Retro Graphic Novels

[J. M. Stovall]

Anything from Milton Caniff is a winner!

 

[Torpedo]

Well, of course, Torpedo 1936 .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torpedo_(comics)

 

[Trenter]

Violent Cases

While sorting my books in my new bookshelf I found this forgotten gem written by Neil Gaiman in 1987 and beautifully illustrated by Dave McKean. The storyline is partly set in the gangster era and involves Al Capone´s osteopath.

It´s been reprinted since and new editions are still available.

 

[feltfan]

I'm not sure Eisner or Caniff count as "retro" since they are of the period...
But I'm impressed that J. M. Stovall has some originals.

A member of this site has written a retro graphic novel,
Union Station.

For my money the last word in retro comics has not yet been
gathered into a graphic novel, no doubt due to rights to the character,
Kaluta's "The Shadow". You can find scans of the best of them
here. Follow links.

 

[Flat Foot Floey]

NIce thread! I recommedn the "Mammoth book of best crime comics" It is a very nice selection and it's cheap. The comics are from the 30s to now. Most of the have a nice Film Noir vibe.

 

[Nobert]

I'd like to mention the cartoonist who works under the name Seth, as his comics are among the things that got me interested in the first half of the twentieth century in the first place.
His most noted books are It's a Good Life if you Don't Weaken, and the as-yet-unfinished Clyde Fans, which runs in his series Palookavile.
He's also done a lot of illustration in his forties, gag-cartoony style. You may have seen them in The Atlantic's back page feature What's Your Problem?

 

[herringbonekid]

dark, adult adaptation of Pinocchio by French comic artist Vincent Paronnaud aka Winshluss:

 

[Edward]

I highly recommend Maus. Based on the author's father's life as a Polish Jew who lived through the Germany's WWII-era leadership concentration camps. It was the first comic book to receive a Pulitzer prize. THe visual device of portraying different ethnicities as different animals (Poles are pigs, Germany's WWII-era leaderships cats, Jews mice and French - mais bien sur - frogs) is interesting: everyone can relate to cute animals. The subject matter brings a much darker spin to this Disneyfied device.

Some nice analysis here:

http://www.lagcc.cuny.edu/maus/whatismaus.htm

... but I really recommend reading the book first.

 

[marxalot]

If you guys aren't familiar with it, I would highly suggest Francesco Francovilla's work, both his contracted stuff (his run on Batman Detective, his Lone Ranger and Zorro work) and his own properties (the Black Beetle is thrilling, pulpy genius). You can check out his stuff at his Pulp Sunday blog, which features new art and updates on what he's working on. Along with JH Williams III, he's one of my favorite artists working, and has a good feel for narrative flow as well.

 

[Story]

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

Update
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/624061548/the-goon-movie-lets-kickstart-this-sucker

 

[Touchofevil]

Update
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/624061548/the-goon-movie-lets-kickstart-this-sucker

Been a fan of The Goon since the beginning and have been waiting for what seems like forever for this to happen.

 

[esteban68]

Vittorio Giardino's Jonas Fink, 'a Jew in communist Prague' and 'No Passaran' series are very good when you can find them in English, fantastic illustrations with decent story lines.

 

[Alice Blue]

It's not quite retro, but one of the story arcs of The Unwritten (Vertigo, Mike Carey & Peter Gross) is set in the comics industry in 1930s New York. The story runs through multiple issues, which are collected in Volume 5: On To Genesis. I don't know what it would be like to start in the middle of the series, though. I highly recommend the entire series.

 

[Dragon Soldier]

Warren Ellis' Ministry Of Space.

 

[Metatron]

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":

Love Hugo Pratt and the rough black and white ink style. Very understated.

 

[skydog757]

Hellboy has some noirish elements and various issues are set in a WWII era. Obviously we are dealing with a fantasy genre, but it has a retro vibe and the dialogue is quite good.

 

[Nobert]

There's always Ethel and Ernest, Raymond Briggs's comic strip memoir of his parents. The get married around 1930 and it follows their fairly typical lower-middle class life to their final resting, ca. 1970.

 

[Edward]

I like Raymond Briggs' writing - very human observations. Very strong in When the Wind Blows, which is, I suppose, now retro, though it was written as a contemporary piece.

 

[esteban68]

When the wind blows is indeed excellent, I remember clearly growing up in the late 70's and having the very real feeling of war breaking out at any time...living very close to one of the biggest chemical plants in Europe and 8 miles from Sheffield pretty much guaranteed annihilation! ......so WTWB and Threads that came out around the same time really struck home, I guess the chemical plant testing it's WW2 air raid siren on a regular basis for when there was a leak didn't help matters!

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

... I remember clearly growing up in the late 70's and having the very real feeling of war breaking out at any time...

When I was a boy (early 1960's), every Saturday at noon the television would have a Civil Defense (by the spelling I'm sure you can tell that I'm an American) test warning broadcast. The CD logo (CD inside a triangle, inside a circle, inside a square) would appear and a 1000 Hz tone was broadcast. After then tone, the announcement would come that "This is a test of the emergency broadcast system. This is only a test. If this were an actual emergency ..."

Now it happened that at the same time, my town tested its fire department siren system. The nearest siren was on the roof of the steel mill across the street where my father worked. The siren sounded exactly like the air raid sirens I had heard in movies. It was a small town with a volunteer fire department. The siren was used to alert the volunteer firemen that they were needed. With the Cuban missile crisis a very recent memory, this ten-year-old was very nervous to hear the CD broadcast along with the siren!