In case you missed it, the New York Times recently dropped their 100 Best Books of the 21st Century and it has officially inspired us! The official list has just two graphic novels on it (PERSEPOLIS by Marjane Satrapi and FUN HOME by Alison Bechdel), so we wanted to throw our hat in the ring to recommend even MORE comics from the new millennium that we think deserve a spot. We tried to keep it at ten, but there's just TOO MANY! Scroll on to check them out, and maybe grab yourself a copy or two!
Best Comics of the 21st Century
A surreal tale of the secret world of the cats of the Louvre, told by Eisner Award winner Taiyo Matsumoto. The world-renowned Louvre museum in Paris contains more than just the most famous works of art in history. At night, within its darkened galleries, an unseen and surreal world comes alive--a world witnessed only by the small family of cats that lives in the attic. Until now... Translated by Tekkonkinkreet film director Michael Arias.
Here, in one volume: Marjane Satrapi's best-selling, internationally acclaimed graphic memoir of growing up as a girl in Iran during the revolution has for twenty years been a classroom staple, a feminist manifesto, and one of the most popular and widely known graphic novels of all time. "A stunning graphic memoir...a wholly original achievement in the form." --The New York Times Persepolis is the story of Satrapi's unforgettable childhood and coming of age within a large and loving family in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution; of the contradictions between private life and public life in a country plagued by political upheaval; of her high school years in Vienna facing the trials of adolescence far from her family; of her homecoming--both sweet and terrible; and, finally, of her self-imposed exile from her beloved homeland. It is the chronicle of a girlhood and adolescence at once outrageous and familiar, a young life entwined with the history of her country yet filled with the universal trials and joys of growing up. Edgy, searingly observant, and candid, often heartbreaking but threaded throughout with raw humor and hard-earned wisdom--Persepolis is a stunning work from one of the most highly regarded, singularly talented graphic artists at work today.
Welcome to the DC Universe in 1950s America -- a land of promise and paranoia, of glittering cities and segregated slums, of dizzying scientific progress and simmering Cold War conflict. A land without the Justice League--Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. Or so it seems. The masked mystery men who fought for freedom in the Second World War have been outlawed. The soldiers and spies who conducted top-secret missions into the unknown now work in the shadows. And those icons who do still fight on -- Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman -- operate under hidden agendas and dueling ideologies. Yet this America needs its heroes more than ever. With darkness gathering on the horizon once more, only a bold new generation of adventurers -- young, daring, and dedicated to the better angels of our nature -- is equal to the challenge of the New Frontier. From Eisner Award-winning writer-artist Darwyn Cooke and Eisner Award-winning colorist Dave Stewart comes DC: THE NEW FRONTIER -- a timeless tale of idealism that has become one of the most acclaimed superhero comics of the 21st century. This edition collects the original 6-issue miniseries together with the JUSTICE LEAGUE: THE NEW FRONTIER SPECIAL, and features over 50 pages of designs, sketches and preliminary artwork from the author.
A New York Times Notable book! One of Barack Obama's favorite books of 2022! Winner of Canada Reads 2023!
"An exceptionally beautiful book about loneliness, labor, and survival."--Carmen Maria Machado
CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED, NATIONAL BESTSELLER
ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY
Time Magazine #1 Book of the Year - National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist
Winner of the Stonewall Book Award - Double finalist for the Lambda Book Award
Alison Bechdel's groundbreaking, bestselling graphic memoir that charts her fraught relationship with her late father.
Distant and exacting, Bruce Bechdel was an English teacher and director of the town funeral home, which Alison and her family referred to as the "Fun Home." It was not until college that Alison, who had recently come out as a lesbian, discovered that her father was also gay. A few weeks after this revelation, he was dead, leaving a legacy of mystery for his daughter to resolve.
In her hands, personal history becomes a work of amazing subtlety and power, written with controlled force and enlivened with humor, rich literary allusion, and heartbreaking detail.
#1 New York Times Bestseller Congressman John Lewis (GA-5) is an American icon and key figure of the civil rights movement. His commitment to justice and nonviolence has taken him from an Alabama sharecropper's farm to the halls of Congress, from a segregated schoolroom to the 1963 March on Washington, and from receiving beatings from state troopers to receiving the Medal of Freedom from the first African-American president. Now, to share his remarkable story with new generations, Lewis presents March, a graphic novel trilogy, in collaboration with co-writer Andrew Aydin and New York Times best-selling artist Nate Powell (winner of the Eisner Award and LA Times Book Prize finalist for Swallow Me Whole). March is a vivid first-hand account of John Lewis' lifelong struggle for civil and human rights, meditating in the modern age on the distance traveled since the days of Jim Crow and segregation. Rooted in Lewis' personal story, it also reflects on the highs and lows of the broader civil rights movement. Book One spans John Lewis' youth in rural Alabama, his life-changing meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr., the birth of the Nashville Student Movement, and their battle to tear down segregation through nonviolent lunch counter sit-ins, building to a stunning climax on the steps of City Hall. Many years ago, John Lewis and other student activists drew inspiration from the 1958 comic book "Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story." Now, his own comics bring those days to life for a new audience, testifying to a movement whose echoes will be heard for generations. Winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award -- Special Recognition
#1 Washington Post Bestseller
A Coretta Scott King Honor Book
An ALA Notable Book
One of YALSA's Top 10 Great Graphic Novels for Teens
One of YALSA's Top 10 Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults
One of YALSA's Outstanding Books for the College Bound
One of Reader's Digest's Graphic Novels Every Grown-Up Should Read
Endorsed by NYC Public Schools' "NYC Reads 365" program
Selected for first-year reading programs by Michigan State University, Marquette University, and Georgia State University
Nominated for three Will Eisner Awards
Nominated for the Glyph Award
Named one of the best books of 2013 by USA Today, The Washington Post, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, School Library Journal, Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, The Horn Book, Paste, Slate, ComicsAlliance, Amazon, and Apple iBooks.
#1 Washington Post Bestseller
A Coretta Scott King Honor Book
An ALA Notable Book
One of YALSA's Top 10 Great Graphic Novels for Teens
One of YALSA's Top 10 Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults
One of YALSA's Outstanding Books for the College Bound
One of Reader's Digest's Graphic Novels Every Grown-Up Should Read
Endorsed by NYC Public Schools' "NYC Reads 365" program
Selected for first-year reading programs by Michigan State University, Marquette University, and Georgia State University
Nominated for three Will Eisner Awards
Nominated for the Glyph Award
Named one of the best books of 2013 by USA Today, The Washington Post, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, School Library Journal, Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, The Horn Book, Paste, Slate, ComicsAlliance, Amazon, and Apple iBooks.
Praised by The New York Times, Brill's Content and Publishers Weekly, Safe Area Gorazde is the long-awaited and highly sought after 240-page look at war in the former Yugoslavia. Sacco (the critically-acclaimed author of Palestine) spent five months in Bosnia in 1996, immersing himself in the human side of life during wartime, researching stories that are rarely found in conventional news coverage. The book focuses on the Muslim-held enclave of Gorazde, which was besieged by Bosnian Serbs during the war. Sacco lived for a month in Gorazde, entering before the Muslims trapped inside had access to the outside world, electricity or running water. Safe Area Gorazde is Sacco's magnum opus and with it he is poised too become one of America's most noted journalists. The book features an introduction by Christopher Hitchens, political columnist for The Nation and Vanity Fair.
Romeo & Juliet meets Star Wars in this sexy, subversive fantasy and sci-fi space opera about star-crossed lovers from enemy worlds. An epic for mature readers, SAGA is the story of Hazel, a child born to star-crossed parents from opposite sides of a never-ending galactic war. Now, Hazel's fugitive family must risk everything to find a peaceful future in a harsh universe that values destruction over creation. The multiple award-winning, critically acclaimed masterpiece and one of the most iconic, bestselling comic book series of its time begins here in the first volume collecting issues #1-6. "The kind of comic that you get when truly talented superstar creators are given the freedom to produce their dream comic." --Entertainment Weekly "An unwieldy, profane, and glorious ode to compassion and equality." --The Atlantic "A little bit Romeo & Juliet and a lot Star Wars." --USA Today "Mischievous, vulgar and gloriously inventive." --TIME Magazine "May it run for 1,000 issues." --Rolling Stone Magazine
Lynda Barry's bestselling treatise on creativity, What It Is, is now available in paperback
How do objects summon memories? What do real images feel like? What is an image? What is the past? For decades, these questions have permeated the pages of Lynda Barry's compositions, with words attracting pictures and conjuring places through a pen that first and foremost keeps on moving. Barry's What It Is demonstrates a tried-and-true creative method that is playful, powerful, and accessible to anyone with an inquisitive mind who wishes to write or to remember. In this exploratory workbook, confessional, and memoir each page is a full-color collage that is a gentle guide to the creative process packed full ofswirling collaged images with pen and ink drawings on Barry's signature legal paper. Barry's award winning book is an invigorating example of exactly what it is: "The ordinary is extraordinary."