Graphic novel suggestions for someone stuck in bed

Cafe Society
21

Excel Saga. Not quite as strange as the anime, but still good for a laugh.

Cartoon History of the Universe by Larry Gonick. Educational and entertaining, a sure-fire hit for any Doper. In fact, just about anything by Larry Gonick is pretty good.

If you can find it at the library, there are collections of very old newspaper comics, including a lot of old Disney strips, Popeye, Krazy Kat etc. It’s interesting to see what Mickey Mouse was like before he made the transition from cartoon character to advertising logo. Also: Popeye playing craps with the Sea Hag. It’ll probably be in the oversized books.

Metropolis by Osamu Tezuka. It’s amazing how much old manga looked like 1930’s American cartoons.

Gon. Manga set in prehistoric times, with no words to advance the story. It’s a interesting, well, can’t exactly call it a read when there are no words.

I can’t remember what it was called, but there’s a Sam & Max: Freelance Police collection.

Secret Comics Japan is an interesting melange of “underground” manga. Includes an interesting comic by Cinderalla artist Junko Mizuno.

I can second the Maus books. They’re also the only things listed I’ve read.

22

Damn, I wish I’d recommended that. Great book.

23

You must be sure to also read the book The Sandman Presents: Taller Tales which has:

Merv Pumpkinhead, Agent of D.R.E.A.M.

The Further Adventures of Danny Nod, Heroic Library Assistant (works for Lucien in Dream’s Library)

The Thessaliad (Parts One through Four)

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Dreams…But Were Afraid to Ask!

24

Also good, if you like cyberpunk, is Warren Ellis’ Transmetropolitan. Read it before watching any election coverage this year.

25

I second Transmetropolitan and Box Office Poison . From Hell was a hard book to get into but eventually I got carried away and the Appendix was actually the most interesting part. It tied the parts I didn’t quite get together and really helped me enjoy the story.

Best wishes!

26

You gotta read Cerebus which, in my opinion, is the pinnacle (thus far) of the comic book medium. You should read this even if for no other reason that this is a historically important series. The stuff that Sim and Gerhard manage to do with the medium is lightyears ahead of everyone else.

Not only that, but the cost to reading time ratio is probably the best you’ll find in comics. However, for the love of God, don’t start with volume 1. Get 2 (High Society) and if you like it, go back to one before 3 and 4. If you’re worried about being offended by what may or may not be Sim’s misogynism, stop at 4 and you’ll be happy.

27

A couple of years ago, kaylasmom and I obtained a CD with several hundred works of literature; all in the public domain. One of the books was Fanny Hill. I found that novel to be quite graphic.

Enjoy.

Hey, wait a minute, when you said “graphic” did you mean Illustrated in some way? Because I don’t remember seeing any pictures in that book. So never mind, if you were looking for illustrations.

28

OK, some more regular books with vampires or vampiric themes, by Barbara Hambly: Those Who Hunt the Night and Travelling With the Dead, the first can be read alone but the second is a sequel, The Silent Tower and The Silicon Mage, which are really two volumes of one book. Sometimes you can find them in a single volume titled Darkmage. Don’t read one without the other. And finally, she has a story in Sisters of the Night, which is a collection of stories about female vampires. I think that she was co-editor of that one, too, though I’m not sure.

I hope this helps. I know all about being laid up and being bored out of one’s skull.

29

If you’re into vampires and dark fantasy type stuff, you might like the hardboiled crime strip collections.

There’s some collections of Dick Tracy strips from the 30’s and 40’s (before it started getting silly) out there that are pretty gruesome. I also recommend The Road to Perdition. There’s also some EC horror story collections that are a hoot to read. This is all that stuff that was published in the 50’s that led to the Red Scare type of inquisition that banned horror comics for a while.

30

Beyond Asterix and some Tintin when I was a whole lot younger, I’ve never really been into graphic novels. However, I would recommend Akira by Katsuhiro Otomo. Much more involved and makes somewhat more sense than the movie did, plus the artwork is generally excellent.

31

I agree with many excellent choices:

Alan Moore – anything is great
Cerebus – but you’ll go broke trying to keep up with it and the early to middle stuff (before the divorce from his wife) is the best stuff
Maus is also quite good.

I’ll recommend from Crossgen:

Route 666
The Path
The Way of the Rat

I don’t think they’re your taste, but I also like:

Sojurn
Meridian
The Crux

Get well, but enjoy your recovery!

32

I recommend the most recent Daredevil compilations, the ones written by Brian Michael Bendis and illustrated by Alex Maleev. They improve on the Miller stories, which is no mean feat, and show a certain political awareness rare in superhero comics.

Also, any Punisher or Hitman compilations by Garth Ennis. And speaking of Ennis, his Enemy Ace story from 2 or 3 years ago was one of the best things he’s ever written–and one of the stories was drawn by Russ Heath!

33

To the many fine titles already mentioned, I would add anything in Frank Miller’s Sin City series (but particularly The Big Fat Kill and maybe That Yellow Bastard), and the perenially underrated Hellblazer. There, again, you can’t go wrong with any of the trades pb’s-- whether you try the older, classic stuff, like Rake at the Gates of Hell (an Ennis/Dillon extravaganza), or more recent runs like the Brian Azzarello-penned Good Intentions and Freezes Over. (This is one comic that continues to kick serious tail; the current run by Mike Carey and Marcelo Frusin is just wonderful.)

And the first Sleeper collection just came out! Get Sleeper. Read Sleeper. It’s one of the best written comics out there.

34

It’s called Sam & Max: Surfin’ the Highway by Steve Purcell. It’s also, unfortunately, out of print. You may be able to find a used copy through amazon or ebay. Don’t know if I’d recommend it to anyone with abdominal surgery, through, because I can’t read it without cracking up.

My first and best recommendation would be Hellboy by Mike Mignola. Once again, Hellboy. My favorite comic series ever: astonishingly beautiful art, very subtly-told stories that perfectly combine humor, action, and horror, and it sounds like it fits in with your interests. There are several trade paperbacks; Seed of Destruction is the first, and The Chained Coffin and Others is my favorite. The only reservation I have is that they’re heavier on mood than on dialog and plot, so I don’t know if they are good time-killers.

The best graphic novel I ever read was Batman: Year One by Frank Miller. I don’t really like any of Miller’s other stuff, and I’m not a huge fan of Batman; I just like well-told stories.

From the OP it sounds like you’re much more familiar with manga than I am, so these might be old hat: Lone Wolf and Cub is huge and very well-done; I imagine you’d be fully recovered by the time you got halfway through that series. A second for Metropolis. And if you don’t already have it, have you considered a subscription to Shonen Jump? The English-language version started fairly recently, and while I feel a little bit guilty reading stuff that’s so clearly directed towards children, I have to admit that it’s fun having a steady supply of something that big and that easy & fun to read.

Lynn Bodoni already mentioned Terry Pratchett, so I’ll second the Discworld books. Especially if you’ve read Good Omens. Because Good Omens is one of my favorite books ever, I’d tried reading some of the Discworld books before. But they always seemed light and never held my interest. Recently, because Pratchett gets so much good press on this message board, I picked up a couple and now I’m hooked. I feel okay suggesting them in a graphic novel thread, because they read somewhat like graphic novels – they’re not stupid, but they’re easy to read, and are carried mostly on the level of imagination in them. Vampires, werewolves, wizards, dragons, time travel, all thrown together in the same story like the best comic books. I started this round with Night Watch and loved it.

In the same vein, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul by Douglas Adams are great, fun books to read.

Good luck and hope you have a speedy recovery, meenie. Enjoy the chance to read.

35

A Distant Soil is pretty good.

36

I buy Shonen Jump every month at the store instead of subscribing, mostly because I think I will stop being interested in Yu Yu Hakusho soon (once it gets to the part where all it is is fighting, like the show is) and, until recently, only Shaman King and YYH interested me out of the ones in there. However, I have a strange new affection for Hikaru no Go (who thought that a manga about a game I couldn’t figure out in a million years would be cool?), so I might subscribe.

37

these are rather smallish graphic novels but I like them-

the DC version of The Ring of the Nibelung (nekkid Rhinemaidens & Valkyrie AND a great presentation of 15+ hours of opera), still in print

I don’t know if these two are still in print-
CAMELOT 3000- Aliens invading Earth in league with reincarnated Mordred & Morgan LeFay, Guenevire leads UN Security forces, the Round Table is reincarnated throughout the world, a young boy flees aliens & crashes into an ancient tomb under Glastonbury Tor awakening its occupant… oh, and Tristan & Isolde are both reincarnated… as women! Sounds totally silly but the material is handled with such respect for the lore that it works.

ELVIS SHRUGGED- a brilliant parody of some big novel & some dead rock star G

38

Curses on me spelling:

Sojurn is really Sojourn

BTW: I knew that, really.

39

Out of print, as far as I know: Myth Adventures, I and II, by Robert Asprin and Phil Foglio. Asprin wrote a series of Myth Adventures books, with illustrations by Foglio, but the ones I’m talking about are a pair of graphic novels. Asprin and Foglio are a great writer/artist pair.

If you like adult comics, then you might like Foglio’s XXXenophile books. Very funny, and very X-rated. It appeals to men AND women. However, as the title implies, this series is about alien love. This might mean something as mild as two modern day humans roleplaying a SF scenario, or it might involve a werejaguar and a human woman, or a human male and female elf…so if something like that would not appeal, it’s probably not for you.

40

For manga I would recomend the apple seed series.

For western I think Cerebus would be a good choice, however I **would ** start with the first one. It’s very interesting to see the progression of the character and the art style.
After Church & State it does get a bit wordy though.

If you get a bit feverish in bed I recomend Batman - Arkham Asylum. Best read in an altered state of mind.