I've been looking for a new Graphic Novel to read; The only one I've read was V for Vendetta a while back, which I really enjoyed. Also on my radar: - Watchmen (though I wasn't wild about the movie) - Maus - Walking Dead (Only because of HBO) Any suggestions?
Definitely The Watchmen. The movie could never do justice to the comic. I'd also add The Dark Knight Returns to your list.
Fine, I'll break down and read The Watchmen. I can't tell you how many times i've passed over Y: The Last Man as well. Thanks for the suggestions, what else?
Read "Wanted". It's so different from the movie that your head will explode. My girlfriend would say read "Walking Dead", it's infinitely better than the show. Ugh that show sucks so bad now. 1st season = great. 2nd season = unwatchable.
Fables is really well written. Would also suggest Scalped, Preacher and Transmetropoltian. They are all very good adult comics.
I strongly second recs for Y: The Last Man, Preacher and The Long Halloween. I'd also add a few Batman classics: The Killing Joke by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland which is the very best Batman/Joker story ever I'd say. And Arkham Asylum by Grant Morrison and Dave McKean. Beautiful writing, craaazy great art. And I'd add any collections of the following series: Animal Man by Grant Morrison Swamp Thing by Alan Moore Sandman by Neil Gaiman And, if you like superheroes, though it was controversial among fans, I loved Identity Crisis by Brad Meltzer and Rags Morales. I thought it was the best Justice League story ever.
I haven't actually read many American graphic novels, but I'm an anime nut, and I've read some damn fine manga. Same difference if you don't mind black-and-white and Japanesey style. Akira is badass sci-fi action. Way better than the anime film. Berserk is amazing dark fantasy if you don't mind majorly over-the-top sex and violence. We're talking about some demon rape, here. Vagabond is awesome and fits in the description of seriously stylized historical fiction, as it's based around the life of Miyamoto Mushashi. Death Note and Monster are both great mystery/thrillers. Serious page-tuners. I know other good stuff, but for the most part this is the best of it.
No. The Killing Joke is a slim volume -- like a one issue graphic novel. You'll read it very quickly and then you'll probably read it again and again. The Long Halloween is a longer read and came out years after Killing Joke but it really doesn't matter which order you read them in. Also, in case no one has mentioned it here, Frank Miller/David Mazzuchelli's four-issue collection Batman: Year One is one of the best Batman stories ever told. Writing and art both solid as hell.
We all have that one school friend– the strange kid, the class freak, the guy whose antics amused and entertained, maybe even alarmed us. The one who sticks in our heads even with the passing of the years. That classmate is invariably left behind when we graduate into the adult world, vanishing into memory, filed away with our old yearbooks and other teenage mementos. But every now and then, we wonder, whatever happened to that friend? For one man who grew up in a small town in Ohio, that question was answered by every media outlet in the world on July 22, 1991. For the friend in question was... Jeffrey Dahmer! MY FRIEND DAHMER is the haunting, new graphic novel by Derf Backderf, an award-winning cartoonist and comix creator. In these pages, Backderf tries to make sense of the iconic monster who he shared the same school hallways, cafeterias, libraries, and compulsive car rides. What emerges is a surprisingly sympathetic portrait of a disturbed young man struggling helplessly against the ghastly urges bubbling up from the deep recesses of his psyche. The Dahmer recounted here, universally regarded as an inhuman monster by the rest of the world, is a lonely oddball who, in reality, is all too human. A shy kid who is sucked inexorably into madness while the adults in his life fail to notice. We all know what Dahmer did, but in MY FRIEND DAHMER, Backderf provides, from his unique vantage point, profound (and at times, even strangely comic) insight into how, and more importantly, why Jeffrey Dahmer transformed from a high school nerd into a depraved fiend as notorious as Jack the Ripper. In MY FRIEND DAHMER, Derf comes as close as anyone yet has to explaining the seemingly unexplainable phenomenon of one Jeffrey Dahmer, Revere High School, Class of 1978. http://www.derfcity.com/store/dahmerpage.html
That's how I felt at first, but Sandman is one of those series that takes it's time in developing the characters. Once you get into it, you realize it's a little different than the more traditional graphic novels. It's a story about stories. I really got into it on the third book. There's only 10 in the series.
