The Push Man and Other Stories (Tatsumi Yoshihiro)

Not for the faint of heart, Tatsumi's work uses simplicity of line and expression to evoke the depths of human emotion.

And I mean depths.

Infanticide, rape, and fecal matter are par for the course in any Tatsumi compendium (those published by Drawn and Quarterly), although not requisite. For instance, the titular tale concerns a man whose job it is to push people onto the Japanese subways, to cram in as many passengers as possible. He begins to question the nature of his role in society, and loosens the bonds on his concept of conformity, with hauntingly poetic results.

Born at the beginning of the second world war Tatsumi grew up a witness of Japan's ugly side. But even by the time he was in his twenties he was disturbed by the morality of his people as it expressed itself in the cities. The stories in Push Man (as well as his other compendiums of shorts, Abandon the Old In Tokyo and Good-Bye) are all rooted in real things he'd witnessed, and in that way they're justifiably presented: entertainment as horrifying historical enlightenment.

If you can stomach putting your arm around Tatsumi's shoulder you might find it stuck there.

The Trial of Colonel Sweeto (Nick Gurewich)

Gurewich is the modern day Gary Larson, except Larson’s body of work far exceeds Gurewich’s, and Gurewich is way dirtier and crueler. Whereas Larson’s jungle explorers get picked off by giant insects and wave their arms frantically about staring eyes, Gurewich’s undetailed expressions are on one hand subtly menacing, mean-spirited, or malicious and on the other hand the opposite of all those three. Plus there’s a whole lot of fucking. The true genius to Gurewich, though, is his ability to snap between drawing styles seamlessly. One week it could be an Edward Gorey tribute, and the next week it’s a Bill Keane parody. I’m still most partial to Gurewich’s own style, but the breadth of his talent is staggering. AND HE’S ONLY 27!

The trial of Colonel Sweeto is the be-all-end-all collection of Gurewich's indefinitely hiatus'd webcomic, Perry Bible Fellowship. It's a shame that in today's market, the recognition of talent and genius is more often what causes artists to stop in their tracks, as opposed to being what spurs them on to create and create. I suppose it's a product of many artists using their successful medium as a portal to what they really want to show the world. Whether that's a singer turned actor. Or an actor turned photographer. Or what have you.

Dogs and Water (Nils Anders)

Another Scandinavian artist (like Jason) with a sense for simplicity. Dogs and Water tells the tale of a possibly post-apocalyptic desert wasteland where a man with a backpack is journeying. He runs into an assortment of characters in the wasteland, all of them out looking for different things, not finding them. He converses with his sole companion, a teddy bear. He eventually stumbles upon a crashed helicopter, lodged in the side of a massive pipeline. The pilot is dying, and lies on the ground beside the pipeline. He begs the backpacked man to shoot him. The story is about desperation, loss, confusion, desire, and ultimately solitude, all favourable themes in my book. The artist chooses not to use the traditional boxes to divide scenes, instead allowing the images and the words to float in space like debris.

Not for all tastes, although those who adore the book will find comparisons to David Lynch and Gus Van Sant.

Phoenix, Vol. 1 - 13 (Osamu Tezuka)

Unarguably the single greatest achievement in the career of the most influential mangaka (Manga cartoonist) in Japan's history, Phoenix rockets back and forth across the temporal plane from volume to volume, telling tales of future and past, that each get a little closer to the present as the volumes tick by. After only the first few volumes the greater design comes into focus: Tezuka is telling the history of the universe.

And what retelling of the history of time would be complete without a lot of rumination on the nature of time and man's mortal role in the universe (unless you're Larry Gonick)? While the phoenix (Hi no tori, in Japanese, meaning 'firebird') owns the name of the series, he/she/it and its many manifestations is mearly a backdrop, or a point of obsession for the real characters, stepping in only as a greek chorus to manipulate the characters, or a god descending from the ink, and Tezuka does not exhaust any one way of revising the reader's concept of what the phoenix is. In one volume the phoenix becomes puppeteer to a scientist who will be allowed to witness the universe as himself a god, in one volume the phoenix will remain an elusive shadow to an artist who seeks to represent the firebird's glory in a painting or else lose his life to a sinister, commissioning lord, and in another volume a red herring of a bird is captured and warred over by rivaling Japanese lords, as they vie for the phoenix's blood and eternal life.

My personal favourite story, Strange Beings (half of Vol. 9), does the old 'time flows backwards' trick to tell the story of life and the universe as a never-ending backwards loop, involving the life of a girl (raised as a boy by a murderous tyrant) who unintentionally becomes the universe's private, eternal mother Theresa.

The cultural effects of the Phoenix saga may have been even more far-reaching had Tezuka not perished before penning its conclusion, presumably set in the modern day. But maybe that's for his readers to accomplish.

This is a sculpture of the famous firebird, which sits just outside the Osamu Tezuka museum in Takarazuka, Japan (20km northwest from Osaka).

A Treasury of Victorian Murder (Rick Geary)

Grim and moody as crime scene photos, but without the vulgarities of similar efforts, Rick Geary (famous for his work on the National Lampoon magazine, and Heavy Metal) paints a pitch-perfect portrait of the famous murders of the late 19th century. Everything from The Saga of the Bloody Benders (my favourite), to Jack the Ripper, to H. H. Holmes, the Beast of Chicago. You’ve probably never heard of most of the killers or victims in these stories, but you’ll never, ever forget them.

For more info: http://www.rickgeary.com/

I Killed Adolf Hitler (Jason)

There are a lot of things that could turn you off about Jason.

1) He’s been called the Alfred Hitchcock of graphic literature.

2) His drawings are spare.

3) His dialogue is spare-to-non-existent.

4) His characters are all people bodies with expressionless animal heads.

5) His non-linear storytelling style could have some putting more effort into reading than enjoying.

What amazes me is how much tension, mood, suspense, and texture Jason is able to derive from expressionlessness, and rudimentary shapes. What keeps me coming back to Jason is the invention, nuance, commitment, and humour inherent to everyone of his panels. Unlike some wordless story-tellers, Jason is near-perfect in his ability to change points-of-view, and show an object or a space several times in order to control the reading tempo, without boring you, erroneously adding details to the background, erroneously mixing in uncomplimentary emotions. In Jason's world, every detail is of the utmost importance.

I Killed Adolf Hitler is the story of a burnt-out hitman and his girlfriend connecting with a scientist who’s created a time machine that will send the occupant back to kill Hitler, but takes 50 years to recharge. This leads to a time-mishmash that’ll have you grabbing your forehead and shouting, “Who comes up with this stuff?” What’s so great about all Jason’s work is the utter seriousness with which he approaches the zaniness of his plots. Imagine that Ed Wood still made the movies he made, but as a genius storyteller, and a stellar craftsman. Instead of as a crackpot.

Fun Home (Alison Bechdel)

The opposite of Leviathan in almost every way. This is the wordiest, most literary graphic novel I’ve ever read, which is paced with a genius you might not suspect from reading Bechdel’s comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For. Since she spent the years leading up to writing Fun Home on her fictitious lesbian comic strips, a niche genre if ever there was one, she’s developed a sense for writing however she damn well pleases, and the result is glorious. She doesn’t dumb down a single phrase, thesaurus a single hundred-dollar word, or string sequences together in an easy-to-understand manner.

It’s uninhibited art at its best.

Autobiographies ususally unfold chronologically, a by-product of the emotional source that drives a person to write an autobiography: nostalgia and fear of death/impermanence. Bechdel, instead, recounts her childhood, the realization of her homosexuality, and the accidental (possibly suicidal) death of her secretly gay father, in a way that’s almost like flipping through a scatterbrained photo album. Not to suggest there's a lick of carelessness in their arrangement: for Bechdel, the autobiography is a way to make sense of a mystery. Not just the reasons (or lack of reason) behind her father's death, but the thoughts and motives of everyone in her life, including herself. Everyone locked in their own, private emotional closet.

The irony of the title is drawn out in the humourless expressions of her family members, the perpetually austere locales, and the parade of unfortunate souls who enter the Bechdel family parlour to mourn their loved ones. And Bechdel evokes it all with a clear-handed grace, mindful of the balance between white space and the symbolic clutter that make up our lives.

For more info: http://dykestowatchoutfor.com/

Leviathan (Jens Harder)

Being wordless is something that can go either way in graphic novels. Either the images will command your will by their intricacies and majesty, or the esoteric nature of the images, or the mundane quality of their subject matter, will give your thumb a rapid little workout (but wouldn't you rather be playing PS3?).

Jens Harder's Leviathan is, so far, for me, the high water mark of wordless sequential art. The story, which is shockingly lucid, concerns the exploits of a...can you guess?

A leviathan.

That’s right.

A giant, underwater, monster whale-creature. A god of, and above, mortal beings.

It clashes with other such monstrosities, flexes its invulnerability on the humans who unwisely choose to tango with it, swims around (through a display of Kathryn Bigelow-esque, orgiastic vistas), and deals with the existential angst of being the only of its kind and with being virtually indestructible. In Harder's world waves spout up like a company of trumpets, currents surge with the feriocity of violins, and flesh smacks meatier than the tautest timpani.

A quotation from a relevant source, like Melville for instance, begins each chapter to set the mood, to honour Harder's inspirations, and to hint at the tempo for the art in the proceeding pages. Every page is packed with dynamic, daunting images of sealife (the hopelessness of the food chain), and depictions of the leviathan, the god of all creatures.

If doctor's and dentists and lawyers stocked this book in their waiting rooms, I'd...probably get out more.

For more info: http://www.hardercomics.de/

Y: The Last Man (Brian K. Vaughan)

A series so good that on the front of every volume is a different exclamatory quotation from a different, highly-regarded member of the upper echelons in the literary community. Stephen King calls it the greatest GN series he’s ever read. Which is both a huge smack down to the rest of the community, and utterly true.

You can think of it as my number one, desert island, eyes are about to be gouged out forever pick. So let's get it out of the way first.

Y is a Shakespearean in magnitude (and, often, in reference) recount of the last man on earth, Yorick, and his journey across the globe in a world of suicidal, tortured, drug-addled, samurai-sword-wielding, hormone-befuddled, grief-stricken ladies, all of whom are trying to move on in their futureless society, unknowing that the key to human survival is being carted around in secret by a group of American interests, all bent on keeping megalomaniac Amazons, and logical militaries, and ruthless ninjas, and, yes, even pirates, from severing that chance at survival for good.

Brian K. Vaughan has penned two other series (Ex Machina and Runaways) as well as some one-offs (Pride of Baghdad), each with a similar tone and artistic execution, but only in Y is his vision so thoroughly exacted, rich with timeless social commentary. Who else in the biz knows how to pack in pop culture references to make even the most outcast social misfit feel like an insider?

Art by Pia Guerra and Jose Marzan Jr. is at worst very competent, and at best stop-you-in-your-tracks arresting. At least once per volume (if not per issue) does the scene arrive where you remember everything that makes comics great in a single page-filling panel.

In expectation for the upcoming film version, Vertigo is releasing the series in five collectible editions, the first of which is already available through Chapters and your local, and much more deserving, comic boutique.

For more info: http://www.bkv.tv/