Booklist's Top 10 Graphic Novels: 2013.
Chipman, Ian
Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama. By Alison Bechdel. Illus. by the author. 2012. Houghton, $22 (9780618982509).
The author of the celebrated Fun Home (2006) here levels her penetrating gaze onto her relationship with her mother, her experiences with psychotherapy and analysis, and her growth as an artist.
Building Stories. By Chris Ware. Illus. by the author. 2012. Pantheon, $50 (9780375424335).
Ware’s latest high-concept, form-shattering work isn’t even a book at all. Fourteen assembled pieces—books, pamphlets, broadsheets, scraps, a giant board—explore lives of quiet desperation in a Chicago three-flat.
A Chinese Life. By Li Kunwu and Philippe Ôtié. Illus. by Li Kunwu. 2012. SelfMadeHero, paper, $27.50 (9781906838553).
This poignant memoir and intimate yet sweeping chronicle of the convulsive development of modern China introduces the West to a masterful graphic storyteller, a longtime artist for a Communist Party newspaper.
Goliath. By Tom Gauld. Illus. by the author. 2012. Drawn & Quarterly, $19.95 (9781770460652).
If the oddsmakers had known the truth about Goliath—a bumbler despite his generous girth—David never would have been the original underdog. A spare gem of wry humor and deft storytelling.
Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City. By Guy Delisle. Illus. by the author. 2012. Drawn & Quarterly, $24.95 (9781770460713).
Focusing not only on the political and religious tensions of the holy city of Jerusalem, Delisle’s travelogue also delves into the connections and humanity that make us all universally similar.
Jim Henson’s Tale of Sand. By Jim Henson and Jerry Juhl. Illus. by Ramón K. Pérez. 2012. Archaia, $29.95 (9781936393091).
An unfilmed screenplay from Henson’s early, experimental days is lavishly visualized by Pérez, who in turn subverts the expectations of sequential art through the story of an unnamed man questing through the desert.
The Lovely Horrible Stuff. By Eddie Campbell. Illus. by the author. 2012. Top Shelf, $14.95 (9781603091527).
Campbell’s seriously playful look at money ranges from autobiographical passages to sheer flights of fancy, all rendered in a simple, scratchy style that belies the thoughtfulness of his approach.
RASL, v.4: The Lost Journals of Nikola Tesla. By Jeff Smith. Illus. by the author. 2012. Cartoon, paper, $19.95 (9781888963328).
The conclusion to Smith’s noirish, fringe-science thriller is a full-throttle plunge through parallel dimensions and mind-bending twists.
SagaSaga, v.1. By Brian K. Vaughan. Illus. by Fiona Staples. 2012. Image Comics, paper, $9.99 (9781607066019).
Veteran scribe Vaughan teams up with mainstream comics’ most explosive new artist in this opening salvo to an epic smashup of space opera and quirky fantasy.
Sailor Twain; or, The Mermaid in the Hudson. By Mark Siegel. Illus. by the author. 2012. First Second, $24.99 (9781596436367).
The siren song of a mermaid’s beauty is nothing to be trifled with, especially on the deep, brooding waters of the Hudson for Captain Twain of the steamboat Lorelei.