Best of
Comix

2002

Groovitude: A Get Fuzzy Treasury


Darby Conley - 2002
    Get Fuzzy has become a hit cartoon with its bitingly funny portrait of single life with pets.And why not? The laughs come fast and furious. Get Fuzzy features Rob Wilco, a single, mild-mannered advertising executive who's the so-called guardian of Bucky and Satchel, anthropomorphic scamps that still live by their animal instincts. Bucky, a temperamental cat who carries a boom box and goes on spending sprees, definitely calls the shots in this eclectic household, while Satchel is a kindly canine with a sensitive soul who tries to remain neutral, even though he bears the brunt of his feline companion's mischief.Between the three of them, the Wilco household faces a whole host of trials and tribulations that classify them as family. Satchel wants his boundaries respected. Bucky refuses to eat vegetables but insists on snarfing up Rob's plants. Rob tries to meet women, but his pets continually subvert his efforts. In every frame, Get Fuzzy depicts the hilarious war between the species, giving the animals an equal footing in hilarious one-upmanship.Get Fuzzy is the comic strip for everyone who loves their pets with an attitude. That said, Groovitude is Get Fuzzy at its finest.Contains cartoons from The Dog Is Not a Toy and Fuzzy Logic.

The Cartoon History of the Universe III: From the Rise of Arabia to the Renaissance


Larry Gonick - 2002
    Larry Gonick's celebrated series The Cartoon History of the Universe is a unique fusion of world history and the comics medium, a work of serious scholarship and a masterpiece of popular literature. Praised by historians as a narrative and interpretive tour de force, Gonick's clever illustrations deliver important information with a deceptively light tone, teaching us about the people and events that have shaped our world. This long-awaited new volume covers the Middle Ages around the globe, including the origin and spread of Islam; West Africa and the cross-Saharan trade; Central Asia and the Byzantine Empire; the European Dark Ages and the Crusades; the Mongol conquests; the Black Death; the Ottoman Empire; the Italian Renaissance; and the rise of Spain, leading up to Columbus's departure for the New World. Highlighting key events and retrieving oft-neglected historical connections, Gonick offers an historical survey that is at once multicultural, humanistic, skeptical, and laugh-out-loud funny.

One Hundred Demons


Lynda Barry - 2002
    Name that Demon!!! Freaky boyfriends! Shouting Moms! Innocence betrayed! These are some of the pickled demons you'll meet as Lynda Barry mixes the true and the un-true into something she calls "autobificitionalography." From her nattering and intolerant/loving Filipina grandmother to the ex-boyfriend from hell who had lice, Lynda Barry's demons jump out of these pages and double-dare you to speak their names. Called by Time magazine "a work of art as well as literature," One Hundred Demons has been hailed for its shimmering watercolor images and unforgettable stories about life's little monsters.

Krazy and Ignatz, 1925-1926: There is a Heppy Land Furfur A-waay


George Herriman - 2002
    Each volume in this series reprints two full years of Sunday strips, or 104 full-page, black-and-white Sunday strips (Herriman did not incorporate color into the strip until 1935). Krazy Kat is a love story, focusing on the relationship of its three main characters. Krazy Kat adored Ignatz Mouse. Ignatz Mouse hated Krazy Kat, the expression of which was in throwing bricks at Krazy's head. Offisa Pup loved Krazy and sought to protect "her" (Herriman always maintained that Krazy was genderless), mostly by throwing Ignatz in jail. Each of the characters was ignorant of the other's true motivations. This simple structure allowed Herriman to build entire worlds of meaning into the actions, building thematic depth that led critics like Gilbert Seldes and E. E. Cummings to recognize Herriman's genius almost immediately. Each of Fantagraphics' Krazy Ignatz volumes is designed by Chris Ware, creator of the wildly successful ACME Novelty Library series. This beautiful volume includes material never collected before.

Twentieth Century Eightball


Daniel Clowes - 2002
    Renowned for its gleefully incisive social satire and riotous absurdity, Entertainment Weekly proclaimed it "the year's best regularly published comic book" upon its debut in 1989. The Village Voice proclaimed it "brilliant," and Art Spiegelman called it "curdlingly good." Simpsons creator Matt Groening has repeatedly called it his favorite comic book.20th Century Eightball collects the very best humor strips from Eightball, written and drawn between 1988 and 1996. Included within are such seminal strips/rants as "I Hate You Deeply," "Sexual Frustration," "Ugly Girls," "Why I Hate Christians," "Message to the People of the Future," "Paranoid," "My Suicide," "Chicago," and over three dozen more. Other favorites include "Art School Confidential," one of Clowes' most popular strips of all-time: made into a motion picture with a screenplay by Ghost World's Clowes and Terry Zwigoff. Also included is Clowes' hilariously Freudian deconstruction of professional athletes, "On Sports," which caused a stir in San Antonio last year when reprinted in the city's most popular weekly paper, prompting an advertising boycott and demands for the paper to be destroyed by local sports fans. Noted comics historian Roger Sabin, author of Phaidon's Comics, Comix and Graphic Novels, calls 20th Century Eightball a "corrosively satirical vision of an America cracking apart, and confirms Clowes as a worthy successor to the underground greats of the 1960s."

Krazy and Ignatz, 1927-1928: Love Letters in Ancient Brick


George Herriman - 2002
    Each volume is edited by the San Francisco Cartoon Art Museum's Bill Blackbeard, the world's foremost authority on early 20th Century American comic strips, and designed by Jimmy Corrigan author Chris Ware. In addition to the 104 full-page black-and-white Sunday strips from 1927 and 1928 (Herriman did not use color until 1935), the book includes introductions by Blackbeard, vaudeville historian Ben Schwartz and reproductions of rare Herriman ephemera from Ware's own extensive collection, as well as annotations and other notes by Ware and Blackbeard. Krazy Kat is a love story, focusing on the relationships of its three main characters. Krazy Kat adored Ignatz Mouse. Ignatz Mouse just tolerated Krazy Kat, except for recurrent onsets of targeting tumescence, which found expression in the fast delivery of bricks to Krazy's cranium. Offisa Pup loved Krazy and sought to protect "her" (Herriman always maintained that Krazy was genderless) by throwing Ignatz in jail. Each of the characters was ignorant of the others' true motivations, and this simple structure allowed Herriman to build entire worlds of meaning into the actions, building thematic depth and sweeping his readers up by the looping verbal rhythms of Krazy Co.'s unique dialogue.

100 Bullets, Vol. 4: A Foregone Tomorrow


Brian Azzarello - 2002
    But as these self-serving manipulations take place, pieces of the mystery of the Minutemen and the organization that created them start to come together, and we discover to the research and conspiracy theories of Mr. Branch. As more is revealed about the series' main characters, the true meaning and importance of the conflict between Graves and the Trust starts to emerge.

100 Bullets, Vol. 5: The Counterfifth Detective


Brian Azzarello - 2002
    After receiving an attach� case and the standard 100 bullets from the mysterious Graves, Milo Garret, a broken-down L.A. private detective learns that a recent mishap that left him scarred and without a face might not have been an accident. But as the mystery of his misfortune unravels, Milo must decide between having answers and having a future. SUGGESTED FOR MATURE READERS

Anarchy for the Masses: The Disinformation Guide to The Invisibles


Patrick Neighly - 2002
    A must-have for comics fans, this Guide features exhaustive, detailed analysis of the full six-year series as well as all-new, exclusive interviews with Morrison and many of the series' artists and editors.Already featured in "Disinformation: The Interviews" and the accompanying TV series and DVD, Grant Morrison has been heavily promoted as a contemporary pop culture star, the first comics writer to be included as one of "Entertainment Weekly's" top 100 creative people in America. We will market the book aggressively to Morrison fan sites and comics, skate and punk zines.

Flex Mentallo: Man of Muscle Mystery


Grant Morrison - 2002
    and of the Doom Patrol. Now Flex Mentallo, the Man of Muscle Mystery, returns to investigate the sinister dealings of his former comrade, The Fact, and a mysterious rock star whose connection to Flex may hold the key to saving them both.This fast-paced tale twists super hero tropes, introducing one mind-boggling concept after another in a tour de force of innovative storytelling.This long-asked-for Vertigo title is collected at last, presenting an early collaboration between writer Grant Morrison and artist Frank Quitely, who would win much acclaim on ALL-STAR SUPERMAN and WE3.

Blacksad: The Sketch Files


Juan Díaz Canales - 2002
    Exciting behind-the-scnes look at the creation of one of the hottest series in graphic novels today.

The Complete Strangers in Paradise, Volume 3, Part 4


Terry Moore - 2002
    Francine and Katchoo are high-school best friends who are reunited when Francine comes back to town after years away from her hometown. David is their new friend entangled in their complicated lives. From creepy ex-boyfriends and insensitive bosses to the reality of AIDS and underworld prostitution, you never know what will come up next - but you can always count on laughing and crying at the same time. This foil-stamped casebound hardcover with color dust jacket includes a special color cover art section, sketches, and more.

The Rabbi's Cat 2


Joann Sfar - 2002
    While the rabbi is away, his cat tags along with Malka of the Lions (the rabbi's enigmatic cousin), who roams the desert with his ferocious-on-demand lion. Some believe Malka to be a pious Jew, others think he's a shrewd womanizer, but the cat will be the one to discover the surprising truth.Back in Algiers, the rabbi's daughter, Zlabya, and her new husband fill the house with their fighting, while the city around them fills with a rising tide of anti-Semitism. On a whim, the rabbi's cat, the rabbi, a sheikh (also a cousin of the rabbi), and a very misplaced Russian painter set out on a fantastic journey (even encountering a young reporter named Tintin in the Congo) in search of an African Jerusalem. It turns out to be very fortuitous that the rabbi's cat is not just a talking cat, but a multilingual talking cat.

Snoopy's Guide to the Writing Life


Barnaby Conrad - 2002
    Each essay focuses on how the strip presents an aspect of writing life - getting started, getting rejected, searching for new ideas - that they have experienced.

Hallmarks of Felinity: A 9 Chickweed Lane Book


Brooke McEldowney - 2002
    From Jim Davis's Garfield to Patrick McDonnell's Mooch, cartoon cats make us laugh. Now in the form of Solange the Siamese, Brooke McEldowney has successfully captured the endearing qualities that makea cat, well, a cat: the way they cannot resist dark fabric, their unflinching indifference to squalid humanity (unless, of course, said humanity comes bearing treats), and their advanced heat-seeking technology that leads them to the warmest laps and the coziest corners. Readers will grin with recognition at each of these humorously illustrated hallmarks. The result is a delightful field guide to a cat's moods, motivations, and behaviors. Ever since it appeared as a recurring theme in the comic strip 9 Chickweed Lane, Hallmarks Of Felinity has attracted a large and devoted readership of its own. Longtime fans and newcomers alike will enjoy this charming gift book.

X-Force: Famous, Mutant & Mortal


Peter Milligan - 2002
    Widely accepted by the general populace, the all-new, all-different X-Force stands in defense of the free world. . . but only if they get paid. A story about money, race, sexuality and America's obsession with celebrities -- disguised as a super hero comic.

The Wind in the Willows


Michel Plessix - 2002
    The artwork is in aquarelle, with thin, precise, detailed lines. In Wind in the Willows, Plessix breathes life into Mole, Rat, and Toad (of Toad Hall) as they picnic on the riverbank, indulge in Toad's latest fad, and get lost in Wild Wood. The pacing is masterful: each panel lingers just long enough to make you appreciate the simple pleasures of life.

Cuckoo


Madison Clell - 2002
    Often funny, sometimes horrifying, but always bitingly honest, Clell's work shows us an amazing glimpse at how survival can often be the best revenge. --Graphic novel ; compilation of 13 comics issues of the original 'Cuckoo' series. --

Five Star Stories #1


Mamoru Nagano - 2002
    It's the Joker calendar year J.C. 2988. One of the Galaxy's most prestigious fatima meights, Dr. Clotho - only to have to thake them into custody by the local lord! He is a depraved upstart merchant by the name of Grand Duke Juba Bardiam, and he coverts the tow fatimas to satisfy his outlandish lecheries. Ballanche has no one to turn to for help, but his longtime friend Ladios Sopp to save his two daughters from Juba's slimy clutches. English text.

Rising Stars: Born in Fire


Arthur Byron Cover - 2002
    Of what happened to us, and to those we knew, and loved, and fought. Sixty years. One hundred and thirteen people born with the power. The story of the world we touched. And all the places where the world touched us. And the terror and the beauty and the death that happened in the spaces in-between... Over twenty years ago, a comet struck the Earth just outside the town of Pederson, Illinois. There were 113 children in utero when the flash hit, and every one of them was affected, gaining extraordinary super-powers as they grew older. The people of the world, initially worried by what the children might become when they reached adulthood, now fear what they will do with the powers they've gained-and who might suffer should the rising stars start to think they could run the world better...

Six Hundred and Seventy Six Apparitions of Killoffer


Patrice Killoffer - 2002
    Charting Killoffer's violent odyssey through a world overflowing with his many selves, 676 Apparitions is a spectacularly ambitious attempt to roll back the constraints of autobiography and graphic narrative.Originally published in French by L'Association in 2002, this is widely recognised to be one of the most important European comics of past years, and was nominated along with Jimmy Corrigan and David Boring for Best Album at Angoulême in 2003.This edition has been completely relettered by the artist.

Krypton Nights


Bryan D. Dietrich - 2002
    Sometimes funny and often heartbreaking, each poem is a careful construction and serious meditation on our 21st century reality how we feel and who we are, as quirky or disturbing as that may be.

Something's Not Quite Right


Guy Billout - 2002
    Guy Billout offers 33 paintings, each of which challenges the viewer to find something wrong.

The Comics Journal Library, Vol. 1: Jack Kirby


Milo George - 2002
    This book presents a comprehensive look at Kirby through a series of in-depth interviews from "The Comics Journal." Illustrations in b&w and color.

Illustrated Yellow Emperor's Canon of Medicine (Chinese/English Edition)


Zhou Chuncai - 2002
    

How to Get Rich


Jeff Fisher - 2002
    With an international reputation for his brilliantly witty and much-imitated drawings, Jeff Fisher is ideally placed to dispense this kind of advice. That he himself is completely broke has little to do with the efficacy of the method outlined in this slim, elegant, and above all, highly affordable little volume.

Actions Speak


Sergio Aragonés - 2002
    Sergio Aragones, forty-year veteran of MAD magazine and winner of the coveted Reuben Award and numerous Eisner and Harvey awards, serves up another helping of hilarity which is guaranteed to leave you speechless. This is one hundred and sixty pages of some of the wittiest comic strips from a true master of the form.

Burn, Bitchy, Burn


Roberta Gregory - 2002
    Included in this collection of Gregory's legendary Naughty Bits comic book series is the classic "Fallout," in which Bitchy Bitch believes she is going into menopause, causing her to remember moments of her youth. She flashes back to her childhood in the 1960s, complete with memories of bomb shelters, school, and backstabbing kiddies. Unfortunately, she realizes that not much has changed from the playground to the office. "Adult-erated" provides more insight into the past of comicdom's only permanently PO'd and PMS'd protagonist, focusing on Bitchy's post-college years, including her first apartment. Follow her as she journeys into adulthood, dealing with sex, responsibility, and the tedium of corporate America. In "Sylvia's Week," Bitchy is on vacation and the spotlight turns to her co-worker Sylvia. As a devotee to the New Age movement, Sylvia tries to use crystals and meditation to deal with the stresses of everyday office life and her dead weight of a husband. The title strip, "Burn, Bitch, Burn," centers on "Witchy Bitch," a 12th Century medicine woman and dead ringer for Bitchy Bitch. Accused of being a witch and sentenced to burning at the stake, Witchy feels no less oppressed by her society than her future counterpart, to say the least. But is she really a witch? That's a question the villagers find out the answer to the hard way, through a little thing called the Black Plague. These classic Gregory strips are supplemented with an all-new strip created especially for this collection, making Burn, Bitchy, Burn a smoldering standard-bearer of feminist-themed comic art.