Gene Kannenberg, Jr.

When I might have been reading as a young child, I was watching movies instead. When I finally started reading in my teens, instead of literature aimed at my age group, including Comic Books of all stripes, I dove straight into literature with a capital "L". My first books were THE GRAPES OF WRATH, CATCH 22, and THE HUMAN FACTOR by Graham Greene and I never looked back. In the past couple years though I have discovered the Graphic Novels or Comics that I did not read back in the day. Now WATCHMEN and MAUS are among my favorite books. My relative lack of knowledge led me to read a book cover to cover that I might have otherwise just dipped into from time to time like a reference book: 500 ESSENTIAL GRAPHIC NOVELS. This is a marvelously valuable reference sturdily bound for constant access and book marking--even wedging your foot between pages. Organized by genre, the best of the best is displayed page after page with each book's cover usually a half page tall and often there are brief samples of the work displayed as well. Each has a synopsis and review rating--for quality and age appropriateness. There are indexes to allow searches by titles, artists, writers and publishers. While these are nifty, they aren't perfect. I did notice a few omissions while referencing back and forth. Another odd thing is that the reviews don't always seem to match the star rating given to a particular work. Don't know if these were done independent of each other but it occasionally seemed that way. Each genre subheading has a nice introduction but something I missed was a more comprehensive piece talking about the best graphic novels over all. I may be addicted to lists, but I would have liked a top ten of each genre and then one overall. Sometimes also it was not clear when the original publication date of the work was when they are rating a recent reprint or new collection of older works. But these small quibbles aside, quite the invaluable reference book for someone who knew virtually nothing before I started reading it and I imagine it would hold more than a few surprises for even more hardcore readers.… (meer)

This book introduces 500 graphic novels, which covers all of the important ones, and a LOT of the not-so-important ones. Although, as one might guess from the large number of works included, the author stretches the notion of a "graphic novel" in my opinion.

It is a very good starting place for anyone wanting to broaden their knowledge of the art of comics and graphic novels. It is divided into 10 thematical categories such as Adventure, Horror, and Superheroes. Within these categories, 10 of the most important graphic novels are introduced in more detail and several more at a glance. All books include an age suggestion and a star rating.

I found myself (surprisingly) having the same opinion as Kannenberg about most of the ratings and reviews. Of course there were some, where I thought that he had it wrong, but that is the case with all reviews. Now I have a ton of new graphic novels on my to-buy list (because one of the criteria of the books included in this guide was that they should be available, and not out-of-print...)!… (meer)