Hmm...Black Hole by Charles Burns has recently been collected. It deals with teen-angst in a beautifully creepy way.
Check it out -- www.randomhouse.com/pantheon...hole.html

My personal heroes, the Hernandez brothers have each recently put out beautiful collections of their Love and Rockets series. Check out these great Amazon previews for Locas(Xaime)
www.amazon.com/gp/product...908-3290566
and Palomar(Gilbert)
www.amazon.com/gp/product...908-3290566

Or you can read both brothers togethor with the orignial, smaller collections from Fantagraphic-- www.fantagraphics.com/artist/...ros.html

Love&Rockets are probably my favorite comics of all time. Give it a shot!

If you're looking for something to use in a classroom to teach tolerance and understanding of other cultures, try Perseopolis by Marjane Satrapi. It's the story of the author's childhood during the Iranian revolution.

if you liked Maus, check out Persepolis, I am not sure if I spelled that correctly. Anyway, its by Marjane Satrapi, also not sure if I spelled that correctly. Bleh. Its a wonderful story about a girl from Iran. Very good. Autobiographical.

Obvious selections: Alan Moore's books like The Watchmen or V For Vendetta From Hell. Neil Gaiman's books with Dave Mckean like Violent Cases, Mr. Punch, and Black Orchid, or just neil gaiman books in general like The Sandman series or 1602(though you seem to already emphasis that you dont like traditional comics so 1602 may not work).

Anyway, persepolis. yes. I even spelled it right. I checked. www.amazon.com/gp/product...042-3637700 buy book 2 also. Good stuff.