Read Stephen Weiner's 101 Best Graphic Novels

This goal stays – I’ve modified my reading goals on LibraryThing for 2010 and am switching over to more open 75 book challenges instead of category reads. I have a dedicated one to graphic novels.

This one stays. I may add some others.

At first glance, Rick Geary’s volume on Jack the Ripper may seem sparse and nearly clinical. It is not padded with endless theories on the identity of Jack the Ripper, reasons for the targeting of the particular women or endless gossip about the lives of those investigating the murders. Comparing this against Alan Moore’s 575-page epic, From Hell, one might well ask, “what’s the point of a simple 62-page graphic on Jack?”

The point is that Rick Geary has presented us Jack the Ripper in the purest form possible – straight from the journals of an unknown British gentleman that lived in London during the murders. These were copious journals (the real ones are 24 volumes) from someone that clearly had access to insider information and a desire to play a bit of armchair detective. So this is Jack the Ripper in his heydey, before the conspiracies, before the movies, before the endless tell-alls and long before the massive rumors.

In this, you get a lot of fact, many fantastic maps and a lot of surprising commentary. Popular conspiracy theories today are readily dismissed by our journalist back then (An equally sinister theory concerns the…Free-Masons…but what motive the organisation could have in these cases is difficult to discern). The journalist actually backs no official theory on Jack’s identity, but there are several long-forgotten suspects that briefly appear in Geary’s volume.

This is worth the read simply to see the story from the perspective of someone as they were watching it unfold.

To appreciate the need to tell yet another Jack the Ripper story, it may be best to flip to the back of From Hell and read Alan Moore’s second appendix first. In it, he details an interesting history of how the legends of Jack the Ripper and the “true tales” have evolved since the murders were committed. He aptly describes it at one point as a “game of Bohemian Whispers” which gives him several advantages in the telling of his story. First, he can’t be blamed if he gets facts wrong, secondly, his version is not necessarily any more right or wrong than anyone else’s if one takes this position – something bolstered very much by the first appendix where Moore lays out that which is drawn from fact, that which was made up for narrative sake and that which was drawn from historical context.

That being said, this is an incredibly compelling version of events. In an environment where the police procedural has more than embedded itself into the pop-culture cannon, there is one truth to getting away with murder – prostitutes are disposable. And this is what makes Jack the Ripper such a compelling tale; Mary Kelly has managed to spawn her own set of legends in addition to being the alleged fifth victim. Each of the other victims is named and remembered. While many killers have garnered similar attention, finding victims that have achieved this type of canonization is a rare thing – finding this amongst the poor and supposedly disposable in our society is a rarity.

So when Moore finds a fantastic tale of Freemason conspiracy, a royal love affair and four women who chose to bribe the wrong man for ten pounds leading directly to the creation of Jack the Ripper, it suddenly makes sense. Even the fourth dimension bends a bit for our killer, bleeding through from the future to show that his actions will become part of the London psyche. Before one thinks that Moore is trying to present all of this as fact, there are good portions of the story devoted to those that were taken in by the hysteria of the day. Panels of random strangers writing letters to newspapers posing as Jack the Ripper are shown, police are shown dismissing key pieces of evidence, different investigators are brought in for political reasons – it’s all there to demonstrate the basic human need to muck up an already limited ability to discover evidence after the fact. (For those that must really know blow-by-blow, the first appendix details where each story element, character and even some bits of dialogue were either found or when they were invented for each page.)

Cambell’s drawings deserve a lot of credit. The black and white varies in style throughout – from a scratched-ink-style to a softened-smudged style that resembles charcoal drawings. For even the most gruesome scenes, one is thankful to only have the black and white drawing – color would simply have been too much for the violence his drawing clearly conveys.

From the mid-80s, this cross-section of Robert Crumb’s work is as representational as it gets. If collecting both Weirdo issues and collaborations with Charles Bukowski and Harvey Pekar weren’t enough, this also includes a biography of obscure blues artist Charley Patton and a collection of random bits of personal drawings. There are only so many Crumb-drawn birth announcements for good friends that the world has seen.

Weirdo includes Mode O’Day’s run which rivals American Psycho in its ability to slice through the ridiculousness of the 1980s ability to turn anything with depth into a shallow piece of fashionable trendiness. It’s more satisfying to know that Crumb did this during while Ellis had already lived the decade and was comfortably listening to grunge when he wrote his observations. Point: Crumb.

Even more satisfying is the ability to see the many versions of Crumb’s illustration. While it all has that distinctive “Crumb Look” to it, the variations in line and shading are amazing. When illustrating the Patton story, the lines take on a solid, nearly wood-cut feel in some places – it’s as if Crumb wishes to carve out Patton’s place in music history even though it has largely been forgotten. The Weirdo issues feature a bit of a “quickie” look to them with few solid areas that look as if they were slapped together in a few hours until you carefully look at the drawings and you realize that the drawing probably took even longer than hard, careful lines would have taken.

The stories are cut from whatever was interesting to Robert at the time. Mode O’Day is the definite highlight. Bukowski will fall flat if you’re unfamiliar with his work. Jesus People USA is a self-indulgent piece in an otherwise great collection.

The praise that has been heaped on Craig Thompson’s Blankets is well-deserved. At nearly 600-pages, it may seem that this will be a never-ending and self-indulgent tale, but it reads as if it were a fraction of those pages – and you are left wishing for more.

A memoir of that beautiful and brutal time when you’re on the verge of growing up, Blankets follows two of Thompson’s most important blanket relationships; the one he shared with his youngest brother and the one made for him by his first foray into love. In between this, there are crisis of faith, family and friendship. There are commentaries on the nature of cruelty in the world – the cruelty inflicted by strangers, by peers, by those that should be kind, by friends and by family. There’s the realization that the simple lessons of youth are no match for complex questions which most people are ill-equipped to answer.

But, mostly, it’s the lesson of the end of first love. And this is where Blankets is absolutely beautiful. Thompson manages to capture the nearly perfect arc of the teen relationship without trying to paint either himself or Reina with some false wisdom or insight to improve past versions of themselves. This is the true emotional impact of this story.

What does a superhero who is human, aging and without real super powers do when time is catching up with him? In this volume, we meet an older Batman who has been out of the limelight for ten years while Gotham has been overrun by the Mutant Gang. A brief turn out of retirement is possible, but not sustainable.

In this volume, Miller manages to weave familiar foes and friends together in a volume that deals with the end of the run for our hero. Age, of course, is the least of our hero’s issues. Our hero is a vigilante in the age of media, so while his battles are very real, the talking heads endlessly debate the merits of the legality of his actions. While our hero has chosen a path against the grain, another hero has chosen the path of assimilation and cooperation with civic leaders and this story is played out between the two of them. Miller even has room for gender politics.

Most impressive is the inking and coloring for Miller’s already expressive drawings. I found myself going over some panels multiple times just to admire the work.

Tucked in the back of Ultimate Spider-Man is an excerpt from the original comics. Our timeless tale of Peter Parker is in the background at school while the following exchange takes place:

Say gang, we need one more guy for the dance! How about Peter Parker over there?

Are you kiddin’? That bookworm wouldn’t know a Cha-Cha from a Waltz!

Peter Parker? He’s Midtown High’s only professional wallflower!

Do I even need to tell you that the kids are dressed in ties, skirts, sweaters and sports coats? Must I mention the girls accessories include clutch bags and pearls?

Not that these really matter much to Spidey’s story, but if you’re just deciding to get into the written version today after seeing the movies, how are you not supposed to roll your eyes and wait for the next CGI fest to come out instead?

This is why Ultimates exists. It’s a reboot for a classic tale. In Brian Michael Bendis’s hands, our Peter Parker meets plenty of the old-school characters in high school instead of in his city days. Technology makes more of an appearance in the stories – even Peter’s job at the Daily Bugle is secured as a web developer instead of just as a photographer. Even better, Peter’s inability to tell the Cha-Cha from the Waltz are forever forgotten in our reboot.

Mark Bagley and Art Thibert’s drawings do present well-defined, detailed characters. Unfortunately, some facial closeups – particularly those involving female charcters – take on a bit of the wide-eyed manga-feel that can feel too trendy at times. At the same time, the drawing techniques used for the Osborn Lab explosion news transmission, Peter’s initial pass out and fights with Electro more than make up for the manga trendiness.

If you’re expecting a faithful frame-for-frame retelling of the original, you’ll be disappointed. If you’re prepared for a story that respects the story of Spider-Man while bringing him up-to-date without tying him down to 40+ years of baggage, this is well-worth a looksee.

The first in Osamu Tezuka’s epic eight-volume manga series.

First things first, this is not a historic reproduction done in comic form. If one is looking for a serious study of Buddhism, this is probably not the place to start. That being said, if one wants to complain about the lack of on-point theological exactness in a manga depiction of the Buddha’s life, one should get familiar with the terms “broad strokes” and “chill.”

Ostensibly, this is the first the story of Shiddhartha, the Gautama Buddha. Seeing as how he’s not even born until page 250/400 and probably appears on about 5 pages worth of those 400, we don’t get a huge introduction outside of knowing that Shiddhartha is destined for great things.

Volume one concentrates mostly on the story of Chapra and Tatta – a slave and pariah. Chapra desperately wants to break free of his slave caste and Tatta is able to possess animals. They live outside of Kapilavastu, which today is considered a Holy site for Buddhists (its exact location is under some dispute).

While the Buddha does not figure prominently into the first book, certain truths are skillfully woven throughout this volume. If nothing, this is a searing indictment on the evils of the caste system put in pace thousands of years ago. Even more brilliantly done is the enduring theme that all life is sacred no matter how insignificant it may seem as it is part of a larger design.

Tezuka’s drawings run the gambit. There’s definitely the “traditional” manga feel in the black and white drawings. At the same time, the artistry in some of the epic panels is undeniable; the locust scenes are well-worth a pause.

The origins of Colleen Doran’s epic graphic novel first began when she was twelve. When we’re twelve, that voice telling us that we shouldn’t mix in governmental kidnapping plots with alien heritages and psychically linked siblings, political dealings of other worlds, Arthurian legend, a touch of an after school special and a slight dash of a Melrose Place designer-sabotage B-plot together to make an epic fantasy story. No, when we get older, that voice tells us such a mixture will just go really wrong really fast.

Thank goodness Colleen plowed onward without that voice. As muddled as all of that sounds, A Distant Earth manages to take all of these various plots and weave them into Liana and Jason’s story. The Gathering really offers a background into their story, beginning with breaking Liana out of a mental hospital where she’s been held captive most of her life. As Jason and Liana believe they’re escaping the worst of things, they discover that their problems are just beginning when it’s revealed that they’re half alien and key to ending a political struggle in which they’ll quickly become pawns.

I do want to find out what happens – of course, the library has volumes 1 & 3, but not 2 & 4…I’ve asked them to fix that.

Why I Hate Saturn feels like that witty banter you wished you had with that good, smart friend that you secretly know is smarter than you but doesn’t really ever hold it over your head. Anne Merkel is a columnist with deadlines she may or may not meet for Daddy-O magazine, which passes judgment on all things. She’s got a book deal, is as neurotic as it’s cool to be and has great taste in scotch.

When her sister arrives in town, her world is turned upside down. Not that she doesn’t try to avoid the whole thing. Anne’s sister, Laura is everything she’s not – a neat freak, confident, caring about the earth, a vegetarian and she claims to be the Queen of the Leather Astro-Girls of Saturn.

In reality, this is Kyle Baker’s story of how we cannot remain unchanged by those around us – no matter how hard we try. It’s also a story about knowing we’ll find out who we are in the company of other and not in the solitary confines of our own haphazardly-built walls. The good news is that these lessons don’t go one way…and they don’t lose their sense of humor.