My daughter - who is nine - LOVES Bone.
Ditto. And me too. She tore through all nine of them in two days’ time.
I’ll have to look into the Shaun Tan works (which I’d heard of before but not picked up) and Jimmy Corrigan (which rings a bell but I hadn’t seen before).
So far, the biggest wallop of a graphic novel I’ve read has definitely been Maus, though the original four Elfquest graphic novels played a huge part in my imagination as an adolescent. That one really built up into a direction I didn’t expect (especially when I was 14).
And if you’re already familiar with Conan style barbarian fantasy, it’s worth a side trip to the light side of comics/graphic novels to visit the world of Groo the Wanderer or Robert Aspirin’s Myth Adventures. 
I don’t know where any of them rank, but I enjoyed:
The Dark Knight Returns
Batman: Year One
The Long Halloween
Knightfall/Knightquest/Kinght’s End or whatever they were all called.
Weapon X
I need to read Maus. I’m about to start Dark Victory, as I think that is where Nolan is going next, since he seems to be following that order.
As MrDibble says it’s pen on paper, black and white, very scratchy stuff for the most part. It’s really very distant from both Gibbons’ Watchmen stuff and David Lloyd’s V’s. It is an acquired taste, but one can acquire it easily from reading the book, I think. I know I did. It is very atmospheric and perfectly suits the writing. Also, architecture plays a big role in the story and Eddie Campbell, the artist, draws some marvelous buildings with a much clearer line. There’s also a lot of different effects tried at different points, so we have charcoal, etc… You can take a look at it in Amazon’s website but really you should browse a copy at a bookstore for the full effect.
At the risk of sounding like an offended fan boy, I’ll have to disagree with you. Although I agree with your general point and, from the little I’ve seen and from much I’ve heard and read, Chris Ware seems to take exemplary care with use of form and the integration of it with content, I’d argue Alan Moore cares enormously for this as well. In fact, he seems to me one of the rare comics writers that even though he is exclusively a writer, cares as much for visual aspect of the narrative as for the verbal. That he thinks of his stories so visually is, in fact, one of the reasons I like his work so much.
This preoccupation with the graphical aspects of his medium is evident (to me at least) from the care with which he forms partnerships with his artists and from his incredibly detailed scripts, tailored to the strengths and weaknesses of those same artists. Dave Gibbons clearly brought a lot to the creative process of Watchmen, but Moore was still the one that wrote the thing, and he was the one that decided the content of each page and of each individual frame. I read Gibbons’ book on the making of the GN on the bookstore the other day; in there we have reproduced the first page of the script of the first issue. The script had something like 96 pages (I may be wrong, as this is from memory) and, after a short paragraph of tomfoolery, Moore proceeds to spend the rest of the page describing in detail how he’d like the first frame to be drawn! He asks Gibbons to try it with and without a candy wrapper in the gutter along with the blood and the smiley button, for the wrapper could help set the alternate world of the novel, but he didn’t want it to interfere with the impact of the image. Obviously, this is an exceptional instance, and necessarily so! Still, it’s indicative of a profound concern for visual narrative and impact, as well as verbal. As is the carefully thought 9 frame grid used throughout the book and each instance in which there was a decision not to use it, just for one more, often cited example from Watchmen. Moore often stated in interviews how he used the book to demonstrate the potential of comics as a narrative medium and try to do stuff there that neither prose alone nor film could.
Promethea, just now mentioned in this thread, is a huge experiment with comics form and language and tries to expand and subvert comics’ vocabulary just as much as it tries to impart Moore’s aesthetic philosophy-cum-magical doctrine. In fact, in Promethea, the formalistic experimentation is often the message. Another example: for a long time, one of Moore’s favorite tricks was to juxtapose dialogue from a previous scene into the frame of a new scene, having the new image comment and subvert the apparent meaning of what had gone on previously, even as the text adds meaning to the new scene. He does this extensively in Watchmen and takes it to ridiculous lengths in The Killing Joke. A key scene in From Hell also relies in juxtaposition, though of a different kind: there we have a sequence of frames of people from all stations writing letters with their text on the top of each frame. Those people are all writing “Ripper” letters to send to the police and the text fragments join to form a coherent whole, creating a very powerful effect on the reader and driving home a very pointed comment on the nature of Victorian society and the Jack the Ripper phenomenon. This a very smart trick and uniquely suited to comics. As is the insertion of a frame containing a William Blake grotesque engraving next to a frame of Gull (the killer) getting ready for bed.
Moore is a formalist at heart and structure, in comics necessarily visual, his foremost concern.
Actually, for a totally insightful, mind-warping GN that probably doesn’t qualify for this thread because it is non-fiction is Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics. So clear, imaginative and articulate in the case it makes that it takes a mere didactic discourse on the nature of the comics media and raises it, IMHO, to Art.
I re-read it more and think more about the concepts in it than I do most other GN’s…
In terms of artistic ability, Eisner is the master. A Contract with God gets my nomination. It is I think the greatest graphic novel (really, connected short stories) of all time. Eisner is simply a master of his medium, and I think anyone seriously interested in graphic novels should check out his stuff.
I’m also a big fan of Maus and Persepolis, but great as these works are, they cannot match Eisner’s artistry; which is certainly not intended to disparage these fine works, which I’d put in second and third place.
:smack: Should have mentioned Mike Mignola’s Hellboy earlier. Start out with Seed of Destruction and go from there. Good stuff!
You are right, of course, and my post was in no way meant as a negative criticism of his work. I think my outburst was too harsh and probably coloured by my reread of V for Vendetta last night. By all accounts Moore is very much aware of the comic as a unique medium for expression. I mentioned his name because he is one of the great - if not the greatest - living comic book artist. He does have a tendency, IMO, to be a bit “wordy”, and sometimes I feel that he is more a writer of literature (in the traditional sense of the word) than comic books (in a sort of McCloud sense). There is nothing wrong with that - he makes great, timeless works, but sometimes I wish that he would “shut up” a little.
As I said - it all comes down to personal taste. Some might feel that Ware is at least as much of a “cold typographer” as I think Moore is a novelist.
For me, Moonshadow. Beautifully written, beautifully illustrated story of a boy’s coming-of-age in a universe that is totally bewildering.
Has anyone seen the DC GN of Wagner’s RING OF THE NIBELUNG? Awesome!
Are you an older fart than this old fart (59)? Cause if’n ya are, then you can have “dibs” on all the "old man/Depends/can’t get it up less’n I get arthritis in it - jokes!
J/K, but my favorite graphic is Batman Year One.
I bought the Dracula one someone here recommended a couple of weeks ago, and although the art was really awesome, they misspelled a bunch of words, and being a former English teacher, that pulls me up short every time!
Still looking for that special Sgt. Rock (was that just a comic, though?) they released a couple of weeks ago…
Back to Batman, I have some issues from the mid-70’s right up to 87 (I think - they’re in storage). Thought I might like to sell 'em, but there doesn’t seem to be a market.
Got some old Playboys as well - some of the pages are stuck together, so I don’t think I’d get much for those…
Q
Definitely a contender. Some of his concepts apply to other arts, too.
Moonshadow is one of my all-time favorites as well. I need to go back and read it again soon.
I would sooner pick Batman: Son of the Demon, which is relatively simple & cinematic, & compared to which DKR is an indulgent overwrought revue of the entire Bat-mythos through a glass darkly.
But “best Batman GN” is not the same as “best GN.”
Actually, that’s much, much better than Watchmen. People who think Watchmen & DKR are the best are assuming that Graphic Novel means superhero. It doesn’t. (Actually, those two are hyped more because they were work-made-for-hire & are effectively completely owned by Warner Brothers.)
Though a bit short to be novels, if I’m recommending sequential art to a neophyte, I’d go for something like these:
the US version of Mazinger is pretty good.
Jean “Moebius” Giraud’s The Gardens of Aedena & related works are in pieces with different names, & I don’t know all the names, but it’s pretty neat stuff, if hard to describe. Actually, anything by Moebius is worth looking at.
I have a soft spot for Rumiko Takahashi’s The Laughing Target (which is horror). And her “Rumic World” shorts (which are usually wry humor).
Chris Claremont & John Bolton’s Marada the She-Wolf stories left me wanting more.
If you want a long, novelistic works that make Watchmen look short:
Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira (scifi with weird mutants, & yet not X-Men) is sort of the Watchmen of Japanese imports, inasmuch as it’s been hyped to death; though I prefer the somewhat more serial-esque (& harder science fiction) Legend of Mother Sarah (Otomo with Takumi Nagayasu).
And the manga of Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is simply mind-blowing. It’s like the LOTR or Foundation Trilogy of science fiction manga.
Somewhere in between would be Hugo Pratt & Milo Manara’s El Gaucho, which is dark enough for Alan Moore fans & comedy-hating English teachers, but which I appreciate for actually being rooted in history.
And then there’s the Roy Thomas/Barry Smith Conan the Barbarian.
And I must second Stan Sakai’s Usagi Yojimbo series, which is up to 23 volumes now.
So, that’s too much, isn’t it? OK, fine, start here:
1st: Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
2nd: Maus
3rd: Usagi Yojimbo
…
142nd: Watchmen
Also libraries. I think pretty much every graphic album Viz has put out (thus every English translation of Takahashi & Tezuka, which is a lot) is available to the public, via inter-library loan, for free.
Not that I discourage you to get on Amazon & buy things, but I’d hate to recommend something, & have you drop $20 on it just to find you hate it.
Again, owned by Warner Brothers.
And Watchmen is on at the end, as an afterthought. DC (the comic book division of WB) is understandably proud of it, but they’re mainly publishers of superhero comics & have a narrow scope.
Actually, the one thing on that list that I have read & would want in my home is Beto Hernandez’s Palomar. But it’s his brother Xaime I’d call the best writer-artist in North America.
:facepalm for forgetting Los Bros. Hernandez:
So what if it’s owned by Warner Brothers?
Y: The Last Man deserves a mention.
DC is owned by Time Warner, which:
- Is the “world’s third largest media and entertainment conglomerate” and thus puts DC in a good position to shove one of its top-selling properties into the public view at every opportunity, and
- Owns Time magazine (note where Elendil’s Heir’s lists are from)… this doesn’t necessarily mean that Time’s reportage on the GN front is biased, but may influence the selection of works that are on their collective minds.
It is better known because of the film that was made of it, but Raymond Briggs’s When the Wind Blows is very bleak and powerful. 