Ten Graphic Novels for People Who Don't Read Comics

There are dozens of others that could fit this list. Note that I avoid super-heroes and their fellow travelers science fiction, fantasy, and horror in this list because all these things put some people off.

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Louis Riel by Chester Brown

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Stuck Rubber Baby by Howard Cruse

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Kings in Disguise by James Vance and Dan Burr

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Maus by art spiegelman

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American Splendor by Harvey Pekar and many artists

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The Book of Genesis by God and Robert Crumb

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Palomar by Gilbert Hernandez

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Can't Get No by Rick Veitch

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From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell

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Signal to Noise by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean

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Comics in 2005

The Best American Comics 2006 (2006; stories originally published 2004-2005): edited by Harvey Pekar and Anne Elizabeth Moore, containing comics written and/or illustrated by Jesse Reklaw, Justin Hall, Rebecca Dart, David Heatley, Chris Ware, Kim Deitch, Anders Nilsen, Ben Katchor, Joe Sacco, Jaime Hernandez, Gilbert Shelton, Alison Bechdel, Alex Robinson, Jessica Abel, Rick Geary, Kurt Wolfgang, Lynda Barry, Robert Crumb, Seth Tobocman, Esther Pearl Watson,  Lilli Carré, and others.

This first volume of Best American Comics, from the same publisher who gave you long-running anthologies that include Best American Sports Writing and Best American Mystery Writing, seems to be a mainstay of used bookstores as a result of it being remaindered out the wazoo soon after its publication back in 2006. Anne Elizabeth Moore did the initial selection and the late Harvey Pekar made the final selection from her list, in case you're wondering what the two editors did.

Pekar's preference for reality-based storytelling explains the book's avoidance of superhero and similar genre material. There is one funny parody of super-heroes. That's it. Some of the comics work as absurdism or satiric fantasy. But the bulk of the volume consists of memoir and memoir-like work, with some experimental pieces that play with form and structure and lay-out interspersed throughout.

There's a lot of awfully good long-form material here. I'd pick Jesse Reklaw's story about childhood pets, "13 Cats," as one of the two or three best stories here. It's sad and funny. And it doesn't wear out its welcome. An autobiographical piece by American giant Robert Crumb also pleases me to no end (as does Crumb's snarky reply to the editors' earnest request for a text piece on the origins of the story). 

Justin Hall's "La Rubia Loca," the longest work included herein, could use some trimming, and perhaps some serious work on working with more panels per page. The length makes it feel padded. The pat ending in which a character learns to love life from the lessons learned from the torments of a mentally ill woman... ugh. Cut out those last few pages, though, and it's a nicely observed work, though the art bears more than a passing resemblance to that of Gilbert Hernandez. There are also fine pieces by Kim Deitch, Joe Sacco, and Lynda Barry, among others.

There are two major flaws with the volume. One comes with its page size, that of a normal hardcover. This reduces several stories originally printed in larger formats to near-incomprehensibility. Pieces by Chris Ware, Rebecca Dart, and David Heatley suffer the most from the size reduction -- you'll either need a magnifying glass or you'll say to hell with it.

The second comes with the decision to include excerpts from longer works. An excerpt from a Jessica Abel piece is probably the worst of these. It's the comics equivalent of treading water for 20 pages, and puts me in mind of how annoyed I get at short-fiction anthologies that include excerpts from novels. I understand it in the context of a Norton literary-survey anthology. In a 'Best of' anthology of shorts, though, it seems like an editorial violation of some fundamental rule. It's as if the Best Short Oscar category included 20-minute chunks from the Best Picture category along with the 'real' shorts. I hate it. I really hate it. 

Still, a worthy beginning to a series that offers non-superhero comics material to a mainstream book-buying audience. Recommended.

Farewell to Cleveland

Harvey Pekar's Cleveland: written by Harvey Pekar; illustrated by Joseph Remnant (2012): Harvey Pekar, who died in 2010, was one of a handful of the finest comics writers ever produced by the United States. His essential topic was his life and its interaction with the people, places, and ideas he came into contact with. He could be hilarious ("A Good Shit is Best" perhaps being the epitomal version of Pekar's deft hand at dialogue and the rhythms of story). But his role, in comics and in culture as a whole, often seemed to be as the champion and the chronicler of the mundane and the human.

This posthumous graphic novel, beautifully rendered by young artist Joseph Remmant (seriously, he looks like he's all of 12 in the back-jacket photo and boy, can he draw), takes us through a brief history of Cleveland, Ohio that also touches upon Harvey's life and times. It's poignant because of what it is (probably Pekar's last new work). It's poignant because of what it shows (the rise and fall of an American city).

Remnant's art uses a lot of photo references for the historical stretches of the narrative. Nonetheless, while exquisitely detailed, the art is also warm, with a nice sense of the cartoony when it comes to human beings. Robert Crumb was one of Pekar's long-time collaborators, and there's certainly some of Crumb in the approach to the human form. We're just a couple of ticks off representational.

Pekar's life and work were remarkable. The point of that work -- of the friends and lovers and casual acquaintances and historical moments and jazz legends and everything else showcased in that work -- was that the remarkable is all around people, not in some magical fantastic way, but in the various things ordinary humans say and do.

The observational moments worked organically with those in which Harvey railed against the anti-human policies of politicians and businessmen, and with those in which Pekar stood pretty much appalled at the breadth and heft and utter emptiness of popular American culture. But he could still laugh about it, and he could still reminisce fondly about the Cleveland Indians of 1948, who actually won a World Series.

Pekar's work helped create a sub-genre of comics -- the confessional auto-biographical independent comic -- that was something truly new on the American comics scene in the 1960's and 1970's. I'd say he looms above it like a Titan, but I think he'd find the idea insulting. He's down on the street somewhere, looking for a jazz record, looking for a new used bookstore. Highly recommended.

Danger Milk

Reid Fleming, World's Toughest Milkman Volume 1: written and illustrated by David Boswell (Collected 2011): London, Ontario's native son David Boswell made quite a splash in Indy comics in the 1980's with Reid Fleming and Heartbreak Comics -- the late, great Harvey Pekar was a fan, for one.

This first IDW volume collects the first few issues of Fleming and the stand-alone (though connected) story of Heartbreak Comics in a nice, over-sized format. Fleming's artwork can be fine-lined and immensely detailed at points; the larger reprint size helps a lot with keeping things crisp and clear.

Surreal and comic, Boswell's work occupies some droll territory that borders Eraserhead, Krazy Kat, and E.C. Segar's Popeye strips of the 1920's and 1930's. This isn't a superhero comic or a funny animal comic or even a humour strip, not exactly. It's a richly detailed and supremely odd world; its own thing, which is a rare instance in comics (or films, or books).

The plot, complex as it can sometime seems, is built upon a simple premise: Reid Fleming delivers milk. He's a guy who takes no crap, so he gets in fights with people. Milk trucks get demolished. Reid gets in trouble with his supervisor. Reid gets out of trouble. Odd things happen. It's all weird and charming and internally consistent -- Boswell has created his own world, with its own strange rules. And then there's that soap opera starring the walking skeleton... Highly recommended.