Looking for something mind-bending and thought provoking

[Plissken]

Hi, I've recently come back to reading comics and currently I'm reading (consistently) Hellblazer and The Losers. Although I enjoy both those comics, all I can say is that they're entertaining.

I was wondering if anybody can suggest comics/graphic novels that have stories with (this might sound a bit corny) deeper meanings, symbols, themes, etc. and a bit mind-blowing as well. Suggestions for pulp/noirish stuff would also be appreciated. No superhero and manga stuff.

I've been searching for quite a while but haven't found much. Just to note, I'm not interested in Sin City or The Preacher....

Neil Gaimans The Sandman looks interesting but I'm not quite sure what it's about....can anybody tell me about Fables?

thanks.

[Alex]

Get Sandman, never will you find a more epic series.

[mgs]

deeper meanings, symbols, themes, etc. and a bit mind-blowing as well.

some suggestions....

David Mack's Kabuki, tho unreadable as hell to me.

Oldies, but goodies....

The Maxx, tho a maybe a bit too superheroish for you.

Scud: The Disposable Assassin, great stuff.

From Hell, great book, bad movie.

[Core]

I second mgs's Kabuki suggestion. I love Mack's work, and the stuff he puts out is chock full of subtexts. The first trade is called Circle of Blood. There's more symbolic meaning in the first 10 pages of that story than in 90% of the comics published in the past decade.

Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers series of mini-series has just started up, and I'd highly recommend it as well. It promises to fulfill both your "mind-bending" and "thought provoking" requirements.

[Alex]

The Maxx, tho a maybe a bit too superheroish for you.



From Hell, great book, bad movie.

Those are good suggestions, though im partialy to Maxx since i worship kieths balls.

[Tom]

I wasn't even halfway through your post when I thought Sandman. It's what you're looking for - although the first trade is nowhere near as good as the rest of the story.

[Alex]

I wasn't even halfway through your post when I thought Sandman. It's what you're looking for - although the first trade is nowhere near as good as the rest of the story.

Except the last issue.

[Tom]

Is that the intro to Death? Pure '80s goodness.

[Alex]

Yknow, i just thought of another one..
Cerebus Starting with Church And State....but you have to read High Soceity too.
By the time you get to the 6th trade, you'll be up to your ass in symbols and deep meaning.

[Alex]

Is that the intro to Death? Pure '80s goodness.

Thats the one.

[mgs]

ahh, those are vergood as well...

Sandman, yes.
Cerebus, yes.

these two may take you a lifetime to catch up on. :)

[Ayo]

Love and Rockets.

For Jamie, I'd say start with The Death of Speedy (Vol. 7) and move on to Flies on the Ceiling and Wig Wam Bam.

For Gilbert, I'd start with X, and go back to the "Luba" magnum opuses...but I'm not deep enough in his side of things to make a good recommendation.



Cages by Dave McKean.

If you want symbolism and layered meanings, Cages practically invented them. A more heavy-handed (though still very good) version would be Craig Thompson's Blankets.


Jim Woodring's The Frank Book. One of the all-time greats of symbolic, surrealistic, uninhibited id comics. Frank is virtually indescribable. I cannot do it justice. Just flip through the first few pages of the hardcover at the store. Trust me, it's mindblowing.


Dan Clowes invents the wheel with David Boring. A dreamlike sleepwalk from page one to the very end. With a restraint that's almost painful, Clowes takes the reader on a very, very bizarre fatherquest (among other things).

Chris Ware reinvents the wheel with Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth. Beyond dreamlike, Ware all but invents a new way to tell stories in comics with his intricately-designed formats. Incredibly dense and complicated, Jimmy Corrigan runs through three generations and about a hundred years of Chicago history as the title character meets his father for the first time.

Charles Burns' Black Hole. It's a horror story and some kind of allegory for adolecence. I haven't been able to read the whole thing, but a collected book of the series is supposed to be coming out later this year, legend has it.

Dylan Horrocks' Hicksville. One of the few graphic novels that succeeds as both comics AND as a "novel." It's about an American journalist who travels to New Zealand to gather background info for a biography he's writing about the most popular comic artist of the moment. In Hicksville, NZ, the journalist finds a small community for whom comics are the primary (and I do mean primary) source of entertainment and culture. As intriguing as that may be, that's not even the half. Horrocks successfully weaves this imagined comics culture into stories within stories (about stories) and dark secrets...it's quite a book.


Hope you find something you like!

[mgs]

noirish comic:

Stray Bullets
by David Lapham

-great, scary stuff.

--------------
Edit: oh yes! *reads up* CW's Jimmy Corrigan is also a great one!

[Plissken]

Awesome. Thanks so much guys. I'll definitely check out the suggestions made.

[Adam Crocker]

I was wondering if anybody can suggest comics/graphic novels that have stories with (this might sound a bit corny) deeper meanings, symbols, themes, etc. and a bit mind-blowing as well.

Well that pretty much sums up the career of Grant Morrison, whose comics are crammed with symbolism, themes, hidden meanings, etc. His Vertigo series The Invisibles was rife with references to the occult, Mayan Mythology, pulp fiction, Situationist writings, Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius novels, etc. It's basically about a group of subversives fighting against an extra-dimensional conspiracy. And what starts out as an occultist X-Files meets the X-Men becomes a bizarre mystical/personal journey set to the greatest spy movie you never saw. Spawned it's own reference website and online community. Art's very inconsistent but it's a surprisingly compelling series. The collections for it in order are:

Vol. 1:

Say You Want A Revolution
Apocalypstick
Entrophy in the U.K.

Vol. 2:

Bloody Hell In America
Counting To None
Kissing Mr. Quimper

Vol. 3:

The Invisible Kingdom

Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers series of mini-series has just started up, and I'd highly recommend it as well. It promises to fulfill both your "mind-bending" and "thought provoking" requirements.

Except that's superheroes and he said...ah what am I saying? It's Morrison written superheroes. He can given them layered meanings while doing them straight (or at least make them a thousand times more interesting and fantastic)...nevermind his Animal Man run which was apparently meta-fiction.