Grass


Keum Suk Gendry-Kim - 2017
    Keum Suk Gendry-Kim emphasizes Lee’s strength in overcoming the many forms of adversity she experienced. Grass is painted in a black ink that flows with lavish details of the beautiful fields and farmland of Korea and uses heavy brushwork on the somber interiors of Lee’s memories.The cartoonist Gendry-Kim’s interviews with Lee become an integral part of Grass, forming the heart and architecture of this powerful nonfiction graphic novel and offering a holistic view of how Lee’s wartime suffering changed her. Grass is a landmark graphic novel that makes personal the desperate cost of war and the importance of peace.

Dumb: Living Without a Voice


Georgia Webber - 2018
    Webber adroitly uses the comics medium to convey the practical hurdles she faced as well as the fear and dread that accompanied her increasingly lonely journey to regain her life. Her raw cartooning style, occasionally devolving into chaotic scribbles, splotches of ink, and overlapping montages, perfectly captures her frustration and anxiety. But her ordeal ultimately becomes a hopeful story. Throughout, she learns to lean on the support of her close friends, finds self-expression in creating comics, and comes to understand and appreciate how deeply her voice and identity are intertwined.

Wonder Woman Unbound: The Curious History of the World's Most Famous Heroine


Tim Hanley - 2014
    The original Wonder Woman was ahead of her time, advocating female superiority and the benefits of matriarchy in the 1940s. At the same time, her creator filled the comics with titillating bondage imagery, and Wonder Woman was tied up as often as she saved the world. In the 1950s, Wonder Woman begrudgingly continued her superheroic mission, wishing she could settle down with her boyfriend instead, all while continually hinting at hidden lesbian leanings. While other female characters stepped forward as women’s lib took off in the late 1960s, Wonder Woman fell backwards, losing her superpowers and flitting from man to man. Ms. magazine and Lynda Carter restored Wonder Woman’s feminist strength in the 1970s, turning her into a powerful symbol as her checkered past was quickly forgotten. Exploring this lost history adds new dimensions to the world’s most beloved female character, and Wonder Woman Unbound delves into her comic book and its spin-offs as well as the myriad motivations of her creators to showcase the peculiar journey that led to Wonder Woman’s iconic status.

Dr. Seuss Goes to War: The World War II Editorial Cartoons of Theodor Seuss Geisel


Richard H. Minear - 1999
    Seuss was drawing biting cartoons for adults that expressed his fierce opposition to anti-Semitism and fascism. An editorial cartoonist from 1941 to 1943 for PM magazine, a left-wing daily New York newspaper, Dr. Seuss launched a battle against dictatorial rule abroad and America First (an isolationist organization that argued against U.S. entry into World War II) with more than 400 cartoons urging the United States to fight against Adolf Hitler and his cohorts in fascism, Benito Mussolini, Pierre Laval, and Japan (he never depicted General Tojo Hideki, the wartime prime minister, or Togo Shigenori, the foreign minister). Dr. Seuss Goes to War, by Richard H. Minear, includes 200 of these cartoons, demonstrating the active role Dr. Seuss played in shaping and reflecting how America responded to World War II as events unfolded.As one of America's leading historians of Japan during World War II, Minear also offers insightful commentary on the historical and political significance of this immense body of work that, until now, has not been seriously considered as part of Dr. Seuss's extraordinary legacy.Born to a German-American family in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1904, Theodor Geisel began his cartooning career at Dartmouth College, where he contributed to the humor magazine. After a run-in with college authorities for bootlegging liquor, he had to use a pseudonym to get his work published, choosing his middle name, Seuss, and adding "Dr." several years later when he dropped out of graduate school at Oxford University in England. He had never planned on setting poison political pen to paper until he realized his deep hatred of Italian fascism. The first editorial cartoon he drew depicts the editor of the fascist paper Il Giornale d'Italia wearing a fez (part of Italy's fascist uniform) and banging away at a giant steam typewriter while a winged Mussolini holds up the free end of the banner of paper emerging from the roll. He submitted it to a friend at PM, an outspoken political magazine that was "against people who push other people around," and began his two-year career with the magazine before joining the U.S. Army as a documentary filmmaker in 1943.Dr. Seuss's first caricature of Hitler appears in the May 1941 cartoon, "The head eats, the rest gets milked," portraying the dictator as the proprietor of "Consolidated World Dairy," merging 11 conquered nations into one cow. Hitler went on to become one of the main caricatures in Seuss's work for the next two years, depicted alone, among his generals and other Germans, and with his allies Benito Mussolini and Pierre Laval. He is also drawn alongside "Japan," which Dr. Seuss portrays quite offensively, with slanted, bespectacled eyes and a sneering grin. While Dr. Seuss was outspoken against antiblack racism in the United States, he held a virulent disdain for the Japanese and rendered sinister and, at times, slanderous caricatures of their wartime actions even before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. But Dr. Seuss's aggression wasn't solely reserved for the fascists abroad. He was also loudly critical of America's initial apathy toward the war, skewering isolationists like America First advocate Charles Lindbergh, the Chicago Tribune's Colonel Robert McCormick, Eleanor Medill Patterson of the Washington Times-Herald, and Joseph Patterson of the New York Daily News, whom he considered as evil as Hitler. He encouraged Americans to buy war savings bonds and stamps and to do everything they could to ensure victory over fascism.Minear provides historical background in Dr. Seuss Goes to War that not only serves to contextualize these cartoons but also deftly explains the highly problematic anti-Japanese and anticommunist stances held by both Dr. Seuss and PM magazine, which contradicted the leftist sentiments to which they both eagerly adhered. As Minear notes, Dr. Seuss eventually softened his feelings toward communism as Russia and the United States were united on the Allied front, but his stereotypical portrayals of Japanese and Japanese-Americans grew increasingly and undeniably racist as the war raged on, reflecting the troubling public opinion of American citizens. Minear does not attempt to ignore or redeem Dr. Seuss's hypocrisy; rather, he shows how these cartoons evoke the mood and the issues of the era. After Dr. Seuss left PM magazine, he never drew another editorial cartoon, though we find in these cartoons the genesis of his later characters Yertle the dictating turtle and the Cat in the Hat, who bears a striking resemblance to Uncle Sam. Dr. Seuss Goes to War is an astonishing collection of work that many of his devoted fans have not been able to see until now. But this book is also a comprehensive, thoughtfully researched, and exciting history lesson of the Second World War, by a writer who loves Dr. Seuss as much as those who grow up with his books do.

Late Bloomer


Carol Tyler - 2005
    Thus each rare new story from her pen has been greeted with hurrahsas well they should be, because she's one of the most skillful, caustic, and emphatic cartoon storytellers of her generation. This new book presents the biggest, richest and most delightful collection of Tyler's work to date featuring many new and previously unpublished works.In "Migrant Mother" Tyler tells the grueling story of a cross-country trip with the flu and her terrible twos toddler using her trademark combination of rueful humor and emphathy. The full-color "Just A Bad Seed" is a meditation on a problem child who might not be such a problem after all, while "The Return of Mrs. Kite" chronicles a family crisishow her widowed grandmother fell in with a beau of questionable character. "Gone" (also in full color) is a stirring meditation on all kinds of loss, and "Why I'm A-gin' Southern Men" is a classic rant that dissects that particular breed of maleor at least a certain subspecies of "ex"eswith pitiless wit.Other stories include "Sweet Miss Lee" (a reminiscence of an immigrant roommate and her fate), "There's Something Wrong with a Perfect Lawn" (a tale of suburban obsessiveness), "Little Crosshatch Mind" (where artistic impulses come from), and "Uncovered Property" (discovering the power of sexuality at an early age).Tyler works equally well in delicately crisp black-and-white penstrokes and lushly watercolored paintings (this book will feature 60 pages of her stunning full-color work). All told, the three-dozen stories here will cement Tyler's reputation as a cartoonist to be reckoned with. 136 pages, 60 pages in color.

Dear Scarlet: The Story of My Postpartum Depression


Teresa Wong - 2019
    Equal parts heartbreaking and funny, Dear Scarlet perfectly captures the quiet desperation of those suffering from PPD and the profound feelings of inadequacy and loss. As Teresa grapples with her fears and anxieties and grasps at potential remedies, coping mechanisms, and her mother’s Chinese elixirs, we come to understand one woman's battle against the cruel dynamics of postpartum depression. Dear Scarlet is a poignant and deeply personal journey through the complexities of new motherhood, offering hope to those affected by PPD, as well as reassurance that they are not alone.

The Comic Book Story of Baseball: The Heroes, Hustlers, and History-making Swings (and Misses) of America's National Pastime


Alexander C. Irvine - 2018
    Writer Alex Irvine and illustrators Tomm Coker (Black Monday Murders) and C.P. Smith team up to present a complete look at the beginnings (both real and legendary), developments, triumphs, and tragedies of baseball. The Comic Book Story of Baseball spotlights the players, teams, games, and moments that have kept the game so popular for so long. Not only does the book define key terms and explain how the game is played, it also breaks down the cultural impact and significance of the sport in America and overseas (including Japan, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic). From the early days of America to the flying W outside Wrigley Field in 2016, the book features members of Baseball's Hall of Fame and modern day stand-outs, including Cy Young, Honus Wagner, Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, Hank Aaron, the 1930s New York Yankees, the 2004 Boston Red Sox, the 2016 Chicago Cubs, and more.

The Hypo: The Melancholic Young Lincoln


Noah Van Sciver - 2012
    Lincoln is a rising Whig in the state's legislature as he arrives in Springfield, IL to practice law. With all of his possessions under his arms in two saddlebags, he is quickly given a place to stay by a womanizing young bachelor who becomes his friend and close confidant. Lincoln builds a life and begins friendships with the town's top lawyers and politicians. He attends elegant dances and meets an independent-minded young woman from a high-society Kentucky family, and after a brisk courtship, becomes engaged. But, as time passes and uncertainty creeps in, young Lincoln is forced to battle a dark cloud of depression brought on by a chain of defeats and failures culminating into a nervous breakdown that threatens his life and sanity. This cloud of dark depression Lincoln calls "The Hypo." Dense crosshatching and an attention to detail help bring together this completely original telling of a man driven by an irrepressible desire to pull himself up by his bootstraps, overcome all obstacles, and become the person he strives to be. All the while, unknowingly laying the foundation of character he would use as one of America's greatest presidents.

Red Rosa: A Graphic Biography of Rosa Luxemburg


Kate Evans - 2015
    The story follows Rosa from her family life in Jewish Poland—where she became the leader of a general strike at age fifteen and was exiled from her homeland at eighteen—to her immersion into the then largest radical party in the world, the German Social Democratic Party, to her founding of the German Communist Party and leadership of the German revolution of 1919.This beautifully drawn graphic life gives “Red Rosa” her due as an iconic radical, but also portrays a fascinating woman with a rich love life, struggles with physical disability and an abiding love of literature and theater. Rosa will contribute to the growing understanding of one of the twentieth century’s greatest revolutionaries.

Colored: The Unsung Life of Claudette Colvin


Emilie Plateau - 2015
    civil rights movement, making headlines around he world and becoming an enduring symbol of the fight for dignity and equality, another young black woman refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. She was the wrong person at the right time, and so History did not choose her. Her name was Claudette Colvin and this is her story.

Save It for Later: Promises, Parenthood, and the Urgency of Protest


Nate Powell - 2021
    Powell highlights both the danger of normalized paramilitary presence symbols in consumer pop culture, and the roles we play individually as we interact with our communities, families, and society at large. Each essay tracks Powell’s journey from the night of the election—promising his four-year-old daughter that Trump will never win, to the reality of the authoritarian presidency, protesting the administration’s policies, and navigating the complications of teaching his children how to raise their own voices in a world that is becoming increasingly dangerous and more and more polarized. While six of the seven essays are new, unpublished work, Powell has also included “About Face,” a comics essay first published by Popula Online that swiftly went viral and inspired him to expand his work on Save It for Later. The seventh and final essay will contextualize the myriad events of 2020 with the previous four years—from the COVID-19 pandemic to global protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder to the 2020 presidential election itself—highlighting both the consistencies and inversions of widely shared experiences and observations amidst a massive social upheaval. As Powell moves between subjective and objective experiences raising his children—depicted in their childhood innocence as imaginary anthropomorphic animals—he reveals the electrifying sense of trust and connection with neighbors and strangers in protest. He also explores how to equip young people with tools to best make their own noise as they grow up and help shape the direction and future of this country.

Drawing Power: Women's Stories of Sexual Violence, Harassment, and Survival


Diane Noomin - 2019
    Featuring such noted creators as Emil Ferris, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, MariNaomi, Liana Finck, and Ebony Flowers the anthology’s contributors comprise a diverse group of many ages, sexual orientations, and races—and their personal stories convey the wide spectrum of sexual harassment and abuse that is still all too commonplace. With a percentage of profits going to RAINN, Drawing Power is an anthology that stokes the fires of progressive social upheaval, in the fight for a better, safer world. Full list of contributors: Rachel Ang, Zoe Belsinger, Jennifer Camper, Caitlin Cass, Tyler Cohen, Marguerite Dabaie, Soumya Dhulekar, Wallis Eates, Trinidad Escobar, Kat Fajardo, Joyce Farmer, Emil Ferris, Liana Finck, Sarah Firth, Mary Fleener, Ebony Flowers, Claire Folkman, Noel Franklin Katie Fricas, Siobhán Gallagher, Joamette Gil, J. Gonzalez-Blitz, Georgiana Goodwin, Roberta Gregory, Marian Henley, Soizick Jaffre Avy Jetter, Sabba Khan, Kendra Josie Kirkpatrick, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Nina Laden, Miss Lasko-Gross, Carol Lay, Miriam Libicki Sarah Lightman, LubaDalu, Ajuan Mance, MariNaomi, Lee Marrs, Liz Mayorga, Lena Merhej, Bridget Meyne, Carta Monir, Hila Noam Diane Noomin, Breena Nuñez, Meg O’Shea, Corinne Pearlman, Cathrin Peterslund, Minnie Phan, Kelly Phillips, Powerpaola, Sarah Allen Reed, Kaylee Rowena, Ariel Schrag, M. Louise Stanley, Maria Stoian, Nicola Streeten, Marcela Trujillo, Carol Tyler, Una, Lenora Yerkes, Ilana Zeffren

Big Black: Stand at Attica


Frank "Big Black" Smith - 2020
    THIS IS THE TRUE STORY FROM THE MAN AT THE CENTER OF IT ALL. In the summer of 1971, the New York’s Attica State Prison is a symbol of everything broken in America – abused prisoners, rampant racism and a blind eye turned towards the injustices perpetrated on the powerless. But when the guards at Attica overreact to a minor incident, the prisoners decide they’ve had enough – and revolt against their jailers, taking them hostage and making demands for humane conditions. Frank “Big Black” Smith finds himself at the center of this uprising, struggling to protect hostages, prisoners and negotiators alike. But when the only avenue for justice seems to be negotiating with ambitious Governor Nelson Rockefeller, Big Black soon discovers there may be no hope in finding a peaceful resolution for the prisoners in Attica. Written by Jared Reinmuth and Frank “Big Black” Smith himself, adapted and illustrated by Ameziane, Big Black: Stand At Attica is an unflinching look at the price of standing up to injustice in what remains one of the bloodiest civil rights confrontations in American history.

Puerto Rico Strong


Hazel NewlevantAlan Medina - 2018
    All proceeds go to UNIDOS Disaster Relief & Recovery Program to Support Puerto Rico.Despite being a US territory, Puerto Rico is often thought of as a foreign land, if it’s even a thought in the mind of the average American at all. Its people exist in all corners of America; some of them have parents who immigrated from the home island, others are a part of families that have been on the mainland for generations. Then there are those who have come to the states in search of a dream but struggle to integrate into an unfamiliar culture, while there are those who have lived in the United States all of their lives but still have the same struggle because of the color of their skin or their sexual identity. These stories follow individuals from diverse walks of life but are all part of the culture that is Puerto Rico.Puerto Rico Strong features art and writing by Rosa Colon, Vita Ayala, Naomi Franquiz, Javier Cruz Winnick, Sabrina Cintron, Ronnie Garcia, Fabian Nicieza, Joamette Gil, and many more!

We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl®, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement


Andi Zeisler - 2016
    Once a dirty word brushed away with a grimace, "feminist" has been rebranded as a shiny label sported by movie and pop stars, fashion designers, and multi-hyphenate powerhouses like Beyoncé It drives advertising and marketing campaigns for everything from wireless plans to underwear to perfume, presenting what's long been a movement for social justice as just another consumer choice in a vast market. Individual self-actualization is the goal, shopping more often than not the means, and celebrities the mouthpieces. But what does it mean when social change becomes a brand identity? Feminism's splashy arrival at the center of today's media and pop-culture marketplace, after all, hasn't offered solutions to the movement's unfinished business. Planned Parenthood is under sustained attack, women are still paid 77 percent -- or less -- of the man's dollar, and vicious attacks on women, both on- and offline, are utterly routine. Andi Zeisler, a founding editor of Bitch Media, draws on more than twenty years' experience interpreting popular culture in this biting history of how feminism has been co-opted, watered down, and turned into a gyratory media trend. Surveying movies, television, advertising, fashion, and more, Zeisler reveals a media landscape brimming with the language of empowerment, but offering little in the way of transformational change. Witty, fearless, and unflinching, We Were Feminists Once is the story of how we let this happen, and how we can amplify feminism's real purpose and power.