The comics in this book were made over a two-year period that seems to consist of constant winter. They were drawn to the tune of the radiator's hum.

    Featuring 50 common North American birds, such as the White-Breasted Butt Nugget and the Goddamned Canada Goose (or White-Breasted Nuthatch and Canada Goose for the layperson), Matt Kracht identifies all the idiots in your backyard and details exactly why they suck with ink drawings. Each entry is accompanied by facts about a bird's (annoying) call, its (dumb) migratory pattern, its (downright tacky) markings, and more.The essential guide to all things wings with migratory maps, tips for birding, musings on the avian population, and the ethics of birdwatching.

    Never one to beat around the bush, he explains to us, in the opening of this singular, delightfully eccentric book, that because he is also a cartoonist at the magazine he actually has two of the best jobs in the world. With the help of myriad images and his funniest, most beloved cartoons, he traces his love of the craft all the way back to his childhood, when he started doing funny drawings at the age of eight. After meeting his mother, we follow his unlikely stints as a high-school basketball star, draft dodger, and sociology grad student. Though Mankoff abandoned the study of psychology in the seventies to become a cartoonist, he recently realized that the field he abandoned could help him better understand the field he was in, and here he takes up the psychology of cartooning, analyzing why some cartoons make us laugh and others don't. He allows us into the hallowed halls of The New Yorker to show us the soup-to-nuts process of cartoon creation, giving us a detailed look not only at his own work, but that of the other talented cartoonists who keep us laughing week after week. For dessert, he reveals the secrets to winning the magazine's caption contest. Throughout How About Never--Is Never Good for You?, we see his commitment to the motto "Anything worth saying is worth saying funny."

    I like it when you say things like 'let's pretend we're in a tunnel'. I like it when you suggest we crawl. I like it when you extinguish the lights. I do not like it when you bite me.

    Now, acclaimed biographer David Michaelis gives us the first full-length biography of Schulz: at once a creation story, a portrait of a hidden American genius, and a chronicle contrasting the private man with the central role he played in shaping the national imagination. The son of a barber, Schulz was born in Minnesota to modest, working class roots. In 1943, just three days after his mother′s tragic death from cancer, Schulz, a private in the army, shipped out for boot camp and the war in Europe. The sense of shock and separation never left him. And these early experiences would shape his entire life.With Peanuts, Schulz embedded adult ideas in a world of small children to remind the reader that character flaws and childhood wounds are with us always. It was the central truth of his own life, that as the adults we′ve become and as the children we always will be, we can free ourselves, if only we can see the humour in the predicaments of funny-looking kids. Schulz′s Peanuts profoundly influenced the country in the second half of the 20th century. But the strip was anchored in the collective experience and hardships of Schulz′s generation-the generation that survived the Great Depression and liberated Europe and the Pacific and came home to build the post-war world.

    His posts were inspired by the desire to re-create simple and everyday observations and stories from his own life that everyone could relate to. In Niemann’s hands, mundane experiences such as riding the subway or trying to get a good night’s sleep were transformed into delightful flights of visual fancy. The struggle to keep up with housework became a battle against adorable but crafty goblins, and nostalgia about New York manifested in simple but strikingly spot-on LEGO creations. This brilliantly illustrated collection of reflections on modern life includes all 16 of the original blog posts as well as a new chapter created exclusively for the book. Also available from Christoph Niemann: Sunday Sketching and I LEGO N.Y. Praise for Abstract City: “Everyday experiences—from looking at leaves to riding city subways—are funny and fresh and often a source of wonder when depicted by this brilliant graphic designer.” —Readers Digest “I will call Christoph when anything awful happens to me. And he will make me laugh like crazy about the whole thing. Because he is insanely funny and completely tenderly true. I love every column he did and will do.” —Maira Kalman, author/illustrator of And the Pursuit of Happiness “Christoph Niemann is the best illustrator alive. Every single time I come across a piece of his work, which is often as he either works all the time, or worse, draws incredibly fast, it is wonderful. While the rest of us are lucky to get a proper piece out here and there, Christoph produces hit after hit after hit. If he wasn’t such a genuinely sweet man, we’d surely hate his ass a lot.” —Stefan Sagmeister, author of Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far “Few books have more probingly and humorously gotten inside the mind and day-to-day experience of an artist.” —NPR.org "What’s terrifying (to me, certainly, and possibly to many of his peers) is that nearly every idea he has seems to be equally well formed . . . once again, performing neat, virtuosic circles around the rest of us, to our delight." —PRINT magazine "Irresistible." —Very Short List “A masterpiece of sophisticated humor, this is a brilliant one-of-a-kind work.” —Library Journal, starred review

    When Arthur Jones cocreated a reading series centered around ubiquitous Post-Its(r), the series struck a chord. It grew in popularity and was ultimately featured on a This American Life live simulcast broadcast across the nation.Inspired by the series and spanning a wide and weird range of topics from an A-list roster of contributors, Post-It(r) Note Diaries captures everyday occurrences from a job interview gone hilariously awry and a nude run-in with a neighbor to hair-raising events like an overnight encounter at Nicholas Cage's house (it's not what you think!), and nearly drowning while trying to paddle across the East River in a homemade canoe. Post-It(r) Note Diaries is perfect for NPR addicts and fans of unique graphic favorites like Postsecret and Blankets.Diarists include: John Hodgman, David Rakoff, Hanna Tinti, Arthur Bradford, Chuck Klosterman, Andrew Solomon, Starlee Kine, Kristen Schaal, Mary Roach and Andrew Bird.

    This book contains more than 150 pages crammed full of classic, monochrome plumage art paired with the delightful but dirty aphorisms (think "I'm going to need more booze to deal with this week") that made the Effin' Birds Twitter feed a household name. Also included in its full, Technicolor glory is John James Audubon's most beautiful work matched with modern life advice. Including never-before-seen birds, insults, and field notes.

    This book by one of Wired magazine's art directors traverses the graphic world through a collection of pie charts, bar graphs, timelines, scatter plots, and more. Super Graphic offers readers a unique look at the intricate and sometimes contradictory storylines that weave their way through comic books, and shares advice for navigating the pages of some of the most popular, longest-running, and best-loved comics and graphic novels out there. From a colorful breakdown of the DC Comics reader demographic to a witty Venn diagram of superhero comic tropes and a Chris Ware sadness scale, this book charts the most arbitrary and monumental characters, moments, and equipment of the wide world of comics.

    Tolkien, Margaret Atwood, James Joyce, Plato, Ernest Hemingway, Dan Brown, Ayn Rand, and Herman Melville.From "Old ladies convince a guy to ruin Scotland" (Macbeth) to "Everyone is sad. It snows." (War and Peace), these clever, humorous synopses are sure to make book lovers smile.

    Now, at last, The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For gathers a “rich, funny, deep and impossible to put down” (Publishers Weekly) selection from all eleven Dykes volumes. Here too are sixty of the newest strips, never before published in book form.Settle in to this wittily illustrated soap opera (Bechdel calls it “half op-ed column and half endless serialized Victorian novel”) of the lives, loves, and politics of a cast of characters, most of them lesbian, living in a midsize American city that may or may not be Minneapolis.Her brilliantly imagined countercultural band of friends -- academics, social workers, bookstore clerks -- fall in and out of love, negotiate friendships, raise children, switch careers, and cope with aging parents.Bechdel fuses high and low culture -- from foreign policy to domestic routine, hot sex to postmodern theory -- in a serial graphic narrative “suitable for humanists of all persuasions.”

    Parenting is hard and often gross. Laughing about it helps. If you liked Toddlers Are A**holes, you'll love Fowl Language!Parenting can be a magical journey full of bliss and wonder . . . if you're on the right meds. For the rest of us, it's another thing altogether. Fowl Language Comics takes an unvarnished look at the tedium and aggravation of parenting, while never forgetting that the reason we put up with those little jerks is that we love them so damn much. By poking fun at the daily struggles parents face, these cartoons help all of us feel less alone in our continual struggle to stay sane.Brian Gordon, creator of Fowl Language Comics, has two small children of his own and knows well the trials and tribulations that go along with raising them. With more than eighteen years of experience in humorous illustration, writing, and cartooning, Brian's visual point of view is memorable, authentic, and instantly recognizable. From Brian: "They say 'write what you know.' Well, I don’t know much, but I do know what it’s like to be the father of two brilliant, beautiful, bat-shit-crazy kids."Launched in July 2013, the relatable humor of Fowl Language broke out on HuffPost Parents, Pop Sugar Moms, Bored Panda, Awkward Family Photos, and countless other humor and parenting blogs. Thanks to more than 200,000 fans on social media, including Facebook, Tumblr, and Instagram, it continues to grow in popularity at a rapid pace.

    Well, regions of the world were competing to host the apocalypse and the Middle East won.’Online sensation Karl reMarks disagreed with the idea that reality had become too strange to satirise. Then he read that bin Laden was radicalised by Shakespeare. Since then, Karl has been bringing the best of the Middle East news and views to his followers around the world.Now Karl’s wildly wry observations and sketches are available in one handy collection. With sections on ‘Geography for Dummies’, ‘Democracy for Realists’ and ‘Extremism: A Study’, alongside the best of Karl reMarks’s infamous ‘Bar Jokes’, this hilarious book proudly presents views you’re guaranteed not to hear on the news …We’re actually very proud of God in the Middle East. He’s the local guy who went on to acquire international fame.Wahahahahabism: A fundamentalist Middle Eastern comedy movement.Twelve people just started to follow me. Jesus.

    Although he was by all accounts a sensitive and thoughtful person, he’s ironically best remembered for his various contemptible personas, which were so committed and so convincing that all but his closest family and friends were completely taken in.Why would someone so gentle-natured and sensitive build an entire career seeking the hatred of his audience? What drives a performer to solicit that reaction? With the same nuance and sympathy with which he approached Andre the Giant in his 2014 biography, graphic novelist Box Brown takes on the complex and often hilarious life of Andy Kaufman.

    Get Fuzzy has become a hit cartoon with its bitingly funny portrait of single life with pets.And why not? The laughs come fast and furious. Get Fuzzy features Rob Wilco, a single, mild-mannered advertising executive who's the so-called guardian of Bucky and Satchel, anthropomorphic scamps that still live by their animal instincts. Bucky, a temperamental cat who carries a boom box and goes on spending sprees, definitely calls the shots in this eclectic household, while Satchel is a kindly canine with a sensitive soul who tries to remain neutral, even though he bears the brunt of his feline companion's mischief.Between the three of them, the Wilco household faces a whole host of trials and tribulations that classify them as family. Satchel wants his boundaries respected. Bucky refuses to eat vegetables but insists on snarfing up Rob's plants. Rob tries to meet women, but his pets continually subvert his efforts. In every frame, Get Fuzzy depicts the hilarious war between the species, giving the animals an equal footing in hilarious one-upmanship.Get Fuzzy is the comic strip for everyone who loves their pets with an attitude. That said, Groovitude is Get Fuzzy at its finest.Contains cartoons from The Dog Is Not a Toy and Fuzzy Logic.