The iconography and mythology they created flourishes to this day in practically all visual media. Supermen! collects the best and the brightest of this first generation, including Jack Cole, Will Eisner, Bill Everett, Lou Fine, Fletcher Hanks, Jack Kirby, Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, and Basil Wolverton. Readers expecting to find an All-American group of altruistic do-gooders are in for quite a jolt. As Jonathan Lethem writes in his Foreword, “A collection like Supermen! works like a reverse-neutron bomb to assumptions about the birth of the superhero image: it tears down the orderly structures of theory and history and leaves the figures standing in full view, staring back at us in all their defiant disorienting particularity, their blazing strangeness.” Beautifully designed and produced in full color, Supermen! contains twenty full-length stories, nine full-sized covers, a generous selection of vintage promotional ads, and comprehensive background notes by editor Greg Sadowski.This anthology is indispensable to anyone interested in the origins of superheroes and the history of the comic book form.

    The hugely successful blog catvshuman.com receives over 6,000 page views per day, and many of its cartoons have gone viral. 40% new material unpublished on the website.Yasmine Surovec began sketching her clever and sarcastic Cat Versus Human cartoons as a way to relax and unwind. Soon, her popular blog at catversushuman.blogspot.com began receiving as many as 12,000 hits per day, with a number of posts going viral and appearing on popular Web sites such as The Huffington Post and I Can Has Cheezburger. Now, a selection of 100 Cat Versus Human strips--many never previously published--can be found inside this inaugural collection of Cat Versus Human.Proud owners of Felis domesticus will instantly recognize Surovec's keen insights into cat behavior and all of the characteristic intricacies of the cat-human relationship, such as the allure of an empty cardboard box trumping an expensive battery-operated toy or how a cat's favorite nap spot might as easily be inside a litter box, on top of clean laundry, or directly on top of a human face. Cat Versus Human also encourages an affectionate look at your once-was-in-mint-condition midcentury modern sofa that is now being unstuffed one cat claw at a time.

    and how it formed him!This book opens with Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*!, creating vignettes of the people, events, and comics that shaped Art Spiegelman. It traces the artist's evolution from a MAD-comics obsessed boy in Rego Park, Queens, to a neurotic adult examining the effect of his parents' memories of Auschwitz on his own son.The second part presents a facsimile of Breakdowns, the long-sought after collection of the artist's comics of the 1970s, the book that triggers these memories. Breakdowns established the mode of formally sophisticated comics that transformed the medium, and includes the prototype of Maus, cubist experiments, an essay on humor, and the definitive genre-twisting pulp story Ace Hole-Midget Detective.Pulling all this together is an illustrated essay that looks back at the sixties as the artist pushes sixty, and explains the obsessions that brought these works into being. Poignant, funny, complex, and innovative, Breakdowns alters the terms of what can be accomplished in a memoir.

    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.

    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.

    Perfectly Clear brings back into print stories that Hornschemeier published prior to his Three Paradoxes Fantagraphics debut from a variety of sources—his own self-published Forlorn Funnies, as well as strips that originally appeared in independent magazines and papers—none of which has been available to the book trade.The book is designed as a "flip book" in the tradition of the old Ace paperbacks, with one side featuring comedic work (or as comedic as Hornschemeier's mind allows), and the other decidedly more morose. With almost every page, we see a new style, a new direction; with the resultant effect being that of an anthology by creators of vastly contrasting sensibilities.On the "funny" menu, we are treated to Dr. Rodentia (an unfortunate-looking fellow with only apathy as his weapon), a detailed artist's catalogue exploring such modern masterpieces as "Accidental Late-Night Sex With a Radiator," musings on the cancerous nature of civilization as observed by a deceased cat and a cotton-based airbus, the scatological "Feelings Check," the ever pathetic Vanderbilt Millions and his fantasies of self-worth, and the multi-narrative story that started the Forlorn Funnies comics series: "The Men and Women of the Television."Clearly, there is a fine line in the Hornschemeier lexicon between funny and morose.On our "forlorn" plate we are served the cold examination of the dyslexic narcoleptic and his bungled plans of murder, a sea creature's balancing of morality and sustenance, the Western romance "Wanted," a metal man's self-destructive search for meaning, and the story the alternative website Ain't It Cool News describes as delivering "a complicated mixture of disgust and pity."Let Us Be Perfectly Clear demonstrates Paul Hornschemeier's versatility and breadth in an elegantly produced book that will appeal to connoisseurs of contemporary, cutting-edge cartoons and graphic novels.

    Imagine, if you will: · The easily assembled Pole-Dancing-Club-in-a- Briefcase for stranded businessmen · Christmas tree ornaments that provide surveillance to instantly tell Santa if you?ve been bad or good · A high-speed police response unit aptly named the Cop Catapult · The Arsehole Trap, which can clear an average size town of arseholes in a single day with its promise of Big Brother auditions Like a twenty-first-century Rube Goldberg on the wrong mix of meds, Andy Riley has created elaborate inventions that are often side-splittingly sociopathic and never short of patently hysterical.

    The artists, some of whom rarely grant interviews, offer insights into the creative process, their influences and personal sources of inspiration, and the history of comics. The interviews amount to private gallery tours, with the artists commenting, now thoughtfully, now passionately, on their own work as well as the works of others.The book is generously illustrated with full-color reproductions of the artists’ works, including some that have been published and others not originally intended for publication, such as sketchbooks and personal projects. Additional illustrations show behind-the-scenes working processes of the cartoonists and particular works by others that have influenced or inspired them. Through the eyes of these artists, we see with a new clarity the achievement of contemporary cartoonists and the extraordinary possibilities of comic art.Extensive interviews with: Ivan Brunetti, Charles Burns, Daniel Clowes, Robert Crumb, Jaime Hernandez, Gary Panter, Seth, Art Spiegelman, Chris Ware

    Comics insider Peter Sanderson recounts Marvel's main story lines and delves into the lives of major characters, showing how different writers shaped their fates. The illustrations include scenes from ground-breaking stories, showcasing the best work of important Marvel artists.

    Reprint.

    This book celebrates this vibrant artistic underground by gathering together a collection of excellent stories that can be enjoyed by all.No Straight Lines showcases major names such as Alison Bechdel (whose book Fun Home was named Time Magazine's 2006 Book of the Year), Howard Cruse (whose groundbreaking Stuck Rubber Baby is now back in print), and Ralf Koenig (one of Europe's most popular cartoonists), as well as high-profile, cross-over creators who have dabbled in LGBT cartooning, like legendary NYC artist David Wojnarowicz and media darling and advice columnist Dan Savage. No Straight Lines also spotlights many talented creators who never made it out of the queer comics ghetto, but produced amazing work that deserves wider attention.Until recently, queer cartooning existed in a parallel universe to the rest of comics, appearing only in gay newspapers and gay bookstores and not in comic book stores, mainstream bookstores or newspapers. The insular nature of the world of queer cartooning, however, created a fascinating artistic scene. LGBT comics have been an uncensored, internal conversation within the queer community, and thus provide a unique window into the hopes, fears, and fantasies of queer people for the last four decades.These comics have forged their aesthetics from the influences of underground comix, gay erotic art, punk zines, and the biting commentaries of drag queens, bull dykes, and other marginalized queers. They have analyzed their own communities, and their relationship with the broader society. They are smart, funny, and profound. No Straight Lines will be heralded by people interested in comics history, and people invested in LGBT culture will embrace it as a unique and invaluable collection.

    Anna Blandford's easy humor points out cat behaviour at its best, and worst, and why humans still find cats irresistible. Because let's be honest, we're obsessed: if a cat lover is presented with a choice of products and one of them has a cat on it, hands down that will be the one selected. And as Anna asks, 'If it doesn't have a cat on it, is it even worth owning?'Cat lovers worldwide will relate to Anna's whimsical drawings and hilarious insights.

    The life of a gay and Jewish Nazi-fighter. A gender reveal party that tears apart reality. These are the just some of the comics you'll find in this massive queer comics anthology from The Nib.Be Gay, Do Comics is filled with dozens of comics about LGBTQIA experiences, ranging from personal stories to queer history to cutting satire about pronoun panic and brands desperate to co-opt pride. Brimming with resilience, inspiration, and humor, an incredible lineup of top indie cartoonists takes you from the American Revolution through Stonewall to today's fights for equality and representation.Featuring more than 30 cartoonists including Hazel Newlevant, Joey Alison Sayers, Maia Kobabe, Matt Lubchansky, Breena Nuñez, Sasha Velour, Shing Yin Khor, Levi Hastings, Mady G, Bianca Xunise, Kazimir Lee, and many, many more!

    It's an age when nurturing moms who've spent years cuddling, tucking, and rocking their little boys suddenly find themselves on the outside trying to see in. Most moms and sons do not make the transition gracefully.Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman are trying something different with this collection of their phenomenally successful comic strip, Zits. They have combed through more than 10 years of strips and selected more than 200 of the most popular of the Mom/Son themed strips into one book.The idea is to provide a more focused look at the dynamic that drives almost all of the mountain of Zits e-mail and letters we receive every month," says Scott. Borgman adds, "If moms can stop what they're doing long enough to discover this book, we think they'll find a lot of comfort (and laughs) in seeing that their struggles with their grunting, slouching, uncommunicative, sloppy, and ultimately incomprehensible sons are universal."

    The complete collection of articles and emails from 27bslash6 such as Overdue Account, Party in Apartment 3 and Strata Agreement plus articles too litigious to be on the website.