Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Grown Up Graphics: Graphic Novels, Adaptations and Comics Geared Towards Adult Audiences



Strangers In Paradise / by Terry Moore
Katchoo is a beautiful young woman living with her best friend Francine until she meets David, a man determined to win her heart. As the love triangle heats up, Katchoo discovers something about her past which could upset everything even more. Contemporary life models and emotional depth highlight this graphic novel series. (YP FIC MOORE)



The Quitter / by Harvey Pekar
Comic legend Pekar is best known for his notable work in the celebrated American Splendor, chronicling his life as a downtrodden file clerk in Cleveland. The Quitter is another autobiographical comic chronicling his youth and early adulthood as an outcast Jew in an increasingly African-american neighborhood and his attempts and ultimate failures at various endeavors including a stint in the Navy and higher education. (YP FIC PEKAR)



Blankets: An Illustrated Novel / by Craig Thompson
In rural Wisconsin, two brothers discover the challenges of growing up as they confront broken friendships, first loves, disappointments and the duality of coming of age under the eye of sternly pious parents. Mostly a self-styled memoir of Thompson’s own childhood, this extensive book is among the most introspective and self-dissecting works of graphic fiction. (YP FIC THOMPSON)



Logicomix: An Epic Search For Truth / by Apostolos K. Doxiades
This exceptional graphic novel concerns the philosophical life and legacy of Bertrand Russell. As he searches for absolute truth, Russell crosses paths with other legendary thinkers and tries to explain natural phenomenon through mathematics and logic. Not your average graphic novel, this is one of the few graphic works concerned with modern philosophy. (FIC DOXIADIS)



Tamara Drewe / by Posy Simmonds
In a graphic story which parallels Thomas Hardy’s classic Far From the Madding Crowd, Tamara Drewe is a new resident in the modern-day English Hamlet of Stonefield. Young, beautiful with a modest inheritance, Tamara is soon the talk of the town as several male suitors, one an author, another a rock star and a third a local farmer attempt to woo the spunky Tamara. (FIC SIMMONDS)



Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid On Earth / by Chris Ware
36-year-old everyman Jimmy Corrigan lives a hapless life in Chicago as a lonely, emotionally-isolated man disenchanted with life until he suddenly hears from his long-absent father. Interspersed throughout the book are flashbacks to a century earlier when Jimmy’s grandfather, James, who was abandoned by his own father at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, dealt with similar problems. Ware's drawings are a good combination of subtle and provocative. (FIC WARE)



Ooku: The Inner Chambers: Vol. 1 / by Fumi Yoshinaga
When a mysterious disease kills off 80 percent of the males in feudal Japan, women have taken control of society with the remaining men carefully preserved as sperm donors in the Ooku, secluded quarters in which a collection male concubines reside. Things suddenly change when handsome Samurai warrior Yunoshi enters the Ooku. This adult manga is very richly illustrated and thoroughly original. (FIC YOSHINAG)



Johnny Cash: I See A Darkness: A Graphic Novel / by Reinhard Kleist
From his impoverished beginning in rural Arkansas to his success as a country crooner and delving into his emotionally volatile life filled with bitter depression and demons of drugs and alcoholism, the life of Johnny Cash is revealed in deft, artistic biography. German graphic novelist Kleist vividly manifests the literal and visceral ‘man in black’ in this somber-toned visual renderings of one of music’s greatest legends. (782.421642 KLEIST)



Maus: A Survivor’s Tale / by Art Spiegleman
Author and illustrator Art Spieglemann conducts interviews with his father Vedak, a survivor of the Holocaust, in this riveting narrative of a relationship between father and son and the harrowing legacy of Jewish persecution in Hitler’s Europe. The Jews are depicted as mice and the author/illustrator's talent is self-evident in both storytelling and aesthetic resonance. (940.5318 SPIEGELM)

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