Book picks similar to
Bizarre Romance by Audrey Niffenegger
graphic-novels
graphic-novel
short-stories
fiction
Poison Flowers and Pandemonium
Richard Sala - 2021
Poison Flowers and Pandemonium collects all four of these original graphic novellas in one beautiful hardcover worthy of Sala's legacy.First up in Poison Flowers is "House of the Blue Dwarf," a 125-page thriller featuring master criminal the Bloody Cardinal, who leaves a wake of mayhem and madness everywhere he goes. "Monsters Illustrated" is a fun, 64-page monster movie riff that showcases Sala's visual imagination. A young woman in a dusty bookstore reads a strange bestiary — the "book within a book" showcases a series of Sala's gorgeous watercolor and ink drawings. But when she gets to the end, she finds the bookseller drives a hard bargain. "Cave Girls Of The Lost World" is a campy, 60-page romp about a team of young women whose plane crashes in a land forgotten by time and rife with dinosaurs, carnivorous plants, and apemen — but these intelligent, brave, and resourceful women are ready to rumble! Rounding out the book is "The Amazing Adventures of Fantomina Fantomella," a 45-page graphic novella of violence and non-stop action. Priest and his mob thought Fantomina was dead. So how is it that she's come back with a vengeance? Poison Flowers & Pandemonium is a perfect showcase of Sala's gorgeous watercolor artwork and his love of B-movie horror, silent film-era archetypes, and femmes fatale.
Bloodlust & Bonnets
Emily McGovern - 2019
The unlikely trio lie, flirt, fight, and manipulate each other as they make their way across Britain, disrupting society balls, slaying vampires, and making every effort not to betray their feelings to each other as their personal and romantic lives become increasingly entangled. Both witty and slapstick, elegant and gory, Emily McGovern’s debut graphic novel pays tribute to and pokes fun at beloved romance tropes, delivering a joyous, action-packed world of friendship and adventure.
Mooncop
Tom Gauld - 2016
Whatever were we thinking...? It seems so silly now."The lunar colony is slowly winding down, like a small town circumvented by a new super highway. As our hero, the Mooncop, makes his daily rounds, his beat grows ever smaller, the population dwindles. A young girl runs away, a dog breaks off his leash, an automaton wanders off from the Museum of the Moon.
The Daughters of Ys
M.T. Anderson - 2020
Queen Malgven used magic to raise the great walls that keep Ys safe from the tumultuous sea. But after the queen's inexplicable death, her daughters drift apart. Rozenn, the heir to the throne, spends her time on the moors communing with wild animals, while Dahut, the youngest, enjoys the splendors of royal life and is eager to take part in palace intrigue.
The Eternal Smile: Three Stories
Gene Luen Yang - 2009
But lately, the walls of reality in Duncan's kingdom are wearing a little thin...Meet Gran'pa Greenbax.Nothing seems to satisfy this greedy old frog's longing for a pool full of gold—until, one day, a mysterious smile appears in the sky. Has his chance at happiness come at last?Meet Janet. Her nine-to-five life takes a turn for the romantic when she learns in an email from a mysterious Nigerian prince that she has been chosen to liberate his family's vast fortune. All he needs is her banking information.In three very different stories, master storytellers Gene Yang and Derek Kirk pit fantasy against reality, for good or for ill. Subtle, surprising, and entirely entertaining, The Eternal Smile delves into our dreams, and the unexpected places they lead.
Single, Carefree, Mellow
Katherine Heiny - 2015
Sadie’s lover calls her as he drives to meet his wife at marriage counseling. Gwen pines for her roommate, a man who will hold her hand but then tells her that her palm is sweaty. And Sasha agrees to have a drink with her married lover’s wife and then immediately regrets it. These are the women of Single, Carefree, Mellow, and in these eleven sublime stories they are grappling with unwelcome houseguests, disastrous birthday parties, needy but loyal friends, and all manner of love, secrets, and betrayal. In “Cranberry Relish” Josie’s ex—a man she met on Facebook—has a new girlfriend he found on Twitter. In “Blue Heron Bridge” Nina is more worried that the Presbyterian minister living in her garage will hear her kids swearing than about his finding out that she’s sleeping with her running partner. And in “The Rhett Butlers” a teenager loses her virginity to her history teacher and then outgrows him. In snappy, glittering prose that is both utterly hilarious and achingly poignant, Katherine Heiny chronicles the ways in which we are unfaithful to each other, both willfully and unwittingly. Maya, who appears in the title story and again in various states of love, forms the spine of this linked collection, and shows us through her moments of pleasure, loss, deceit, and kindness just how fickle the human heart can be.
Patience
Daniel Clowes - 2016
This 180-page, full-color original graphic novel affords Clowes the opportunity to draw some of the most exuberant and breathtaking pages of his life, and to tell his most suspenseful, surprising and affecting story yet.
Thirsty Mermaids
Kat Leyh - 2021
But the good times abruptly end the next morning when, through the haze of killer hangovers, the trio realizes they never actually learned how to break the spell, and are now stuck on land for the foreseeable future. Which means everything from: enlisting the aid of their I-know-we-just-met-but-can-we-crash-with-you bartender friend, struggling to make sense of the human world around them, to even trying to get jobs with zero skill sets . . . all while attempting to somehow return to the sea and making the most of their current situation with tenacity and camaraderie (especially if someone else is buying).
Lena Finkle's Magic Barrel: A Graphic Novel
Anya Ulinich - 2014
. . Anya Ulinich is the David Sedaris of Russian-American cartoonists.”—Gary ShteyngartAnya Ulinich turns her sharp eye toward the strange, often unmooring world of “grown-up” dating in this darkly comic graphic novel. After her fifteen-year marriage ends, Lena Finkle gets an eye-opening education in love, sex, and loss when she embarks on a string of online dates, all while raising her two teenage daughters. The Vampire of Bensonhurst, the Orphan, Disaster Man, and the Diamond Psychiatrist are just a few of the unforgettable characters she meets along the way. Evoking Louis C. K.’s humor and Amy Winehouse’s longing and anguish, and paying homage to Malamud and Chekhov, Lena Finkle’s Magic Barrel is a funny and moving story, beautifully told.
Take It as a Compliment
Maria Stoian - 2015
Her unique and varied styles powerfully reflect the tone and mood of the different stories and in just a few pages express the complex emotions felt by victims of sexual abuse.Covering acts such as sexual violence, public sexual harassment, domestic abuse and child abuse, this is a reminder for survivors that they are not alone and a call for all of us to take action. The stories clearly show that assault of any type is not an honour bestowed on anyone. It is not a compliment.
My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, Vol. 1
Emil Ferris - 2017
Karen Reyes tries to solve the murder of her enigmatic upstairs neighbor, Anka Silverberg, a holocaust survivor, while the interconnected stories of those around her unfold. When Karen’s investigation takes us back to Anka’s life in Nazi Germany, the reader discovers how the personal, the political, the past, and the present converge. Full-color illustrations throughout.
Behind You: One-Shot Horror Stories
Brian Coldrick - 2017
A giggling crowd of masked watchers. A reassembling corpse. What could be behind you, just waiting for you to turn around? Behind You is an illustration series, a comic with no panels, where each piece is essentially a separate story. Each tale is one image and one piece of text; an unsuspecting victim with someone, or something, behind them. Entries range from the amusingly weird to the genuinely unsettling. Inspired by spooky films, books, myths, and internet tall tales, Behind You is full of scary set-ups but leaves lots of blanks for the reader to fill in with their own narrative. Includes an Introduction by New York Times Best-Seller Joe Hill.
Venus in the Blind Spot
Junji Ito - 2019
This striking collection presents the most remarkable short works of Junji Ito’s career, featuring an adaptation of Rampo Edogawa’s classic horror story “The Human Chair” and fan favorite “The Enigma of Amigara Fault.” With a deluxe presentation—including special color pages, and showcasing illustrations from his acclaimed long-form manga No Longer Human—each chilling tale invites readers to revel in a world of terror.
Girl Town
Casey Nowak - 2018
Her stunning solo debut collection celebrates the ascent of a rising star in comics.Diana got hurt—a lot—and she's decided to deal with this fact by purchasing a life-sized robot boyfriend. Mary and La-La host a podcast about a movie no one's ever seen. Kelly has dragged her friend Beth out of her comfort zone—and into a day at the fantasy market that neither of them will forget. Carolyn Nowak's Girl Town collects the Ignatz Award-winning stories "Radishes" and "Diana's Electric Tongue" together with several other tales of young adulthood and the search for connection. Here are her most acclaimed mini-comics and anthology contributions, enhanced with new colors and joined by brand-new work.Bold, infatuated, wounded, or lost, Nowak's girls shine with life and longing. Their stories—depicted with remarkable charm and insight—capture the spirit of our time.
Bubble
Jordan Morris - 2021
Humans like Morgan, who’s Brush-born and Bubble-raised and fully capable of fending off an Imp attack during her morning jog. She’s got a great routine going—she has a chill day job, she recreationally kills the occasional Imp, then she takes that Imp home for her roommate and BFF, Annie, to transform into drugs as a side hustle. But cracks appear in her tidy life when one of those Imps nearly murders a delivery guy in her apartment, accidentally transforming him into a Brush-powered mutant in the process. And when Morgan’s company launches Huntr, a gig economy app for Imp extermination, she finds herself press-ganged into kicking her stabby side job up to the next level as she battles a parade of monsters and monstrously Brush-turned citizens, from a living hipster beard to a book club hive mind.