The team of Eric Shanower and Skottie Young have produced five adaptations of L. Frank Baum’s Oz books. The award-winning adaptations are first issued as comic books and then collected in hardcover under the Marvel Comics imprint.

Shanower is faithful to Baum’s singular vision. Generations are familiar with Dorothy, Toto, the Tinman and Cowardly Lion — largely due to that movie. Lesser known characters such as Johnny Dooit, the Musicker and the Queen of the Scoodlers populate the books, and give the stories a zesty, manic quality.

A page from Hope Larson’s adaptation of Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle In Time.

But it’s Young’s art that elevates the series. His recent work for Marvel includes a revamp of the New Warriors, variant covers for a crop of recent new launches and writing the epic A-Babies vs. X-Babies.

Young’s unique and endearing style is made for Oz. As is the warm, vibrant palette used by colorist Jean-Francois Beaulieu, which causes Young’s images to pop from the page.

When I first read Madeleine L’Engle’s classic A Wrinkle in Time I struggled to understand the complete scope of this tale of travel through time and space.

The graphic novel, written and illustrated by Hope Larson, demonstrates how images can make a difficult concept accessible. Just one example: Mrs. Who’s explanation of how to use a “tesser” — a wrinkle in time — to speed up travel.

The characters — Mrs. Who, Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Which and Aunt Beast — also take on depth and clarity in Larson’s adaptation. I also like her use of a limited palette — blues, black and white — to illustrate the story.

I.N.J. Culbard has adapted several classic novels, including three Sherlock Holmes’ stories, into graphic novels. The most recent is H.P. Lovecraft’s classic At the Mountains of Madness.

It’s a tale of a polar expedition that stumbles upon a vast, unknown city. Built by an alien race, it is inhabited by giant birds and ancient multi-eyed creatures that lurk in the shadows.

In an ancient text, the explorers stumble upon this chilling message: “Nor is it to be thought that man is either the oldest or the last of earth’s masters. The old ones were, the old ones are and the old ones shall be.”

From the marvels of Oz to the mysteries of space and time to ancient horrors hidden in the Antarctic, these adaptations are works of originality as well as an affectionate tribute to the novels and the authors that were their inspiration.

Native Kansan John Reinhart is a comic-book devotee, foodie, runner and cyclist. You can follow his reading life at bibliobloggin.blogspot.com or on Twitter @bibliobaggins.

(c) Madeleine L’Engle and Hope Larson, used with permission of FSG BYR

Also of Interest

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Do you start with the powerful narrative or its unusual physical and artistic composition or the critical acclaim that may appear over the top until you’ve spent time immersed in this brilliant work?

Since architecture provides much of the framework for Building Stories let’s begin with the novel’s physical and artistic composition. It comes in 14 parts housed in a box the size of a typical board game.

An excerpt from Building Stories by Chris Ware.

The 14 parts are described as “distinctively discrete books, booklets, magazines, newspapers, and pamphlets.” One of the books resembles nothing so much as a Little Golden Book.

There’s no specific starting point. The reader can begin this story wherever chance and inclination takes her. I read from smallest to largest.

With no clear beginning, readers, like Vonnegut’s Billy Pilgrim, jump through time.

Those jumps may begin with the chief protagonist as a lonely young adult, skip to her childhood and then leap to the present where she is a mother and wife.

The lack of authorial direction is not as daunting as it first appears. It’s nothing we aren’t accustomed to in novels or movies and Ware’s artwork helps place the reader in time far more quickly than text alone.

The woman, who is the focus of this multi-layered story, is unnamed. The reader learns that she is a florist, has a prosthetic leg and is a former art student.

During one stage of her life she occupies the top floor of a three-story building in Chicago. The building’s other inhabitants are a frail spinster and a couple whose marriage is falling apart. In this heart-rending passage, the characters are isolated by a cocoon of loneliness and despair.

Building Stories has been described as important, delectable, intricate. It is all that, and more, which explains why Time and the New York Times each selected it as one of the top 10 Books of 2012. Publisher’s Weekly named it the best book of the year.

It was nominated for five Eisner Awards, the comic industry’s equivalent of the Oscar, including Best Graphic Album, Best Writer/Artist and Best Publication Design. Results will be announced in July at the Comic-Con International in San Diego.

See also: Marvel Comics superheroes celebrate 50th anniversary!

No other graphic novel compares to Building Stories. Taken merely as a story, it is insightful, compelling, and evocative. Ware’s drawings and innovative design raise Building Stories to another level.

One that results in a rich and rewarding read, and that demonstrates the full scope a graphic novel can achieve.

Native Kansan John Reinhart is a comic-book devotee, foodie, runner, and cyclist. You can follow his reading life at bibliobloggin.blogspot.com or on Twitter @bibliobaggins.

Image from Building Stories courtesy of Chris Ware/Pantheon Books.

Also of Interest

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“Do you have other graphic novels?” I asked the nearest clerk.

“Graphic novels?” She looked perplexed.

“Yeah,” I said, holding up a Gaiman cover. “Like these?”

“Oh.” More confusion. “I thought those were comic books.”

My point exactly.

Tell an adult story via text and sequential art, and chances are most people will see it as a comic book on steroids. But a graphic novel is much more than that. And these days it may not even be fiction: Modern graphic “novels” present all manner of true-life stories, from the plight of Saharan refugees (Journalism by Joe Sacco) to a gay woman grappling with her sexual identity (Fun Home by Alison Bechdel) to a Vietnamese family  assimilating in the United States (Vietnamerica by G. B. Tran).

We’re a long way from supervillians intent on world domination here, people. Check out, for example, Will Eisner’s A Contract with God: It explores a man’s loss of faith after the death of his adopted daughter—a layered subject you might be surprised to encounter outside the works of Philip Roth or Louise Erdrich.

Equally intricate is Maus, in which Art Spiegelman interviews his father about his experiences as a Polish survivor of the Holocaust. The result is a blend of history, memoir, and fiction so powerful and complex it won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992 (a first for a graphic novel).

With new graphic novels hitting bookstore shelves each week, I hope to use this space to help you tour this undiscovered country. I hope you’ll join me for a wide-ranging dialogue about one of my favorite mediums: Which graphic novels do you like? And why?

Full disclosure: I’m a  bit biased when it comes to artwork. If I like the art in a graphic novel, odds are I’m going to like the story line too. If I don’t like the art, well—even Dickens would have a hard time winning me over.

Related: ’50 Shades of Grey’ and 5 Less Painful Book for Beach Reading

In my next post we’ll look at Chris Ware’s Building Stories, which many critics deemed one of 2012’s finest novels (of any kind). In the weeks after that we’ll page through works by Neil Gaiman, Joe Kubert, Hope Larson, Joe Sacco—and any others you’d like to see here.

Native Kansan John Reinhart is a comic-book devotee, foodie, runner, and cyclist. You can follow his reading life at bibliobloggin.blogspot.com or on Twitter @bibliobaggins.

Cover of the Kitchen Sink Press edition of A Contract With God with permission from the Will Eisner estate.

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• Join AARP: Savings, resources and news for your well-being

See the AARP home page for deals, savings tips, trivia and more