Graphic-novel Gift Guide
By Dan Brown I love giving (and getting) graphic novels and comics at Christmas! As you’re shopping for family and friends this festive season, I’ve got some suggestions on which books to get the different people who made your list. Check it out! For the newbie graphic-novel reader: I would recommend a starter pack of Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns and Maus. Released at roughly the same moment in the 1980s, these are the foundational graphic novels – along with Will Eisner’s A Contract With God – that showed comics could be taken seriously. For the superhero fan: I would give this person Irredeemable from Boom! Studios. Written by Mark Waid, it takes a look at what happens when an all-powerful hero in the mold of Superman goes off the rails. For the fan of Canadiana: Maurice Vellekoop’s I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together is a gay coming-of-age story set in Toronto and includes a lot of history about the queer community in the Big Smoke. There’s also Kate Beaton’s Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands, set in Alberta’s Oil Patch. For the fan of local talent: Derek Laufman has books like Bot 9 and The Witch of Wickerson for kids, plus titles such as Crimson Fall: The Shore Tower for mature readers. He recently published the first issue of The Rats of Ironwood and has taken over art duties on Skottie Young’s I Hate Fairyland series. A Byron resident, Laufman is as local (and as good a creator) as it gets. For the fan of overlooked gems: Get this person on your list anything Mouse Guard, Londoner Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Seconds, or Southwestern Ontario native Jeff Lemire’s The Nobody, the latter of the three being a re-telling of the H.G. Wells novel The Invisible Man in a small town. For the history buff: Maybe I’m in the minority, but I had not heard of Eadweard Muybridge, the pioneering photographer who was also involved in one of the most notorious murder trials of the 1800s, until Quebec graphic novelist Guy Delisle published this biography. A fascinating character whose story is told in a fascinating way. You could also try Scott Chanter’s Two Generals, about the D-Day invasion told from the perspective of two Canadian grunts. For the political buff: Are You Willing to Die for the Cause? is the first of a two-volume history of the FLQ, the separatist terrorists who are portrayed by veteran cartoonist Chris Oliveros as a bunch of stumblebums. For the art lover: I came relatively late to Dean Motter’s Mister X. Check out Mister X: The Archives or Mister X: The Modern Age, with its glorious retro look, billed as “a fusion of film noir, Art Deco and German Expressionism.” All of those elements combine to make a comic that will live in your imagination for a long time. And Los Bros Hernandez worked on some of the early issues of this Canadian classic! For the lover of the printed word: Anything, really, by Hamilton’s Joe Ollmann. If you want a starting point, try some of his short graphica, for instance Happy Stories About Well-Adjusted People. If you like what you read, move on to Fictional Father and The Abominable Mr. Seabrook. Don’t get me wrong, I love Joe’s art, too, but there are few comic creators whose voice comes through as clearly as Ollmann’s does. For the one who loved this summer’s Superman movies: The James Gunn film was based on a number of storylines, including All-Star Superman, Superman For All Seasons and Superman: Birthright. If you can find a compilation of John Byrne’s 1980s run on Superman, this person on your list will likely enjoy that one, too. For the one who loved The Fantastic Four: First Steps this summer: The Essential Fantastic Four Volumes 1-5 were the source material for this movie, with its retro-futuristic look. The new motion picture was dedicated to artist Jack Kirby, and these five volumes contain his entire influential run on the title with Stan Lee. For the one who is looking forward to Avengers: Doomsday next year: See my Fantastic Four recommendations. Also the Essential Super-Villain Team-Up Volume 1 and the individual issue The Invincible Iron Man No. 150 – in which Doctor Doom faces off against Iron Man. For the music fan: Scott Chantler’s Bix, Rush: The Making of a Farewell to Kings and David Collier’s Topp: Promoter Gary Topp Brought us the World. For the person who’s impossible to buy for: Why, a gift certificate, of course! So that’s it for my suggestions for this year. Are there any graphic novels/comics you are giving this year, or hoping to see under the tree? Let me know in the comments! Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 32 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
Scary Halloween Graphic Novels
By Dan BrownIn time for Halloween, here’s a rundown of graphic novels that range from unsettling to creepy to scary to horrifying. Read them at your peril, boys and girls!Vision: The Complete Collection: Imagine you live in suburbia and your new neighbours turn out to be emotionless androids. Literally. This Tom King-written story ends with the Vision taking on pretty much the entire Marvel universe.Monsters Volume 1 and 2: These omnibuses, dubbed “monsterbuses,” collect classic tales by Jack Kirby from the 1950s and 1960s, when evil creatures came with names like Fin Fang Foom. Find out what the world was like before superheroes! Before Marvel was even Marvel!The Simon and Kirby Library: Horror!: See some utterly creep characters the King came up with before he switched to inventing the Marvel universe pretty much on his own. In addition to EC’s many gruesome titles, this is the kind of comic that got denounced by U.S. politicians for causing juvenile delinquency!Any EC collection: From the publisher that brought you the Crypt Keeper! It doesn’t matter which EC horror anthology you read (they have titles like Tales From the Crypt and Crypt of Terror), they are all great examples of EC’s thoughtful suspense and horror!Monsters: Originally envisioned as a story about the Hulk, this thick tome from Conan the Barbarian artist Barry Windsor Smith is as gorgeous as it is horrifying! A military experiment goes wrong and unsuspecting civilians pay the price! Nicely marries horror with a touch of magic realism.Something is Killing the Children Book One: You can file this series under the heading of “the title is the premise.” Something evil has been leaving a trail of lifeless tots in its wake in the sleepy small town of Archer’s Peak. Will a heroine rise to stop the slaughter of innocents? Written by James Tynion IV.Wild’s End: Your basic alien invasion story set between the wars. The twist: The characters who populate the British countryside are anthropomorphized animals. The alien invaders look kind of like Victorian-era street lamps and remind me a bit of Triffids. This ain’t no Watership Down!H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness Volumes 1 and 2: This manga adaptation of Lovecraft’s story about a doomed Antarctic expedition is made even more unworldly by the fact it’s a manga. Japanese creator Gou Tanabe takes his time to recount this encounter between humankind and the previous alien inhabitants of this planet.The Nobody: This Jeff Lemire joint, which made nary a splash when it came out in 2009, asks the question, What if the Invisible Man came to Essex County? Yes, I know Lemire never specifically says the story takes place in Southwestern Ontario, but it’s easy to imagine it does.Snotgirl Volume One: Green Hair Don’t Care: Written by Londoner Bryan Lee O’Malley (yes, he does stuff other than Scott Pilgrim!) this is a psychological drama featuring an influencer named Lottie Person. The fun comes from trying to guess how much of her adventures are really happening and how much of the action is in Lottie’s head. Vampirella Archives Volume One: My favourite version of Vampirella is the one featured in these stories from 1970s Warren Publishing magazines that were drawn by Jose Gonzalez. Giving the character a science-fiction twist – in this continuity, vampires are from the planet Drakulon – infused her stories with that X factor I was looking for as a kid.Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands: What does Kate Beaton’s account of her time in the oil patch have to do with Halloween? If you’ve ever wondered how an entirely male society would work, Ducks explores that theme in horrifying detail. Ducks is all the scarier for the fact it really happened. The old standbys: There’s also the Walking Dead for zombie fans, 30 Days of Night for vampire enthusiasts, and Hellboy books like Conqueror Worm for fans of the paranormal.Your suggestions: What are YOU reading this spooky season? I want to hear it in the comment box below!Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 31 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
