Jimmy Corrigan (1999)

Won: Guardian First Book Award, 2001; also an American Book Award. The first graphic novel to win a major British literary prize, and it beat prose debuts to do it. Chris Ware follows lonely, middle-aged Jimmy as he meets the father who abandoned him, with a parallel story of Jimmy's grandfather at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. The pages are dense, tiny and precisely designed, so this rewards a slow reader with good light rather than a commute. Expect melancholy more than plot; its power is in how much feeling Ware packs into small silent panels.