/lit/ here. What are the best graphic novels for adults? Also I like things that are kind of dark

/lit/ here. What are the best graphic novels for adults? Also I like things that are kind of dark.
Is pic related any good

Its real damn good. I also suggest you read Hellboy and the Goon, as you can't go wrong with any of those.

Well you're already under the assumption that there is an "adult vs kids" thing with comics, which there kind of is, but not a great way to view them. But that's another discussion.

Anyway, I would highly recommend Sandman (as you posted), Hellboy, Hellblazer, The Punisher if that's your thing, etc. Could you narrow down "dark"?

What genre? Horror? Noir? War? Fantasy? Or just dark in general?

No, it's edgy and grimdark. Real adults don't care about what they enjoy and just have fun.

Thanks.
>Could you narrow down "dark"?
Authors I like include Flannery O'Connor, Cormac McCarthy, William Faulkner, etc. if that helps.
Horror would be nice, but im not too particular on genre

>Thinking Sandman isn't fun.

Fuck you and your opinions.

Beautiful Stories for Ugly Children

Hellboy and stuff in the mignolaverse is great, an user is actually story timing it chronologically on this board. It's probably going to go on for the next few weekends

Well Hellboy is horror in the sense that most of his big bads are eldritch gods one might compare to H.P. Lovecraft's work. Outside of that, his stories pull a lot from various folklore from around the world, and the occasional Nazi fight or a Russian mystic.

Sandman, Lucifer, and Hellblazer (Constantine) all deal in trippy, often biblical, material.

Sandman is a good one, but I don't think that something like Mignolaverse compares to it or should be counted amongst the best runs. Locke and Key is the better horror comic. Read something like Stray Bullets, Concrete, Blast, Jimmy Corrigan, Maus, Boxers and Saints, Irmina.

>graphic novels for adults
just call them comics, don't be like /toy/ calling their dolls poseable characters

Check out Morrisons The Invisibles too.

My definition of "adult" is someone who cares about quality, but does not care what others think of his hobbies. An adult is one who likes the good stuff.

Don't listen to these capefags OP. Sandman is decent for something published by the big two. But if you want something more grounded in reality read The Heartbreak Soup stories by Gilbert Hernandez or Locas by Jaime Hernandez or anything by Daniel Clowes or Adrian Tomine. Also Chester Brown and Seth are /lit/-tier.

I wouldn't exactly call Sandman one of the big 2, despite its connections to DC. It's very much its own entity

"The Nao of Brown"

One of the better standalone adult comic works in recent memory.

adult would accept that comic book is not actually a book, much less a novel.

just read Stray Bullets

I don't get the cartoonist snobbery. Just because Clowes publishes for Fanta and draws his own stuff, doesn't make his time travel, ray gun or David Lynch ripoff grounded or any good.

>no one has mentioned watchmen yet.

Anything by Charles Burns.

The Squirrel Machine by Hans Rickheit

Transmetropolitan by Ellis

The Scarlet Traces.

You must be delusional then. Please go see your local doctor.

>Vertigo is an imprint of DC Comics
>Cape characters actually appear in the book

I would argue that Fables by Bill Willingham is "adult" but only read up to vol 11 (issue #75).

Anything by François Schuiten. Particularly when he's working with Peeters.

There's nothing better than Love & Rockets.

There's only two "graphic novels" that matter, Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns. It's all a downhill shitshow from there. Fact.

Comics only do one thing well: entertaining prepubescent boys. And they ain't been doing that since the mid 90s. If you ain't a prepubescent boy and you're still reading funny books you suffer from a severe case of arrested development. Fact.

Grow the fuck up.

Anything by Jason.

>srs comics for srs people like myself

Read the Lucifer spinoff. I liked it more than Sandman.

Wrong. Comics that are made entirely by single individuals instead of a disjointed team of random specialists are inherently better. Also, they are producing original material and not pimping out your favorite superwhores for going on 80 years now.

Tell me, how many Superman or Spider-Man stories will be published before you gullible manchildren realize they are just in it for the money and care not about producing art?

L&R is fine, especially for how long los bros. have been at it. But there is plenty of stuff better.

Very true, but this only applies to capefaggotry.

Frank series by Jim Woodring.

>t. "mature adult" manchild

Tintin has more literary merit than The Dark Knight Returns

Pinocchio by Winshluss

I usually hate capeshit, but sandman is top-tier.

Enigma.

Swamp Thing was Alan Moore's definitive run and much better than Watchmen, sorry.

read both

No, you. If you had ever read any comics other than capeshit you would not have said what you said in your first post.

Nobody mentioned Spider-man or Batman. Cartoonists constantly have to be compared to capeshit to show any kind of merit. No way is a cartoonist like Clowes even on the same level as a genre writer like Gaiman, let alone a /lit/erary writer.

Anything by Alan Moore, Warren Ellis, Neil Gaiman, Mike Mignola, or Grant Morrison. Start with pic related.

Por que no los dos indeed.

Spoken like a capefag of the highest order. Go jerk off in your underoos user.

Hooray! The obligatory non-capeshit thread of the weekend is here.

Shut up, faggot. No one gives a shit about your try-hard hipster rag you give lip service to but don't actually care about. Everybody knows you just need an "adult" book to buy so you can feel less embarrassed about still buying your copy of Spiderman every month.

Dude, I usually hate clowes, but you are super wrong.

>hating on tintin

Nice bait user

I've read more than you ever will and what I said is a fact. Sorry you're a manbabby who still reads trash written exclusively to entertain children as an adult.

Different user, but Tintin escapes death through LUCK so many times, I gave up on those comics.

Nobody hates Tintin because nobody cares enough about Tintin to love it or hate it. Including your intellectually dishonest ass.

It's good for the first 50 or so issues then goes to shit.

All good writers eventually work for the big 2. Indieshit is peak pseudo-intellectualism.

>Hernandez
>Better than Gaiman

>You're a capefag because I disagree with you
Okay

Then why mention Clowes at all? What I said is true though. A few like Chris Ware and Gilbert Hernandez are the only exceptions among Americans.

Ellis is a good pick

>planetary
>Transmet
>Ocean
>Orbiter

Patrician. But also read Alan Moores Songbook. His poem/song comics are his best

this. only incel soyboys pretend comics are anything more than superheroes

T. American

Europe has far better comics than america can make. So much so that the industry is continually saved by european writers. Without eurocomics there would be no american comics.

>t. estronaut

>Europe has far better comics than america can make.
Name five.

Try this, it's about architecture.

>spunky Maggie
Well, dropped before I even started. Thanks for saving me from making a bad decision.

Fine by me brother. I live to see plebs get filtered.

God loves, man kills

Read Gilbert Hernandez's stories. I bet you'll like them.
Jaime is shit and only known because of his talented brother.

Transmetropolitan whips

>plebs
Oh, you sweet child. The only thing your funny books are filtering is your crushing self-inflicted misery. But you and I both know how temporary that reprieve is for you ;^)

If you read and like Sandman, try out The Unwritten after if you want another look at how stories can shape the culture and society that people live in.

If you like Thomas Pynchton, James Joyce
>Watchmen
>Promethea
>Skreemer (by Peter Milligan and Brett Ewins)
If you like Dashiel Hammet, Robert A. Heinlein or Nietzsche
>The Dark Knight Returns
>Batman: Year One
>Daredevil: Born Again
If your interested in Holocaust literature.
>Maus
If you like Peter Ackroyd
>From Hell
If you like Phillip K. Dick
>Shade the Changing Man
If your in to kitchen sink realism
>American Splendor
>Robert Crumb's Diary comics
>Love and Rockets (Jamie Hernandez books)
If your in to magical realism
>Love and Rockets (Gilbert Hernandez books)
>Cerebus
If your in to fantasy or space opera
>ElfQuest
>The Incal

I recommend doing a little research to see what suits your tastes.

I can do better and name 5 that are written by europeans and are published in america
Sandman
Watchmen
Swamp Thing
Hellblazer
Planetary

>If you like Phillip K. Dick
>>Shade the Changing Man
I don't track this

>naming a bunch of basic bitch capeshit
good job pig pen

>Cerebus
>magical realism
It's straight out fantasy.

I think you have that the other way around. Gilbert is kind of shit and is too into fetish stuff. Jamie has way better linework.

Trippy sci-fi that questions the nature of identity, nationalism and the limits of progress, within a heroic archyticpal character.

Just my thought.

>why mention clowes
Because there is much than two people in this thread.

>not even reading my post.
Good job

you mean where you changed it from
>Europe has far better comics than america can make to
>here's a list of basic bitch american capeshit written by bongs

damn, there is one salty user in this thread.

Sandman
Hellboy (probably B.P.R.D. too but i haven't read it)
Daytripper
Habibi
Berlin
Low
East of West
Locke and Key
Lucifer (mike carey. not the recent bullshit)
The Unwritten
The Eternaut
Punisher: Born
if you like X-Men, Age of Apocalypse and Uncanny X-Force
The Goon
From Hell
Manifest Destiny
Black Orchid
We3
Monstress

sandman isn't really capeshit

you forgot mike carey and rick remender

the problem with hellblazer is that there's so much to read. i've only read about two thirds of the whole thing i think

Wait, I thought the thread was for best /lit/-ish comics/graphic novels, not just decent one's you happen to like, because there is some rather mediocre stuff in the list.

Daytripper is great though. Haven't seen that one mentioned yet.

Blueberry
Corto Maltes
Alack Sinner
Paracuellos
The Metabarons

Just proving that americans can't even handle their own comic industry. All you can do is import

Rick Remender is pretty shit. I don't know how he gets such good artists.

>too much to read
>a person asking for more to read
Man up and read the whole Hellblazer

Describing the taste of someone's ejaculate in your mouth as "salty" certainly made your case.

>mediocre

OP asked for dark stuff most of that has some aspect of horror or violence (dystopian can be horror) to it

lmao, which one of the books you listed were imported from Europe?

>rick remender is shit

patently false and he has a sense of deliberate tragedy that many other writers are totally lacking

i'm not OP and last i checked the more recent used TPBs were still too expensive. "manning up" also means being fiscally responsible.

Ring of the Niblung by Craig P Russell. One of the best comics i ever read. It's an adaption of Wagers ring saga and is so fucking good.

All you fucking retard. All are euopean writers.

That's because Remender uses his characters as weirdly personal mouth pieces for stuff that he as a person is clearly working through in therapy.

I want to like remender because he comes up with some pretty great premises, but his execution is sorely lacking.

10 issue volumes go for 20 dollars. Hellblazer is one of the cheepest series to pick up.