I also found the Persepolis movie to be very, very good, so that’s another option for that.
Agreed. In fact, despite the fact that the movie V for Vendetta was even more different from its source GN than the movie of Watchmen was from its, I’d go so far as to say that V for Vendetta was a better movie.
Freedom! Forever!
I’ll disagree with a couple of premises above:
Nonsense. By your reasoning, a shitty graphic novel about the Holocaust is better than a brilliant one about growing up. Tons of dreck has been written about the Holocaust. Judging a work of art by the importance of its subject is bizarre.
(That’s not to say Maus isn’t better than Watchmen–I’ve never read Maus. If it’s better, it’s not better because of the importance of its subject, it’s better because of its writing, art, plotting, etc.)
I disagree less fervently with this one, but I certainly don’t find true stories more powerful than fiction. That’s a matter of taste.
As for best graphic novels? The art in Neil Gaiman’s The Kindly Ones initially put me off it, but when I gave it another go, I found it to be the only graphic novel ever to move me to tears. That’s some good readin’. (Note that it only makes sense within the context of the previous books; read them first!)
Daniel
My opinion - Top five is gonna include:
Maus
Dark Knight
Watchmen
Sandman (Art is inconsistent, especially early on )
Usagi Yojimbo
In roughly that order.
But… I did just start Persiopololisiopilispo…Persepolis, but so far it hasn’t passed anybody else.
As far as movies go V for Vendetta was the better movie. As far as graphic novels I could never get into V for Vendetta. The artwork instantly turns me off. I’ve tried many times to read it but I can never get past the first few pages.
Hmm. If Manga counts that opens a new candidate for me.
Maison Ikkoku by Rumiko Takahashi. The gentlest, most human love story ever set to paper for my money. Over the course of years it made me both laugh and cry with the humaness of it.
Of all the fiction (graphic novels and otherwise) I’ve read so far in my life, Ghost World is my favorite.
Watchmen isn’t even the best graphic novel by Alan Moore. That’s Promethea. For me, Sandman is #1, Promethea is #2, and nothing else that I know of comes close.
Disclaimer: I haven’t really read all that many GNs. If there’s some work of utter genius out there that I don’t know about…well, I don’t know about it.
Another for Starman. Not that the others aren’t great, I just feel it needs another mention.
No love for Bone?
There were three graphic novel titles popular among my friends when I was a kid: Watchmen, Preacher and Sandman. I haven’t read the two latter, but from what I gather they might at least be worth looking into.
As for graphic novels that might be contender for best or second best ever? Hm. Well, Maus, as bentioned, is a seriously high contender. Persepolis and Ghost World are also good picks. But I think I’ll cast my personal vote to Dropsie Avenue. I just loved it immensely.
Purely sentimental as it’s the first graphic novel I ever read- CAMELOT 3000.
And a tongue-in-cheek endorsement for ELVIS SHRUGGED. A parody of Ayn Rand in which Elvis is John Galt, Sinatra is Rearden & Madonna is Dagny Taggart.
Jimmy Corrigan (and other Chris Ware stuff such as Rusty Brown and Building Stories) it is. I can’t believe that only two people in the thread have mentioned it so far. He is one of the very few artists who truly understands that the comic book is a complete medium in its own right and not just another way to present a novel. Alan Moore and Eisner are generally very good, too, but neither of them reaches the heights of Ware, IMO.
Oh, and David B’s Epileptic is recommendable. He pioneered the semi-naive black & white style that Satrapi (and many others) uses as well.
I love Watchmen dearly but I think Maus is far superior to it. Moore’s own From Hell, however, is the best graphic novel I’ve read and one of the best novels, with or without pictures. But take care for it is very long, very, very dense and the art (which I think is absolutely amazing) has been described to me as ugly, horrendous or depressing by people. To disclose bias, I’m a huge fan of Alan Moore and think very little of what he’s written to be anything less than excellent. It’s not to the taste of everyone but his Top 10 is incredibly fun and I reread it every so often and Lost Girls is fascinating and sports gorgeous art but is also very graphically pornographic (which is the whole point of the thing).
Dark Knight I think has aged rather badly, I’d recommend Batman - Year One by the same author instead. It’s as important or more to the character’s mythology, isn’t as OTT while still keeping the noir atmosphere and tough as nails dialogue and characterization and has better art (even considering that Miller’s art in Dark Knight is energetic, original and has a great sense of design). Dark Knight sure was more influential to comics as a whole, though.
Fun Home was a very pleasant surprise to me because I thought it would never be able to live up to the hype and it did. I objected to the subject matter (because I thought it’d be boring, no moral judgments implied) but it turned out to be interesting and touching. The execution of the thing was astounding; form and content served each other masterfully. I’d rate this near the top of any list.
Just substitute Epileptic for Fun Home and repeat the paragraph above.
Dan Clowe’s Ghost World was great but I preferred David Boring, though I wouldn’t argue it’s actually better.
Grant Morrison has done lots of great stuff, of which his Doom Patrol (6 vols.) is my favorite. It’s absolutely insane, taking an absurdist or surrealist approach to the super-hero genre rather than a realistic one. Among the villains it featured there are The Brotherhood of Dada (they starred in one of my favorite adventures: The Painting That Ate Paris), The Thing Beneath the Pentagon (the Men in Green work for it and you don’t even want to know about the Men in Mauve) and The Men From N.O.W.H.E.R.E (they were lead by the nefarious Mr. Jones!). Frankly, I shouldn’t mention it here, because it’s much too inconsistent and weird to be considered the second greatest GN by anyone but, depending on taste, it may very well be the second most fun. Also great by Morrison and much shorter and less weird are WE3 and All Star Superman. His Invisibles is often touted as his best work, but I found it pretentious, confusing, disjointed and boring. Also, I feel Peter Milligan’s Human Target and the manga Lone Wolf and Cub both deserve mentions in the “I like them really a lot but can’t say is the greatest” category.
Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth I haven’t read yet, but I’ve heard lots of good things. If I can judge from the very little I’ve read by Chris Ware he is incredibly talented
Bone is fun but I just don’t think it’s all that memorable, Preacher I like but just don’t think is all that good all things considered and Will Eisner’s “serious” work is often maudlin, though it’s still great because of the art, with the same applicable to Craig Thompson. Sandman varies from awful to amazing in both art and writing so I feel is too flawed for consideration and Persepolis was good but no more than that.
All of the above is very much IMO, no offense intended, YMMV, etc…
Frankly, it’s a slog - I respect the talent that went into constructing, but it requires too much work. I am not saying it is of the quality of Joyce’s Ulysses (I didn’t invest enough time to develop a conclusion) but it expects the reader to engage it in a similar way, IMHO…
And Promethea?? **Biffy **- really? I love me some Alan Moore, and respect the experiment that is Promethea, but it is so…meta? that it is hard to engage.
That’s the beauty of a GN, IMHO - the linearity of the stories. Watchmen, Maus, Dark Knight, etc. are character-driven stories. I love folks who want to stretch the media and applaud their efforts - Ware, Clowes and the rest - but their stuff is more like high literature or small indie films. Dark Knight is more like, oh, the movie the Dark Knight (funded by a major player for broad release, but with a true, dark artistic sense…)
How is the art in From Hell compared to V for Vendetta? I found the art in V., to be quite flawed to be honest – so many characters that looked the same and the written text didn’t really flow that well with the images. I felt it was pretty busy and confusing, though I did enjoy the GN as a whole.
Watchmen, on the other hand, had good illustrations and the text balanced it pretty well.
It’s all line art, very scribbly and loose. No colour, either. It’s an acquired taste, I think. Not as clearly comic-book style art as even V for Vendetta was.
I can see why you might find Jimmy Corrigan slow - even boring, perhaps, and it certainly is hard work to read it. But if you read it carefully, slowly and with attention to details and the little tricks that are played all the time it is just so incredibly rewarding. And in contrast to Ulysses, everything is there, right in front of your eyes. JC is entirely (almost) self-contained - you don’t need to know the entire Western literature tradition to follow it. Perhaps because it isn’t literature in the sense of a novel. Many “graphic novel” artists - including even Alan Moore at times - think - perhaps betrayed by the genre name - that their medium is and can be nothing more than an illustrated novel. JC is a full-blown comic, one of the first - and certainly finest - examples of the unique potentials of the medium.
In the end it’s a question of taste, and I can certainly understand people who don’t like Chris Ware’s work - as long as they’re willing to give it a try.
Probably not second best, but still pretty darn good:
Batman: The Killing Joke
Batman: Son of the Demon
X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills
I did like Promethea, although it’s deeply, deeply weird and kinda hard to wrap your head around. Watchmen is still better, IMHO.