If you’re interested in reading a graphic novel but not sure where to start, here are some recommendations depending on what kind of books you usually gravitate towards.

If you like short-story collections:

• Lisa Hanawalt’s comics in her debut collection My Dirty Dumb Eyes are bizarre and colourful, and most importantly – very, very funny.

• In Heads Or Tails, Lilli Carre gives us a collection of comics that are akin to the gothic narratives of Flannery O’Connor and Carson McCullers.

• Berlin collective Édition Biografiktion made their UK publishing debut with Biografiktion – an irreverent collection of bold illustration work that both celebrates and lampoons the culture of celebrity.

If you like memoir and coming-of-age stories:

• Marble Season is the semi-autobiographical novel from Gilbert Hernandez, co-creator of the popular Love and Rockets comic series, and is a deceptively simple evocation of childhood.

• The story of a young ballerina, as she travels from Russia to Berlin, Polina is a story of creative self-discovery from French artist Bastien Vive. His illustrations are stunningly original.

• In Embroideries, the author of Persepolis Marjane Satrapi recreates an afternoon spent drinking tea with other Iranian women and talking on life, love and sex. One of my favourite reads of 2013!

If you like action and adventure tales:

• Mr Unpronounceable Adventures presents the complete adventures of Mr Unpronounceable, freshly squeezed from the feverish pen of Melbourne-based psychedelic artist, Tim Molloy.

• Get Jiro! is a stylised send-up of food culture set in a not-too-distant future L.A. where master chefs rule the town like crime lords and people literally kill for a seat at the best restaurants.

• In Batman: Death by Design a string of design-related catastrophes, such as faulty crane calculations and sturdy materials suddenly collapsing, threaten Gotham – easily the most unlucky city in comic book history.

If you like books that explore important issues:

• Adapted and drawn by Joshua Santospirito from an original essay by Craig San Roque, The Long Weekend In Alice Springs is a haunting comic, and one of the best literary explorations of Indigenous issues I’ve ever read.

• Shaun Tan’s wordless portrayal of a migrant’s arrival in a strange new land, The Arrival, is astonishingly moving and given current Australian politics, more important than ever before.

• The Great War unfolds into a seven-metre-long panorama depicting the first day of the Battle of the Somme, filled with wordless, meticulous illustrations from Joe Sacco.

If you like to read ‘definitive authors’:

• Co-Mix: A Retrospective of Comics, Graphics, and Scraps is a comprehensive career overview of the output of legendary cartoonist Art Spiegelman, author of the groundbreaking graphic novel Maus.

• Daniel Clowes is a central figure in the emergence of the graphic novel and The Daniel Clowes Reader is the perfect introduction to his work, including Ghost World.

• While not dedicated to a single author, The Best American Comics 2013 showcases the work of both established and up-and-coming contributors, any of which might become the next Spiegelman or Clowes.

And finally, a recommendation for someone who wants to be wowed:

Building Stories is imaginative and inventive and comes from Chris Ware, author of the widely-acclaimed Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth and one of the most exciting comic creators of today. Less a book but rather a box containing, ‘fourteen distinctively discrete books, booklets, magazines, newspapers, and pamphlets’, Building Stories explores the lives of inhabitants in a three-storey building in Chicago, focusing largely on the story of a nameless, middle-aged woman with an amputated leg. It’s an incredible achievement.