My Favorite Graphic Novels of 2019

Every year, I read a lot of graphic novels. These are the ones published in the past year that have stuck with me the most. In no particular order, and in no set categories, here are my favorites:

Favorite Overall Graphic Novel

The Hard Tomorrow is a tale set in the not-so-far-future where Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is the US president, social media is used for surveillance, and civil rights are under siege. The story of relationships nested within this context is complex, moving, and very relatable for me. The ending of this book literally gave me goosebumps.






Favorite Book by a Hernandez Brother

For once, Jaime out-published Gilbert in terms of books in a calendar year. A 30-year punk rock reunion concert is the setting for Is This How You See Me?, and it pulls off the great trick of flitting from the present to the past to show a broad picture of growing up or changing in terms of people and music scenes. Although it did not give me goosebumps, the final page of this book put a perfect exclamation mark on the whole enterprise.





Favorite Adaptation

Using all sorts of styles and media variations, Anne Frank's Diary is a moving translation that does justice to the book and makes it even more relatable to a modern context. I read a lot of graphic novel adaptations, but this one knocked my socks off.







Favorite Scifi/Horror

Nathan Hale regularly appears in my end-of-year posts for his nonfiction Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales series, but this book is a work of fiction. Apocalypse Taco is about some school drama students who get caught up in nightmare scenario involving inter-dimensional beings trying to replicate and replace our world, and it is full of great twists and body horror. Plus, one of the eventual heroes is a graduate student. Hooray for graduate students! (This book would have also won my Best Title category, for the record.)




Favorite Book for Younger Readers

My rating here is based on two criteria: 1. number of times my 4-year-old requested to read it, and 2. just how charming and inventive the whole thing was. Red Panda & Moon Bear is about two superheroic kids who protect their neighborhood from various menaces, from bad dogs to ghosts to ice cream monsters. I loved seeing how they solved their problems with ingenuity and empathy. We loved this book in my house!




Favorite Nonfiction Book

Box Brown is a regular in my end-of-year lists as well, but this book surprised me with just how much it taught me. Cannabis is a history of the contentious plant, showing the science behind how it works, its international roots, and how a long-term process of racism and misinformation has colored how we view it today. It is an excellent cultural history.






Favorite Scifi

Last Pick: Born to Run is two things: an gripping scifi story about an alien invasion of Earth and what people who are underestimated can accomplish. This look at what are typically considered disabilities or disablement made for great drama to accompany strong characterization and great, gruesome monster designs.






Favorite Young Adult Book

The insights into an African-American young man and the experiences he has at a private school make New Kid a unique and important book. Not only does it explore the social dimensions of adolescence, it also raises timely questions about social justice and equity in a way that involves multiple shareholders. Additionally, I very much enjoyed getting to know Jordan Banks, the main character, as he learns the lay of land while trying to develop his artistic skills. It features a great message but with a sense of both humor and humanity.




Favorite Memoir

Lucy Knisley is another regular in my end-of-year lists, and in Kid Gloves she offers multiple features in one book. It is a memoir about her own process of getting pregnant, pregnancy, and giving birth. It also contains a bunch of historical sections about how those three life processes have been viewed and evolved over time and across cultures. It also contains a good deal of graphic medicine about specific conditions and treatments. All of these features combine to give the reader much to learn about, chew over, and also be entertained and moved by. This is an excellent book for anyone who is a parent or who would like to be one.



OK, that's my list. Happy New Year!

Is This How You See Me?

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Jaime Hernandez is one of my favorite comics makers ever, and I don't know how he keeps topping himself, but he's done it again. Is This How You See Me? is a book about a reunion. The Locas, characters Hernandez has been writing about since the early 1980s all convene 30 years later for a special concert of their old favorites and some of the new Turks who were inspired by them. It also features old friends and acquaintances coming back together, some happily and others not so much. What is phenomenal to me is just how vibrant and complex a quilt Hernandez weaves in a relatively short space in this book.

All of the major players here have aged, most have mellowed, and it is interesting to see how their lives have shifted over time. Of course, this book focuses much of the time on Maggie and Hopey, the on-again, off-again friends and lovers who were the primary focus of the classic Locas tales. Their adventures have always featured lots of personal drama and upheaval, and it is fascinating to see how that still plays out 30 years later.

This book features a lot of juxtaposition. It hops back in forth in time to show characters then and now. It shows what the folks at the reunion are up to while also showing what their significant others are doing while left at home. And although a few things remain relatively the same, it shows the ocean changes the exist between then and now. Perhaps most strikingly for me was the difference between the sorts of trouble Maggie and Hopey can get into to. Their past run-ins with punks and drug dealers seemed almost quaint and fun next to the two episodes of hate they run into in the present, which were full of menace and danger.

One of the strong points is just how iconic and potent the illustrations are. Hernandez has honed his craft over the decades to be able to capture an emotion or deliver a visual zinger in economical fashion. There were multiple times I found myself poring back over pages to admire his characters and how he brings them to life via his artwork.

Another of the strongest parts of this book for me was its dialogue. There are a number of big crowd scenes where people are watching shows, catching up, or hanging out late night in diners, and their conversations are mundane, silly, pointed, and sometimes poignant. I know that comics work best when there is a playful, intentional interplay between the images and the words, and Hernandez shows he is a maestro of drawing, writing, and also marrying the two.

I feel that I have a difficult time doing this book justice, because it does so much. It delivers quality slice-of-life type tales while also showing what happens across a lifespan. It is funny, sometimes sad, and very rewarding. There are lots of pay-offs for longtime Love & Rockets readers but also quite enough context to entertain and engage those new to this universe. I cannot recommend this book enough.

The reviews I have read of this book have been glowing. Edwin Turner wrote, "It's fascinating too to see how naturally Hernandez has realized the aging of his characters, as if they were not drawings on a page, but rather real people." In a starred review, Publishers Weekly concluded, "While longtime fans will discover extra levels of joy and regret in this installment, even those who pick this up as their introduction to the series will be moved by its tale of growing older without necessarily growing up." Hernandez speaks about his work on this book in this interview.

Is This How You See Me? was published by Fantagraphics, and they provide a preview and much more here. It features profanity, some violence, and sexual content, so it is recommended for readers mature enough to handle those things.