Happy Holidays! Best of 2006

Fun Home cover

The more I’m able to knock off the to-do list, the more I look forward to the winter holidays.

These wonderful comic-themed advent calendar countdowns help, too.

Here’s my list of the ten best graphic novels of 2006.

  1. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
    As excellent as everyone says it is, this graphic memoir is all the more powerful for what it doesn’t show about Alison Bechdel’s father’s hidden life. Fun Home cover
  2. Dramacon Book 2
    Easily the most entertaining graphic novel I read this year. Highly anticipated, Svetlana Chmakova achieves the rare feat of creating a sequel that’s more enjoyable than the previous volume. It’s marred only by the need to wait another year to find out what finally happens between the two leads of this romantic comedy.
  3. Mom’s Cancer
    Incredibly powerful due to being so personal and honest.
  4. 12 Reasons Why I Love Her
    Jamie S. Rich makes romance look easy with detailed, three-dimensional characters brought to complex life by artist Joëlle Jones. An immediate re-read.
  5. Finder: Five Crazy Women
    Few graphic novels take a mature approach to the subject of sex, but Carla Speed McNeil’s latest gem tackles various permutations of attraction honestly, passionately, and disturbingly.
  6. Absolute DC: The New Frontier
    A loving revisitation of the classic superheroes that fired Darwyn Cooke’s young imagination in a super-deluxe package.
  7. Castle Waiting
    Linda Medley’s fairy tales are gorgeous and funny, populated with characters you want to visit a tavern with.
  8. Sorcerers & Secretaries Book 1
    Charming young romance with the kind of fantasy-lost heroine any book-lover can identify with.
  9. The Voices of a Distant Star
    Heartbreaking science fiction that ponders the human connection.
  10. 110 Percent
    Undeservingly overlooked, this portrayal of middle-aged boy band fans explores the satisfactions of fandom through the types of adult women society too often ignores.


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