This looks like an interesting list, and I'm probably going to read a few of these. Rare Flavours in particular sounds right up my alley.
It can be hard to tell with the newer graphic novels which ones are more fun than being a work of serious literary fiction to elevate the medium, i.e. often they tend to be downers, at least for a good chunk of the story.
I do like the more serious ones myself, but my partner has a birthday coming up, she loves graphic novels, but she's much more into fun, escapist (but with interesting/strong characters) stories at the moment since her job's been pretty stressful. Does anyone have recommendations for those? This list doesn't seem like it has too many that would fit that.
I got her Nimona for Christmas, after we saw (and loved) the film adaptation for the first one on Netflix, for example.
Oh man. Manga has been honed over decades to be artfully escapist. The Japanese have this stuff down as an engineered art form and they divided it by gender too.
As a dude I recommend stuff like, great teacher onizuka or Naruto or attack on titan or full metal alchemist... but that's stuff engineered for men.
For girls you'll have to Google but it's definitely a targeted genre as well with tons of long running mangas.
She doesn't seem to really be that into manga actually, even though we do watch some anime from time to time. Like we're churning through One Piece right now (although that's mainly thanks to seeing and liking the live action adaptation). I could give her the manga for it, but I don't think she'd be as interested as just watching the anime.
She hasn't expressed any interest in it, at least, where as soon as we finished Nimona she said "I want the graphic novel." And she doesn't own any manga, whereas she owns several dozen other graphic novels.
I'm not sure it's translated in a language you understand but "Les indes fourbes" (Guarnido/Ayroles) is a picaresque story with a wonderful main character, a gripping adventurous plot, and some of the best artwork I've seen in years.
Are these all published in 2023? If these are just the top ones, then how many were there total? There must be hundreds of comic authors out there to get this many in a year. Is it a big market?
Also. When did digital downloads of comics become more the norm, not exception? Some of these don't seem to have physical copies available. I know digital has been around a long time, but it always seemed like the biggest hits would still have physical copies on sale.
Just yesterday I was looking at a list of American films released in 2023 and there were more than three hundred [1]. Considering that a movie takes a whole team of people to make but a comic only one or two, they're much easier to distribute especially digitally, and comics are popular also in Asia and Europe, I would say there's at least several thousands of them published every year (without even counting that many have monthly issues).
Edit: Another interesting data point, there were more than 14000 games released just on Steam last year [2]. So I think it's not crazy to assume there's also several thousands of comics.
Comics being published digitally first has been the norm for a while, especially in the indie comic space. There are many websites where comics are published first as webcomics, and then only later maybe combined into physical books, often via Kickstarter or Print on Demand. Webtoons is the one I know by name, and I'm only a very passing fan of the genre. Webtoons also even offers the infinite scroll format, and some artists use this to create comics that don't translate cleanly to physical form. That's not even counting all of the creators who build and host their own websites.
Traditional physical comics require a lot of hands. Often separate people do the writing, illustrating, lettering, and coloring. On top of that, you have to have an actual publishing press and ship the comics out to stores. Still, if you go to a comic shop you'll find at least a few dozen new comics a month.
Unlike film, though, where it's incredibly difficult for a single individual to do the writing, acting, filming, and editing, a talented artist can definitely create a comic start to finish without outside help. Webcomics have a thriving indie scene of staggering proportions. Most of these probably don't generate much money - people tend to read them for free and even ads are limited - but not everyone in the indie scene is treating them as a full-time job.
I vastly prefer to read comics digitally on a tablet. It preserves the fidelity of the artwork much better and there are great apps like Panels that allow a lot of customization to the experience.
Having physical copies of all the manga I read would be extremely cumbersome, it would take up a ton of space.
Very interesting and extensive list. I now absolutely plan to buy Shubeik Lubeik in arabic for my SO who I just realized owns zero books in Arabic even though they speak, read and write arabic.
The traditional comics industry has done such a disservice to consumers by painting comics as toothless drivel. This is due to the fact having actual consequences in the plots would interfere with their ability to milk characters and stories until the end of time. There is no drama in a Batman comic because nothing that happens in Batman comic matters since it will all be reset and overwritten eventually. Single-run comics that begin and end can tell truly incredible stories and you owe it to yourself to check them out.
> The traditional comics industry has done such a disservice to consumers by painting comics as toothless drivel.
>
> There is no drama in a Batman comic because nothing that happens in Batman comic matters since it will all be reset and overwritten eventually.
You're conflating a feature of a genre with a medium or format. The phenomenon that you're referring to (retconning) is a feature of a genre, one which enables the creation of rich and intricate stories that couldn't emerge any other way.
Batman is a particularly bad example to choose for this, because it's actually been exempted from several of DC's hard resets (see: New 52). Although DC in general does this less well than Marvel anyway.
If you don't like them, that's fine, but they're not the only comics around, even if you're only buying stuff from the Big Two. Dismissing comics as "toothless drivel" because you don't like the narrative vocabulary of one genre is like dismissing cinema because you don't like Avengers movies.
Batman is a particularly good example to choose for this since he's died twenty-three times between 1952 and 2023.
If you don't like them, that's fine, but they're not the only comics around, even if you're only buying stuff from the Big Two. Dismissing comics as "toothless drivel"
That was my point. Superhero comics have created a mainstream perception that all comics are like that, that the entire medium is too lazy and greedy to commit to a narrative.
Non-superhero comics have been outselling superhero comics in the US for many years. DC and Marvel have been trying to maintain their traditional model, including comic book shops, for decades now; it doesn't work.
The problem is compounded by the fact that Americans see animation and comics as something for children while the US entertainment industry pumps out unsophisticated drivel. There are countless anime series and movies that are more emotionally and intellectually complex than most live action entertainment produced in the US.
> The world is shit, multiple genocides rage on, the world seems hell-bent on a rightward turn as the capital class’ wealth extraction schemes go on and on.
Not to be thoroughly unproductive, but an opening sentence like this is a complete turn-off to the rest of the article.
If you feel that way, the rest of the content probably doesn't target you.
In that case it could be considered nice from the author to make you realize this early on.
Meh. If the author had turned it around and said "Modern culture is shit, immigrants and refugees continue to corrupt and degrade Western civilization, the world seems hell-bent on a hard Marxist turn as the woke liberal class' anti-white, anti-male schemes of oppression and censorship go on and on" we'd see comment threads a dozen levels deep praising the author for their refreshing iconoclasm and insight, and promising to read every book on their list.
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The linked cookie policy is hosted on a different domain: https://automattic.com/cookies/, where riteshbabu.net is never mentioned again, and I am presented with a list of four websites (!) where I might be able to opt-out of tracking or whatever.
Not to single this website out specifically, but what a load of crap. It's all just so incredibly stupid and broken.
I noticed this as well. The site is small enough it's not likely to draw enough scrutiny to face repercussions, however there's zero chance this is enough to satisfy various data protection laws.
Readit News
It can be hard to tell with the newer graphic novels which ones are more fun than being a work of serious literary fiction to elevate the medium, i.e. often they tend to be downers, at least for a good chunk of the story.
I do like the more serious ones myself, but my partner has a birthday coming up, she loves graphic novels, but she's much more into fun, escapist (but with interesting/strong characters) stories at the moment since her job's been pretty stressful. Does anyone have recommendations for those? This list doesn't seem like it has too many that would fit that.
I got her Nimona for Christmas, after we saw (and loved) the film adaptation for the first one on Netflix, for example.
As a dude I recommend stuff like, great teacher onizuka or Naruto or attack on titan or full metal alchemist... but that's stuff engineered for men.
For girls you'll have to Google but it's definitely a targeted genre as well with tons of long running mangas.
She hasn't expressed any interest in it, at least, where as soon as we finished Nimona she said "I want the graphic novel." And she doesn't own any manga, whereas she owns several dozen other graphic novels.
Feels like I need to branch out beyond One Punch Man
Also. When did digital downloads of comics become more the norm, not exception? Some of these don't seem to have physical copies available. I know digital has been around a long time, but it always seemed like the biggest hits would still have physical copies on sale.
Edit: Another interesting data point, there were more than 14000 games released just on Steam last year [2]. So I think it's not crazy to assume there's also several thousands of comics.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_films_of_2023
2: https://gamerant.com/games-released-steam-2023-record-number...
Traditional physical comics require a lot of hands. Often separate people do the writing, illustrating, lettering, and coloring. On top of that, you have to have an actual publishing press and ship the comics out to stores. Still, if you go to a comic shop you'll find at least a few dozen new comics a month.
Unlike film, though, where it's incredibly difficult for a single individual to do the writing, acting, filming, and editing, a talented artist can definitely create a comic start to finish without outside help. Webcomics have a thriving indie scene of staggering proportions. Most of these probably don't generate much money - people tend to read them for free and even ads are limited - but not everyone in the indie scene is treating them as a full-time job.
Oh, buddy, you are in for a treat, here's some publishers just off the top of my head: https://drawnandquarterly.com https://www.topshelfcomix.com https://www.silversprocket.net https://www.fantagraphics.com and there's a lot more after that.
barriers to entry are low and it's a rich, internationally thriving medium
Having physical copies of all the manga I read would be extremely cumbersome, it would take up a ton of space.
You're conflating a feature of a genre with a medium or format. The phenomenon that you're referring to (retconning) is a feature of a genre, one which enables the creation of rich and intricate stories that couldn't emerge any other way.
Batman is a particularly bad example to choose for this, because it's actually been exempted from several of DC's hard resets (see: New 52). Although DC in general does this less well than Marvel anyway.
If you don't like them, that's fine, but they're not the only comics around, even if you're only buying stuff from the Big Two. Dismissing comics as "toothless drivel" because you don't like the narrative vocabulary of one genre is like dismissing cinema because you don't like Avengers movies.
If you don't like them, that's fine, but they're not the only comics around, even if you're only buying stuff from the Big Two. Dismissing comics as "toothless drivel"
That was my point. Superhero comics have created a mainstream perception that all comics are like that, that the entire medium is too lazy and greedy to commit to a narrative.
The problem is compounded by the fact that Americans see animation and comics as something for children while the US entertainment industry pumps out unsophisticated drivel. There are countless anime series and movies that are more emotionally and intellectually complex than most live action entertainment produced in the US.
Not to be thoroughly unproductive, but an opening sentence like this is a complete turn-off to the rest of the article.
The linked cookie policy is hosted on a different domain: https://automattic.com/cookies/, where riteshbabu.net is never mentioned again, and I am presented with a list of four websites (!) where I might be able to opt-out of tracking or whatever.
Not to single this website out specifically, but what a load of crap. It's all just so incredibly stupid and broken.