h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

You don't *have* to like them, you know. It's not an endurance test.

Yes, I know, KB. And I've been resistant in not succumbing to computer games, for instance, even though lots of people tell me they're great.

But I have read and enjoyed various graphic novels. I feel there's probably more out there - but I don't know my way around them, having concentrated on Actual Books. When it comes to Actual Books, I might not have read any (say) Nadine Gordimer or AS Byatt. Yet. But I have a fair idea of who they are and some expectations - probably wrong - about their work. Thus I also have a fair idea about what I'll want to pick up - although this changes constantly. With graphic novels I'm all at sea. I'm just asking for swimming lessons here.

Actually - I've a sudden notion to read AS Byatt's 'Possession' so maybe I won't get around to a graphic novel for a while.

One problem with comics is that most people who know about them are _fans_. I like the whole Vertigo line, which includes such stand-out series as Sandman, Swamp Thing, Hellblazer, Fables and Transmetropolitan. However, because I'm a fan, that makes me less critical of any weaknesses. Besides, Vertigo comics plough a certain literary furrow: horror and fantasy, anti-heroes, British writers, magic and the supernatural all feature more strongly than elsewhere. If you want a straightforward heroic story, mainstream Marvel or DC may be more for you.
Having said that, I'll just return to Transmetropolitan for a moment, because it's simply brilliant. The main character is basically Hunter S Thompson, and the world he inhabits might be compared to a more sunny Bladerunner, but both have a delightful wicked twist to them.

Well I am a fan of Dr Gonzo...

The fandom part is interesting. I tend not to be a Fan. Of anything. An enthusiast, yes, but there are only a handful of authors whose books I would seek out because I must read another book by that same author. (Vonnegut, Greene, Steinbeck...not many more.)

Oh yes, Fables would be a good idea. That's a story it would probably be difficult to tell in another medium.

Throw us a bone, Ed. Of the ones you liked - what was it you liked about them?

On a hunch, I think you'd find some of Louis Trondheim's stuff interesting. The more wordless, surreal stuff.

And I lost two or three good days of a holiday because I got so engrossed in "Die Sache mit Sorge" that other plans went by the wayside - it's one you might like too.

Also not a comic, not a story, not in English or any other real language and having only a very loose connection to reality altogether, but a beautiful object to peruse is the Codex Seraphinianus, if you can get hold of it. It's a book with pictures and words in it, it's just you can't read the words and pictures are confusing and weird.

@KB:

Well my favourite has been 'Love and Rockets'. I guess it's because it has well-realised, interlocking (and confusing!) stories. It follows its characters over a long period as they undergo changing circumstances. It also uses graphics well without trying to be fancy.

Plus it has Maggie Chascarillo.

http://media.comicvine.com/uploads/1/16281/319121-20716-124237-1-love-and-rockets-bon_large.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_AQ7G7SixcC4/TRyY27GJozI/AAAAAAAAEV4/ZD5XqtJKjyM/s1600/love+and.jpg

http://bolhafner.com/stevesreads/maggie03.gif

A while ago Marvel did a kind of reboot of their main comics. The used the name Ultimate for some comics, where the stories ran independent of the normal Marvel universe. They had Ultimate Spiderman, Ultimate X-Men and Ultimate Avengers, which was just called The Ultimates. This last one was actually really good, dealing with politics and other things making it all a bit more realistic.

I also endorse the Marvel Ultimate line. The Ultimates and Ultimate X-Men are definitely good, partly because they are written by Mark Millar, a youngish Scottish writer who is rapidly becoming one of the biggest in mainstream comics. The version of characters seen in the recent spate of Marvel movies - Iron Man, Thor, The Incredible Hulk, Captain America, and all leading up to the upcoming Avengers - is mainly based on The Ultimate universe conception of them. For instance, The Ultimates was the first comic to portray Nicholas Fury as black: at one point, they are discussing who would play them in a movie and he says prophetically, "There's really only one choice: Samuel L Jackson!"

And the poses in comic books are just so natural .

Further: http://geeks.thedailywh.at/2011/09/07/unrealistic-comic-book-pose-of-the-day/

TRiG.

Hmm. A further glitch, I'm afraid. Nadine Gordimer was on 'Start The Week' just now and I'm *definitely* reading her latest

Mark Waid can do no wrong. You could have a look at his story Superman: Birthright. It's a new origin story for Superman, and makes sense of a number of things.

Supplementary questions:

What makes a good comic? What is it that comics can do that other media can't?

There's a certain filmic quality about them, I'd have thought, and it's probably no accident the form appeared at roughly the same time as cinema. But that's not quite it. What is it that they deliver that neither cinema nor literature do?

The pictures are a big part of it. Each panel is a tableau, totally stationary and under the control of the artist. It's so much easier for a comic artist to put a tiny detail in the corner of a panel, or perfectly plot the trajectory of a movement, than it is for a film-maker to control every slight movement within the camera-frame.
That's how you get the subtle visual themes in 'Watchmen', such as the numerous clock-faces and slashes of red on yellow, all getting closer and closer to the vertical as events approach the climax of the story. Books can't do that: even mentioning it in prose would be drawing too much attention. It's up to you to pick up on the little hints and messages...

That makes sense. There's something about the fixedness of each panel that moving pictures don't deliver. Sort of like lots of jump cuts.

I once went on the Spiderman 3-D Adventure ride at Universal in Orlando. It involves being in one of those things they use for simulator rides...only it's also on rails...and you're wearing 3d glasses...and the scenery moves. We were given a technical presentation (I was there for a conference) in which they explained that the artistic effect they were aiming for was to spin you around, stopping at 'frames' where some action would take place. (like a 3d character jumping on the car or a commercial bread oven being opened to singe your face giving the impression of flames.) It was very effective.

I'm not sure whether the Asterix series counts as graphic novels. If so, then I've read and enjoyed graphic novels. They're wonderful. And there are a lot of small visual jokes (often involving chickens), that you don't notice on a quick read.

TRiG.

The best and quickest answer I can give to the question of what makes comics different from film is to point you at this:

http://acephalous.typepad.com/acephalous/2009/03/watching-watchmen-how-unfilmable-novels-become-unwatchable-films.html

Now that's interesting. essentially graphic novels can do internal or authorial monologues in a way that books can but films can't.

I was also thinking of a couple that *have* made a successful transition to screen: 'Sin City', 'Persepolis'. Part of the reason they've worked is because they've kept the distinctive graphic qualities of the original.

Graphic novels are also less bound by linearity than films or even books. A film progresses at a remorseless twenty four frames per second, although in the last fifteen years or so the rise of bullet time has given the hackneyed slomo some dubious new life. Books, similarly, are meant to be read one word after another, and in general are not specifically designed so that in order to make sense of them you have to read the previous paragraph again, then the one you're on, then the one before again.

In a graphic novel, there's the possibility of playing with the reader's attention and focus in a way you can't easily do in a book, drawing their eye round the page in non-standard ways, encouraging re-viewing of the sequence of images. A very few textual books try something similar (The Raw Shark Tapes, House of Leaves).

Both Watchmen and The Killing Joke (both by Moore) have excellent sequences of flashback (or are they...?) where the transition between now and possibly-then is an only-slightly-altered image from one frame to the next.

Watchmen was an example of using constraint and discipline to raise the art - Moore specified clear page and panel boundaries, never to be broken, no sound effects of the BIFF! WWWHHHAAM! variety, no thought balloons, and no "splash" pages. This makes the wordless conclusion far more powerful, and something that probably couldn't, and certainly wasn't, recreated on film.

One whole issue of Watchmen was an exercise in symmetry - symmetry of image, theme, action, even page layout. I didn't realise it at the time, and it blew my mind a bit when I re-read it and realise how much more work had gone into it than I had initially realised. The only moving-picture equivalent I can think of is this pop video directed by Michel Gondry: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EN9auBn6Jys