Why Grizzly Bears Should Wear Underpants


Matthew Inman - 2013
    Classics from the website, including “Dear Sriracha Rooster Sauce,” “What It Means When You Say Literally,” and “What We Should Have Been Taught in Our Senior Year of High School,” are featured alongside never-before-seen works of epic hilarity that will delight veteran and newbie Oatmeal fans alike.Matthew Inman’s first collection of The Oatmeal.com spent six weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and sold 200,000 copies. This pivotal and influential comic collection titled 5 Very Good Reasons to Punch a Dolphin in the Mouth introduced Samurai sword-wielding kittens and informed us on how to tell if a velociraptor is having pre-marital sex. Matthew's cat-themed collection How to Tell If Your Cat Is Plotting to Kill You is a #1 New York Times bestseller and has sold over 350,000 copies. Now with Why Grizzly Bears Should Wear Underpants, Inman offers a delicious, tantalizing follow-up featuring all new material that has been posted on the site since the publication of the first book plus never-before-seen comics that have not appeared anywhere.  As with every Oatmeal collection, there is a pull-out poster at the back of the book.In this second collection of over 50 comics, you'll be treated to the hilarity of "The Crap We Put Up with Getting On and Off an Airplane," "Why Captain Higgins Is My Favorite Parasitic Flatworm," "This Is How I Feel about Buying Apps," "6 Things You Really Don't Need to Take a Photo of," and much more. Along with lambasting the latest culture crazes, Inman serves up recurrent themes such as foodstuffs, holidays, e-mail, as well as technological, news-of-the-day, and his snarky yet informative comics on grammar and usage. Online and in print, The Oatmeal delivers brilliant, irreverent comic hilarity.

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.

Cerebus


Dave Sim - 1987
    This initial volume collects the first two years of stories from Dave Sim's 300-issue magnum opus. Don't be discouraged by the initially crude artwork or the silliness of the stories. It gets better--even noticeably within this volume. This first installment is the most valuable in preparing for the larger stories ahead.When we first meet Cerebus--a small, gray, and chronically ill-tempered aardvark--he is making his living as a barbarian. In 1977, when the Cerebus comic book series began, Sim initially conceived of it as a parody of such popular series as Conan, Red Sonja, and Elric but quickly mined that material and transformed the scope of the series into much more. Even by the end of this volume, the Cerebus story begins to transform beyond "funny animal" humor into something much more complex and interesting. High points in Cerebus include the introduction of Lord Julius, the dictator of Palnu, who looks, acts, and talks just like a certain cigar-smoking, mustachioed comedian; Jaka, Cerebus's one true love; Elrod the Albino, an innept swordsman; and the Cockroach, the-mother-of-all-superhero-parodies and "inspiration" for the much-later TV and comic character--the Tick. All of these characters appear later on in the series as part of a constantly present ensemble of supporting figures.Even if Cerebus doesn't knock your socks off, give its successor, High Society a try, as this is where the plot really gets going.

Childproof: Cartoons about Parents and Children


Roz Chast - 1997
    A perfect Mother's Day and Father's Day gift, as well as an absolute must-have for new and seasoned parents. 120 illustrations. of color cartoons.

Breaking Cat News: Cats Reporting on the News that Matters to Cats


Georgia Dunn - 2016
    Together they break headlines on the food bowl, new plants, mysterious red dots, strange cats in the yard, and all the daily happenings in their home.

What's New, Vol. 1: The Collected Adventures of Phil and Dixie


Phil Foglio - 1991
    Originally published by Palliard Press.

Two Guys Fooling Around with the Moon


B. Kliban - 1982
    Brilliantly drawn and bitterly funny, these cartoons thoroughly demonstrate better living through plywood, reaffirm that what's good for business is good for America-even if Your Government in Action has taken to the streets-the Madonna is out of order and Yoga has been made silly. 122,000 copies in print.

Dykes to Watch Out For


Alison Bechdel - 1986
    Grin, giggle, and guffaw your way through this celebrated cartoonist's graphic commentary of contemporary lesbian life.

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.

The Cartoon History of the Universe II, Vol. 8-13: From the Springtime of China to the Fall of Rome


Larry Gonick - 1994
    Spanning ages and continents from Ancient India to Rome and China in A.D. 600, Volume II is hip, funny, and full of info.B & W illustrations.

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).

Cyanide and Happiness


Kris Wilson - 2005
    Just see what their mothers have to say!"Dave is a nice, young man with a bright future ahead of him. I always knew he was a gifted boy who would go on to do great things. I hope he settles down with a nice, young woman and ****s the **** out of her."—Dave's mom"I don't know how to get computer pictures, so I'm glad Kris finally has a book out. I haven't read it yet, but I hope he gives me a quote on the back."—Kris's mom"I hope Robert's book does well so he can finally afford to move out. He plays his hip-hop music too loud."—Rob's momMatt's mom was unavailable for a quote due to being dead.

What Am I Doing Here?


Abner Dean - 1947
    He used the elegant draftsmanship and single-panel format of the standard cartoons of the day, but turned them into more than just one-off jokes. With an inimitable mixture of wit, earnestness, and enigmatic surrealism, Dean uses this most ephemeral of forms to explore the deepest mysteries of human existence.What Am I Doing Here? depicts a world at once alien and familiar, in which everyone is naked but act like they’re clothed—a world of club-wielding commuters and byzantine inventions, secret fears, and perverse satisfactions. Through it all strolls (or crawls, or floats, or stumbles) Dean’s unclad Everyman, searching for love, happiness, and the answers to life’s biggest questions.

Amphigorey


Edward Gorey - 1972
    As always, Gorey's painstakingly cross-hatched pen and ink drawings are perfectly suited to his oddball verse and prose. The first book of 15, "The Unstrung Harp," describes the writing process of novelist Mr. Clavius Frederick Earbrass: "He must be mad to go on enduring the unexquisite agony of writing when it all turns out drivel." In "The Listing Attic," you'll find a set of quirky limericks such as "A certain young man, it was noted, / Went about in the heat thickly coated; / He said, 'You may scoff, / But I shan't take it off; / Underneath I am horribly bloated.' "Many of Gorey's tales involve untimely deaths and dreadful mishaps, but much like tragic Irish ballads with their perky rhythms and melodies, they come off as strangely lighthearted. "The Gashlycrumb Tinies," for example, begins like this: "A is for AMY who fell down the stairs, B is for BASIL assaulted by bears," and so on. An eccentric, funny book for either the uninitiated or diehard Gorey fans.Contains: The Unstrung Harp, The Listing Attic, The Doubtful Guest, The Object Lesson, The Bug Book, The Fatal Lozenge, The Hapless Child, The Curious Sofa, The Willowdale Handcar, The Gashlycrumb Tinies, The Insect God, The West Wing, The Wuggly Ump, The Sinking Spell, and The Remembered Visit.

The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker


Robert Mankoff - 2004
    Organized by decade, with commentary by some of the magazine's finest writers, this landmark collection showcases the work of the hundreds of talented artists who have contributed cartoons over the course ofThe New Yorker's eight-two-year history. From the early cartoons of Peter Arno, George Price and Charles Addams to the cutting-edge work of Alex Gregory, Matthew Diffee and Bruce Eric Kaplan (with stops along the way for the genius of Charles Barsotti, Roz Chast, Jack Ziegler, George Booth, and many others), the art collected here forms, as David Remnick puts it in his Foreword, "the longest-running popular comic genre in American life." Throughout the book, brief overviews of each era's predominant themes—from the Depression and nudity to technology and the Internet, highlight various genres of cartoons and shed light on our pastimes and preoccupations. Brief profiles and mini-portfolios spotlight the work of key cartoonists, including Arno, Chast, Ziegler, and others. The DVD-ROM included with the book is what really makes the "Complete Cartoons" complete. Compatible with most home computers and easily browsable, the disk contains a mind-boggling 70,363 cartoons, indexed in a variety of ways. Perhaps you'd like to find all the cartoons by your favorite artist. Or maybe you'd like to look up the cartoons that ran the week you were born, or all of the cartoons on a particular subject. Of course, you can always begin at the beginning, February 21, 1925, and experience the unprecedented pleasure of reading through every single cartoon ever published in The New Yorker. Enjoy this one-of-a-kind protrait of American life over the past eight decades, as captured by the talented pens and singular outlooks of the masters of the cartoonist's art.