Retro Graphic Novels

davidraphael · Aug 17, 2010

I can highly recommend Berlin, by Jason Lutes, set in Berlin during the Weimar Republic 1928-1933

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_(comic)

There's also Robert Crumb's many works, for example, Draws the Blues and his Kafka biography:

And then there's Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (but you can forget the film version, which is awful)

The_League_of_Extraordinary_Gentlemen_800x600-722151.jpg

Does anyone know of any other graphic novels set between say, 1900-ish and the end of WWII?

Serial Hero · Aug 17, 2010

Check out Will Eisner's, "A Contract with God Trilogy"

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Co...780393061055/?itm=14&USRI=a+contract+with+god

and for that matter, anything by Will Eisner. He also created the Spirit.

davidraphael · Aug 17, 2010

Absolutely, Will Eisner is a genius!

Mahagonny Bill · Aug 17, 2010

There is the excellent retelling of Jack the Ripper From Hell

I also enjoyed Stagger Lee, concerning history and myth of the famous blues song

I'm sure I'll think of more later, but for now I have to get back to work

Guttersnipe · Aug 17, 2010

The Goon definitely has a retro vibe, but also has zombies, mad scientists, fishmen, and aliens...I highly recommend the series!

flat-top · Aug 18, 2010

Gotham By Gaslight

Beaubeau · Aug 22, 2010

The Twelve is an excellent book where they took 12 obscure 1940 Timely/Marvel characters and put them in the modern day. It's unfinished and it leaves you on a cliffhanger, but in February of this year Straczynski (the writer) said they were going to finish it later this year.

Even unfinished, it's pretty good.

Lady Day · Aug 22, 2010

Incognegro put out by Vertigo a couple of years back.

Zane Pinchback, a reporter for The New Holland Herald of New York, is a black man who can pass for white. Zane uses this ability to go undercover to investigate lynchings in the 1930s South.

LD

Katzenjammer · Aug 23, 2010

Excellent suggestions, everyone (and being a Bat-Fan, I've always loved Gotham by Gaslight).

Don't forget that the late Dave Stevens' Rocketeer has been collected in a lavish hardcover edition. It's perfect for anyone with even a passing interest in 1930s pulp adventure (or beautifully-drawn comics). Unfortunately, the pages have been recolored and suffer a bit from Photoshop Airbrush Syndrome...traditional, flat comic coloring seems more appropriate for the material.

Mahagonny Bill · Aug 24, 2010

I just finished reading The Black Diamond Detective Agency

Fantastic full color painted art by Eddie Campbell and a true "penny dreadful" story with turn of the 19th century gangsters, private detectives train explosions, and gunfights, Great Stuff.

Mahagonny Bill · Aug 24, 2010

More in the Superhero vein, there are two books that read well together:

The Golden Age

The last hurrah for the original DC heroes as they come to terms with the aftermath of the war and face a new threat when they are brought before the House Committee on Un-American Activities to testify and name their former allies.

The New Frontier

A new look at the beginning of DC's Silver Age heroes with incredible period influenced art by Darwyn Cooke. There is also an animated movie based on this novel.

LordBest · Aug 24, 2010

I'm very fond of The Rainbow Orchid, set in the '20s:
http://www.garenewing.co.uk/rainboworchid/

Mahagonny Bill · Aug 24, 2010

Sandman Mystery Theater

Not a strictly a graphic novel but a 70 issue series about early adventures of the DC comics hero Sandman. The stories are set in New York during the late 1930's and most of them have been republished in the graphic novel format.

Trenter · Aug 30, 2010

Road to perdition

One of my favourite movies Road to Perdition is based upon a graphic novel. The story is written by Max Allan Collins and drawn by Richard Piers Rayner. You can download a four page preview from this link.

http://www.dccomics.com/dccomics/graphic_novels/?gn=1504

I´m a big fan of Will Eisners work and can recommend The Spirit. Beautifully drawn noir detective stories with hard boiled crooks and femme fatales en masse. I actually wrote a biography about Will Eisner in high school and own two signed graphic prints. One is framed and the other is lost somewhere in the basement.

Corto · Aug 30, 2010

Anything Hugo Pratt did was "retro", but for Golden Age stuff check out "The Scorpions of the Desert", his comic-bio of Antoine de St. Exupery or "Morgan":

Story · Aug 30, 2010

Guttersnipe said:
The Goon definitely has a retro vibe, but also has zombies, mad scientists, fishmen, and aliens...I highly recommend the series!

Nice hats.
[YOUTUBE]3axeIVXrCbU[/YOUTUBE]

Geesie · Aug 30, 2010

An adaptation of TS Eliot's masterpiece interpreted as a detective novel.

It's great.

RetroToday · Sep 1, 2010

Superman: War Of The Worlds

I used to read comics and graphic novels, but not really at all now.
Also loved Batman Gotham by Gaslight, Rocketeer and many other retro themed comics which I will have to dig out to remember the titles.

*Thoroughly enjoyed DC's "Elseworlds" take on "Superman: War of the Worlds" (1999). To me it seemed a natural merging of two previously unrelated storylines, mainly due to the fact that I really enjoy the 1930s-40s Max & Dave Fleischer Superman cartoons.

I followed any comic that artist Michael Lark did for some time, then lost track. He also did art for a great DC Vertigo comic series called "Terminal City".
Wonder what he's up to now? Time to Google him... He's the penciler for Marvel's Daredevil.

Fly Boy · Sep 4, 2010

Tintin by Hergé!

Garth Ennis has done some fantastic (albeit often tongue-in-cheek) WW2 stories as well - Adventures in the Rifle Brigade is very funny, and his reworking of Battler Britton is great.

Katzenjammer · Sep 4, 2010

RetroToday said:
I followed any comic that artist Michael Lark did for some time, then lost track. He also did art for a great DC Vertigo comic series called "Terminal City". Wonder what he's up to now? Time to Google him... He's the penciler for Marvel's Daredevil.

Michael Lark is indeed great.

He and Dean Motter put out a really neat graphic novel a few years back called The Batman in Nine Lives, which was a fun, intelligent merger of the Batman universe with a Raymond Chandler-style noir setting. Including Dick Grayson as a cynical Philip Marlowe-inspired detective!

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