comic books

A friend of mine from Colombia, who is now fluent in English, said his main method of learning was reading comic books. His favorite was "Archie," which uses fairly standard conversational English.

Does anyone else have any experience/success with this "method"? Also, do such comic books exist for other languages?

Asterix has been translated into tons of languages as well as regional dialects; perhaps Asterix would be useful.

Use "Sazae-san" for Japanese.