Top Graphic Novels

BLACK HOLE
Charles Burns' meditation on sex, drugs and 1970s teens takes a horror-movie approach to the topic of becoming an adult. Ten years in the making and worth every minute.

BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS
In Frank Miller's grimy vision of Gotham, Batman gets his balls back-and no one's going to take them.

EX MACHINA
Brian K. Vaughan's ripped-from-the-tabloids tale tells how an engineer with the power to talk to machines saves one of the World Trade Center towers and gets elected mayor of New York.

FROM HELL
Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell spin a complex literary detective story about Jack the Ripper. Aimed at those who don't believe in tidy solutions, the book goes so far beyond the movie, you'll wonder why Johnny Depp bothered.

THE INVISIBLES
Never has a book had so much fun being deadly serious. The frightening thing is Grant Morrison says the magic, the time travel and freaky sex are autobiographical.

LIKE A VELVET GLOVE CAST IN IRON
A disturbing, paranoid masterpiece involving an estranged wife, a bondage flick and a cult, by GHOST WORLD author Daniel Clowes.

LOVE & ROCKETS
Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez began by depicting outer space adventures and ended up writing about lesbian punk rockers. Come for the copious cheesecake, stay for the barrio realism. Start with the recent collection LOCAS.

MAUS I and II
Two volumes that will slice you clean open. Art Spiegelman uses his father's horrific memories of living through the Holocaust to take us on a clear-eyed tour of the cruelest moments of the 20th century.

100 BULLETS
Brian Azzarello's breakout hit gives beatendown people a gun, 100 untaceable bullets and evidence of who screwed them over. A mediation on money, power and mortality.

THE QUITTER
Harvey Pekar fundamentally does not like himself. Fortunately, a lot of other people do. An appropriately prickly place to get to know the antihero of AMERICAN SPLENDOR.

SAFE AREA GORAZDE
In this pioneering work of comics-based reporting, Joe Sacco chronicles with words and pictures the Bosnian war of the early 1990s. Humanizing and heartbreaking, this is new journalism with word balloons.

THE SANDMAN
Neil Gaman's long-running series made cool comics fantastical and fantastical comics cool. Collected in 10 volumes, THE SANDMAN is a modern myth, as well as a precis on why the stories we tell matter so much. Start with BRIEF LIVES.

TRANSMETROPOLITAN
Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson take a Hunter S. Thompson analogue and put him through a 23rd century wringer. It's angry political sci-fi, and it's funny as hell.

WATCHMEN
Just buy it for heaven's sake!

MAIL ORDER BRIDE
Explores Asian fetishism and the struggle to develop an identity. Rich and layered human drama.

ORDINARY VICTORIES
Manu Larcenet's ground-breaking graphical novel stands out because of it's ability to show people and their vulnerabilities side-by-side. While set in France, the humanity that leaps from the pages is universal. A gem.

GHOST WORLD
Daniel Clowes nihilism is frequently annoying to me but when it's set against a backdrop of teen ennui, it provides a perfect palette. The movie is pretty friggin' awesome too.

IS THERE ANYBODY THERE?
The artist known only as Jason is famous for depicting people as animals to isolate and display their emotions. This deeply depressing tale is effective in the way that Edward Munch's work is effective: stark, bleak and terribly lonely and yet life-affirming as well.

(According to Playboy and me.)