MADreads

Graphic essentials

August 27th, 2008 Dennis - Central

Gene Kannenberg, Jr. has compiled a book containing what he calls the 500 Essential Graphic Novels : The Ultimate Guide.  Now that’s the sort of inflated title that’s just begging to be punctured once or twice.  Kannenberg even helps by admitting upfront that the phrase “graphic novel” can be open to interpretation.  His suggestion is that the phrase should refer to works of “lasting value” rather than the daily strip or monthly periodical format that the word “comics”suggests to most readers.  Which is probably as good a working definition as he needs for this collection of titles.  It sort of has to be, since he includes works that are collections of daily strips, and others that are considered children’s books.  One key limitation Kannenberg placed on works to be included in this volume was that the titles had to be currently in print.  Which means that a lot of great material from the past which would have made the list, got left off in the interest of giving readers a fair shot at finding the titles mentioned.  But even with those kinds of limitations he came up with 500 titles.  And among 500 titles there are bound to be some undiscovered or forgotten gems.

Overall, the book is pretty nicely organized, with the selected titles divided into ten chapters covering ten genres: Adventure, Non-fiction, Crime and Mystery, Fantasy, General fiction, Horror, Humor, Science fiction, Superheroes, and War.  Each chapter starts with a two-page introduction covering some of the broader history of each genre and some of the highlighted works, followed by what Kannenberg calls a “top ten essential section.”  These top tens get longer reviews and plot summaries and feature a full-color picture of the book cover and usually a page or a couple of panels from the interior of the work.  Rounding out each section are works not quite good enough for the top ten, which also display cover art, but fewer examples of interior illustrations.  Each also has a star rating from one to five (not all 5-star books make it to the top ten, nor do all the top-ten books garner 5 stars– go figure) and an age rating (A for all, 12+, 15+ or 18+).  Each title also includes a short list of “See also” and “Further reading” titles.

In the back there are indexes with page listings for each writer, artist, and title.  Be careful with those page listings, however.  Don’t confuse them with the rank out of 500 numbers like I did.  There’s also a separate list of publishers showing which titles they produced.  They even have an index for the age ratings!  Too bad they didn’t think to include a separate index for the star ratings.

Whew!  That’s a lot of information.  True, the graphics cover up a lot of that page space.  But the book is printed on trade paperback size pages (about 7 inches tall by 5 inches wide) so it doesn’t take much text to fill out the book.  And the graphic novel page samples are really hard to read when they’re reduced down enough to fit.  So that tends to detract from the overall appeal of the book. As for the titles, well, it’s a pretty nice mix.

Most of the ones you’d expect to find are here: Maus, Contract with God, Watchmen, Barefoot Gen, Batman: the Dark Knight Returns, along with more esoteric fare like Fun Home, Safe Area Gorazde, Mom’s Cancer, The Complete Concrete, Amphigory and Justin Green’s Binky Brown Sampler.  And, literally, hundreds more. As might be expected, the collection does tend to focus pretty heavily on American publications.  Japan does have a few titles represented (their English adaptations, anyway).  And the same goes for the Europeans.  Maybe that’s a minor quibble.  And while the Superheroes don’t predominate, their section does have over sixty titles listed (not to mention the titles that overlap with Science Fiction) while War lists just 28.

But there’s plenty to peruse, even if you don’t bother reading each plot and summary.  I developed quite a list of titles I want to seek out, and more than a few fond memories of past enjoyable reads.  That’s part of the fun of these greatest hits/bibliography type lists.  Flipping through pages when something catches your eye and you remember reading that back when it first came out.  Suddenly you realize you’re just grinning from ear to ear.

Whether you’re already a fan or completely new to the genre, this will be a very useful resource.  And if you’re really lucky, you’ll be able to borrow a lot of these from your local library. 

How superheroic is that?

Entry Filed under: Graphic Novel, Nonfiction