Wednesday, May 20, 2009

I Hate the Term "Graphic Novel"

There are some stories written and drawn in comic form that are released as thicker-than-magazine-size, stand-alone books. They read just as fast as comic books, therefore they might as well be called "graphic novellas" or "graphic short stories" as much as "graphic novels." When half a year's, or a year's worth of issues from an ongoing comic book series are collected in trade paperback form, it has nothing to do with novels. At any rate, the most recent issue of Wizard Magazine featured a cover article on "The 100 Greatest Graphic Novels of Out Lifetime," and the list is comprised mostly of what should be called trade paperback collections. Forgiving that for now, I'm making a handy, alphabetical list of the ones I would like to read. For anyone interested, I already own 15 of their 100, and most of the others are "mature audience" titles that I've never been interested in.

1. Absolute DC: The New Frontier
2. Absolute Planetary
3. Astro City Volume 1
4. Black Hole
5. Books of Magic
6. Box Office Poison
7. Captain America Ed Brubaker Omnibus
8. Daredevil Brian Michael Bendis Omnibus
9. G.I. Joe: WWIII Omnibus
10. Inhumans
11. Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth
12. Joker
13. Kramers Ergot 7
14. Last of the Independents
15. Madman Gargantua
16. The Nightly News
17. Planet Hulk
18. Sleeper
19. Starman Omnibus
20. Superman For All Seasons
21. Superspy
22. Supreme: Story of the Year
23. Thor: Blood Oath
24. 300
25. X-Force: Famous, Mutant & Mortal

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