Don’t want to commit to a longterm relationship with a graphic novel series? Sounds like you need a graphic novel one night stand. These standalones come with no strings, and no series attached. This way, you can get really graphic with one story, but still have time for yourself while you’re “figuring things out” or “focusing on your career.” Just don’t make it a pattern. One of these days you’re gonna want to settle down. Why not do it with Brian K. Vaughn’s Saga? There’s a graphic novel about a loving, committed relationship between hot extraterrestrials – everything you could ever want in love. Until then, it’s time to sow your wild oats with these titles: the 10 best standalone graphic novels.
Daytripper
Daytripper by Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá is about a day in the life of obituary writer Brás de Oliva Domingos – a day that ends in his death. Told across a series of ten vignettes each taking place at pivotal moments in the writer’s life, the graphic novel examines the many ways that Brás’ could have bought the farm. First love, parenthood, old age, Brás’ life comes to a close at each one of these milestones, before skipping forward into a future where he survives. This isn’t a “break the loop” plot like Groundhog Day, but rather a mediation on the fragility of life – how any moment could be our last. A painfully relatable novel, Daytripper will have you questioning your own life. Are you really living it to the fullest? Would you have any regrets if you died tomorrow? Are you happy with the way things are? Heady questions for a graphic novel one night stand, but important to consider regardless.
Spinning
Spinning is the graphic memoir Tillie Walden, recounting her days as a young figure skater – a sport she hated with every fiber of her adolescent being. She spent ten years criss-crossing the country and winning competitions, all the while growing more and more disillusioned with the sport and its culture. Tillie’s inner turmoil came to a head after she fell in love with another woman, and realized that she couldn’t square the heteronormative culture of figure skating with her budding queer identity. It’s a love letter to overachievers everywhere, children who are led to believe their value comes from what they can accomplish as opposed to who they are. It’s a graphic novel that feels like medicine for your wounded inner child – one that encourages you to accept yourself whether or not you take home a trophy.
This One Summer
This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki is a coming of age story about two teenage girls and their experiences at a lake house vacation. Rose and Windy were always close, and their families have spent summers at an Awago lake house for as long as they can remember. While their childhood memories of the place are wrapped in bliss, this summer, the mood has changed. Rose and her mother Alice are at each others’ throats, and the young girl seeks solace in her best friend, and in a few crushes on some local boys. One of the most challenged books in American libraries, This One Summer is an honest look at two young people discovering their sexuality, and learning that the adults in their lives don’t have it all as “figured out” as they claim. If you’re looking for wistful bildungsroman by the side of a lake, this novel is for you.
Blankets
Craig Thompson’s Blankets is a graphic memoir about the author’s younger years, centered around his tumultuous experience with first love. While at a winter church camp (you know where this is going) the Christian Craig falls hard for Raina, a young Baptist who has a complicated relationship with her family and her faith. As the devout Craig and the wavering Raina begin to grow closer, their unresolved inner turmoil tears their relationship apart. Yes, this in an “ugly cry” kind of novel – one that will having you sobbing into the blankets for which it is named. It’s sweet as a first kiss and brutal as goodbye, and you’ll gleefully weep through every page. And if you had a Christian upbringing? Oof. This graphic novel will go straight for your emotional jugular.
Through The Woods
Through The Woods by Emily Carroll is tears a page out of the Brothers Grimm’s book – five pages, to be precise. A collection of five dark fairytales, Through The Woods features some of the author’s most celebrated webcomics – including the viral sensation His Face All Red. Rendered in hauntingly beautiful colors, this novel is certain get your spine tingling harder than Little Red Riding Hood’s while facing down a Big Bad Wolf. The standout story is about a relationship between two brothers – one murdered the other, and yet the dead one appears to have come back to life. Is it a resurrected spirit with complete amnesia of the crime? Or a doppelgänger that didn’t do its research? You’ll find out, but you may not like the answer.
Black Hole
Charles Burn’s Black Hole is a coming of age story that forgoes graphic memoir coziness to tell a tale of adolescent horror. In a suburban 1970’s Seattle, the kids are not alright – the neighborhood has fallen to the grips of a sexually transmitted plague. The symptoms range from subtle changes to monstrous mutations, but one thing is certain, once you get it, there’s no cure. Black Hole is a parable about the abject terror that comes with puberty – a changing body is a yucky thing. When changing bodies are compelled to plaster themselves all over other changing bodies, things can only get worse. And once people start turning up murdered, things do. Bizarre, alienating, and utterly gross, don’t read this one on a full stomach.
We3
Do you like dressing your pets up in adorable little costumes and parading them around? Evidently, so does We3‘s writer Grant Morrison. But instead of dressing up dogs and cats in vampire capes and fabric hot dog buns, he equips them with cybernetic murder suits fit for government wetwork. The dog, cat and rabbit that make up the Animal Weapons 3 task force have been outfitted with cutting edge technology, and are sicced on enemies of the state. After multiple successful assassinations, the government has decided to “retire” the trio through euthanasia, but their scientist creator just let them out of their cages. On the run from the long arm of the law, this animal trio has to fight to survive in a dog eat dog world. Cyberborg pets vs. black-ops soldiers, what more could you want in a graphic novel?
After The Rain
After The Rain is a graphic novel adaption of Nnedi Okorafor’s short story On The Road, which is about a woman who is having a very bad day. While visiting her grandmother in Nigeria, young Chioma hears a knock at the door after a powerful storm. When she opens the door, she finds a young boy standing there. Not weird on its own, but when she realizes that he’s holding his own severed head, things get weirder fast. After touching Chioma, the boy disappears into thin air. Realizing that she’s somehow been magically marked by the little punk, Chioma sets out on a quest to lift a curse that she barely understands. Kids these days, walking around with their heads cut off. They got no respect.
Fun Home
Before it was adapted into a devastating Broadway musical, Fun Home was a devastating graphic novel by Alison Bechdel. It’s the story of the author’s relationship with her late father Bruce, an English teacher and funeral home director. After coming out as a lesbian in college, Alison learns that her father is gay. A little while later, he died by apparent suicide. Reeling from the revelation, Alison reexamines her less than happy childhood with her father, and realizes that his emotional coldness and outbursts of anger must have come from the secret that he kept. Painful and painfully funny, Fun Home is the story of a woman shouldering the twin burdens of grief and love for a person she lost.
Blue Is The Warmest Color
Jul Maroh’s graphic novel Blue Is The Warmest Color is better known for its famously tragic film adaption, centered around the doomed love between two young French women. Rendered in watercolors the consistency of the tears you’ll shed reading it, this novel details the star-crossed romance between Emma and Clementine. Clementine’s electric relationship with Emma starts out like a dream, but reality hits hard as the pair deal with the social stigma of queerness as well as their own turbulent emotions. Like any tragic romance worth its salt, the whole thing comes crashing down in anger and heartbreak. If you’re looking for a cozy romance comfort read, put this novel back on the bookstore shelf. If you need a good cry, buy twelve copies.
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
