Comics appropriate for young children?

[Riftwolf]

My 5 year old niece is an avid reader, and her mum (my sis) is wanting her to read other things than Disney Princesses. My niece loves Supergirl, and I bought one of the comics recommended for younger audiences, but it was still too old for her. I wanted to find something with a strong female lead (with emphasis on character over appearance), no cheesecake artwork (something which has ruled out a lot of Supergirl comics) and not too much violence (like I said, 5 years old, would prefer a story where problems are solved non-violently, something I liked about the Supergirl comic I got.)
Any suggestions? Doesn't have to be DC/Marvel.

[BWR]

Something like Cardcaptor Sakura, maybe?

[An Enemy Spy]

Calvin and Hobbes? A lot of the subject matter might go over her head but it's still a fun strip about a kid and his tiger and she's guaranteed to learn a lot of new words.

[Inspector Valin]

Comics wise, My Little Pony's an easy suggestion. Probably the least violent option I can cite. Beyond that.. I think Mega Princess might be worth a look. Also possibly Princeless, or Space Battle Lunchtime. It's a little hard to aim for a kid that young, so please take a look at an amazon preview of these or something for a sense of the dialogue. I wanna recommend Princess Ugg but it's ultimately got some pretty dark stuff for what you're looking at (flashback bits talking about war and death. Not gory but talking about it)

Supergirl book suited for kids... was that cosmic adventures in *sonething* grade? Ooh! If you're willing to be a little loose with comic I loved Dahl's the Minpins as a kid. ^^

[Riftwolf]

She's five but with a reading age closer to eight... But still with the emotional state of a five year old, so she gets scared and confused easily. Looking at Cardcaptor, I can see what my manga-knowing brother knows and recommends; I can see my sister rebelling over the pink pinkness of the covers.

[Dorath]

DC's Superhero Girls is a good starter.

[Aotrs Commander]

More of an outlier (in the sense that's technically graphic novels, rather than comics), but Asterix the Gaul.


(My Dad read that to me as a child anyway.

...

Assuming you want your child to grow up making second-hand classical literary allusions (because they are alluding to Asteric alluding to classical literature.)

Fun for adults as well, Asteric is.



(At its best when written under both Toscanni and Uderzo than under the former only (though the early ones of those are still quite good, the quality declined a bit in the later years.))

[endoperez]

Franco-Belgian comics have a lot of variety. Many of those comics are humorous. They're often basically episodic, with one story wrapped up within one book.

Asterix and Obelix - two guys adventure in ancient Europe, with the typical problem being that Romans are doing something to conquer their village, and they they travel to place X, where cun accidents pile up. Most stories would be understandable at her age, I think, but there will be lots of puns and references, so they might be better when she gets a bit older.

Lucky Luke takes place in wild west and sometimes people are shot and die. I don't recommend those for someone so young.

Smurfs should be good.


The following might be a bit older and might not be well known outside of Europe, so they might be hard to find.

Tintin should be good, too, but they have some stuff you might find objectionable. One of the characters curses and drinks like a sailor, the Blue Lotus story that takes place in China talks about opium smuggling and opium as a drug, sometimes someone has a gun, that sort of thing. They can be a bit dated, too, and by dated I mean racist. Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, Tintin in the Congo, and Tintin in America are actually described as being made as propaganda pieces. The later installments are much better and have a more neutral tone; they're about a reporter-slash-adventurer and his dog (and friends) solving mysteries, having adventures, sometimes fighting crime. Despite the warnings, they would be very good, in a few years if not right now.

Spirou and Fantasio is a, hmm, it's probably so old it's retro-futurist, and it's an adventure comic series, humorous and mostly light in tone. They should be fine, but I don't remember all the details, so some of the stories might be a bit scary.
Marsupilami comics are a spin-off that showcase a made-up jungle animal's adventures.

---

Other than that, there's Disney's comics. And boy is there a lot in that. I understand they're not appreciated much in Americas, but they're loved in Europe, and they're generally of very high quality. There's a periodic (monthly?) Donald Duck magazine with mostly new stories, and at least in Europe there's also pocket-books and then collections of various classic stories.

Search for Donald Duck Collection in your preferred bookstore, and choose something whose cover looks like something your daughter would be interested in. There's treasure hunts (Atlantis, lost kingdoms, buried tombs, jungle temples) on Earth, there's space adventures, etc. Then there's parodies and pastiches of all kinds of things: super hero stories, (Donald moonlights as Duck Avenger), romances, action films, star wars, Lord of the Rings, historical epics (e.g. Marco Polo), fantasy stuff, all sorts of things where the main characters are replaced with the Disney duck family. There's stories about the everyday life of Donald Duck, down-on-his-luck father of three. There's stories about Donald Duck trying to find a job (and failing). There's stories about Scrooge's neverending war against a witch. There's stories about the three nephews taking part in boy scout adventures. Etc etc.

Pretty much the same is true for Mickey Mouse comics too. Mickey stories have him as a detective or solving crimes with the police.

Donald Duck tends to be a subverted hero: either unlucky, malicious, greedy or in some sort of a parody. He's sometimes played as a straight hero, but not that often.
Mickey Mouse tends to be a straight up heroic figure in his stories.

Most of the classic stories in the collections are older stories (as in decades) which don't have women in major roles, or they're only defined by their relationships to men. E.g. Daisy Duck is only relevant as Donald's kinda-girlfriend. The writers are getting better at that, but I don't know if there's any collections about the best stories starring the female characters like Daisy, Minnie, Daisy's three nieces, Magica De Spell the witch, etc.

[gooddragon1]

Calvin and Hobbes? A lot of the subject matter might go over her head but it's still a fun strip about a kid and his tiger and she's guaranteed to learn a lot of new words.

Seconded. A lot of other comics out there introduce concepts that you might not expect or show a bit more of anatomy than you might prefer. I don't recall calvin and hobbes delving into those things with any frequency.

[JNAProductions]

Calvin and Hobbes made me cry. In a good way. Highly recommend it.

[dps]

My first thought when I saw the thread title for a comic appropriate to that age group was Richie Rich; my second was Caspar the Friendly Ghost. When I read the OP and saw you were looked for something with a female protagonist, I immediately thought of Wendy the Good Little Witch.

I don't even know if any of those are even still being published; they're just the comic I read when I was roughly that age. If they're not still in publication, though, you should be able to dig up some old issues.

[Elanasaurus]

Calvin and Hobbes made me cry. In a good way. Highly recommend it.

It's a magical world, Hobbes... Let's go exploring!

[Metahuman1]

Calvin and Hobbs, not so sure about the MLP comic but you could at least preview it. Same with the IDW Jem and the Holograms Comic, which might be a bit old for her but is better written then it has any right to be all things considered.

I'll also throw in for the Disney Duck Comics, and Cardcaptor Sakura.

Another one that might be worth looking at for her is W.I.T.C.H. Again, possibly abit old for her, but it's well written and my understanding is it's not nearly as brutal as some other things on the market.

[Eldan]

Franco-Belgian comics have a lot of variety. Many of those comics are humorous. They're often basically episodic, with one story wrapped up within one book.

Asterix and Obelix - two guys adventure in ancient Europe, with the typical problem being that Romans are doing something to conquer their village, and they they travel to place X, where cun accidents pile up. Most stories would be understandable at her age, I think, but there will be lots of puns and references, so they might be better when she gets a bit older.

Lucky Luke takes place in wild west and sometimes people are shot and die. I don't recommend those for someone so young.

Smurfs should be good.


The following might be a bit older and might not be well known outside of Europe, so they might be hard to find.

Tintin should be good, too, but they have some stuff you might find objectionable. One of the characters curses and drinks like a sailor, the Blue Lotus story that takes place in China talks about opium smuggling and opium as a drug, sometimes someone has a gun, that sort of thing. They can be a bit dated, too, and by dated I mean racist. Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, Tintin in the Congo, and Tintin in America are actually described as being made as propaganda pieces. The later installments are much better and have a more neutral tone; they're about a reporter-slash-adventurer and his dog (and friends) solving mysteries, having adventures, sometimes fighting crime. Despite the warnings, they would be very good, in a few years if not right now.

Spirou and Fantasio is a, hmm, it's probably so old it's retro-futurist, and it's an adventure comic series, humorous and mostly light in tone. They should be fine, but I don't remember all the details, so some of the stories might be a bit scary.
Marsupilami comics are a spin-off that showcase a made-up jungle animal's adventures.

Franco-Belgian was my first thought. Asterix is sadly lacking almost entirely in female main characters throughout the run (there's a few strong women, like Cleopatra, but they are never the viewpoint, so to speak). However, it's funny and essentially harmless and very child friendly. There's pretty regular cartoon violence, if that is a problem, but the clash of a Roman Legion with Gaulish warriors will usually end with a few black eyes, teeth knocked out and some buildings destroyed.

Tintin... maybe not so much. I mean, I loved them as a kid, but they regularly feature guns, the occasional murder, corpses and racism. Lots and lots of racism and bad racial charicatures, in the earliest volumes.

[Amaril]

If graphic novels are okay, how about Bone? Been quite a while since I read it, but from what I remember, it should be fine for a kid that age (I read it a little older, and remember finding it a bit more kid-friendly than I'd have liked). Pretty sure it meets all your criteria, too.

[Vinyadan]

It's a magical world, Hobbes... Let's go exploring!

Great wisdom there http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/09/21

[The Fury]

I think the Hilda books by Luke Pearson are good.

[Knaight]

For now, I'll second Calvin and Hobbes and add Akiko. If I hit up the library anytime soon, I'll try to remember to find one other possibility that I can't quite remember the name of.

[Blackhawk748]

You could always go with the Pokemon Adventure Manga

[Themrys]

I remember my parents reading the Lucky Luke comics to me, and since I learnt reading almost instantly after starting school, I cannot have been much older than 5, then. Didn't mentally scar me for life, at the very least.

People should get shot and die, as it takes place in the Wild West, but that's not what actually happens. Lucky Luke only disarms them, and I cannot remember a character that was actually killed by others. Over time, Lucky Luke quit smoking and alcohol. At this point, I think it is quite okay for a child to read.

I think the comic where Calamity Jane appears would be okay to read ... sadly that's the only one where a female character plays an important role. Read it beforehand if you aren't sure.


I found the lack of female characters, respectively the stereotyping rather annoying in the Smurfs - if Smurfette didn't exist, one could see them all as sexless, which would be better, imho.

Have the same problem with the Marsupilami comics - the female Marsupilami with the long eyelashes and feminine mannerisms is annoying.

[The Fury]

I'm not sure why I didn't think of this earlier, but how about The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl? They're fairly age appropriate and I had fun reading them.

[Telonius]

Chi's Sweet Home is a cute one, if you're more on the manga side. My daughter (just turned 8) has been reading Calvin & Hobbes for a couple years. Got into Phoebe and her Unicorn recently too (imagine if C&H was starring a girl and took place closer to today). Princeless might be a bit more controversial (and definitely intended for older than 5), but my daughter's reading it. MLP as well.

[JakiHere]

Rooting for Casper the friendly ghost. I have enjoyed reading this one as a kid.

[Future Sword]

Cardcaptor Sakura was mentioned. I'll second it, followed by Sailor Moon. There was mention of objections based on perceived "pink pinkness", which I take as code for "girliness". Never use girliness as a reason not to give a girl some fresh entertainment, or you could make her think it's wrong somehow. I've seen where that leads. Pink is fine.

Other recommendations include the current Power Rangers, Mega Man, and Jem comics.

[Razade]

Digger. Get her Digger. Some concepts might be a little difficult but I think it's perfectly fine for a young kid to read.

[Knaight]

Digger. Get her Digger. Some concepts might be a little difficult but I think it's perfectly fine for a young kid to read.

Digger might be pushing it a bit. It's pretty violent and brutal in parts, and while I'd recommend it for some children it might be a bit much for a five year old.

[endoperez]

Digger might be pushing it a bit. It's pretty violent and brutal in parts, and while I'd recommend it for some children it might be a bit much for a five year old.

Definitely pushing things for a 5-year-old. Even just the metaphysical stuff is hard, and then we get into what's going on underground, with skinning dead (animal) people, corpses, rivers of blood, etc. Not to mention the story features a wombat who gets lost in a strange land far from her family, a hyena abandoned, un-named and excommunicated by his whole clan, etc. Loads and loads of nightmare fuel.



Thanks for the additional comments on the Franco-Belgian classics. It's been a while, and it seems I didn't notice how few women those have, and how stereotyped they tend to be.

[Vinyadan]

And the "eat your friend's liver" part.

[Knaight]

And the "eat your friend's liver" part.

Funerary cannibalism might be another one of those things that's not great for a five year old, yeah.

[Maryring]

Digger is fantastic and everyone should read it. But you should probably wait until you're a bit older than 5 years old. 12 plus is my recommendation.

I will also throw my vote behind Donald Duck, Asterix and Lucky Luke. There's a lack of female representation, true. But the violence when it appears is low key, difficulties are usually handled by trickery and intelligence, and most importantly at least for me it made me real curious about the events that the stories referenced. It's a great springboard for further learning. Out of the three, Donald Duck is perhaps the most fitting for a five year old, but I read Asterix as a five-six year old myself. I also read Billy and C&H but they didn't interest me that much.