Book picks similar to
The Cardboard Valise by Ben Katchor


graphic-novels
comics
graphic-novel
fiction

Breaking Cat News: Cats Reporting on the News that Matters to Cats


Georgia Dunn - 2016
    Together they break headlines on the food bowl, new plants, mysterious red dots, strange cats in the yard, and all the daily happenings in their home.

Get Jiro!


Anthony Bourdain - 2012
    where master chefs rule the town like crime lords and people literally kill for a seat at the best restaurants, a bloody culinary war is raging.On one side, the Internationalists, who blend foods from all over the world into exotic delights. On the other, the "Vertical Farm," who prepare nothing but organic, vegetarian, macrobiotic dishes. Into this maelstrom steps Jiro, a renegade and ruthless sushi chef, known to decapitate patrons who dare request a California Roll, or who stir wasabi into their soy sauce. Both sides want Jiro to join their factions. Jiro, however has bigger ideas, and in the end, no chef may be left alive!Anthony Bourdain, top chef, acclaimed writer (Kitchen Confidential, Medium Raw) and star of the hit travel show, No Reservations, co-writes with Joel Rose (Kill Kill Faster Faster, The Blackest Bird) this stylized send-up of food culture and society, with detailed and dynamic art by Langdon Foss.

My Dirty Dumb Eyes


Lisa Hanawalt - 2013
    Her world vision is intricately rendered in a full spectrum of color, unapologetically gorgeous and intensely bizarre.  With movie reviews, tips for her readers, laugh-out-loud lists and short pieces such as “Rumors I’ve Heard About Anna Wintour,” and “The Secret Lives of Chefs,”  Hanawalt’s comedy shines, making the quotidian silly and surreal, flatulent and facetious.

Ant Colony


Michael DeForge - 2014
    His brash, confident, undulating artwork sent a shock wave through the comics world for its unique, fully formed aesthetic.From its opening pages, Ant Colony immerses the reader in a world that is darkly existential, with false prophets, unjust wars, and corrupt police officers, as it follows the denizens of a black ant colony under attack from the nearby red ants. On the surface, it’s the story of this war, the destruction of a civilization, and the ants’ all too familiar desire to rebuild. Underneath, though, Ant Colony plumbs the deepest human concerns—loneliness, faith, love, apathy, and more. All of this is done with humor and sensitivity, exposing a world where spiders can wreak unimaginable amounts of havoc with a single gnash of their jaws.DeForge’s striking visual sensibility—stark lines, dramatic color choices, and brilliant use of page and panel space—stands out in this volume.

Sex Criminals: Volume One: One Weird Trick


Matt Fraction - 2014
    One day she meets Jon and it turns out he has the same ability. And sooner or later they get around to using their gifts to do what we’d ALL do: rob a couple banks. A bawdy and brazen sex comedy for comics begins here!Collecting: Sex Criminals 1-5

Thessaly: Witch for Hire


Bill Willingham - 2005
    Attaching her name to a monster slaying business behind her back is one thing, but agreeing to take on the universe's ultimate destructive force--well, that just proves that love makes you stupid. Faced with this kind of courtship, it'll be a miracle if Thessaly can survive long enough to smack some sense into Fetch's intangible head--never mind stopping the unstoppable doom he's unleashed.

Unshelved


Bill Barnes - 2004
    Some of the stories are made up, some of them are based on real life, and some are absolutely true stories sent to us from our readers. And the stranger the story, the more likely it is to be true.

You're All Just Jealous of My Jetpack


Tom Gauld - 2013
    Sikoryak, Michael Kupperman, and Kate Beaton.”—NPR, Best Books of 2013A new collection from the Guardian and New York Times Magazine cartoonistThe New York Times Magazine cartoonist Tom Gauld follows up his widely praised graphic novel Goliath with You’re All Just Jealous of My Jetpack, a collection of cartoons made for The Guardian. Over the past eight years, Gauld has produced a weekly cartoon for the Saturday Review section of Britain’s best-regarded newspaper. Only a handful of comics from this huge and hilarious body of work have ever been printed in North America—and these have been available exclusively within the pages of the prestigious Believer magazine.      You’re All Just Jealous of My Jetpack distills perfectly Gauld’s dark humor, impeccable timing, and distinctive style. Arrests by the fiction police and imaginary towns designed by Tom Waits intermingle hilariously with piercing observations about human behavior and whimsical imaginings of the future. Again and again, Gauld reaffirms his position as a first-rank cartoonist, creating work infused with a deep understanding of both literary and cartoon history.

Megahex


Simon Hanselmann - 2014
    Mogg is her black cat. Their friend, Owl, is an anthropomorphized owl. They hang out a lot with Werewolf Jones. This may sound like a pure stoner comedy, but it transcends the genre: these characters struggle unsuccessfully to come to grips with their depression, drug use, sexuality, poverty, lack of work, lack of ambition, and their complex feelings about each other in ways that have made Megg and Mogg sensations on Hanselmann's GirlMountain tumblr. This is the first collection of Hanselmann's work, freed from its cumbersome Internet prison, and sure to be one of the most talked about graphic novels of 2014, featuring all of the "classic" Megg and Mogg episodes from the past five years as well as over 70 pages of all-new material.

Snowpiercer: The Escape


Jacques Lob - 1982
    Originally published in French, this marks the first time that Snowpiercer will be available in English. In a harsh, uncompromisingly cold future where Earth has succumbed to treacherously low temperatures, the last remaining members of humanity travel on a train while the outside world remains encased in ice. The surviving community are not without a social hierarchy; those that travel at the front of the train live in relative luxury whilst those unfortunate enough to be at the rear remain clustered like cattle in claustrophobic darkness. Yet, things are about to change aboard the train as passengers become disgruntled... The movie Snowpiercer, due for release in 2014, is directed by Joon-ho Bong (The Host) and is already causing a stir with parallels to 1984 and Animal Farm.

Heavy Liquid


Paul Pope - 2001
    This graphic novel, set in the late 21st century, focuses on all the classic elements of detective and adventure stories: lost love, mysterious clients, a package everyone wants, and a tired, barely willing protagonist. The narrative details--such as the eponymous liquid, which is part munition, part drug, and much stranger than any character imagines--are calculated to foil the reader's assumptions, and the expressionistic artwork blends simple colors with bold lines to draw the eyes onward. It seems safe to say that cyberpunk's not dead. --Rob Lightner

Everything Together: Collected Stories


Sammy Harkham - 2012
    After a decade of work and groundbreaking anthologies, "Everything Together" collects his short-story comics, which condense vast amounts of emotion and information into nuanced cartoon narratives. Harkham's classic style is both articulate and expedient. At the center of the book are two vastly different tales: "Poor Sailor," a sea-faring myth of a man gone to find wealth for his love; and "Somersaulting," a kind of fever dream of teenagers in love, wiling away the summer. Alongside these stories are shorter comic strips tackling everything from Napoleon as a tortured artist to touching examinations of Jewish mysticism and life in a shtetl, to satires on contemporary university life. Throughout these tales, Harkham maintains a light touch and emotive wit. The works in this book confirm his place among the best storytellers of his generation.Sammy Harkham was born in Los Angeles in 1980, moving to Sydney, Australia, at the age of 14. He soon started making his own comics and a zine, "Kramers Ergot," which has evolved into one of the most influential comics anthologies published today. His comic strip "Poor Sailor," originally published in "Kramers Ergot" 4, was subsequently included in "Best American Nonrequired Reading of 2004 "and has been published in French, Korean and Italian. "Kramers Ergot" has been on numerous "best of the year" lists including the "LA Weekly," "Time," "The New York Times," "Dazed and Confused," "The Comics Journal" and "Publishers Weekly." In 2006 Harkham started the ongoing comic series, "Crickets," and edited "The Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror," and most recently the eighth volume of "Kramers Ergot." A partner in both the renowned bookstore Family, and the movie theater, Cinefamily, Harkham lives in Los Angeles with his wife and three children.

Bookhunter


Jason Shiga - 2007
    The excitement is fulfilling. The year is 1973. A priceless book has been stolen from the Oakland Public Library. A crack team of Bookhunters (aka. library police) have less than three days to recover the stolen item. It’s a race against the clock as our heroes use every tool in their arsenal of library equipment to find the book and the mastermind who stole it.Will the detectives catch this scoundrel? Find out in Bookhunter, the greatest comic of the new millennium. What a roller coaster ride of excitement! What an unexpected twist takes place! Do not begin Bookhunter unless you are prepared to finish it in one sitting.

Air, Volume 1: Letters from Lost Countries


G. Willow Wilson - 2009
    You may have heard of a group called the Etesian Front -- vigilantes dedicated to taking the skies back from terrorism. Sounds like a noble cause, right? But there's more to them than meets the eye. They're after someone I know. Someone who is either an average frequent flier -- or a terrorist. And he's got a secret. Something that will change the way we fly -- and the way we see technology -- forever.To find him, we've altered course. We're en route to a country that doesn't exist on any maps. Only one person knows how to get us there: me. My name is Blythe, and I'll be your stewardess today. So buckle your seatbelts -- this will be the flight of your life.

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.