Optimism Sounds Exhausting


Scott Adams - 2015
    Dilbert has managed to keep up with technology like iPads and Twitter over the years, as well as advanced systems like the Disaster Preparedness Plan that has its followers eating the crumbs from their keyboards. It doesn’t get any more sophisticated than that.   It’s an office code violation to be this good after so many years, but Dilbert keeps doing what he does best: passive-aggressively out-witting his superiors and exercising conflict avoidance. And he is so good. No wonder office drones and workforce automatons alike can’t resist the cold embrace of Dilbert’s workplace.

A Zits Guide to Living With Your Teenager


Jerry Scott - 2010
    Parents themselves, Borgman and Scott have learned a thing or two along the way in their creative and family lives. The result is A Zits Guide to Living with Your Teenager.A combination of select Zits comic strips depicting the relationship between teenager Jeremy Duncan and his parents, Walt and Connie, and witty, knowing, and dead-on commentary from Borgman and Scott, A Zits Guide to Living with Your Teenager is an indispensable and entertaining manual for parents on the verge of having a teenager.Zits has twice been honored with the award for Best Newspaper Comic Strip by the National Cartoonists Society and received the "Max and Moritz" award for Best International Comic Strip in 2000.

Nuts


Gahan Wilson - 1979
    This new hardcover edition reprints every single “Nuts” story from the Lampoon (rescuing over two dozen pages from oblivion) and reinstitutes the color in the “Christmas” and “Halloween” episodes, and for that matter the 3-D in the 3-D episode (“I wish to God I’d never seen all this space.”)If you don’t remember what it was like being a child, this book will bring it all back… for good or for ill!

The Bundled Doonesbury


G.B. Trudeau - 1998
    Start with the book: a rich, oversize anthology, jam-packed with America's most provocative and pointed satire -- including 80 Sunday strips in full color. From O.J. and Mr. Butts to Whitewater and Tailgate, from Mike, Kim, and Alex's funky software start-up company to Duke and Earl's Las Vegas long shots, Trudeau tracks the fierce strangeness of end-of-century life through the ever-intertwining fortunes of his substantial cast.Bundled with this impressive tome is the Doonesbury Flashbacks CD-ROM, a complete account of all things Doonesbury over the course of the strip's first 25 years. The disc contains more than 9,000 strips, archived with every search mode imaginable -- readers can locate strips by character, topic, chronology, dialogue, or location. Contemporary newspaper headlines, articles, quotes, and factoids give useful context for the historically clueless. Other features include a digital bibliography of Doonesbury books, posters, videos, and audio recordings; a Doonesbury trivia game, complete with unctuous host (Mike) and decorative hostess (Boopsie); a Doonesbury timeline; elaborate character bios; and animation. A useful print capability lets users generate crisp refrigerator art from any strip.Thanks to this digital cornucopia you can relive the ages of Aquarius, Reagan, and O.J. through the eyes of G.B. Trudeau and his merry band of misfits.

The Bloom County Library, Vol. 1: 1980-1982


Berkeley Breathed - 2009
    Bloom County ran from December 8th, 1980 to August 6th, 1989 and was published in an astounding 1200 newspapers on a daily basis. The huge popularity of Bloom County spawned a merchandizing bonanza, as well as two spin-off strips, Outland and Opus.The Bloom County Library Volume 1 highlights the first time the entire run of the immensely popular Bloom County strip has been collected in beautifully designed hard cover books with exceptional reproduction.The Library of American Comics is the world's #1 publisher of classic newspaper comic strips, with 14 Eisner Award nominations and three wins for best book. LOAC has become the gold standard for archival comic strip reprints...The research and articles provide insight and context, and most importantly the glorious reproduction of the material has preserved these strips for those who knew them and offers a new gateway to adventure for those discovering them for the first time." - ScoopWinner of the 2010 Eisner Award for Best Archival Collection/Project--Strips

BBXX: Baby Blues: The First Two Decades


Rick Kirkman - 2010
     A comprehensive and commemorative edition of all things Baby Blues, creators Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott share personal reflections and never-before-published essays, drawings, and photographs, along with more than 1,000 of the best Baby Blues strips from the last two decades.Named Best Comic Strip of the Year in 2002, Baby Blues follows young parents Darryl and Wanda MacPherson as they raise children Zoe, Hammie, and Baby Wren.  From temper tantrums to toilet training, everyday experiences that all parents agonize over and laugh about serve as fertile comedic ground as Baby Blues: XX takes readers on a relevant and timeless journey through twenty years of Baby Blues. What results is a truthfully fulfilling romp through the daily aspects of family life as well as a carefully nuanced tug at the heartstrings.

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.

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.

Math, Science, and UNIX Underpants


Bill Amend - 2009
    In this first ever FoxTrot themed book, the best math, science, and other geek-worthy cartoons are collected for all of FoxTrot's many fans.

The Rejection Collection Vol. 2: The Cream of the Crap


Matthew Diffee - 2007
    So what happens to the 75 percent of cartoons that don't make the cut? Some go back in a drawer, others go up on the refrigerator or into the filing cabinet...but the very best of all the rejects can be found right here in these pages. "The Rejection Collection Vol. 2: The Cream of the Crap" is the ultimate scrap heap of creative misfires -- from the lowbrow and the dirty to the politically incorrect and the weird, these rejects represent the best of the worst...in the best possible sense of the word. Handpicked by editor Matthew Diffee, these hilarious cartoons are accompanied by handwritten questionnaires and photographed self-portraits, providing a rare glimpse into the minds of the artists behind the rejection. With appendices that explore the top ten reasons why cartoons are rejected and examine the solitary nature of the job of cartooning -- plus a special bonus section of questions asked of and answered by cartoon editor Robert Mankoff -- this sequel to "The Rejection Collection" offers even deeper insight into the exercise in frustration, patience, and amusement that is being a "New Yorker" cartoonist. Warped, wicked, and wildly funny, "The Rejection Collection Vol. 2 "will appeal to every "New Yorker" fan -- and everyone with a taste for the absurd.

All About P'Gell


Will Eisner - 1998
    There are 17 classic stories, reprinted in black and white. Contains the complete stories “The Portier Fortune,” “Saree,” “The School For Girls,” “Saree Falls In Love,” “Il Fuce’s Locket,” “Black Gold (The Lands of Ben Adim),” “Competition,” “Money,” “Assignment Paris (The Spanish Jewels),” “Teachers Pet,” “The Seventh Husband,” “A Ticket Home,” “The Loot Of Robinson Crusoe (The Island Of Pearls),” “Staple Springs,” “L’Spirit,” “The Incident of the Sitting Duck,” and “The Capistrano Jewels.”

Red Meat Gold


Max Cannon - 2005
    Cannon's internationally popular strip features a disturbing and sidesplitting cast of characters that includes latex-clad fathers, sadistic milkmen, vomiting robots, malformed neighbors, incontinent interdimensional beings, decomposing clowns, and dozens of other bizarre Red Meat denziens who will keep you laughing until it hurts. Pure Gold!

A Wealth of Pigeons: A Cartoon Collection


Steve Martin - 2020
    I have done stand-up, sketches, movies, monologues, awards show introductions, sound bites, blurbs, talk show appearances, and tweets, but the idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me. I felt like, yeah, sometimes I'm funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny. You can understand that I was deeply suspicious of these people who are actually funny." So writes the multitalented comedian Steve Martin in his introduction to A Wealth of Pigeons: A Cartoon Collection. In order to venture into this lauded territory of cartooning, he partnered with the heralded New Yorker cartoonist Harry Bliss. Steve shared caption and cartoon ideas, Harry provided impeccable artwork, and together they created this collection of humorous cartoons and comic strips, with amusing commentary about their collaboration throughout. The result: this gorgeous, funny, singular book, perfect to give as a gift or to buy for yourself.

The Complete Peanuts, 1967-1970


Charles M. Schulz - 2008
    Beautiful boxed set collects four years in two volumes of the complete collection of the popular strip.

Everyday MUTTS: A Comic Strip Treasury


Patrick McDonnell - 2006
    Long may he reign."Everyday MUTTS marks the 11th book of the award-winning MUTTS strip. It is the follow-up to Patrick McDonnell's successful collection Who Let the Cat Out? as well as his first storybook, The Gift of Nothing, which reached the New York Times Best-Seller List for Children's Picture Books in January 2006. McDonnell's classic cartooning style not only delivers consistent laughs but often a message that reminds us to take care of our furry friends. With its expressive art and clever, often philosophical pet banter, MUTTS has built a large and loyal fan base among readers and cartoonists alike. McDonnell is a past winner of the National Cartoonists Society's Reuben Award, and MUTTS won the coveted Comic Strip of the Year Award in 1996. This unique collection includes 16 pages of full-color bonus material, including watercolors, other artwork, and items personally selected from the creator's sketchbook to accompany the black-and-white dailies and McDonnell's Sunday pages with his signature title panels. As always, the tales-and tails-of this especially close dog-kitty friendship can be counted on for charming adventures and gentle laughs, reminding us that there is more than it seems to the Everyday MUTTS we meet on the street.