Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Books That Would Be On Your Syllabus If You Taught X 101

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish. They created the meme because they love lists. Who doesn’t love lists? They wanted to share these list with fellow book lovers and ask that we share in return to connect with our fellow book lovers. To learn more about participating in the challenge, stop by their page dedicated to it and dive in!

This week’s topic: Top Ten Books That Would Be On Your Syllabus If You Taught X 101

Comic books are often regarded as entertainment for a younger audience in Western culture and older comic book readers are treated like nostalgia nerds unable to let go of that last bit of their childhood. However, comics have evolved to tell complex stories through the years using art and words. If I were teaching a course, I’d introduce people to comics that I feel best showcase the literary brilliance that the medium is capable of producing. For many of these I will just be quoting myself, so I’ll just warn you now.

V for Vendetta by Alan Moore

For many years Alex Moore has been writing graphic novels which spin complex tales that tend to focus on darker themes dealing with the human condition. While I certainly could pick any number of Moore’s book, I will stick with the first book I read by him (and still a favorite to this day). Many people might be more familiar with the movie adaptation of this comic that starred Natalie Portman and Hugo Weaver in the eponymous role of V.

A frightening and powerful tale of the loss of freedom and identity in a chillingly believable totalitarian world, V for Vendetta stands as one of the highest achievements of the comics medium and a defining work for creators Alan Moore and David Lloyd.

Set in an imagined future England that has given itself over to fascism, this groundbreaking story captures both the suffocating nature of life in an authoritarian police state and the redemptive power of the human spirit which rebels against it. Crafted with sterling clarity and intelligence, V for Vendetta brings an unequaled depth of characterization and verisimilitude to its unflinching account of oppression and resistance.

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

Alison Bechdel might be best known for her comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For and the Bechdel Test, which is a sort of litmus test for media, that asks if there are at least two women in the media that talk to each other about something else other than a man. Fun Home is a graphic memoir that depicts Bechdel’s complicated relationship with her overbearing father. This book explores her sexuality, gender roles, and various issues she dealt with growing up as a queer child.

Kingdom Come by Mark Waid

I didn’t think I’d put too many superhero type comics on this list, but while going through my essentials, books like these popped. This is a Superman comic. Despite that, this book tells a more complicated story than a simple superhero tale. Superman has retreated to solitude after a hero named Magog is acquitted of killing Joker—who went on a killing spree in Metropolis, a bender that resulted in Lois’ death. When humanity expresses that Magog is where superheroism should go, Superman leaves them to that, seeming to lose quite a bit of faith in people. This book explores a moral dilemma, pondering many sides of the old question, “Is it morally justifiable to do y, if it’ll prevent x?”

Julio’s Day by Gilbert Hernández

This is a slice of life comic that opens up with the birth wails of Julio and ends with his death rattle 100 years later in the same house and in the same bed. Even though there are many iconic things that happen from 1900 to 2000, the comic kept the impact of such events insular, choosing to focus on the small scale impact of these events and how they did or didn’t affect Julio’s family. Things like the stock market crash happened and the family acknowledges it, but what does it mean to a family that’s already poor? What does it mean to a family already used to just getting by? This book also focuses on the people in their communities and how they impacted Julio and his family’s life, as well.

This story was filled with dark family secrets, loneliness, betrayal, mental health issues, racism, turning sexual tides, and many other things. While that seems so much for one graphic novel, the pains and joys in this story are told with such simplicity, often times without words or with only dialogue that says so much without the characters ever going into full details such as Julio’s sister telling him, “I don’t feel so sad when somebody dies, Julio, because they fly away to explore the stars and planets. When it’s our turn we join them in exploring the universe.” The art, the pacing, everything was just right for this story.

Daytripper by Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá

I think I’ll let the description speak for this one:

What are the most important days of your life?

Meet Brás de Oliva Domingos. The miracle child of a world-famous Brazilian writer, Brás spends his days penning other people’s obituaries and his nights dreaming of becoming a successful author himself—writing the end of other people’s stories, while his own has barely begun.

But on the day that life begins, would he even notice? Does it start at 21 when he meets the girl of his dreams? Or at 11, when he has his first kiss? Is it later in his life when his first son is born? Or earlier when he might have found his voice as a writer?

Each day in Brás’s life is like a page from a book. Each one reveals the people and things who have made him who he is: his mother and father, his child and his best friend, his first love and the love of his life. And like all great stories, each day has a twist he’ll never see coming…

In Daytripper, the Eisner Award-winning twin brothers Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá What are the most important days of your life?

Meet Brás de Oliva Domingos. The miracle child of a world-famous Brazilian writer, Brás spends his days penning other people’s obituaries and his nights dreaming of becoming a successful author himself—writing the end of other people’s stories, while his own has barely begun.

But on the day that life begins, would he even notice? Does it start at 21 when he meets the girl of his dreams? Or at 11, when he has his first kiss? Is it later in his life when his first son is born? Or earlier when he might have found his voice as a writer?

Each day in Brás’s life is like a page from a book. Each one reveals the people and things who have made him who he is: his mother and father, his child and his best friend, his first love and the love of his life. And like all great stories, each day has a twist he’ll never see coming…

In Daytripper, the Eisner Award-winning twin brothers Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá tell a magical, mysterious and moving story about life itself—a hauntingly lyrical journey that uses the quiet moments to ask the big questions. tell a magical, mysterious and moving story about life itself—a hauntingly lyrical journey that uses the quiet moments to ask the big questions.

Sin City by Frank Miller

Yet another comic that has been turned into two movies. Sin City is dark, unforgiving, and gritty. On the surface it’s a crime comic, but if you dig much deeper you’ll find these books explore many themes typical of day to day human life and exaggerates them to the nth degree. These books feature various stories, following various characters that all interlock together.

X-Men: Magneto Testament by Greg Pak

Today, the whole world knows him as Magneto, the most radical champion of mutant rights that mankind has ever seen. But in 1935, he was just another schoolboy – who happened to be Jewish in Nazi Germany. The definitive origin story of one of Marvel’s greatest icons begins with a silver chain and a crush on a girl – and quickly turns into a harrowing struggle for survival against the inexorable machinery of Hitler’s Final Solution From X-Men: Phoenix – Endsong writer Greg Pak and award-winning artist Carmine Di Giandomenico. Collects X-Men: Magneto Testament #1-5.

Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan 

You knew it was coming. I knew it was coming. However, this is an excellent series for readers looking for something less superhero-y.  I might be biased, but this would be a great comic to introduce people to because this series will always be relevant:

Y: THE LAST MAN, winner of three Eisner Awards and one of the most critically acclaimed, best-selling comic books series of the last decade, is that rare example of a page-turner that is at once humorous, socially relevant and endlessly surprising.

Written by Brian K. Vaughan (LOST, PRIDE OF BAGHDAD, EX MACHINA) and with art by Pia Guerra, this is the saga of Yorick Brown—the only human survivor of a planet-wide plague that instantly kills every mammal possessing a Y chromosome. Accompanied by a mysterious government agent, a brilliant young geneticist and his pet monkey, Ampersand, Yorick travels the world in search of his lost love and the answer to why he’s the last man on earth.

Truth: Red, White, and Black by Robert Morales

Another superhero pick, but one that brings about a social awareness:

In 1940, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby created Captain America, a frail patriot who was transformed by a “super-soldier serum” into a physically perfect specimen to champion freedom, an American alternative to the Nazi uebermensch. Now, writer Morales pursues this idea and also draws inspiration from U.S. government experiments in the 1930s that left unwitting African-Americans infected with syphilis, leading to many deaths.

Beginning his story in 1940, Morales incisively depicts the racism his various African-American characters confront both in civilian life and in the military. These black soldiers are compelled to act as test subjects for the super-soldier serum; some die, while others become deformed. Ultimately only one survives, Isaiah Bradley. Substituting for Captain America on a mission, Bradley discovers Jewish concentration camp inmates subjected to experiments.

Ranging from heroic figures to pointed caricatures, artist Baker makes his varied styles gel. Drawing on copious research, Morales dramatizes how racism corrupted American history, yet verges close to asserting moral equivalency between America and Nazi Germany. Roosevelt was ultimately in charge of the super-soldier program: would he have approved these human experiments? Besides, how can one talk about “truth” regarding a fictional creation? Simon and Kirby devised a fable about an American everyman tapping his inner strength to combat genocidal fascism; Kirby helped pioneer positive depictions of blacks in comics. By adding Morales’s backstory to Captain America’s origin, Marvel has turned the character into a white superman who owes his powers to the deaths and exploitation of African-Americans.

Preacher by Garth Ennis

I love my theology debates, so what better comic to get all existential and theological with than Ennis’ Preacher?

One of the most celebrated comics titles of the late 1990s, PREACHER is a modern American epic of life, death, love and redemption also packed with sex, booze, blood and bullets – not to mention angels, demons, God, vampires and deviants of all stripes.

At first glance, the Reverend Jesse Custer doesn’t look like anyone special-just another small-town minister slowly losing his flock and his faith. But he’s about to come face-to-face with proof that God does indeed exist. Merging with a bizarre spiritual force called Genesis, Jesse now possesses the power of “the Word,” an ability to make people do whatever he utters. He begins a violent and riotous journey across the country in search of answers from the elusive deity.