Serious about comics

ONCE upon a time, you could safely speak up at a dinner party and mock comic books as the empty calories of a juvenile diet, the brightly colored cotton candy of the magazine rack. Those days are gone. Comic books (sorry -- graphic novels) are now treated in some quarters as museum pieces -- that is quite literally the case at the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Hammer Museum, which, starting Sunday, will co-host an exhibit that anoints and annotates the “Masters of American Comics.”

Graphic novels seem to be everywhere. At USC and UCLA, students (and some professors) arrive at class with Japanese manga novels tucked in their backpacks. In Silver Lake, the coffeehouse crowd mixes its espresso with comics of hipster ennui by artists such as Dan Clowes and Adrian Tomine. At Hollywood meetings, graphic novels are handed across tables as ready-made movie pitches with word balloons -- and not just the superhero stuff, either, as proved by “A History of Violence,” “Sin City,” “American Splendor,” “Road to Perdition” and plenty of other non-spandex films.

Perhaps it’s time to set aside your bias and concede that, just maybe, comics have evolved since you said goodbye to “Archie” in seventh grade. After all, the graphic novel “Maus” did win a Pulitzer Prize -- 13 years ago.

If you are willing to indulge in a different sort of narrative, you’ll need to know where and how to start. What follows is a highly subjective guide of some of the best graphic novels (or compilations of classics) published in the last two decades and some suggestions on where to find them.

The old masters

The exhibit at MOCA and the Hammer Museum celebrates some of the pioneers who date to the 1940s Golden Age of comic books, among them Will Eisner, Jack Kirby and Harvey Kurtzman. To check out their work, you can track down original copies and spend tens of thousands of dollars to buy them -- or you can take advantage of the recent flurry of deluxe reprints that have been collected and packaged in handsome hardcover editions.

Assuming you opt for that latter approach, a good place to start browsing through comic-book history is Book Soup, Sunset Boulevard’s independent bookshop of renown. Founded 30 years ago, the landmark has been a stable brand name on the ever-churning Sunset Strip. Star maps, rare first editions, restaurant guides -- the shelves at Book Soup have a spot for just about everything. To find the graphic novels and classic reprints, walk in, veer to the right and -- in the prime shelf property between books on L.A. history and culture and the humor section -- you’ll find colorful editions that also make pretty cool eye candy for the coffee table.

There’s no better book to decorate with than “The New Smithsonian Book of Comic-Book Stories,” a sampler plate for a first-time visitor to the comics world. It’s almost 400 pages and has a smart design. Bob Callahan, editor of the book, makes bold choices in this rundown of American comic books that somehow manages to exclude Superman, the old E.C. horror comics and any pre-1960 superhero work. Instead, this volume captures the lightning moments as comics pushed to become more mature in theme and literary in voice.

The emphasis in the Smithsonian book is on the new and the underground, represented by the political dispatches of Joe Sacco and the washed-out world view of Clowes, but there’s also some smartly selected classic material, such as Joe Kubert’s 1960s military melodrama “Enemy Ace” and Jim Steranko’s ambitiously stylized take on Captain America from the end of the same decade.

If you are looking to understand where the graphic novel is today, you can start at its beginnings. And its beginnings can be summed up in one name: Will Eisner. No name from pioneering years of comics has been more celebrated in recent years than Eisner, who died earlier this year and has set such a standard of craft and innovation that the highest comics-industry award bears his name. Among the many Eisner titles, an essential volume is “A Contract With God,” which is viewed by many as the blueprint for the graphic novel (a term, by the way, that Eisner coined).

If Eisner was the Frank Capra of the American graphic novel, Osama Tezuka was the Akira Kirosawa of the Japanese scene that eventually became the manga phenomenon of today. Comic-book creator and historian Scott McCloud says that that alone is a reason to check out “Buddha: Kapilavastu,” the 400-page first volume of a hardcover series that collects up the serialized 1970s stories from “the irrepressible imagination of Japan’s ‘god of comics,’ ” as McCloud puts it. In this rollicking tale of adventure, the life of Siddhartha is the core of an epic that goes far and wide.

If you’re looking for something lighter, you can find escapism and nostalgia at Amazing Comics in Long Beach. This is no bohemian reading room. Inflatable superheroes dangle from the ceiling, “The Incredibles” statuettes pose by the door, and the vast selection of “Star Wars” action figures (please, do not call them dolls) proudly announce that this is a bazaar for the young at heart and for the devotees of both Harry Knowles and Harry Potter. Half the shop is devoted to sports memorabilia and collector’s cards and half to comics and a staggering amount of toys that tie in to the four-color heroes. With no exaggeration, there are probably a thousand different Batman toys under this one roof.

The store’s walls are lined with hundreds of new comic books, but don’t miss the glass case in the rear of the store. There you’ll find a deep selection of handsome hardcover reprints of comics from past decades, all of them for sale. The best of them might very well be from the Marvel Comics Masterworks series: “The Fantastic Four: Vol. 1,” by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, and “The Amazing Spider-Man: Vol. 1,” by Lee and Steve Ditko, which lovingly present the first 10 issues of each of those early 1960s landmark comics. And they are comics -- not graphic novels. Sometimes that’s good enough.

Dispatches from the real world

For plenty of grown-ups contemplating the graphic novel, superheroes are a deal-breaker. Blame it on Adam West or “Underdog,” but a good portion of thinking adults will never take guys in tights seriously as a literature option. That’s fine. There has never been a time when there were more graphic novels and comics that share that point of view. Some of the signature works of the genre are about small lives, not big heroes.

In the celebrated “Maus,” by Art Speigelman, a young New Yorker searches for himself by mapping his grandparents’ harrowing odyssey through Nazi concentration camps. In “American Splendor,” a misanthropic jazz collector in Cleveland named Harvey Pekar scrapes against life, day in and day out, and then records it in a memoir of quirky rhythms. In “Persepolis.” Marjane Satrapi tells of growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution, when she feels the push of fundamentalist culture and the tug of Western culture and her own spirit.

Pekar is also the author of a slim new graphic novel -- with the wonderfully sour title “The Quitter” -- that tells of his life growing up white and Jewish in a black neighborhood. We called him up to see if he might pass on a recommendation to add to our list. “Joe Sacco.” Any particular book? “Anything by Sacco. All of it.”

He wasn’t just being grumpy, or abrupt. Sacco is a journalist who reports in pen-and-ink drawings. His work evokes the front-line voice of Ernie Pyle’s World War II cartoons or Michael Herr’s Vietnam dispatches. His most compelling work may be “Palestine,” an account of his trips to that region beginning in the early 1990s. Sacco, a native of Malta, creates a documentary as compelling as any filmmaker’s; within a few pages you feel as if you hear his voice.

If you’re contemplating entering the modern eclecticism of graphic novels, try Meltdown in Hollywood. Not only does the store stock the offbeat and experimental comic books from smaller and overseas publishers, it also has a gallery that features the original artwork of the stars of the moment and, perhaps, the future. Through Tuesday, the exhibit space is featuring “Super Muerto” prints by Artemio Rodriguez that merge Day of the Dead imagery with Superman, Mickey Mouse and other pop-culture references.

Meltdown is the hipster hub for dispatches from the new comics underground. The stars of that scene include Clowes, whose quirky “Ghostworld” is colored in a hue that might be best described as drowning-victim blue. Author Brad Meltzer, who penned the acclaimed 2004 graphic novel “Identity Crisis,” has this to say about the book and its 2000 film: “Alienation and youth mix like chocolate and milk

Meltdown (which has smaller satellite shops in Eagle Rock and Atwater Village) is also a good spot to pick up a copy of “Optic Nerve,” the umbrella title for Tomine’s quirky short stories of disconnected lives.

Or thumb through Chris Ware’s “Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth” and you’ll see how the medium can produce something that seems beholden to both Charles M. Schulz and Stanley Kubrick. (Ware’s work is included in the MOCA exhibit as well.)

The heroes, re-imagined

Let’s say you grew up with comics and have a fondness for the old characters, but your contemporary tastes demand something a bit more sophisticated than the funny books you used to read (and wish you had kept so you would now be rich).

Drive down Melrose Avenue to Golden Apple Comics and prepare to be overwhelmed. Golden Apple is the mecca of comics for the West Coast, a vast storehouse of comics, toys, posters, books and pop-culture tchotchkes of every stripe. There’s a fan-boy vibe to the place that will unnerve some of the Book Soup crowd (you may find that perfect Wonder Woman figurine for your mom’s birthday).

But the shop also has a strong selection of alternative titles and, in a closet marked “adults only,” L.A.’s best selection of erotic comics. Golden Apple takes comics seriously and, if you peruse the graphic novels on its shelves, you’ll find that superheroes have gotten serious too.

The turning point in modern comic-book history was the release of two masterworks in the 1980s, and both were grounded proudly in superhero mythology, although both turned the genre’s familiar conventions on their ear. “The Watchmen” and “The Dark Knight Returns” not only super-charged the comics world, they influenced the generation of filmmakers who brought comics to the screen with a new respectfulness.

At Golden Apple you can order the new $75 hardcover edition of “The Watchmen” with a slipcase and lots of extra material, and that alone should signal the rarified stature that it enjoys. The epic by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons elicits breathless praise from comics mavens.

Meltzer calls it “the ‘Citizen Kane’ of comics, but unlike ‘Kane,’ it still holds up on every level.”

“The Watchmen” ushered in a new sophistication in the superhero story. Moore created a group of superheroes in the mold of the old Justice League of America but in their personal relationships they are haunted by betrayal, disillusionment and hubris -- forget the Super Friends, this is a Greek tragedy with an especially flamboyant wardrobe.

The colors run to grimmer hues in Frank Miller’s “Dark Knight.” The writer and artist took Batman and made him the borderline sociopath who dovetails with the grittier character of the film “Batman Begins.” Miller would expand on the urban ultra-violence later in “Sin City” but the accomplishment of “Dark Knight” was more than making Dirty Harry with a costume. With the use of experimental layouts, bold color, surreal images of nihilism and high-adrenaline pacing, Miller made it instantly dull to do superheroes the old-fashioned way.

As good and as famous as “Dark Knight” is, Miller’s most satisfying book for a newcomer may be his later book, “Batman: Year One.” In a far more understated story line and art style (its drawn by David Mazzucchelli, not Miller), it begins, as it title suggests, with the character at genesis. “Batman Begins,” the film, borrows heavily from this work and a fan of the movie will find the graphic novel welcoming.

Two of the newer titles that deserve to be checked out at Golden Apple: “Identity Crisis,” the “event” book from last year that puts Superman and other heroes in the middle of shocking, psychological murder mystery, and “Powers,” which is a sleek, humor-laced series that falls somewhere between “The Incredibles” and “NYPD Blue.”

Some of the people who won’t read a Superman graphic novel will gladly sit through the “Harry Potter” or “Lord of the Rings” films. If your brand of the fantastic sits easier with creature of myth and magic than a Man of Steel, check out the shelves at Golden Apple weighed down by the “Sandman” library.

Written by Neil Gaiman and drawn by artists of widely eclectic styles, “Sandman” is a sophisticated fantasy that hop scotches between the real world and the Dreaming, an ether realm where the presiding lord is Dream, also known as Morpheus, the god of dreams. From that plot point, Gaiman takes readers into the dreams of people (the stories veer wildly; the “real” origins of William Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer’s Night Dream,” a convention for serial killers, the dreams of cats, etc.) and destinations throughout mythology and literature.

Also written with a scholar’s passion and knowledge of literature is “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” by Alan Moore. The League is a collective of 19th century fictional characters of literature -- Captain Nemo, Dr. Jekyll, the Invisible Man, Alan Quartermain, Mina Harker -- and the ability of Moore to deftly weave their tales into one unified story is sublime.

It used to be the case that Shakespeare and Jules Verne would only find their way into comic books if it were for an issue of “Classics Illustrated.” Now, though, in this age when the genre gets the respect of museums and mainstream readers, it’s getting easier to say “comics” and “literature” in the same sentence.

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What they’re drawn to

Weekend Calendar invited some well-known comic-book mavens to share a recommended reading list.

Ingenious, edgy

Chipp Kidd is an acclaimed book-jacket designer, and his images are collected in a new book, “Chip Kidd: Book One: Work: 1986-2006.” He has also worked on numerous comics-related projects, including the book “Batman Collected.” His suggestions:

“The New Frontier” by Darwyn Cooke

“A recent and relatively overlooked classic take on the DC heroes, as they adapt to the Cold War years and the space race. Anyone who thinks draftsmanship is dead in contemporary superhero comics will be delighted by Cooke’s extraordinary hand, and the JFK speech at the end will have you in tears.”

“Haw!” by Ivan Brunetti

“Ingeniously outrageous single-panel gags by what appears to be the spawn of Charles Schulz and the Marquis de Sade.”

“Buddha” by Osamu Tezuka

“If you only ever own one work of manga, make it this one. Epic, enthralling, heartbreaking. Spiritual in every best sense of the word. True to the historical facts of Siddhartha’s life and a rollicking adventure story to boot.”

“Maakies” by Tony Millionaire

“Reads as if A.A. Milne became a heroin addict trapped in a ship on the late 19th century high seas and couldn’t stop doodling. Which is a good thing; trust me.”

“Amy & Jordan” by Mark Beyer

“This ingeniously reinvents the notion of what a comic strip can be, without sacrificing narrative, emotion or craft.”

Superheroes, politics

Novelist Brad Meltzer (“Zero Game,” “Mortelle Defense”) also wrote the graphic novel “Identity Crisis,” which puts Superman, Batman and other heroes in the middle of a disturbing murder mystery. His suggestions:

“Swamp Thing” by Alan Moore

“It just slapped me awake and took my lunch money. This is a novel. Period. Took a dead character and used it to dissect issues of love, hate, humanity, birth, death and everything else that Alan Moore does better than everyone else out there.”

“Animal Man” by Grant Morrison

“Morrison brought this lame character to such life, I’d miss him between issues.”

“Ex Machina”

“New? Yes. Incredible? For sure. This is a book I gave to my wife. Mixes superheroes with politics and pulls it off so well I can only be jealous of it.”

“X-Men: Gifted” by Joss Whedon

“When Harvey Pekar was bitching about superhero comics, I told him he had to read this one. Fun and lively and reminds me why I love this genre so much.”

Laid bare on the page

Adrian Tomine is one of the leading names in the modern underground comics scene, and his “Optic Nerve” anthologies are a must-read tastemaker for fans of the scene. His suggestions:

“Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary” by Justin Green

“One of the first (and best) autobiographical comics. I’ve always been inspired by Justin’s ability (or compulsion) to lay himself bare on the page.”

“Eightball” by Daniel Clowes

“I’ve enjoyed every phase of this comic’s evolution, but I think now it’s entered into an unprecedented every-issue-a-stand-alone-

masterpiece era. I’ve learned (and stolen) so much from Dan, but most of all I’m impressed by his refusal to grow complacent. He pushes himself with every story, taking big risks that seem to alway pay off.”

“Peanuts” by Charles M. Schulz

“This strip is the only piece of popular culture that I’ve enjoyed for my entire life. The paperback collections were the first books I tried to read, and those same books still bring me immense pleasure. It’s kind of weird how connected I feel to those characters.”

“Love and Rockets” by Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez

“I credit my entire career in comics to these guys. I discovered their work right at that crucial moment when I was about to turn my back on comics because I’d lost interest in superheroes. It’s probably pretty obvious, but I have to say that this comic has influenced my work more than any other.”

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Kinda sketchy

Graphic novels and comics in Los Angeles

Where to view:

“Masters of American Comics,” co-organized by the Hammer Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, will be presented at both museums from Sunday through next March. It’s the first major museum exhibition to delve into the evolution of comic strips and comics books from their genesis and features more than 900 sketches, drawings, books and other items. The exhibit centers on the work of 15 “masters,” among them R. Crumb, Jack Kirby, Chris Ware and Will Eisner.

MOCA: 250 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A.. For hours and program information, call (213) 626-6222 or visit www.moca.org.

Hammer Museum: 10899 Wilshire Blvd. For hours and program information call (310) 443-7000 or visit www.hammer.ucla.edu.

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Where to buy:

Book Soup, 8818 Sunset Blvd., (310) 659-3110. The landmark bookshop has a nice selection of the most sophisticated graphic novels and deluxe reprints of classic comic books. The store also has a location at South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa.

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Golden Apple Comics, 7711 Melrose Ave., (323) 658-6047. Probably the most famous comic-book store on the West Coast and with good reason. All the superhero titles imaginable are here, but there’s also a deep selection of small-press graphic novels, underground oddities and erotic titles.

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Meltdown, 7522 Sunset Blvd., (323) 851-7223. The coolest place to sample graphic novels (and alt scene) is this hipster hub, which also has a gallery that exhibits art and cartooning. Meltdown has two smaller satellite shops: 3151 Los Feliz Blvd. in Atwater Village and 1613 Colorado Blvd. in Eagle Rock.

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Amazing Comics, 5555 Stearns St., Long Beach, (562) 493-4427. A strong fan-boy vibe but an impressive selection of hardcover reprints of vintage comic books and other anthologies.