10 Non-Fiction Comics Worth Your Time

I've spent a lot of time on this blog so far talking about mainstream superheroes.  And superheroes and the mainstream comics world is worth paying attention too--at least in my judgement.  But it's far from all that's out there.  In the interests of giving a wider picture, then, here are 10 non-fiction comics I think are especially worth your time.  Apologies for the comics that pop up here and on other lists I've made.  What can I say? I just want to recommend what I've loved reading.  Also, don't place too much importance on the order these books are presented in.  Another day I might order them differently.

Honourable mentions: Not actually non-fiction

Blankets - Craig Thompson

Craig Thompson's Blankets is classified as a novel, but it is clearly at least semi-autobiographical.  In this book Thompson displays great talent weaving together themes, symbols, and images.  He is an excellent writer.  But it is as an artist that he is simply outstanding, and this book is worth buying just so you can take your time looking at it.


 Hark! A Vagrant - Kate Beaton

Kate Beaton's webcomic Hark! A Vagrant is one of the best webcomics ever made.  In this book she collects her historical and literary comics, and adds some commentary.  Some, like the "Sexy Batman" series are clearly and straightforwardly fiction.  Others, however, represent historical figures in a parodic context that I have to conclude counts as non-fiction.  Virtually anyone will end this well-researched book more informed than they began it.

Okay here are the really-non-fiction books

 10. Book of Genesis - Illustrated by R. Crumb

Robert Crumb is the founder and central figure of "underground comics".  He's a satirist and a critic, a wit and an innovator.  Crumb has said that he originally intended this book to be a satirical send-up of the book of Genesis, but he was swept away by the language of the Bible, and in the end he presents the text of Genesis unaltered.  His illustrations are neither satirical nor psychedelic.  This is simply an illustrated graphic-novel version of the book of Genesis, with all the beauty and all the humour and all the horror of the Bible maintained. 

9. You Can Never Find a Rickshaw When It Monsoons - Mo Willems

I've written about this book before.  It's a cartoon-a-day travel journal by a young Mo Willems, written before he began a career as a writer for sesame street and then as a popular and successful children's book author.  This book is a great read, and provides the reader with a glimpse of life around the globe, as it was in the early 90s.

8. The Plot - Will Eisner

Will Eisner was a major innovator in the comics world.  His Contract With God is usually credited as the first graphic novel, and was certainly the first book to be marketed as such.  In The Plot, Eisner recounts the history of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.  Part history, part polemic, The Plot is a powerful piece of anti-anti-semite writing.

7. Logicomix - Apostolos Doxiadis

Logicomix is essentially a biography of Bertrand Russell.  As it tells his life story, however, it also explains Russell's life's work, and the importance of logic to Russell and to 20th century mathematics and philosophy.  Well worth reading.


6. Palestine - Joe Sacco


I could probably replace this with any of Joe Sacco's books.  Palestine is a fantastic piece of comics-journalism--and is the first book that could claim that title at all.  In it, Sacco tours Palestine, talking to the people he meets about their day-to-day lives and about the conflict with Israel.  Though Sacco generally presents these conversations without much comment, his sympathy is clearly with the Palestinians and it's difficult to read this book without sharing that sympathy.

5. American Splendor: From off the Streets Of Cleveland - Harvey Pekar

American Splendor is a series, not a single comic.  There are any number of non-fiction books by Harvey Pekar that are worth your time.  In addition to this book, I'd especially recommend Our Cancer Year, which is a single-narrative comic about a year relating the story of the year Pekar discovered he had testicular cancer, or American Splendor: The Life and Times of Harvey Pekar, Pekar's first anthology (which I couldn't find on amazon).  Pekar's writing is often typified as "slice of life", and if you don't understand what that means, check out these two pages for a taste of American Splendor.

4. Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography - Chester Brown

Chester Brown has gotten a fair bit of press lately for his memoir Paying for It, in which he recounts his experiences as a John.  I haven't read that, so I can't say whether it's worth your time.  Louis Riel, however, definitely is.  Riel is one of the most colourful characters of Canadian history, and Brown writes an energetic and gripping account of Riel's conflicts with the Canadian government.  Both his writing and his art are deceptively simple, which increases a kind of unconscious sense that he is presenting you with the simple facts.  One of the simple but great things about this book is the endnotes, in which Brown comments on panels which may give a false impression of the history, and corrects that false impression; things like "McDougall arrived in Pembina by ox-cart, not stage-coach. I'm not sure why I drew stage-coaches -- there is a note in my script specifying ox-cart" (246).

3. Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi

Marjane Satrapi's memoir Persepolis and its sequel Persepolis 2 are gripping accounts of life in Iran before, during, and after Islamic Revolution.  One of the things that makes this book so engaging is how unfamiliar the story is to most Westerners.  This, in addition to the compelling specificity of Satrapi's life, the details of a person that we seem to really get to know, make for a great read.  Unlike Maus, which is written by Art Spiegelman about his father and therefore has the benefit of hindsight, Persepolis ends with very little resolution, which is both a weakness and a strength--the lack of a narrativized ending only makes the narrative seem more real.

2. Understanding Comics - Scott McCloud

I've written about Understanding Comics before. It is one of the most popular non-fiction comics ever written, and certainly the most popular non-narrative comic ever written, and deservedly so.  In Understanding Comics, McCloud dissects the medium of comics in both historical and especially in theoretical terms, and attempts to explain how comics work.  He does so in an entertaining and engaging way that is well worth reading by anyone who enjoys the medium of comics.

1. Maus - Art Spiegelman

Before he wrote Maus, Art Spiegelman was known by comics fans for his experimental--sometimes radically so--art.   In comparison with some of his other work, Maus is deceptively simple and straightforward.  It is the story of Spiegelman's father, Vladek, a Polish Jew, during and after WWII.  Spiegelman couches the story as an animal fable, drawing the Jews as mice, the Germans as cats, the Americans as dogs, etc.  The only comic book ever to have won a Pulitzer Prize, this is both an outstanding comic book and an outstanding holocaust narrative.


And there you have it.  This list isn't to say that there aren't plenty of other non-fiction comics which are also worth your time of course.  Feel free to suggest more in the comments!

Man and Superman

Formalism and structuralism both focus on the work of art as an object independent from the people or the world that created them.  But plenty of kinds of criticism does care about things outside the work of art as an artifact.  The biography of the authors, the historical moment out of which the work arose, the influences upon the work and its influences on other works, all of these focus outside the work itself.

Superman arose out of a specific historical moment.

As you may know, Superman was created by artist Joe Shuster and writer Jerry Siegel.  In 1938, when the first Superman comic was published in Action Comics #1, Siegel and Shuster were both 24 years old, and they'd been working together on Superman for at least five years.  Their first published Superman work was their short story "The Reign of the Superman", published in a 1933 fanzine.  That original story featured a bald "Superman" bent on world domination: recognizable now as an early version of the Ultra-Humanite, who was himself an early version of Lex Luthor.

The origin of the name "Superman" is up for debate, but in the 1930s there was another historical movement using the same term.  Adolph Hitler (who became chancellor of Germany in 1933) was strongly influenced by his reading of Nietzsche and by the idea of the Ubermensch, which in English translations of the day was given as "Superman".  Hitler considered himself to be the Superman, who by strength of will could, and SHOULD, overcome lesser men and exert his power.  Hitler, of course, applied Nietzsche's ideas along racial lines, and considered the Arians to be a race of Supermen, who would use their will to dominate lesser races.

Siegel and Shuster, Harry Donenfeld, Jack S. Liebowitz, Sheldon Mayer, (not to mention Bob Kane, Will Eisner, Jack Kirby, Stan Lee) were all Jewish.  Though Siegel has said that he never read Nietzsche and he wasn't thinking of Hitler, in 1938 a Jewish-American community created and published a story about a dark-haired alien* Superman who used his power not to dominate but to protect the weak, and who exerted his power on behalf of so-called "lesser men".  Superman's first acts in the comics include saving a woman wrongly accused of murder, stopping a man from beating his wife.  Whether his creators intended him to be such or not, then, Superman is a direct refutation of the Nazi idea of the Ubermensch.

*We should understand "alien" not only as a science-fiction designation, but as a racial one. Superman is defined as an outsider.  He's not an Arian, but he's not Jewish either, exactly. He's a stranger in a strange land--though that is itself a designation that has often historically been adopted by or thrust upon Jewish people.

Hello?

Is there anybody out there? Just nod if you can hear me.

I really disappeared, didn't I?  But I'm back and I'm going to try again.

Stay tuned.

Oops

So those last 2 posts were accidentally published a little sooner than I really intended them to be.  I know I could always just delete and republish them, but that seems kinda silly. It does mean that there's going to be a short lull here for a week or two, though while I'm away from this blog for a while writing papers for classes.  Instead of spacing out my pre-written posts to fill that lull, I've prematurely shot my load and ended up with something of a mess on my hands.

When I get back, I'm going back to approaches to Superman, then we'll move on to other superheroes, including a bit of a historical picture of how Marvel came to be the second comic book company, and why the rivalry between the two companies is disingenuous.

I've also got reviews of a few great comics lined up, and a few other lists to sprinkle in there.

In the mean time, take a look through the archives, and ask questions, correct me, disagree with me, or tell me how great I am in the comments.

It's the Bat-Man!

In a previous post I argued that all superheroes are variations on the theme established by Superman.  I made this point, in passing, to a professor friend who despite being a very intelligent woman answered me by asking: "Even Batman?"

Perhaps no superhero is as straightforwardly defined by Superman as Batman is.

Batman is dark because Superman is light.  Batman has no powers because Superman does.  They each reside in the same city: since Metropolis and Gotham are both transparent analogues for New York City.  Symbolically,  Superman is a transcendent figure of divine intervention and Batman is a figure of the moral imperative to work out that salvation ourselves.

Batman was created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger and debuted in Detective Comics, in May 1939.  Superman's appearance in Action Comics #1 was just under one year earlier, in June of 1938.  Both Detective Comics and Action Comics were published by a publication company called National Allied Publications, which would eventually change its name in honour of the comic starring Batman: DC Comics would become one of what people in the comics industry call "The Big Two" (the other being Marvel).  Because Batman is rather conspicuously an anti-Superman, as well as a Superman clone, he represents the capability of replication in the genre of superheroes.  The success of Batman showed that superheroes were repeatable.  In this sense, Batman, just as much as Superman, is the reason why people kept making superhero comics.

Ten Comics for People who Love Comics

Okay, if you love comics, chances are you are already familiar with most of these.  Still, I wanted a counterpoint to my previous post about comics for people who don't like comics, and here it is.  I haven't repeated anything from the other list, though obviously some of those could work well here too.

Some of these are self-referential or rife with in-jokes, some are just plain great reading. This is a list, in no specific order, of my choices for the best comics for people who already love comics.

10. Marvels by Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross


Kurt Busiek is a favourite of mine, a writer who manages to be both realistic and mythic at once, and Alex Ross is a remarkable comic artist whose realistic painting style is usually too much for a whole comic but works perfectly here.  In Marvels, Busiek and Ross retell the origin of some of the major superheroes in the Marvel universe, all from the perspective of an everyman who is often confused and overwhelmed by what he sees.  It's great fun for anyone, but especially for people who are already familiar with the Marvel universe.

9. Supreme: The Return by Alan Moore and Chris Sprouse


Supreme is one of Alan Moore's most underrated works.  Depending on how you want to see it, Supreme is either Moore doing the same kind of thing he did in Miracleman, or doing the exact opposite.  Moore takes a previously dull Superman analogue, and turns him into a metatextual tribute to the Silver Age Superman, and to superhero comics in general.  It's well worth reading, especially if you aren't a fan of Moore's grittier work in stuff like Watchmen and V for Vendetta.

8. Grant Morrison's run on Animal Man


Ever since I started reading comics I heard people rave about Grant Morrison's writing, and to be honest I didn't see it.  His run on Doom Patrol was very bizarre and very fun, and his run on X-Men had a lot of high points, but the twist ending of both bugged the heck out of me.  He felt too studiously strange and carefully clever.  I just didn't see what the fuss was about.  And then I read his run on Animal Man.  Animal Man is perfectly executed, and deeply compelling.  In it, Morrison treats the same themes as Moore did in Supreme, but does an even better job of it.

7. The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller


I'm going to put my cards on the table here and say that I think Frank Miller is a fascist.  His treatment of power and violence in books like 300 and Sin City goes beyond idealism and glorification into idolization and worship.  But that said, The Dark Knight Returns is a central text in superhero comics, and it has earned its place.  Usually described as a "deconstruction" of Superheroes (and I hope to address that in a future post) , it's most simply described as a superhero comic without its tongue in its cheek.  Writers since (including Miller himself) have occasionally gone overboard but The Dark Knight Returns was one of the first comics in a long time to take superheroes seriously, and to do it well.

6.Alan Moore's run on Swamp Thing



Alan Moore is a seriously weird looking dude, and a hell of a comics writer.  His run on Swamp Thing is by turns beautiful and chilling.  He reinterprets a fairly uninspired hero/monster as the modern embodiment of a plant elemental.  Moore makes Swamp Thing into the Green Man, and then uses him to explore the nature of the relationship between humanity and nature, and of nature to itself.  It's a fantastic series.


5. All-Star Superman by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely


If you like Superman, you'll like this book.  If you don't like Superman, this book might change your mind.


4. Sandman by Neil Gaiman


With The Dark Knight Returns and Watchman, Neil Gaiman's Sandman is often credited with bringing comics into serious, adult, legitimacy as an art form.  In it, Gaiman reinterprets the mediocre superhero "Sandman" as the incarnation of Dream.  He strays far away from superheroes, into legend and mythology.  Sandman is an epic, and of everything on this list is probably the most likely to be studied in a literature course.  It beautifully showcases how sweeping, epic, and fantastic a comic book can be.

3. James Robinson's run on Starman



Like some of the other books on this list, Starman is an updating and re-interpretation of an old character.  Robinson juggles a lot of balls in this run--reinterpreting Golden Age superheroics, retconning and amalgamating all of the characters who've ever been called "Starman", and telling a great sprawling superhero story of his own at the same time.

2. Superman: For All Seasons by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale


At the risk of repeating myself from a previous post: Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale's retelling of Superman's early days through a metaphor of the four seasons is a beautifully drawn, wonderfully written book that captures what I take to be core of Superman.

1. Batman: Year One by Frank Miller


For my money, Batman: Year One is a better comic book than The Dark Knight Returns.  It's Miller's retelling of Batman's origins, and I think it's Miller at his best.  Serious and realistic without descending to the unintentional self-parody of so many lesser "gritty" comics, Batman: Year One is the obvious inspiration for Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins, and for much of the tone of The Dark Knight.  In short, it's just a great Batman book.


Honourable Mention:

1602

Watchmen

V for Vendetta