a lost baby Brontosaurus, and a Big Momma Allosaurus. If you’re worried about providing a wordless story for new readers, I do think there’s value in processing the visual storytelling and language of comics as well. This is especially great before your toddlers are quite reading, as we’ve seen our non-readers pour over the pages of comics before they recognize any of the words on their own.
In addition to enjoying their own reads, my youngest toddler has recently adopted Jurassic as his bedtime reading. Nothing says sweet dreams like “Thunder Lizards” and Allosaurus vs. Torvosaurus fights over territory and Stegosaurus carcasses. My oldest particularly likes Cretaceous because it shows all the dinosaurs names at the end, and it’s great for providing reference materials for drawing.
Why your Kid Will Love It: Have I mentioned how cool dinosaurs are?
Why you’ll love it: Really cool dinosaur art and coloring, and if you like drawing with your kids, you’ll come back to this one again and again.
I’ve been reading Bone with my kindergartner. Big hit. It’s the first comic we’ve read together and the first long-form written narrative. We’ll have to try a few more on this list.
Thanks for putting this together!