Love Stuntboy, in the Meantime? Readers share 73 books like Stuntboy, in the Meantime...

I fell in love with these two brothers, Link and Hud, but I couldn’t help asking myself what I would do if I were one of their long line of failed babysitters. Their energy and hi-jinks would challenge anyone. At the same time those same characteristics make Link and Hud loveable and memorable. Never underestimate the creativity and intelligence of a child.

I hope all kids will embrace their imaginations and childhood years to have grand adventures. I loved the mix of comic book storytelling inserted within passages of text. 

Jack Briglio’s main character, Logan, is non-verbal and autistic. There are many scary things for him in the world, like clowns, but Logan has learned to cope by becoming the superhero ThunderBoom. By wearing this identity and acting it out, Logan learns he’s a little bit super, too.

The graphic novel format is perfect for a story about a non-verbal boy. The pictures fill in where words can’t come out of Logan’s mouth. I found this book to be moving, and it opened a window for me to see inside the heart of a very special boy.

I’m a huge Alan Gratz fan, and this book did not disappoint. Like the creators of Superman, Siegel and Schuster, in Heroes, we have a tween writer, Frank, and a tween artist, Stanley, who talk non-stop about superhero comics as they set out to write their own. But this day is December 7, 1947, and the Japanese military attacks the boys’ Pearl Harbor home.

Gratz brings history to life with the stories of life-like characters. Frank was already riddled with fears, even fear of flip flops (you’ll have to read the book), and now the situation is beyond his worst fears. Not many of us will be tested as these boys are tested, but Gratz has the power in his writing to put us in perilous situations in order to examine our own lives.

Olive is sent away to RASCH, a private school on an island in the San Francisco Bay. There, she befriends a girl named Phil, who shares her love of "Meggie and Her Fun Family" comics. I’m not sure Meggie qualifies as a “superhero” per se. All we know is Meggie has something Olive thinks she’s always wanted, and isn’t that the allure of most superhero stories?

Olive has never fit in at the many schools she’s attended. She sees the world in a different way. I enjoy stories about smart girls who start out as misfits and eventually find their place in the world—and just maybe that place for Olive is still a place called misfit, and that’s okay so long as she’s not alone.

Yee and Santat form a strong team in bringing this delightful story to life. Their cast of misfits are kids I’d like to hang… show more.

Rafter, Benny, and Juanita protagonate (yep, that’s a word) in a bizarre amalgamated world that could have been dreamed up by Stan Lee, the Andy Griffith Show writers, and Beverly Cleary. Dreamed up as a joke. Abandoned with a good comeraderific laugh (also a word). Then picked up, dusted off, and polished by Marion Jensen. But that’s not what happened. Jensen created the whole adventurous, hilarious, uplifting, good-buddy superhero story with his own solitary brain. My kids and I have laughed at his story many times.

If your superhero tastes run more to the weird and dark, this is definitely in your wheelhouse. Deja’s Shadow Legion could best be described as “superhero noir.” It’s got aspects of the supernatural and horror mixed in with pulp hero archetypes and intriguing interpretations of classic super powers. Plus, it features one of the best villains in any piece of superhero media, bar none.

Not a novel, but Supergods is one of the most intriguing books about the superhero as a concept that I’ve ever read. In Supergods, the always thought-provoking Grant Morrison digs into what superheroes actually are by picking apart archetypes, delving into the history of the medium, and exploring their place as a sort of modern mythology. Having written countless superhero comics, including some of the most surreal such stories ever to exist, Morrison is in a unique position to dissect the genre in a way that leaves you thinking about what superheroes mean and why they matter. It's the kind of book that makes you examine what the building blocks of superheroes are, and as someone who enjoys playing in that sandbox, it makes me look at one of my favorite genres in new and unique ways. 

The God: Thor

Marvel doesn’t always get it right, mythologically speaking, but this all-ages title was a fantastic introduction to the superhero version of everyone’s favorite Norse God, Thor. Romantic and full of adventure, with peeks at Thor’s goat chariot and guest appearances by a handful of other superheroes along the way, paired with the gorgeously expressive artwork of Chris Samnee, this is definitely a graphic novel worth gifting to both the young and young at heart in your life—if you can find it to give!

I’m recommending this book for how delightfully it considers the ill human body as a site of new possibilities. The Doom Patrol have never been well-known superheroes, perhaps because of the willingness of writers to confront the bodily trauma at the heart of their stories.

Morrison’s contribution to the series was to consider the Doom Patrol truly as freaks: people who could not fit into a society that demands gender, mental, and physical homogeneity. Mixing allegorical forms of illness—Cliff “Robotman” Steele’s fallible technological body—with more direct conditions like Kaye “Crazy Jane” Callis’ dissociative identity disorder.

Morrison, along with artistic collaborators, built a celebration of difference into a genre where most heroic bodies never break the mold.

In the days after World War II, an alien device explodes in the skies above New York, blanketing the planet with an extraterrestrial virus. Most of the victims die horrible deaths. A smaller percentage – the “Jokers” – find their bodies mutated in various unpredictable ways. And a scant few draw an “Ace” – superpowers without the consequences of a Joker mutation. Wild Cards is the first in a series of “mosaic novels,” books of stories featuring the work of several writers contributing their own pieces of a larger tapestry that helps build and flesh out a remarkable world. The Wild Cards series is perhaps the most elaborate and provocative superhero universe that exists in prose fiction. 

As much as I love comic books, it's always bothered me how many people think comics are superheroes and vice-versa. This was one of the first really successful attempts at doing something with… show more.