Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

V for Vendetta is, like its author's later Watchmen, a landmark in comic-book writing. Alan Moore has led the field in intelligent, politically astute (if slightly paranoid), complex adult comic-book writing since the early 1980s. He began V back in 1981 and it constituted one of his first attempts (along with the criminally neglected but equally superb Miracleman) at writing an ongoing series. It is 1998 (which... (more)

Eight Ball

Ghost World

by Daniel Clowes

One of the best-selling and critically-acclaimed graphic novels of all-time telling the story of two supremely ironic, above-it-all teenagers facing the thrilling uncertainty of life after high school. As they attempt to carry their life-long friendship into a new era, the careful dynamics of their inseparable bond are jolted, and what seemed like a future of endless possibilities looks more like an encroaching... (more)

Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth

Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth

by Chris Ware

This first book from Chicago author Chris Ware is a pleasantly-decorated view at a lonely and emotionally-impaired "everyman" (Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth), who is provided, at age 36, the opportunity to meet his father for the first time. An improvisatory romance which gingerly deports itself between 1890's Chicago and 1980's small town Michigan, the reader is helped along by thousands of colored... (more)

Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron

by Daniel Clowes

Daniel Clowes's first book remains a modern classic 15 years after its debut in Eightball #1, the comic book title that made Clowes a household name in comics circles. This surreal graphic novel is couched within a noir-ish detective structure and rich with recurring psychosexual motifs and imagery. The story follows a deadpan Candide named Clay Loudermilk, on a search for a former lover through a landscape that... (more)

Ice Haven

by Daniel Clowes

At long last: Daniel Clowes is back at Pantheon, with a brilliant new graphic novel already hailed by Time as “another of his hilariously slightly off-center worlds that have a vague sense of dread about them. Kind of like where you live.” Welcome to Ice Haven! “It’s not as cold here as it sounds,” declares Random Wilder, our reluctant guide to this sleepy Midwestern town. He’s also its would-be poet... (more)

Manly World of Lloyd Llewellyn

by Daniel Clowes

The Manly World of Lloyd Llewellyn (1986-1988), one of the earliest works of Eightball author Daniel Clowes, anticipated the 1990s rediscovery of lounge culture. The 31 stories collected here combine Dragnet with The Twilight Zone with Tales from the Crypt in a world filled with aliens, good-time girls, and cocktail-bar nihilism. The stories are hip and funny, with a good dose of wacky 1950s... (more)