Gosh! Best Graphic Novels of 2020 - Adults
By Gosh! Comics
Gosh! Best Graphic Novels of 2020 - Adults
By Gosh! Comics
Our favourite graphic novels of 2020. For the full list, plus previous years, visit our webstore at goshlondon.com.
A Man And His Cat 1
Umi Sakurai
£14.99 £14.24Sometimes you want harrowing memoir. Sometimes you want gripping thrills. Sometimes you want experimentation. And sometimes you want a heartwarming story about an older man and his homely cat. A sensation in Japan, this lovely book is one for the pet owners out there. It’s about how we can find what we’re looking for in our animal companions, and what they might even find in you. Umi Sakurai’s art has a dreamy quality which makes titular cat Fukumaru’s cuteness nigh-on unbearable. But in the end it works, because it’s just so damn lovely that you’d have to have a heart of stone to be cynical in the face of it.
Blue In Green
Ram V
£15.99 £15.19The latest book from Ram V and his Grafity's Wall artist Anand RK has had a lot of heat, and was certainly one of our most anticipated books of the year given Ram’s These Savage Shores making last year’s list. Blue in Green (taking its name from the classic Miles Davis track) is a psychological horror set in the world of jazz. Erik Dieter is a teacher whose most promising days as a musician are long behind him. After the funeral of his mother he has a disturbing vision which sets him on a path that may lead to his destruction. It's about legacy and obssession in the pursuit of creativity, with stunning art and storytelling that marks a new high water mark for its creators.
Dragman
Steven Appleby
£18.99 £18.04Given his near-40 year career making comics (plus animation, fine art, illustration, etc), it’s remarkable to think that this is Steven Appleby’s first graphic novel. Even more remarkable for it to be a superhero story that is also a gripping thriller, a witty underground comic, and a semi-autobiographical meditation on identity. August Crimp is the superhero Dragman, whose powers are only present while he wears women’s clothes. Drawn out of retirement by a serial killer who is targeting transgender women, Crimp puts his life on the line one more time. What’s amazing about the book is how well it works on every level, with its warm humanity that which resonates most at the end. Appleby is a British comics legend, so it’s no surprise that his first expanded narrative should be so damn good.
Flake
Matthew Dooley
£18.99 £18.04The world of ice cream vans is a fascinating one. Dragon’s Den star Duncan Bannatyne has told some amazing stories of his time as an ice cream seller, and the cutthroat world that he operated in (all the more so for it being during the Glasgow Ice Cream Wars, a gang turf war that used the vans to move drugs and stolen goods). So it’s no surprise that Matthew Dooley’s graphic novel should be so entertaining in its tale of warring vans in a North East seaside town. What is a surprise is just how accomplished this, Dooley’s first graphic novel, is. With its spot-on portrayal of the all-too familiar fictional town of Dobbiston and its witty portrait of the half-brothers at the centre of the story, it shows a sophistication that is unusual in a debut. A funny, accessible graphic novel that’s a perfect conversion tool for the non-comics reader!
Glass Town
Isabel Greenberg
£22.00 £20.90Isabel Greenberg is perfectly suited to write about writing, and the mastery of her storytelling is fully realised in Glass Town. An exquisitely crafted weaving of the real and imagined lives of the Brontës, Greenberg digs deep into Brontë juvenilia to fully submerge the reader in the chaotic and confusing world of Glass Town. Following the siblings - with a focus on Charlotte - from childhood to adulthood, Greenberg perfectly depicts the impact what started as a childhood pastime has across their whole lives. Not to mention that Glass Town is stunning to look at, and each page is full of wonder. Greenberg has managed to create a book that is full of the fantastical, yet remains a faithful and personal exploration of one of literature’s most iconic families.
House Of X/powers Of X
Jonathan Hickman and Pepe Larraz
£29.99 £28.49Serialised last year (but collected in March), this was easily the biggest superhero event we’d seen in quite some time, and probably the most seismic shift in the status quo of Marvel’s mutants since Grant Morrison’s explosive run nearly 20 years ago. Jonathan Hickman, along with artists RB Silva and Pepe Larraz, simultaneously embraced and turfed out recent continuity with this meticulously plotted tale that sees Charles Xavier execute a bold, potentially crazy plan for mutantkind. With story threads running in the past, present and far flung future, it’s both a gigantic reset button for a corner of the Marvel universe that had been overlooked for some time, and an exciting, original story filled with the kind of jaw-dropping beats that you want from top-drawer superhero entertainment.
Paying the Land
Joe Sacco
£22.00 £20.90Joe Sacco, undisputed king of comics reportage, is back with his first full-length work since 2009’s Footnotes in Gaza (not counting “narrative panorama” The Great War). Spending several years touring through Canada’s Northwest Territory, Sacco chronicles the experience of the Dené, the indigenous people of the region. It’s a familiar colonial story, one of forced settlement, stolen resources, suppressed culture and official neglect. Familiar, but sadly all-too often not told, especially among descendents of the colonisers. As usual, Sacco acts as witness to the stories of those he encounters in his travels, piecing together the grand arc of history while never losing sight of the human stories that make it up, told with Sacco’s typical clarity and verve. He’s a great cartoonist and a great communicator, and this book is a reminder of just how important that can be.
Perramus: The City & Oblivion
Juan Sasturain and Alberto Breccia
£45.99 £43.69Alberto Breccia (an Argentinian comics artist who was truly one of the greats) and Juan Sasturain’s politically charged post-modern masterpiece is collected in English for the first time in a seriously solid piece of hardcover book design. This phenomenal work follows a political dissident who travels Latin America with several like-minded freedom fighters (including, it would seem, Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges) encountering despotic regimes and absurdist characters, all the while evading the clutches of a sinister death squad. It’s all the more remarkable given that it was created while Argentina was still in the grip of a terrifying dictatorship, where those who spoke out were routinely disappeared.
Portrait of a Drunk
Florent Ruppert, Jerome Mulot, et al.
£27.99 £26.59A decidedly unromantic view of the pirate’s life as we follow Guy, a thoroughly unpleasant fellow who finds himself a carpenter on a pirate crew. Guy cares only about one thing, where his next drink is coming from, and he doesn’t care who he has to rob, batter or kill to get it. It’s a misanthropic tale that’s elevated by Olivier Schrauwen’s observant, clean line whimsy meeting Ruppert & Mulot’s ethereal, clinical and satirical brush strokes. These three are some of the most exciting creators working in French comics today, and this collaboration doesn’t disappoint.
Pulp
Ed Brubaker
£11.99 £11.39(Note, the hardcover was released in 2020) Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips are one of the most solidly reliable creative collaborations in comics, and their latest original graphic novel, a thriller set in the age of pulps as World War II looms, is typically excellent. Our lead is Max WInter, an aging western pulp writer whose youth as an outlaw comes in handy when he gets drawn into one last score so he can provide for his wife when he’s gone: ripping off the American Nazi movement. It’s a propulsive, gripping read that feels all the more satisfying for some of the scenes we’ve had over the past, oh, 4 years or so?
Slaughterhouse-Five: The Graphic Novel
Kurt Vonnegut, Ryan North, et al.
£18.99 £18.04Kurt Vonnegut’s classic anti-war novel gets its first comics adaptation, and what an adaptation it is. Ryan North and Albert Monteys craft the best adaptation of a post-modern novel to comics since Paul Karasik & David Mazzucchelli’s masterful take on Paul Auster’s City of Glass. Like that book, North and Monteys’ work is more than just transposing prose into comics, but rather is a true adaptation, utilising the storytelling potential of the medium to its full. All the humour, horror and humanity is intact in a graphic novel that is enriched by knowledge of the original, but equally offers an excellent introduction to Billy Pilgrim’s story to readers who have never picked up Vonnegut.
Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen: Who Killed Jimmy Olsen?
Matt Fraction
£26.00Matt Fraction and Steve Lieber tap into goofier times with gleeful abandon in this love letter to the silver age adventures of Jimmy Olsen. After he’s targeted for assassination, Jimmy fakes his death so he can track down his would-be killer. What follows is a convoluted, irreverent, very funny romp through the DC universe, filled with narrative trickery and silly digressions. Don’t worry though, all the threads come together in the end for a thoroughly satisfying conclusion to what is one of the most fun superhero books we’ve seen in quite some time.
The Swamp
Yoshiharu Tsuge
£21.00 £19.95Yoshiharu Tsuge is one of the most revered, influential artists in manga, but virtually unknown in the west due to so little ever being published in English (only 3 short stories have been translated in the past) . That’s a situation that has thankfully changed this past year, which has also seen the publication of The Man Without Talent (also highly recommended). This is the first in a series of books that will be presenting Tsuge’s work for Garo magazine (probably his most-beloved body of work) in chronological order. Even in this early collection of tales from 1965-66, Tsuge is crafting lyrical, literary short stories that speak to the humanity of their characters and lay the groundwork for the avant-gard masterpieces that were to come.
The Times I Knew I Was Gay: A Graphic Memoir 'for everyone. Candid, authentic and utterly charming' Sarah Waters
Eleanor Crewes
£14.99 £14.24Ellie Crewes’ debut graphic novel (which began its life as a zine, so hang in there self-publishers!) is a work of charming honesty that elevates itself above hackneyed cliches of the grand moment where one comes out to the world. Ellie’s struggles to find that truth within herself lead to a sometimes funny, sometimes painful journey where she takes one step forward and two steps back on her journey to realising she is gay. Her art is pleasingly freeform and borderless, a cross between a diary and a sketchbook, which gives it an immediacy that helps us connect with her authorial voice. One of the most honest and authentic graphic novels we’ve seen this year.
Vision
Julia Gfrorer
£16.99Julia Gfrörer has done it again, with another twisted and eerie affair. There’s a timeless quality to all of Gfrörer’s work that comes from the understated nature of both her line drawings and her sparse narratives, that merge to create an unmatched feeling of discomfort. In Vision, a spinster tasked with taking care of a demanding sister-in-law and disappearing brother begins a sexual relationship with a talking mirror. To give away any more than that would be amiss, as Vision slowly unravels to reveal the delicately constructed nature of human existence. Creepy, erotic and vunerable, this is not one to read before bed.
What We Don't Talk About
Charlot Kristensen
£11.99 £11.39Charlot Kristensen’s debut is layered and nuanced exploration of an interracial relationship. Upon meeting her white boyfriend Adam’s family for the first time, Farai is met with dismissal, condescension and explicit racism. As Farai’s frustration with Adam’s refusal to speak up for her grows, so does the reader’s—Farai is left alone to handle the daily racism microaggressions levelled at her. Kristensen does not shy away from the difficulties placed on Farai in this situation, who is a brave and compelling protagonist. As is evident from the cover alone, Kristensen’s art is simply gorgeous, full of vibrant colours and masterful expressions. What We Don’t Talk About is a bold and memorable debut, and Kristensen is an exciting new talent.
Zatopek: When you can’t keep going, go faster!
Jan Novak
£14.99 £14.24A stunning biography of an Olympic champion who many consider to be the greatest runner that has ever lived. Jan Novák & Jaromir 99 tell the story of Emil Zátopek, the only man to have won gold in the 5,000 metres, 10, 000 metres and marathon in the same Olympics (Helsinki, 1952). All the more amazing for the fact that he only decided to compete in the marathon at the last minute, and had never run one competitively before. The book covers his life from his first meeting with Dana Ingrová (his soon-to-be wife who would also be a gold medal winner in Helsinki) through to his landmark achievements. He was an outspoken figure, a supporter of the democratic arm of the Communist Party who wasn’t afraid to stand up for what he believed was right (and for which he paid a heavy personal and professional price in the wake of the Prague Spring). Oh, and he also originated interval training and hypoventilation training. A great book about an incredible man.