Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities Recommendations for a Graphic Novel Discussion Group

I've recently joined a local group that meets monthly to discuss a graphic novel. It's a pretty sharp group that includes some college professors, a comics artist, and the owner of our local indy bookstore. We spend a lively couple of hours talking about each book.

In the past few months we've read and talked about:
Blankets by Craig Thompson
Batman: The Black Mirror
Daredevil: Born Again
Beautiful Darkness by Fabien Vehlmann & Kerascoet
Daytripper by Fabio Moon & Gabriel Ba

Tomorrow we're discussing Marvel's Civil War.

As you can see, we're open to a variety of material.

If you had (or have) access to such a group, what books would you recommend for discussion?

From Hell
Mr. Punch
WE3
Enigma
Human Target
Maus

I second From Hell.

Others
V for Vendetta
Revolver
The Parker OGNs by Darwyn Cooke
Superspy

Hm...trying to think off the top of my head. I'll have more.

The only caveat for From Hell is that it's quite large compared to your other selections, but if it's a monthly group you should be OK.

Darwyn Cooke's New Frontier

Enemy Ace: War Idyll
Great Darkness Saga
Mind Mgmt: Vol 1
Saga of the Swamp Thing Vol 1.
Black Orchid
All-Star Superman
Walking Dead Vol 1.

I was going to go with Black Orchid too.

We3 would be a tough one. I'm not sure I'd want anyone to see me sniffle my way through talking about it.

New Gods V1

Astro City: Life in the Big City


I imagine both would have a lot of "this begat that" discussion topics as well as how they themselves came about.

The Greatest of Marley's to get off the beaten path a bit.

Pretty much anything Eisner.

Yeah.

Superior was also good. A bit short. (Amazon says 200 pages but probably a lot less of content).

Flex Mentallo

Thanks for the suggestions, friends. I'm going to compile a list with brief annotations for the group's reference.

Keep 'em coming!

The Tale of One Bad Rat
Hellboy: Seed of Destruction

Series I really like that must have TPBs...
Strangers in Paradise
Mister X
Stray Bullets
Luther Arkwright and Heart of Empire were 9 issue apiece I think, but I couldn't not add them to ze list.

"Watchmen" of course
Frank Miller's "Ronin"
"X-Men: God Loves, Men Kill"
"Alien Legion: A Grey Day to Die"

Thanks for all the recommendations, Legionnaires. I've compiled the list to take to my discussion group this week. Here it is in a one-stop-shopping format.

1. Alien Legion: A Grey Day to Die (Drake)
2. All-Star Superman (Hackett)
3. Astro City, Volume 1: Life in the Big City (Blockade, LT)
4. Black Orchid (Hackett, thoth)
5. Enemy Ace: War Idyll (Hackett)
6. Enigma (Hackett)
7. Flex Mentallo (Fanfic)
8. From Hell (Hackett, Cobie, Fanfic)
9. Great Darkness Saga (Hackett)
10. Hellboy: Seed of Destruction (thoth)
11. Human Target (Hackett)
12. Maus (Hackett)
13. Mind Mgmt: Vol 1 (Hackett)
14. Mr. Punch (Hackett)
15. New Frontier by Darwyn Cooke (Nostalgia, Peebz)
16. New Gods V1 (Blockade)
17. Parker OGNs by Darwyn Cooke (Cobie)
18. Revolver (Cobie)
19. Ronin (Drake)
20. Saga of the Swamp Thing Vol 1. (Hackett)
21. Superior by Millar/Yu (Peebz)
22. Superspy (Cobie)
23. The Tale of One Bad Rat (thoth)
24. V for Vendetta (Cobie)
25. Walking Dead Vol 1. (Hackett)
26. Watchmen (Drake)
27. WE3 (Hackett)
28. X-Men: God Loves, Men Kill (Drake)


Any other titles you think deserve to be on this list?
Do you want to add your name to any of these?

Looks like as good a suggested reading list as any. When I finish these Watchmen prequels, I think I see which of those I can find at the library. The only ones I personally own are 9, 15, and 26.

If the group agrees to discuss Flex Mentallo, please tell us some of the highlights of the discussion, LT.

And please add my name to From Hell. As I'm sure you saw in the Big-Ass Pile o' Trades thread, I read it just recently and loved it.

Thanks, Fanfie. I edited the list to add your name.

Flex Mentallo is one of my top choices to recommend to the group. If we do it I'll let you know how it goes.

Since I've not read any of the five that were in the OP, do you have any comments on those Tracker?

Sorry, thothy, that it's taken me a while to respond to your question. So here goes...

Blankets by Craig Thompson was the book for my first session with the group. It's a sweet (in the best sense), honest, autobiographical story of the author/artist's uncomfortable coming-of-age in an evangelical Christian family. His struggles with faith and his artistic sensibilities are just a couple of the dissonances he has with his parents. He finds a girlfriend who has her own struggles with family and faith, and their journey through love and life's struggles is well-told. The art is strong and beautiful.

Batman: The Black Mirror was a good read, but not the strongest of our list. Here, Batman is Dick Grayson because Bruce Wayne has disappeared, and Dick comes to see that his motivations for heroing are not the same as Bruce's. There's a powerful thread about Commissioner Gordon and his family. Our group that night lacked a real Batman fan, so we probably didn't go as deep as we might have.

However, we did have super-fans for Daredevil: Born Again. Unfortunately I had to miss the discussion due to another commitment. I had not read a Daredevil collection before (just monthlies way back in the day and a few recently). I thought the collected story was pretty powerful.

Beautiful Darkness by Fabien Vehlmann & Kerascoet was the oddest book we've read to date. It's translated from its French origin, and a francophile in our group confirms that it shows its French attitude. It's a creepy/pretty story of a bunch of tiny child-like fantasy characters who arrive in the world from a young girl's dead body which lies undiscovereed in the woods. I wouldn't say I "liked" the book, but it was the most thought-provoking one we've read so far.

Daytripper by Fabio Moon & Gabriel Ba is a series of stand-alone stories about an obituary writer, the son of a famous novelist. In each story he dies--at a different age, by different causes, with different relationships explored. We had various conjectures about how these stories relate to one another. The writer and artist are Brazilian brothers, and we enjoyed the tone of magic realism that threads through the book.

All were well worth the read.

Thank you very much for that Tracker. I may give Bats and Daredevil a miss, but the others sound very interesting indeed.