Book picks similar to
Crimes by Kelsey Wroten


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Transformers: War Within, Volume 1


Simon Furman - 2003
    The War Within. Four million years before the Transformers came to Earth, civil war rocks their home world of Cybertron, and Optimus Prime faces his first -- and greatest -- challenge. But before he can deal with the Decepticons, the new Autobot leader must look within... and decide if Cybertron is worth saving at all! If you think you know the Transformers... think again! IDW is proud to present an all-new collection of this long-out-of-print tale from the Transformers' past.

A Western World


Michael DeForge - 2018
    In a career that's volume outweighs its years, DeForge's most powerful work has often been his most pithy. (From Koyama Press)

Dead of Night: Devil-Slayer


Brian Keene - 2009
    Abandoned by his fiancee, his family, his church, and his government, Sergeant Dan Sylva returns to Iraq for a third tour of duty - and a descent into Hell itself! If the demon Belathauzer and the mysterious mercenary group known as Bloodstone have their way, Iraq, the place where civilization began, may also be where civilization ends! The reinvented Devil-Slayer takes Marvel's Dead of Night to terrifying new heights, from award-winning horror novelist Brian Keene (The Rising, Dark Hollow) and artist Chris Samnee (Daredevil: Blood of the Tarantula)! Collects Dead of Night Featuring Devil-Slayer #1-4.

Couch Tag


Jesse Reklaw - 2013
    Presented as a series of comic novellas that together comprise a thoughtful, sometimes dark and often hilarious memoir about childhood, family, death, mental illness, sex and drug use, the entire book is told through cleverly inviting conceits like cat histories and card games. The graphic novel is told in five parts: In "Thirteen Cats" (featured in The Best American Comics), Reklaw discovers coping mechanisms that mimic his family pets; "Toys I Love" relates the author's pre-pubescent brushes with deviant sexual activity, and the way innocence converges with real sexual trauma; "The Fred Robinson Story" tells the story of Reklaw's period stalking perfect strangers; "The Stacked Deck," in which hereditary influences towards criminal behavior, drug use and depression are explored via card games the author played with his family; and "Lessoned," a family history of mental illness.

Wynonna Earp: Bad Day at Black Rock


Beau Smith - 2019
    Marshals Black Badge Division--a unit dedicated to protecting the world from all things that go bump in the night. Two of their greatest assets in the fight against evil are the Division's relative secrecy and Black Rock Prison, the only facility capable of holding major paranormal threats, and both were just exposed. That means it's time for Bobo Del Rey, Wynonna's old enemy, to step up his plans on a breakout to free his brother. It's family against family as the Earp clan and the Del Rey's go head-to-head in a rip-roaring, knock-down, drag out fight to escape the Bad Day at Black Rock.

Miss: Better Living Through Crime


Philippe Thirault - 2002
    Slim is a black pimp with an uncertain past, trying to keep one foot out of the grave. When their paths cross and their options run out, Enola and Slim forge a partnership as murderers for hire. This is their story.

Gahan Wilson: 50 Years of Playboy Cartoons


Gahan Wilson - 2009
    His work has been seen by millions—no, hundreds of millions—in the pages of Playboy, The New Yorker, Punch, The National Lampoon, and many other magazines; there is no telling, really, how many readers he has corrupted or comforted. He is revered for his playfully sinister take on childhood, adulthood, men, women, and monsters. His brand of humor makes you laugh until you cry. And it’s about time that a collection of his cartoons was published that did justice to his vast body of work.When Gahan Wilson walked into Hugh Hefner’s office in 1957, he sat down as Hefner was on the phone, gently rejecting a submission to his new gentlemen’s magazine: “I think it’s very well-written and I liked it very much,” Hefner reportedly said, “but it’s anti-sin. And I’m afraid we’re pro-sin.” Wilson knew, at that moment, that he had found a kindred spirit and a potential home for his cartoons. And indeed he had; Wilson appeared in every issue of Playboy from the December 1957 issue to today. It has been one of the most fruitful, successful, and long-lived relationships between a contributor and a magazine, ever.Gahan Wilson: 50 Years of Playboy Cartoons features not only every cartoon Wilson drew for Playboy, but all his prose fiction that has appeared in that magazine as well, from his first story in the June 1962 issue, “Horror Trio,” to such classics as “Dracula Country” (September 1978). It also includes the text-and-art features he drew for Playboy, such as his look at Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum, his take on our country’s “pathology of violence,” and his appreciation of “transplant surgery.”Wilson’s notoriously black sense of comedy is on display throughout the book, leaving no sacred cow unturned (an image curiously absent in the book), ridiculing everything from state sponsored executions to the sober precincts of the nouveau rich, from teenage dating to police line-ups, with scalding and hilarious satirical jabs. Although Wilson is known as an artist who relishes the creepy side of modern life, this three-volume set truly demonstrates the depth and breadth of his range—from illustrating private angst we never knew we had (when you eat a steak, just whom are you eating?) to the ironic and deadpan take on horrifying public issues (ecological disaster, nuclear destruction anyone?).Gahan Wilson has been peeling back the troubling layers of modern life with his incongruously playful and unnerving cartoons, assailing our deepest fears and our most inane follies. This three-volume set is a testament to one of the funniest—and wickedly disturbing—cartoonists alive.Nominated for two 2010 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards (Best Archival Collection/Project: Strips; Best Publication Design).

Never Ending Summer


Allison Cole - 2004
    Parties, excessive drinking, and financial instability add to the commotion. Drawn in a beautiful minimal style with delicate two-color printing.

Haha #1


W. Maxwell Prince - 2021
    MAXWELL PRINCE brings his signature style of one-shot storytelling to the world of clowns—and he’s invited SOME OF THE COMIC INDUSTRY’S BEST ARTISTS to join him for the ride.HAHA is a genre-jumping, throat-lumping look at the sad, scary, hilarious life of those who get paid to play the fool—but these ain’t your typical jokers.With issues drawn by VANESA DEL REY (REDLANDS), GABRIEL WALTA (Vision), ROGER LANGRIDGE (Thor), and more, HAHA peeks under the big top, over the rainbow, and even inside a balloon to tell a wide-ranging slew of stories about “funny” men and women, proving that some things are so sad you just have to laugh.

Pug Davis


Rebecca Sugar - 2010
    The hero of the comic is the titular Pug Davis: a defender of Earth with an American flag emblazoned on his chest. A bare-knuckles brawler. A man of action with a puppy for a head. He’s basically Buck Rogers if Buck was a surly old marine. He makes no attempt to hide that he’s a grizzled sourpuss, tossing about politically incorrect epithets that he may or may not mean. Pug’s past is a mystery, and he burdens a hidden pain that becomes apparent when you look at him directly in those big puppy-dog eyes. He’s also got a sort of Jesse James or Billy the Kid reputation: killers seem to be popping out of the woodwork just to see if they can take a crack at the infamous Pug Davis.

In a Daze Work: A Pick-Your-Path Journey Through the Daily Grind


Siobhan Gallagher - 2017
    From small-talk to dating to death, In A Daze Work is an exciting, playful new spin on the minute and mundane decisions that make up your daily life. Each flip of the page puts you in control of the story: Will you stay in or go out? Do you wake up or sleep in? How will you navigate a bad date, or a party full of cookie-cutter couples (available in vanilla flavor only)? More importantly, where will your decisions take you? Bringing humor and sly self-reflection to the humdrum details of adulthood with hand-drawn illustrations and sharp wit, this relatable visual journey will help you find the extraordinary (or at least hilarious) moments in any day of the week.

Showcase Presents: Batman and the Outsiders, Vol. 1


Mike W. BarrSteve Lightle - 2007
    In this hard-hitting, value-packed volume, witness Batman's formation of the original Outsiders! Metamorpho, Black Lightning, Katana, Halo and Geo-Force star in these stories from BATMAN and THE OUTSIDERS #1-19, BRAVE and BOLD #200 and NEW TEEN TITANS #16!

Maniac Killer Strikes Again!


Richard Sala - 2004
    Maniac Killer is full of deformed monsters and secret societies, of a mirderous clan of cat-masked villians and simple mad scientists. In the multi-chapter "Thirteen O'Clock" a serial killer bearing a corkscrew strikes repeatedly while a glowing, disembodied skull talks to the victims. But the enigmatic detective Mr. Murmur solves the crime and shares the motive, too ridiculous to be explained here. It combines noir mystery with absurd humor. The native artwork is reminiscent of Lynda Berry and its simplicity helps to convey the tone of spooky delight.

Life's a Bitch: The Complete Bitchy Bitch Stories


Roberta Gregory - 2005
    Beloved for the expressive scrawl of Gregory's line and her take-no-prisoners satirical approach, it was particularly notable for introducing the world to Bitchy Bitch—a woman who is eternally, magnificently, and for the most part, quite justifiably pissed off at the world around her! This extra-thick volume collects the entire first half of the Bitchy Bitch saga, and it ranges widely in her eventful life. There are stories about Bitchy's travails as a little girl (when she was just "Bitsy Bitch"), including that greatest horror of all, the holidays; a long sequence about her hippie free-love days in the '70s (and the harrowing abortion that followed); tales of her miserable days as an office drone surrounded by dunces, lechers, and the occasional ultra-Christian maniac; and the hilarious full-length graphic novel "Bitchy Takes a Vacation," where a tropical getaway turns into a fiasco (romanic and otherwise) of epic proportions. The book will also feature a brand new full-length story that chronicles the (never before shown) death of Bitchy's tempestuous father (well, she had to get that temper from somewhere), as Gregory once again finds the humor in even the grimmest situation. If anger is an energy, as Johnny Rotten once said, then Life's a Bitch is a 240-page slab of caffeinated fury... but laugh-out-loud funny!

HALCYON


Marc Guggenheim - 2011