I’ve been on a bit of a comic book kick lately. I especially like graphic novels, as they’re easier to get my hands on and take longer to read than individual issues.

“Nimona,” Noelle Stevenson’s graphic novel debut, began as a web comic. A fun read, the comic is set in the time of knights and dragons, but with convenient anachronisms like computers, TVs, and plasma cannons.

Nimona is a shapeshifter who shows up at villain Ballister Blackheart’s lair, looking to be his new sidekick. She can’t wait to do revenge! And science! She is an impatient teenager and she wants to overthrow the government – NOW!

Blackheart is methodical, though, and has plans, and he doesn’t want Nimona going berserk. Of course she does anyway, and chaos ensues, etc.

I love that “Nimona” subverts the traditional role of heroes and villains. It’s unpredictable and it has heart.

Stevenson also co-writes the comic “Lumberjanes,” about a Girl Scout-like troop who get much more than they bargained for when they explore the wilderness.

Plans for both “Nimona” and “Lumberjanes” to be adapted for the big screen are in the works.

Descender

Entertainment Weekly says, “Your new sci-fi obsession is here,” in the blurb on the cover of the graphic novel “Descender, Volume 1,” by Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen. A bold statement which would seem a bit presumptuous if it wasn’t such a great comic.

A collection of issues 1-6, “Descender, Volume 1” definitely left me wanting more, and I can’t wait to see what happens next to Tim-21, an android child who survived the robot culls that followed the destruction of billions of humans by huge robots called Harvesters.

Tim was created by a scientist named Dr. Jin Quon, and then shipped to a mining colony, where his function was to provide companionship to a child of one of the miners.

I don’t want to give the whole story away. It’s dark, intense, and heartbreaking, and is also being made into a movie. Check it out.

Nimona, by Noelle Stevenson; HarperTeen

Descender, by Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen, Image Comics, Rated Mature