I love well written graphic novels, for the often elegant storytelling, combining words and pictures. And I hope a lot of my fellow writers do. This thread is for recommending graphic novels, the key world being novels. Not comic strips (like Garfield) but comics that tell a story spanning over a bunch of pages at least, to over thousands of pages. Stories with a beginning or a end. It doesn't matter if the graphic novels av Western or Asian, or from somewhere else. It can be a traditional comic or an illustrated novel. It not okay to say some never ending publication/franchise, (like Spiderman) but it okay if you define a well defined story arch within the franchise (The Onslaught story arch in Xmen ) with a defined beginning and an end. Bring on your recommendations people!
My favourite is based of an RPG not sure if it is my favourite because it is my favourite game but I love Suikoden III it takes place over three books.
If you want a never ending one you can always go with either One Piece or Bleach. Not to familiar with One Piece and I am not entirely sure Bleach would count as elegant story telling. So... Yeah I actually don't know that many graphic novels. So the ones I do know are probably the more mainstream ones. But I would recommend Death Note. I read a few chapters of the manga and seen the anime. Great series. Its about Light Yagami, highly intelligent high school student who picks up a Death Note. A notebook used by Shinigami to kill people. Light uses the Death Note to kill criminals and become the god of his ideal world. The show focuses on the battle between Light and L. Each trying to find the other's identity. (can probably find a better summary of things on wikipedia. Not so great at this. lol) Overall a great series. Not sure how different the manga is to the anime though. Other then Death Note the only other one I really know about is Superman: Red Son. Which is alternate reality in where Superman's ship lands in the USSR instead of Kansas and how that results in a different world and Superman. Not sure if any of this is what your looking for. But good luck.
Okay. I'll present some of my favorites: If you new to comics, or never read anything more then an occational Marvel or DC mainstream titles as a kid, I would recommend that you start with: "Creatures of the night" by Michel Zulli and Neil Gaiman. A album with to short stories with the common theme of nocturnal animals. The story of an girl raised by owl, and then a second story about a tom cat defending a screenwriters home. Beautiful artwork and storytelling, masterfully using both the visual and the written media. If you are skeptical to graphic novels but enjoy Britishness and fairy tales, you should take a look at "Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book" by Terry Jones and Brain Froud. The title says it all. It sort of a combined fictional diary where we follow Lady Cottington from age six when she caught and pressed her first fairy in the book, though her childhood and youth up to the night of her wedding. Her diary entries start out childish with childish spelling and handwriting, and ends up quite Jane Austen like. Another good one to start with is the album "Veils" by Pat McGreal, Stephen John Phillips, Rebecca Guay and José Villarrubia. It is a story that tell a story within the. The wife of a British ambassador, is invited into the harem for tea while her husband is attending a political meeting, At the harem she is told a story about a young girl who once came there, and the book shift back an forth between the story about the ambassadors wife and the young girl who once came as a slave to the harem. A story about freedom, choosing your own path, love, sex and power. Make an excellent use of to different visual styles. The wife story is told in photo manipulated photos, the girls story is told in brilliant watercolors. And if you want one of the most prized, award winning tales ever been told in the graphic novel media you should take a look at Neil Gailman (yeah the American Gods, Stardust, Coraline etc Neil Gaimans) "Sandman" series, 8 albums and a bunch of stand alone and spin off tales. It about Dream of the Endless, ruler of the realm of dreams and stories. (With siblings like Death, Destiny, Desire, Despair, Destruction, and Delirium.) Neil Gaiman has a fantastic ability weave together a story about every day events, with the battle of godlike beings, along with philosophical questions about the power of dreams, the value of family, all sort of stuff. And yet, keep it all together in a many faceted epic story.
In no particular order, and covering a few genres: Maus Sin City Dark Knight Returns Transmetropolitan Ex Machina (it's a series, but it's still relatively new and relatively easy to read all of) Daredevil: The Man Without Fear Long Halloween Watchmen V for Vendetta Ghostworld Persepolis It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken I could go on, but that's like, a year's worth of reading. So yeah! Get to it
At the moment, my tops are 'the walking dead' I just love the traditional zombie, this built around thatt great, then even offered a live action series thats done a pretty good job for it's self, can't wait for the second series! I also enjoy the Manga 'full metal alchemist' I loved the story for this, the anime that was based around the manga just as much, rather then the alternate anime. It has a great story and follows the action pretty well.
Ursula Vernon is almost to the end of Digger, so depending on how fast you buy the books, you might not have to wait long for the dead tree version. http://www.diggercomic.com/?p=3
Watchmen - I know someone already mentioned it but it's good enough to mention twice! The way it's told takes a little getting the hang of but its definately worth the effort.
Corrected. Really, there are so many episodes/chapters of Bleach that accomplish/explain nothing they might as well not be there.
Without a doubt you should check out James O'Barr's "The Crow" It was beautiful in every sense of the word: story, dialogue, characters, and art work. The movie (only the first one!) was good, but it doesn't do the GN justice.
it has a great story, but the ending is so disappointingly cliched. i'm not really a fan of "everybody has somebody and lives happily ever after" kind of ending, especially not if the pairing is predictable and seems forced. it has better female characters than most series i know, though. i also loved the relationship between riza and roy. it's subtle and complicated and a great soap opera material, but it's easy to stomach because neither of the characters go on and on about it.
From Hell...brilliant.... Lucifer...a strong series... V for Vendetta...better than movie... these are all very cerebral...
If you like Neil Gaiman, you might like the series Fable, about characters from fairy tale stories trying to live under the radar among regular people. I barely started this series but it was enjoyable and the premise is of course a little reminiscent of American Gods. Alas, somehow I still have not gotten around to reading Sandman except for one issue. I second the motion that Walking Dead is pretty awesome. The one I finished most recently was called Y: The Last Man, with one of my favorite premises ever. It begins with a disease killing everything on earth unlucky enough to have a y chromosome, except for one guy. I also enjoyed Red Son, an alternate Superman story where he initially landed in Russia instead of farmland America. And Black Hole for something weird and a lot more adult. It is about a community of teenagers and how they deal with an STD that turns the infected into mutants. Some get lucky with a mutation they can hide, but others don't.
Ok there are some great ones that I'm a fan of. "Watchmen, V for Vendetta, The Dark Tower series, Sandman, Dark Knight Returns, Fable Series, Preacher Series, Dead Space, Dresden Files series". All are great.
Janet Fitch had a best seller in general fiction with dark tragic subject matter in White Oleander. Her follow up Paint it Black is also grim. Not sure if her works are graphic per se but she is masterful at using graphic subject matter while keep her chit mainstream rather fringe niche
I've only read one, it was pretty good. "The Alcoholic" by Jonathan Ames. Its semi-autobiographical, like most of his work, and deals with a lot of real life stuff.
