Friday, September 30, 2016

50 Essential Graphic Novels

Road to Perdition by Max Allen CollinsAbeBooks: 50 Essential Graphic Novels: While the term 'graphic novel' only entered common usage as recently as the late 1970's, novel-length works in either pictures-only forms or pictures in combination with text have existed since the 19th century. Baby boomers who haven't picked up a comic book since childhood will most likely associate the term with the Classics Illustrated series, which does not quite fit the modern definition.

2 comments:

Don Coffin said...

I think the only two I have read are Maus (which is a great piece of writing and art) and The Road to Perdition (also excellent). I have missed the rest of them.

S.B. said...

Graphic fiction, or graphic novels, or Trade Paperback collections are what I have always considered to be a part of literature, and an important one, or some cases, a form of a "guilty pleasure". But some of the darker themes of comics and really, really sour artwork have proliferated and the whole idea of looking for them or reading them at the library is usually not so enjoyable to me now.


TERRY MOORE has a wonderful series called Strangers in Paradise, and the first several volumes are dramatic and good.

NEIL GAIMAN is famous as an author, but several of the early SANDMAN collections are nice and have a lot of references to William Shakespeare and more in the stories.

ALAN MOORE is a very good writer and has Top 10, Tom Strong, the V For Vendetta series which is quite good and the Promethea series which is incredibly odd and somehow an experiment that holds up well.

Some other authors have personal politics and things in interviews and their own books, for Superman, Batman and other characters and their own that I find their books are good OR I could take them or leave 'em.

S