If you're like, "Stories with pictures? This art form intrigues me ... yet I know not where to start," then you could do worse than use the industry's annual Eisner award nominations as an entry to the comics medium. I only raised an eyebrow at a few of the selections. Others -- like the Best Writer field -- are pretty much a can't-lose proposition.
And if tights-and-flights are never, never going to be your thing, that's your right. The best graphic novel I read in the past year was Nick Abadzis's Laika. I read it in the store, standing next to the bookcase, and for a good ten minutes after I turned the last page, I had to remain turned into the shelves because I didn't want anyone else in the store to see how hard I was crying. (Hell, I'm tearing up now just recounting this.) Laika is beautifully, economically told, and the blank spaces between the lines give each reader's monkey mind the space to ponder the costs of human progress, and at what point the progress overtakes the humanity. Read an excerpt here. (And if you have a dog, give him or her a pat from me, okay?)
It's an interesting coincidence how Laika gets the nod right after the little tempest over the stunt Guillermo Habacuc Vargas pulled, where he argued that his exhibition of an emaciated street mutt -- and a sign made of dog biscuits right above it -- was really an indictment of the people who a) let the dog get to this condition in the streets and b) didn't bother to deface the art and feed the dog. (Read a summary of this furor here.)
Both Vargas and Abadzis make their points about how our treatment of animals essentially boils down to using them as we see fit and ignoring their sovereignty as living creatures unto themselves. But for my money, Abadzis makes this point far more poignantly and less piously -- and that gives it greater affect. But what do I know? I'm a dumb funnybook reader.
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