5 Comic Book Storylines to Steal

When I am running adventures, I steal shamelessly from all kinds of sources. Characters, themes, storylines, names, places… nothing is safe from pillaging. One of the formats I love using as an idea mine are comic books. Those would be graphic novels if you’d rather use the name given to legitimize the form in recent years. While I will undoubtedly cover some of the specifics of what I’ve used and how I’ve twisted it to my own ends, I’ll start today by going over five series’ or storylines that are ripe for adaptation to the game table.

1. Y, the Last Man – Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra, Goran Sudzuka, and others (DC/Vertigo)

This is one of my favourite series’ probably of all time, but I may be biased as the post-apocalypse is among my most beloved sub-genres. In this series, following an event in the first issue, Yorick Brown (and his pet monkey, Ampersand), become the last male creatures on Earth. We then follow Yorick and a small retinue as he attempts to travel from where he is in the US to meet his girlfriend, who is in Australia when the extinction event occurs. The series explores themes that a lot of good post-apocalyptic material does, such as the cost and value of humanity. Its set up however, with billions of women still alive after the disaster, also handles the topic of gender roles and gender inequalities without being exploitative.

2. Planetary – Warren Ellis and John Cassaday (DC/Wildstorm… or maybe DC/Vertigo now… or possibly just DC Comics…)

This one is an easy setup for any game that employs hopping from location to location and investigating what Monte Cook would call “The Weird.” Simply put, the series focuses on archaeologists of the unknown looking into strange phenomena while dealing with their personal demons. Many of the issues of the series could be easily adapted as adventures for GMs running a Planescape type campaign or who are playing The Strange or Numenera.

3. Preacher – Garth Ennis, Steve Dillon, and others (DC/Vertigo)

Preacher has a setup that isn’t atypical for a roleplaying game campaign: Jesse Custer, a minister who has accidentally been granted immense power, is traveling across the US with an ex-girlfriend and an Irish vampire on a search for God. Along the way, they encounter numerous challenges both celestial and fiendish in nature, as well as dealing with Jesse’s family. While the setup is a fairly classic hero’s journey, the execution is phenomenal and will leave any GMing reader with a ton of ideas that will challenge their PCs skills as well as their morals.

4. DMZ – Brian Wood, Riccardo Burchielli, and others (DC/Vertigo)

Set on Manhattan in the near future, during the second American civil war, DMZ follows reporter Matty Roth as he navigates the treacherous morass of factions active on the island in order to get at “the truth.” The series’ plot is winding, and effectively shows that good and evil are fictions; all of the many interest groups present in the series take horrific actions at different times, and the reader often feels that they are justified in doing so. Yes, I prefer shades of gray to the black and white storytelling we are often subjected to, and the games I run often reflect this.

5. Morning Glories – Nick Spencer and Joe Eisma (Image Comics)

Hey, a comic series that wasn’t published by a DC Comics imprint! Morning Glories is set at the eponymous academy, where a lot of weirdness is going on. This series has it all: murder, torture, occult phenomena, secret twins, flashbacks… and it all works. From the time that Casey’s father tells her he doesn’t have a daughter to <redacted> your mind will be filled with enough twists and turns to last several campaigns… and your players will love and hate you for it!

What comics have you read that have inspired your campaigns, or even your characters? Sound off in the comments below!