Recommend me some graphic novels
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I'm amazed no one's mentioned V for Vendetta. It's an intriguing story, frightening in how easily it might happen, IMO (at least the parts about the government running amok; dunno about some fellow in a Guy Fawkes mask blowing things up). I bought the novel after seeing the movie, and was thoroughly impressed. Alan Moore even wrote a song for it, and put the sheet music inside! 
Let me see...
Sandman is great. Maybe somewhat overrated, but it's rated so high that it can be both overrated and great at the same time. Also good is Lucifer, a spin-off title. But avoid anything else with "Sandman Presents" in its title.
On the other hand, the people who recommend you Preacher are leading you astray. Garth Ennis is only tolerable when he has editorial control to keep him from being too much like himself (i.e. Hitman, The Demon).
The first League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was great, but I think Moore must have had a stroke or something before he wrote the second one. Avoid it.
Well, I've just been parroting what other people have said so far, except for disagreeing with them about Preacher. Let's prove that I have a will of my own by recommending something new like ...
Dragon Head. A Japanese post-apocalypse horror manga of great quality.
Fables. Childhood story-book characters like Red Riding Hood and Snow White have been forced to flee to New York after the mysterious "Adversary" decimates their homeland. Hard to describe, but really good.
Ruse--too bad about Crossgen going bankrupt. But the first two volumes are cool, anyway. And probably the third, if I could find the damn thing...
Sandman is great. Maybe somewhat overrated, but it's rated so high that it can be both overrated and great at the same time. Also good is Lucifer, a spin-off title. But avoid anything else with "Sandman Presents" in its title.
On the other hand, the people who recommend you Preacher are leading you astray. Garth Ennis is only tolerable when he has editorial control to keep him from being too much like himself (i.e. Hitman, The Demon).
The first League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was great, but I think Moore must have had a stroke or something before he wrote the second one. Avoid it.
Well, I've just been parroting what other people have said so far, except for disagreeing with them about Preacher. Let's prove that I have a will of my own by recommending something new like ...
Dragon Head. A Japanese post-apocalypse horror manga of great quality.
Fables. Childhood story-book characters like Red Riding Hood and Snow White have been forced to flee to New York after the mysterious "Adversary" decimates their homeland. Hard to describe, but really good.
Ruse--too bad about Crossgen going bankrupt. But the first two volumes are cool, anyway. And probably the third, if I could find the damn thing...
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GreedyAlgorithm
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Blasphemy. Close your ears lest you accidentally don't read Preacher.
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Gilmar
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A few suggestions off the beaten path:
Black Hole by Charles Burns
"And you thought *your* adolescence was scary."
Barefoot Gen by Keiji Nakazawa
"...story of the bombing of Hiroshima, seen through the eyes of the artist as a young boy growing up in a Japanese anti-militarist family."
Stuck Rubber Baby by Howard Cruse
Growing up gay in the South in the 60s.
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (soon to be an animated movie)
Growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution
(Hmmm, am I seeing a theme here?)
Frank by Jim Woodring
It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken by Seth
Our Cancer Year by Harvey Pekar (and anything else he's written, drawn by a variety of artists)
Black Hole by Charles Burns
"And you thought *your* adolescence was scary."
Barefoot Gen by Keiji Nakazawa
"...story of the bombing of Hiroshima, seen through the eyes of the artist as a young boy growing up in a Japanese anti-militarist family."
Stuck Rubber Baby by Howard Cruse
Growing up gay in the South in the 60s.
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (soon to be an animated movie)
Growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution
(Hmmm, am I seeing a theme here?)
Frank by Jim Woodring
It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken by Seth
Our Cancer Year by Harvey Pekar (and anything else he's written, drawn by a variety of artists)
I am a big fan of Grant Morrison. Reading his Series "The Invisibles" is like participating in a weird and wonderful acid trip. Imagine every Conspiracy Theory that you have ever heard turn out to be true and the forces fighting for chaos against order are the good guys. It is weird fun and wonderful. Also "The Filth" by Morrison is just plain strange and fun, taking a couple of readings to figure out what exactly is going on. He is currently writing for Batman and a Superman series making the world around those characters more fun and wonderful.
I'd call most of those more fun page-turners than flat-out very good manga - well, ok, Blade of the Immortal is badass.
But I must second the vote for Berserk. I keep falling in and out of comics but I've been riveted by Berserk for ten years now. The first few volumes aren't that good, but once it picks up it's excellent, and the current books are AMAZING. The author's a big Anglophile; while there are some standard manga ingredients, for the most part it's straightforward medeval/renaissance/fantasy, with the fantasy element gaining more and more presence after about volume ten. It's also very brutal sometimes. The art is top-notch. It's got about 32 volumes so far, with more on the way. For the English translations, volume 20 is about to be released.
If you like or even tolerate manga, read it. Read it!
JoeEllison
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I'm considering recommending Y: The Last Man, but it is up to 9 very narrow collections, and I'm not sure they are worth the price all at once.
Hawk one
Emperor of the Internet
Not making more new recommendations, but giving my opinion on a couple of others:
Sandman: It's pretty damn weird, and there are some bloody fantastic stories in there. On the other hand, it is more than a bit fractured (often, clues to the main plot are hidden very well within all the sub-plots), and Gaiman's insistence of keeping on using so many different artists can be very hit-and-miss, to say the least. I am especially unfond of the drawing style in the volume "The kindly ones" and his use of f.ex. Teddy Kristiansen.
Ghost in the Shell: I don't know... The drawing style is perfectly fine if you like manga at all (Japanese comic book writers seems to have a general tendency to throw in some wacky cartoon-style drawing in just about any kind of story, no matter how grim. There's even some of it in Akira.). I think my main problem is that it's not at all an easy read, and you have to be pretty computer geeky to follow the premises of many of the stories.
Fables: A good execution of the "fairy tale creatures in the modern world" premise. Not the best comic in the world - and not for small kids - but good stuff. Worth checking out at one point.
V for Vendetta: Nowhere near as easy to follow as Watchmen, and whereas the latter is great because you can reread it and discover new marvellous details every single time, this one will probably require a reread or two just to have the main details fall into place.
Oh, and if you want a story that's definitely going to require full concentration at all times, then From Hell will definitely keep you occupied for a while. Moore never claims it to be more than a story - because it is just that - but he's certainly done his homework to make the setting right, and he's also constantly referring to all the different hypothesises made with regards to the Jack the Ripper mythos, taking out the details that he deemed the best. Just look at the appendix to see what I mean. And Eddie Campell's unique drawing style may seem off-putting at first, but gradually, you'll find that it fits this particular story very well. Maybe not a good idea to read in candle-light during a power outage.
OK, so one new recommendation. Sue me.
Sandman: It's pretty damn weird, and there are some bloody fantastic stories in there. On the other hand, it is more than a bit fractured (often, clues to the main plot are hidden very well within all the sub-plots), and Gaiman's insistence of keeping on using so many different artists can be very hit-and-miss, to say the least. I am especially unfond of the drawing style in the volume "The kindly ones" and his use of f.ex. Teddy Kristiansen.
Ghost in the Shell: I don't know... The drawing style is perfectly fine if you like manga at all (Japanese comic book writers seems to have a general tendency to throw in some wacky cartoon-style drawing in just about any kind of story, no matter how grim. There's even some of it in Akira.). I think my main problem is that it's not at all an easy read, and you have to be pretty computer geeky to follow the premises of many of the stories.
Fables: A good execution of the "fairy tale creatures in the modern world" premise. Not the best comic in the world - and not for small kids - but good stuff. Worth checking out at one point.
V for Vendetta: Nowhere near as easy to follow as Watchmen, and whereas the latter is great because you can reread it and discover new marvellous details every single time, this one will probably require a reread or two just to have the main details fall into place.
Oh, and if you want a story that's definitely going to require full concentration at all times, then From Hell will definitely keep you occupied for a while. Moore never claims it to be more than a story - because it is just that - but he's certainly done his homework to make the setting right, and he's also constantly referring to all the different hypothesises made with regards to the Jack the Ripper mythos, taking out the details that he deemed the best. Just look at the appendix to see what I mean. And Eddie Campell's unique drawing style may seem off-putting at first, but gradually, you'll find that it fits this particular story very well. Maybe not a good idea to read in candle-light during a power outage.
OK, so one new recommendation. Sue me.
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ThatSoundAgain
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Your recommendation of the movie is seconded - pacing and visuals much like Blade Runner. Gorgeus.
With regards to the manga, I don't consider it to be up there with Akira. But I can easily forgive the different drawing styles, as Shirow takes the liberty to change it with the tone of the story - the childish, or cartoony, pages are for comedic effect, and occur throughout, not just at the end of chapters. This is, to me, an interesting experiment in merging the writing and the art - not only does the literary tone shift, the artistic tone follows it. I also like the footnotes that are everywhere.
I read that and was about to raise you a:
Glad you included Jim.
The movie is out here in Europe. I think I may have to go see it, as I had trouble finishing the books. There is something about the auto-bio stuff when it gets too long that puts me off. I did like Maus, though.
Yup, and the movie to go with that one, too. American Splendor.
rsaavedra
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That is very likely a more accurate assessment, because I read Ghost in the Shell manga a long time ago. I recall the cartoonish shifts that I disliked mostly at some end of chapters, but very likely it was spread all over, not just there. Have the book with me, will re-read it some time soon when I get a chance.
Might have been an interesting creative experiment, but the shifting itself brought to me a sense of inconsistency in the presentation. A book (or a creation in general, not just books) can certainly include comedic parts without projecting a sense of stylistic inconsistency, abandoning for moments the primary presentation style. Of course it's a matter of style, might be highly appreciated by some, it's just something that didn't appeal much to me. Particularly as opposed to the movie, which was highly consistent in being mostly humourless and having a more mature presentation.
Jorghnassen
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Anything by Enki Bilal.
/Also, Van Hamme's Thorgal had its moments.
/Also, Van Hamme's Thorgal had its moments.
Hawk one
Emperor of the Internet
To get a little bit off-topic, it often seems that Japanese entertainment tend to simply don't care as much about keeping "in style" all the time. I mean, take just about any average console RPG from Japan, and you'll see they tend to mix up fantasy/fairly real world/sci-fi just as they please. Probably the most common example here is that such games often puts magic swords and modern guns together without a second thought.
Getting back to comics, most of the comics from the USA and Europe mentioned so far are much easier to categorise as such. And even a comic like "Fables" makes a big deal of pointing out the differences between the fairy-tale world and the place in New York where they all live now (of course, it could hardly be done differently, so don't think of this as a complaint), instead of (apparently) just throwing it all together.
Now, whether or not the Japanese way of doing it is "better" is of course a completely useless question. It's a tool, and like any tool, can be used well or not well. But if you've grown up with the Western approach, then the Japanese style will fairly likely be off-putting, at least at first. And vice-versa, I bet.
Anyway, that's just a few random thoughts from me. Carry on now.
Getting back to comics, most of the comics from the USA and Europe mentioned so far are much easier to categorise as such. And even a comic like "Fables" makes a big deal of pointing out the differences between the fairy-tale world and the place in New York where they all live now (of course, it could hardly be done differently, so don't think of this as a complaint), instead of (apparently) just throwing it all together.
Now, whether or not the Japanese way of doing it is "better" is of course a completely useless question. It's a tool, and like any tool, can be used well or not well. But if you've grown up with the Western approach, then the Japanese style will fairly likely be off-putting, at least at first. And vice-versa, I bet.
Anyway, that's just a few random thoughts from me. Carry on now.
Morrigan
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Yeah, well. I maintain what I said. Inherently inferior.Watchmen.
That is all.
I'm not amazed no one had mentioned it, because frankly it's overrated pulp. I think Alan Moore is overrated myself, but honestly, V For Vendetta was pretty insipid and really, really predictable.I'm amazed no one's mentioned V for Vendetta. It's an intriguing story, frightening in how easily it might happen, IMO (at least the parts about the government running amok; dunno about some fellow in a Guy Fawkes mask blowing things up). I bought the novel after seeing the movie, and was thoroughly impressed. Alan Moore even wrote a song for it, and put the sheet music inside!
ThatSoundAgain
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rsaavedra & Hawk one, to clarify on Ghost in the Shell, reading that was the first time I saw the stylistic variance, but I've noticed it in other comics since then. So for me to call it an experiment is a bit off, I think you're right that it is a common occurence in Japanese popular culture. It's just remarkably strong in Ghost.
Now, to be honest I prefer the movie to the manga too, and they are very different. The comic has too much sleaze and Clancyesque fascination with military hardware for my tastes, but is a refreshing attempt at harder SF. It would IMO be unreadable without the humor / cartoony stuff.
Now, to be honest I prefer the movie to the manga too, and they are very different. The comic has too much sleaze and Clancyesque fascination with military hardware for my tastes, but is a refreshing attempt at harder SF. It would IMO be unreadable without the humor / cartoony stuff.
LostAngeles
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There's plenty of good suggestions here, but I'll throw in a few for more Superhero stuff:
The Authority - What if the supergroup doesn't just deal with massive world-ending threats but takes down military dictators too? Warren Ellis and Mark Millar did some great stuff. The later stuff is a bit iffy, but still pretty good.
New X-Men - Grant Morrison's run was fantastic.
Similarly, Origin finally tells you who Wolverine is and it is done wonderfully.
Global Frequency - The diner scene in the first volume of The Sandman is scary. One of the issues of Global Frequency gave me nightmares. There isn't a single bad issue out of the 12. There are 1000 people on the Global Frequency and they clean up the messes that the world governments can't handle.
Planetary - The final issue of this should be out soon. Warren Ellis finished the script and Cassady should be drawing it now, if he hasn't finished already. Planetary are the super-powered, "Archaeologists of the Impossible." They deal with the stuff of sci-fi, pulp novels, and superheroes.
The Authority - What if the supergroup doesn't just deal with massive world-ending threats but takes down military dictators too? Warren Ellis and Mark Millar did some great stuff. The later stuff is a bit iffy, but still pretty good.
New X-Men - Grant Morrison's run was fantastic.
Similarly, Origin finally tells you who Wolverine is and it is done wonderfully.
Global Frequency - The diner scene in the first volume of The Sandman is scary. One of the issues of Global Frequency gave me nightmares. There isn't a single bad issue out of the 12. There are 1000 people on the Global Frequency and they clean up the messes that the world governments can't handle.
Planetary - The final issue of this should be out soon. Warren Ellis finished the script and Cassady should be drawing it now, if he hasn't finished already. Planetary are the super-powered, "Archaeologists of the Impossible." They deal with the stuff of sci-fi, pulp novels, and superheroes.
Gilmar
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For fun, I'll toss in anything by Phil Foglio. Always clever and amusing, but sometimes also touching or awe-inspiring. He's mostly worked in a science-fictional vein.
Buck Godot, Zapgun For Hire - 3 graphic novels, the first a collection of stories.
Xxxenophile - zesty sci-fi erotica, IIRC written & pencilled by Phil but inked by a variety of artists.
MythAdventures - yes, a comic based on the books. He's releasing a compilation soon!
www.studiofoglio.com
And with its own website at www.girlgenius.net:
Girl Genius - "Adventure, Romance, MAD SCIENCE" - an alternative-history Victorian-era steampunkish series where all manner of Mad Scientists (called Sparks) exist. They create biological constructs (think Frankenstein), robots ("clanks"), portals to other worlds, you name it. The hero is Agatha Clay, who is far more than she seems (or knows). The series is ongoing, up to 6 volumes now, and the entire thing is also available online. Early parts are black&white.
(Disclaimer, I am a huge Foglio fan from way back.)
Also really excellent: Concrete by Paul Chadwick. Contemplative, beautifully written and drawn stories of the human condition, with a main character who is no longer quite human. 7 volumes collecting the stories written over the last 20 years.
Gon by Masashi Tanaka. Gon is a charming, wordless comic about Gon, a small but fierce dinosaur-like creature. He is extremely strong and determined, often protective, but sometimes accidentally destructive, like when he gets jealous of a beaver dam and builds one of his own -- out of huge full-grown trees. Then there's the time he tries to learn to fly.... Filled with wonderfully-drawn nature scenes, and overflowing with personality, despite not a word or human in evidence. A good choice for kids, too.
Buck Godot, Zapgun For Hire - 3 graphic novels, the first a collection of stories.
Xxxenophile - zesty sci-fi erotica, IIRC written & pencilled by Phil but inked by a variety of artists.
MythAdventures - yes, a comic based on the books. He's releasing a compilation soon!
www.studiofoglio.com
And with its own website at www.girlgenius.net:
Girl Genius - "Adventure, Romance, MAD SCIENCE" - an alternative-history Victorian-era steampunkish series where all manner of Mad Scientists (called Sparks) exist. They create biological constructs (think Frankenstein), robots ("clanks"), portals to other worlds, you name it. The hero is Agatha Clay, who is far more than she seems (or knows). The series is ongoing, up to 6 volumes now, and the entire thing is also available online. Early parts are black&white.
(Disclaimer, I am a huge Foglio fan from way back.)
Also really excellent: Concrete by Paul Chadwick. Contemplative, beautifully written and drawn stories of the human condition, with a main character who is no longer quite human. 7 volumes collecting the stories written over the last 20 years.
Gon by Masashi Tanaka. Gon is a charming, wordless comic about Gon, a small but fierce dinosaur-like creature. He is extremely strong and determined, often protective, but sometimes accidentally destructive, like when he gets jealous of a beaver dam and builds one of his own -- out of huge full-grown trees. Then there's the time he tries to learn to fly.... Filled with wonderfully-drawn nature scenes, and overflowing with personality, despite not a word or human in evidence. A good choice for kids, too.
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