Best of
Comic-Strips

2009

Pearls Sells Out: A Pearls Before Swine Treasury


Stephan Pastis - 2009
    This edgy comic is the perfect collection of insight and observation on humanity's pitiful plight as seen by an arrogant rat, a half-wit pig, and their insane entourage. Pearls Sells Out gives fans their much-needed dose of humor, wit and biting sarcasm. The book also features thoughts and sly comments from Pastis about the strips in running commentary throughout the book."There's an artful, edgy rebellion being waged in the funny pages, and one of its brightest revolutionaries is Stephan Pastis." --Fort Worth Star-Telegram"The cartoon Pearls Before Swine is written by a psychopath." --reader complaint, Wichita Eagle

The Bloom County Library, Vol. 1: 1980-1982


Berkeley Breathed - 2009
    Bloom County ran from December 8th, 1980 to August 6th, 1989 and was published in an astounding 1200 newspapers on a daily basis. The huge popularity of Bloom County spawned a merchandizing bonanza, as well as two spin-off strips, Outland and Opus.The Bloom County Library Volume 1 highlights the first time the entire run of the immensely popular Bloom County strip has been collected in beautifully designed hard cover books with exceptional reproduction.The Library of American Comics is the world's #1 publisher of classic newspaper comic strips, with 14 Eisner Award nominations and three wins for best book. LOAC has become the gold standard for archival comic strip reprints...The research and articles provide insight and context, and most importantly the glorious reproduction of the material has preserved these strips for those who knew them and offers a new gateway to adventure for those discovering them for the first time." - ScoopWinner of the 2010 Eisner Award for Best Archival Collection/Project--Strips

The Complete Peanuts, 1971-1974


Charles M. Schulz - 2009
    A boxed set of the eleventh and twelfth volumes, just in time for the holidays, designed by the Award-winning graphic novelist, Seth! This collection of books—identical to the individual volumes—ships shrinkwrapped, with two hardcovers containing complete strips from the years 1971-1972 and 1973-1974, packed in a sturdy custom box designed especially for this set. The perfect gift item. The Complete Peanuts 1971-1972 : Sally Brown elbows her way to center stage, at least among the humans, and is thus the logical choice for cover girl... and in her honor, the introduction is provided by none other than Broadway, television and film star Kristin (Wicked) Chenoweth, who first rose to Tony-winning fame with her scene-stealing performance as Sally in You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. Two long Summer-camp sequences involve Charlie Brown and Peppermint Patty, who has decided that Charlie Brown is madly in love with her, much to his clueless confusion. Snoopy shows up at camp as well, as does Peppermint Patty’s new permanent sidekick, the one and only Marcie. The eternally mutable Snoopy mostly shakes off his World War I Flying Ace identity and turns into Joe Cool, college hipster extraordinaire. And in three long sequences he writes a fan letter to his favorite author, Miss Helen Sweetstory, then goes on a journey to meet her, and finally enlists Charlie Brown’s help when her latest opus, “The Six Bunny-Wunnies Freak Out,” falls afoul of censors. Also, Woodstock attends worm school, falls in love with a worm (perhaps the most doomed unrequited Peanuts love story ever!), and is nearly eaten by the neighbors’ cat... Peppermint Patty is put on trial for another dress code violation and makes a very ill-advised choice in terms of lawyers... Snoopy turns Linus’s blanket into not one but two sportcoats... Lucy hits a home run... and the birth of one Rerun Van Pelt! The Complete Peanuts 1973-1974 : This volume features a number of tennis strips and several extended sequences involving Peppermint Patty’s friend Marcie (including a riotous, rarely seen sequence in which Marcie’s costume-making and hairstyling skills utterly spoil a skating competition for PP), so it seems only right that this volume’s introduction should be served up by Schulz’s longtime friend, tennis champion Billie Jean King. This volume also picks up on a few loose threads from the previous year, as the mysterious “Poochie” shows up in the flesh; Linus and Lucy’s new kid brother “Rerun” makes his first appearance, is almost immediately drafted onto the baseball team (where, thanks to his tiny strike zone, he wins a game), and embarks on his first terrifying journey on the back of his mom’s bike; and, in one of Peanuts’ oddest recurring storylines, the schoolhouse Sally used to talk to starts talking, or at least thinking, back at her! The Complete Peanuts 1973-1974 also includes one of the all-time classic Peanuts sequences, in which Charlie Brown’s baseball-oriented hallucinations finally manifest themselves in a baseball-shaped rash on his head. Forced to conceal the embarrassing discoloration with a bag worn over his head, Charlie Brown goes to camp as “Mister Sack” and discovers that, shorn of his identity, he’s suddenly well liked and successful. 1460 b/w cartoons.

Gahan Wilson: 50 Years of Playboy Cartoons


Gahan Wilson - 2009
    His work has been seen by millions—no, hundreds of millions—in the pages of Playboy, The New Yorker, Punch, The National Lampoon, and many other magazines; there is no telling, really, how many readers he has corrupted or comforted. He is revered for his playfully sinister take on childhood, adulthood, men, women, and monsters. His brand of humor makes you laugh until you cry. And it’s about time that a collection of his cartoons was published that did justice to his vast body of work.When Gahan Wilson walked into Hugh Hefner’s office in 1957, he sat down as Hefner was on the phone, gently rejecting a submission to his new gentlemen’s magazine: “I think it’s very well-written and I liked it very much,” Hefner reportedly said, “but it’s anti-sin. And I’m afraid we’re pro-sin.” Wilson knew, at that moment, that he had found a kindred spirit and a potential home for his cartoons. And indeed he had; Wilson appeared in every issue of Playboy from the December 1957 issue to today. It has been one of the most fruitful, successful, and long-lived relationships between a contributor and a magazine, ever.Gahan Wilson: 50 Years of Playboy Cartoons features not only every cartoon Wilson drew for Playboy, but all his prose fiction that has appeared in that magazine as well, from his first story in the June 1962 issue, “Horror Trio,” to such classics as “Dracula Country” (September 1978). It also includes the text-and-art features he drew for Playboy, such as his look at Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum, his take on our country’s “pathology of violence,” and his appreciation of “transplant surgery.”Wilson’s notoriously black sense of comedy is on display throughout the book, leaving no sacred cow unturned (an image curiously absent in the book), ridiculing everything from state sponsored executions to the sober precincts of the nouveau rich, from teenage dating to police line-ups, with scalding and hilarious satirical jabs. Although Wilson is known as an artist who relishes the creepy side of modern life, this three-volume set truly demonstrates the depth and breadth of his range—from illustrating private angst we never knew we had (when you eat a steak, just whom are you eating?) to the ironic and deadpan take on horrifying public issues (ecological disaster, nuclear destruction anyone?).Gahan Wilson has been peeling back the troubling layers of modern life with his incongruously playful and unnerving cartoons, assailing our deepest fears and our most inane follies. This three-volume set is a testament to one of the funniest—and wickedly disturbing—cartoonists alive.Nominated for two 2010 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards (Best Archival Collection/Project: Strips; Best Publication Design).

Garfield Fat Cat 3-Pack #14


Jim Davis - 2009
    . . hacking up a monster hair ball, unleashing a killer burp, or giving Jon a tongue-lashing (with Odie's tongue). It's all in a day's play for the famous feline!The GARFIELD FAT CAT 3-PACK series collects the GARFIELD comic-strip compilation books in a new, full-color format. Garfield may have gone through a few changes, but one thing has stayed the same: his enormous appetite for food and fun. So enjoy some supersized laughs with the insatiable cat, because too much fun is never enough!

They Still Suspect Nothing: Two Lumps Year Four


Mel Hynes - 2009
    It has since become a cult legend. Collected here in print, for the first time, are the strips from the fourth year of Two Lumps - complete with author and artist annotations. Forward by Chris Daily from "Punch an' Pie"!

Wrapped-Up FoxTrot: A Treasury with the Final Daily Strips


Bill Amend - 2009
    Life is always fresh, topical, and irreverent in this wacky house.* Amend's FoxTrot won the National Cartoonists Society's prestigious Reuben Award in 2007.

Today I Hunt...Humankind: Two Lumps - Year Three


Mel Hynes - 2009
    It has since become a cult legend. Collected here in print, for the first time, are the strips from the third year of Two Lumps - complete with author and artist annotations.

Hagar the Horrible: The Epic Chronicles: The Dailies 1973-1974


Dik Browne - 2009
    that movie, The Vikings, comes the epic saga of the best-known Viking in the history of the world, the lovable, Hågar the Horrible – and his unending quest to put meat, mead and swag on the family table.

Playboy


Staff of Tess Press - 2009
    Its spectacular stable of artists includes such luminaries as Buck Brown, Jack Cole, Eldon Dedini, John Dempsey, Alden Erikson, Jules Feiffer, Phil Interlandi, Kiraz, Bobby London, Don Madden, Marty Murphy, Roy Raymonde, Arnold Roth, Shel Silverstein, Smilby, Doung Sneyd, Erich Sokol, Art Spiegelman, Gahan Wilson, Rowland B. Wilson, and hundreds of others. Hip subversives and sly revolutionaries all, Playboy's artists have continually offered a sophisticated brand of humor sorely missing in other men's magazines. Now, Playboy gathers them together i this glorious collection of the finest and funniest cartoons. Handpicked by Hugh M. Hefner himself, the pages distill the very bet of the cartoons featuring sweet young things, terrible tarts, winsome wives, suitors, and studs–a riotous chronicle of Playboy humor.

Liō's Astonishing Tales: From the Haunted Crypt of Unknown Horrors


Mark Tatulli - 2009
    The 2009 National Cartoonists Award for Best Newspaper Comic Strip, Lio is unique in its pantomime content and drawing style. This treasury includes creator commentary and origins of Lio.It's slightly dark and terribly funny. Lio, the main character, a young boy with an imagination that has no limit, explores everything kid. From bumps in the night to things hiding under the bed, readers get an inside look at different shades of humor but always come out the other end unscathed and laughing."Lio is brilliant!" --Dallas Morning News

F Minus: This Can't Be Legal


Tony Carrillo - 2009
    It tackles life's serious issues, pins them to the ground, and steals their lunch money. Then it feels a little bit guilty and gives some of it back."I draw my material from my experiences at a wide array of failed careers," says Carrillo. "Over time, I have worked as a pizza cook, Web site designer, dancing costumed character, portrait artist, insurance drone, waiter, custom framer, camel ride attendant at the zoo, and the guy at the airport that waves orange wands at the airplanes. As varied as these jobs were, eventually I had the profound realization that they all had two important things in common: each offered a wealth of comedic inspiration and there was always a creepy guy named Larry."Life isn't fair. But it sure is funny in F Minus.* Carrillo began his drawing career while attending Arizona State University. F Minus appeared in the college newspaper, The State Press, for two years.* In December 2004, the strip was named the winner of the 2004 mtvU Strips Contest, as chosen by judges Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, and David Rees, creator of Get Your War On, as well as more than 200,000 online voters.

Stop and Smell the Roses: A Mutts Treasury


Patrick McDonnell - 2009
    He's also a prominent proponent of funny and a keen observer of the small, everyday moments that make up our lives. Stop and Smell the Roses: A Mutts Treasury is a collection of dailies and Sundays of the adventures of McDonnell's dynamic dog and cat duo.* "Patrick McDonnell's Mutts is up there with Peanuts, Pogo, Krazy Kat, and Calvin and Hobbes--cartoons that are smart and funny, brilliantly drawn and full of heart." --Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons* McDonnell was awarded Germany's Max and Moritz Award for best international comic strip and the Adamson Statuette from the Swedish Academy of Comic Art for Best International Comic Strip Artist. Mutts was also honored with the Genesis Award for highlighting animal welfare issues.* Mutts characters are featured on special New Jersey license plates to raise funds for low-cost spaying and neutering.