Book picks similar to
Look Straight Ahead by Elaine M. Will
graphic-novels
mental-health
graphic-novel
fiction
Just Peachy: Comics About Depression, Anxiety, Love, and Finding the Humor in Being Sad
Holly Chisholm - 2019
The all-too-real cartoon protagonist gives readers a character to empathize with, and helps explain some of the not often talked about consequences and symptoms of having depression. The comics also explore the themes of heartbreak, finding love, dealing with stress, and capturing the magical moments in life that keep us going.Through dark humor and cute illustrations, the subject matter becomes a bit more bearable, allowing for honest discussion about things like treatment and getting through anxiety attacks, and providing some comfort in times of struggle.For anyone affected by mental illness, Just Peachy shows that you are not alone. Simply put, this is an encouraging collection of comics about being just okay sometimes."So brave of Holly Chisholm to share her struggles with mental health issues through this creative medium. Just Peachy will inspire others to connect to, navigate through, and recover from their own day-to-day trials and tribulations of living with a mental illness. Well done!"—Dr. Carlin Barnes and Dr. Marketa Wills, authors of Understanding Mental Illness and founders of Healthy Mind MDs
The Adventures of Superhero Girl
Faith Erin Hicks - 2013
What if you can leap tall buildings and defeat alien monsters with your bare hands, but you buy your capes at secondhand stores, and have a weakness for kittens, and a snarky comment from Skeptical Guy can ruin a whole afternoon? Cartoonist Faith Erin Hicks brings her skills in character design and sharp, charming humor to the trials and tribulations of a young, superhero battling monsters both supernatural and mundane in an all-too-ordinary world.
Invincible: Ultimate Collection, Vol. 1
Robert KirkmanBrian Michael Bendis - 2005
Get in on the ground floor! This massive hardcover collects the first 13 issues of Robert Kirkman's Eisner-Nominated super-hero, along with all the extras from the first three trade paperback volumes and even more on top of that! Invincible: The Ultimate Collection, Volume 1 is a can't-miss for anyone who's wanted to start reading Invincible, but needed an easier way to start from the beginning.Collects issues #1–13.
Ultimate Spider-Man, Volume 1: Power and Responsibility
Brian Michael Bendis - 2001
In a retelling of the Spider-Man saga that has been updated for the twenty-first century, teenager Peter Parker is bitten by an experimental spider from the laboratory of Osborn Industries, and develops super powers as a result.
To Be or Not To Be: A Chooseable-Path Adventure
Ryan North - 2013
Play as Hamlet, Ophelia, or King Hamlet--if you want to die on the first page and play as a ghost. It's pretty awesome! Readers can follow Yorick skull markers to stick closely to Shakespeare's plot, or go off-script and explore alternative possibilities filled with puzzles and humor.Each ending in the book is accompanied by a full-color, full-page illustration by one of the 65 most excellent artists working today, so each rereading yields new surprises and rewards. Ryan's prose is, as always, colloquial and familiar but full of clever references, vivid imagination, and only the most choice of jokes. Inventive devices like a book-within-a-book (to mirror Hamlet's play-within-a-play) take full advantage of the gamebook medium and liven up the original story for even the most disinterested of Shakespeare readers!To Be or Not to Be became a sensation when it launched: over 15,000 people backed the book in just one month, and it remains the number-one most funded publishing project ever on Kickstarter.com.To be, or not to be: that is the adventure!
Rx
Rachel Lindsay - 2018
But work takes a strange turn when she is promoted onto the Pfizer account and suddenly finds herself on the other side of the curtain, developing ads for an anti-depressant drug. Overwhelmed by her professional life and the self-scrutiny it inspires, her mania takes hold. She quits her job to become an artist, only to be hospitalized by her parents against her will. Over the course of her two weeks in the ward, she tries to find a path out of the hospital and this cycle of treatment. One where she can live the life she wants, finding freedom and autonomy, without sacrificing her dreams in order to stay well.
Save Me
Big Hit Entertainment - 2019
Best friends. Their fates intertwined through the good times together, but also the tough times, as they have gone their separate ways and suffered greatly as a result. When all is almost lost for these boys, one is given a special chance to go back in time and help his friends fix the mistakes that led them down this path. He’ll do anything to save them, but can he? Or is he too late?
Strangers in Paradise: Pocket Book 1
Terry Moore - 2004
She's smart, independent and very much in love with her best friend, Francine. Then Katchoo meets David, a gentle but persistent young man who is determined to win Katchoo's heart. The resulting love triangle is a touching comedy of romantic errors until Katchoo's former employer comes looking for her and $850,000 in missing mob money. As her idyllic life begins to fall apart, Katchoo discovers no one can be trusted and that the past she thought she left behind now threatens to destroy her and everything she loves, including Francine.
In Clothes Called Fat
Moyoco Anno - 2002
In Clothes Called Fat details the lives of young women earnestly revealing the struggles women may have with their bodies and sexuality.Noko appears to be living a great life, she's got a good job and a loving boyfriend, but beneath a thin veneer is a young woman who is struggling with her self-image and self-confidence as she fights to keep her weight down. To Noko, being 5 pounds overweight means being miles away from happiness in her lovelife and in her work-place.Originally serialized in a major weekly newsmagazine for adult women (Shukan Josei, the first of its kind to be launched in Japan), this early gem from graphic novel megastar Moyoco Anno may be her most searing work to be published in English yet, closer in spirit to some of the best stateside indie comics—ironically, given its mainstream pedigree—than to most translated manga. In Clothes Called Fat is an indispensable addition to your growing library of sequential art for mature readers.
Alone
Christophe Chabouté - 2008
Every week a supply boat leaves provisions, its occupants never meeting him, never asking the obvious questions: Who are you? Why do you hide? Why do you never leave? What is it like to be so alone? Years spent on a deserted rock—a lifetime, really—with imagination his sole companion has made the lighthouse keeper something more than alone, something else entirely. For him, what lies beyond the horizon might be...nothing. And so, why not stay put? But one day, as a new boatman starts asking the questions all others have avoided, a chain of events unfolds that will irrevocably upend the hermit’s solitary life.... Filled with stunning and richly executed black-and-white illustrations, Alone is Chabouté’s masterpiece—an unforgettable tale where tenderness, despair, and humor intertwine to flawlessly portray how someone can be an everyman, and every man is someone. Translated from the French by Ivanka Hahnenberger.
FreakAngels, Volume 1
Warren Ellis - 2008
Now they attempt to rebuild society and defend London's Whitechapel survivors from one of their own.Twenty-three years ago, twelve strange children were born in England at exactly the same moment. Six years ago, the world ended. Today, eleven strange 23-year-olds live in and defend Whitechapel, maybe the last real settlement in flooded London. When a dazed, gun-toting girl appears on the outskirts with a deadly grudge against the self-proclaimed Freakangels, the kids realize that an old enemy is still alive beyond the safety of their borders... a twelfth psychic child, evil and exiled, who can program human minds to hate, and send his private, pirate armies into Whitechapel for revenge. The first chapter in award-winning author Warren Ellis' post-apocalyptic web comic series!
She and Her Cat
Makoto Shinkai - 2016
It was raining. That was the day that she brought me home.”This is the story of Miyu, a woman who lives alone with her cat, Chobi. As Miyu navigates the world of adulthood, she discovers both the freedom and loneliness that come with living independently, and Chobi learns of the outside world through her actions. Time drifts slowly for Miyu and her cat, but the harsh realities of the world soon catch up…
Jane Eyre
Stacy King - 1847
Though she meets with further abuse, she receives an education, and eventually takes a job as a governess at the estate of Edward Rochester. Jane and Rochester begin to bond, but his dark moods trouble her. When Jane uncovers the terrible secret Rochester has been hiding, she flees and finds temporary refuge at the home of St. John Rivers.
Stitches
David Small - 2009
A vocal cord removed, his throat slashed and stitched together like a bloody boot, the fourteen-year-old boy had not been told that he had cancer and was expected to die.In Stitches, Small, the award-winning children’s illustrator and author, re-creates this terrifying event in a life story that might have been imagined by Kafka. As the images painfully tumble out, one by one, we gain a ringside seat at a gothic family drama where David—a highly anxious yet supremely talented child—all too often became the unwitting object of his parents’ buried frustration and rage.Believing that they were trying to do their best, David’s parents did just the reverse. Edward Small, a Detroit physician, who vented his own anger by hitting a punching bag, was convinced that he could cure his young son’s respiratory problems with heavy doses of radiation, possibly causing David’s cancer. Elizabeth, David’s mother, tyrannically stingy and excessively scolding, ran the Small household under a cone of silence where emotions, especially her own, were hidden.Depicting this coming-of-age story with dazzling, kaleidoscopic images that turn nightmare into fairy tale, Small tells us of his journey from sickly child to cancer patient, to the troubled teen whose risky decision to run away from home at sixteen—with nothing more than the dream of becoming an artist—will resonate as the ultimate survival statemen.
Eat, and Love Yourself
Sweeney Boo - 2020
One night, while perusing the aisles of the neighborhood convenience store for a midnight snack, she finds a new product. A chocolate bar called “Eat and Love Yourself”. On a whim, Mindy buys the curious candy, not knowing that with every piece of chocolate she eats, she will be brought back to a specific moment of her past -- helping her to look at herself honestly, learn to love her body the way it is, and accepting love. Perhaps, she will even realize that her long lost high school best friend, Elliot, was more than just a friend…