Melmoth (Cerebus, Volume 6)

More than 11 years into a 25-year project of chronicling the life of a single main character, Dave Sim took a small detour (of sorts), put his main character Cerebus on the sidelines, and told this story of the last days of Oscar Wilde. Some Cerebus readers think this book is a needless distraction from Sim's master epic; others think this is one of Sim's finest achievements, and that by combining and slightly altering the very real letters of Robert Ross to More Adey (originally printed in the Collected Letters of Oscar Wilde), Sim was able to add a depth and breadth to his fiction never before possible. Either way, Sim and exquisite background artist Gerhard are in fine form as they weave this tale of Wilde into their fictional landscape of a new matriarchal establishment.