Cats of the Louvre


Taiyo Matsumoto - 2018
    At night, within its darkened galleries, an unseen and surreal world comes alive—a world witnessed only by the small family of cats that lives in the attic. Until now…Translated by Tekkonkinkreet film director Michael Arias.

xkcd: volume 0


Randall Munroe - 2009
    While it's practically required reading in the geek community, xkcd fans are as varied as the comic's subject matter. This book creates laughs from science jokes on one page to relationship humor on another.xkcd: volume 0 is the first book from the immensely popular webcomic with a passionate readership (just Google "xkcd meetup").The artist selected personal and fan favorites from his first 600 comics. It was lovingly assembled from high-resolution original scans of the comics (the mouseover text is discreetly included), and features a lot of doodles, notes, and puzzles in the margins.The book is published by Breadpig, which donates all of the publisher profits from this book to Room to Read for promoting literacy in the developing world.

Our Dreams at Dusk: Shimanami Tasogare, Vol. 1


Yuhki Kamatani - 2015
    Just as he’s contemplating doing the unthinkable, Tasuku meets a mysterious woman who leads him to a group of people dealing with problems not so different from his own. In this realistic, heartfelt depiction of LGBT+ characters from different backgrounds finding their place in the world, a search for inner peace proves to be the most universal experience of all.

Sweet Time


Pixin Weng - 2020
    Singaporean cartoonist Weng Pixin delicately explores strained relationships with a kind of hopefulness while acknowledging their inevitable collapse. Her stories are like a series of snapshots in a photo album or the brightest highlights from an Instagram profile. Gorgeous image follows gorgeous image in a delicate quest to find connection. A night out turns into a chance encounter that is at first ecstatic and then quickly descends into awkwardness. A round of “he loves me, he loves me not” becomes a way of reading every action taken by a distant love interest. A couple find themselves in an artificially beautiful landscape, but the relationship can’t survive their difference of opinion on the illusion of its beauty. In Sweet Time, thick and bold strokes of color mingle with delicate lines. Weng combines colorful realism with a gentle wit and introspection, crafting infinitely relatable stories of everyday life and love now.

Kingdom Come


Mark Waid - 1996
    Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and almost every other character from DC Comics must choose sides in what could be the final battle of them all.

Buddha, Vol. 1: Kapilavastu


Osamu Tezuka - 1972
    Tezuka evidences his profound grasp of the subject by contextualizing the Buddha’s ideas; the emphasis is on movement, action, emotion, and conflict as the prince Siddhartha runs away from home, travels across India, and questions Hindu practices such as ascetic self-mutilation and caste oppression. Rather than recommend resignation and impassivity, Tezuka’s Buddha predicates enlightenment upon recognizing the interconnectedness of life, having compassion for the suffering, and ordering one’s life sensibly. Philosophical segments are threaded into interpersonal situations with ground-breaking visual dynamism by an artist who makes sure never to lose his readers’ attention.Tezuka himself was a humanist rather than a Buddhist, and his magnum opus is not an attempt at propaganda. Hermann Hesse’s novel or Bertolucci’s film is comparable in this regard; in fact, Tezuka’s approach is slightly irreverent in that it incorporates something that Western commentators often eschew, namely, humor.

Kabuki, Vol. 1: Circle of Blood


David W. Mack - 2001
    It also includes in-depth notes and story analysis about the subtext of the story. Circle of Blood recounts the origins of the government operative known as Kabuki who works in Japan's near future, It's an exploration of the relationship between Japan's government and organized crime on a truly epic scale!

The Complete Buddy Bradley Stories from Hate Comics, Vol. 1: Buddy Does Seattle, 1990-1994


Peter Bagge - 2005
    This is the first time these hilarious stories, starring the hapless Buddy Bradley and his cast of loser cohorts, have ever been available under one cover, and never have they been available at such a low price (it would have cost at least three times as much to read all of these classic stories in any previous editions). Bagge's riotous tales of the early 1990s subculture are more hilarious now than ever, find out why he has been praised by R. Crumb, Matt Groening, John Kricfalusi, Publishers Weekly, Entertainment Weekly and many more. Comedy genius.

Becoming Horses


Disa Wallander - 2020
    The You you know may shift and take form as a beautiful horse, a sunset, or something so special, so huge that you could never describe it.Disa Wallander’s Becoming Horses is a mix of delicate cartooning and brash collage—watercolor and photography. Her colorful flowing drawings and watercolors are experimental yet accessible, as her characters mull big questions about life and art, philosophizing in a thoroughly modern voice. Bright dialogue and pleading silences create a beautiful journey that is, in fact, “the destination.”

Astonishing X-Men Omnibus


Joss Whedon - 2008
    Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Whedon and Cassaday (Captain America, Planetary) assembled a tight cast - Cyclops, the Beast, Wolverine, and Emma Frost, joined by returning fan-favorite Kitty Pryde - and set forth a groundbreaking pace, from the opening pages of a Sentinel attack to the unexpected return of a beloved X-Man. Then, building on early momentum, they ratcheted up the danger and drama with a shocking second year, creating a must-read book that can truly be called "astonishing " Collects Astonishing X-Men #1-24, and Giant-Size Astonishing X-Men #1.

Lenore #1


Roman Dirge - 1998
    The story takes place in a small town called Nevermore (taking its name from the same poem as Lenore's namesake "The Raven") and the surrounding wilderness where Lenore's mansion and a nearby graveyard is situated.The primary focus of the graphic novel is dark humor, with many of the stories having twist endings. Common themes are the reinvention of children's songs, games, and nursery rhymes to something more macabre, and subverting all sorts of pop culture icons and cultural figures in to topics of dark comedy. In one story, for instance, Lenore accidentally kills the Easter Bunny. Lenore's actions often result in the death or injury to those around her and in various forms of chaos. Lenore is a character who's a mystery. She often thinks she is doing good and occasionally shows good intentions. Although in recent issues it should be noted that the character has shown a change in personality. When she is asked of what her dream is, she replies that it's to rule the world. To further question this, it should also be mentioned that whenever Lenore gets really upset or angry, she can be very violent and often takes her anger out on whoever made her angry even if it's one of her friends. This results in most of her friends (all for except Mr. Gosh) being very fearful of her. She can also be spiteful. All of this results in Lenore being an enigma due to her at times thinking that she's doing good with meaning to do good and at other times wanting to do something that's more along the lines of being evil.The comic also featured various onetime side stories (One of these stories, Samurai Sloth, is set to star in his own series) and occasionally guest strips from other artists (with Jhonen Vasquez being the most frequent). A recurring comic strip called "Things Involving Me" tells about the author's life and experience in an exaggerated, semi-autobiographical manner.

Courtney Crumrin and the Night Things


Ted Naifeh - 2003
    Courtney's parents have dragged her out to a high-to-do suburb to live with her creepy Great Uncle Aloysius in his spooky old house. She's not only the new kid in school, but she also discovers strange things lurking under her bed.

Nocturnals: Black Planet


Dan Brereton - 1998
    They have already ravaged his home planet, and now he has traveled to Earth to try and stop them once and for all. Once here, however, he finds that this world's inhabitants aren't all sweetness and light themselves. Some of them are busy creating freakish mutations out of their fellow man, and others are helping the invaders in their quest for domination. An outcast, Doc Horror is forced to live by the dark of night, and there he finds compatriots who must also shun the light of day. Polychrome, The Gunwitch, Starfish, Firelion, Komodo, and The Raccoon have all their share of knocks from humanity, but they want to save their homeworld anyway, and they don't care how many monsters stand in their way.

Only Skin - New Tales of the Slow Apocalypse


Sean Ford - 2012
    Only Skin is a grim exploration of the hallucinatory and tragic landscape of modern rural America, as seen through the eyes of a pair of orphaned siblings, searching for answers in a world filled with terrible, terrible questions.

A Game for Swallows: To Die, to Leave, to Return


Zeina Abirached - 2007
    The city of Beirut is cut in two, separated by bricks and sandbags and threatened by snipers and shelling. East Beirut is for Christians, and West Beirut is for Muslims. When Zeina's parents don't return one afternoon from a visit to the other half of the city and the bombing grows ever closer, the neighbors in her apartment house create a world indoors for Zeina and her brother where it's comfy and safe, where they can share cooking lessons and games and gossip. Together they try to make it through a dramatic day in the one place they hoped they would always be safe--home.