The Greatest Graphic Novels Of All Time

Dave McKean is probably best known as the cover artist for Neil Gaiman's Sandman series (which we'll get to later), but he's surprisingly as good a writer as he is an artist. In Cages, his only graphic novel, he examines the lives of a number of residents in an apartment building as they wrestle with issues of creativity and belief. Not only is it gloriously drawn, it's an amazing meditation on what it means to be an artist and how we force ourselves to change to communicate.

And from the sublime to the ridiculous - Peter Bagge's Hate comics were the best illustrations of what life was like in early '90s Seattle, as grunge swept the globe and flannel shirts were suddenly cool again. Buddy Does Seattle collects the first fifteen issues of that series, for grown-up readers only, as acne-scarred everyman Buddy Bradley deals with crazy girlfriends, crappy jobs, annoying hipsters and more. It's a trashbag classic that has still not been beaten for hilarity.

DC's Wednesday Comics was a bizarre experiment in retailing - one-page stories starring a variety of superheroes by some of the industry's top talents, published in an impossible-to-store broadsheet newspaper format. Thankfully, after the series wrapped up, they collected it all in a massive book for you to pull out at your leisure. While not everything in here is great, stories by Neil Gaiman, Walt Simonson, Kurt Busiek, and many more make it an awesome purchase with amazing visual appeal.

It's interesting how sometimes the least respected characters can make the most interesting stories. Hawkman has been an albatross around DC's neck for years - in a universe where just about anybody can fly, how useful is a superhero who can only fly? 1989's Hawkworld rebooted the character in the most interesting way yet, as writer Tim Truman attempted to clean up a continuity mess while also giving us a rip-roaring sci-fi tale that brought Hawkman (and Hawkgirl) back to their roots.