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I’m an artist who likes to write, but I’ve never been interested in classic superhero or pulp graphic novels. Early in my career, the word “comics” felt like an insult—it's not “real art,” right? Too childish! While that instinct was definitely wrong, I found a (small) world of experimental, abstract, genre-breaking graphic novels that combine art and writing in a wholly unique way. This is a list of some of my recent favorites that have inspired my drawing and writing practice, and will hopefully inspire you.
This is an excellent textbook to get readers and comic makers of all experience levels to loosen up, think deeply and personally, and make better, more confident comics. It’s warm but practical, smart but approachable, deep but unpretentious. This is a comics veteran generously sharing both her knowledge of comics and teaching, as well as her own methods for drawing, brainstorming, and writing. It’s an incredible resource and one I often find myself quoting and recommending to my own students.
Hello students, meet Professor Skeletor. Be on time, don t miss class, and turn off your phones. No time for introductions, we start drawing right away. The goal is more rock, less talk, and we communicate only through images. For more than five years the cartoonist Lynda Barry has been an associate professor in the University of Wisconsin Madison art department and at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, teaching students from all majors, both graduate and undergraduate, how to make comics, how to be creative, how to not think. There is no academic lecture in this classroom. Doodling is enthusiastically…
When I was a kid in the 80s the superhero comics I was obsessed with were beginning to deal with the real world in a new way. And their creators were beginning to push and pull at the boundaries of the medium with a new spirit of play and provocation. I still love comics that seriously deal with real life – its complexities and its profound weirdness – and that push the medium in new directions and reckon with its history. I also want to be absorbed and moved and to identify intently with characters. It’s what I try to do in my own work, and what I look for in that of others.
This is the most profoundly absorbing experimental art-comic the world has ever produced.
It’s a fun book to sit with someone else and page through, backward or forward, or just ambling around, discovering things. The very simple conceit is that it’s a book that spans millions of years in time, but all happens in exactly one single space. It grew out of a six-page short story that blew people’s minds in the 80’s comics anthology Raw.
I remember hearing that the author had decided, two decades later, to expand it to book form, and wondered if that was really necessary. The short version had been such a perfect jewel of a piece. Turns out he had very good reason.
From one of the great comic innovators, the long-awaited fulfillment of a pioneering comic vision. Richard McGuire’s Here is the story of a corner of a room and of the events that have occurred in that space over the course of hundreds of thousands of years.
"In Here McGuire has introduced a third dimension to the flat page. He can poke holes in the space-time continuum simply by imposing frames that act as transtemporal windows into the larger frame that stands for the provisional now. Here is the comic-book equivalent of a scientific breakthrough. It is also a lovely evocation…
I’m an artist who likes to write, but I’ve never been interested in classic superhero or pulp graphic novels. Early in my career, the word “comics” felt like an insult—it's not “real art,” right? Too childish! While that instinct was definitely wrong, I found a (small) world of experimental, abstract, genre-breaking graphic novels that combine art and writing in a wholly unique way. This is a list of some of my recent favorites that have inspired my drawing and writing practice, and will hopefully inspire you.
You could really choose any graphic novel by Patrick Kyle—they’re all excellent. I personally like this collection of his short stories. The art is abstract, cartoony, expressive, drawn with a stylistic boldness not often seen in graphic novels.
The art could stand on its own, and often I find myself skimming this novel just to look at the art. But the narratives themselves are the real key here—completely original, contemporary thinking that discusses things like the end of cell phones and purifying skin creams. These narratives will change the way you think about narrative.
A keen observer of the absurd, Patrick Kyle's stories defamiliarize the machinations of life, work, and art with droll dialogue and his angular, humanely geometric drawing and sci-fi settings that recall set design more than satellite images. Kyle's figures may be foreign and his settings strange, but his stories resonate deeply.
Patrick Kyle lives and works in Toronto, ON. He is the author of the graphic novels Black Mass (2012), Distance Mover (2014), and Don't Come In Here (2016). At the 2016 Doug Wright Awards, he won the Pigskin Peters Award for New Comics #6 and #7.
I’m an artist who likes to write, but I’ve never been interested in classic superhero or pulp graphic novels. Early in my career, the word “comics” felt like an insult—it's not “real art,” right? Too childish! While that instinct was definitely wrong, I found a (small) world of experimental, abstract, genre-breaking graphic novels that combine art and writing in a wholly unique way. This is a list of some of my recent favorites that have inspired my drawing and writing practice, and will hopefully inspire you.
This is one of the first graphic novels to truly reinvent the medium, and is absolutely required reading for anyone who wants to experiment with visual storytelling. Instead of a traditionally bound book, you get an oversized box filled with pamphlets, booklets, newspapers, and more. The comics themselves read pretty straightforwardly, but it's the act of rifling through this giant box for the first time, not knowing exactly where it'll lead you, that's truly a unique reading experience.
In Chris Ware's own words, 'Building Stories follows the inhabitants of a three-flat Chicago apartment house: a thirty-year-old woman who has yet to find someone with whom to spend the rest of her life; a couple who wonder if they can bear each other's company for another minute; and finally an elderly woman who never married and is the building's landlady...'
The scope, the ambition, the artistry and emotional heft of this project are beyond anything even Chris Ware has achieved before.
I’ve written or edited thousands of science and engineering proposals, blog posts, and reports, and in the past decade, disaster resilience has become a major subject of these documents. I’ve come to realize that while it’s possible to be ready for disasters, few people truly are. In the books I’m recommending, something vital to life has been stolen and the disasters are so overpowering that mere survival is a nearly impossible goal. This forces the characters into unusual and heroic action. Their choices are sometimes surprising and always compelling, and I loved sharing their journeys.
It fascinates me how in a disaster, from one day to the next, nothing is ever the same again.
In Bird Box, where something is turning people violently suicidal, “…it definitely begins when a person sees something.”
At first there’s a rumor in a faraway country, but later the world abruptly changes. Nobody can be outside without a blindfold, millions are dying, and society collapses.
It would be bad enough to literally never see the world outside of your house, but then Malorie has to take a journey on a river…while blindfolded...with two blindfolded children…amidst creatures she knows almost nothing about.
That’s pure insanity that makes for a riveting, absorbing book, and Malorie’s determination is beyond inspiring.
I grew up in the ‘60s, when women were not in charge of anything much. I’ve always been fascinated by strong women. Amelia Earhart was a particular favorite, as were the suffragettes, Michelle Obama, and others. The strongest thing I’ve done in my life is to seize opportunities when they arise. I forged a second career that way, taking more than one leap of faith to do what I’ve always known I could do, be a writer. During and after my first career as a dental hygienist I took opportunities to be a newspaper wire editor, then a columnist, a magazine writer, an indexer, a nonfiction writer, and a novelist.
This is a new dystopian matriarchal novel, first in a series, that I’ve just discovered. Interestingly, it’s been described as the opposite of The Handmaid’s Tale.
The story is of a female-controlled society in which men are kept imprisoned and used as breeders. Neen, a female scientist who is interviewing men for their potential as sperm donors, begins to question the status quo when some of the men she meets don’t fit her preconceptions.
I was attracted to the book because its story is comparable to my book, but the tone and world-building are completely different. I loved the plot twists and the focus on ethical dilemmas.
" (...) The author outdid herself with this novel which is both entertaining and thought-provoking." Readers' Favorite ★★★★★
A genetically enhanced female. A male breeder fighting for his life in the Arena Dome. A world ruled by five clans of super-women. What could possibly be wrong with such a well-designed world?
When Neen and Tem's paths cross they uncover a web of lies spun so deep, that the truth seems like a mere illusion.
In the near-future propaganda-driven dystopian society of EVE, women control the world.
Young brilliant scientist, Neen Salvek of genetically enhanced Clan Triverser is assigned to screen…
I have been reading and writing Children’s books for many years. I have an MLS and have worked in school libraries and recreation departments. I have a strong connection to people. My passion for book writing and reading began the moment I learned to read. I've been in this business for over 30 years and have six books published. Probably my biggest accomplishment was the three years I worked as a freelance book reviewer for Scholastic Books. To this day I continue to dream, read, imagine, meet, and create new worlds that will be available for everyone. My passion for books and writing go beyond the physical but also the emotional and spiritual.
I just finished reading this book from a friend of mine and I loved it. I recommend it for several reasons. First of all, this book is about a young inventor Dameon Gardener who is looking forward to summer break to tinker with his beloved gadgets ends up traveling many years into the future to a dystopian world that is falling apart. He does not know it, but this journey puts him on a quest to save the bleak world of the future of time. That concept is also found in my books, and it is a kind of basic outline of most Fantasy and Science Fiction books.
They have a hero who journeys on a quest to save a world, a person, or even a creature. This is universal and used by these kinds of books. My books are also set in a dystopian world. I also like the…
Young, inventive Dameon Gardener is looking forward to his summer break when he can spend all day tinkering with his beloved gadgets. At least that was his plan until his workaholic dad came home unusually early and announced that his grandfather had passed away, leaving him his massive estate. Eager to explore their new inheritance, the Gardener family embarks on their first-ever vacation with great anticipation. Dameon, his schedule-loving mom, and video-game-obsessed younger brother are appalled when they arrive at the decrepit Victorian mansion situated on top of a mountainside overlooking a secluded, rundown, ocean-side mining town. However, Dameon soon…
As a writer from Aotearoa New Zealand, I’ve always been interested in social justice and human rights, and my own writing explores such issues, including who holds the power and who exerts the control. By writing about real-world issues in a speculative future, it allows us to peel back the layers of conditioning and look at ourselves and our actions through the eyes of an outsider – which forces us to examine our best and worst human traits. I love the way speculative fiction can do this, and I love that it challenges us to do better.
Though not packaged as YA, I think it sits well here. It’s speculative cli-fi, imagining an Aotearoa New Zealand ravaged by climate change. Steeped with Māori references, it’s a rollicking good yarn with a serious undertow and questions about how we care (and don’t care) for our environment, and the things that join and divide us.
In a radically changed Aotearoa New Zealand, Van's life in the swamp is hazardous. Sheltered by Rau and Matewai, he mines plastic and trades to survive. When a young visitor summons him to the fenced settlement on the hill, he is offered a new and frightening responsibility-a perilous inland journey that leads to a tense confrontation and the prospect of a rebuilt world.
`Patchett's is an extraordinary imaginative achievement: an unsettlingly strange, and fully realised, narrative situation and world. I read The Burning River experiencing a mixture of intellectual exhilaration and emotional agitation of an intensity fiction has not produced…
I love escapist fantasy and science fiction. I like stories that stretch the imagination and take me places I’ve never been. I want to be lost and be completely confused after taking my eyes off the written word, still in the fantasy world of the story. My picks are those kinds of stories. Worlds where anything is possible, and the characters have skills and powers which can help them achieve anything, something I want for my own characters.
By chance, I stumbled upon the Chrestomanci series after exhausting all the books that were available on the Library Van.
Initially, I had been deterred by the covers of the novels. Victorian dresses on the cover didn’t appeal to me at the time, but the story became the gateway to Witch Week. This is set in an English boarding school, but unlike Malory Towers, it has magic in it.
It starts off in the ‘real’ world but gets going in the end. In this dimension witches get burned and when someone sends a note to say someone is a witch in class, well, we all know what happened in Salem…
Glorious new rejacket of a Diana Wynne Jones favourite, featuring Chrestomanci - now a book with extra bits!
SOMEONE IN THIS CLASS IS A WITCH
When the note, written in ordinary ballpoint, turns up in the homework books Mr Crossley is marking, he is very upset. For this is Larwood House, a school for witch-orphans, where witchcraft is utterly forbidden. And yet magic keeps breaking out all over the place - like measles!
The last thing they need is a visit from the Divisional Inquisitor. If only Chrestomanci could come and sort out all the trouble.
I got interested in the theme of a post-apocalyptic, dystopian world after hearing years of doomsday predictions, most of which never came true or were far from catastrophic. I wondered what some real threats to our way of life are and in 2015, started writing a novel, Defenders of Holt, about what a dystopian future might look like. After that book, I wanted to write about the events that led up to that dystopian world and settled on a coronal mass ejection (CME) as the apocalyptic event in the Teenage Survivalist series. I did many hours of research to back up my stories to make them as realistic as possible.
In this 2014 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Finalist book, a different scenario of an apocalyptic event—a meteor that slams into earth, causing a shift in the planet’s magnetic core—ushers in the end of the age of technology and the beginning of a dystopian future where knowledge is not only power, it is currency. I loved this book because it’s a clever and exciting take on a dystopian tale. Being set in Australia provides lots of interesting scenes and plot twists and the idea of using knowledge as currency brings new meaning to the phrase "knowledge is power." This is a thoroughly enjoyable story that is hard to put down. I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes a good adventure with just a touch of romance!
**2014 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Finalist** When a meteor slams into earth causing a shift in the planet’s magnetic core, the age of technology ends and economies across the globe crash. Years later, knowledge is not only power…it is currency. Bookkeepers are invaluable in this post-apocalyptic world.
Nevel can never tell anyone he is a bookkeeper. His photographic memory is his secret. With a dystopian government that keeps all known books under lock and key looming as a constant threat and with parents involved as agents in the U.B.M. (Underground Book Movement) to protect that secretly exist, Nevel is…
