I am an illustrator and author and fantasy stories are some of my favorites. I love getting lost in a book. It might be a cliche, but the ability of a book to take you to a place you’ve never been, or might not even exist, is an amazing power. These are the types of stories I love to create and these books have been a great influence on my own work.
Lightfall is the first in a series of graphic novels set in the world of Irpa, a world without a sun. Deep in the northern forest, the young girl Bea lives with her adoptive grandfather the Pig Wizard. While walking through the woods one day, Bea meets Cad, a member of the Galdurians, an ancient race thought to be long-extinct. When the Pig Wizard goes missing, Bea and Cad set out across Irpa to find him, while danger fights its way out of the shadows and into the light.
Hayao Miyazaki is rightly renowned as one of the greatest animation directors of all time. But he also created this amazing comic over many years, while also directing films. Nausicaä is a fantasy epic, over 1000+ pages of lush drawings telling a beautiful story. It’s a post-apocalyptic world filled with warring factions, giant insects, and dark secrets. One young woman is trying to find her way through this world and put things right, though the right thing to do isn’t always clear. It’s a great story that I recommend to anyone who loves comics, adventures, or the environment.
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind is an epic fantasy tale written and illustrated by legendary Studio Ghibli director Hayao Miyazaki, creator of My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle. A modern masterpiece, the entire series is now available in this deluxe box set containing two hardcover volumes with interior colour pages and a bonus poster.
Bone seems to start small, with the Bone cousins having been run out of their town. But they get involved in a sweeping adventure of epic proportions. With their goofy humor and simple designs, the Bone cousins initially seem out of place in this fantasy world, but they are the key to stopping the evil in this story, not unlike the hobbits of Lord of the Rings. Bone has been released as individual books that have been beautifully colored. But I personally love the one-volume edition in the original black and white. It’s a massive book, I come back to those wonderful inky pages again and again.
Winner of 41 National and International Awards including 10 Eisner Awards and 11 Harvey Awards!
Meet the Bone cousins, Fone Bone, Phoney Bone and Smiley Bone, three misfits who are run out of Boneville and find themselves lost in a vast uncharted desert. They make their way into a deep, forested valley filled with wonderful and terrifying creatures. With the help of the mysterious Thorn, her tough-as-nails Gran’ma Ben and the Great Red Dragon, the boys do their best to survive in the middle of brewing trouble between the valley’s denizens.…
This one is a completely wordless story that transports you back to the time when dinosaurs roamed the planet. It follows a pack of deinonychus who steal the eggs of a tyrannosaurus and a hunt ensues. Through lively drawings and colors that pop, you get to know the personalities of all these different dinosaurs and feel the difficult and often vicious life back then. It’s out of print, but if you can find a copy it’s worth it. There are a few more books in this series that are also great, but this was my first and I cherish my copy.
Thundering herds of lizards roam Cretaceous America, and the earth trembles with their passage. Enormous yet graceful meat-eaters shred the still-living meat from the bones of placid plant-eating saurians. Tyrannosaurus rex, the most fearsome carnivore that ever lived, is king. But even T-rex isn't safe from the greedy eyes and the ravenous appetites of a band of bird-quick Deinonychus. A tale from an age before humans and language, Age of Reptiles: Tribal Warfare is a 128-page epic told entirely in pictures. Ricardo Delgado, production artist for "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine," has crafted the finest graphic novel about dinosaurs ever…
This one starts with what seems like a normal night. Some friends ride their bikes as far as they dare, dropping off one by one. The world becomes more and more magical as it goes, with witches and talking bears. But the kids never seem fazed and roll with the increasingly odd happenings. It recalls those magical nights as a kid when you could explore and everything felt wondrous and new. On top of that, you can really feel Andrews’ pencil on the page and the colors create an engrossing atmosphere.
It's the night of the annual Autumn Equinox Festival, when the town gathers to float paper lanterns down the river. Legend has it that after drifting out of sight, they'll soar off to the Milky Way and turn into brilliant stars. This year, Ben and his classmates are determined to find out where those lanterns really go, and they made a pact with two simple rules: No one turns for home. No one looks back.
The plan is to follow the river on their bikes for as long as it takes to learn the truth, but it isn't long before…
Another book of beautiful drawings (noticing a theme?), the dynamic lifework pulls you into a parallel dimension along with the characters. The protagonist crosses dangerous lines to find his partner and you are along for the ride in a new world. Also, check out Malassange’s work with Studio La Cachette, the animation studio he co-founded – it’s great!
Nills and Anaelle were looking forward to the first night in their rustic cabin in the woods. But the couple's idyllic vacation is suddenly thrown into turmoil when a strange flash of light bursts from the fireplace. A portal appears and out of it spill dragon-like creatures that are armed to the teeth. They grab Anaelle and flee back through the portal, leaving a distraught Nills with a sudden decision: stay behind or leap through after her?
He leaps. And that's when things get really weird.
In Kairos, French graphic novelist Ulysse Malassage turns the typical damsel-in-distress narrative on its…
The constellation we know as Taurus goes all the way back to cave paintings of aurochs at Lascaux. This book traces the story of the bull in the sky, a journey through the history of what has become known as the sacred bull.
Each of the sections is written from the perspective of the mythical Taurus, from the beginning at Lascaux to Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, and elsewhere. This is not just a history of the bull but also a view of ourselves through the eyes of the bull, illustrating our pre-literate use of myth, how the advent of writing and the urban revolution changed our view of ourselves, and how even bullfighting in Spain is a variation on the ancient sacrifice of the sacred bull.
The constellation we know as Taurus goes all the way back to cave paintings of aurochs at Lascaux. In I Am Taurus, author Stephen Palmer traces the story of the bull in the sky, starting from that point 19,000 years ago - a journey through the history of what has become known as the sacred bull. Each of the eleven sections is written from the perspective of the mythical Taurus, from the beginning at Lascaux to Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, Greece, Spain and elsewhere. This is not just a history of the bull but also an attempt to see ourselves through…
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