Comics & Graphic Novels

Calvin & Hobbes, Bill Watterson
Best comic ever, hands down. This is first comic I remember reading, not just of daily strips but of comics period. I started reading it when I was 5, and I cried when I found out it was ending (when I was 13). The philosophical conversations held between the two characters are balanced with a good amount of random funniness, and Watterson's drawing is spectacular when it needs to be and cute and simple when it needs to be.

Cul de Sac, Richard Thompson
Cul de Sac started as a Sunday strip in the Washington Post magazine, and is now nationally syndicated. The drawings are adorable and I love how Alice and Petey defy gender stereotypes. However, I think my favorite character is Ernesto Lacuna: "Alas, I have a food allergy that manifests itself as a mild form of lycanthropy, so I must decline."

Lio, Mark Tatulli
This is one of the best strips currently being published. I've seen it described as Calvin meets the Addams Family, and being a fan of both that makes it just delightful. The unique thing about this strip is the total lack of dialog. Every single joke is visual, and while occasionally this makes it confusing, it usually works very well. Lio is the rare strip that makes me laugh nearly every day.

Narbonic, Shaenon K. Garrity
A daily webcomic that ran for 6 years, about a mad scientist and her assistants, with captivating story arcs and lots of geek humor. I discovered this comic toward the end of its run and it took me a year to read through the archives.

Skin Horse, Shaenon K. Garrity and Jeffrey Channing Wells
Shaenon's current webcomic, about a secret government body that deals with sentient animals. The main characters are a tranvestite psychologist, a talking dog, and a zombie.

Questionable Content, Jeph Jacques
Adorable robots, cute girls, and geeky/indie music humor.

Perry Bible Fellowship, Nicholas Gurewitch
Wikipedia describes this comic as "characterized by the juxtaposition of whimsical childlike imagery or fantasy with extremely morbid, absurdist humor", and I doubt I could put it any better than that. The art is fantastic and the jokes are deliciously funny. This is the kind of strip that I wish would be printed in my paper, but by its very nature it never could be.

Richard's Poor Almanac, Richard Thompson
This strip runs every Saturday in the Washington Post's Style section, often as a satirical almanac entry with astronomy or seasonal info. The DC-specific jokes are particularly hilarious for anyone who's ever lived here, but it's still pretty universal. The strips are occasionally posted on the Post's website.

Dykes to Watch Out For, Alison Bechdel
A serialized strip about a lesbian named Mo and her group of friends. The art is beautiful, it's full of liberal political commentary, and the characters are realistic and interesting. What I love most is the humor; even the most serious strips have little jokes in the background.

Life in Hell, Matt Groening
Having been a Simpsons fan for most of my life, I naturally explored its predecessor, and it is one damn funny strip. The art is very Simpsonic, although it mostly centers around bunnies. The characters range from the one-eared bunny Bongo to the fez-wearing couple Akbar and Jeff (are they lovers? brothers? both?) to Groening himself, and his kids, who he draws with bunny ears. It's not being written anymore, but there are collections and a fansite with some cartoons posted.

This Modern World, Tom Tomorrow
A hilarious, insightful, beautifully-drawn left-wing political cartoon, starring Sparky the penguin and Blinky the very nice dog. I think I agree with this cartoon on pretty much every issue. It's extremely wordy for a political cartoon, but he packs a lot of funny into those words. "Tom" also has a great blog at ThisModernWorld.com (it's the one that got me into blog-reading, incidentally).

The Boiling Point, Mikhaela Reid
It is so refreshing to see such a talented, unabashedly liberal, female political cartoonist. Mikhaela's cartoons are about poverty, the environment, queer rights, feminism, and of course the evils of Republicans. This cartoon is not widely known yet, but it has been featured in a few newspapers and magazines, as well as Ted Rall's Attitude series.

Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, Jhonen Vasquez
A delightful comic about a homicidal maniac named Johnny, or "Nny" for short. Not for the faint of heart.

Squee!, Jhonen Vasquez
Johnny's next door neighbor, a little boy who is constantly terrorized by his parents, his teacher, other kids, monstrous dust mites, aliens, Satan, and certain homicidal neighbors.

I Feel Sick: a Book About a Girl Jhonen Vasquez
About Devi, a girl who went out with Johnny once and kicked his ass when he tried to kill her. In this book she faces soul-stealing demons who are trying to keep her from working on her painting.

Lenore, Roman Dirge
A cute little comic about a little dead girl, Lenore. Dirge's website is Spookyland.com.

Fray, Joss Whedon
A comic book spinoff from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, about a slayer name Melaka Fray several centuries in the future, the first slayer to be called in generations. The art (by Karl Moline and Andy Owens) is spectacular, and the writing, as always with Joss, is brilliant. This is a must-read for Buffy fans.

Ghost World, Daniel Clowes
"Ghost World" is Clowes' term for that weird, directionless time between high school graduation and the rest of your life, and this book is the story of the summer after Enid Coleslaw's graduation, as she resists figuring out what to do with her life. The movie based on this was okay, but the book is much better (and lacks the icky Steve Buscemi storyline).

The Book of Genesis Illustrated, R. Crumb
Every single word of Genesis is used in this graphic novelization. Crumb's artwork is beautiful and his endnote analyses are fascinating.

Black Hole, Charles Burns
In a suburb of Seattle in the early 70's, a strange sexually transmitted disease is spreading among high school students. The disease causes strange mutations in its victims, different each time, but often turning them into hideous monsters. The story follows several different characters as they each contract and live with the disease. What drew me to this book was the gorgeous artwork, which somehow manages to make even the disgusting into something beautiful.

The Diary of a Teenage Girl, Phoebe Gloeckner
A combination of diary entries and comic book format, telling the story of Minnie Goetze, a fifteen year old growing up in San Francisco in the 70's, and her forays into sex, drugs, and love. It's actually a thinly-veiled autobiography, and when I realized that as I was reading it, I was horrified to think that all of this had actually happened to her. It's a nice thick book, 300 pages, but it only took me two days to read because it's so engrossing.

Fun Home, Alison Bechdel
A moving memoir in the form of a graphic novel, telling of Bechdel's life growing up in a funeral home with her closeted father, and his suicide not long after she came out to him and her mother. Bechdel is famous for her very funny and politically-charged weekly strip Dykes to Watch Out For, and while this book has some of that same humor, as a memoir it's obviously much more somber. Critically acclaimed and beautifully drawn.

Persepolis

Maus

The Man Who Grew Young, Daniel Quinn
I'm a great fan of Daniel Quinn as a novelist, and I was thoroughly impressed with this beautifully done graphic novel, illustrated by Tom Eldred. The idea is fascinating — in a world where time moves backwards and everyone is eventually united with their mother, one man can't find his, so he's basically immortal. As with all of Quinn's work, there is an important message in the story.

More of my favorite cartoonists are listed on my links page.

back to favorites
home