Book picks similar to
Abandoned Cars by Tim Lane
comics
graphic-novels
graphic-novel
fiction
The Vision
Tom King - 2018
The place where he first rebelled against his given destiny and imagined that he could be more - that he could be a man.There, he builds them. A wife, Virginia. Teenage twins, Viv and Vin. They look like him. They have his powers. They share his grandest ambition - or is that obsession? - the unrelenting need to be ordinary. Behold the Visions! Theirs is a story of togetherness and tragedy - one that will send the Android Avenger into a devastating confrontation with Earth's Mightiest Heroes.COLLECTING: VISION #1-12
Trashed
Derf Backderf - 2015
Trashed, Derf Backderf's follow-up to the critically acclaimed, award-winning international bestseller My Friend Dahmer, is an ode to the crap job of all crap jobs--garbage collector. Anyone who has ever been trapped in a soul-sucking gig will relate to this tale. Trashed follows the raucous escapades of three 20-something friends as they clean the streets of pile after pile of stinking garbage, while battling annoying small-town bureaucrats, bizarre townfolk, sweltering summer heat, and frigid winter storms. Trashed is fiction, but is inspired by Derf's own experiences as a garbageman. Interspersed are nonfiction pages that detail what our garbage is and where it goes. The answers will stun you. Hop on the garbage truck named Betty and ride along with Derf on a journey into the vast, secret world of garbage. Trashed is a hilarious, stomach-churning tale that will leave you laughing and wincing in disbelief.
Cruddy
Lynda Barry - 1999
Now the truth can finally be revealed about the mysterious day long ago when the authorities found a child, calmly walking in the boiling desert, covered with blood. The girl is Roberta Rohbeson, and her rant against a world bounded by "the cruddy top bedroom of a cruddy rental house on a very cruddy mud road" soon becomes a detailed account of another story, one that she has kept silent since she was eleven. Darkly funny and resonant with humanity, Cruddy, masterfully intertwines Roberta's stories -- part Easy Rider and part bipolar Wizard of Oz. These stories, the backbone of Roberta's short life, include a one-way trip across America fueled by revenge and greed and a vivid cast of characters, starring Roberta's dangerous father, the owners of the Knocking Hammer Bar-cum-slaughterhouse, and runaway adolescents. With a teenager's eye for freakish detail and a nervous ability to make the most horrible scenes seem hilarious, Cruddy is a stunning achievement.
Swallow Me Whole
Nate Powell - 2008
Swallow Me Whole is a love story carried by rolling fog, terminal illness, hallucination, apophenia, insect armies, secrets held, unshakeable faith, and the search for a master pattern to make sense of one's unraveling.In his most ambitious book to date, Nate Powell quietly explores the dark corners of adolescence -- not the clich�d melodramatic outbursts of rebellion, but the countless tiny moments of madness, the vague relief of medication, and mixed blessing of family ties. As the story unfolds, two stepsiblings hold together amidst schizophrenia, obsessive compulsive disorder, family breakdown, animal telepathy, misguided love, and the tiniest hope that everything will someday make sense.Deliberately paced, delicately drawn, and drenched in shadows,
Swallow Me Whole
is a landmark achievement for Nate Powell and a suburban ghost story that will haunt readers long after its final pages.
Grandville
Bryan Talbot - 2005
Gaining independence after decades of civil disobedience and anarchist bombings, the Socialist Republic of Britain is now a small, unimportant backwater connected by a railway bridge, steampowered dirigible, and mutual suspicion to France. When a British diplomat's murder is made to look like suicide, ferocious DetectiveInspector LeBrock of Scotland Yard stalks a ruthless murder squad through the heart of a Belle Epoque Paris, the center of the greatest empire in a world of steamdriven hansom cabs, automatons, and flying machines. LeBrock's relentless quest can lead only to death, truth... or war.* Following on the heels of his internationally acclaimed graphic novels The Tale of One Bad Rat and Alice in Sunderland, Grandville is a fantastical and audacious rollercoaster ride, visually stunning and rich in memorable detail.
Bastard
Max de Radiguès - 2017
What makes these criminals so surprising is that they are a young mother and her preteen son. Thus begins the intense, yet touching, Bastard, Max de Radiguès’s Fantagraphics debut and a book already nominated for the prestigious noir award at the 2018 Angoulême International Comics Festival. Bastard traces the deadly escape of May and Eugene as they crisscross the United States, encountering mysterious truckers, ambitious bandits, and senior citizens living off the grid in the Southwest. The duo race to get to their stolen cash and simply survive as masterful flashbacks clue us into how they got into this deadly situation in the first place. Both bloody and tender, de Radiguès focuses on the familial relationship as much as the exhilarating plot elements, and his clear-lined style adds depth to the brutality as well as the moments of maternal love. Full of plot twists and high tension, Bastard is a hard-boiled page-turner introducing an adolescent anti-hero that you’re sure not to forget. (less)
Archie (2015-) #1
Mark Waid - 2015
But is this a one-off or a sign of bigger changes awaiting for America's favorite teens -- and the entire town? Find out in this exciting and remarkable first issue!
Superman: Secret Identity
Kurt Busiek - 2004
Set in the real world, SECRET IDENTITY examines the life of a young Kansas man with the unfortunate name of Clark Kent. All Clark wants is to be a writer, but his daily life is filled with the taunts and jibes of his peers, comparing him to that other Clark Kent — the one with super-powers. Until one day when Clark awakens to discover that he can fly...that he does in fact have super-strength! But where did these powers come from? And what's he going to do about it?
Heart and Brain: An Awkward Yeti Collection
Nick Seluk - 2015
From paying taxes and getting up for work to dancing with kittens and starting a band, readers everywhere will relate to the ongoing struggle between Heart and Brain.Heart and Brain: An Awkward Yeti Collection illustrates the relationship between the sensible Brain and its emotionally driven counterpart, the Heart.Boasting more than one million pageviews per month, TheAwkwardYeti.com has become a webcomic staple since its creation in 2012.
Cats are Weird and More Observations
Jeffrey Brown - 2010
Following the success of Cat Getting Out of a Bag, this all-new collection of color and black-and-white comic strips loosely follows the adventures of a pair of cats as they explore the world around them, indoors and out. Adventures include taking a nap, licking a shoe, attacking dust particles, hiding in cabinets, pouncing on fallen leaves, confronting the vacuum cleaner, patrolling the yard, and purring up a stormall adorably rendered in Brown's immediate and irresistible style. Sure to delight anyone who lives with cats and appreciates their sweet and batty behavior, this beautifully packaged gift book is the cat's meow.
Asterios Polyp
David Mazzucchelli - 2009
An epic story long awaited, and well worth the wait. Meet Asterios Polyp: middle-aged, meagerly successful architect and teacher, aesthete and womanizer, whose life is wholly upended when his New York City apartment goes up in flames. In a tenacious daze, he leaves the city and relocates to a small town in the American heartland. But what is this “escape” really about? As the story unfolds, moving between the present and the past, we begin to understand this confounding yet fascinating character, and how he’s gotten to where he is. And isn’t. And we meet Hana: a sweet, smart, first-generation Japanese American artist with whom he had made a blissful life. But now she’s gone. Did Asterios do something to drive her away? What has happened to her? Is she even alive? All the questions will be answered, eventually.In the meantime, we are enthralled by Mazzucchelli’s extraordinarily imagined world of brilliantly conceived eccentrics, sharply observed social mores, and deftly depicted asides on everything from design theory to the nature of human perception.Asterios Polyp is David Mazzucchelli’s masterpiece: a great American graphic novel.
Boxers & Saints
Gene Luen Yang - 2013
The first is of Little Bao, a Chinese peasant boy whose village is abused and plundered by Westerners claiming the role of missionaries. Little Bao, inspired by visions of the Chinese gods, joins a violent uprising against the Western interlopers. Against all odds, their grass-roots rebellion is successful. But in the second volume, Yang lays out the opposite side of the conflict. A girl whose village has no place for her is taken in by Christian missionaries and finds, for the first time, a home with them. As the Boxer Rebellion gains momentum, Vibiana must decide whether to abandon her Christian friends or to commit herself fully to Christianity.Boxers & Saints is one of the most ambitious graphic novels First Second has ever published. It offers a penetrating insight into not only one of the most controversial episodes of modern Chinese history, but into the very core of our human nature. Gene Luen Yang is rightly called a master of the comics form, and this book will cement that reputation. This boxed set includes the trade paperback Boxers as well as the trade paperback Saints, packaged together in one slipcase.
Cages
Dave McKean - 1991
Their lives and stories intertwine and relate inevitably to each other in ways that point to the mystery of life.
The Cape
Jason Ciaramella - 2007
but "what if "one day that dream were to come true? Eric was like every other eight-year-old boy, until a tragic accident changed his life forever. THE CAPE explores the dark side of power, as the adult Eric - a confused and broken man - takes to the skies... and sets out to exact a terrible vengeance on everyone who ever disappointed him. This critically acclaimed, Eisner-Award nominated story, written by Jason Ciaramella, based on the short story by "New York Times" bestselling author Joe Hill, with art by Zach Howard and Nelson Daniel, will linger with you long after you turn the last page, and force you to ask yourself the question: "What if?"
Good-Bye, Chunky Rice
Craig Thompson - 1999
It was winnning a Harvey Award, no less. It documentates the once upon a time in our fishing village town and a short turtle lad name of Chunky, last name Rice.Mister Chunky Rice be living in the same rooming house likewise myself, only that boy be restless. Looking for something. And he puts hisself on my brother Chuck's ship and boats out to sea to find it. Only he be departin' from his bestest of all friends, his deer mouse, I mean, mouse deer chum Dandel.Now why in a whirl would someone leave beyond a buddy? Just what be that turtle lad searchings for? I said you best read the book to find out. Merle said, "Doot doot."