10 Marvel Graphic Novels You Must Read Before You Die

9. Silver Surfer: Parable

French artist Jean Giraud, known professionally as Moebius, won fame for his unique style and influential works translated from his native language. He counted Hayao Miyazaki, Federico Fellini and, surprisingly, Stan Lee amongst his fans. Perhaps not so surprising, considering that much of Moebius's work had a surreal sci-fi bent, which perfectly gelled with some of Lee's more out there Marvel creations, including Fantastic Four bad guy/friend (depending on when you were reading) Silver Surfer, herald of the planet-eating space monster Galactus.

A rare foray into Western comics for Moebius, Parable was an award-winning two issue miniseries "written" by Stan Lee and drawn by the French savant. In fact most of the credit can go to Moebius himself, since the story was produced using the infamous Marvel Method, where an artist works from a loose plot but puts the bulk of the comic together themselves, with the writer adding dialogue and such afterwards.

As usual with Moebius works, however, it's the art that's really the main attraction over the words. In collected form, Silver Surfer: Parable is a sumptuous book, one you could keep on your coffee table and have read by arty types whilst still being about a Fantastic Four villain who's a giant purple guy and his shiny bald sidekick who travels round space on a flying surfboard. Not that the FF stuff is important, since this is an out-of-continuity tale and, well, an actual parable that anybody could pick up and be blown away by.