I am new to the group, and pretty new to reading graphic novels. As a kid I picked up English through Asterix and Tintin comics, but then veered into novels and eventually more non-fiction and academic work. Recently, I have stumbled across the work of Neil Gaiman, and after reading a sample chapter from Sandman I've managed to get both Absolute Sandman volume 1 and Absolute Sandman volume 2. It is really amazing to see that the quality of stories in graphic form can at times even surpass "normal" novels etc. This weekend, I bought Watchmen and couldn't stop reading it. I have previously bought Ghost in the shell, but didn't find that too accessible. So, my question is: If you could recommend something of the same quality as Sandman and Watchmen, what would it be? I would prefer a stand-alone volume (so not an existing, continuing series). I have read that Alan Moore also wrote V for Vendetta, but after watching the film I thought they had some good ideas, but couldn't quite pull it together... Does the graphic novel roughly suffer from the same problems?

Thanks for reading the questions, and I appreciate your recommendations!

Alan Moore's From Hell is also great. But stay far, far away from the movie.

Message edited by its author, Apr 7, 2008, 2:51pm.

If you like Gaiman and Moore try Mike Carey's God save the Queen, it is a great stand alone and has some shades of Gaiman's Sandman in it. I would also go for we3 by Grant Morrison and if you do feel like getting into a series try Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis.

For a good one-shot, I always seem to recommend Torso by Brian Michael Bendis.

Series are harder to recommend - with HBO supposedly working on the series, there's always Preacher by Garth Ennis. Of course, I've been really attached to Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan.

If you want a step up, one can never go wrong with Sin City - they sit next to my Absolute Sandmans. =)

Message edited by its author, Apr 18, 2008, 9:32pm.

I love the artwork and stories of Charles Burns. His recent graphic novel Black Hole is a surreal, noir-ish combination of 50's horror B-Movies and weirdo teen drama.

I'm a huge Gaiman fan. I would probably have to reccomend Bone by Jeff Smith, Fables by Bill Willingham, and Lucifer by Mike Carey. Bone is very much a fantasy tale, although the artwork is simple, the story line is deeper than it lets on at first. Fables works with the concept that fairy tale characters exist in their own realm, which was taken over by an evil overlord of sorts, forcing them into exile in our own world. Lucifer is a direct spin-off of the Sandman series dealing with...well...Lucifer. I enjoyed Gaiman's portrail of Lucifer and Carey simply picks up the story where Gaiman left off.

I'd also have to go with a few of the other posts and suggest V for Vendetta and From Hell. They both have such incredibly deep story elements that the movies didn't even begin to touch on.

If you've become a Gaiman addict then I definitely have to go with the crowd and recommend Mike Carey. Besides what's been mentioned already, Crossing Midnight is a great series, which is being canceled far too soon. So it's a bit iffy how it'll hold up with the rushed conclusion, but so far it's the best fantasy book out there next to Sandman and Bone.

But my top recommendation is J.M. DeMatteis's book Moonshadow, which might be a bit difficult to find. To my mind it has the best prose of any comic published to date, and the watercolor art from John J. Muth is gorgeous.

Epileptic by David B. My absolute favorite in this format. It's considered a literary graphic novel.

Here are some non-superhero hits not yet mentioned in this thread:

* Blankets by Craig Thompson - a (semi?) biographical story about first love and family - a wonderfully hefty volume

* Maus by Art Spiegelman - available in either one or two volumes - the story of how Spiegelman's father survived the concentration camps, as well as Spiegelman's relationship with his father - with the incredible gimmick of drawing Jewish people as mice and German people as cats (not as cheesy as it sounds)

These both have highly expressive art and heart-touching-wrenching-exploding stories.

* Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud - a discussion of what comics is, whether it is art, and it's potential (separate but linked are Reinventing Comics and Making Comics)

This isn't fiction, but it's a stimulating read and SM makes many references to other comix worth looking up (in the other two books as well).

Also check out the Drawn & Quarterly catalogue at http://www.drawnandquarterly.com/

Will add more if I can think of other highlights not already mentioned.

Ah yes, of course there's Will Eisner's Life on Dropsie Avenue - a one volume trilogy mostly containing short stories. I sometimes find Eisner's sequences difficult to follow, but his rough and ready caricatures are great, I love the way they literally drip with emotion.

Then I discovered another thread in this very group that you might want to look at if you haven't already... http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.ph...

Of the authors mentioned I've read and would recommend:
* Ghost world by Daniel Clowes
* Jar of Fools by Jason Lutes
* Quimby the Mouse by Chris Ware

Hi all,:) new to the proceedings and think might I have some worthy recommends for mm:

In the "men in tights" vein, the graphic novels Marvels and Kingdom Come are both beautifully rendered by Alex Ross, intelligently written and worth reading. I enjoyed them both and recommend them highly.

In a non super hero groove, I second Blankets as worth an investigation. The last graphic novel I read that impressed me.
On a more abstract and arty note, you might take a look at Dave McKean's Cages.
I'm also very fond of It's A Good Life If You Don't Weaken.Other people don't seem to be as impressed by it as I was, but I'll put it out there as a suggestion regardless.

Message edited by its author, May 11, 2008, 1:22am.

If I only had one recommendation that I was allowed to give, it would be - Fables by Bill Willingham... if I had two recommendations I could give it would be buy Fables and Y: The Last Man, but you're asking for single, standalone volumes of stuff, so how about... um... Blankets (I see that's been mentioned before, it's very good), it's not everyone's cup of tea, but I quite liked Neil Gaiman's Marvel 1602, though the sequels (written by other people) are not a patch on his first volume and can be ignored if you want to keep to a single volume story. Especially the second one. Any of the Sin City's by Frank Miller are worth a look, and Bone by Jeff Smith can be bought in a large, single-volume version - it's drawn in a very kiddie-cartoon style, but don't let that sway your judgement, it's an excellent read.

Message edited by its author, May 13, 2008, 4:36pm.

I recently read and adored American Born Chinese. I also liked Laika from the same publisher (but not author).

For some reason the touchstone isn't working for Laika. It's by Nick Abadzis.

Publishers with a lot of interesting alternative comic books (graphic novels) are Fantagraphics Books; Drawn & Quarterly; :01 First Second; Top Shelf; Alternative Comics; NBM and Oni Press.
For more mainstream check out Dark Horse, Vertigo and Image comics.
See also the 5 star range in my library.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Planetary but it may be too "high brow" for many - a lot of the references and inferences, especially to old pulps are rather oblique. It's a definite "must read" if you're into Warren Ellis and/or the obscure. Both the writing and renderings are exeptional.

For superhero fare I would recommend Kingdom Come with greating writing by Mark Waid and beautiful artwork from Alex Ross. Alot of people are recommending you check out Frank Miller's work. For a classic superhero series read Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns.

Non-superhero recommendations:

Bone by Jeff Smith
Clumsy by Jeffrey Brown
Blankets by Craig Thompson
Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware
Scott Pilgrim, Volume 1: Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life by Bryan Lee O'Malley

Hope you enjoy some of these!

I have to second (or fifth or whatever) V for Vendetta, From Hell, Maus, Life on Dropsie Avenue, and Ghost World as fantastic stand alones. All are fairly easy to pick up from outside the genre as well.

As a stand alone, I would also suggest Pride of Baghdad by Brian K Vaughan. It's loosely based on actual events that happened after a pride of lions escaped from the Baghdad Zoo during the US bombing, told from the point of view of the lions. Very interesting.

Y: The Last Man has been a favorite of mine for a while, and they just released the last trade paperback of the series. While you can't get this as a single volume, the series is done, so you won't have to wait around for subsequent issues to arrive.

Fables is spectacular, but it isn't finished. There are 10 trade paperbacks out now, plus a bonus book that is really wonderful (it's a prequel). I too hate waiting for stuff to come out, but this one is just getting better and better. It has changed drastically from the first few issues, but it's proving to be a real powerhouse.

If you want something really unlike anything else, I would suggest the Buddha series by Osamu Tezuka. I am not typically a "manga" fan, but this series is really quite interesting. It's the life story of the Buddha, illustrated by the stories of those around him. You can get it as 8 large bound books, which encompasses the entire series.

"Fables is spectacular, but it isn't finished. There are 10 trade paperbacks out now, plus a bonus book that is really wonderful (it's a prequel)."

There are two 'bonus' Fables books, actually. 1001 Nights of Snowfall, and The Last Castle. One is a collection of short stories (I think), and the other is a prequel.

As well as this, there's the spin-off series, Jack of Fables. That's up to three volumes already.

>>18 "There are two 'bonus' Fables books, actually. 1001 Nights of Snowfall, and The Last Castle. One is a collection of short stories (I think), and the other is a prequel."

Actually, The Last Castle is included in tpb vol. 4 March of the Wooden Soldiers.

As for 1001 Nights of Snowfall, it is a collection of short stories which are all prequels to the series. It's one of my favorite parts of the series. Most of the stories are really good, but the highlight for me was the introduction of all the various really great artists.

The only Jack of Fables that I've read was Bag 'O Bones (issue 11 of Fables) and Jack Be Nimble (issues 34 and 35 of Fables) which were both before the series was launched as a spin-off. I hear it's pretty good though.

To add to these wonderful recommendations:

Books of Magic
league of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore
Superman: Secret Identity by Kurt Busiek
Castle Waiting by Linda Medley

And there are sooo many more...

>19

Is it? I didn't know that. Damn people and their confusing me by adding their comics as well as the TPBs to LibraryThing and thus making the series data more complicated. :P Thanks for correcting me on that point, anyway.

I really need to get around to catching up on Fables sometime, maybe then I'll be left with less chance of ending up with egg on my face. :)

don't sweet it holdencarver. no egg intended. i actually had to reassure myself when i read that. i was afraid i had overlooked something, but felt sure i had read last castle.

these few series are about the only comics i can sound comic-snob about, as i just caught the bug about 2 years ago. my path to comics was strange to say the least: i wrote a 35 page research paper for my religion of pop culture class on the themes of jewish wish-fulfillment and the new "american ideal" in 1930-1950's comics. try being a girl and presenting that paper to a class full of snotty scholars. but it just jump started my interest in the genre, and for that i am thankful.

We3 (very gory - and odd, but great graphics) Maus, (Y-The Last Man), From Hell, Dean Koontz Frankenstein, our Frankenstein (well I would say that), Spring Heeled Jack, Alice in Sunderland, Queen Margot........there are a few!!!

Concrete by Paul Chadwick.

Lots of good recommendations! Two others that are very good are Bryan Talbot's Alice in Sunderland, an entertaining mash of connections between that town in England and Alice in Wonderland, and Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis 1 and 2, a graphic memoir of growing up in Iran during its political and religious upheaval. The latter worked to convinced my English professor brother-in-law that graphic novels can be teachable literature.

Two recent standalones that I've appreciated a great deal are and haven't seen mentioned yet are:1. Shooting War by Anthony Lappe and 2. Cairo G. Willow Wilson. Both are set in the middle East; Shooting War mostly in Iraq and Cairo..duh..Egypt. Both are very political; "Shooting War" more in the fashion of V for Vendetta while "Cairo" brings the fantastic into the mundane world. "Shooting War" is really an extended critique of news media and Cairo a love story beset by middle Eastern politics. "Cairo" suffers a little from being an early (maybe a first?)work but tells a story both exciting and emotionally involving. Like "V for Vendetta", "Shooting War" is bleak, pessimistic and not implausible.

OH..Sfar's wonderful The Rabbi's Cat v1 and 2 set in Algeria between the world wars, as well as his totally whimsical Vampire Loves and The Professor's Daughter.

I, too, like many of the series mentioned above: Fables, Sandman, Lucifer; though i'm not fond of most of superhero sets.

Message edited by its author, Nov 15, 2008, 8:29pm.

I would highly recommend several of the books written by Alan Moore (V FOR VENDETTA, WATCHMEN, LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN & FROM HELL) Like them or not they have all been made into movies, which might interest a non-comics fan.

For horror buffs, you can't go wrong with WALKING DEAD by Robert Kirkman or the ZOMBIE TALES: THE SERIES anthology published by BOOM! Studios.

If you are not into superheroes or monsters, you might want to look at the TPB collections of STRANGERS IN PARADISE by Terry Moore or countless English translations of Japanese manga you can find at most public libraries.

"I have read that Alan Moore also wrote V for Vendetta, but after watching the film I thought they had some good ideas, but couldn't quite pull it together... Does the graphic novel roughly suffer from the same problems?"

No at all. V for Vendetta is one of my favourite books but it is a product of its era. If you experienced and lived through and 1980s Britain you will understand the echoes of fascism represented in Moore's writing. The movie tried to modernise the story and 'make it relevent' to today's audiences. It partly achieved this but the sense of darkness and personal sacrifice was somewhat diluted.

And as a final recommendation, I'd would always encourage people to read Watchmen. ;-)

The problem with the V is for Vendetta movie is that the Wachowski brothers tried to make it parallel the climate in America too much, when 1980's UK and 2000's US aren't really all that similar.

If you are interested in some very nice adventure stories and art try Hal Fosters "Prince Valiant" , Alex Raymond's comics (Flash Gordon, Rip Kirby, Jungle Jim), Al Williams (Phil Corrigan), Horak and Holdaway (Modesty Blaise) comics.

And of course if you like Tin-Tin like comics try Asterix, Umpah-Pah or Lucky Luke.

Message edited by its author, Feb 26, 2009, 5:33am.

I would suggest alternatives to either Marvel or DC Comics something like the Ultraverse or Dark Horse Comics. I love the Ultraverse and Dark Horse Comics. I have a bunch of the different Star Wars titles from Dark Horse and one of my favorite Ultraverse titles is Mantra who is Immortal and has been a Warrior for 1,500 years she went by the name Lukasz and in the last incarnation was made female by a Wizard. Now she is called Mantra and is also a wife and mother of two children and goes by the name Eden Blake. As Mantra she stills fights an Evil Wizard and has a very cool Mystical Armor and in some issues is seen to even fly. There are more Ultraverse Comics than just Mantra but Mantra is the one I mailnly collected and they only did 24 issues before they decided to stop the Series.

Some other characters in the Ultracverse are:

Solitaire
Wrath
Exiles
Elven
Academy of the New Elite
Rune
Prime
Warstrike
Prototype
The Strangers

I would totally recommend to everyone to try to find some Ultraverse Comics and see which ones you like the best.
Of the 24 issues of Mantra they made I own 18 or 19 of them. In Frederick weve a Wonderbook & VideoStore that
Sells DVD's, LP's, Collectibles, Comic Books, Books that are
Signed & Numbered 1st Editions, Bookmarks, Video Games, you can also rent Movies from them too. And they also have a ton of Comic Books in large boxes that
they Sell for only $1.00 apiece.

I love going in there every time and look forward to each and every visit to the Store. It is such a great place to go and lose yourself in for awhile. They also will buy your books off of you if you bring them in to them.

Beatles1964

Message edited by its author, Apr 6, 2009, 1:23pm.

I'd also recommend the Star Wars Dark Horse comics. Excellent tales with artwork to match. And Dark Horse are VERY librarian friendly - unlike Titan Books. ;-)