My graphic novel favourites*

I thought I'd give you a whistle stop tour of a few of my favourite graphic novels that have left a deep impression, or have recently impressed me.

Covers of the books described below.

‘Alice in Sunderland’ by Brian Talbot' 'Alice in Sunderland' is the book that reawakened my love for comics and graphic novels some years ago. The sheer, complexity and scale of the book, a sort of love letter to Sunderland, woven in with the story of Lewis Carroll's creation of 'Alice in Wonderland', and the author/illustrator's own history and local myths, is a staggering undertaking that apparently took 4 years. It's a whistle stop tour of the history of Britain, led by Talbot himself, with entertaining diversions via Sid James, the Lambton Worm and a shape shifting goblin. This full colour mélange of photos, drawings, music hall posters, Victorian postcards pushes the medium of sequential art to its edges - everyone should own a copy or get given one for Christmas!

When it came out, some critics didn't like the non-linear storytelling - is there even a coherent story? It's more a TED talk perhaps, jumping around in time and space, but the experience of reading this ambitious, luscious book was paradigm shifting for what I thought a graphic novel could be.

‘Just so happens’ by Fumio Obata

Fumio Obata's book is a beautifully drawn meditation on belonging. A young Japanese woman who has moved to London, has to return home to Japan for a funeral - where she feels the contrast of the Western and Eastern tradition weighing heavily upon her, and has to decide which way her future will go. Fumio Obata's water colour drawings are mostly in muted pastel tones. In the second half of the story, colour is used effectively to reflect Yumiko's mourning and nightmares. The pages have a delicate sensitivity - though some images are enclosed by panels, many float free, in gorgeous full-page images.

Though there is an obvious link back to the author/illustrator's boyhood in Japan and deep love of the manga-style books he read as a child, the images in this book are in a different style - more free than those very defined rules and layouts of manga. A lovely, thoughtful book.

‘Mongrel’ by Sayra Begum

The cover of 'Mongrel' summarises beautifully the central concept of the book - the two cultures conflicting within the main character Shuna's life, as she marries a non-Muslim. Sayra's illustrations are inspired by Islamic miniatures and Surrealism, and her fine art background is clear in the 260 plus pages of exquisitely pencilled black and white illustrations, which cover the page in a variety of layouts, not confined just to frames.

'Mongrel' is a gorgeously illustrated autobiographical story, and a window into the life of a Bangla-British Muslim family.

‘It’s Lonely At The Centre of The Earth’ by Zoe Thorogood

Content warning: 'It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth' explores clinical depression and suicidal thoughts in great detail.

This is an astounding autobiographical graphic novel - in which the author/illustrator Zoe Thorogood lays bare her mental health struggles with, at the same time, unflinching honesty about the pressure of being marked out as being a brilliant creator. Thorogood's magpie-like taking of a huge range of visual styles and comics references fits together in a complex visual narrative which is none-the-less completely readable and oftentimes laugh out loud funny. It's so good. I loved it, I laughed at it and it made me cry.

'A Guest In The House' by E. M. Carroll

E.M. / Emily Carroll wrote another of my favourite books - 'Through The Woods', a collection of short horror stories, and 'A Guest In The House' is her full-length contemporary gothic horror graphic novel. I wasn't aware of the genre before, but it will definitely be a genre I check out in future.

As unreliable narrator Abby settles into married life with a new husband and step-daughter in the home of his former deceased wife, something from either her past or their past begins to haunt her. The sense of tension builds in a very similar way to 'House Of Leaves' by Mark Z Danielewski, if you've read that. I love the way Carroll's illustrations swim across the pages, bleeding memory and action, mixing monochrome sections with vivid scars and stabs of colour. A deserving multiple award-winner.

'The Black Project' by Gareth Brookes

A graphic novel which integrates linocut and embroidery into the artwork? I'm there for that.

A hilarious coming of age story about a young man who builds a girlfriend, this was a winner of the First Graphic Novel Competition. Dark and bizarre, main character Richard builds increasingly realistic girlfriends out of household materials and gets more and more obsessed with making his own girlfriend, until a showdown with a local gang turns the tide.

The pages have a sort of grimy black and white smudginess to them that suits the story, as a story that celebrates making, the book seems handmade, photographs of the embroidered linen pages and linocuts have a texture that's reinforced by the choice of the publishers to use uncoated matt paper. It's a difficult book to describe, best you just get hold of a copy and decide for yourself!

After choosing these 6 from what could have been many more, it strikes me that they're all innovative in some way, and that's what I like about graphic novels - that they have evolved in so many ways from the superhero comic.

*There are so many more but I don't want to get into a TL:DR situation here!