The philosophy of the 2024 graphic novel, Mary Tyler MooreHawk can be seen right in the main character's design. Cute and full of personality, the little girl with two buns in her hair is certainly a unique creation. However, she does bear a silhouette that is strikingly similar to a well-known mouse. The overlap of iteration and creation, of trope and mimicry, are at the heart of the story spelled out by author and artist, Dave Baker. A surreal and captivating experience, the work manages to walk the line between excelling and subverting the expectations of its medium.
Part of 2024’s relaunch of Marvel’s Ultimate Universe, a reboot of Black Panther in an alternate universe makes a lot of sense on paper. The hero has become a household name thanks to the 2018 movie, which effectively showcased the strength of the character in a modern context. There is an opportunity to present Black Panther stories from a clean slate, divorced from the Kirby-Lee originated continuity, which many of their other creations would not benefit from as much. Great power and great responsibility are core to classic Marvel books, but applying the motto to modern colonialism is something the originators never quite proved able or willing to tackle.
The Marvel Graphic Novel line of comics started in 1982 and ran until 1993. The oversized, standalone graphic novels were a mixture of familiar company characters and creator owned experiments, presented in a higher quality format than the typical comic of the time. The collection includes at least seventy five titles, with only the first twenty being officially numbered by Marvel. Ranging from beloved, lauded graphic novels to some of the most obscure books put out by the publisher, the collection is one of their most varied in terms of genre, art, and story. This first iteration of our rankings of the MGN books includes the initial twenty titles.
