The Best Graphic Novels Ever #8 -- The Dark Knight Returns

8. The Dark Knight Returns
by Frank Miller
Published by DC Comics

I bet you really expected to see this one even closer to the coveted number one spot, didn't you? Well, I don't blame you. This book certainly changed the face of comics for the foreseeable future. Grim and gritty became the fashion. Anti-hero became the norm. Noble and heroic became willing to get your hands bloody and dirty to get the right thing done, no matter how wrong you have to be to make that happen.

And it put a certain Frank Miller so firmly on the map that not even his current (let's just call them) shortcoming of innate humanity can blemish that bit of the historical record in comics-dom.

I think for me this one would be higher up on this list if it just didn't feel so dated now. The dark and gritty Batman has been the norm for so long that Returns just doesn't pack the same punch anymore. Sadly, instead of becoming the timeless story it should have been, it became the generic model for Batman ever since its publication.

The Best Graphic Novels Ever #15 -- Sin City: That Yellow Bastard

Today we finally break into the top 15. Hang on, folks, we'll hit the top 10 shortly!

15. Sin City: That Yellow Bastard
by Frank Miller
Published by Dark Horse Comics

This book would hit my top list if just because of Miller's use of yellow as an accent color rather than red. And where he chooses to uses it simply adds to the gritty storytelling in a way that a full color book could never had done. (I'm looking at you, Scarlet Spider, but thanks for trying.)

Miller's pulp and noir sensibilities are strong in this book, as they are in most of his Sin City work, but something about the total package just clicks in That Yellow Bastard in a way that the others don't quite achieve. Don't ask me what exactly. It's one of the things that's impossible to quantify for a review, but it's as real as the wind or a whisper.

Regardless, this is a epic of violent poetry, of beautiful danger, and of bloody artisan-ship, and it's in Miller's unflinching POV that That Yellow Bastard (like the rest of his Sin City work) has it's power. There's something raw about it, something that refuses to let a reader stop reading even while feeling the gnawing dread in his or her gut.

Simply put, it's a powerful book that just plain works.