The best graphic novels of 2021

I ’ ve read some insanely good graphic novels this year : deplorable comics, funny comics, finely drawn comics. But it was credibly Esther’s Notebooks by Riad Sattouf ( translated by Sam Taylor ), the foremost three volumes of which were published in rapid succession by the brilliant Pushkin Press, that I most looked forward to opening. Sattouf bases these ( in France, bestselling ) stories about the everyday life of a little girlfriend who lives in Paris on real conversations with the daughter of a ally, and thanks to this they have an illicit veracity that ’ s powerfully attractive to readers of all ages : my little niece Edith and I both adore them. In my hands, Esther ’ mho adventures comprise an indispensable guidebook to the conflicts of 21st-century girlhood ; I see them as craftily feminist. But in Edith ’ mho, they ’ re fair insanely enjoyable : naughty, evocative and true . ‘ It ’ s impossible not to think of Tintin as you turn this ledger ’ randomness pages ’ : Tunnels by Rutu Modan. Illustration: Rutu Modan

I besides loved Tunnels by Rutu Modan ( Drawn & Quarterly ; translated by Ishai Mishory ), in which two rival archaeologists attempt to find the Ark of the Covenant beneath the wall that separates Israel from the West Bank. It ’ s impossible not to think of Tintin as you turn this book ’ sulfur pages : hera are full guys, and bad guys, and museum-standard sarcophagus. But it works on a deeper level, excessively, its real number subjugate being contested nation, and all the ways in which competing narratives are imposed on such territory. Modan is a brilliance and I hope lots of people will read this floor with its ending that might have been borrowed from Evelyn Waugh ’ s A Handful of Dust – and then, possibly, seek out her earlier books, Exit Wounds and The Property. It was fantastic to see Alison Bechdel, of Fun Home fame, return with The Secret to Superhuman Strength ( Cape ), a wittingly neurotic memoir of her lifelong compulsion with seaworthiness that covers therefore a lot district – what other writer would detour into Jane Fonda and William Wordsworth ? – it demands to be reread immediately. Wrestling the notion of physical self-improvement from the clammy hands of the alleged health industry, Bechdel puts it rather in the context not entirely of her own struggle to be happy ( drill is her balm ), but of centuries of literary and social history. The result is transcendent, and does the reader far more good than a Peloton class and a cup of turmeric tea.

‘ An amazing first outing ’ : It ’ s not What You Thought It Would Be by Lizzy Stewart.

Illustration: Lizzy Stewart last, a debut, and a big return. Lizzy ’ s Stewart ’ s fib solicitation It’s Not What You Thought It Would Be ( Fantagraphics ) is an amaze first out, one I relished both for the room it looked – you ’ ve never seen an english house estate look sol gorgeous – and for its dialogue ( these tales of female friendship and adolescent boredom require restraint when it comes to speech bubbles ). But her rare airiness made for some line to a book I read at about the same prison term : a counterfeit meta-memoir called Fictional Father ( Drawn & Quarterly ) by Joe Ollmann, a veteran comics star whom no lesser an artist than Seth has described as “ the last of the great funny/sad underground cartoonists ”. Jimmi Wyatt ’ s honeyed casual plunder, Sonny Side Up, has earned him fame, luck and the nickname Everybody ’ s Dad. But, alas, in reality protactinium is a nightmare : a raging egomaniac who has hanker neglected his family. What happens when Jimmi dies and bequeaths his strip to his artist son ? Will Cal ever be able to find his own voice ? Though no matchless does galumphing homo failure better than Ollmann, thankfully his spit is besides ever in his boldness. On the book ’ south jacket, the eye falls on one puff quote in detail. “ Don ’ thymine worry, my father is not very like this, ” writes a sealed Sam Ollmann-Chan .

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Category : Recommendations