The 10 best graphic novels

For The Observer, Rachel Cooke came up with a list of the ten best graphic novels, including:

Blankets
Craig Thompson (2003)

Blankets is extremely long – a mammoth 592 pages – but it’s a thing of huge power and grace. Thompson grew up in chilly, flat Wisconsin, in an evangelical Christian family, and his book is variously about faith (keeping it, losing it), sibling rivalry, being a misfit, and the isolation of the countryside. Most of all, though, it’s about what it feels like to fall in love for the very first time (at a Bible camp our hero meets Raina, beautiful and interesting but burdened with siblings she must care for following the divorce of her parents). Quaint, meditative and sometimes dreamy, Blankets will take you straight back to your first kiss

Read about another entry on the list.

Also see Lev Grossman's top ten graphic novels list, Danny Fingeroth's top 10 list of graphic novels, and Malorie Blackman's top ten list of graphic novels for teenagers.

--Marshal Zeringue