Auckland Council Libraries: Must read graphic novels

Must read graphic novels

Absolute must read graphic novels from around the world. Dig in!

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Alison Bechdel

A darkly funny memoir, illustrated with Bechdel's gothic drawings, about her relationship with her icily distant father, a funeral home director and obsessive restorer of the family’s Victorian home who is also a closeted homosexual.

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Locas

Jaime Hernandez

Created from 1981 to 1996 in the pages of the legendary comic book series Love and Rockets, Locas tells the story of a bisexual, Mexican-American woman attempting to define herself in a community rife with class, race and gender issues.

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Maus

Art Spiegelman

Acclaimed as 'the first masterpiece in comic book history' (The New Yorker), Maus is the story of Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe, and his son, a cartoonist, coming to terms with his father's story.

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Palestine

Joe Sacco

Palestine was the first major political and historical nonfiction comics work by Sacco, whose name has since become synonymous with this graphic form of New Journalism, and it firmly ensconced him in the pantheon of great cartoonists.

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Hicksville

Dylan Horrocks

This internationally acclaimed New Zealand graphic novel is a wryly funny story about the dangerous business of art and a haunting meditation on longing and regret. This reissue of this classic features a new introduction in comics form by Horrocks.

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Jimmy Corrigan

Chris Ware

Jimmy Corrigan is a boy with the face of a disappointed old man. This graphic novel tells the poignant story of a shy character and his relationship with his absent father.

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Arsène Schrauwen

Olivier Schrauwen

In 1947, the author's grandfather Arsene travelled across the ocean to a mysterious jungle colony with his cousin. Together they would build a utopia of modernity in the wilderness -- but not before Arsene falls in love with his cousin's wife.

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A contract with God and other tenement stories

Will Eisner

The book that more or less introduced the term ‘graphic novel’. Set during the Great Depression, this literary trilogy presents a treasure house of now near-mythic stories that fictionally illustrate the bittersweet tenement life of Eisner's youth.

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Watchmen

Alan Moore

Chronicles the fall from grace of a group of super-heroes plagued by all-too-human failings. Along the way, the concept of the super-hero is dissected as the heroes are stalked by an unknown assassin.

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Saga. Volume 1

Brian K. Vaughan

When two soldiers from opposite sides of a never-ending galactic war fall in love, they risk everything to bring a fragile new life into a dangerous old universe.

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Lone Wolf and Cub. Volume 1, The assassin's road

Kazuo Koike

When Ogami is falsely dishonoured by the powerful Yagyuu clan and they murder his wife, he flees with his three-year-old son. Together they travel Japan as fugitive mercenaries.

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Auckland Council Libraries:Book list Recommended reading lists about different topics and genres to help you find new books to read.