Count Five: Lightspeed Champion's Favorite Graphic Novels

Devonte Hynes, the former Test Icicles member now better know as Lightspeed Champion, gives the lowdown on his all-time favorite comic books. Although his music has progressed and matured radically over the years, Hynes has always found inspiration in graphic novels.

1. 'Madman,' by Michael Allred: It's one of my favorite comic characters and one of my favorite artists. Basically, nobody knows who he was – he died. A guy called Dr. Boiffard brought him back and then nicknamed him Frank Einstein, after Frank Sinatra and, obviously, Einstein. He's perfectly scarred but he's completely insane.

2. 'Unlikely,' by Jeffrey Brown: There's an honesty to it. I don't actually read a lot of comics like this. Its all about girls usually, but the pacing of each frame is just perfect.

3. 'David Boring,' by Daniel Clowes: Clowes got quite popular recently due to the 'Ghost World' film adaptation, originally based on his serialized '8 Ball' comics. 'David Boring' is set like a movie, it's in three acts but it's honestly my favorite graphic novel of all time. The pacing is so still, it moves so well, its beautifully written and beautifully drawn.

4. 'Black Hole,' by Charles Burns: His artwork is another one that gets ripped off quite a bit, I've noticed, by kids that tend to do indie show flyers. But he very, very much has his own style more than most people, I guess art-wise his shading is second to none -- each stroke is precision. This is set in the '70s around high school kids doing what high school kids do -- with the twists and turns of high school life. The only difference is that instead of AIDS or STDs going around, they all kind of mutate in various ways, and that's how everyone seems to know people have had affairs and whatever.

5. 'Summer Blonde,' by Adrian Tomine: A lot of people criticize him 'cause they feel his stories have no endings. There's one in here that's about a girl who works in a call center, she hasn't got a boyfriend, goes on dates and nothing really happens. Stuff like that. This is just kinda real-life. Even if there were no words you could just read it; every character says something in their face. People who didn't read comics were shocked that you could be simple. It's just like trying to say to them that not every film made in the world is exactly the same; there are millions of genres and you can do what you want in cinema, and it's the same in comics.