/lit/ person here. I want to try reading some graphic novels,

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>>93243883
start with the greatest graphic novel of all time

>>93243883
Watchmen
Sandman
Maus
Cerberus the Aardvark
Get to it nerd.

>>93243903
Seconding Identity Crisis.

>>93243903
This guy is trolling you, Identity Crisis is shit and a bad book to start on.

>>93243914
This guy knows what's up. Though I'm not sure about Cerberus.

>>93243914

>Watchmen
must read

>Sandman
wouldn't recomment to anyone over 16 years old

>Maus
the comic for people who don't read comics (it's good though)

>Cerberus the Aardvark
highly subjective

>>93243930
>wouldn't recomment to anyone over 16 years old
NIgga what?

>>93243883
Transmetropolitan is great.

Saga of the Swamp thing

Obviously you can't go wrong with Watchmen.
And while other anons create longer lists or sift through their recc charts, I have a question I wanted to ask /lit/.

Marvel has recently gotten into the habit of hiring second-string YA authors. One would assume they're doing it because diversity tokens, but the newest addition, Rainbow whatever, has been apparently in center of few nontroversies, so that's out. So now my theory is "jewish tricks". How much would you say being a YA writer pays?

>>93243943
Transmetropolitan was one of maybe two Ellis things I don't care for.

>>93243926
>Though I'm not sure about Cerberus.
Cerebus is really good, but also really different depending on the book number.

It's like someone told you that the entire dramatic works of Shakespeare where all in one universe and you had to read them all in the order they where written, and then make a coherent narrative out of it.

>>93243883
>western canon
screw that, read nausicaa. if you REALLY are limiting yourself to western, read sandman. also really excellent, its italian, but you can get it in engrish, is dylan dog

>>93243883
These are the ones you typically see held up as literary achievements. But also you can't really can't go wrong with a little Moebius & Jordoroswky.

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>>93243985
>Dylan Dog
Good to see a /co/mrade with such fine taste. I reccomend the issues: Requiem for a Monster and A Story About Nobody, as well as any of the original early issues.

>>93243976
And Shakespeare's wife left him about midway through his collection of plays, and the rest of them slowly degenerated into an extended increasingly sociopathic diatribe against the female gender.

>>93243914
Don't read Cerberus, it's just a mouthpiece for the writer's political stance most of the time.

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I'm hoping we'll have a list to trigger /co/ someday

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This is probably a troll thread

>>93243883
>Cape
Batman Year One
Watchmen
Batman Killing Joke
Superman Red Son
Batman Arkham Asylum
Joker
Green Arrow Longbow Hunters(read Mike Grell's whole run on Green Arrow if you dig it)
>None cape
The Crow
My Friend Dahmer
Black Sad
IZombie
From Hell
SCUD
The Goon
Hellboy
Hack/Slash

There's way more,this is just some stuff i enjoyed.

>>93244172
>Green Arrow Longbow Hunters(read Mike Grell's whole run on Green Arrow if you dig it)

The best Green Arrow in my opinion.

Essex County

>>93243930
Don't listen to this guy, Sandman is fantastic

>>93243883
Love and Rockets is divine if you like long stories

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>>93243883
Here are some Franco Belgian comics.
But OP, I do not think a "Western canon of comics" exists or is even helpful to think about. As in lit a lot depends on what one likes, for example what have you read and which did you dislike/like/tolerate? English language only?
Provide more clues and get better focussed recommendations.

>>93243883
>graphic novels
you are already too mindcucked to appreciate fiction

>>93243883
Only comic book which is a must-read is the Scrooge McDuck comic from Don Rosa. Everything else pretty much depends on the comic book market you are interested in, you have American comic market, Franco-Belgian comic market, Japanese comic market (also refered to as manga) and German comic market.

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>>93243914
>Cerberus the Aardvark
>>93243926
>Cerberus
>>93243930
>>93244098
>Don't read Cerberus
I agree, read Cerebus the Aardvark instead

The Maxx is worth reading

>>93243883
I notice nobody's mentioned Ronin or V for Vendetta yet. Go for those too while you're at it.
Will Eisner's Contract With God too.

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Jacking this thread. What is some good /lit/ about /co/ stuff? Thinking about getting pic related, and looking for more personal, anecdotal things.

>>93244758
>the Scrooge McDuck comic from Don Rosa
I hope you realize he made a LOT of Uncle Scrooge stories, and they're not all The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck.
A Little Something Special is his best story anyway

>>93244861
Grant Morrison's Supergods was pretty good, he described his trippy experiences in Kathmandu in it.

>Read 10 books
>I'm educated now

Cmon /lit/

>>93244893
Is it similar to the documentary, Talking With Gods?

>>93244921
I wouldn't know. It's a good book though. He talks a lot about what comics were like in the Golden and Silver Age before he gets far enough in the timeline to become relevant himself, at which point it becomes a little more personal.

>>93244928
It's a pretty good watch, but kind of masturbatory over how dude meta lmao he is.

If you want to read Cape, the three must read authors would be Miller, Moore and Morrison, judging by your desire. My reasoning is that their work almost works in Ying/Yang reflective state. Miller is the first one who popularized the adult and somewhat literary style in comics then come to Moore who really wanted to write adult fiction in cape comics. What they did is make a very self reflective and almost in lot of ways subversive/deconstructive text by the time they fully realized their intentions. Morrison on the other hand wrote stuff that opposed what Moore/Miller popularized, he was the first one to do so in a very overt and almost loud fashion. The recommended reading would be Daredevil + Born Again + Batman Year One -> Moore's Superman work + Saga of Swamp Thing + Miracleman -> The Dark Knight Returns -> Watchmen + The Killing Joke -> Zenith + Animal Man -> Flex Mentallo + Kingdom Come -> Supreme + All Star Superman.
If Moore's work on Miracleman and Swamp Thing is thought to be a proto deconstructive text, which is to say a bridge between cape comics being comics and comics should be adult and self reflective, Kingdom Come and Flex Mentallo are in a bridge to return comics to the previous state of being innocent fiction. So if something like Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen are pure deconstructive text, All Star Superman and Supreme are innocent fiction or reconstructive text. Animal Man and Zenith are prior state of something like Flex Mentallo, they function as a parody like text that calls out Watchmen or serious fiction with a lot of irony, Flex Mentallo and Kingdom Come are played almost straight in their intentions.
Also Kingdom Come is written by Mark Waid, it's important in understanding the era but not really a great book by itself. Zenith is also Morrison's one of first work in cape fiction, it's not as refined and you can skip it if you want, similarly Miracleman is Moore's first work in cape fiction and can also be skipped.

>>93244861
On top of Supergods I'd recommend Power of Comics and Critical Approaches to Comics.

>>93244921
Kind of, its less about his own work and more of his perception of the superhero genre as a whole.

Two books you should read before you get in to any comics or Graphic Novels (if you want to be academic about it) is Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud and Comics and Sequential Art by Will Eisner.

The McCloud book is a complete history of the medium, from it's pictograph origins, though the emergence of modern comic strips, periodicals and eventually feature length books.

Both books pull back the curtain and explain the "how" and "why" of how comics work, showing the many different ways that you can tell a story in comics and why it's a medium with just as much varied subject matter and narrative as literature or film.

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Worm is a online web serial about Superpowers.

Link
https://parahumans.wordpress.com/

An introverted teenage girl with an unconventional superpower, Taylor goes out in costume to find escape from a deeply unhappy and frustrated civilian life. Her first attempt at taking down a supervillain sees her mistaken for one, thrusting her into the midst of the local ‘cape’ scene’s politics, unwritten rules, and ambiguous morals. As she risks life and limb, Taylor faces the dilemma of having to do the wrong things for the right reasons.

Readers should be cautioned that Worm is fairly dark as fiction goes, and it gets far darker as the story progresses. Morality isn’t black and white, Taylor and her acquaintances aren’t invincible, the heroes aren’t winning the war between right and wrong, and superpowers haven’t necessarily affected society for the better. Just the opposite on every count, really. Even on a more fundamental level, Taylor’s day to day life is unhappy, with her clinging to the end of her rope from the story’s outset. The denizens of the Wormverse (as readers have termed it) don’t pull punches, and I try to avoid doing so myself, as a writer. There’s graphic language, descriptions of violence and sex does happen (albeit offscreen). It would be easier to note the trigger warnings that don’t apply than all the ones that do.

>>93244861
We Told You So is a great read if youre into Fantagraphics

Ghost World
Fun Home
Ordinary Victories
Heartbreak Soup

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>>93243883
Understanding Comics - Uses the art form to explain the art form, the ultimate introductory comic.
Heartbreak Soup by Gilbert Hernandez - The first of Hernandez's Palomar stories. Good /lit/-friendly fare, think Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Little Nemo in Slumberland by Winsor McCay - The most groundbreaking comic of all time, tested the possibilities of the medium. Continues to blow minds over 100 years later.
Bone by Jeff Smith - If you're up for fantasy aimed at a younger audience. Smith is one of the greatest living masters of comics as a craft.
Lone Sloane by Druillet - For insane art
If you want to try capes I'm sure you've heard of Watchmen already. It is a classic, but as it is a deconstruction you'll get the most out of it with a cursory knowledge of superhero tropes (which you probably have due to cultural osmosis). If you want to read a superhero comic played straight first, I recommend The Eternals by Jack Kirby.

>>93245569
cont., It's also important to remember that comics aren't literature, this is where a lot of /lit/ types get hung up in trying to deal with them. Don't go into a comic expecting it to do what prose does, the same way you wouldn't expect a painting to do what prose does, it's a different thing that must be appreciated in a different way.

>>93244785
sure showed everyone

>>93244861
Marvel Comics: The Untold Story should be required reading to pass /co/'s captcha

>>93243883
try Kingdom Come if you want super heroes

>>93243883
Scrooge McDuck. You think I'm trolling but I'm dead serious.

>>93245688
A million times this. Comics follow completely different rules than literature, they have way different aesthetic searches. Try to think of comics in terms more similar to film, or even theater.