Though sequential art has been around for a while, since the times of Hogarth, it's only in recent times that I feel the medium has really begun to evolve.

 

I feel the combination of visual art, language and storytelling can be very powerful, but I get sick of superheroes. Yet there are a few works I've come across that manage to defy my biases and stand on their own as unique, powerful works completely on par with great novels and films.

 

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With its complex exploration of morality and humanity, Watchmen is something to be experienced to be believed. The art is darkly vibrant and imposing all at once. The shots are so well composed that the work at times doesn't even need words. The characters are miserable, lost, ambivalent, and absolutely human. As a whole, the work is both cinematic and literary, while maintaining its identity as a graphic novel.

 

The only comic book to make it on the Time's 100 Best Novels list, Watchmen is more than simply a well executed graphic novel; it's a work that presently marks the pinnacle of an entire medium.

Honest, heartfelt, and powerful, Blankets is more than a cartoon mermoir. It is a validation of man's existence.

 

This is the Great American (Graphic) Novel. This is a reason to maintain faith in the artist, and in humanity.

A fascinating work that gives sincere insight into a part of the world that is not at all well understood by the West, Persepolis paints a human face on a story that might otherwise have been lost to the world had Ms. Satrapi not recorded it as she has in these two volumes. It's an amazing portrait of human development in the modern world. That it's rendered through cartoons in no way detracts from this; indeed, it actually drives it.