Literary Comics
The comics I consider the best. I mention only the authors and comics I have read myself — there are some others, as good, that I do not mention.
Daniel Clowes
Ghost World is a Salingerian tale of the first summer after graduation in the lives of two girls, close friends, but now drifting apart.
With Terry Zwigoff, Clowes has written the script of the film with the same name.
In the film-like David Boring, the protagonist wanders in bleak landscapes through fetishistic episodes, tries to piece together his father’ s life, and is stranded on an island.
Daniel Clowes bibliography is an exhaustive bibliography of Clowes’ work and interviews in English and other languages.
To Clowes, the question “Who am I?” is inseparably tied to “What do I wear?” Good taste and banality are discussed in the interview “He Loves You Tenderly”, published in the Hermenaut magazine.
Kim Deitch
The Boulevard of Broken Dreams tells the story of an animation artist working in a studio that competes with Disney. In hallucinations, the animator is tortured by a creation of his own, the mischievous cat Waldo.
Deitch’ s pictures spark!
Eric Drooker
Blood Song is a story in pictures, without words. Through scenes reminiscent of Munch, it tells of the journey of a girl from a tropical island to a city, of her dance through life.
Neil Gaiman
The ten books of the Sandman have risen from the scripts of master storyteller Neil Gaiman.
Gaiman’s homepage is populated with his essays, weblog, and picture gallery.
Scott McCloud
Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud discusses comics as an art form: e.g. the use of symbols in comics, storytelling, the flow of time in comics. The book, in comics form itself, the words and pictures illustrate each other.
NEW! “The Sculptor“ tellos of a young sculptor whose life takes an unexpected turn; McCloud masterfully applies techniques described in “Understanding Comics“.
In scottmccloud.com, he publishes his new comics and links to other web comics.
Joe Sacco
The “comics journalist” Joe Sacco has specialised to describing horrors of war.
Palestine tells of the life of the Palestinian people during the 1st intifada in the beginning of the 1990s.
Safe Area Gorazde depicts Serbian cruelty and genocide in the Bosnian war of 1995-1996.
Art Spiegelman
Maus by the Jewish New Yorker Art Spiegelman is the tale of his father Vladek’s life in Poland in the 1930s and of his experiences in the Auschwitz concentration camp during the 2nd World War. —On a parallel thread, we see how Art copes with his father (read: does not cope).
Spiegelman represents Jews as mice, Germans as cats, and Americans as dogs, contrasting stereotypes with a realistic style.
Umberto Eco has said: “Maus is a book that cannot be put down, truly, even to sleep.”
Maus has won the Pulitzer Prize.
Art Spiegelman: a short biography and Maus and other comics.
Chris Ware
Chris Ware, the master of pacing, weighs in the family saga Jimmy Corrigan the fate of three generations of ne’er-do-wells.
A lonely office clerk of age 36 recieves an invitation from his father whom he has never seen. Jimmy Corrigan’s tale alternates with his grandfather’s childhood happenings during the world fair of Chicago (1896).
Flat pastel surfaces, small panels and minuscule details, betray author’s affection for the aesthethics of the beginning of the 20th century.
An interview in NYC Graphic Novelists.