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1
The Complete Little Nemo in Slumberland (1989)
Published
Winsor McCay's full-page weekly strip ran in the New York Herald from October 15, 1905, and each page is a single dream that ends with Nemo waking in or beside his bed. McCay drew Slumberland as architecture: colonnades that recede for what feels like miles, a bed that grows long legs and strides over the city, panels that stretch or shrink as the dream does. The Sunday color is still extravagant more than a century later.
Read it in a large collection, because a page shrunk to paperback size loses the detail. The stories are slight and some of the period caricature is hard to look at now; the reason to own it is the drawing.
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George Herriman's Krazy Kat: A Celebration of Sundays (2010)
Published
George Herriman's Sunday pages are where an American newspaper strip started to look like modern art. The plot barely changes: a mouse throws a brick at a lovestruck cat and a dog in a police helmet locks the mouse up. Everything around them changes constantly. The desert of Coconino County, drawn from Arizona's buttes and spires, shifts from panel to panel, so a hill becomes a tree or a moon while the characters keep talking. Herriman also broke the grid, with panels of every shape arranged however the joke needed.
This 14 by 17 inch Sunday Press book reprints the pages at their original size, which suits a strip built on landscape, though it is out of print and worth hunting secondhand. The dialect lettering takes a while to get used to.
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Prince Valiant (2009)
Published
Hal Foster's Arthurian saga premiered on February 13, 1937, and it reads like an illustrated history book that happens to move. There are no speech balloons: narration and dialogue sit in short captions near the panel edges, which leaves every image free for castles, longships, crowded battles and forests drawn with a draftsman's patience. Foster plotted, wrote and drew it himself for decades, and his anatomy and horses set a standard later adventure artists measured themselves against.
Fantagraphics' restored volumes, starting with 1937 to 1938, are the edition to look for. The prose is formal and the early pages take time to find their pace, so treat it as a book to dip into a Sunday at a time.
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The Incal (2011)
Published
Moebius drew Alejandro Jodorowsky's space opera for the French magazine Métal Hurlant through the 1980s, and his clean, confident line makes the strangest ideas look solid. The opening, a seedy detective plunging down the shaft of a vast, many-leveled city toward an acid lake, shows his gift for scale in a few panels. Later chapters fill pages with crystalline machines, cathedral-sized ships and crowds of alien faces.
Jodorowsky's mystical plotting gets wilder as it goes, and readers who want tight storytelling may lose patience. The pages earn their place regardless. This is Humanoids' 2011 hardcover, which restored the original coloring after an early-2000s edition recolored it, so check which version you buy.
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Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (2012)
Published
Hayao Miyazaki serialized this manga on and off from 1982 to 1994, and it goes far beyond his film of the same name. The pages are dense with fine pencil work: insect swarms that fill a spread, fungal forests drawn spore by spore, airships and armies seen from high above. The pages were printed in a sepia-toned ink rather than black, which gives the whole saga a soft, aged mood.
This deluxe two-volume hardcover box set is the format to choose, since its pages are larger than the older English paperbacks and give the detail room to breathe. The later volumes grow crowded with factions and politics, so some readers will slow down. The drawing never does.
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Akira, Vol. 1 (1984)
8.5/10on Open Library
Published
Start with Volume 1 of six.
Katsuhiro Otomo's Neo-Tokyo is one of the most completely drawn cities in comics. Every street has its signage, wiring, rubble and traffic, and when the city starts to come apart Otomo draws the destruction at the same level of detail, across whole spreads. The motorcycle chases in the first volume borrow speed lines and camera angles from film to make a static page feel fast.
Kodansha's paperbacks, like this one, are flipped to read left to right; its 2017 hardcover box set restores the original right-to-left order and Otomo's hand-drawn sound effects. The plot sprawls over more than two thousand pages, which is part of the experience: give it a few evenings rather than one sitting.
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Elektra: Assassin (1986)
Published
Bill Sienkiewicz painted this eight-issue Epic Comics series, written by Frank Miller, between 1986 and 1987, and it looks like nothing else Marvel was publishing. Sienkiewicz switches style from page to page: loose watercolor, collage, scratchy pen caricature, near-photographic portraits, sometimes all in one spread. The point is the fractured state of mind of the people on the page, and the art carries that more than the captions do.
It is violent, cynical and deliberately disorienting, and the Cold War satire has dated in places. Readers who like their comics to feel like an expressionist gallery wall should still find it thrilling. No prior knowledge of Daredevil is needed.
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Batman: Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth (1990)
Published
Dave McKean's art for Grant Morrison's 1989 Batman graphic novel mixes paint, photography, collage and found textures into a haunted-house book where nothing is quite solid. Batman is mostly a silhouette, the Joker barely holds a human shape, and the asylum's rooms dissolve into stains, symbols and scraps. It is a book to look at for its surfaces, the way you would study a mixed-media canvas.
The story leans heavily on symbolism and is easier to admire than to follow on a first read; some panels are dark enough that the action is hard to make out, by design. The anniversary editions that include Morrison's annotated script help with both.
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Berserk (2003)
Published
Berserk in Dark Horse's English edition; the cover shown is the original Japanese first volume.
Kentaro Miura's dark fantasy is the manga to read for crosshatching. As the series went on, his armor, cathedral stonework, demon hordes and stormy seas were built from layer after layer of fine pen lines, and the large spreads of the later volumes are some of the most labor-intensive drawing in comics. The early chapters are rougher, so the jump in craft is part of the fun.
Be warned that it is extremely violent and includes sexual violence. Since Miura's death in 2021, his former assistants at Studio Gaga have continued it under the supervision of his friend Kouji Mori. Dark Horse's deluxe hardcovers print three volumes at a time, larger.
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Hellboy: Seed of Destruction (1995)
Published
Hellboy, starting with Seed of Destruction, the first collection.
Mike Mignola builds pages out of solid black. Faces, ruins and tentacled things emerge from big flat shapes of shadow, with only a few lines picking out a stone gargoyle or a fist, and the restraint makes every panel read instantly. He also lingers on quiet details between fights, a carved idol or a candle or falling snow, which gives the books the mood of an old folk tale.
This first tale was scripted by John Byrne from Mignola's story, and the art and writing both get stronger once Mignola writes alone in the collections that follow. Each book is short, so it is easy to read on from here.
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Black Hole (2005)
Published
Charles Burns drew this story of 1970s Seattle-area teenagers who catch a disease that mutates them, and the art is as controlled as the subject is unsettling. Every line is a smooth, swelling brush stroke, with heavy black areas and no gray in between, so skin, hair and woods all share the same glossy, almost carved finish. Dream sequences repeat images like motifs in a painting.
It deals frankly with sex, drugs and body horror, and the pace is slow and dreamy rather than plot-driven. The single-volume hardcover collects the full twelve-issue run, which is the way to read it.
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Kingdom Come (1996)
Published
Alex Ross painted every page of this four-issue DC miniseries in gouache, from his own concept, with Mark Waid writing. Ross works from posed models, so the heroes have real weight and aging faces: a gray-templed Superman, a Wonder Woman in armor, crowds of costumed figures that look like a history painting of a superhero war. It is the closest mainstream comics have come to a Norman Rockwell canvas.
The story assumes some familiarity with the DC cast and its biblical framing is heavy-handed in places. For the art, look for an oversized edition, since the crowd scenes reward every extra inch.
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Vagabond VIZBIG Edition, Vol. 1 (2008)
9.2/10on Open Library
Published
Vagabond, starting with the first VIZBIG omnibus.
Takehiko Inoue's retelling of the swordsman Miyamoto Musashi's life turns from detailed pen work toward brush and ink as it goes, borrowing the loose, wet strokes of traditional Japanese painting. By the later volumes a duel can be a few slashes of black across white paper, and a landscape of rice fields can feel like a hanging scroll. Faces carry enormous emotion with very few lines.
The series ran from 1998 to 2015 across 37 volumes and has been on hiatus since, so it stops without an ending. The VIZBIG editions gather the volumes three at a time on larger pages, which suits the art, and the journey is worth taking even without a finish.
More about Vagabond VIZBIG Edition, Vol. 114
Jimmy Corrigan (1999)
6.9/10on Open Library
Published
Chris Ware's novel of a lonely Chicago office worker meeting his father for the first time is built like an architect's drawing. Ware uses flat colors, clean lines and diagrams, with tiny panels sometimes arranged like a flowchart or a cutaway model, and the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition sequences render a vanished city with real tenderness. It rewards the kind of slow looking you would give a printed poster or a page of type.
It is quiet and deeply sad, and the small, dense panels demand concentration; this is not a book to skim. For readers who want to see how far design can push comics as a form, it is essential.
More about Jimmy Corrigan15
Blacksad (2000)
Published
Juanjo Guarnido, a former Disney animator, paints this American noir in detailed watercolor, and every character is an animal chosen for type: a black cat private eye, a weary dog of a police commissioner, thugs who are all teeth and scales. The acting is the marvel. Guarnido's background in animation shows in the poses and expressions, and his rain-wet streets, smoky jazz clubs and sunlit roads are lit like film stills.
Juan Díaz Canales writes tight, self-contained crime stories, so this is one of the few books here where the plotting keeps pace with the art. The first English collection gathers the opening three albums, and it is a fine first purchase for anyone new to European comics.
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The Arrival (2006)
9.6/10on Open Library
Published
Shaun Tan's 2006 book about a man who emigrates to a strange new country has no words at all. Tan drew it in graphite pencil and colored it digitally to resemble old sepia photographs, so the pages look like a family album from a place that never existed: towering harbor statues, airships, unreadable alphabets and odd pets that the reader learns to decode alongside the newcomer.
It reads in an hour and lingers much longer. Because there is no text to get in the way, it suits readers who have never picked up a comic as well as anyone who wants pure drawing, and it makes a good book to share with older children too.
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Asterios polyp (2008)
8.5/10on Open Library
Published
More than two decades after Batman: Year One, David Mazzucchelli published this 2009 graphic novel about an arrogant architect whose apartment burns down, and it is a master class in how color and line can carry meaning. Asterios is drawn in cool blue geometry, the woman he loves in warm, soft-edged pink, and when they connect their styles visibly blend on the page. Each character even gets a different lettering style.
It won Eisner Awards in 2010, including best new graphic album. The story is clever and occasionally pleased with itself, but the design ideas are so clear that it doubles as a lesson in reading comics.
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Batwoman: Elegy The Deluxe Edition (2010)
Published
J.H. Williams III drew this Batwoman story when it ran in Detective Comics #854 to #860, with Greg Rucka writing and Dave Stewart coloring, and it is the superhero book to hand anyone who thinks the genre has no visual ambition. Williams changes his whole approach depending on who is on the page. Kate Kane's ordinary life gets bright, simply laid out panels, while Batwoman's scenes spill into sprawling, decorative layouts, often built around a bat motif, with the costume's vivid red glowing against the dark.
The villain is a bit thin, but the art also does the storytelling, giving scenes from Kate's past a flatter look of their own. The deluxe hardcover prints it large.
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Daytripper (2010)
Published
Twin brothers Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá drew this ten-issue Vertigo series about a Brazilian obituary writer, with each chapter showing a different day in his life, and their loose, warm ink line makes São Paulo and Salvador feel lived in: crowded bars, rain on the streets, sunlight through windows. Dave Stewart's colors give each chapter its own temperature, from humid gold to cold night blue.
It is sentimental by design and the premise repeats, which some readers find heavy-handed by the later chapters. For anyone who wants beautiful, human-scale drawing rather than spectacle, it is a gentle and moving pick that needs no knowledge of comics.
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Habibi (2011)
7.8/10on Open Library
Published
Craig Thompson spent years on this 2011 book, and almost every one of its more than 600 pages is framed by ornament: Arabic calligraphy, geometric tile patterns and borders that grow out of the story itself. His brush line, already fluid in Blankets, here turns into flowing desert landscapes, rivers and bodies drawn like decorative script. As an object it is one of the most beautiful graphic novels in print.
The writing is the weak point. Critics have objected to its fantasy Middle East built on Orientalist clichés and to its repeated sexual violence, and those are fair reasons to skip it. Readers who go in for the artwork should know both are part of the book.
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Monstress (2015)
Published
Sana Takeda paints Marjorie Liu's ongoing Image Comics fantasy in a blend of manga, Art Nouveau and Art Deco, and there is no current series that looks more lavish. Costumes are covered in filigree, the cities are all spires and gold leaf, and the monsters, including the one that bursts from the heroine's body in massive black tentacles, are as ornate as they are frightening. The first three collections won the Hugo Award for best graphic story three years running.
The world-building is dense and the early volumes throw names and factions at the reader quickly, so it helps to read a collection at a time rather than single issues. It is also bloody. For pure richness of surface, nothing else on the shelf right now comes close.
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My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, vol 1 (2017)
9.7/10on Open Library
Published
My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, starting with Book One; Book Two followed in 2024.
Emil Ferris drew this story of a girl in 1968 Chicago who imagines herself as a werewolf as if it were the girl's own journal, in ballpoint pen and colored pencil on lined notebook paper. Out of those humble tools come portraits crosshatched as densely as engravings, pulp horror magazine covers redrawn by hand, and copies of paintings from the Art Institute of Chicago, which the girl visits with her brother.
It is long, the plot wanders through family secrets and a neighbor's murder, and Book Two leaves some threads loose. The drawing alone makes it one of the most remarkable comics of the century so far.
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