Why am I passionate about this?

I've been creating books, magazines, comics, and stories for both adults and children for more than thirty-five years. If you’re after more graphic novels with a certain textural and/or emotional depth and storytelling heft to them, I’ve also compiled the following list that might work as a starting point. The search for the archetypal “good” graphic novel is of course one that will be peculiar to one’s own tastes. While it’s primarily a visual medium, the best of them can be as nuanced and complex as storytelling in any other art form and means of communication. 

I wrote

Book cover of Laika

What is my book about?

Laika was the Moscow street dog destined to become Earth's first space traveler. This graphic novel follows her journey. Nick…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Life in Yop City

Nick Abadzis Why did I love this book?

Originally released as separate volumes, these have now been collected into two bumper volumes which read as one, giant graphic novel. Aya is a 19-year old girl who lives on the Ivory Coast of Africa in the late 1970s. It’s largely a portrait of her life, and that of her friends and relatives and the situations they get themselves into. Broadly it’s a coming-of-age story - I find it utterly captivating and enthralling from beginning to end. Oubrerie’s luminous, vibrant art is charming, but can take a turn into darkly expressive when it needs to be.

By Marguerite Abouet, Clément Oubrerie, Helge Dascher (translator)

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Life in Yop City as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"Aya is an irresistible comedy, a couple of love stories and a tale for becoming African. It's essential reading." -Joann Sfar, cartoonist of The Rabbi's Cat

Ivory Coast, 1978. It's a golden time, and the nation, too-an oasis of affluence and stability in West Africa-seems fueled by something wondrous. Aya is loosely based upon Marguerite Abouet's youth in Yop City. It is the story of the studious and clear-sighted nineteen-year-old Aya, her easygoing friends Adjoua and Bintou, and their meddling relatives and neighbors. It's a wryly funny, breezy account of the simple pleasures and private troubles of everyday life in…


Book cover of The Lonesome Era

Nick Abadzis Why did I love this book?

Jon Allen’s coming out and growing up story in his ongoing Ohio Is For Sale series, The Lonesome Era is, so far, his most complex and affecting work, but that’s not saying much for a cartoonist who expands his abilities and repertoire with each new book. The Lonesome Era is a rites-of-passage tale that showcases Allen’s customarily bleak outlook and dry wit, and it is, by turns, hilarious and poignant. I’ve called his work “Kafkaesque situation comedies” in the past, but that description belies the mordant emotional and observational sophistication on show here. He is simply one of the best young visual storytellers around.

By Jon Allen,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Lonesome Era as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"A touching book that is sure to appeal to any reader who has tried to be the person they were meant to be." - BOOKLIST

Camden is a cat. Camden is also crushing hard on his best buddy and all-around terrible influence, Jeremiah. Young, bored, and trapped in their slowly decomposing Rust Belt town, Camden tamps down his burgeoning feelings for the local ne'er-do-well and allows himself to be dragged along with every awful idea, every hair-brained plan, and every threat to life and limb Jeremiah can come up with. As the dangers of Camden's risk-taking mount, an even more…


Book cover of Beautiful Darkness

Nick Abadzis Why did I love this book?

The best comics, graphic novels, bande dessinées, sequential narratives - whatever you want to call them - invite you into their world and if they’re successful, you’re carried by them, not as you would be by a literary encounter but as an immersive, sensory experience. You have to be open to their visual sensibilities, and perceptive readers will find far more than a fairy tale here. That’s how it begins but it very soon becomes clear that this is a story that expertly contrasts the delightful constructs of a childlike imagination with the damnable awfulness of the real world. It is both exquisite and horrific, matter-of-fact and fantastical, an unsettling fairy tale for those not unwilling to gaze unabashedly into the abyss.

By Fabien Vehlmann, Kerascoët,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Beautiful Darkness as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Newly homeless, a group of fairies find themselves trying to adapt to their new life in the forest. As they dodge dangers from both without and within, optimistic Aurora steps forward to organize and help build a new community. Slowly, the world around them becomes more treacherous as petty rivalries and factions form. Beautiful Darkness became a bestseller and an instant classic when it was released in 2014. This paperback edition of the modern horror classic contains added material, preparatory sketches, and unused art. While Kerascoet mix gorgeous watercolors and spritely cartoon characters, Fabien Vehlmann takes the story into bleaker…


Book cover of Exit Wounds

Nick Abadzis Why did I love this book?

Rutu Modan is rightly celebrated and Exit Wounds, for me, remains the high point of her work. She seems to me to be a writer who draws as opposed to an artist who writes - that is, her work is propelled by an almost literary narrative necessity as much as any formal artistic experimentation, which is not to say there aren’t wonderfully inventive moments throughout this book. It’s the through-line though, the characters and the story she urgently wants to tell that captures the attention, and Exit Wounds is a classic of escalating mood, incident, coincidence and human needs.

By Rutu Modan,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Exit Wounds as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Set in modern-day Tel Aviv, Exit Wounds is the first graphic novel to be published in Britain by one of Israel's best-known cartoonists.

A young man, Koby Franco, receives an urgent phone call from a female soldier. Learning that his estranged father may have been a victim of a suicide bombing in Hadera, Koby reluctantly joins the soldier in searching for clues. His death would certainly explain his empty apartment and disconnected phone line. As Koby tries to unravel the mystery of his father's death, he finds himself not only piecing together the last few months of his father's life,…


Book cover of Polina

Nick Abadzis Why did I love this book?

Polina is about a would-be ballerina and a teacher and the methods he employs to get the best from his students. Polina ages from child to young adult through its pages, and as her comprehension of the world about her and the people in it changes, so too does the reader’s impressions of her. Like any good character piece, much depends on the performance of the players, and therefore Vivès and his ability to convey subtleties of emotional reactions. He always leaves enough room for the reader’s own interpretations, and so hooks you into the nuances of Polina’s feelings. Vivès can draw anything, but this beautiful, delicately balanced story depends as much on what he leaves out as what he puts in. A small masterpiece.

By Bastien Vives,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Polina as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

As a very young girl, Polina Oulinov is taken on as a special pupil by the famous ballet teacher Professor Bojinsky. He is very demanding and refuses to adapt his standards to the talents of his pupils, and Polina has to work hard and make great sacrifices in order to reach the level Bojinsky senses she has the talent for. When she graduates and is admitted to the official theatre school, she discovers that Bojinsky's view of ballet is only one of many and that she can't adapt to new rules, new visions. She flees Russia for Berlin, where she…


Explore my book 😀

Book cover of Laika

What is my book about?

Laika was the Moscow street dog destined to become Earth's first space traveler. This graphic novel follows her journey. Nick Abadzis masterfully blends fact and fiction in the intertwined stories of three compelling lives. Along with Laika, there is Sergei Korolev, once a political prisoner, now a driven engineer at the top of the Soviet Union's space program, and Yelena Dubrovsky, the lab technician responsible for Laika's health and wellbeing. Abadzis gives life to a pivotal event in modern times, illuminating the hidden moments, both human and canine, that lie behind the written word of history.

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Black Crow Cabin

By Peggy Webb,

Book cover of Black Crow Cabin

Peggy Webb Author Of Without a Trace

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Bookworm Pianist Master Gardener Gigi to 4 grands Lover of porches and hot tea

Peggy's 3 favorite reads in 2024

What is my book about?

A small town in the grips of evil... a single mom with nowhere to turn... and a madman who will stop at nothing to get what he wants.

He is the Collector, and he's taking prized possessions, pets, and children, keeping what he wants, and burying his rejects in shallow graves. When he comes after Rachel Logan, an ordinary schoolteacher living on a ranch with her grandmother and her two children, she has no weapon except her wits.

But how can she stop a monster who outdoes Hannibal Lecter in cunning and depravity?

Black Crow Cabin

By Peggy Webb,

What is this book about?

A small town in the grips of evil... a single mom with nowhere to turn... and a madman who will stop at nothing to get what he wants.

He is the Collector, and he's taking prized possessions, pets, and children, keeping what he wants, and burying his rejects in shallow graves. When he comes after Rachel Logan, an ordinary schoolteacher living on a ranch with her grandmother and her two children, she has no weapon except her wits.

But how can she stop a monster who outdoes Hannibal Lecter in cunning and depravity?


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in comics, gay teenagers, and Russia?

Comics 124 books
Gay Teenagers 37 books
Russia 385 books