I’m starting my FMP with research into top selling comic books and graphic novels of 2019. I used Forbes’ and Guardian’s articles to determine latest trends in the industry and outline potential audiences; and I’m going to summarise the choices here.
I organised the 23 titles into 3 main categories, which are: classic, political/feminist, and fantasy. There is few cross-overs, especially in fantasy and feminist groups, however, I will explain why I chose to determine them in this way.
The classic graphic novels here have predominantly real-life narratives. The events are either taken from author’s own experience (such as in A Puff of Smoke by Sarah Lippett and King of King Court by Travis Dandro), author’s family past (in Pittsburgh by Frank Santoro), or from author’s imagination as fiction. While Sarah Lippett’s and Travis Dandro’s childhoods memoirs are sad-funny and put on display different families dynamics from a child’s point of view, Clyde Fans (by Seth) and earlier mentioned Pittsburgh take us back in time to the beginning of the last century and expose family life as an adult.
Other titles from this category have characteristic punchy dialogues and are well crafted. Bad Weekend: A Criminal Story (by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips) proclaims the account of old time artists embroiled in a shady schemes during Comic-Con San Diego in 1998. White this comic-noir includes tight plots, Rusty Brown (by Chris Ware) illustrates the process of growing up with an architectural precision – the narrative is reflected in the scale of panels and colours used.
Another graphic novel representative of generational achievement in The Man Without Talent (by Yoshiharu Tsuge). This story has been written and illustrated in mid-80’s in Japan, however, it has only been translated to English in 2019.
The last publication in the classic category is Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me (by Mariko Tamaki & Rosemary Valero-O’Connell). This bitter-sweet tale about dysfunctional teenage relationship represents the gender-fluid modern teenage culture, which is progressive and perhaps feminist and political. I decided to keep it the classic category, however, because of a nature of the narrative (young love, school troubles, adolescence) and its appealing manga style.
While the more traditional graphic novels mentioned above explore themes of domestic life, crime and love from a safer, much more indigenous place, the political and feminist graphic novels that made a list are full of self-discovery journeys (such as: The American Dream: A Journey on Route 66 by Shing Yin Khor, Is This How You See Me? by Jaime Hernandez, and Americana (And the art of getting over it) by Luke Healy), identity and racial struggles (Hot Comb by Ebony Flowers), and real-life events from the history books (Peterloo: Witnesses To a Massacre by Robert Poole, Eva Schlunke and Paul “Polyp” Fitzgerald, They Called Us Enemy by George Takei, Justin Eisinger and Steven Scott- exploring the Japanese-American ethnic identity during WWII, and White Bird by R.J. Palacio – the Holocaust story about escaping Nazi’s in France).
The Hard Tomorrow (by Eleanor Davis) is a reaction to a current political climate and the narrative takes place in the near-future. Even though we’re being subjected to a lot of pessimistic prediction about next few decades on Earth, the authors’ approach is life-affirming and putting hope over fear.
LaGuardia (by Nnedi Okorafor, Tana Ford and James Devlin) is a cross-over title, because of its sci-fi nature. The topics discussed in the narrative however, include family drama, immigration politics and Afrofuturism. The content is very politically and socially rich.The style of illustration in LaGuardia is the most colourful and detailed here, in comparison with black-and-white panels of Hot Comb, The Hard Tomorrow, They Called Us Enemy, and Is This How You See Me?.
The fantasy category comprise of more known titles within the heteronormative and mainly white audiences, such as The Immortal Hulk (by Al Ewing, Joe Bennett, Roy José) – offering gruesome morality tales, Mister Miracle (by Tom King and Mitch Gerads) – exploring superhero genre with domestic life and new family struggles in the foreground, and The Tempest (by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill) – last graphic novel of the author Alan Moore, with themes including supernatural conspiracy story and wild metafictional journey; this publication is a conclusion to the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
After careful consideration I decided to that my FMP publication will take feminist and political approach. These subjects are of my personal interest and I feel passionate about.
