Good-Bye, Chunky Rice


Craig Thompson - 1999
    It was winnning a Harvey Award, no less. It documentates the once upon a time in our fishing village town and a short turtle lad name of Chunky, last name Rice.Mister Chunky Rice be living in the same rooming house likewise myself, only that boy be restless. Looking for something. And he puts hisself on my brother Chuck's ship and boats out to sea to find it. Only he be departin' from his bestest of all friends, his deer mouse, I mean, mouse deer chum Dandel.Now why in a whirl would someone leave beyond a buddy? Just what be that turtle lad searchings for? I said you best read the book to find out. Merle said, "Doot doot."

Mister Wonderful: A Love Story


Daniel Clowes - 2011
    Sitting alone in the local coffee place. He’s been set up by his friend Tim on a blind date with someone named Natalie, and now he’s just feeling set up. She’s nine minutes late and counting. Who was he kidding anyway? Divorced, middle-aged, newly unem­ployed, with next to no prospects, Marshall isn’t ex­actly what you’d call a catch. Twenty minutes pass.A half hour. Marshall orders a scotch. (He wasn’t going to drink!) Forty minutes.Then, after nearly an hour, when he’s long since given up hope, Natalie appears — breathless, apologiz­ing profusely that she went to the wrong place. She takes a seat, to Marshall’s utter amazement. She’s too good to be true: attractive, young, intel­ligent, and she seems to be seriously engaged with what Marshall has to say. There has to be a catch. And, of course, there is.During the extremely long night that follows, Marshall and Natalie are emotionally tested in ways that two people who just met really should not be. Not, at least, if they want the prospect of a second date.A captivating, bittersweet, and hilarious look at the potential for human connection in an increasingly hopeless world, Mister Wonderful more than lives up to its name.

Local


Brian Wood - 2008
    Crossing genres as it crosses the country, LOCAL examines Megan McKeenan, a young woman who sets off from Portland, OR with nothing but a backpack and a bad case of wanderlust. Each emotional vignette is a self-contained story that represents one year in the life of this young vagabond as she struggles to find a place to call home, both physically and spiritually.

Scenes from an Impending Marriage


Adrian Tomine - 2011
    What started out as a simple illustrated card soon grew into a full-fledged comic book: a collection of short strips chronicling the often absurd process of getting married. A loose, cartoony departure from Tomine’s previous work, Scenes from an Impending Marriage is a sweet-natured, laugh out-loud skewering of the modern marriage process, including hiring a DJ, location scouting, trips to the salon, suit fittings, dance lessons, registering for gifts, and managing familial demands. The most personal and autobiographical work of Tomine’s career, Scenes from an Impending Marriage is a charming, delightful token of love.

Three Shadows


Cyril Pedrosa - 2007
    The taste of cherries, the cool shade, the smell of the river... That was how we lived, in a vale among the hills—sheltered from storms, ignorant of the world, as though on an island, peaceful and untroubled.And then...And then everything changed.Can you ever escape your fate?Three shadows stand outside the house—and Louis and Lise know why the spectral figures are there. The shadows have come for Louis and Lise’s son, and nothing anyone can do will stop them. Louis cannot let his son die without trying to prevent it, so the family embarks on a journey to the ends of the earth, fleeing death.Poignant and suspenseful, Three Shadows is a haunting story of love and grief, told in moving text and sweeping black and white artwork by Cyril Pedrosa.

Bottomless Belly Button


Dash Shaw - 2008
    When the parents announce their divorce, the family comes together at their beach house for a week. Dennis, the eldest son, is having marriage troubles of his own, and searches for clues, trap doors, and secret tunnels. Claire, the middle child, is a single mother with a troubled 16-year-old daughter, Jill. The youngest child, Peter, is a hack filmmaker suffering from paralyzing insecurities who establishes an unorthodox romance with a mysterious day care counselor at the beach.

Life With Mr. Dangerous


Paul Hornschemeier - 2011
    But at least her (often painfully passive-aggressive) mother bought her a pink unicorn sweatshirt for her birthday. Pink. Unicorn. For her twenty-seventh birthday.Gliding through the daydreams and realities of a young woman searching for definition, Life with Mr. Dangerous showcases acclaimed cartoonist Paul Hornschemeier’s gift for deadpan humor and dead-on insight with a droll aftertaste—an unlikely but welcome marriage of the bleak and the hopeful.

The Unwritten, Vol. 1: Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity


Mike Carey - 2010
    His father created the Tommy Taylor fantasy series, boy-wizard novels with popularity on par with Harry Potter. The problem is Dad modeled the fictional epic so closely to Tom's real life that fans are constantly comparing him to his counterpart, turning him into the lamest variety of Z-level celebrity. In the final novel, it's even implied that the fictional Tommy will crossover into the real world, giving delusional fans more excuses to harass Tom.When an enormous scandal reveals that Tom might really be a boy-wizard made flesh, Tom comes into contact with a very mysterious, very deadly group that's secretly kept tabs on him all his life. Now, to protect his own life and discover the truth behind his origins, Tom will travel the world, eventually finding himself at locations all featured on a very special map -- one kept by the deadly group that charts places throughout world history where fictions have impacted and tangibly shaped reality, those stories ranging from famous literary works to folktales to pop culture. And in the process of figuring out what it all means, Tom will find himself having to figure out a huge conspiracy mystery that spans the entirety of the history of fiction.Collecting: The Unwritten 1-5

Clumsy


Jeffrey Brown - 2002
    Oh, and it also has a lot of sex.

The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil


Stephen Collins - 2013
    By which we mean: orderly, neat, contained and, moreover, beardless.Or at least it is until one famous day, when Dave, bald but for a single hair, finds himself assailed by a terrifying, unstoppable... monster*!Where did it come from? How should the islanders deal with it? And what, most importantly, are they going to do with Dave?The first book from a new leading light of UK comics, The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil is an off-beat fable worthy of Roald Dahl. It is about life, death and the meaning of beards.(*We mean a gigantic beard, basically.)

Asterios Polyp


David Mazzucchelli - 2009
    An epic story long awaited, and well worth the wait. Meet Asterios Polyp: middle-aged, meagerly successful architect and teacher, aesthete and womanizer, whose life is wholly upended when his New York City apartment goes up in flames. In a tenacious daze, he leaves the city and relocates to a small town in the American heartland. But what is this “escape” really about? As the story unfolds, moving between the present and the past, we begin to understand this confounding yet fascinating character, and how he’s gotten to where he is. And isn’t. And we meet Hana: a sweet, smart, first-generation Japanese American artist with whom he had made a blissful life. But now she’s gone. Did Asterios do something to drive her away? What has happened to her? Is she even alive? All the questions will be answered, eventually.In the meantime, we are enthralled by Mazzucchelli’s extraordinarily imagined world of brilliantly conceived eccentrics, sharply observed social mores, and deftly depicted asides on everything from design theory to the nature of human perception.Asterios Polyp is David Mazzucchelli’s masterpiece: a great American graphic novel.

The Encyclopedia of Early Earth


Isabel Greenberg - 2013
    The people who roamed Early Earth were much like us: curious, emotional, funny, ambitious, and vulnerable. In this series of illustrated and linked tales, Isabel Greenberg chronicles the explorations of a young man as he paddles from his home in the North Pole to the South Pole. There, he meets his true love, but their romance is ill-fated. Early Earth's unusual and finicky polarity means the lovers can never touch.      As intricate and richly imagined as the work of Chris Ware, and leavened with a dry wit that rivals Kate Beaton's in Hark! A Vagrant, Isabel Greenberg's debut will be a welcome addition to the thriving graphic novel genre.

Emiko Superstar


Mariko Tamaki - 2008
    Young adult.

Coyote Doggirl


Lisa Hanawalt - 2018
    A gifted equestrian, Coyote Doggirl is half dog, half coyote, and a whole lot of attitude. She and her steed Red are on the run from a trio of vengeful bad guys when Coyote gets clobbered by a few well-placed arrows. Her attackers, a clan of wolves, take her in and nurse her back to health so she can get back on the road, track down Red, and evade the men who are hunting her. By turns delightfully absurd and intensely emotional, Coyote Doggirl charts one weird woman's escape into the wild.

MIND MGMT, Volume One: The Manager


Matt Kindt - 2013
    Her ensuing journey involves weaponized psychics, hypnotic advertising, talking dolphins, and seemingly immortal pursuers, as she attempts to find the flight's missing passenger, the man who was MIND MGMT's greatest success - and its most devastating failure. But in a world where people can rewrite reality itself, can she trust anything she sees?Collecting: MIND MGMT 1-6