Favorite Graphic Novel

Ongoing series: Daredevil The graphic series that reminds one of the classic crime and noir films, not to mention the urban nuance of such writers as Raymond Chandler and W.R. Burnett.

Spirit comic strips by Will Eisner almost make one want to throw the title “comic” out of the window, as it led to graphic fictions, works of design and dialogue that read like miniature filmstrips with visuals. In many ways, Eisner’s comic strips, graphics in the Spirit reproduce the styles, both in clothing and architecture, of the 30s and 40s, giving us an idea of what a culture immortalized in popular art, might have been if we lived in the world of nouveau art and architecture. The Spirit is so good that I always purchase it even when I have the stories in other editions.

Jack Kirby is a perfect example of the impact of the culture and lives of European and American Jews dramatizing through the graphics the spirit of Western culture as existed in myth and folklore. Note on Jack Kirby: my wife and I recall a young boy in Philadelphia, who was enamored of the stories and artwork of Jack Kirby. Talk about cross-cultural references, out of his life as an American Jew, like many artists and filmmakers, etc, he dramatized the American experience as no other Americans, black or white, have since that time. Captain America, the Boy Commandoes, the Kirby characters still live, and in many ways, dramatize through the comic book/graphic novel, the transformation from WWII and postwar America into the early 60s. Captain America was an American who wore a star on his chest with red/white stripes across his stomach, but who stood against the Vietnam war, racial equality. New Gods, was in many ways about the 60s culture that led us into the America we take for granted today.

Ed Brubaker (Daredevil)

Graphic Novelists

Ryan Azzarello

Neil Gaiman

Brian Wood

Alan Moore

Michael Stracznski

Jack Kirby

Will Eisner