Exploring the artistic medium of comics with the kid-gloves long gone.
I remade this post into a page, since I’ll be updating it over time, adding links and books I think are worth checking out: http://kevinczap.com/artofcomics/reading-list/.
I’ll be sure to let you know where there’s something new!
Hundreds of manga series are available to read online for free over at Tokyopop and Viz.
A lot of manga have a dozen or more volumes, and getting started on one can be quite an investment. Tokyopop and Viz are two of the biggest publishers of manga in North America, and each has a good selection of titles that you can preview before you buy, or just read the whole thing right there (as nice as the free internet is, there are still comics shops that need support!)
There are also a few places online where you can find countless free manga scans, although legality begins to get tricky.