Maus I & II, by Art Spiegelman

I'm going to treat these as one, because they so obviously should be, seeing as how they tell the same story, in the same style, and the second is merely a continuation of the first.

That "merely" might imply that I'm going to say something disparaging about these books, but far from it! They were incredible: engrossing, well-drawn, well-written, and, frankly, much deeper than I thought a comic book (excuse me, "graphic novel") could ever be. Spiegelman explores not only the story of the Holocaust, drawn in excruciating detail, despite the comic cover of using mice, cats, dogs, fish, frogs, and pigs instead of Jews, Germans, British, French, and Polish, but also the story of his troubled relationship with his father, who, despite his noble and resourceful actions during the war, is now the living stereotype of a miserly, racist old Jew. (The scene in which the father characterizes all black people as thieves is particularly compelling.) This double-story exploration adds a richness to the work that is sometimes lacking in other artistic treatments of the Holocaust, since it allows Spiegelman to ponder both the war and its aftermath, Jewish suffering both then and now. The Holocaust has been, some say, done to death in books, movies, songs, plays, art, and nearly any other medium you can think of, but Maus stands among the best, if not the best.