| |
|
I tend to be of the opinion that if you think either A) the best comics being publisher come out of Marvel or DC or B)The best comics feature superheroes, you really need to read more widely.
I don't really agree. If someone told me they think the best films ever made are Warners gangster movies, or that the best films feature cowboys, that wouldn't seem so absurd. It is all about personal favourites, after all. If they weren't aware that any other types of film existed, that's different, but declaring a personal preference isn't ignorant.
What strikes me about this list is, indeed, that I'm surprised I haven't read more of them, but also their dates of publication.
Some are reprints, but DKR and Watchmen seem to be the oldest title by far on there. The list runs 2000, 2003, 2004, 2002, 1986, 2000, 1989, 2000, 2003, 1986.
That's a strange bunching.
The definition of "graphic novel" is also open to question I think. Palomar is an "uber" graphic novel. I assume the stories were originally published monthly. DKR and Watchmen were monthly DC titles in the normal format, before they were collected. I believe Jimmy Corrigan appeared in installments, though I could be wrong.
Under that definition, you're calling something a graphic novel if it's a collection of episodes that originally appeared in a very different serial form and may not have been planned as a single volume. So it's a graphic novel because it's collected? That's not the same thing as a narrative that was always planned as a single-volume story, all in one go; the way we use "novel" to apply to any other kind of novel. I haven't read Palomar but I will have read many of the stories in it, and I don't believe they connect into one grand, overarching story as a conventional novel would. They share characters and settings and continuity, but they're no more a "novel" when you put them in a collection than a 90 minute soap opera omnibus is a "film".
So, debatable whether collections of collections, or even collections of single issues, should constitute a graphic novel.
However, if that is the definition, then surely you could include collections of Little Nemo, Krazy Kat, The Spirit? How about a bit of historical context, if these are the 10 greatest comic "novels" of ALL TIME? I'm just naming those three possibles off the top of my head, but surely the books they include on the list depend on decades of work by pioneers like Eisner who actually evolved the language through which comic book stories are told?
Finally, I think the comic book form is dominated by one genre, superheroes, and so superheroes do need to be recognised in any top ten. Whether you want to stereotype these comics as "spandex" or not, some of the greatest writers in the industry have worked within that genre, and presumably wouldn't have developed their voice and talents without it. If you rate From Hell, for instance, I think you have to give some credit to Moore's years on 2000AD and Swamp Thing, where he experimented and improved as an author. I don't mean those specific titles should be included on a top ten, but I do believe a list of great comic books that excluded superheroes would be a distortion of the medium's heritage. |
|
|
