I took part in a couple of those chain things on Facebook where you list your top whatevers. I named off my 15 favorite (or most influential) movies and 10 favorite comics. While I considered it, I really don’t feel like writing about all of those movies, but I thought I’d expand on my comic choices here a little bit.
The Beast Trilogy: Chapters 1 & 2 (Enki Bilal)- This comic comes closer than any other comics to hitting me the way Philip K. Dick’s novels do. It’s a bizarre comic, a thing that I can’t quite grasp or wrap my mind around, demanding to be read multiple times but still eluding me in so many ways. It feels so huge, even if it really isn’t. Bilal’s art is dirty and grimy, drawn with what looks like charcoal or a china pencil and painted in ugly colors, but packed with grungy detail. I hope to make a comic very much like it some day.
Scott Pilgrim Gets it Together (Bryan Lee O’Malley)- I have to admit that Scott Pilgrim doesn’t mean as much to me today as it did when I was still in college as the books were coming out, but this volume still holds a special place in my heart as the one where, well, did you read the title? Our plucky, dumb protagonist manages to stop being such a dummy and pulls himself together here, and I guess it came out in the right place at the right time for me, exactly what I needed to read when I first got it. Of course, it all went south in the next book, but still. The next volume is almost too depressing for me to go back to, and the final volume gets even darker in places, but I’ll always love this one for being a brief, shining moment before it all goes wrong. Scott’s entire arc over the course of all six books means a lot to me, with moments that feel a little too real and hit a little too close to home. I need to re-read them all sometime.
The Airtight Garage (Moebius)- This book is Moebius at his most unrestrained, writing himself into a corner every two to four pages, making it all up as it goes along, drawing whatever he wants to draw, never too worried about where the story is going, just enjoying himself. It’s an obtuse masterpiece, filled with so many incredible drawings. This is another one that will make you excited about comics just by flipping through it.
Hellboy (Mike Mignola)- Hellboy is this perfect balance of action, humor, horror, and poetry. No one handles pacing like Mignola, and his page layouts are wonderful. Hellboy himself is a favorite kind of character for me, the hero with a calm, blue collar demeanor. This dude fights off massive demons all the time and brushes it off like it’s nothing. No matter what the odds are, he shoulders it and gets the job done. Nothing overwhelms him. I love that. Amidst this beast of the apocalypse roaming the world, seemingly oblivious to just how horrible the things he deals with happen to be, are moments of absolute beauty and poetry (which, like a lot of us, he‘s also sometimes oblivious to.) It’s just so much fun to read.
DragonBall (Akira Toriyama)- I only just started reading it this year, but I know it deserves a spot on this list already. DragonBall is the comic that Cannonball Fist secretly aspires to be. Or maybe not so secretly. This book is so wonderfully drawn, and one of the funniest comics I’ve come across. It’s the epitome of what a good, all-ages adventure comic should be. Goku is the perfect protagonist, and everyone else is just as colorful and ridiculous. No wonder it’s so popular, right? Why’d it take me so long to actually READ it?
Desolation Jones (Warren Ellis/JH Williams III)- As I was just getting back into seriously reading comics in high school, I nabbed a poster for this out of a pile of freebies at my local shop. It hung on my wall for months before I finally got my hands on an issue. Ellis was one of the first writers I latched onto, recognizing his name from a Hellblazer volume (Haunted, I believe?) I’d bought on a whim and enjoyed. This is my favorite comic Ellis has written, and my favorite thing that Williams has illustrated. It’s another book that kind of blew my mind when it comes to what a comic can be, as well as being an incredibly surreal and brutal riff on the Big Sleep.
Casanova (Matt Fraction, Gabriel Bá, and Fabio Moon)- Fraction’s backmatter in those early Image issues was crucial to me when it came to working on my own comics, the way he broke down his process and how each issue was constructed, all of the little references and things that he filled each page with. I don’t think I’ve re-read any other comic as much I’ve gone through Luxuria, the first volume. Nobody else writes like Fraction, and the way this comic is packed with everything but the kitchen sink is incredible. It’s so dense, filled with lots of multi-dimensional twists, and yet not TOO challenging to read. Also staggering is the way it seamlessly transitions from being a fun sci-fi spy comic into some pretty dark shit, as the most recent volume was emotionally exhausting.
Akira (Katsuhiro Otomo)- Nothing else on this list compares to Akira, nothing comes close to approaching this thing’s magnitude. Every time I mention the manga to people, I have to bring up the nearly 40 pages of catastrophic destruction at the end of volume 3. That sequence, from Nezu taking aim at Akira and missing, to the very end where Tetsuo finds him after Neo Tokyo is in ruins, is maybe one of the greatest things you will ever see in a comic. The movie never really worked for me, and trying to watch it again after reading all six massive volumes of the manga, it still doesn’t. It doesn’t compare. And the pacing, my god, it doesn‘t leap forward in time at all except after the city is destroyed. The book hits the ground running and doesn’t stop, it’s such a relentless page turner.
Elektra: Assassin (Frank Miller/Bill Sienkiewicz)- I feel like this book should be an essential read the way others treat Watchmen and the Sandman. This is some of Miller’s strongest writing, and Sienkiewicz’s art is full-on schizophrenic, featuring my favorite depiction of Nick Fury. I never knew superhero comics could look like this before I picked it up in high school. It’s so good that any time I see another Elektra book, I grab it in the hopes that it’s even half as compelling, but no one else comes close. It’s a fractured, mean, filthy book, and you can feel the tug-of-war going on between Miller and Sienkiewicz, working together but fighting all the way, trying to keep up with and outdo one another, just spitting crazy ideas out. The perfect collaboration.
King City (Brandon Graham)- This is the book that got me REALLY seriously into making comics, not just teasing the idea and saying I’d make them without putting any of the work in. I bought the first issue when the first volume was being re-released by Image and I think I started working on the first issue Burst Reach the next day, with this website coming soon after. Brandon is one of the most inspiring guys working in the industry right now, and any time I feel a little down, or don’t feel like working, all I have to do is open this book (or his Walrus sketchbook) and just flip through a few pages to get excited again. I love everything about King City. I love how the plot involves a wicked cult of men in suits trying to raise an ancient god and destroy the city, but it’s all on the side. Joe’s personal story, getting over his ex-girlfriend and helping his friends is what’s important, you’re more invested in these characters just getting their lives together rather than the fate of the world or whatever. It’s a funny, weird book with a lot of ridiculous jokes and sci-fi elements, but it never loses that human core. Nothing else feels as real to me as this.
There you have it. COMICS COMICS COMICS. If you haven't read any of these before? Well, get to it!