Tired of tender graphic memoirs and family friendly romps about first love? Looking for a graphic novel that speaks directly to your cynical, shriveled heart? It sounds like you’re in the market for grimdarkness! You’ve got an appetite that only the most brutal, bloody, depraved, depressing, hopeless, and abominable comics can sate, and while your therapist may consider that cause for alarm, I think it’s a cause for celebration! Without an awareness of the sick and sordid side of life, how can be ever hope to appreciate its everyday joys? Here are the 10 best grimdark graphic novels, to make you grateful for how good you’ve got it!
Berserk
The poster-child for dark fantasy, Kentaro Miura’s Berserk is one of the most seminal grimdark works ever penned – inspiring the brutal, melancholy and woefully frustrating Dark Souls series. This novel takes place in a crapsack Medieval world plagued by never-ending war – and that’s before the demons show up! Wandering swordsman Guts ekes out a living by depriving people of theirs, and soon catches the eye of Griffith – the charismatic commander of a tight-knit band mercenaries. The group’s dreams of glory are short lived (along with their lives) after Griffith sacrifices their souls in exchange for demonic power. After barely escaping with his existence in tact, Guts pledges to introduce his former comrade to the business end of his Honda Civic-sized sword. He walks the path of vengeance, and he’ll cut through any demon standing in the road.
The Metabarons
While most of the work of avant-garde film director Alejandro Jodorowsky has a surrealist bark that’s worse than its bite, The Metabarons proves that he’s got that grimdark dog in him too. This epic saga is an offshoot of his graphic novel series The Incal, and follows a multi-generational family of intergalactic assassins. Each and every one of them has daddy issues, considering it’s family tradition for a father to mutilate his child – then that child must kill their father in armed combat as a rite of passage. When your dynasty is known for creating the greatest warriors in the galaxy, you’ve got to resort to some particularly brutal methods to stay on top. Featuring horrifying cybernetic enhancements, planet-killing weapons, and hyperspace hyperviolence, The Metabarons is essentially Jodorowsky’s version of Warhammer 40,000 – a gothic space opera that chews the scenery and spits it back out a bloody pulp.
Monstress
Don’t let the glittering Art Deco style fool you, Monstress by Marjorie Liu is as grimdark as it gets. In a fantasy world inspired by bloody 20th century East Asia, humanity is fighting a never-ending battle against the Arcanics – eldritch beings that are coveted their magical abilities. The matriarchal sorcerers that rule society use Arcanics as living batteries, dissecting them while they’re still breathing. Maika Halfwolf is an Arcanic on the run, trying to live long enough to avenge her dead mother. With the help of the demon that resides in the stump of her left arm, she might just be able to do it, provided the monster doesn’t consume Maika from the inside first. Violence, torture, cannibalism, Monstress lays it all out on the operating table.
Pretty Deadly
If Pretty Deadly by Kelly Sue DeConnick is an acid western, it is one very bad trip. The novel follows a young girl named Sissy and her elderly companion Fox as they ramble across the wasteland – telling stories about the gunslinging daughter of Death. It’s said that Deathface Ginny will appear to anyone who has been wronged by men, and she can be summoned by singing an appropriately creepy cowboy ballad. As Sissy travels the badlands, she learns that her history is irrevocably tied with the supernatural Ginny, and that they may share a common ancestor. Haunted, hallucinatory, and violent as all heck, Pretty Deadly gives Stephen King’s famously sombre western The Dark Tower a run for its hard-earned money.
Monster – The Perfect Edition
Monster by Naoki Urasawa is the story of a doctor who had it made, until he saved the life of the wrong patient. Dr. Kenzo Tenma was a renowned surgeon Germany, engaged to the beautiful daughter of his hospital director. After going against the director’s wishes and saving the life of a headshot child instead of a prominent politician, his marriage and his career crumbled. At least he can sleep easy knowing he made the right decision, right? Wrong. The child that Tenma grew up to become one of the most prolific serial killers in German history – a man who dreams of orchestrating the end the human race. The way Dr. Tenma sees it, the killer Johan Liebert is his responsibility, and he’s prepared to end the life of someone he should have let expire on the operating table. Monster is a thoroughly depressing exploration of the human nature – our most self-destructive made manifest in an angel-faced young murderer. Easily one of the most chilling antagonists in fiction, Liebert could give Hannibal Lector the jitters.
From Hell
Alan Moore is no stranger to the grimdark genre – it’s pretty much the only thing he does. This is the mind behind Watchmen, V For Vendetta, and Batman: The Killing Joke, after all! From Hell is Moore’s grimdarkest work yet, the story of the world’s most infamous serial killer: Jack the Ripper. A hodgepodge of hard facts, leading theories, and artistic liberties, Moore’s retelling of the story of London’s most famous murderer is a thoroughly depraved affair. The plot hinges around a corruption that has taken root of the very heart of Victorian-era London, stretching its tendrils across the city’s secret societies to the Royal Family itself. Conspiracy theorists, this one’s for you.
The Road
When it comes to grimdark, there are few who understand the genre more intimately than Cormac McCarthy. While his novels are generally sordid affairs involving wandering psychopaths, his post-apocalyptic opus The Road is the tender story of a father and son – who are equally doomed. The unnamed duo wander a slowly dying planet, avoiding the cannibal tribes of survivors that have cropped up in end times. There’s no food. There’s barely any water. The animals and plants are all bones and dust. The world is growing colder and darker by the day, and yet the father reminds his son that is their sacred duty to survive because they “carrying the fire.” It’s a tear-jerker testament to the indomitable human spirit, rendered in grimdark greys by illustrator Manu Larcenet. A hard read for a hard world.
Redlands
Redlands by Jordie Bellaire is a takes place in one of the most depraved, twisted, and maddening places on Earth: Florida. The small town of Redlands under the control of an immortal coven of witches – shadowy figures who have held onto power through demonic sacrifice. Serving as the local law enforcement, the coven maintains a tenuous peace with the town, but that peace is threatened with the arrival of a serial killer that is targeting young women. As the bodies begin to pile up, one of the witches is contacted by the vengeful spirit of the dead, a woman intent on dragging her killer kicking and screaming into the light. Feminist revenge at its finest.
The Walking Dead
If there was a Grimdark Hall of Fame, Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead would be one of the first inductees. Unless you’ve been living under a rock the size of Woodbury, you probably know the plot. After waking up in a hospital bed surrounded by hungry, walking corpses, Sheriff Rick Grimes realizes that the world he once knew is dead and gone. Now he has to lead a group of still-human survivors, while trying not to lose his humanity in the process. It’s a throughly brutal read, one where the true monsters are (surprise, surprise) the humans themselves. Sure, flesh-eating zombies are bad. But you know what’s worse? Flesh-eating people. Listen, I get things are bad, but things are never so bad that you have to eat your own children to survive. Chris, leader of The Hunters, I’m talking to you.
Crossed
Crossed by Garth Ennis does the impossible – it one-ups The Walking Dead in terms of pure horror. Imagine if all the meandering and morally uncomplicated zombies Robert Kirkman’s world were replaced by living, breathing, reasoning psychopaths. There’s a mysterious infection that’s causing average people to follow their most evil impulses, killing and maiming their way through the day. Imagine the zombies from 28 Days Later: fast and brutal, but this time they’re intelligent. The infected can be distinguished by the cross shaped rash that appears on their faces – though the evil grins help too. Now a group of survivors has to make their way across the American wasteland in order to seek shelter from the Crossed, but they better be careful. Contact with infected bodily fluids is a surefire way to catch the disease, and if there’s one thing the Crossed love doing more than anything else, it’s spreading their bodily fluids around. Disgusting.
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
