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my 6 year old saw a comic shop. help.
Maguano
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While driving my son to school today, he saw the local comic book shop. (we're temporarily displaced due "sandy") I was planning on taking him there eventually, but now the timeline has been moved up. Can anyone recommend some titles for a 6 year old? I'll be helping him read them/reading to him, but are there some geared towards early readers as well?
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I sure cant.. *sighs at boxes filling his closet*.
Try to find Xmen vs Avengers babies. or Adventure time comics to start with. Move slowly into the heavy stuff.
If he's a fan of Adventure Times, there's a comic book that seems to capture the spirit pretty well.
Shogun Streams Vidya
http://www.amazon.com/Bone-Complete-Cartoon-Epic-Volume/dp/188896314X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1352917381&sr=8-1&keywords=bone+comic
If he likes Adventure Time, there is an Adventure Time comic series right now that is really good too.
I might also recommend seeing if they have any Silver Age comics collections. Old Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, and Superman comics were my gateway when I was around that age.
There is also a famous Spanish comic (translated to English) called Mort & Phil, they are hillarious
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mort_&_Phil
Maybe the age 9 thing is based on vocabulary? Oh and there is some scary stuff (grim reaper-type villain, someone gets cut in half but no blood). I'd agree that for the most part, Bone is good for kids and a great story.
There's also always Calvin and Hobbes books.
You could also take a pre-emptive look in the store yourself -- my LCS has a "for kids" section already, and it'll let you know if there's any bits of the store that he should be steered away from for now.
Another good option could be your local library -- the ones around here have a "J GRAPHIX" section which is full of comics-for-kids that the library system has sorted out, and as other people have mentioned, the introductory reader section should have some good things. The old Carl Barks Donald Duck collections are pretty awesome as well, for what it's worth.
Chris Giarrusso's work is also really good. He did a bunch of Mini-Marvel strips that are hilarious-not sure if they're collected or not, and he has his own series, G-Man that is also in the same vein.
Ultimate Spiderman is NOT 6 year old friendly. I mean it's not Marvel MAX or anything, but there's quite a bit of bloodshed and death, adult situations, and pretty horrific looking monsters in that series, it's a PG-13 book.
edit: that sounded weird because I'm not the OP's six year old's parent, admittedly it's their call, and while the first book is relatively tame, here are some tidbits from the Ultimate Carnage saga.
When I was a kid, I started on newspaper comics. Calvin and Hobbs, Garfield, and Peanuts. Peanuts is great, since it has all the movies and such to support the interest as well. Garfield is pretty bland but its easy to get and the old 90s cartoon was fun (Who knows if it holds up, though.)
<- Reference point: Father of 4-year-olds who want to be Batman when they grow up...
I loved Carl Barks as a kid. They're certainly age-appropriate, although they can also be enjoyed by adults. I also liked Garfield a lot when I was young. I'm also mentioning Asterix - I remember reading the Asterix books from an early age and although I surely didn't understand everything, the drawings drew me in.
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It's still out, but it's kind of terrible and has been for years. I mean, I gave up on it while I was still a kid (but it was originally great, even rereading some of the stuff now). Uhh, it's probably still kid-friendly, but it would be like 10-12 kid-friendly and I think they've been trying to go even edgier from my impressions when I flipped through a book several months back, so I'm not sure it'd be a good fit for a 6-year-old.
The Donald Duck comics have indeed been historically awesome. And Uncle Scrooge's comics too, assuming he still has his own comic line nowadays (or you can at least find a collection of them). Uhhh, it's not the same genre of course, but there's a lot of manga out there that explicitly has age labels indicating who they're supposed to be for out there. Anime/manga have become way more popular among kids and teens over here in recent years, I've gathered. I can't think of any particular recommendations at the moment, but you could take a look.
And yeah, try to find something from indie publishers if you can, because they need your moneys!
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There's more than one collection of these -- the old Carl Barks collections (most recently reprinted by Fantagraphics) are great, because they're Carl Barks. The newest ones are a _lot_ more patchy, especially the Donald Duck ones, which can depend on already-dated pop culture references. (you can generally tell these apart because they're written by people with Italian-sounding names, for some reason, and printed by Boom! Studios).
Boom! Studios have done a lot of disney/pixar comics, which are mostly okay -- just watch out for The Incredibles comic, which started off well, but then got cancelled partway through a storyline, so does not come to any sort of sensible ending.
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Those are stories written and drawn for Donald Duck paperbacks which are published under different names in Europe. From what I know, they're produced in a very streamlined process and stories, like you said, often depend on some current reference which might or might not be familiar to an American audience. They're not as high quality as, say, stories by Carl Barks or Don Rosa, who is another great Disney artist and expands on elements present in the Carl Barks stories.
I grew up with Tintin, can't say I've ever read the original French but I loved them (and still do, got the collector's box set as a Christmas present last year right before the movie came out).
My first comic books were Casper, Richie Rich kind of stuff. I dont ever remember asking for them, they just were supplied. When i was old enough to appriciate non-crap, I realized what a disservice was being done on me. I know hes young, but dont patronize him! give him good books! No garfield, no peanuts! There are better options!
I had one book, I have no idea if it still published, but it was a big tome of Superman comics. Basically reprints of selected ones from each decade. So like, the first one, the first Mr. Mxyzptlk one and such. It was a pretty neat cross section.
I would recommend going into a comic shop and asking the person working there. I would bet they know what sells to that age group and can make some suggestions - especially if it's a small local shop.
A Charlie Brown Christmas is pretty classic and that music is going to be a part of the holidays forever, a peanuts collection to complement that is no disservice in my mind.
I had a bunch of Garfield collections, but once I got on my own I moved into webcomics and manga, and I didn't exactly look back. Garfield actually taught me a lot of vocab as a kid, so its not the worst thing.
I was looking through my old Gon book and totally forgot that he rips a buffalo in half teaching a lion how to hunt. Its not like it gore, and I'm fairly sure I read them young, but I was probably a preteen.
Man, I dont know why I didn't think of Tintin or Asterix. I loved those around that age. I still love them - have giant posters of Tintin covers on my wall in nice frames.
Asterix would almost certainly be a huge hit, but our guy already reads enough biffing-people-centric stuff without adding to the list. And as other people have mentioned, he loves Garfield (and Calvin and Hobbes), though those are even further from 'comic shop' things.