recommend me some essential graphic novels to acquire

get the one i said to get

and the one dr superman

I'll check em out

get this

if you are a HUGE STONER

Eisner's collected 'Contract With God' trilogy.
Eddie Campbell's Alec books (The King Canute Crowd, Three Piece Suit, How To Be An Artist, After The Snooter)
Anything else by Eddie Campbell
Cerebus, as mentioned above, is still astonishing (my guide here: This is the thread where I try and summarise Cerebus )
Fun Home
Lost Girls (not sure how available this is)
Alice In Sunderland is probably this year's finest work
Owly
Scott Pilgrim

> I liked reading through the previews of Adrian Tomine's work here.

tomine has several collections out, mostly short stories but the recent 3 issue extended story is recently out as a book ('shortcomings'). (search amazon for 'tomine')

there's a second volume of maus btw, and lots more daniel clowes and chris ware. have recently read and enjoyed clowes' 'ice haven' and wares' 'acme novelty library 17'.

lone wolf and cub.

Aldo, tell me more re. Alice in Sunderland.

Does one really need to be a stoner to enjoy "Can't get no..."?

Alice In Sunderland is Bryan Talbot's history of Sunderland, filtered through what is known of Lewis Carroll's relationship with Alice Liddell.

It's probably best described as if Iain Sinclair and Alan Moore were collaborating on a book about the North East - imagine something that looks like Voice Of The Fire, or The Highbury Working, only with the comics density of Promethea and Watchmen put together.

Voice Of The Fire, or The Highbury Working

I do not know these books :( I will have a look at Alice though. Sounds good. Does one need to know Sunderland or is it secondary to the story?

Voice Of The Fire is Alang Moore's novel (non-graphic) about Northampton. The Highbury Working is a spoken word piece he did with Tim Perkins which is available on CD (in fact, all his spoken word pieces are good - let me see if I can sort out a Why Ess Eye later).

Sunderland is not secondary to the story, but you don't need to know anything about it. I certainly didn't know very much about it before reading - almost everything was new to me.

I have actually read Voice of Fire. I can't really remembering enjoying it all that much. The offer of the other sounds v good indeed!

Just pricing up Alice in Sunderland now, sounds very interesting indeed!

http://ilx.wh3rd.net/ILX/NewAnswersControllerServlet?boardid=57

CaptainLorax, do you love comis? I Love Comics.

ugh Adrian Tomine

hadn't heard of that Veitch thing before, he's great!

i'm currently reading tomine's 'summer blonde' - i like it, but it's pretty depressing and sad. next up is 'curses' by kevin huizenga.

took me awhile to get into because i've never been a fan of comics or read a graphic novel, but they were gifts.

i've heard lots of good things about joe matt.

Alice In Sunderland is a BUCKET OF SHIT and has ZERO comics density. Every single page is a few black and white drawings of Talbot talking and talking and talking to the reader, in front of hideous, hideous, hideous shitey photoshop collages where he's taken all his reference photos and tried to swerve copyright by blurring the edges and sticking them through My First Oil Painting Filter and My First Lumpy Glass Window Filter. There's nothing wrong with the cross-references, but they don't actually reveal any deep thinking about the connections beyond "Ey up! This happened too! But 300 years earlier. Eh? Eh?" He's so smug about creating (get this) three different versions of himself to portray different levels of reader interest that he takes time to tell you that he's done it instead of just letting you decode for yourself that the fat slob asking dipshit questions is a device to prompt exposition and explication.

Forget the author of Arkwright and One Bad Rat, this is about one-ninth as good as Phage: Shadow Death.

Does one really need to be a stoner to enjoy "Can't get no..."?

You don't have to, but it will certainly help. If you don't have a taste for long poetic allegories instead, probably steer clear.

there's a second volume of maus btw

There's been a complete volume out for ten or twelve years, I don't think they keep the second serialised version in print anymore

Joe Matt is great - a real genius with the "unreliable narrator" tactic, albeit often a quite subtle one. The whole comic is built around a willful exaggeration of his most loathsome and lamentable character traits (kinda like Curb Your Enthusiasm, only much more carefully constructed and executed)

also his brushwork is really beautiful

dude is really nice too. my best friend emailed him asking if he would sign a book for him if he sent it - joe matt emailed back and told him if he hadn't already bought the book to not bother; he would just send a signed one to him for free.

Dang!

some dudes are just nice.

in his comics he's possibly the most unlikeable person imaginable - a raging narcissist with a host of crippling emotional problems and unattractive sexual proclivities.

void of super hero type stuff (but not too girly).

Oh man this is pretty much prefect.

I recommend Little Lulu

People who like stuff like Maus and Persepolis should check out Stuck Rubber Baby, it's a similarly grounded-in-history kind of a story of oppression and resistance, dealing with the fight for civil rights and gay rights in 60s America. It's not a straight (auto)biography like the other two, but the characters are very well written and believable, and the whole story is quite touching. And it's not too girly either.

GIRLY COMICS FOR DANDY DAMAGED PRINCESS-MEN

What the hell.

lolz @ Maus being called a "straight autobiography"

Poor Finnish word choices aside, I heartily second the recommendation of "Stuck Rubber Baby." Also "Can't Get No," even if you aren't high.

Dave McKean's Cages is excellent.

I'm not really into graphic novels so much so my standards might be off, but there's a Japanese book called "Blame!" (supposed to be pronounced 'Blam!', but you know, the author's Japanese) about people wandering this infinitely massive building in the future. The style cops a lot from Alien and it occasionally veers into cheesy Japanese cyber-gothiness, but the art is astounding and the author's vision is so uniquely bleak that it really sets itself apart from your standard Japanese sci-fi (which I usually just ignore). Anyway, the author is Tsutomu Nihei and I think it's just been translated into English.

an ILXor wrote THE BOOK.

Doug Wolk is an ilxor??

Yep, and I host his MP3s for his website. <3

"can't get no" seemed a bit too America-centric for me. I decided to give it a miss. What I read of "Stuck rubber baby" in the shop I found rather dull. I might give it another chance.

If only these things were cheaper! My curiosity is tempered by my brokedness :(

Where is a good place to start with Joe Matt? Is he like Joe Sacco?

Oh right. Wikipedia comes to the rescue:

* Peepshow - The Cartoon Diary of Joe Matt, 1992 (Kitchen Sink)/1999 (Drawn & Quarterly), a collection of mostly one-page strips, usually dealing with a single subject, originally published between 1987 and 1991.

* The Poor Bastard, 1996 (Drawn & Quarterly), which collects stories published in Peepshow numbers #1 to #6. This book chronicles Joe's relationship and breakup with then-girlfriend Trish.

* Joe Matt's "Jam" Sketchbook , 1998, Collaborations with Chris Ware, Seth, Chester Brown, Julie Doucet, Adrain Tomine, Max, Jason Lutes, Dave Sim, Will Eisner, Marc Bell, James Kochalka, Ivan Brunetti, Steven Weisman, etc., limited print.

* Fair Weather, 2002 (Drawn & Quarterly), which collects Peepshow numbers #7 to #10. In this book Matt chronicles an episode from his childhood in 1970s suburbia.

* Spent, 2007 (Drawn & Quarterly), which collects Peepshow numbers #11 to #14. In this book Matt chronicles a story arc that documents his obsessive “editing” of porn videos.

Need to read some of it before buying 3 books outright. There's impulsive and then there's crazy!

I'll add my name to the list of people who found Stuck Rubber Baby to be dull, worthy nonsense. If I hadn't bought it in a charity shop for £2 I would have felt ripped off.

energy flash - I completely disagree with you about Alice In Sunderland, but I can see where you're coming from.

I finally got around to reading "Epileptic" by David B. Pretty good but not great.

They're making "Y: The Last Man" into a movie...pretty scared they'll ruin that one.

They're making "Y: The Last Man" into a movie...pretty scared they'll ruin that one.

I dunno, could work. That said, I have only read the first one so can hardly judge properly!

Need to read some of it before buying 3 books outright

DO NOT start with Fair Weather. Do not start with Spent, but not as emphatically. Either Poor Bastard or the diary strips are OK to start with, but whichever you try first, go to the other one next before moving on to later material.

Fair Weather is actually my favorite but yeah its not a good starting point as its not really emblematic of his work. I'd say start with The Poor Bastard. The earlier strips are also great and really funny, but aren't as stylistically well-realized (also lots of tiny hard-to-read panels)

Does anyone else think a lot of modern autobio comic makers don't have enough bio to auto? I'm looking at you, Blankets.

Also, could anyone give me an example of "girly comics" besides maybe the abominable Strangers in Paradise, which I would call more of a douchebag comic?

i dont get the fun home love. it was so BORING!!!!

Also, could anyone give me an example of "girly comics" besides maybe the abominable Strangers in Paradise, which I would call more of a douchebag comic?

http://www.jennymiller.com/romancecomics/rm1coverthumb.jpg

http://tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:4NajNwdsGmRd6M:http://img93.imageshack.us/img93/2746/imor758au.jpg

http://www.matt-thorn.com/comicology/romance/fire5.jpg

Yeah, but I meant more ones people actually read, or would recommend in a thread like this requiring someone to specify "no girly comics."