Graphic Novel Picks for Fall 2009: Adult Fiction

Check out all our Fall 2009 picks
in these other categories:

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The Life and Times of Martha Washington in the Twenty-First Century
by Frank Miller and Dave Gibbons
Dark Horse
Our story begins in the squalid corridors of a maximum-security housing project, where a young girl will rise from the war-torn streets of Chicago to battle injustice in a world insane with corruption. She will be called a hero, a traitor, and nearly everything in between, but all along the way, her courage, her integrity, and her unwavering commitment to that most valuable of rights—liberty—will inspire a movement that will never surrender. Collecting meticulously remastered versions of every Martha Washington story, this book features a comprehensive behind-the-scenes section, a new introduction by Frank Miller and extensive commentary by Dave Gibbons.

Ooku: The Inner Chamber
Yoshinaga
VIZ Media
In Edo-period Japan, a strange new disease called the Red Pox has begun to prey on the country’s men. Within 80 years of the first outbreak, the male population has fallen by 75 percent. Women have taken on all the roles traditionally granted to men, even that of the Shogun. The men, precious providers of life, are carefully protected. And the most beautiful of the men are sent to serve in the Shogun’s Inner Chamber.

Tom Strong Deluxe Edition, Book One
by Alan Moore and Chris Sprouse
WildStorm
Comics legend Alan Moore introduces science hero Tom Strong in the first of three deluxe hardcover editions of the popular series illustrated by Chris Sprouse and many of comics’ greatest artists. Tom’s remarkable exploits over a nearly century-long career feature an amazing cast of characters, including his wife, Dhalua (the daughter of a mighty chieftain); their daughter, Tesla; the enhanced ape King Solomon, and Tom’s robotic valet, Pneuman. In this volume, collecting issues #1–12, Tom finds himself battling in different times, worlds, and realms, facing off against an eclectic group of enemies, like the ruthless Paul Saveen, the mechanized Aztechs, and the prehuman Pangaean—in places as diverse as New York, Venus, an alternate Earth, and even the past.

Ball Peen Hammer

by Adam Rapp and George O’Connor
First Second
The world is dying. After most of the city succumbed to the plague, Welton’s staying inside—permanently. But hiding in his claustrophobic basement room—the only place he knows is safe—exacts a gruesome price, and he becomes part of a collective that’s killing children. Infected with the plague himself, with no way to find the woman he loves, Welton takes refuge in apathy—until someone knocks on his door. Ball Peen Hammer gives us a window into life in a half-deserted apartment building in a time of raw love, sacrifice, fear, and death.

WRITER ADAM RAPP IS INTERVIEWED HERE.

ARTIST GEORGE O'CONNOR IS INTERVIEWED HERE.

Lovecraft Unbound

by various
Dark Horse
The stories are legendary, the characters unforgettable, the world horrible and disturbing. Howard Phillips Lovecraft may have been a writer for only a short time, but the creations he left behind after his death in 1937 have shaped modern horror more than any other author’s in the last two centuries: the shambling god Cthulhu, and the other deities of the Elder Things, the Outer Gods, and the Great Old Ones, and Herbert West, Reanimator, a doctor who unlocked the secrets of life and death at a terrible cost. In Lovecraft Unbound, more than 20 of today’s most prominent writers of literature and dark fantasy tell stories set in or inspired by the works of H. P. Lovecraft.

Bloom County: The Complete Library, Vol. 1
by Berkeley Breathed
IDW
Berkley Breathed’s Bloom County was one of the most popular and critically acclaimed newspaper strips of all time. Bloom County ran from December 8th, 1980, to August 6th, 1989, and was published in an astounding 1,200 newspapers on a daily basis. The huge popularity of Bloom County spawned a merchandizing bonanza, as well as two spin-off strips, Outland and Opus. Bloom County: The Complete Library, Vol. 1 marks the first time the entire run of the immensely popular Bloom County strip has been collected in beautifully designed hardcover books with exceptional reproduction.

Exurbia
by Scott Allie and Kevin McGovern
Dark Horse
Gage Wallace’s day seemingly couldn’t get any worse. After breaking up with his girlfriend, he finds himself framed for blowing up his apartment building—the latest in a string of deadly bombings in this doomed suburb. After the neighboring Fat City fell into the river during an earthquake, these hapless exurbanites have been waiting for their own town to sink. The only glimmer of hope is a talking rat, whose drunken ramblings are taken as the prophecy of a better time ahead. Now Gage finds himself being pursued by well-intentioned friends, bored cops, and the bloodthirsty Bald Suzie, a local firearms enthusiast whose brother was killed in a recent explosion.

High Moon, Vol. 1
by Dave Gallaher and Steve Ellis
Zuda
The horror adventure from Zudacomics.com arrives as a bound graphic novel to deliver werewolves (and a whole lot more) in the Old West. Bounty-hunter Matthew Macgregor investigates a series of strange happenings in the dusty Texas town of Blest, where drought has brought famine and hardship to most of the town and surrounding ranches. Unfortunately, that’s the least of the town’s worries! While the summer heat pushes the mercury toward further unbearable degrees during the day, the nights are haunted by strange, unnatural creatures roaming the darkness. Macgregor, a former Pinkerton agent, seeks to uncover the town’s dark secrets and tries desperately to keep his own past (steeped in witchcraft and the supernatural) hidden.

The Book of Genesis
illustrated by R. Crumb
W.W. Norton
From the Creation to the death of Joseph, here is the Book of Genesis, revealingly illustrated as never before. This eagerly awaited graphic work retells the first book of the Bible in a profoundly honest way. Peeling away the theological and scholarly interpretations that have often obscured its most dramatic stories, R. Crumb—using the actual text word for word—has imagined the Bible as it really was. Now, readers of every persuasion—Crumb fans, comic book lovers, history buffs, and believers—can gain astonishing new insights from these harrowing, visceral, and even juicy stories. Crumb’s The Book of Genesis reintroduces readers to Adam and Eve’s Eden, Noah’s Ark, Sodom and Gomorrah, and the Pharaoh’s Egypt. Using clues from the text, Crumb fleshes out the parade of biblical originals: from the sensitive dreamer Joseph to the crafty Jacob, to the still-fetching Sarah, to God Himself. The result, four years in the making, is a tapestry of extraordinary detail, the finest work of Crumb’s legendary career.

Squirrel Machine
by Hans Rickheit
Fantagraphics
An anachronistic parable for the convulsive elite. What is the squirrel machine? Is it a rodent ensnarement device? A mechanism for concealing one’s guarded harvest? An anachronistic fable? A meaningless diversion? Set in a fictional 19th-century New England town, the narrative initially details the relationship and maturation of Edmund and William Torpor. But the two brothers quickly elicit the scorn and recrimination of an unamused public when they reveal their musical creations built from strange technologies and scavenged animal carcasses. Driven to seek a concealment for their aberrant activities, they make a startling discovery. Perhaps they will divine the mystery of the squirrel machine.

West Coast Blues
by Jean-Patrick Manchette
Fantagraphics
A savage noir thriller reuniting a master crime novelist and a superlative French cartoonist—the beginning of an ambitious publishing project introducing one of Europe’s most beloved cartoonists to American audiences.George Gerfaut, aimlessyoung executive and desultory family man, witnesses a murder and finds himself sucked into a spiral of violence involving an exiled war criminal and two hired assassins. Adapting to the exigencies of his new life on the run with shocking ease, Gerfaut abandons his comfortable middle-class life for several months (including a sojourn in the countryside after an attempt to ride the rails turns spectacularly bad) until, joined with a new ally, he finally returns to settle all accounts…with brutal, bloody interest.

One Model Nation
by C. Allbritton Taylor and Jim Rugg
Image Comics
In 1977, four young men were the voice of their generation. In 1978, they disappeared. Afrodisiac and Street Angel illustrator Jim Rugg brings you a complete view of the political art noise band One Model Nation. Writer C. Allbritton Taylor and OMN historian Donovan Leitch piece together the band’s epic journey, revealing the final dark days of the Baader-Meinoff Gang and the band’s mysterious disappearance only months later. With Scorsese-esque electricity, One Model Nation captures the arts and politics of an era whose influence cannot be measured.

Grandville
by Bryan Talbot
Dark Horse
Two hundred years ago, Britain lost the Napoleonic War and fell under the thumb of French domination. Gaining independence after decades of civil disobedience and anarchist bombings, the Socialist Republic of Britain is now a small, unimportant backwater connected by a railway bridge, steam-powered dirigible, and mutual suspicion to France. When a British diplomat’s murder is made to look like suicide, ferocious Detective-Inspector LeBrock of Scotland Yard stalks a ruthless murder squad through the heart of a Belle Epoque Paris, the center of the greatest empire in a world of steam-driven hansom cabs, automatons, and flying machines. LeBrock's relentless quest can lead only to death, truth…or war.

Locke and Key: Head Games
by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez
IDW
New York Times bestselling writer Joe Hill and artist Gabriel Rodriguez, the creators behind the acclaimed Locke & Key: Welcome to Lovecraft, return with the next chapter in the ongoing tale, Head Games. Following a shocking death that dredges up memories of their father’s murder, Kinsey and Tyler Locke are thrown into choppy emotional waters and turn to their new friend, Zack Wells, for support, little suspecting Zack’s dark secret. Meanwhile, six-year-old Bode Locke tries to puzzle out the secret of the head key, and Uncle Duncan is jarred into the past by a disturbingly familiar face. Open your mind—the head games are just getting started!

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Vol. 1
by Philip K. Dick and Tony Parker
Boom! Studios
The book that inspired the film Blade Runner comes to comics! Worldwide bestselling sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick’s award-winning Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? has been called “a masterpiece ahead of its time, even today” and served as the basis for the film Blade Runner. San Francisco lies under a cloud of radioactive dust. The World War has killed millions, driving entire species to extinction and sending mankind off-planet. Those who remained coveted any living creature, and for people who couldn’t afford one, companies built incredibly realistic fakes: horses, birds, cats, sheep…even humans. Rick Deckard is an officially sanctioned bounty hunter tasked to find six rogue androids—they’re machines, but look, sound, and think like humans—clever and dangerous humans.

Bob Dylan Revisited
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Rendered in striking, explosive graphic form, many of Bob Dylan’s most famous songs—illustrated as they’ve never been before. Mesmerized by the power of Bob Dylan’s lyrics and intrigued by the possibilities of translating his powerful, enigmatic personality into art, 13 leading graphic artists banded together to create this unusual testament to the universality and transcendent vision of an American musical genius. With their vibrant, unexpected colors and dynamic, cinematic imagery, this group has assembled in Bob Dylan Revisited one of the most provocative interpretations of Dylan’s music in decades. Whether illustrating “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Like a Rolling Stone,” “Hurricane,” or “Lay, Lady, Lay,” these artists capture the tender emotions, the ineffable sadness, and the romantic overtones of Dylan’s classic songs, at the same time reflecting the moral and political urgency of his music. Each artist’s style surprisingly complements Dylan’s lyrics and offers an irresistible window through which to reconsider one of America’s most enigmatic artists. A deeply respectful and brilliant homage to the extraordinary influence of Bob Dylan.

Joe & Azat
by Jesse Lonergan
NBM/ComicsLit
Joe is an American in the strange land of Turkmenistan who finds a good friend in Azat, a Turkmen dreamer whose optimism knows no bounds. With tales of doomed desert cab rides, nights of endless vodka shots, unlikely Turkmen business schemes, and secret girlfriends, Lonergan captures not only the bizarreness of living in a country where the president for life launches copies of his poetry books into space, outlaws gold teeth, and renames the months and days, but also reveals that there is hope in seemingly hopeless situations. Based loosely on Lonergan’s Peace Corps experience in the former Soviet republic.

Pim and Francie: The Golden Bear Days

by Al Columbia
Fantagraphics
A lavishly produced portal into the fantastic and frightful world of Pim & Francie. This gorgeous grimoire is part alchemy, part art book, part storybook, part comic book, and part conceptual art from the pen of Al Columbia, a longtime fan favorite contributor to comics anthologies like Zero Zero, Blab!, and, more recently, MOME. Collecting over a decade’s worth of “artifacts,” excavations, comic strips, animation stills, storybook covers, and much more, this broken jigsaw puzzle of a book tells the story of Pim and Francie, a pair of childlike, male and female imps whose irresponsible antics get them into horrific, fantastic trouble. Their loosely defined relationship only contributes to the existential fear that lingers underneath the various perils they are subjected to. Columbia’s brilliant, fairytale-like backdrops hint at further layers of reality lurking under every gingerbread house or behind every sunny afternoon. Never have such colorful, imaginative vistas instilled such an atmosphere of dread, and with such a wicked sense of humor.

The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century A.D.
by Dash Shaw
Fantagraphics
The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century A.D. is Shaw’s first book since his breakthrough graphic novel of 2008, Bottomless Belly Button. The book collects Shaw’s acclaimed, genre-bending short stories from MOME, including “Look Forward, First Son of Terra Two,” a remarkable story of two lovers traveling in opposite directions…in time. Also featured: “Galactic Funnels,” the 2008 Ignatz Award nominee for “Outstanding Story,” about the parasitic relationship between an artist and his lover/mentor; “Satellite CMYK,” a sci-fi mindwarp that ingeniously drives the narrative through Shaw’s masterful control of color, and “Making the Abyss,” a fictionalized story of a surreal film set filled with nuclear tanks, hot tubs, and blind ambition.

Absolute Promethea, Vol. 1
by Alan Moore and J.H. Williams
Wildstorm
From Alan Moore, bestselling author of Watchmen and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, comes a mind-blowing journey through the worlds of magic. Student Sophie Bangs is researching a character called Promethea, who inexplicably reappears in fiction across the centuries, when she is whisked into a world beyond imagination to become the immortal goddess of story—Promethea! But with magicians and demons on her trail, not to mention her cynical best friend to protect, will Sophie’s tenure as Promethea be the shortest yet?

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-- John Hogan