The Story of My Tits


Jennifer Hayden - 2015
    Across a lifetime, they’d held so many meanings: hope and fear, pride and embarrassment, life and death. And then they were gone. Now, their story has become a way of understanding her story. Growing up flat-chested and highly aware of her inadequacies… heading off to college, where she “bloomed” in more ways than one… navigating adulthood between her mother’s mastectomy, her father’s mistress, and her musician boyfriend’s problems of his own—not to mention his sprawling family. Then the kids come along… As cancer strikes three different lives, some relationships crumble while others emerge even stronger, and this sarcastic child of the ‘70s finally finds a goddess she can believe in.For everyone who’s faced cancer personally, or watched a loved one fight that battle, Hayden’s story is a much-needed breath of fresh air, an irresistible blend of sweetness and skepticism. Rich with both symbolism & humor, The Story of My Tits will leave you laughing, weeping, and feeling grateful for every day.

Pride of Baghdad


Brian K. Vaughan - 2006
    In his award-winning work on Y THE LAST MAN and EX MACHINA (one of Entertainment Weekly’s 2005 Ten Best Fiction titles), writer Brian K. Vaughan has displayed an understanding of both the cost of survival and the political nuances of the modern world. Now, in this provocative graphic novel, Vaughan examines life on the streets of war-torn Iraq. In the spring of 2003, a pride of lions escaped from the Baghdad zoo during an American bombing raid. Lost and confused, hungry but finally free, the four lions roamed the decimated streets of Baghdad in a desperate struggle for their lives. In documenting the plight of the lions, PRIDE OF BAGHDAD raises questions about the true meaning of liberation – can it be given or is it earned only through self-determination and sacrifice? And in the end, is it truly better to die free than to live life in captivity? Based on a true story, VAUGHAN and artist NIKO HENRICHON (Barnum!) have created a unique and heartbreaking window into the nature of life during wartime, illuminating this struggle as only the graphic novel can.

A Chinese Life


Li Kunwu - 2012
    This distinctively drawn work chronicles the rise and reign of Chairman Mao Zedong, and his sweeping, often cataclysmic vision for the most populated country on the planet.Though the storyline is epic, the storytelling is intimate, reflecting the real life of the book’s artist. Li Kunwu spent more than 30 years as a state artist for the Communist Party. He saw firsthand what was happening to his family, his neighbors, and his homeland during this extraordinary time. Working with Philippe Ôtié, the artist has created a memoir of self and state, a rich, very human account of a major historical moment with contemporary consequences. Mao said, “The masses are the real heroes,” but A Chinese Life shows those masses as real people.Praise for A Chinese Life:“This is an absorbing book—all 700 pages of it—reminiscent at times of Zhang Yimou’s epic Chinese history film To Live, and reminiscent at others of George Orwell’s 1984, recast as non-fiction.” —The Onion’s A.V. Club

X'ed Out


Charles Burns - 2010
    A weird buzzing noise on the other side of the wall has woken him up, and there, across the room, next to a huge hole torn out of the bricks, sits his beloved cat, Inky. Who died years ago. But who’s nonetheless slinking out through the hole, beckoning Doug to follow.What’s going on? To say any more would spoil the freaky, Burnsian fun, especially because X’ed Out, unlike Black Hole, has not been previously serialized, and every unnervingly meticulous panel will be more tantalizing than the last...

Duran Duran, Imelda Marcos, and Me


Lorina Mapa - 2017
    An intimate look at Philippine society and culture, but above all, a deeply endearing father-daughter love story." —Michel RabagliatiWhen she learns of her beloved father's fatal car accident, Lorina Mapa flies to Manila to attend his funeral. Weaving the past with the present, Mapa entertains with stories about religion, pop culture, adolescence, and social class, including her experiences of the 1986 People Power Revolution which made headlines around the world. It is a love letter to her parents, family, friends, country of birth, and in the end, perhaps even to herself.

Black Dog: The Dreams of Paul Nash


Dave McKean - 2016
    Dark Horse proudly presents a new original graphic novel by the legendary artist based on the life of Paul Nash, a surrealist painter during World War 1. The Dreams of Paul Nash deals with real soldier's memoirs, and all the stories will add up to be a moving piece about how war and extreme situations change us, how we deal with that pain, and, in Nash's case, by turning his landscapes into powerful and fantastical psycho-scapes.Praise for one of Dave McKean's previous graphic novels, Cages: "One of the most important works of comic art in the last decade." -The Comics Journal"It is compulsively readable, with a lyrical tone that moves the reader through the rougher, more elusive passages as it strives at the very edge of the form's limitation." -Comic Foundry Magazine"The finest comic being created today. Get it and see what heights narrative graphic art can achieve." -The Fine Print

Jim Henson's Tale of Sand


Jim Henson - 2011
    Discovered in the Archives of the The Jim Henson Company, A Tale of Sand is an original graphic novel adaptation of an unproduced, feature-length screenplay written by Jim Henson and his frequent writing partner, Jerry Juhl. A Tale of Sand follows scruffy everyman, Mac, who wakes up in an unfamiliar town, and is chased across the desert of the American Southwest by all manners of man and beast of unimaginable proportions. Produced with the complete blessing of Lisa Henson, A Tale of Sand will allow Henson fans to recognize some of the inspirations and set pieces that appeared in later Henson Company productions.

A Dangerous Woman: The Graphic Biography of Emma Goldman


Sharon Rudahl - 2007
    Emma Goldman was at the forefront of the radical causes of the twentieth century, from leading hunger demonstrations during the Great Depression—"Ask for work! If they do not give you work, ask for bread! If they do not give you work or bread, take the bread!"—to organizing a cloakmakers' strike, from lecturing on how to use birth control to fighting conscription for World War I, while her soulmate, Alexander Berkman, spent fourteen years in jail for his failed attentat against industrialist Henry Clay Frick.Sharon Rudahl's lovely, energetic illustrations bring Goldman's many facets and passions to new life; her work belongs with the critically acclaimed graphic nonfiction of Alison Bechdel's Fun Home and Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis. Featuring a foreword by Alice Wexler, A Dangerous Woman is a marvelously compelling presentation of a woman devoted to revolutionizing her age.

Castle in the Stars: The Space Race of 1869


Alex Alice - 2014
    It’s the space race in 1869 in a kind of alternate past. … When you see the book itself, it’s this big, oversized object with this incredible watercolor comics style, and it’s this really big, epic, sweeping story of a boy following in his mother’s discovery and then opening up the solar system, but in the age of the 1800s. It’s got a kind of steampunk but also a kind of young, classic children’s story feel to it.”

Catherine's War


Julia Billet - 2012
    Although she hasn’t heard from her parents in months, she loves the people at her school, adores capturing what she sees in pictures, and tries not to worry too much about Hitler’s war. But as France buckles under the Nazi regime, danger closes in, and Rachel must change her name and go into hiding.As Catherine Colin, Rachel Cohen is faced with leaving the Sèvres Home—and the friends she made there—behind. But with her beautiful camera, Catherine possesses an object with the power to remember. For the rest of the war, Catherine bears witness to her own journey, and to the countless heroes whose courage and generosity saved the lives of many, including her own.Based on the author’s mother’s own experiences as a hidden child in France during World War II.Includes a map and photographs of the real Catherine and her wartime experiences, as well as an interview with author Julia Billet.

Banned Book Club


Kim Hyun Sook - 2020
    After acing her exams and sort-of convincing her traditional mother that it was a good idea for a woman to go to college, she looked forward to soaking up the ideas of Western Literature far from the drudgery she was promised at her family’s restaurant. But literature class would prove to be just the start of a massive turning point, still focused on reading but with life-or-death stakes she never could have imagined.This was during South Korea's Fifth Republic, a military regime that entrenched its power through censorship, torture, and the murder of protestors. In this charged political climate, with Molotov cocktails flying and fellow students disappearing for hours and returning with bruises, Hyun Sook sought refuge in the comfort of books. When the handsome young editor of the school newspaper invited her to his reading group, she expected to pop into the cafeteria to talk about Moby Dick, Hamlet, and The Scarlet Letter. Instead she found herself hiding in a basement as the youngest member of an underground banned book club. And as Hyun Sook soon discovered, in a totalitarian regime, the delights of discovering great works of illicit literature are quickly overshadowed by fear and violence as the walls close in.In BANNED BOOK CLUB, Hyun Sook shares a dramatic true story of political division, fear-mongering, anti-intellectualism, the death of democratic institutions, and the relentless rebellion of reading.

We Can Fix It: A Time Travel Memoir


Jess Fink - 2013
    One time machine, one frustrated girl, one sexy futuristic jumpsuit... infinite possibilities!

The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck


Don Rosa - 1996
    In addition to superb storytelling and wonderful entertainment, he left behind a character who was not only rich in his stories, but one for whom the stories themselves were rich. Modern master Don Rosa, beginning in 1994, undertook the task of recounting Uncle Scrooge's past in a serialized epic. The wonderful result of his efforts is now collected in trade paperback form by Gemstone Publishing as THE LIFE & TIMES OF SCROOGE McDUCK.A collection of the celebrated 12-part Eisner Award-winning series that details the life of the young Uncle Scrooge. The story was originally serialized in the United States in Uncle Scrooge comics. Now it has been collected in one all-encompassing popularly-priced volume.

It Was the War of the Trenches


Jacques Tardi - 1993
    (His very first—rejected—comics story dealt with the subject, as does his most recent work, the two-volume Putain de Guerre.) But It Was the War of the Trenches is Tardi’s defining, masterful statement on the subject, a graphic novel that can stand shoulder to shoulder with Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front and Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms.Tardi is not interested in the national politics, the strategies, or the battles. Like Remarque, he focuses on the day to day of the grunts in the trenches, and, with icy, controlled fury and disgust, with sardonic yet deeply sympathetic narration, he brings that existence alive as no one has before or since. Yet he also delves deeply into the underlying causes of the war, the madness, the cynical political exploitation of patriotism. And in a final, heartbreaking coda, Tardi grimly itemizes the ghastly human cost of the war, and lays out the future 20th century conflicts, all of which seem to spring from this global burst of insanity.Trenches features some of Tardi’s most stunning artwork. Rendered in an inhabitually lush illustrative style, inspired both by abundant photographic documentation and classic American war comics, augmented by a sophisticated, gorgeous use of Craftint tones, trenches is somehow simultaneously atypical and a perfect encapsulation of Tardi’s mature style. It is the indisputable centerpiece of Tardi’s oeuvre.It Was the War of the Trenches has been an object of fascination for North American publishers: RAW published a chapter in the early 1980s, and Drawn and Quarterly magazine serialized a few more in the 1990s. But only a small fraction of Trenches has ever been made available to the English speaking public (in now out of print publications); the Fantagraphics edition, the third in an ongoing collection of the works of this great master, finally remedies this situation.

Chlorine Gardens


Keiler Roberts - 2018
    She doesn’t whistle past graveyards, but rather finds the punch line in the pitiful.KEILER ROBERTS is a Chicago-based artist whose autobiographical comic series Powdered Milk has received an Ignatz Award for Outstanding Series and was included in The Best American Comics 2016. Her first book with Koyama Press, Sunburning, was published in 2017.