Trying to get the wife into comics.

Maybe Lost at Sea by Bryan Lee O'Malley? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_at_Sea_(comics)
It's kind of out there but it's grounded by an inspirational story about a young woman finding herself on a road trip.

Turk, may I recommend these books, based on the fact that they are a small run and seem to lean towards a more cinematic-sense of drama than your traditional Marvel/DC superhero title:

The Wake is well-written and is only 10 issues long. It is highly suspenseful and features female protagonists.
The Massive reads like "Captain Phillips" meets "Whale Wars".
Infinite Horizon is a modern retelling of Homer's The Odyssey (basically the story of a man who just wants to get home to his wife and kid (and just a 6 issue run to boot!).

I would have recommended the Locke & Key series, but there are a lot of F-bombs...and your wife would also need to appreciate a highly fantasized concept story by the child of Stephen King (Mr. Joe Hill)

Hope this helps!
-Drew

Some very nice books recommended already, so I thought I'd throw my hat into the ring too. My first thought (pretty much always my first thought when recommending comics to people who currently read no comics at all) would be to stay a long way away from superheroes. All of us here know that there are loads of great books within the genre, but it carries a lot of baggage and an internal language of storytelling and conventions that can be really inaccessible to readers unfamiliar with comics. I'd tend to start with quality non-superhero books and work on to some of the great superhero recommendations above once you've made the breakthrough of getting her interested in the medium.

Exactly what to recommend is a touch tricky - it depends a bit on what counts as too much SF or Fantasy since there aren't all that many series with none of those elements.

Some things I might try:

The current Gail Simone run of Red Sonja - I know this is Fantasy, but there is so little magic involved that it almost reads more like historical fiction. Great characterisation and a very strong female lead.

Strangers In Paradise - Strong female characters, beautiful art, friendship, romance, twists & turns... everyone should read SiP, actually! I don't know how easy it is to track down in ink-on-paper format, but it's all on Comixology and Vol. 1 is very reasonably priced. If she likes this, Terry Moore's more recent Rachel Rising is much loved around here (also by me) although it does have far more fantasy/horror to it.

Phonogram Vol. 2 - technically it does involve magic, but you could ignore that completely and hardly lose anything as far as the story goes. It mostly involves the events of a single night in an indie night club seen from the PoV of a bunch of different young characters. Lots of music and fashion references, great art and writing. It does include some characters from Vol 1, but only in very minor roles and Vol 1 is far less accessible to someone unfamiliar with reading comics.

Courtney Crumrin - Again, there is magic here... it's the adventures of a 12 year old girl dicovering she's a witch with magical powers. The art is charming and it does a great job of being funny and adventurous at the same time.

I'd second the recommendation of Saga too, as long as it's not too SF for her tastes (it is pretty high space opera, but a particularly wonderful one).

Everyone has posted amazing suggestions but may I throw Fables into the ring? It's got pretty much everything you listed and I've heard more times than I can count that it's the comic that got someone's wife or girlfriend into comics.

I actually am sort of in the same boat (limited success). My wife works as an organizer/lobbyist for workers rights and other social justice causes. So of all the comics I've had her try Magneto seems to be the one she's latched on to the most. I guess when you have to be proffesor x all day it's nice to go home and be magneto for a bit.

Maybe you could try with some european comics.

Marjane Satrappi's Persepolis link
It has everything you mentioned. The art is totally not comics, but it's a start.
And it was made into a Cannes winning animation later.

Then Didier Comes, a belgian artist, has couple of albums with strong female characters,
but I'm not sure if he was translated in english...

PhilyD,

I'm sure that when presented with the cornucopia you laid out that your wife will have found something that caught her fancy and fired her imagination!

Keep us posted!