Comics & Graphic Novels

Spiegelman's graphic novel, which was recently banned by a school district in Tennessee, tells the story of how his Jewish parents survived the Holocaust in Poland.

My Favorite Thing is Monsters is Emil Ferris' debut graphic novel, about a ten year old girl who sees herself as a werewolf. Ferris always loved monsters, and also wanted to be one as a child. Her love of monsters is what helped her get thru some of the darkest periods of her life.

These days, almost every new movie, TV show, album or book feels so anticipated and pre-packaged that we're already tired of it by the time it's released. This makes it especially thrilling when something dazzling just appears like that alien spaceship in Arrival, startling even those whose business it is be in the know.

There are two things viewers should know right from the start about Legion, which premieres Wednesday night on FX. One is that it doesn't look, or feel, like a drama based on a comic book — it's more like a next-generation version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, as filtered through H.P. Lovecraft or Edgar Allan Poe.

"Donald and I go all the way back to when his hair was dark brown," Garry Trudeau jokes. His new book, Yuge!, is a collection of 30 years of comic strips featuring Trump as a character.

Graphic novelist Daniel Clowes, best known for his graphic novel Ghost World, has a new book, Patience, a love story that was five years in the making. In it, Clowes uses time travel to explore themes like tragedy and regret.

The new graphic novel by Malaysia-born cartoonist Sonny Liew spans 80 years as it tells the story of a fictional comic-book. Critic John Powers calls the book a "startlingly brilliant tour de force."

When Lucy Knisley agreed to go on a Caribbean cruise with her grandparents, she didn't know she'd spend 10 days basically keeping them alive. She writes about it in her new cartoon memoir.

In his first graphic novel, Jules Feiffer, 85, has returned to the seedy comic strips, hard boiled novels and B movies of his youth. Maureen Corrigan says it's "a mulligan stew of murder and desire."

Critic Maureen Corrigan recommends two graphic novels -- one about a Yiddish advice column in the early 1900s and another about a regiment of African-American soldiers who fought during World War I.

For the past 80 years, the Man of Steel has endured in books, movies, radio serials, comic books and cartoons. "Americans embrace Superman partly because he captured so many things that are part of our psyche and part of our sense of ourselves," says biographer Larry Tye.

The British director speaks with Fresh Air's Dave Davies about his new film, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, based on the graphic comic series by Bryan Lee O'Malley. Wright also directed the parody romantic zombie film Shaun of the Dead and the British TV sit-com, Spaced.

Edgar Wright's adaptation of a cult-favorite comic centers on a regular schmo who fights like a superhero when his new girlfriend's Seven Evil Exes come calling. Critic David Edelstein says the movie has a vintage look all its own -- "part comic-book panel and part arcade video-game screen."

Fresh Air remembers the comic book writer with highlights from 2003 and 2005 interviews. Pekar, who died Monday, was the author of the series American Splendor, which captured the angst of a man struggling with the daily ups and downs of life.

Before there was Superman, other comics roamed the funny pages. The TOON Treasury of Classic Children's Comics is an anthology of these forgotten gems, lovingly selected by famed comic artist Art Spiegelman and his wife, Francoise Mouly.

If a comic book about surviving middle school doesn't sound like a must read to you, think again. Critic Maureen Corrigan says that Jeff Kinney's Dog Days — the latest in his Diary of a Wimpy Kid series — hits home with any crowd.

Critic Milo Miles reviews The Art of Harvey Kurtzman: The Mad Genius of Comics. It's Dennis Kitchen and Paul Buhle's illustrated biography of influential artist and writer Harvey Kurtzman, the inventor of MAD Magazine.

In his new book, Secret Identity: The Fetish Art Of Superman's Co-creator Joe Shuster, Craig Yoe explores the risque art of the man behind Superman.