Award-winning author and artist Naoki Urasawa, a manga star in Japan, has a new series out called Monster. Geared toward a mature audience, this book is a gripping hospital thriller, featuring the kind-hearted and extremely talented young Japanese surgeon Dr. Tenma. Defying orders from a corrupt hospital administrator, Tenma saves a young boy who has been shot in the head, sacrificing his bright future and his expensive fiancŽe in the process. It’s only nine years later, after working his way back up from being punished for his noble beliefs, that the young doctor finds out that doing the right thing might have been the wrong move. The writing is smart, the sympathetic characters are well-developed and the story is exciting enough to enthrall adult readers at least as much as teens.

In The Making of a Graphic Novel, author-illustrator Prentis Rollins’ science-fiction graphic novel The Resonator doubles as a how-to book about writing and illustrating comics. The original novel is about an industrialized future in which humans have worked themselves into a sleepless society, and one man figures out a way to break free of it. Its black-and-white pages are hyper-detailed, full of mechano-organic forms and dreamy spacescapes. At the end of the story, you flip the book over and learn how the author created it. If you’ve ever wondered how comic-book letterers get all those words to fit into speech bubbles, or what the heck a rapidograph or liquid frisket is, this is your book.

A mold-breaking new graphic novel you’ll want to consider is La Perdida, by Jessica Abel, who publishes the zine Artbabe. La Perdida follows Carla, a young Mexican-American woman who sets out with vague motives to explore her heritage. She goes to Mexico City to crash with an ex-flame, a blue-blooded writer called Harry, but before long they fight and she dives into the city on her own. Things go from interesting to exciting to terrifying pretty rapidly, and the consequences for Carla, Harry and many of the locals she befriends are dire. Abel’s black-and-white drawings are both loose and bold, a combination of strong lines, evocative gestures and very basic facial features. The dialogue is in both Spanish and English, which enhances the tension that automatically exists between curious visitor and struggling native. Alienated in the huge city, Carla finds it hard to decide who her friends are, so she assumes she has none which proves to be the biggest mistake she makes.

Israeli author Etgar Keret is known and loved, especially among younger readers, for his short, potent stories. So Jetlag, which pairs five of his tales with five different illustrators, seems a natural fit. It’s clear just five pages in that this is not your average comic book. The first story, Hatrick, has a magician retiring in despair after his innocent pulling-a-rabbit-out-of-a-hat finale yields increasingly horrific results. Keret’s deadpan tone and the restrained Picasso-esque illustrations by Batia Kolton are a perfect foil for the brutal story. Things get progressively weirder from there: X is about a girl who lives in a village near the gates of Hell and falls in love with a vacationing corpse. There’s also a zanily drawn, surreal plane-crash saga, a simple tale of a boy and his piggy bank and a story about a man who falls for a tightrope walker but ends up with her pet monkey. Highly recommended.

Most of us would probably agree that making Superman angry is not the best career move. But in Bill Willingham’s Day of Vengeance, that’s exactly how the vengeful spirit Eclipso forces his wicked way into the mind and body of the Man of Steel in order to take over the world. (All supervillains want to take over the world. Why? What will they do with it then?) In this cross-pollinated book, part of the excellent series Countdown to Infinite Crisis, the gorgeous color artwork complements a scary storyline and appearances by many in the vast pantheon of superheroes, including even the wizard Shazam. The Infinite Crisis story arc, which also includes the excellent The OMAC Project, deals with the fragility of identity, so all the main good guys end up doing evil deeds, and not always because they’ve been possessed by demons.

Other than a penchant for capes and black masks and a talent for getting on Batman’s nerves Batgirl and Catwoman might not seem to have much in common. But in at least one sense, they fight on the same side: both were among the earliest female superheroes. It’s easy to imagine the influence these two powerful female role models must have wielded over their young audience. Now, the heroic contributions of Batgirl and Catwoman are celebrated in two separate retrospectives. From DC Comics, there’s Batgirl: Year One ($17.95, 224 pages, ISBN 140120080X), in which we learn how the feisty daughter of Commissioner Gordon Batman’s begrudging pal in the fight against crime became, almost by accident, a superhero in her own right. The book, written by Scott Beatty and Chuck Dixon and illustrated by Marcos Martin and Alvaro Lopez, is a prime example of the classic superhero comic: the writing is strong and witty, but contains just enough cheese to satisfy, and the artwork is rich, brightly colored and impeccably drawn. It’s a great, fun read, and would make a nice replacement for a Sweet Valley High title on any girl’s bookshelf. Less a graphic novel than a coffee table book is Catwoman: The Visual Guide to the Femme Fatale, by Scott Beatty. Written with obvious love for the medium and its exclamation-point-ridden language, the book is a celebration of the various incarnations of Selina Kyle, a.k.a. Catwoman, from spurned secretary to jewel thief in furry suit to, well, Michelle Pfeiffer in lickable latex. Some great fight scenes and images of the uneasy romance between Catwoman and Batman are also included, reproduced in color panels.

Other than a penchant for capes and black masks and a talent for getting on Batman’s nerves Batgirl and Catwoman might not seem to have much in common. But in at least one sense, they fight on the same side: both were among the earliest female superheroes. It’s easy to imagine the influence these two powerful female role models must have wielded over their young audience. Now, the heroic contributions of Batgirl and Catwoman are celebrated in two separate retrospectives. From DC Comics, there’s Batgirl: Year One, in which we learn how the feisty daughter of Commissioner Gordon Batman’s begrudging pal in the fight against crime became, almost by accident, a superhero in her own right. The book, written by Scott Beatty and Chuck Dixon and illustrated by Marcos Martin and Alvaro Lopez, is a prime example of the classic superhero comic: the writing is strong and witty, but contains just enough cheese to satisfy, and the artwork is rich, brightly colored and impeccably drawn. It’s a great, fun read, and would make a nice replacement for a Sweet Valley High title on any girl’s bookshelf. Less a graphic novel than a coffee table book is Catwoman: The Visual Guide to the Femme Fatale (DK, $19.99, 64 pages, ISBN 0756603838), by Scott Beatty. Written with obvious love for the medium and its exclamation-point-ridden language, the book is a celebration of the various incarnations of Selina Kyle, a.k.a. Catwoman, from spurned secretary to jewel thief in furry suit to, well, Michelle Pfeiffer in lickable latex. Some great fight scenes and images of the uneasy romance between Catwoman and Batman are also included, reproduced in color panels.

A new manga-style book that displays influences by various goth-friendly artists, from Jhonen Vasquez to the Brothers Grimm, is The Tarot Cafe (TOKYOPOP, $9.99, 192 pages, ISBN 1595325557), illustrated by noted Korean manga artist Park Sang Sung. It’s the story of Pamela, a tarot card reader, who has the unlikely task of helping supernatural characters make their way in the human world. Not unexpectedly, tackling the problems of all the strange folks who walk through her door from vampires to alchemists to lovestruck cats eventually leads Pamela to face her own. The writing and artwork are equally swirly and sensual, making it the perfect choice for that budding Cure fan.

The goth-influenced manga I Luv Halloween, by Benjamin Roman and Keith Giffen, follows a batch of adorably creepy little moppets as they set out trick-or-treating on Halloween night. Meant for older teens, it serves as a cautionary tale against practically everything, from eating candy apples to trucking with bullies to using a bra as a slingshot.

Author Tsugumi Ohba and artist Takeshi Obata join forces in Death Note, in which a klutzy Shinigami demon drops his “death notebook” in the human world and has to go fetch it, causing unimaginable chaos. Helping restore the balance (well, eventually) is a bored 17-year-old boy called Light, who picks up the lost notebook and finds himself permanently bound to the demon. It’s a highly entertaining, teenage take on the desire to control or at least understand life and death.

Matt Wagner’s Grendel: Red, White ∧ Black, the second collected volume of stories about the mysterious, demonic crime boss Grendel. Literally black and white and red all over, the book collects stunningly executed artwork and short tales from several of the top artists and writers in comics, including Wagner himself. The segments range from Jill Thompson’s painterly kewpies to Jim Mahfood’s hip-hop style to the gritty scrawls of Michael Zulli, all starring the deadly Grendel, who wields a two-pronged sword and a renegade vision of justice that spells doom for shady two-bit mobsters. The ultraviolence is extreme in places, but the three-color scheme keeps it simple and surprisingly beautiful.

Becky Ohlsen keeps her comics collection in Portland, Oregon.

Existing in a darkly hilarious universe all its own, The Rabbi’s Cat (Pantheon, $21.95, 142 pages, ISBN 0375422811), by acclaimed French artist Joann Sfar, combines whimsical drawings, forbidden romance and searching questions about the nature of faith. The story is narrated by a nameless cat who belongs to an Algerian rabbi in the 1930s. When the cat eats the rabbi’s obnoxiously squawking parrot, he gains the power of speech temporarily, but long enough to find an impetuous joy in telling lies and challenging his master’s long-held beliefs. Speech enables the cat to question the tenets of Judaism, even as he’s arguing for his right to have a Bar Mitzvah and study the kabbalah. He and the rabbi eventually accompany the rabbi’s beautiful daughter, Zlabya, to Paris on her honeymoon after she marries into the wealthy family of a sophisticated French rabbi. The artwork is as rich and lovely as the story, full of squiggly lines, tapestried walls, cobbled alleyways, opulent costumes and palpably warm lighting. Both adults and older kids will find the book charming and thought-provoking. Becky Ohlsen keeps her comics collection in Portland, Oregon.