Way more about comics than anyone cares about.

Julie asked on twitter about comic books for Ramona.  I thought about it, and about what I have, and that led to me thinking about what comics I read when I was little.  I remember that when I was little, comic books were something I got at the Waldenbooks at the mall so I would have something quiet to do when my mom got her hair cut.  Because internet, I can now look and see that at least three of my comics were published when I was four five.

These were not necessarily good choices.

The Mighty Avengers 249 November 1984.

Surtur uses the Casket of Ancient Winters to freeze the world, and then sends hordes of demons to kill everyone.

Featuring Monica Rambeau as Captain Marvel.

The Uncanny X-Men 191 March 1985.

Conan the Barbarian villain Kulan Gath uses magic to turn Manhattan, and the 99% of all Marvel superheroes who live there, into Conan themed versions of themselves, but they all forget everything.  Except Spider-Man, because Kulan Gath, who again, I must point out is a villain from the far distant past who fought Conan the Barbarian, because Kulan Gath hates Spider-Man.  I'll just leave this link here so you can count how many "not for kids" things there are.

They're sneaking in to do X-Men things with Captain America.

Rom 66 May 1985.

Rom and a bunch of superheroes banish the Dire Wraiths, who you can probably guess from their name, are kind of bad guys.  He also explains how he was put into his space knight armor that he can't take off ever, because that's the sacrifice he had to make to fight Dire Wraiths.  And he tells a bunch of people who've had their families killed that they should just be a family together.  It's a bit weird.

Also, Monica is back again.

The good news is that there are now actual all ages comics that are being published

Archie, Adventure Time, the better DC comics.

Steven Universe, A Bunch of Other Licensed Properties By Boom, Marvel's all ages stuff.

Goodnight Azathoth, the daemon sultan who dwells at the center of infinity outside the bounds of the universe.

So let's go through my collection that range from "this is probably my best suggestion" to "these are probably for a bit older" to "this is mostly a suggestion for a creator who has lots of more appropriate books that I don't own."

Help Us! Great Warrior, Madeline Flores

 Great Warrior fights demons to save her friends and the world.

"or whatever."

Nimona, Noelle Stevenson

 Nimona can shapechange, and teams up with Blackheart to do bad things.

But it's ok, they're really the good guys.

Cleopatra in Space, Mike Maihack

 Actual historical Cleopatra is transported into the future to save the day and go to school.

She has a talking cat, too.

Giant Days, John Allison.

This is technically all ages, but probably isn't interesting for a four year old.  It was in the pile so I took pictures.  It's mostly about going to college.

"The industrial might of the 3M Corporation" is the best description of post-it notes ever.

Adventure Time, everyone in existence.

It's Adventure Time.  Boom/Kaboom have a lot of these books coming out, with AT, Steven Universe, Bravest Warriors, Bee and Puppycat, Garfield, Peanuts, etc.

Fancy parties.

Lumberjanes, Shannon Watters, Grace Ellis, and Noelle Stevenson. 

Five girls go to summer camp camp for hardcore lady types, but it's a weird magical summer camp camp for hardcore lady types, and they tend to have to defeat big scary monsters.

It's a big scary monster, April.

Superhero time:

The Avengers: Infinity Gauntlet, Clevinger, Black, Starlin, Churilla, Perez

This is one of Marvel's all ages stories.  It's a retelling of the Infinity Gauntlet story, but glossing over Thanos killing most of the population of the universe and focusing instead on using friendship and teamwork to save the day.  

And they take an interstellar semi-truck with Dr. Doom.  Who will allow this breach of protocol.

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Ryan North and Erica Henderson

Squirrel Girl saves the day, is awesome, and is going to college to learn how to be a computer programmer.  She's also basically the best superhero ever.

Here's where she defeated Galactus, devourer of worlds.

 She did it with words and nuts.

The fact that she solves most fights by talking is one of the reasons she's the best superhero ever.

 So much so that she gets three interior pictures.

I mean, she's seriously considering just throwing Kraven the Hunter into the air for the rest of forever if it stops him from being such a jerk.

The all ages DC stuff, usually in the form of X Adventures, which were based on the cartoons.

I picked up the Batman one today, which is volume one of four that they had.  I once upon a time had a nearly complete set of the Batman Adventures comics.  As a continuation of the cartoons, they're targeted to the same audience, and because of that, aren't awful garbage like most of DC has become.  There's also Tiny Titans, which I don't actually own, but is a "all the Teen Titan characters, but as kids, and they go to school, and I think Darkseid is like a mean teacher or something instead of a evil god."

And Batman tries to convince people to not be bad guys instead of just punching everyone in the face.

Not superheroes again:

Groo the Wanderer, Sergio Aragones and Mark Evanier.

I picked this one up today when I was taking pictures of the all ages section of the comic book store, because I've read bits of this since I was a kid.  Mark Evanier has a great blog where he talks about comics, and cartoons, and old TV, and a bunch of other stuff that he knows about.  Groo is a Conan the Barbarian like character who is super strong, but also super dumb, so he gets confused and does silly stuff.  Most of the side characters just try to focus his stupid strength away from anything they like because it ends so poorly.

My phone decided to rotate this one.

This is the "maybe not this exact book, but Jill Thompson has a lot of kid books and things that would work."

Death: At Death's Door, Jill Thompson.

During the Sandman series, Lucifer Morningstar expels the population of Hell, locks the gates, and leaves.  So everyone who was dead goes to Death's house, since they have no where else to go.  Her sisters Delirium and Despair throw a party because why not.

Here Death is trying to take Charles, but he just refuses to be dead properly, so she gives up to go deal with bigger problems and he runs off with Edwin, who's also a ghost.

They're the Dead Boy Detectives.

Which isn't really a child appropriate book either, but it was available, so I took pictures.

They do solve the case, and they stay ghosts.

 Because I have it, and they generally fit:

The Tenchi Muyo spin off comics, Hitoshi Okuda.

 I have a bunch of these, and I think they're far less "a bunch of girls want to date Tenchi" and more "a bunch of girls live with Tenchi, and silly adventures happen, sometimes in space, and sometimes just in Japan."

Like this one, where Sasami enters a totally not Iron Chef TV show.

Cardcaptor Sakura, Clamp.

Sakura is an elementary school girl who uses her magic wand to capture magic cards that she can use the power of.

She also doesn't really "fight" so much as "convince."

"So what's best?"  No idea.  This is just a selection of comics I have that are plausibly child friendly.  Compared to what I was reading, pretty much all of these are better options.  Not Dead Boy Detectives.  The first page I opened of that was a "whoops, yeah, this isn't the book I was thinking about."