I just recently picked up a copy of watchmen after being floored by the (incredible) movie trailer. It was the first graphic novel i have ever read and i really liked it. The experience of reading a story as deep as that in what i considered a rather juvenile medium has changed my mindset completely toward comic books. Does anyone have any suggestions as what would be a good choice to read next?

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Like a Victorian Watchmen, written by the same author too.

Top Ten: A super hero cop story, by the same author as Watchmen.

Astro City: Realistic Superheroes with a bit more heart and hope than Watchmen.

I'd recomend V for Vendetta next, another excellent graphic novel by Alan Moore. However after that I'd like some advice, as that and Watchmen are the only one's I've read too.

Well, boxbrown4, it depends on what you want. there are plenty of super hero titles, and I kind of put V For Vendetta in that box. But if you're really looking to see what comics as a medium can do, I recommend Maus books I & II by Art Spiegelman and A Contract With God by Will Eisner. Both are even more realistic stories (Maus is actually non-fiction despite how he draws people as mice and cats and such) On a personal note, if you can track down the Carl Barks Uncle Scrooge stories, you'll be a very happy person indeed and wonder why you ever thought Indiana Jones was cool.

As Spencer said it does depend on what type of book you want to read. If your looking for more superhero books i would recommend the following:
Batman: The Killing Joke By Alan Morre
Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller
In fact most books by the authors above are good reads.
For non-hero books i would recommend something like Pride of Baghdad by Brian K. Vaughan.
I could sit here all night recommending comics to read but i wont.

Regardless of what you read, a mandatory reading of Art Spiegelman's Maus must follow Watchmen.

yeah, i'm starting to get the picture that anything written by alan moore is pure gold.

i guess i am interested in the whole super hero thing, but what really got me in watchmen was how deep and realistic the characters were.

Thanks for all the suggestions, i'm getting quite a list here already.

Sandman, by Neil Gaiman. Ten volumes. I recommend starting with the second one, The Doll's House and going from there.

Most things by Warren Ellis are also good, especially Transmetropolitan and Planetary.

nilcypher:
Most things by Warren Ellis are also good, especially Transmetropolitan and Planetary.

What he said. If you're up for a laugh I also suggest reading Nextwave, also by Warren Ellis. Also check out Runaways and Y: The Last Man by Brian Vaughn.

boxbrown4:
yeah, i'm starting to get the picture that anything written by alan moore is pure gold.

Well, not always. I read his Eisner Award winning work on Supreme and didn't think it was all that great. It was basically a love letter to the silver age Superman, but it went on for too long and really didn't take full advantage of some of the concepts he'd added to the character.

boxbrown4:
I just recently picked up a copy of watchmen after being floored by the (incredible) movie trailer. It was the first graphic novel i have ever read and i really liked it. The experience of reading a story as deep as that in what i considered a rather juvenile medium has changed my mindset completely toward comic books. Does anyone have any suggestions as what would be a good choice to read next?

Give up, it's all downhill from here.

Just read Watchmen again, talk about how Frank Miller was good "in the old days", but don't specify when they were, and act indignant when someone mentions Dave Sim.

Actually, From Hell is pretty good.

I can suggest "Alice in Sunderland" a non-fiction/fiction...thing. It tells you all about an obscure British town which you didn't ask about and by the end you'll be wondering whether or not your own town has as many pages of intrigue, mystery, history, legend and humour.

V for Vendetta, Maus (only comic book to win a Pulitzer Prize), I enjoyed Superman: Red Son and Wanted, but they're a bit more shallow than Moore or Speigelman. I also liked the Death of Captain America, but you may have to read some of the rest of Ed Brubaker's work as well as the Marvel Civil War to understand it. Sandman is brilliant. Anything by Neil Gaiman is brilliant. There's a comic adaptation of Neverwhere that's pretty good too.

And then, if you're one of those elitist snobs who only fancies "Graphic Novels" and ignores all the comic books, you can check out the really heavy depressing stuff like Black Hole by Charles Burns (which is FUCKING CREEPY), Fun Home by Alison Bechdel (it's a memoir) or the Adventures of Jimmy Corrigan by Chris Ware (who's just about the world's biggest tool). I don't necessarily endorse or like these books, I just have no idea what your taste is. You used the words "juvenile medium" in reference to comic books, so you could be an English professor.

There's a book called "Understanding Comics" by Scott McCloud which I recommend as well. It's kinda like a comic textbook, and it can help whet your appetite, as well as help you respect the medium.

I heartily recommend The Invisibles (or most anything by Grant Morrison) if you like your brain getting raped. It's uncomfortable at first, but you grow to like it. It's about a cell of anarchist revolutionaries in an invisible (hence the name) war against the conspiracy of extradimensional entities trying to impose their will on us and almost literally eat freedom.

An interesting take on superheroes is Deus Ex Machina, which is about a retired superhero with the ability to talk to machines. After giving up the cape (well, jetpack), he became Mayor of New York City, and the main drama comes from the politics of the peice rather than the actual superhero-ness.

Finally, the Lucifer series is a spin off from Sandman, though it is written by Mike Carey rather than Neil Gaiman. It details the adventures of the eponymous Prince of Hell (retired) and his half-faced, sword weilding waitress Mazikeen, who together run a classy nightclub in Los Angeles, but find themselves drawn back into the whole paranormal palaver. An interesting look at mythology, free will and the nature of good or evil.

V For Vendetta. Sorry, haven't read much else.

One pretty cool graphic novel I've read is called We3 - it's about a dog, a cat, and a rabbit that were abducted by the U.S. Government and turned into cyborg killing machines. They're slated for destruction once their "trial run" is over, so a sympathetic scientist allows them to escape. They evade the military while pursuing a vague sense of the "home" they had before the experiment - kind of like that movie "Homeward Bound", except the animals are kick-ass cyborgs. It has some awesome action scenes, and a thought-provoking, poignant, and at times disturbing storyline.

I recommend Red Sephelcure, Black Flowers and Staring at The Wall from Hellblazer, in that order.

Preacher is good if you like well written characters, religious blasphemy, dark comedy and an average of 2.5 grevious and explicit head wounds per issue (it is a VERY violent comic).

Transmetropolitan is one of the best comic series' ever written and it ends VERY well.

Fables is the best comic on the market at the moment and is a MUST read if you like Folklore and Fairytales.

I agree Pedro, I can't believe I forgot Preacher and its "last descendant of Christ"....

Eyclonus:
I agree Pedro, I can't believe I forgot Preacher and its "last descendant of Christ"....

Preacher is great, what's even better is realizing that if you took out most of the violence, tits and gross out humor you'd STILL have a good comic, as the main plot and characters are still damn good. Though it'd lose a bit of its punch if you took out all of the violence, sex and grossness.

I really like that scene where he kicks "It" out of the helicopter...

Dark Knight Returns is good, but Strikes Again is so aweful

Batman: Year One is another Frank Miller story set in Gotham City. In my opinion, it's far better than TDKR, though admittedly it doesn't have Batman kicking the snot out of Superman. Year One takes a very realistic look at the characters of both Jim Gordon and Bruce Wayne (in fact, it's prolly more about Gordon than it is about Batman), and its one of the main inspirations behind the new series of Batman films.

Oh, and as others have said, check out Maus. It floored me.

A lot depends what kind might/think you will like. Super-heroes, real world, etc.

Many of the greats have already been mentioned so I won't bother repeating, but "The Surrogates" by Robert Venditti is one I just recently read and really enjoyed. The premise is that in the future everyone lives their lives by jacking into robot bodies.