Mom's Cancer


Brian Fies - 2006
    Honest, unflinching, and sometimes humorous, it is a look at the practical and emotional effect that serious illness can have on patients and their families. In the end, it is a story of hope--uniquely told in words and illustrations.

Hark! A Vagrant


Kate Beaton - 2011
    No era or tome emerges unscathbed as Beaton rightly skewers the Western world's revolutionaries, leaders, sycophants, and suffragists while equally honing her wit on the hapless heroes, heroines, and villains of the best-loved fiction. She deftly points out what really happened when Brahms fell asleep listening to Liszt, that the world's first hipsters were obviously the Incroyables and the Merveilleuses from eighteenth-century France, that Susan B. Anthony is, of course, a "Samantha," and that the polite banality of Canadian culture never gets old. Hark! A Vagrant features sexy Batman, the true stories behind classic Nancy Drew covers, and Queen Elizabeth doing the albatross. As the 5600.000 unique monthly visitors to harkavagrant.com already know, no one turns the ironic absurdities of history and literature into comedic fodder as hilarious as Beaton.

Cheeky: A Head-to-Toe Memoir


Ariella Elovic - 2020
    Too tall. Too short. Too fat. Too thin. The message is everywhere--we need to pluck, wax, shrink, and hide ourselves, to not take up space, emotionally or literally; women are never “just right.” Well, Ariella Elovic, feminist and illustrator extraordinaire, has had enough. In her full-color graphic memoir Cheeky, she takes an inspiring and exuberant head-to-toe look at her own body self-consciousness, and body part by body part, finds her way back to herself.How does Ariella learn not to see herself as a never-finished DIY project, but to accept and even love the physical attributes society taught her to hide? How does a mirror go from a “black hole of critique” to a “who's that girl” moment? Essential to her journey is her posse of girlfriends, her “yentas.” Together, they discover that sharing “imperfections” and some of the gross and “unsightly” things our bodies produce can be a source of endless laughs and deep bonding. It helps to have a team with some outside perspectives to keep our inner bullies in check.Charming and hilarious, full of empathy and candor, and gorgeously illustrated, Cheeky aims to inspire all of us to embrace our bodies, flaws and all, as well as our bodies' needs, desires, and inherent power.

Lore Olympus: Volume One


Rachel SmytheRachel Smythe - 2021
    Scandalous gossip, wild parties, and forbidden love—witness what the gods do after dark in this stylish and contemporary reimagining of one of mythology’s most well-known stories from creator Rachel Smythe. Featuring a brand-new, exclusive short story, Smythe’s original Eisner-nominated web-comic Lore Olympus brings the Greek Pantheon into the modern age with this sharply perceptive and romantic graphic novel. This volume collects episodes 1-25 of the #1 WEBTOON comic, Lore Olympus.

Cancer Vixen


Marisa Acocella Marchetto - 2006
    a lump in her breast?That/s the question that sets this powerful, funny, and poignant graphic memoir in motion. In vivid color and with a taboo-breaking sense of humor, Marisa Acocella Marchetto tells the story of her eleven-month, ultimately triumphant bout with breast cancer--from diagnosis to cure, and every challenging step in between.But Cancer Vixen is about more than surviving an illness. It is a portrait of one woman's supercharged life in Manhattan, and a wonderful love story. Marisa, self-described "terminal bachelorette", meets her Prince Charming in Silvano, owner of the chic downtown restaurant Da Silvano. Three weeks before their wedding, she receives her diagnosis. She wonders: How will he react to this news? How will my world change? Will I even survive? And... what about my hair?From raucous New Yorker staff lunches and the star-studded crowd at Silvano/s restaurant to the rainbow pumps Marisa wears to chemotherapy, Cancer Vixen is a total original. Marisa's wit and courage are an inspiration--she's a cancer vixen, not its victim.

The Alcoholic


Jonathan Ames - 2008
    Unfortunately, the first place his search takes him is the bottom of a bottle as he careens from one off-kilter encounter to another in search of himself.

Give Me Liberty


Frank Miller - 1991
    A young girl from the ghetto struggles against impossible odds to save the world from the Fat Boy Burger corporate army, the Aryan Thrust, and the meanest Mr Clean ever - the Surgeon General! That young girl is Martha Washington.

Alone Forever: The Singles Collection


Liz Prince - 2011
    Finally bringing her popular webcomic to printed form, Alone Forever explores the joys of flying solo, free to focus on what really matters: comics, punk rock, and cute boys with beards. Drawn in Liz Prince's ultra-charming style, filled with self-deprecation and cats, there's something for everyone to relate to in this celebration of self-reliance in the age of OkCupid.

The Contract With God Trilogy: Life on Dropsie Avenue


Will Eisner - 2005
    It marked the birth of the modern graphic novel and the beginning of an era when serious cartoonists could be liberated from their stultifying comic-book format.More than a quarter-century after the initial publication of A Contract With God, and in the last few months of his life, Eisner chose to combine the three fictional works he had set on Dropsie Avenue, the mythical street of his youth in Depression-era New York City.As the dramas unfold in A Contract With God, the first book in this new trilogy, it is at 55 Dropsie Avenue where Frimme Hersh, the pious Jew, first loses his beloved daughter, then breaks his contract with his maker, and ends up as a slumlord; it is on Dropsie Avenue where a street singer, befriended by an aging diva, is so beholden to the bottle that he fails to grasp his chance for stardom; and it is there that a scheming little girl named Rosie poisons a depraved super’s dog before doing in the super as well.In the second book, A Life Force, declared by R. Crumb to be "a masterpiece," Eisner re-creates himself in his protagonist, Jacob Shtarkah, whose existential search reflected Eisner’s own lifelong struggle. Chronicling not only the Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression but also the rise of Nazism and the spread of left-wing politics, Eisner combined the miniaturist sensibility of Henry Roth with the grand social themes of novelists such as Dos Passos and Steinbeck.Finally, in Dropsie Avenue: The Neighborhood, Eisner graphically traces the social trajectory of this mythic avenue over four centuries, creating a sweeping panorama of the city and its waves of new residents—the Dutch, English, Irish, Jews, African Americans, and Puerto Ricans—whose faces changed yet whose lives presented an unending "story of life, death, and resurrection."The Contract With God Trilogy is a mesmerizing, fictional chronicle of a universal American experience and Eisner’' most poignant and enduring literary legacy.

Bone, Vol. 1: Out from Boneville


Jeff Smith - 1991
    Everyone who has ever left home for the first time only to find that the world outside is strange and overwhelming will love Bone.

Pregnant Butch: Nine Long Months Spent in Drag


A.K. Summers - 2014
    Teek wonders, “Can butches even get pregnant?”Of course, as she and her pragmatic femme girlfriend Vee discover, they can. But what happens when they do? Written and illustrated by A.K. Summers, and based on her own pregnancy, Pregnant Butch strives to depict this increasingly common, but still underrepresented experience of queer pregnancy with humor and complexity—from the question of whether suspenders count as legitimate maternity wear to the strains created by different views of pregnancy within a couple and finally to a culturally critical and compassionate interrogation of gender in pregnancy. Offering smart, ambitious art, this graphic memoir is a must-read for would-be pregnant butches and anyone interested in the intersection of birth and gender, as well as a perfect queer baby shower gift and conversation starter for those who always assumed they “got” being pregnant.

Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut


Jhonen Vásquez - 1997
    Dark and disturbingly funny, JTHM follows the adventures of Johnny (you can call him Nny), who lives with a pair of styrofoam doughboys that encourage his madness, a wall that constantly needs a fresh coat of blood, and--oh, yeah--his victims in various states of torture. Join Nny as he frightens the little boy next door (Todd, known to fans of Vasquez's work as Squee), thirsts for Cherry Brain Freezies, attempts suicide, draws Happy Noodle Boy, and tries to uncover the meaning of his homicidal existence.

Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse, Vol. 1: Birds, Bees, Blood & Beer


Ben Templesmith - 2007
    Things are awakening in the city. Things that have a nasty habit of leaving mutilated bodies in their wake and it all reeks of demons and dark gods up to no good. Owing a favor to his lazy ghost cop buddy Trotsky, Wormwood, the gentleman corpse and his oddball entourage are brought in to investigate the case (or at least hopefully not stuff it up too much.) This collection compiles the first miniseries (issues #1-4), the original "Taster" issue, and covers, sketches, pin-ups and other cocktail napkin scribblings from Templesmith.

The Walking Dead Compendium Three


Robert Kirkman - 2015
    In a matter of months society has crumbled - no government, no grocery stores, no mail delivery, no cable TV.In a world ruled by the dead, we are forced to finally start living.Collects issues #97-144 of the acclaimed zombie hit!

Deadpool: Dracula's Gauntlet


Brian Posehn - 2014
    But in this vampire love story, the only thing that sparkles is the dialogue.Dracula has chosen a bride. She's a succubus queen of the undead, and their union will end eons of conflict and bring the monster world under his rule. Only one problem: he's hired Deadpool to find her. The stakes are high, middling and painfully low as wascally Wade goes all Indiana Jones in a bid to dig up Drac's long-buried intended. But as teleporting assassins, Greek legends and the vampire hunter Blade get in his way, it's clear not everyone's on board with this unholy matrimony. And when Deadpool finally meets the bride-to-be, even he gets cold feet. If Wade won't run this gauntlet, Dracula will throw down the gauntlet. And that means sending Werewolf by Night and the most literal Frightful Four of all time to retrieve his quarry. As an all-out Monster Mash looms, how far is Wade willing to go to stop this wedding?Collecting: Deadpool: Dracula's Gauntlet 1-7