First Friday 5: Mel's Favorites

Since today marks one year since I started this series, I thought I would make the theme about my personal favorites. But here's the caveat: these are favorites I haven't talked about yet somewhere else on the site. And it doesn't include ones I might talk about soon (*cough* Amulet *cough*). Plus I could only choose five, so I had to come up with a lot of excuses not to include many of my favorites! Here are five of my favorite comics of all time.

You can always check out my all-time favorites list here.

American Born Chinese

Written and illustrated by Gene Yang

This book is broken into three seemingly unrelated stories: Jin, who starts at a new school where he's the only Chinese-American student, Danny and his cousin Chin-Kee, who threatens to ruin Danny's social life, and The Monkey King, who is attempting to ascend to the ranks of the immortal gods. The stories, though independent of each other, weave together in a most surprising way, and, honestly, the less you know about this book going in, the more you'll be amazed.

Bone
Written and illustrated by Jeff Smith

When cousins Fone Bone, Phoney Bone, and Smiley Bone are run out of their hometown, they mistakenly end up in a mysterious land filled with wonderful and terrifying creatures. Together with Thorn, Gran'ma Ben, and the Great Red Dragon, the three cousins set out on an epic journey that pushes everyone involved to their very limits

The Hilda series
Written and illustrated by Luke Pearson

Hilda is an adventurous girl who lives with her mother and a deerfox named Twig. The trio encounters everything magical, from trolls to giants to invisible people. Hands-down one of the best series out there right now for younger readers (and just in general!). So far there are five books in the series, with a Netflix original show coming out soon.

Nimona
Written and illustrated by Noelle Stevenson

Nimona is an impulsive young shapeshifter who wants to be a villain, so when she finds super villain Lord Ballister Blackheart, she's determined to be his sidekick and prove that heroism is overrated. But what starts as small vengeance turns into something much larger as Lord Blackheart discovers that Nimona isn't who she claims to be.

Sailor Twain, Or: The Mermaid in the Hudson
Written and illustrated by Mark Siegel

One of my favorite books of all time! One hundred years ago a riverboat captain rescues an injured mermaid from the Hudson River, a notoriously reclusive author makes a public debut, and a French nobleman––who seems to be losing his mind––begins talking about his search for the remedy of a curse. As the stories unfold, the mysteries that shroud each event become clearer and more connected to each other, forever altering the lives of everyone in the story.

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