Book picks similar to
Black Cotton #1 by Patrick Foreman
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Nothing Nice to Say
Mitch Clem - 2008
Enter Nothing Nice to Say. Mitch Clem's Nothing Nice to Say leaves no mohawked, leather-jacket-clad stone unturned in its mission to expose the awesomeness and the absurdity of punk culture. Sometimes esoteric and always hilarious, Nothing Nice is so punk you'd think the book was bound with safety pins.
Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now
Andre Jordan - 2008
Love can be shit. Whatever has happened to you, whatever will happen to you, whatever might happen to you, whatever hasn't happened to you, well . . . you're not alone. Andre Jordan's drawings and prose are culled from a life of heartache and unrequited love. Simple, sad, clever, and darkly hilarious, they tell of both dismal places and hopeful realizations.
Miracleman, Book One: A Dream of Flying
Alan MooreAlan Davis - 1990
After nearly two decades away, Miracleman uncovers his origins and their connection to the British military's "Project Zarathustra" - while his alter ego, Michael Moran, must reconcile his life as the lesser half of a god.
Pretty Deadly #1
Kelly Sue DeConnick - 2013
Strange, Osborn) reunite to bring you an all-new ongoing series that marries the magical realism of Sandman with the western brutality of Preacher. Death's daughter rides the wind on a horse made of smoke and her face bears the skull marks of her father. Her tale of retribution is as beautifully lush as it is unflinchingly savage.
Lulu Anew
Étienne Davodeau - 2010
She’s got a husband and kids left bewildered but it’s nothing against them. This is just her time, getting away from the grind and with no other plan than savoring it. Surprised at her own temerity, she meets other people on the edge of the world. It wasn’t meant to be for long. It wasn’t meant to be anything but in the end thrilling, fun, and possibly dangerous, this improvised experience will make of Lulu a different woman.
The Sky is Blue with a Single Cloud
Kuniko Tsurita - 2020
While the works of her male peers in literary manga are widely reprinted, this formally ambitious and poetic female voice is like none other currently available to an English readership. A master of the comics form, expert pacing and compositions combined with bold characters are signature qualities of Tsurita's work.Tsurita’s early stories “Nonsense” and “Anti” provide a unique, intimate perspective on the bohemian culture and political heat of late 1960s and early ‘70s Tokyo. Her work gradually became darker and more surreal under the influence of modern French literature and her own prematurely failing health. As in works like “The Sky is Blue with a Single Cloud” and “Max,” the gender of many of Tsurita's strong and sensual protagonists is ambiguous, marking an early exploration of gender fluidity. Late stories like "Arctic Cold" and "Flight" show the artist experimenting with more conventional narrative modes, though with dystopian themes that extend the philosophical interests of her early work.An exciting and essential gekiga collection, The Sky is Blue with a Single Cloud is translated by the comics scholar Ryan Holmberg and includes an afterword cowritten by Holmberg and manga editor Mitsuhiro Asakawa delineating Tsurita's importance and historical relevance.
Elsewhere #1
Jay Faerber - 2017
Along the way, she forges alliances and makes enemies as she goes from aviator to freedom fighter in a rebellion against a merciless warlord!
Same Difference and Other Stories
Derek Kirk Kim - 2003
After selling through the self-published run of Same Difference and Other Stories in just a few short months, Derek Kirk Kim proudly moves his debut collection to Top Shelf! Through a series of sensitive -- and often hilarious -- short stories, Kim deftly explores the not-so-average twenty-something's quarter-life crisis, romantic neurosis, and a refreshing slice of Korean-American life.
The Veil
El Torres - 2010
Chris has the unique ability to sometimes pierce through The Veil between our realm and the unknown beyond. Unfortunately, it doesn't really pay the rent. Now Chris is broke and has to return home to Maine... and face the darkness that now lurks beneath the surface of her quiet hometown.
Breakwater
Katriona Chapman - 2020
A loner and an introvert, Chris has worked in Breakwater Picture House for many years. It's the kind of job that people drift through; friendships flourish for a time, contained within their allotted hours and place...and then fade when people move on. But when Dan joins, Chris finds someone who breaks out of these designated boundaries and gradually becomes a part of her life. Initially the relationship helps her out of a rut and she finds her world starting to open up. But as she learns more about her new friend, she must decide if the solitary life she's built is the one she's actually most suited to after all. Dealing with issues of mental health, the joys and drawbacks of choosing a casual job over a career path and the burden that comes with letting other peoples' problems into your life, Breakwater is a stunning second graphic novel from the creator of Follow Me In.
DeadEndia: The Watcher's Test
Hamish Steele - 2018
Barney and his best friend Norma are just trying to get by and keep their jobs, but working at the Dead End theme park also means battling demonic forces, time traveling wizards, and scariest of all--their love lives!Follow the lives of this diverse group of employees of a haunted house, which may or may not also serve as a portal to hell, in this hilarious and moving graphic novel, complete with talking pugs, vengeful ghosts and LBGTQIA love!
Bread and Wine
Samuel R. Delany - 1999
Award-winning science fiction author Samuel Delany and Dennis, a homeless New Yorker selling books from a blanket, discover sexual joy and explode stereotypes while exploring the possibilities for compassion and acceptance in this moving graphic novel -- all the more touching because it's true.
Cyclopedia Exotica
Aminder Dhaliwal - 2021
It's resonating with her thousands of Instagram followers."—Robert Ito, The New York Times“The characters in Dhaliwal’s stories sparkle. They’re tenderly rendered and their problems are real... The struggle of the cyclops unfolds in metaphors for race, sexuality, gender, and disability, tangling with ideas about fetishization, interracial relationships, passing, and representation.“—Carmen Maria Machado, author of In The Dream HouseFollowing the critical and popular success of Woman World—the hit Instagram comic which appeared on 25 best of the year lists—Aminder Dhaliwal returns with Cyclopedia Exotica. Also serialized on instagram to her 250,000 followers, this graphic novel showcases Dhaliwal’s quick wit and astute socio-cultural criticism.Doctor’s office waiting rooms, commercials, dog parks, and dating app screenshots capture the experiences and interior lives of the cyclops community; a largely immigrant population displaying physical differences from the majority. Whether they’re artists, parents, or yoga students, the cyclops have it tough: they face microaggressions and overt xenophobia on a daily basis. However, they are bent on finding love, cultivating community, and navigating life alongside the two-eyed majority with patience and the occasional bout of rage.Cyclopedia Exotica is a triumph of hilarious candor.
Pregnant Butch: Nine Long Months Spent in Drag
A.K. Summers - 2014
Teek wonders, “Can butches even get pregnant?”Of course, as she and her pragmatic femme girlfriend Vee discover, they can. But what happens when they do? Written and illustrated by A.K. Summers, and based on her own pregnancy, Pregnant Butch strives to depict this increasingly common, but still underrepresented experience of queer pregnancy with humor and complexity—from the question of whether suspenders count as legitimate maternity wear to the strains created by different views of pregnancy within a couple and finally to a culturally critical and compassionate interrogation of gender in pregnancy. Offering smart, ambitious art, this graphic memoir is a must-read for would-be pregnant butches and anyone interested in the intersection of birth and gender, as well as a perfect queer baby shower gift and conversation starter for those who always assumed they “got” being pregnant.
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).