Artemis Draws

I thought I’d post here about the relatively few graphic novels I’ve read, as well as my biggest influences in terms of pictorial story-telling. I haven’t been reading graphic novels for very long and certainly not very avidly, I still struggle to see myself as a comic reader in that respect; I have only ventured once into Gosh Comics in Bloomsbury, and the only thing I came out with was a compilation: ‘Clyde Fans Part 1’ as a Christmas present for the same friend who introduced me to Chris Ware. I had been reading Chris Ware’s oddly sized Acme Novelty releases from time to time but nothing in them had particularly moved me. I felt far more affinity with Seth, with his nostalgic and melancholic yearning for the past which he imagines as a sort of near-ideal world where it was possible for an ordinary person to achieve true happiness. His drawing could be described as having a sort of ‘retro’, elegant cartoon style.

So here are some of my favourite ”graphic novels” on my bookshelf, in no particular order.

• Jimmy Corrigan – The Smartest Kid on Earth (Chris Ware)
• It’s A Good Life If You Don’t Weaken (Seth)
• Fun Home (Alison Bechdel)
• Blankets (Chris Thompson)
• Persepolis (Marjane Satrapi)
• Maus (Art Spiegelman)
• George Sprott (Seth)

There is a trend here – graphic novel as an autobiographical device, and I think it works extremely well, one doesn’t have to take oneself too seriously, and still produce an autobiography worth reading!

Other graphic novels on my bookshelf:

• Wimbledon Green (Seth)
• Ghost World (Daniel Clowes)
• Caricature (Daniel Clowes)
• David Boring (Daniel Clowes)
• 32 Stories (Adrian Tomine)
• We Are On Our Own (Miriam Katin)
• Carnet de Voyage (Craig Thompson)
• Goodbye, Chunky Rice (Craig Thompson)
• Epileptic (David B)
• Good-bye (Yoshiro Tatsumi)
• Various Acme Novelty books by Chris Ware, all too annoyingly large to fit properly in my bookshelf
• City of Glass (based on a novel by Paul Auster… I didn”t particularly enjoy the novel and likewise I wasn’t sure I liked the ‘comic’ version)

As I am not at all an avid comics reader, it is possible to list all these books in a single blog entry….. I am eagerly awaiting Craig Thompson”s impending release of ‘Habibi’ but I don”t really see myself making any new purchases anytime soon. I’m a much bigger fan of comic strips, having grown up enjoying a huge variety; the Sunday funnies were always read first on a Sunday morning ahead of the news and everything else. So I’m collecting Fantagraphics’ excellent ‘Collected Peanuts’ volumes, released once every quarter…. I’m up to the 1970s now, and there’ll be many more volumes to go before I’ll have accumulated the entirety of Charles Schultz”s prodigious ‘Peanuts’ output. Other favourite comic strip artists include Dan Piraro, Sam Waterman, Gary Larson, the crew at MAD magazine etc.etc. who were probably my biggest (often subconscious) influences.