Colourful tales of Mr Wonderful and Maus

Don O’Mahony on the burgeoning business of graphic novels and comic art

PUBLISHED in 2004, In The Shadow Of No Towers was New York cartoonist and comic book writer Art Spiegelman’s nuanced response to the attacks on the World Trade Center and its aftermath. It would not be too much of a stretch to suggest that In The Shadow Of Maus would be an apt epithet for Spiegelman’s life. Maus told Spiegelman’s family history against the background of the Holocaust. A groundbreaking and innovative work, the book took the 1992 Pulitzer Prize.

To mark the 25th anniversary of its publication, Viking published MetaMaus, a book plus DVD compendium of everything you ever needed to know about Art Spiegelman and the Maus universe, featuring family interviews, transcripts of Spiegelman’s interviews with his father Vladek, and even rejection letters.

2011 offered four historically important documents that should grace any serious comic book fan’s shelf. Alongside MetaMaus, Gary Spencer Millidge’s Alan Moore: Storyteller (Ilex Press) offers an examination of the droll sage of Northampton. Unlike Spiegelman, Moore is not forever tied to just one publication. That V For Vendetta, Watchmen and From Hell are works of genius is something upon which all can agree, and Storyteller offers insights into all of Moore’s works.

Scottish writer Grant Morrison is best known for such provocative works as the Batman story Arkham Asylum and his comic book series The Invisibles. When it comes to his prose exploration of the history of superheroes, he doesn’t disappoint. In Supergods: Our World In The Age Of The Superhero (Jonathan Cape), Morrison proves an amusing and engaging guide to the genre. As well as being rich in autobiographical detail, he offers such wry observations as the phenomenal sales of Watchman “must at least have kept the writer in cigarettes and scorpion rings”.

Completing this quartet is 1001 Comics (Quintessence), by general editor and comic book boffin Paul Gravett. All four books offer an encyclopaedic knowledge of comic book history and are required reading for anyone who wishes to gain an understanding of the medium.

Proving the golden age doesn’t stop with these men, Craig Thompson’s Habibi (Faber & Faber) is an astounding work. In Have You Seen…? A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films, film writer David Thompson hoped, as the deadline loomed, that he “might encounter not just an appealing film but a great director”. For Thompson, that film was Roy Andersson’s You, The Living, and similarly 1001 Comics managed to hold off until it could accommodate Thompson’s masterpiece. The writer and illustrator of the acclaimed memoir Blankets, Thompson is indeed a great comic book author. By steeping himself thoroughly in Arab literature, he created an exquisitely rendered tale of much ambition. Despite being confined to black ink, this is an eye-popping work, depicting a love story for the ages between two escaped slaves.

David B also made a return this year with Black Paths (Self Made Hero). Rendered in colour but no less nightmarish and claustrophobic than its predecessor, Black Paths focuses on an episode at the end of the First World War where the city port of Fiume, lost to the defeated Austro-Hungarian Empire, comes under the control of self-styled Pirate King and Dadaist poet Gabriele d’Annunzio. It’s a fascinating point in history and at points David B’s narrative, centred around a beautiful cabaret singer and a haunted soldier, contains dialogue that fizzes like Casablanca as well as evoking that film’s sense of cynicism and doomed romance.

This year saw comics tackle themes in its own ways. Sarah Leavitt’s Tangles painfully documented her mother’s Alzheimer’s, but John Porcellino, Paul Peterson and Jason Gilmore’s The Next Day (Pop Sandbox) was quietly breathtaking. Constructed from interviews with survivors of near-fatal suicide attempts, The Next Day introduced us to Tina, Ryan, Chantel and Jenn, and ran their stories parallel to each other. Opening on the day of each participant’s suicide attempt, the book goes on to lead up to each one’s fateful day. Told in a spare and typically childlike drawing style by underground comic maverick Porcellino. The Next Day’s intertwining narrative races along from stories of childhood abuse and dysfunction towards a hopeful conclusion.

Comedic highlight of the year was Daniel Clowes’ Mister Wonderful (Jonathan Cape). Marshall is a middle-aged neurotic expecting the worst from his blind date. Clowes (Ghost World, Wilson) skilfully enforces this expectation, creating a succinct comic masterpiece to rival his best work.