Meet the authors of Icarus: A Graphic Novel and the intersection of novels/graphic novels/comics discussion

What got you into reading graphic novels? Which authors are your favorites? Which graphic novels made a difference for you? Please share and tell us what's so special about your pick.

Oh man, Justice from DC. LOVED IT. Also, the "Tales" Star Wars series by Dark Horse was pretty fantastic.

I've been pretty impressed with the quality of the Walking Dead graphic novels.

My husband is the one who introduced me to graphic novels. Before that, I thought they were just really long comics featuring starburst onomatopoeias and women with abnormally large breasts. First, he got me to read Sandman by Neil Gaiman. My eyes were opened and I realized comics could have a story that I actually cared about. Then I read Kingdom Come and realized how phenomenally beautiful artwork could be.

Kingdom Come is one of those interesting graphic novels because it sort of blurs the line between comic series and graphic novel. Whatever label you put on it, though, it is amazingly beautiful.

The ones which have most struck me are Alan Moore's V for Vendetta (not optimistic but exceptionally well crafted--better, in my opinion, than Watchmen), Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns (incredibly influential on later work and one of the graphic novels which started to get people to take comics more seriously), and Bryan Talbot's Grandville Mon Amour (got my vote for the Hugo in 2011). All of these tied together the visual with the narrative exceptionally well, and changed my view of storytelling in each case.

What got me into reading graphic novels? Comic books. :) No, seriously--I've been reading comics since I could read (I credit the early Spider-man comics with large portions of my vocabulary), so it was a natural transition to graphic novels as I got older. I still remember The Death of Captain Marvel, which I think was Marvel's first graphic novel, and Watchman and Dark Knight Returns and Ronin and others from that time. The stories in them were so rich, so layered, so much deeper and more complex than a regular comic's, they were breathtaking.

Once Upon A Time: Shadow of the Queen {based on the American television drama series} has to be one of my favourite graphic novels, simply because it adds to the entire experiance. The images and exciting drama takes you behind the character's lives and tells the story of the Queen and the Sherif's relationship {which is not shown during the TV series}.