Stewart the Rat #0 (1980)

In the wake of their groundbreaking work on Howard the Duck, writer Steve Gerber and artist Gene Colan brought another talking animal into the world, subjecting a rat named Stewart to the madness that is Los Angeles. Between self-help cults and the putrified corpse of Disco, it's a fate that even a rat doesn't deserve. As one of the first American graphic novels and an early example of the independent publishing movement, Stewart the Rat  was free from the restrictions and censorship that ruled the comics field.