Long Graphic Novels to Read on a Long Flight

The one-volume edition (Cartoon Books, 2004) If you can pack only one book, this is the one. Jeff Smith's whole saga, serialized in 55 issues from 1991 to 2004, sits in a single paperback of about 1,300 pages, so it outlasts even an ultra-long-haul flight. Three cartoon cousins, Fone, Phoney and Smiley, get stranded in a strange valley, and what starts as slapstick turns steadily darker as a war with the Rat Creatures closes in. The clean black-and-white line reads beautifully on a tablet, and the paperback is heavy enough that the digital version is worth considering. This edition won the 2005 Eisner Award for best reprint graphic album.

Saga: Compendium One (Image Comics, 2019) The space opera that reads like a binge-watch. This brick collects the first 54 issues, more than 1,300 pages, of Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples's story of Alana and Marko, lovers from opposite sides of an interplanetary war, and their daughter Hazel. Issue after issue ends on a hook, which is exactly what you want at hour seven. Staples's bright, uncluttered colors look great on a tablet. One firm warning: it has explicit sex and graphic violence, so pick your seat accordingly. The series carries on past these issues, so expect to want more when you land.

Volumes 1 and 2 of the Perfect Edition (VIZ Media) Naoki Urasawa's thriller follows a Japanese surgeon in Germany whose life unravels after he crosses paths again with Johan Liebert, a former patient. VIZ's Perfect Edition pairs the original books two at a time across nine fat volumes, and the first runs past 400 pages. Two volumes in your bag is the right dose for one flight: the chase builds so steadily that you will reach for the second before the first meal is cleared. Urasawa's precise, cinematic pages read cleanly on a tablet. It won the Grand Prize of the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize in 1999. Manga reads right to left, so give it a few pages to settle.

Books one and two, both now out (Fantagraphics, 2017 and 2024) Emil Ferris presents this as the diary of Karen Reyes, a girl in 1960s Chicago investigating the death of her upstairs neighbor. It is drawn mostly in ballpoint pen on pages made to look like a lined spiral notebook, and the density rewards slow reading, which suits a long flight. Book two arrived in 2024, so you can now take the whole story in one trip. The first book won two Eisner Awards in 2018, including best new graphic album. The fine pen work loses something on a phone; a printed copy or a large tablet does it justice.

The collected edition (Drawn & Quarterly, 2011) A 658-page fable that took Anders Nilsen ten years to complete. A group of small birds comes upon a downed plane, takes its unexploded bomb for a giant egg and starts arguing about what it all means, while the stranded pilot becomes their obsession. It sounds slight and turns out to be one of the most thoughtful books here, funny and unsettling about faith and death. The spare drawings leave plenty of white space, so it moves faster than the page count suggests and reads well on a tablet.

Craig Thompson spent nearly six years on this 672-page black-and-white epic about Dodola and Zam, two escaped child slaves whose bond is tested across years in an invented Islamic landscape. Its pages are threaded with Arabic calligraphy and retold Bible and Quran stories, and the ornament is so dense that one spread can hold you for minutes, which is the point on a long flight. Go in knowing the arguments: critics have faulted its Orientalist imagery and its scenes of sexual cruelty. The intricate linework is best in print or on a large tablet.

Craig Thompson's memoir of growing up in an evangelical Christian family in Wisconsin and falling for Raina, a girl from a similar background he meets at a winter camp. At nearly 600 pages it gives a first love the room most novels would, and its snowy, flowing art makes the hours drift. It won the Eisner and Harvey awards for best graphic album in 2004. It is quieter than the thrillers here, so it suits the stretch of a night flight when the cabin lights go down. If you also pack Habibi, read this one first; it is the gentler of the two.

The collected edition (first published in 1999) Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's 572-page speculation on the identity and motives of Jack the Ripper, serialized from 1989 to 1998, and the slowest burn on this list in the best way. Campbell's scratchy ink makes Victorian London feel grimy and close, and Moore builds his theory of the murders with the patience of a historian. This is a book for the long middle of the flight, when you can give it full attention; skim it and the threads slip away. The violence is graphic. The scratchy art survives a tablet, though small text is easier in print.

The collected edition (DC Comics) Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's 12-issue series from 1986 and 1987 runs to 448 pages in DC's current paperback, and it rewards the kind of close reading a long flight allows. In an alternate 1985 where costumed heroes have changed history and Nixon is still president, the murder of the Comedian sends the vigilante Rorschach to warn his retired colleagues of a plot. Gibbons's strict nine-panel grid reads evenly on a tablet, and the prose pieces that close most chapters make natural breaks between meals. It won a Hugo Award in 1988 and made Time's list of the 100 best English-language novels since 1923. Expect graphic violence and an attempted rape.

Gilbert Hernandez's Palomar stories from the first volume of Love and Rockets, gathered in one hardcover of more than 500 pages. They follow a small town in an unnamed Central American country, with Luba, a businesswoman raising seven children, at the center of a huge cast. It reads like a family saga novel: you finish one story and the next is about someone you met in passing two hundred pages back. The bold black-and-white art is easy on a tablet. Expect frank sex and violence.

The Collected Essex County (Top Shelf, 2009) Jeff Lemire's three linked stories set in Essex County, Ontario, Tales from the Farm, Ghost Stories and The Country Nurse, collected in 512 pages along with two shorter extra stories. Lemire's rough, quiet pages set a slow, aching rhythm, and the connections between the three books build as you go, so reading them in one sitting pays off. It was a 2011 Canada Reads selection, and CBC Television premiered an adaptation in 2023. The sketchy ink works fine on a tablet.

Kate Beaton's 436-page memoir of the years she spent working in Alberta's oil sands, starting in 2005, to pay off her student loans. It is the most grounded book here: camp life, isolation and the way the men around her treated a young woman far from home, told with the same dry wit as her Hark! A Vagrant strips. It won Canada Reads in 2023 along with Eisner and Harvey awards. The simple, open drawings are about as tablet-friendly as comics get. It handles sexual assault, so it is a serious read despite the jokes.

Chris Ware's novel about a shy, isolated 36-year-old Chicago man who visits his estranged father in Michigan, with a parallel story about his grandfather in 1893 Chicago. At 380 pages it is shorter than most picks here, but it reads far longer: tiny, tightly packed panels make you slow right down. It won the Guardian First Book Award in 2001, the first time a graphic novel won a major UK book award, and the American Book Award the same year. Read it in print if you can; the small lettering is hard work on a tablet.

The collected hardcover (Pantheon, 2005) Charles Burns's twelve-issue series, which ran from 1995 to 2005, in one book. In the Seattle suburbs of the mid-1970s, teenagers catch a sexually transmitted infection that causes grotesque mutations and turns them into outcasts. It is the best horror pick for a red-eye: dreamlike, creepy and hard to put down once the pieces connect. Burns's heavy, glossy blacks look superb on a bright tablet screen. Expect sexual content and body horror throughout.