Big Mouth Strikes Again

Milk and Cheese (dairy products gone bad) by Evan Dorkin

I used to try to skeeve out of work early on Friday afternoons. Well, doesn't everyone, but I did it because Friday is when the new comics would come out. I would pretend I had an offsite meeting, go to the comic book shop, drop fifty bucks on the Hernandez brothers and Mister X (Hi, Sean!) and Matt Howarth, then go over to Tio Loco's on Cross Street and drink one margarita (they came in Mason jars) and read my comics. Eventually I got to know those bartenders pretty well (eventually, one became my massage therapist), but for the first year or so they referred to me as "Comic Book Girl".

The other day, for work, I came up with a list of graphic novels, writers and artists that would be considered "indie". Here's what I said about 'how to tell if a graphic novel is "indie"':

These books are easy to identify: no superheroes, no girls with giant eyes. Often published by Drawn & Quarterly or Fantagraphics. And the title? Put it this way: if it references insomnia, depression, OCD, or uses big words, it’s indie. Also if it’s called This will all end in tears? Indie.

I've taken that list and edited it down (and up) to the writers, artists, and titles I would actually personally recommend. If you scan the titles, it is unrelenting. You deserved it. Cruddy. Cry yourself to sleep. He done her wrong. My twenties were SO much fun.

Although, to be fair, there was lots of Milk & Cheese, Concrete, Tank Girl, and Bacchus in there too.

• Mike Allred
  
• Ho Che Anderson
• Jeffrey Brown
• Lynda Barry
• Charles Burns
• Peter Bagge
• Chester Brown
• Bob Burden
• Eddie Campbell.
• Paul Chadwick
• Howard Chaykin
• Dan Clowes
• The last lonely Saturday. Jordan Crane.
• Scrublands. by Joe Daly.
• Dame Darcy
  
• Evan Dorkin (Total coincidence by the way that when I yelled out in the workroom "Give me a Smiths song" to title this post, Tyler yelled back "Big Mouth Strikes Again," and then I look up Evan Dorkin and his blog is titled Big Mouth Types Again. Total coincidence.)
  
• Julie Doucet
• Emily Flake
• Neil Gaiman (ok not indie but you could read anything by him and be glad of it)
  
• Gilbert Hernandez
• Jaime Hernandez
• Jamie Hewlett
• Matt Howarth
  
• James Kochalka
• Joe Matt
• Ted McKeever
• Pete Milligan
• crazy bastard Alan Moore
• This will all end in tears. Joe Ollmann.
• Harvey Pekar (although I couldn't stand the smelly jerk when I lived in Cleveland Heights and saw him everywhere)
• Brian Ralph
• Marjane Satrapi
  
• Seth
• Joann Sfar
• Art Spiegelman
• Cry yourself to sleep by writer and artist Jeremy Tinder
• Jim Woodring

These are just the people whose names I can remember. You can find a lot of their books at Atomic Books, and a few at your local public library.