The Top Ten Graphic Novels

1 of 10

1. Disappearance Diary
by Hideo Azuma
(Fanfare/Ponent Mon)
In 1989, veteran manga artist Azuma left his family and work behind to live as a hermit in the mountains of Japan. In a year fraught with financial tension, Azuma’s memoir of homelessness and menial labor—drawn in a deceptively light cartoon style, and packed with desperate sadness—is a timely reminder of how quickly lives can change. You may read it as a cautionary tale but at least you’ll learn how to make a meal out of a radish and tempura oil.

2. Bottomless Belly Button
by Dash Shaw
(Fantagraphics)
The rare 720-page doorstop you can actually read in one sitting, 25-year-old Shaw's dysfunctional-family epic is so funny and engrossing we'd expect Oprah to pick it, but for all the graphic frog sex.

3. Nat Turner, by Kyle Baker
(Abrams)
Carefully researched and vividly drawn, Baker’s graphic adaptation of rebel slave Turner's 1831 confession is a bloody but crucial work of history.

4. Slow Storm, by Danica Novgorodoff
(First Second)
A female firefighter and an illegal immigrant have a fateful meeting on one tornado-filled night in Kentucky in this thoughtful, ominous debut.

5. Strange Embrace
by David Hine
(Image)
Psychological horror that would scare the hell out of Edgar Allan Poe.

6. Wonton Soup
(Oni)
James Stokoe's wacky culinary space-trucker odyssey.

7. Travel
by Yuichi Yokoyama
(PictureBox)
Metronome
by Véronique Tanaka
(NBM)

Two elegant, wordless works of art.

8. Fables: The Good Prince
by Bill Willingham and Mark Buckingham
(Vertigo)
The best book yet in this long-satisfying series.

9. Paul Goes Fishing
by Michel Rabagliatti
(Drawn & Quarterly)
The Country Nurse
by Jeff Lemire
(Top Shelf)

Two gemlike tales of family and memory in the Great White North.

10. Water Baby
by Ross Campbell
(Minx)
An offbeat and frank story of a teenage surfer who loses her leg to a shark.

Photo: Courtesy of Fanfare/Ponent Mon

Photo: Courtesy of Fantagraphics

Photo: Courtesy of Abrams

Photo: Courtesy of First Second

Photo: Courtesy of Image

Photo: Courtesy of Oni

Photo: Courtesy of PictureBox

Photo: Courtesy of Vertigo

Photo: Courtesy of Drawn & Quarterly

Photo: Courtesy of Minx

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The Beefcake in the Backcourt
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The Beefcake in the Backcourt
Big, fake, and fully able to outshine its surroundings.Big, fake, and fully able to outshine its surroundings.
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