原创 Enthralling graphic novels

A few years ago, I read Locke & Key by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriquez, and Preacher by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon.

I really love the graphic novel medium and I'm constantly impressed with the different ways in which the various wordsmiths and artists communicate their stories -- some are very linear in their timelines, while others bounce around all over the place in time and space; some follow a standard comic format (left page top-to-bottom then right page top-to-bottom with talk bubbles also progressing top-to-bottom), while others totally stretch the medium; and some present their tale in a straightforward manner, while others are the graphic novel equivalent of Catch 22, introducing characters and references about which you don't have a clue, and then tying up the loose ends later. I love them all.

The reason I mention this here is that I've recently become enthralled with a whole bunch of new graphic offerings, and I thought I'd share them in the hope that I'll end up with someone with whom I can discuss the little rascals.

Now, I'm not going to give full reviews here; I'll do that sometime in the future when I've finished the various series. Instead, I'll point you to the first volume in each series over on Amazon. Suffice it to say that I'm only mentioning things that I consider to be worth reading, plus you'll see that they all score highly with other Amazon readers.

First up we have Saga by Brian K Vaughan and Fiona Staples. The story revolves around two soldiers from opposite sides of a never-ending galactic war, who fall in love and risk everything to bring a fragile new life into a dangerous old universe. All I can say is that the graphics, the characters, and the storyline are spot on.

Next we have Chew by John Layman and Rob Guillory. This is a really interesting one. It's based on the premise that the lead character, Tony Chu, is Cibopathic, which means he gets psychic impressions from whatever he eats. This also means that he's a heck of a detective, just so long as he doesn't mind nibbling on the corpse of a murder victim to figure out whodunit, and why.

Another interesting offering is Black Science by Rick Remender, Matteo Scalera, and Dean White. This involves a dysfunctional family who are bouncing around from one dimension to another via a damaged machine, desperately trying to get back home. This is one of the ones in which you are introduced to things out of order, so you start off wondering "how on Earth did we get here" or "who the heck is this character" and then discovering the answer several pages later.

I tell you, these stories are jumping around all over the place. Next we have LOW by Rick Remender and Greg Tocchini. This tale takes place in the far distant future when the sun's premature expansion has irradiated the Earth and forced humanity to live in radiation-shielded cities in the depth of the oceans. Things are starting to look pretty grim until a robot probe that was launched generations before returns bringing the hope of a new world in a distant part of the galaxy.

Last, but not least (for the moment), we have Trees by Warren Ellis and Jason Howard. This story is based in a near-future world where life goes on under the shadow of gigantic alien trees that mysteriously appeared all over the world. In the ten years since they arrived, we've learned that there is intelligent life in the universe, but that they don't recognize us as being either intelligent or alive.

Well, that's it for the moment. The graphic novels mentioned above are the series I'm actually reading at the moment -- I have a pile of others sitting on the shelves here in my office just waiting for me to find the time to peruse and ponder them. As soon as I do so, I'll post a follow-up column. In the meantime, are there any graphic novels you would care to recommend?