13 great drama graphic novels you must read

The graphic novel. The pinnacle of literary achievement. Why settle for a regular, boring book when you can have the adult version of a picture book? These graphic novels, with their mature and dramatic themes will make your inner child feel way over their little head.

1. Maus

Hailed as the greatest graphic novel of all time, Maus tells the harrowing tale of The Holocaust with Jews reimagined as mice fleeing from Nazi cats. Author Art Spiegelman also explore his strained relationship with his father, with whom he is on the run. It’s a brutal story of the descends into the depths of animalistic depravity, and the perseverance of the human spirit.

2. Rusty Brown

Chris Ware’s Rusty Brown is a collection of stories centered around the titular all-American Midwestern protagonist whose life is explored from boyhood to middle age. You know how youth is fleeting? How life is beautiful in its mundanity? How nothing lasts forever and all we have is each other on a rock floating in space? Yeah, Rusty Brown’s slice of life storytelling will remind you of all of that.

3. Sunday

Sunday is about nothing. Honestly that’s the best kind of Sunday there is, no? It’s a story about author Olivier Schrauwen’s cousin Thibault. Well, not a story, more a day in the life. Thibault engages in classic Sunday afternoon behavior. He listens to James Brown. He writes and rewrites text messages. He watches The DaVinci Code. He hands with his girlfriend, all the while an old flame is planning to throw him a surprise party. It’s a weird, quotidian stream of consciousness tale about the mental drama of the average day.

4. Saga

Saga is the exact opposite of Sunday. Brian K Vaughan’s graphic novel is a sci-fi opus centered around two new parents embroiled in a galaxy wide war. They attempt to find safety for their young daughter Hazel, all the while cutting a swath through enemy ranks attempting to destroy them. It’s a violent, dramatic tale that’s about the most important thing of all… a TV-headed robot empire? No, family.

5. Transmetropolitan

It’s a gritty future. Corruption is everywhere. Superficiality is rewarded. Consumerism is rampant. Sounds like the present, baby! But what’s this? Daredevil journalist Spider Jerusalem (yep that’s his name) is gonna use his story-sniffing powers to expose the foibles of modern society? Warren Ellis’ Transmetropolitan is a cynical thrill ride.

6. Black Hole

Black Hole is the story of the most dramatic years of our lives: our teenage years. Crushes. Romance. Sexuality. All of that gets even more difficult to deal with when a new STD arises that is turning teens into literal monsters. Charles Burns’ teen plague tale is It Follows sexually transmitted horror before it was cool. It’s a grisly mess of a story about the grisly mess that is growing up.

7. Asterios Polyp

Asterios Polyp is the portrait of the American Dream: a moderately successful architect! The titular character (who was probs bullied in highschool for his name) gets the last laugh! He’s got a pretty good job, makes good money, and spends his idle hours living a swinging bachelor’s life. But when his NYC apartment burns down, he decides to ditch city living and move to the rural heartland of America. But what’s he running to? Or from? His own emotions and his lost love, for a start.

8. The Making Of

Brecht Evans’ The Making Of sounds like it should be part of the Special Features of a DVD boxset, but it is not! It’s about a small festival in the Flemish countryside where a man named Pieterjan takes it upon himself to build a giant garden gnome as a testament to the Flemish identity. He soon runs afoul of other artists jealous of his work, and emotional antics ensure. All the drama of a high school theater ensemble.

9. Daytripper

Daytripper by Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá is the story of Bras de Olivias Dominguez. Well, stories plural. Each one begins at a different point in the character’s life, but they all end with his death. Wait but if teenage Dominguez died then how are we meeting him again in middle age? Don’t sweat the details! This novel is about the feelings… and how it feels knowing any of us can die at any moment!

10. The River At Night

The River At Night is not a place you wanna swim, but Kevin Huizenga’s cerebral slice of like drama is one you wanna read! It’s essentially about the inner monologue that happens to all of us when we lay down to sleep. We replay our pasts, we dream about our futures, we remember our relationships, our successes and failures and fears and joys. It’s a kaleidoscopic novel, fractured visions of a single, full life.

11. I Never Liked You

Chester Brown’s I Never Liked You is the author’s memoir of his troubled youth. Poor Chester suffered from the introvert’s dilemma in his younger years. Talking to people was hard. Talking to girls was harder. Talking to his own mom was sometimes the hardest of all. It’s a dreamy, touching, and painfully understated story of growing up.

12. Blankets

Blankets is the acclaimed coming of age story of a young artist finding his own voice. Craig Thompson’s novel is inspired by his own troubled youth, and revolves around a life changing romance that takes place in a quaint corner of the Midwest. Craig and his fellow church camp attendee Raina fall in love as a blanket of snow covers the still and silent world. Cozy as it is quietly devastating.

13. Concrete

You know that scene in the Fantastic Four where The Thing struggles to pick up the wedding ring his fiancé threw on the ground just before she ran away from him in fear? Concrete is basically that as a graphic novel. A speechwriter is mysteriously transformed into a being made of three tons of concrete, but that’s the only fantastical thing that happens. The rest of the story is one of alienation, a man made of stone struggles to relate to a modern world that rejects and alienates him. That’s heavy, no pun intended.