Graphic Novels

Books, comics, graphic novels, boardgames and RPGs all need high quality artwork. Readers and gamers generally expect artwork to grab their attention and work alongside the rest of the content to make gaming and reading more enjoyable. Consequently, there's...

Comic Life has been around on Macs for a while but the Windows copy arrived later. We've been trying it out for several months and it's a lot of fun. Which is more than I can say for any other page layout or DTP software I've used. The idea is to let...

There are some excellent, 'hard-hitting' graphic novels available for older readers, e.g. Persopolis and Yossel. These titles can be very successful in terms of transcending politics and taking readers inside the personal understanding or experience of...

Just a quick mention for the Wolverine standalone Not Dead Yet. None of us would usually try or buy a Wolverine 'standalone' collection packaged as a graphic novel. But a Warren Ellis storyline is always worth a glance and Leinil Francis Yu's artwork...

Plenty of games owe a debt to comic books and graphic novels, which provide a regular source of new ideas and inspiration for game designers and artists. The time when comic books were just for kids is long past and many games have been influenced by,...

Charley's War by Pat Mills and Joe Colquhoun Charley's War had a dramatic effect on publishers produced battle comics in the UK between the 1950s and the 1980s. The comic's setting in World War 1 was an indication of what Mills and Colquhoun had in...

300 by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley The 300 is based more on the Hollywood movie of the same name than exact historical details of the battle at Thermopylae. Nevertheless, it presents a dramatic account of how Leonidas and his Spartans stood against...

Blankets by Craig Thompson Craig Thompson's semi-autobiographical story about first love and growing up in a deeply religious community demonstrates a full range of graphic and storytelling skills. The brushed images are 'to die for' and consistently...

Between us we get through several graphic novels a month. Some of them probably merit a post but don't make the cut. That's mainly because sticking to 'the best of the best' helps to showcase the entertainment (and skills) delivered by good graphic novels....

This short selection of graphic novels covers a couple of sets of books suitable for older kids and adults: Crogan's Revenge by Chris Schweizer The Crogan series features the adventures of the Crogan family through history. The first book is a pirate...

Joe Sacco has produced a series of graphic novels looking at conflicts and flashpoints around the world. Titles have included Palestine, Safe Area Gorazde: The War in Eastern Bosnia 1992-95 and The Fixer: A Story from Sarajevo; all of which have delivered...

X-Men: Messiah Complex The X-Men franchise has seen a few remixes and revisions in recent years. Perhaps the most significant of these was the House of M storyline, which saw Magneto's daughter, aka The Scarlet Witch, dispense with, or clear out, many...

Charley's War 7 The flashforward sequence appears in the long-running World War I comic series Charley's War. In keeping with the rest of this consistently excellent series the flashforward section is cleverly done - it'd be a bit of a spoiler to say...

Frank Miller's powerful graphic novel 300 isn't exactly a Greek literary 'classic', but it did set out how to go about translating the many dramas and tragedies of Ancient Greece into a compelling visual format. On the strength of reading 300 it seemed...

Back at the computer for slightly long at a time now, so the final steps in finishing Tainted are underway. The weekend looks very likely, but that was what was said before the last accident. While that's getting done here's a very quick addition to our...