Yeah, I meant Fun Home. I thought it was great.
“Great Work”? Like taking its place in the Western Canon alongside Shakespeare? No, not really, but it’s the closest I’ve seen, and a lot more compelling than a lot of novels I’ve read that are considered pretty great.
I’ve gotta go with Sandman as being the greatest work in the medium so far. Maus is a great book and Watchmen was certainly groundbreaking but IMHO Gaiman gets the nod to date. Morrison is…spotty. Some of his stuff is brilliant but quite a bit is just odd and pretentious.
You thought wrong.
Many like Maus for the same reason many people like Persepolis, done by a non-Jew and not about the holocaust.
Because it told a great autibiographical story, with real feeling, enhanced by the use of comic visuals.
It wasn’t a work of technical cartooning genius (and neither is Persepolis)- for that, I’d go with Eisner, whose Contract With God trilogy hasn’t really been bettered (and is the real grandfather of the graphic novel).
But to claim that the only reason people like it is that they give Jews a critical pass when writing on the Holocaust displays limited thinking. There are more reasons to like a work of art than mere technical wizardry. The real question is ‘does this work of art acoomplish what it set out to do? Is the reader interested in going there?’
I think Maus received a lot of critical acclaim because it exceeded the artificial preconceptions of many reviewers. Many critics who don’t read comic books believe that the media is all Archie and Superman (and not the good stuff). So when they came across Maus they thought it was unique in being an adult comic book story about a serious subject. If they had been familiar with comic books, they would have realized that Maus was good but hardly sui generis.
I’m pretty familiar with comic books, at least, I’ve been reading 'em for decades. I liked it a lot.
I don’t agree with the notion that the primary reason it got good press was that reviewers were ignorant of the medium. For one, that fails to explain why it got sufficient prominance to be reviewed by those not familiar with the medium.
The high-concept gimmick of a serious, hot-button historical event told in cartoon form by anthropomorphic mice. That’s an attention-getter.
If it wasn’t actually entertaining anyone, and no-one thought it was really good, it would sink out of sight without a trace.
There are tons of gimmicky comics out there. There are tons of anthropomorphic funny animal comics out there - indeed, it is a whole sub-genre (shudder, “furries” 
). There are even historically based comics. Few gain notice outside of fandom.
I thought Sandman was uneven for the first third or so. The plotting and attention to detail are fantastic, but it spends a lot of time down blind alleys that may or may not be relevant – witness the Prez storyline, where it would have been simple for Gaiman to turn Boss Smiley into an incarnation of Desire, and making the storyline count for something at both the micro and macro scales.
You can’t beat Alan Moore’s obsessive attention to detail – he manages to weave political lessons, commentary on the superhero genre, a whodunit, and several satisfying plot twists together. Then he throws in a comic-within-a-comic, a biography-within-a-comic, and even gives us a Greek chorus of secondary characters whose reactions tell us more about the world and ourselves. The chapter focusing on Rorschach (whose mask is symmetrical) is graphically symmetrical, for Pete’s sake! The whole thing comes together like a Swiss watch.
As for The Invisibles, I thought the pacing and plotting were horrendously jagged and uneven, the characters relied on Godlike powers which aren’t revealed until they seem to need them, the bad guys are constantly being replaced by deeper and deeper conspiracies (Chthulhu was just a front for the Alien Insect Nazi Overlords!) … I just couldn’t put up with it. It felt like Morrison was taking me on a tour of his art exhibit, eagerly pointing out his bizarre conceptual pieces in draft form and then nudging me to say “Do ya GET IT? HUH?” and then hustling me on to the next sculpture.
I don’t think any discussion of ‘Great Works’ in the comic book medium can be seriously considered unless Beto Hernandez ‘Heartbreak Soup’ from ‘Love & Rockets’ is in there. Both Jaime and Beto did great work but Beto really delivered with the Tales of Palomar.
Also, it would be impossible to not take Dave Sim’s ‘Cerebus the Aardvark’ into account. Arguably, Sim went batshit mad over the last few years (of a twenty-five year work!) and might have lost the title there…but otherwise he’s right up there. It’s not everyone who can write a 6000 page graphic novel and just have it be one small part of a larger tale.
At a minimum, I’d offer that both of the above kick Morrison right in the ol’ nads and leave him crawling away crying. And I like some of Morrison’s stuff.
It’s on my list.
The rest of this thread is looking for the impossible. I don’t think we can have one greatest graphic/comic/whatever novel/book/opus/whatever, any more than we can have the greatest non-graphic novel of all time.
My comments about comics mentioned here:
[ul]
[li]Maus - ground-breaking, in that it’s historical non-fiction. We didn’t exactly see much of that genre in comics before (oh, OK, if you insist, Classic Comics mebbe). I also happen to think that Maus is well-written and decently drawn. It certainly kept me involved.[/li][li]V for Vendetta - Deserves the hype that Watchmen gets. It’s a more original and thought-provoking story. I think it lost out because it’s too “British”.[/li][li]Watchmen - still damn good. I like it because it turns the classic super-hero comic on its head. [/li][/ul]
We seem to have left out The Dark Knight Returns and Sin City. I like 'em. OK, they’re comics. so what.
All of these books prove that there’s a market for graphic novels. Yay! Of course, I was born 20 years too late to take advantage of any of it.
The greatest work to come out of comics books is, I hope, yet sitting on some woman’s or man’s drawing board, waiting for the ink to dry. Even better, it may be still in the mind of a 10-year-old Neil Gaiman wanna-be.
I’m writing a comic book right now. That’ll be the great work. 
I have Beto’s Palomar hardcover, but I admit I preferred Xaime’s Locas, which I checked out of the library. Both were very very good, but I liked Maggie and Hopey better than the residents of Palomar, and I prefer Xaime’s art.
Having read the whole series, I agree with Tengu and Candid Gamera. The Invisibles was too often pretentious, pompous and full of itself.
I had a pal in college (late 80s) who used to say ‘Man, Beto is the better writer but Xaime draws the most bustin’ babes.’
Certainly true, and they’re both good authors. I can see how it could go both ways for people.
That may be what I thought. His Maggie and Penny Century are always curvy and hot. I always figured Mike Allred had a touch of Xaime in his art, especially his pop art stylings and pulchritudinous ladies.
You should give Frank Cho a look as a comic artist. During his University[sup]2[/sup] days he had a ‘letters’ strip in his College Paper and someone wrote in "Why does Frank Cho always draw such objectified, large-breasted women in his strip?
His answer? “BECAUSE I CAN, BABY!”
I’m really, REALLY loathe to invoke a statement like the following, but having just completed my Nth re-reading of The Invisibles last night, I just have to say that anyone who writes it off as “pretentious wankery” just didn’t get it. I know, I know, I can hear the groans now, but having spent a lot of time delving into the hidden things that make the book tick and work together, I can understand how it could fly over many readers’ heads (and how it flew over mine the first two times or so that I read through it).
If there is one universally great comic work, I think that Watchmen is it - as the ridiculously perfect work that’s an example of its medium, a critique of its medium (comic books) and genre (spandex superhero comics), its moment in world history (the cold war zeitgeist) and medium and genre history, etc. etc.
If Watchmen is the The Great Gatsby of comics, then The Invisibles is the Ulysses.
Unless we do get it and it’s your head which is being flown over. Sorry but nobody can declare a victory in a game of “my insight is better than your insight”.
“Pretentious wankery” can be fun. Too much pretentious wankery and I check out, but (despite how it sounds) I don’t really intend it to be a universal dismissal. I have no doubt that The Invisibles is intricate and exciting and mind-openingly complex – but none of that matters (to a particular reader) if they’re not interested enough to keep reading the thing, or re-reading the thing.
That’s not an inherent flaw in the work – enough people I respect think The Invisibles is pretty great (though you and Wolk are the only two people I’ve seen cite it as their single favorite work, and even Wolk admits there are flaws) that I’m sure, if I found it more interesting, I might get something out of it. My track record with Morrison, though, makes me think I won’t love it even if I do put enough effort in to respect it more than I do.
I have to give it up for Sandman (at least the last several volumes) and Fun Home.