5. Hands of a Living God – The King in Yellow
This gripping yet eerily unforeseen climax of three strangers connected by their reading of The King in Yellow, the cursed play that sends it’s readers mad is another fine example of Culbard deftly handling classic fiction and twisting it into an almost cartoon-like spectacle for the reader. Such near-comical artwork fits in extremely well, oddly, with these classic tales of horror and suspense. You can read our review of The King in Yellow here, and buy your copy here.
4. She Only Blinked – Seconds
All Katie has to do is write her mistake down in a little notepad, eat a mushroom, and her mistake is reversed. But like anyone who’d come across such a notepad and mushroom, she uses it to build a perfect life for herself. And it results in the above moment. Bryan Lee O’Malley‘s follow-up to his Scott Pilgrim books stands as a delightfully hipster addition to SelfMadeHero’s catalogue, and Seconds perfectly boils up raw young angst into a smart-mouthed, funny and sometimes haunting graphic novel. You can read our review of Seconds here, and buy your copy here.
3. The Rocky Desert – Aama Volume 3: The Desert of Mirrors
Reading Verloc and co’s journey across the rocky deserts in Aama‘s third instalment, you can almost picture Pink Floyd providing musical accompaniment to them. Another case of how wonderfully weird a world Peeters can conjurer up, this immensely psychedelic sequence takes us across twenty pages-worth of backward visions for Verloc and exotically off landscapes.
It’s also, ironically, one of the more human moments in the Aama saga thus far (we’ve yet to indulge in Volume 4, which is released this September), as the sequence allows Verloc to address some of his inner demons and make sense of what’s going on around him. Given what exactly is going on around him across those twenty pages, it’s a wonder Verloc keeps a straight face. You can read our review of Aama Vol. 3: The Desert of Mirrors here, and buy your copy here.
2. David meets Meg – The Sculptor
The thing about hype is that one should rarely be sucked into it, as there isn’t always valid justification for such a thing on any given form of creativity. However, in The Sculptor‘s case, you should believe the hype.
DEFINITELY believe the hype!
Scott McCloud‘s heart-wrenching, semi-fantasy fable of love, dreams and death is an astounding piece of graphic fiction, which really takes off when David gets swooped off his feet by the angel of his dreams. Unfortunately for him, that angel turns out to be a theatrical stunt, but Meg the angel stays in his mind, to the point where both where both discover the ultimate price for falling in love.
I promise you this book will break your very soul. You have been warned. You can read our review of The Sculptor here, and buy your copy here.
1. “The Rouse is in the house” – Ricky Rouse Has a Gun
Die Hard in a Chinese Disneyland rip-off – what more could you ask for from Jorg Tittel‘s debut graphic novel? Ricky Rouse Has a Gun has more wicked chops to it than a sadistic meat butcher, and this moment when our hero Richard Rouse fully embraces his theme park disguise has entertainment levels that soar higher than any Disney castle.
The wonderfully subversive Ricky Rouse Has a Gun was one of our first ever adventures with SelfMadeHero, and it certainly remains as their most amusing violent (or should that be violently amusing?) graphic novel we’ve been treated to so far. Then again, give it another year and all that may change, as who knows what SelfMadeHero have up their sleeves? You can read our review of Ricky Rouse Has a Gun here, check out our interview with Tittel here, and buy your copy here.
Are there any moments from SelfMadeHero we’ve missed out? Sound off in the comments or send us your thoughts on Twitter!
