Itching for something new and different to read to start the new year? Then check out Matt Price’s picks for the 10 best graphic novels of 2014!

True-life stories of aging parents, up-and-coming rappers and superstar wrestlers mingled with fictional tales of alternate worlds and 1940s detectives and superheroes in a wide selection of graphic novels worth reading in 2014.

1. “Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?” (Bloomsbury)
Roz Chast’s memoir about dealing with her aging parents is honest and heartbreaking. But Chast manages to find humor and poignancy as she recounts her time as a conflicted caretaker for her parents.

2. “Seconds: A Graphic Novel” (Ballantine Books)
“Scott Pilgrim” creator Bryan Lee O’Malley returns with a full-color graphic novel about Katie, a chef who finds magic mushrooms that give her second chances to change her decisions in the past.

3. “The Shadow Hero” (First Second)
Gene Luen Yang and Sonny Liew look at the Golden Age comic-book hero the Green Turtle and extrapolate a possible origin of the character, who may have been comics’ first Asian-American superhero.

4. “Kill My Mother” (Liveright Publishing)
The 85-year-old Jules Feiffer has created a graphic novel tribute to the likes of Chandler and Hammett that examines and explores noir tropes in a fresh new way. The cartoonist, who has won an Oscar and a Pulitzer Prize, likely doesn’t need more accolades. But with this excellent graphic novel, he’s due them. Kinetic, insightful and instantly engrossing, “Kill My Mother” is one of the top graphic novels of the year.

5. “Here” (Pantheon)
In “Here,” Richard McGuire tells the story of a single space. The graphic novel follows the events that have occurred in one room over the course of centuries.

6. “Sugar Skull” (Pantheon)
“Sugar Skull” is the conclusion of Charles Burns’ graphic novel trilogy that began with “X’ed Out” and continued in “The Hive.” The journey of artist Doug and his avatar Nitnit, an anagram for and homage to Herge’s Tintin, is completed in this volume, as Doug has to confront his own self-deception. It’s a deeply psychological look at modern life.

7. “Doctors” (Fantagraphics)
In “Doctors,” Dash Shaw crafts a science-fictional story of a medical marvel with a dark downside. The Charon is a device that allows a doctor to enter a patient’s afterlife via a memory in the patient’s mind. The Charon can guide the patient back to life, but the process leaves the patients deeply disturbed, as they are pulled from the perfect afterlife they have created in their minds. Psychologically moving and unsettling.

8. “Over Easy” (Drawn and Quarterly)
Mimi Pond transports readers back to the early 1970s in California, as hippies gave way to punks and Pond was a waitress at the Imperial Cafe, which hosted an oddball yet endearing cast of characters.

9. “Andre the Giant: The Life and Legend” (First Second)
Box Brown has researched the life of one of the best-known professional wrestlers of all time and crafted a compelling story that looks at the impressive yet flawed man behind the charismatic TV persona.

10. “Hip Hop Family Tree Vol. 2: 1981-1983″ (Fantagraphics)
Ed Piskor continues his comic strips examining the early days of hip-hop. In this volume, hip-hop begins to evolve into an industry, with the pros and cons that implies. Piskor brings these stories to life while at the same time invoking the style and braggadocio of early 1980s Marvel Comics, which seems strangely appropriate. Rappers including RUN-DMC, NWA, The Beastie Boys, Doug E Fresh, KRS One, ICE T and Public Enemy appear in this volume’s stories.