my birthday is soon so i want to buy myself comic books
can be manga as well just shoot what you have at me i can take it

HALLOWEEN

I highly recommend Cromartie High School. In terms of humor it sets itself apart from manga who rely on idk slapstick or whatever comedy. Cromartie is more of a 'smart' comedy not in the sciencey way but on the meta-ish way. I don't really know how to explain it on proper terms but I always get the familiarity with Futurama when reading it (but without the science and pop-culture references spread all over).

The only other manga that is similar to it is Gintama(my favorite) but it needs a little bit of background with pop-culutre, anime and japanese stuff to get. Cromartie you could just dive right in.

i love the cromartie anime which ive watched a ton, i saw the manga once and loved it also. i should read it..

before I moved far from home and left all my comics behind, I used to have bunches, but as I think critically about them I dont know how many I'd recommed
 
I think one of the first comics series I really got into was the invisibles, and it still has a fond place in my heart, and it's worth checking out if you've never seen it, it's a story about a secret society of magic anarchist punks who are fighting forces of order and control
 
I left behind 2 giant Little Nemo books of broadsheet sized pages that I hope to reclaim some day.  maybe you might be able to get ahold of something by winsor mccay? he is the absolute grandmaster of whimsy and delightful disorientation
 
what do y'all think of more serious graphic novels?  persepolis is one of my favorites of those, for instance. story of a socially conscious persian girl growing up during iranian revolution of 1979
 
I also used to be way into league of extraordinary gentlemen, though on reflection the series had many problematic elements that make me reticent to give it a fullhearted recommendation. 
 
I dunno, what kind of recommendations you looking for? light-hearted things? serious things?  fantasy? slice of life? or just anything new you might not have heard of?
 
edit: also, regardless of anything you should have/get daniel clowes' ghost world, I read that like 2 dozen times in my teen years, enid was kinda one of my weird media rolemodels. story of 2 girls in 1990's chicago suburbs disaffected and trying to figure out what to do with themselves.  honest, sometimes funny, sometimes kinda sad

The only reason I picked up the manga as a kid was because the anime told me too (talking about cromartie) but i love the anime...
 
ALSO WOW! I only knew ghost world was a film, i didnt even... know this was a comic book! this is great, ill def get a copy. film adaptations of any comic sort of confuse me though, since both act so differently.
 
hmm.. i really love manga.... and i guess, i can go for anything, as long as its a comic book
 
you should all read I am a hero, which is a manga still in the works (hasnt been published in USA yet, but is very famous and has been going on since 2009.) and its a zombie manga about a mangaka who sometimes refuses to believe hes the main character of the story, yet sometimes is only brave because of it. hence the name I am a hero.hes just a cute character and im sure youll all be able to see that within the first chapter
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSqhOZV5smM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSqhOZV5smM[/url]
 
also on the topic of anime look at what i found.... the story has lots of boobers, but i like the early animation... from what ive seen its a story about a perverted Buddhist who is good at technology and wants to save this model.

perhaps you'd like jim woodring? most of what he's known for is wordless stories set in a surreal world, basically a combination of psychedelia and old Fleischer Bros. cartoons + a dash of cosmic horror and inscrutability, with a lot of depth and strange Buddhist analogies built deep within the obscure narratives. he's also a good writer though, maybe try his Jim autobio comics for his illustrated dream journals, random Unifactor stories, just strange vignettes, etc. his work with writing is sometimes very reminiscent of classic alt "comix" minus the shitty xenophobic worldviews and casual sexism, sometimes just his own thing. it might not be your thing but if that sounds interesting, try lookin' up some Frank stories online, cheggidout

Yeah, Happy Birthday!