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X-Men are great. Are you more interested in modern stories or classics? Are you more interested in reading an entire series or would like recommendations for good arcs within a series?

As general recommendation, Claremont's Uncanny X-Men are probably my favorite, and his work on the X-Men has pretty much defined our understanding of the characters. So, you could start with Giant Size X-Men (this is where now classics like Wolverine, Storm, Nightcrawler, and more came together) and then continue with with X-Men #94 and beyond. These are an older style of comic though, with non-digital art, and some of those Silver Age sensibilities that seem a bit goofy to some these days. Still, Claremont does a good job making us care for the characters and really has some nice development.

If you're looking for more modern stuff, or self-contained arcs, you might check out House of M and then go on to read the Messiah Complex trade, then Second Coming, and then Avengers vs. X-Men. These arcs have some great art, and some exciting, momentous stuff for the X-Men. They also kind of set the stage for the modern set up of the X-Men.

P.S.: a "trade paperback" (TPB) is a collection of individual issues from one or more series that cover a particular story arc. For example, Messiah Complex was a story told over different comic series: X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, New X-Men, and X-Factor. Some people like TPBs because they save you from having to track down all the issues. Some people like reading monthly (or bi-monthly) issues from particular series they like. So it's just two different ways to read the same content.

PSS: my go-to is Marvel Unlimited. They have a huge digital collection of back catalogued stuff (although it's usually months behind on current releases) and you can read entire series at your leisure for $10 a month. They also collect story arcs/events as well if you want to read that way.

First off I gotta recommend Blacksad. I imagine you know it, but its made by two spaniards. The noir-style detective stories and the amazing drawing style gets me every time. Black Horse publishes the English volumes.

I'm not comic book expert I'm afraid, but as /u/s3rila mentions, when talking European comics the French/Belgian comics are definitely an area you should look through. Not sure what kind of stories you are after, but I'll try and mention some of the ones I grew up with and read through the years.

However, one of the big problems is that quite a few of them are hard to find in English. I'm from Denmark where most of them exist in Danish, but since I no longer live there I have been trying to locate them in English from time to time over the past few years, but only with limited success. Some have been translated by kind netizens though, so even though an official English verison doesn't exist, you can get lucky!

One of the best known Franco-Belgian cartoonists is obviously Hergé and his TinTin comics. He did other comic books as well, but personally I enjoyed the Jo, Zette and Jocko ones when I was younger.

Two other well known (I imagine) European comic book series are Asterix and Lucky Luke

The Spirou and Marsupilami series and its spinoffs are also quite good, but I must admit I haven't be able to find that in english so far.
Another would be the Percevan series or the Buddy Longway series.

Another classic Belgian series I have read and enjoyed a lot is the Blake and Mortimer which I guess is a little more grown up.

If you want some more "grown up" comics books, some of the (in my opinion) classics would be the Blueberry and Thorgal, both series I have spent a lot of time enjoying, and at least the Blueberry one has a few spinoffs as far as I'm aware.

Jacques Tardi's It Was the War of the Trenches Is also an amazing (and gory) telling of World War I.

One of the cartoonists working on Spirou also had this little project on the side called Wake, but if possible don't go for the American version, its censored a bit as far as I know :P

XIII which has been made both to a game and TV series also have its origins in Belgium. Its been a while since I've read that series and volumes are still being produced, so I'm not up to date.

François Boucq made Billy Budd, KGB and the Bouncer series.
If you're into the more fantasy related series there there is the Black Moon Chronicles, Lanfeust of Troy (neither exist in English though I believe) and Requiem Chevalier Vampire which is a slightly different take on Vampires, Ghouls and the afterlife.



Anywho, that was only a fraction of the European comics, but those are the ones I can remember at the moment. I've read many more, but unfortunately I can't recall their names or authors.
But I am sure someone else can come up with other suggestions :)

Hope it helps a bit regardless!





EDIT: A few link and word corrections.

This is the most recent volume 1: The Amazing Spider-Man: Worldwide, vol. 1

Marvel has never really rebooted, but they do occasionally relaunch titles to try and give new readers a good place to jump on. In 2012, there was Marvel NOW, and in 2015 there was All-New All-Different Marvel, and now Fresh Start is coming up soon.

This is more of what I was looking at... but I'd like to have the paperbacks in order to match what I have. Had I known that all of them are out in Hardback, I would've probably gotten these instead but I've already gotten the first two books in paperback.

According to Amazon, the paperback for Book 3 comes out in January. :/ I was hoping that was just Amazon only, but it seems that the more I search, the more I'm realizing that the paperback isn't out in stores yet.

I do appreciate the kind gesture and the link, though!

So, have you seen the new Supergirl show?



https://youtu.be/Lm46-envrHo


I don't know much about her comic counterpart currently but the TV one may be up your ally. As for comics...



You may like the new Batgirl that started at issue 35: http://io9.gizmodo.com/batgirls-new-uniform-may-be-the-best-damn-superheroine-1603247249




Also someone suggested the new Starfire book. If you like that then I'd suggest the current Harley Quinn book. They have much the same feel. Another plus side is there is enough of this book out to be collected into volumes: http://www.amazon.com/Harley-Quinn-Vol-City-Numbered/dp/1401254152






I also think you may like Emma Frost but that'd require digging into X-Men as she's not a solo character.

Well the graphic novel can be found on Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/Civil-War-Mark-Millar/dp/078512179X

Although I recommend buying from a comic shop if you can because it supports local businesses and will help get you into comics if you have any questions.

As far as the tie ins? There are probably hundreds. So I would read the main story first, see what characters interest you and then go from there. Personally I like the Spiderman stories from that time, Iron man and strangely enough the Deadpool/Cable stories were wonderful. Also runaways meets the Young Avengers was fun but that might be a little obscure for you.

Also if you look on the amazon suggested page there are some recommended reading that are all civil war related.

It gets a little more complicated after that.

The next arc (Night of the Owls) is a crossover. The main story is told in the main Batman book, but all the other Batfamily books did tie-in issues. So, if you are going through TPBs, you can either go with the next volume of Batman and ignore the tie-ins:

http://www.amazon.com/Batman-Vol-The-City-Owls/dp/1401237789/

Or, you can read the TPB that collects the Batman issues plus the tie-ins:

http://www.amazon.com/Batman-Night-Owls-The-New/dp/1401242529/

I went with the latter because I thought it would be a nice way to survey all of the related books without buying trades of all of them. It sort of was, but it also was kind of tedious to read all of the tie-ins at once because they tend to be pretty similar and it means you're reading a lot of side issues for not much movement of the main plot.

I would go "Batman and Son", then "Final Crisis", then "Battle for the Cowl", and then onto "Batman and Robin: Batman Reborn" and the rest of Grant Morrison's run.

Is it The Gauntlet you are thinking of?