I used to read a lot of comic books. I enjoyed going to the comic book store every Wednesday to check out the new titles. But I can’t tell you the last time I walked into a comic store or bought a comics magazine. All my comics reading is done now in the form of graphic novels. I hate the term “graphic novel” because it doesn’t really get to the heart of what the format is—that it is comics presented as a book. That’s it. If it has a spine, it’s a graphic novel. Take the contents that once would have been published over several issues in a serialized comic book now is released as a book. In other words, a graphic novel is just a large comic book. But because of the size of the book, it can be more ambitious than a comic book.
This list are my favorites among the comics I read this year: I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together by Maurice Vellekoop, How War Begins: Dispatches from the Ukrainian Invasion by Igort, and Final Cut by Charles Burns.
