Compiling a list of the best graphic novels can be something of a challenge. As writer-artist Peter Kuper once quipped, "What's the difference between a comic and a graphic novel? No one knows!"
The term "graphic novel" is too often used not only for a comic book that aspires to literary quality, but for nearly any comic that runs more than a few dozen pages.
To narrow things down, here are some of the essential titles from the last four decades that are undeniably intended as more than just a collection of reprinted issues. They should be on the shelf of every comic book collector.
The First Graphic Novels
Until the 1970s, comics were seen as cheap entertainments meant to be read and thrown away. Among the early works to challenge this perception was Will Eisner's A Contract With God and Other Tenement Stories (1978). It marked Eisner's return to comics after the end of his brilliant 1940s strip The Spirit.
A Contract With God is now recognized as one of the first graphic novels. Set in the 1930s New York of Eisner's youth, the book-length comic tells a series of vignettes of Jewish life. Eisner would go on to write many more graphic novels through the 1980s and '90s, including two follow-ups to A Contract With God, A Life Force (1988) and Dropsie Avenue (1995).
The Best Superhero Graphic Novels
Superheroes have long been mainstays of the comics medium, and even today the vast majority of English-language comics star Marvel or DC characters.
The first – and still the best – graphic novels to seriously deconstruct the superhero genre emerged in the 1980s. Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (1986) presents an aged and embittered Caped Crusader returning to the streets of a satirized, 1980s Gotham City. It remains one of the classic interpretations of any major superhero.
Similarly, Watchmen (1987), written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons, describes an alternate-history America in which costumed vigilantes are real, but whose role in society is far more nuanced and controversial than depicted in Golden-Age comics.
In the years following these two monumental works have come other excellent superhero graphic novels. These include The Killing Joke (1988), Alan Moore and Brian Bolland's retelling of the Joker's origin story, and Marvels (1993) and Kingdom Come (1996), epic tales of the Marvel and DC universes painted by Alex Ross.
Essential Non-Fiction Graphic Novels
Some of the best graphic novels eschew not only superheroes, but even fiction itself. Art Spiegelman's Maus: A Survivor's Tale tells the life story of Spiegelman's father, Vladek, and how he survived the Holocaust. Serialized in Raw magazine throughout the 1980s, Maus was later collected as The Complete Maus and even won a Pulitzer Prize.
Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art (1993) is a very different kind of non-fiction graphic novel, but no less essential. Understanding Comics is a landmark in comic book theory, using comics techniques to explain the workings – and possibilities – of the medium. It was followed by Reinventing Comics (2000) and Making Comics (2006).
The Best Graphic Novels Only Scratch the Surface
While these graphic novels are undeniable classics, there are far more literary-quality comics worth exploring. There isn't enough space here to deal with the landmarks of the European tradition (such as Tintin) or of Japanese manga (such as Astro Boy or Akira).
Nevertheless, American works like A Contract With God, The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, Maus, and Understanding Comics are some of the best graphic novels to use as the foundation of a serious comic book library.
Luke Arnott - Luke Arnott has a Master's Degree in Comparative Literature from the University of Western Ontario, where he is currently enrolled in the ...
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