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.

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.

New Engineering


Yuichi Yokoyama - 2007
    If the history of the world had turned out differently from what we know today, men would live according to different sets of values and different aesthetics It would be a civilization completely alien to ours." This first U.S. book on Yokoyama's work combines two of the artist's central themes: fighting and building. One set of graphic stories, "Public Works," details massive structures being erected across a landscape. Plot is pushed aside in favor of sheer formal verve as we watch buildings, about which we know nothing, come into being. The other set of stories, "Combats," is one sequence after another of elegantly choreographed battles. Manga comics have never seen a talent that combines this level of formal ambition with such exquisitely drawn depictions of fashion, art and architecture.

The Trial of Colonel Sweeto and Other Stories


Nicholas Gurewitch - 2007
    Now, for the first time, the hilarious cartoons of Nicholas Gurewitch are being collected in this handsome hardcover edition.

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

Hey, Wait...


Jason - 2000
    This superbly evocative graphic novella by the award-winning Norwegian cartoonist Jason (his first appearance in the English language) starts off as a melancholy childhood memoir and then, with a shocking twist midway through, becomes the summary of lives lived, wasted, and lost. Like Art Spiegelman did with Maus, Jason utilizes anthropomorphic stylizations to reach deeper, more general truths, and to create elegantly minimalist panels whose emotional depth-charge comes as an even greater shock. His sparse dialogue, dark wit, and supremely bold use of "jump-cuts" from one scene to the next (sometimes spanning a number of years) make Hey, Wait... one of the most surprising and engaging debuts of the year.

Skullkickers, Vol. 1: 1000 Opas and a Dead Body


Jim Zub - 2011
    Image's new hit fantasy action-comedy series has gone through multiple printings of each issue released so far and is getting rave reviews from readers and critics alike. Pick up the first collection and find out what all the excitement is about.Collects SKULLKICKERS #1-5 and the short stories from POPGUN, VOL. 2 & 3

Simon's Cat


Simon Tofield - 2009
    Now, the feline Internet phenomenon makes his way onto the page in this first-ever book based on the popular animated series. Simon's Cat depicts and exaggerates the hilarious relationship between a man and his cat. The daily escapades of this adorable pet, which always involve demanding more food, and his exasperated but doting owner come to life through Tofield's charming and hilarious illustrations.

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.

Lenore: Noogies


Roman Dirge - 1999
    Lenore: Noogies is a romp into the dark, surreal world of a little dead girl. Featuring stories about limbless cannibals, clock monsters, cursed vampire dolls, taxidermied friends and obssesed would be lover and more fuzzy animal mutilations than should be legal. Lenore is one of the funniest, darkest comic books on the marketplace today.

Morning Glories, Vol. 1: For a Better Future


Nick Spencer - 2011
    When six brilliant but troubled new students arrive, they find themselves trapped and desperately seeking answers...and escape from a place where nothing is what it seems to be!

Deadpool by Daniel Way: The Complete Collection, Volume 1


Daniel Way - 2013
    Daniel Way's hilarious, action-packed run begins here! When the Merc with a Mouth is hired to rub out Wolverine, sparks will fly! But when both men can regenerate any wound in minutes, how can either one expect to finish off his foe? And whoever wins will have to face Wolverine's murderous son, Daken! Then: The Skrulls have infiltrated Earth, but nobody warned them about Deadpool! The invaders replicate Deadpool's healing factor in a new generation of Super-Skrulls - but why is Deadpool himself leading this brigade against Earth? And when Norman Osborn double-crosses Deadpool, the maniacal merc unleashes a full-on assault against Avengers Tower! Norman must pull out all the stops - and that means deploying his new team of bloodthirsty, black-ops Thunderbolts!Collecting: Wolverine: Origins 21-25; Deadpool 1-12, Saga; Thunderbolts 130-131

The Crow


James O'Barr - 1989
    Eric has returned from the dead, driven only by hate and the need to wreak revenge on those who killed him and raped and then killed his beloved Shelly.

Underworld, Vol. 1: Cruel and Unusual Comics


Kaz - 1997
    The lead character in most is Bitchy Bitch, the perma-nently PMS'd and PO'd embodiment of the female id, who also stars in her own series of cartoon shorts on the Oxygen Network's X-Chromosome animated series.The raunchiest collection, focusing on Bitchy's sexual excapades.

Groom Lake


Chris Ryall - 2009
    er, under there? In the remote Nevada desert there sits a dry lakebed called Groom Lake, and under that land resides a secret base that holds all the secrets of the world. Not this world, either. Karl Bauer's father disappeared on him a year ago, but he didn't just "go out for cigarettes" in the usual way of abandoning his kid. Turns out his father was an alien abductee who was sent back with altered DNA that has forever changed Karl's life, too. Karl is drawn -- okay, taken -- to a secret base under Groom Lake in Nevada where he's drawn into a plot to weaponize alien technology in the form of a new Manhattan Project. Karl, who is befriended by a cynical female worker and a group of unpredictable aliens, leads an escape from the base even while closely pursued by a worldwide organization that will kill to preserve the greatest secret in (in-)human history. There's nowhere on the planet to hide and beyond even that, Karl faces the twin threats of his altered DNA and a group of aliens whose true motivations are otherworldly, to say the least.Writer Chris Ryall and artist Ben Templesmith present a tale of abductions and probings, conspiracies and secrets.