Kooks: A Guide to the Outer Limits of Human Belief


Donna Kossy - 1994
    A rich compendium of looniness!

Tintin: The Art of Hergé


Michel Daubert - 2013
    Millions followed Tintin from the wilds of the Congo to the streets of Prague, Moscow, New York, and more. Lavishly illustrated with photographs, original plates, and ephemera, Tintin: The Art of Hergé offers fresh insight into the story behind this iconic character, with unprecedented access to original sources from the Hergé Museum in Belgium. Offering a new and nuanced look into the world of Tintin, journalist Michel Daubert explains how the artist Georges Remi became the world-famous Hergé. The book also includes profiles on the beloved characters, selections from Hergé’s earliest work, and chapters that trace the development of a rough sketch into a masterpiece. With its dynamic narrative and visual treasures, Tintin underscores the artist’s varied inspirations, revealing how Hergé’s creations have become modern classics. Praise for Tintin: The Art of Hergé: Working with the Hergé Museum in Belgium, journalist Michel Daubert has produced Tintin: The Art of Hergé, a rich collection of photographs, early works, character profiles, and more that trace the life and artistic development of Tintin creator Georges Remi, aka Hergé.” —Publishers Weekly

47 Ronin


Mike Richardson - 2014
    Opening with the tragic incident that sealed the fate of Lord Asano, 47 Ronin follows a dedicated group of Asano’s vassals on their years-long path of vengeance!

In Waves


A.J. Dungo - 2019
    With his passion for surfing uniting many narratives, he intertwines his own story with those of some of the great heroes of surf.

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.

Flannery O'Connor: The Cartoons


Flannery O'Connor - 2012
    She is perhapsas well known for her tantalizing brand of Southern Gothic humor as she is for her Catholicism. That these tendencies should be so happily married in her fiction is no longer a surprise. The real surprise is learning that this much beloved icon of American literature did not set out to be a fiction writer, but a cartoonist. This seems to be the last well-kept secret of her creative life. Flannery O'Connor: The Cartoons, the first book devoted to the author's work in the visual arts, emphasizes O'Connor's most prolific period as a cartoonist, drawing for her high school and college publications in the early 1940s. While many of these images lampoon student life and the impact of World War II on the home front, something much more is happening. Her cartoons are a creative threshing floor for experimenting and trying out techniques that are deployed later with such great success in her fiction. O'Connor learns how to set up and carry a joke visually, how to write a good one-liner and set it off against a background of complex visual narration. She develops and asserts her taste for a stock set of character types, attitudes, situations, exaggerations, and grotesques, and she learns how to present them not to distort the truth, but to expose her vision of it.She worked in both pen & ink and linoleum cuts, and her rough-hewn technique combined with her acidic observations to form a visual precursor to her prose. Fantagraphics is honored to bring the early cartoons of this American literary treasure to a 21st century readership.

Be Gay, Do Comics


Matt BorsDelta Vasquez - 2020
    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!

The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye


Sonny Liew - 2015
    With a career spanning more than five decades, from pre-independent Singapore through its three Prime Ministers, Chan’s work reflects the changing political and economic environment in Singapore.Containing Chan’s original illustrations, paintings and sketches, this is a groundbreaking work and labour of love aimed at recapturing the portrait of an artist, whose deep passion for comics and country is given a fitting tribute by award-winning comics artist Sonny Liew.3 Eisner Awards 2017: Best U.S. Edition of International Material–AsiaBest Writer/ArtistBest Publication DesignOther Eisner Award 2017 Nominations: Best Graphic Album–NewBest ColoringBest LetteringWinner of the Singapore Literature Prize 2016 for English FictionA New York Times bestsellerAn Economist Book of the Year 2016An NPR Graphic Novel Pick for 2016A Washington Post Best Graphic Novel of 2016A New York Post Best Books of 2016A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2016A South China Morning Post Top 10 Asian books of 2016An A.V. Club Best Comics of 2016A Comic Books Resources Top 100 Comics of 2016A Mental Floss Most Interesting Graphic Novel of 2016Winner of the Singapore Book Awards 2016 for Book of the Year and Best Book Cover Design

Cuba: My Revolution


Inverna Lockpez - 2010
    While her eccentric mother hatches an increasingly desperate series of plans to flee Cuba, Sonia joins the militia and volunteers as a medic at the Bay of Pigs — where she encounters her mortally wounded high school sweetheart as an enemy fighter, then is arrested and tortured for treating another CIA-trained brigadier.  Scarred, yet clinging to her revolutionary ideals, she seeks fulfillment in an artists’ collective, only to be further disillusioned by increasing repression under Castro. Finally, she flees to America where she has been a painter and influential arts activist.

Kampung Boy


Lat - 1979
    With masterful economy worthy of Charles Schultz, Lat recounts the life of Mat, a Muslim boy growing up in rural Malaysia in the 1950s: his adventures and mischief-making, fishing trips, religious study, and work on his family's rubber plantation. Meanwhile, the traditional way of life in his village (or kampung) is steadily disappearing, with tin mines and factory jobs gradually replacing family farms and rubber small-holders. When Mat himself leaves for boarding school, he can only hope that his familiar kampung will still be there when he returns. Kampung Boy is hilarious and affectionate, with brilliant, super-expressive artwork that opens a window into a world that has now nearly vanished.

The DC Comics Encyclopedia


Scott Beatty - 2004
    It includes brand-new artwork of some of DC's most famous characters, as well as recalling famous storylines and battles.

The Joe Shuster Story: The Artist Behind Superman


Julian Voloj - 2018
    Based on archival material and original sources, "Truth, Justice, and the American Way: The Joe Shuster Story" tells the story of the friendship between writer Jerry Siegel and illustrator Joe Shuster, and puts it into the wider context of the American comicbook industry.

Dungeon: Zenith - Vol. 3: Back in Style


Joann Sfar - 2009
    Two stories continue the heyday of Dungeon, in the first, Isis is to be married to the Keeper but she wants Herbert! Besides, the whole affair promises to ruin the Dungeon completely. In the second, besides the continued Keeper financial mishaps, Herbert wishes to make his comeback to his hometown where his name is mud. He disguises himself with a potion that makes him the mask of death . Only one problem: if he laughs, he becomes himself again!

The Ukrainian and Russian Notebooks: Life and Death Under Soviet Rule


Igort - 2010
    Now he brings those stories to new life with in-depth reporting and deep compassion. In The Russian Notebooks, Igort investigates the murder of award-winning journalist and human rights activist Anna Politkoyskaya. Anna spoke out frequently against the Second Chechen War, criticizing Vladimir Putin. For her work, she was detained, poisoned, and ultimately murdered. Igort follows in her tracks, detailing Anna’s assassination and the stories of abuse, murder, abduction, and torture that Russia was so desperate to censor. In The Ukrainian Notebooks, Igort reaches further back in history and illustrates the events of the 1932 Holodomor. Little known outside of the Ukraine, the Holodomor was a government-sanctioned famine, a peacetime atrocity during Stalin’s rule that killed anywhere from 1.8 to twelve million ethnic Ukrainians. Told through interviews with the people who lived through it, Igort paints a harrowing picture of hunger and cruelty under Soviet rule. With elegant brush strokes and a stark color palette, Igort has transcribed the words and emotions of his subjects, revealing their intelligence, humanity, and honesty—and exposing the secret world of the former USSR.

Walt and Skeezix, Vol. 1: 1921-1922


Frank King - 2005
    Not only does this volume reprint the first two years of the strip in which King’s friendly and nostalgic imagination took shape but each book in the series features an eighty-page color introduction by Jeet Heer of Canada’s National Post. Each introduction will also feature never-before-seen archival photos and ephemera from the personal collection of King’s granddaughter. Walt & Skeezix is not just a collection of a classic comic strip—it is the story of a great American cartoonist. Few cartoon strips have this kind of longevity and quality; Gasoline Alley has been with us since 1919 and is a gentle mirror held up to ordinary American life in the early twentieth century. It started as a mild satire on the post-WWI “craze” for cars, but it wasn’t long before it developed into a quirky family story attracting an audience of more than thirty million readers in four hundred–plus newspapers. Gasoline Alley, an affectionate portrait of modern living, is remembered for being the first strip to set itself in contemporary American history. The characters of Gasoline Alley grow up, go to war, and have grandchildren. The strip always reflects the kind, sweet pace of life.