'500 Essential Graphic Novels: The Ultimate Guide'Picked up a great book/tool for the comic luddite and aficionado alike over the weekend. '500 Essential Graphic Novels' provides a list of...well, 500 graphic novels that no self-respecting geek should be without. 350 authors and 400 artists are represented in this study of the genre.
The book is neatly divided into ten alphabetically organized chapter themes, each defining a graphic novel genre: from adventure through fiction and humor to war. Each chapter contains a thoughtful introduction, ten essential reads and nearly 40 other genre-defining works from 1987 onward. Each 1/2 page entry offers a plot synopsis and a qualitative review while showing the novel cover and (space permitting) a page excerpt. Even better, each entry also includes recommendations to other books of similar ilk.
This guide really runs the gambit, where you find Alan Moore and Frank Miller comfortably hobnobbing w/ Daniel Clowes and Charles Burns...allowing you to expand your parameters into some great new stuff or give you hours of fodder to argue over what was/wasn't included. As author Gene Kannenberg Jr. explains in the introduction, this is in no way definitive...there is just too much stuff out there to include it all.
That said, he's done a fantastic job in showing you where to start. Getting back into the whole world of comics myself, this is a great 'field guide' to help me continue to get up to speed. It came out in August and i've seen it at most of the major book sellers, so it should be easy to find. Could either save you some money spent on something bad or make you drain your savings on all the stuff you never knew about. Either way, good times!
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