Artists: R. Crumb (and many others, including Alison Bechdel)
Though technically a collection of comics spanning more than two decades, Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor is generally regarded as one of the great forefathers of the modern graphic memoir. Offering an insightful, often self-deprecating, peek into the humdrum of daily life in Cleveland, Ohio. As TIME wrote, “Pekar took the kinds of everyday triumphs and tragedies that everyone deals with and turned them in sublimely gritty vignettes that became art.” In short, what makes the American Splendor comics so extraordinary is that the topics it covers are so ordinary—completely relate-able snippets of Pekar’s life—including relationships with family and friends, workplace frustrations and money woes. Illustrated by a roster of legendary cartoonists such as R. Crumb, Chester Brown, and Alan Moore, American Splendor is by turns cantankerous, humorous and bittersweet.
MORE: Read “Comic Relief,” TIME’s profile of Alison Bechdel