You voted and now we continue our countdown of your votes for the top original graphic novels of all-time! These are graphic novels that were not serialized as comic books before they were released as graphic novels.

Enjoy!

40. Safe Area Gorazde by Joe Sacco (2000)

During the war in Bosnia during the 1990s, the United Nations came up with the idea for "Safe Areas." These wee designated cities where the Bosnian Serbs were not meant to attack the Bosniaks, so they were ostensibly intended to be places where the Bosniaks could be free from the ethnic cleansing that went on during the Bosnian War. The problem was that the United Nations did not bother to make these "safe areas" all that safe and thus the people in them had to constantly worry that any day now they were going to be overrun and the people there massacred (it happened in Srebrenica, another "safe area" where thousands of Bosniaks were slaughtered).

Joe Sacco visited Gorazde three times during the midst of this period and he did a wonderful job in Safe Area Gorazde depicting what life was like for the people there.

A young man named Edin, who saw many of his friends slaughtered in one of the early attacks by the Serbs, became Sacco's most valued guide.

39. The Story of My Tits by Jennifer Hayden (2015)

While Jennifer Hayden's graphic novel, The Story of My Tits, is ostensibly about Hayden's breast cancer diagnosis, it is instead used as framework in which Hayden tells the story of her life and the lives of two other very important women in her journey that dealt with cancer, including Hayden's own mother, who had a mastectomy when Hayden was a girl...

It's a beautiful, character-driven tale.

38. The Golem's Mighty Swing by James Sturm (2001)

Throughout his career, James Sturm has always had a way of getting to the heart of America through looks at the odd parts of American history. This fictionalized account of a Jewish barnstorming baseball team hits beautifully on themes of assimilation, racism and Anti-Semitism that are as appropriate today as they were 17 years ago.

The concept is that a promoter makes a deal to the all-Jewish team. Let him add a Golem to their team...

The Golem, of course, is an African-American ballplayer, and thus you get directly into themes of turning a black man into a "Golem"...

It is kind of hard not to be seen as the "other" in a situation like that, and things deteriorate from there.

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37. Obelix and Co. by Rene Goscinny and Albert Uderzo (1976)

There were a number of votes for Asterix graphic novels (or graphic albums, as they call them in Europe), but most of them were for the early Asterix books, which are all collections of stories that were originally serialized. By the early 1970s, Goscinny and Uderzo began to release the books by themselves. The graphic novel that got the most votes that actually qualified was Obelix and Co., the last book released in Goscinny's lifetime (another book was released after he passed away).

This is perhaps the harshest satirical work that they did together. The book stars the usual group of wacky Gauls, like Asterix and his giant friend, Obelix.

The thing is that the Romans are having so much trouble defeating the Gauls through traditional means that they are forced to think of sneakier ways of attacking them. The latest plan is to essentially turn the Gauls against each other by introducing the concept of capitalism to the Gauls...

This has such a great edge to it, while still being a fun comic to read.

36. My Favorite Thing is Monsters by Emil Ferris (2017)

One of the most notable graphic novels of 2017, My Favorite Thing is Monsters is a a book by Emil Ferris that shows the story of a horror-obsessed middle schooler in the late 1960s Chicago who is trying to solve the murder of one of the residents of her building while also being introduced to a few new pieces of information about her life which send young Karen reeling.

The whole thing is drawn and written as if it was simply something a notebook that the girl keeps the story in.

This story is so big that it had to be broken up into two smaller books. The first one rocked everyone's world last year with its combination of powerful artwork and a relatable lead whose imagination sometimes gets the best of her but she is a delightful person at her heart.