Graphic Novels
I like them (a lot). I buy them (when I can).
On the shelf · 29
Asterios Polyp
David Mazzucchelli · LiteraryMazzucchelli’s masterclass on language, memory, and a cracked architect rebuilding himself.
Maus
Art Spiegelman · MemoirSpiegelman draws his father’s Holocaust testimony as cats and mice, without flinching.
Persepolis
Marjane Satrapi · AutobiographyA childhood in revolutionary Iran, drawn in stark black and white.
Blankets
Craig Thompson · MemoirA first-love memoir wrapped in falling snow and small-town faith.
Blast
Manu Larcenet · LiteraryFour volumes of weight, hunger, and a man walking out of his own life.
Akira
Katsuhiro Otomo · Sci-FiSprawling neon dystopia that redrew what manga could do on the page.
Herakles
Édouard Cour · MythologyThe labors retold as a tired man’s burden — mythology with calloused hands.
Le Grand Vide
Léa Murawiec · Sci-FiA debut where existence is rationed by attention — quietly devastating.
Preference System
Bienvenu · Slice of lifeAn experimental loop on choice, platforms, and the lives we tap into being.
L’Épopée Espagnole
Antonio Altarriba · HistoricalA father’s life as a window onto the whole twentieth century in Spain.
Gunnm
Yukito Kishiro · Sci-FiA cyborg coming-of-age through the scrapyard underworld — leaner than it looks.
Le Sommet des Dieux
Jirō Taniguchi · AdventureObsession, Everest, and the kind of silence Taniguchi draws better than anyone.
Monster
Naoki Urasawa · ThrillerA relentless thriller built around a doctor who saved the wrong child.
Fullmetal Alchemist
Hiromu Arakawa · FantasyBrothers, equivalent exchange, and one of the cleanest endings in long-form manga.
Solanin
Inio Asano · Slice of lifeThe post-graduate years where the dream politely runs out — and what comes after.
Bouddha
Osamu Tezuka · HistoricalTezuka’s decade-long retelling of Siddhartha — playful, sweeping, surprisingly funny.
Palestine
Joe Sacco · ReportageComics journalism from the first intifada — the form invented to fit the subject.
Capacity
Theo Ellsworth · LiteraryA metafictional notebook about making the book you are currently holding.
Jimmy Corrigan
Chris Ware · LiteraryThree generations of loneliness laid out in Ware’s impossibly precise architecture.
Demon
Jason Shiga · ThrillerA brutal logic puzzle about a man who can’t die — far darker than its grid suggests.
My Friend Dahmer
Derf Backderf · MemoirA high-school memoir from the kid who sat next to the future serial killer.
NonNonBâ
Shigeru Mizuki · MemoirA wartime childhood, taught the ghost stories of Tottori by the family’s old maid.
Culottées
Pénélope Bagieu · BiographyThirty short portraits of women history almost let slip away.
Gemma Bovery
Posy Simmonds · LiteraryFlaubert rewritten in an English village, drawn with pen-and-pencil deadpan.
Fun Home
Alison Bechdel · MemoirA father, a daughter, the house, the closet, the books — every layer doing work.
Bea Wolf
Zach Weinersmith & Boulet · AdventureBeowulf transposed to a treehouse and a band of sugar-fueled kids — fully committed.
L’Ascension du Haut Mal
David B. · MemoirA brother’s epilepsy and the family’s long search, in some of the densest art on the page.
New York
Will Eisner · AnthologyTenement vignettes drawn at street-corner pace — the city as a cast of characters.