Bookfinder

Comics and graphic books are now being regarded as worthy of being considered heavyweight literature, and Joe Sacco has played a big part in this. Having made a name for himself with his war reportage books Palestine and Safe Area: Gora De, he doesn't comprise or relent with his new offering.

...a dazzling brilliant book that is subtly political, never heavy-handed and always cast with a fair eye.

How to update Samuel Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner? By embarking on a mostly pictoral interpretation of the text and making it an allegorical treatise on environmental disaster, obviously.

If William Burroughs wrote a graphic novel, it might look something like this. 

There is something painfully familiar about this simple, funny and sad graphic novel about a mum trying to engage her awkward, moody teenage metalhead of a son over the 6 weeks of his summer holiday

Grandville is an anthropomorphised detective tale set in an alternative reality where not only are animals the master race and humans the 'dough face underclass' but France won the Napoleonic wars and Paris is the capital of the world.

Scott Pilgrim's life is totally sweet. He's 23 years old, he's in a rock band, he's 'between jobs', and he's dating a cute high school girl. Nothing could possibly go wrong...

This graphic novel tells two stories: that of the childhood of Mary Talbot, daughter of the eminent Joyce scholar James Atherton (and now respected academic in her own right), and that of Lucia, daughter of James Joyce himself.

Once again Daniel Clowes proves himself to be the master of the graphic novel and the celebrator of the loveable loser.

The story of a mute, reluctant super hero from another planet, and the earthly teenager with whom he shares a strange destiny.

Bechdel's moving 'graphic autobiography' beautifully tells the story of her strange childhood and adolescence in the funeral home run by her father.

When Adrian Tomine was asked by his wife-to-be to document the lead-up to their wedding in a comic book that would be given out as a party favour, he soon found himself with a fully-fledged graphic novel on his hands.

Dave Lizewski is just an ordinary American teenager. He has a MySpace page, he loves comic books, and he is unable to find a girlfriend. Then an idea hits him: why not become a real life super hero?

Set in modern Tokyo, with the Capulets and Montagues recast as organised-crime rivals, this racy retelling gets to the heart of the love story and the foolish rivalry that dooms it.

This is the complete story of Vladek Spiegelman and his wife, living and surviving in Hitler's Europe.

Books like this only come around rarely, and when they do, they deserve all of your attention.

This is the superlative post-modern superhero tale involving pulp noir, science, hubris, the Cold War, love, lust, craziness and pirates.

Joe Sacco is one of the most unique graphic novelists of his time. I wonder if he would even be satisfied with the label, graphic novelist. His works encompass so much more. He tells oral histories of our times. He writes journalism.

This graphic novel by Bruce Paley illustrated with gorgeous charcoal-y drawings by Carole Swain tells short stories and anecdotes from Bruce's life as a teenager and drifter who turns 18 in the Summer of Love and hits the road to discover America.

The perfect story to share with young people to explore themes of immigration, alienation and communication

Faber reprints this gloriously arch and bittersweet graphic novel by Adrian Tomine, surely one of the biggest reasons to not dismiss graphic novels as worthy competitors in the sphere of literary fiction.

This is an examination of the lives of two recent high school graduates from the advantaged perch of a constant and undetectable eavesdropper, with the shaky detachment of a scientist who has grown fond of the prize microbes in his petri dish.

The next in Bryan Talbot's anthropomorphic detective graphic novel series, Grandville, featuring tough badger DI LeBrock is a steampunk extravaganza of murder, political intrigue and good ol' fashioned pulp fiction deduction.

This extraordinary graphic novel is so obviously a labour of love that the reader can only marvel at the energy that has been expended in its creation.

Alice in Sunderland is a graphic novel like no other. Bryan Talbot takes the city of Sunderland and the story of Lewis Carroll and Alice Liddell (the ‘real’ Alice) as the spine of his story and around them spins a spectacularly diverse range of different stories.

This graphic novel presents Cash as we know him: dangerous, possessed and full of music.

Simone Lia's follow-up to Fluffy is another humourous take on the sense of identity that comes with a quest for a place to belong. Taking on the idea of Lia's quest for a husband leading her on a voyage of religion and an exploration of her Catholicism.

Daniel Clowes’ latest exercise in dysfunctional love affairs smitten by misanthropy concerns the titular, Mister Wonderful, Marshall, a neurotic divorcee who goes on a first date, with the obvious ‘complications’ ensuing.

Persepolis is Satrapi's history of Iran and her life in Iran and France as she tries to retain her Iranian culture but also grow up and become independent.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is comics scriptwriting supremo Alan Moore's incredible, reinvention of classic heroes and villains.

This graphic novel from Guy Delisle is a charming insight into a country notorious for its use of concealment and isolation as social control.

The new graphic novelist from Hannah Berry (trivia: she is Booktrust's writer in residence) takes her love of dark humour, les bandes dessinées and noir and twists them into a boiler room of a novel

After years of selfimposed exile from a civilization rife with degradation and indecency, cynical journalist Spider Jerusalem is forced to return to a job he hates and a city he loathes.

In the early hours of a summer morning, a young woman encounters a mysterious mobile library while walking down an empty suburban street.

Stories that range from darkly fantastical and unsettling to surprising discoveries that shape personal identity.