Nerve.com lists the following “25 20 comics that can change your life” – I would like views from my all-knowing f-list as to which are really worth pursuing.
Alias by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Gaydos
Preacher by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon (which I am reading, got to #3)
“Bomb Scare,” Optic Nerve #8 by Adriane Tomine
Hate by Peter Bagge
Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis
Heavy Liquid/100% by Paul Pope
Diary of a Teenage Girl by Phoebe Gloeckner
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (I loved this)
Blue Monday by Chynna Clugston
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel (already recommended to me by
Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron by Daniel Clowes (I was disappointed by this though I very much like some of his other work)
Fortune and Glory by Brian Michael Bendis
Kabuki by David Mack
Love and Rockets by Los Bros Hernandez (I remember reading, and enjoying,
Sandman by Neil Gaiman, et. al. (but of course!)
Miracleman by Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman
Zippy the Pinhead by Bill Griffith
Usagi Yojimbo by Stan Sakai
Fantastic Four Issues #1-#102 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
Planetary by Warren Ellis
So, what should I get next?
ETA: Thanks to
I have seen Mormon bloggers in particular sing the story’s praises, but I tend to feel they are parti pris.
For myself, I was mentally comparing it with the explorations of religion found in novels like C.S. Lewis’s trilogy, A Case of Conscience by James Blish, The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell, A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr., and Raising the Stones by Sheri S. Tepper; and James Morrow’s collection Bible Stories for Adults. I didn’t feel that “That Leviathan, Which Thou Hast Made” was anywhere near any of those in terms of quality.
To be honest, the very first sentence jarred me badly, when the narrator tells us “that wasn’t why my palm sweat slicked the plastic pulpit of the station’s multidenominational chapel”. It seemed to me a clumsy sentence, and there were many more that felt the same to me; no matter how sympathetic I may be to the subject matter, that will always put me off.