Childproof: Cartoons about Parents and Children


Roz Chast - 1997
    A perfect Mother's Day and Father's Day gift, as well as an absolute must-have for new and seasoned parents. 120 illustrations. of color cartoons.

The Graphic Canon, Vol. 1: From the Epic of Gilgamesh to Shakespeare to Dangerous Liaisons


Russ KickWill Eisner - 2012
    There are more than 130 illustrators represented and 190 literary works over three volumes—many newly commissioned, some hard to find—reinterpreted here for readers and collectors of all ages.Volume 1 takes us on a visual tour from the earliest literature through the end of the 1700s. Along the way, we're treated to eye-popping renditions of the human race's greatest epics: Gilgamesh, The Iliad, The Odyssey (in watercolors by Gareth Hinds), The Aeneid, Beowulf, and The Arabian Nights, plus later epics The Divine Comedy and The Canterbury Tales (both by legendary illustrator and graphic designer Seymour Chwast), Paradise Lost, and Le Morte D'Arthur. Two of ancient Greece's greatest plays are adapted—the tragedy Medea by Euripides and Tania Schrag’s uninhibited rendering of the very bawdy comedy Lysistrata by Aristophanes (the text of which is still censored in many textbooks). Also included is Robert Crumb’s rarely-seen adaptation of James Boswell’s London Journal, filled with philosophical debate and lowbrow debauchery.Religious literature is well-covered and well-illustrated, with the Books of Daniel and Esther from the Old Testament, Rick Geary’s awe-inspiring new rendition of the Book of Revelation from the New Testament, the Tao te Ching, Rumi’s Sufi poetry, Hinduism’s Mahabharata, and the Mayan holy book Popol Vuh, illustrated by Roberta Gregory. The Eastern canon gets its due, with The Tale of Genji (the world’s first novel, done in full-page illustrations reminiscent of Aubrey Beardsley), three poems from China’s golden age of literature lovingly drawn by pioneering underground comics artist Sharon Rudahl, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, a Japanese Noh play, and other works from Asia.Two of Shakespeare’s greatest plays (King Lear and A Midsummer Night’s Dream) and two of his sonnets are here, as are Plato’s Symposium, Gulliver’s Travels, Candide, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Renaissance poetry of love and desire, and Don Quixote visualized by the legendary Will Eisner.Some unexpected twists in this volume include a Native American folktale, an Incan play, Sappho’s poetic fragments, bawdy essays by Benjamin Franklin, the love letters of Abelard and Heloise, and the decadent French classic Dangerous Liaisons, as illustrated by MollyCrabapple.   Edited by Russ Kick, The Graphic Canon is an extraordinary collection that will continue with Volume 2: "Kubla Khan" to the Bronte Sisters to The Picture of Dorian Gray in Summer 2012, and Volume 3: From Heart of Darkness to Hemingway to Infinite Jest in Fall 2012. A boxed set of all three volumes will also be published in Fall 2012.

Chris Ware


Daniel Raeburn - 2004
    Combining innovative comic book art, hand lettering, and graphic design, Ware’s uniquely appealing work is characterized by ceaseless experimentation with narrative and graphic forms. The publication of his novel Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth in2000 inspired a near avalanche of praise from critics and general readers alike. This book is the first to explore the life and work of Chris Ware. Daniel Raeburn looks closely at Ware’s career, work methods, and artistic innovations. Born in Omaha in 1967, Ware introduced the character Jimmy Corrigan in a full-page strip he began writing for the Chicago tabloid New City. Combining six years’ worth of the strips, Ware created the best-selling novel named after Jimmy that spans an Irish-American family’s life in Chicago from the Civil War to the present. For its experiments in graphic form—including pull-out, three-dimensional inserts—and its non-chronological narrative, the novel earned numerous honors, among them the Guardian First Book Award, presented for the first time to a comic book. For this volume Raeburn interviewed Chris Ware for many hours to make fascinating connections between Jimmy Corrigan’s fictional life and the life of his creator. Raeburn discusses the scope of Ware’s career, including his drawings for New City, the New Yorker, and his own comic book, The Acme Novelty Library. AsRaeburn shows, Ware’s unique art form extends beyond the world of graphic novels into the broader worlds of literature, graphic art, and popular culture, and challenges traditional definitions of all three.

The Splendid Magic of Penny Arcade


Jerry Holkins - 2010
    The comic appears to catalog the lives of two young men who are utterly steeped in popular culture.Each chapter gathers into a coherent beam of savory trivia, strange facts, formerly mysterious origins, biographical information, interviews, inaugural conventions, an unlikely charity, and comic strips. You get the sense that some of the content may be apocryphal—for example, the part where they eat a whole wolf basically comes out of nowhere. Also, if one of them really did become “King of the Britons,” you’re sure you would have heard about it somewhere else. > close book You close the book and place it back on the shelf. Maybe next time.

A Baby Blues Treasury: Framed!


Rick Kirkman - 2006
    . . welcome to another year in the life of the never-a-dull-moment McPherson family. While sister Zoe and brother Hammie's budding sibling rivalry reaches new heights (and volumes), baby Wren is making great strides of her own. With the advent of "the climbing phase" no coffee table, countertop, or bookshelf is too high.For years, the team of Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott have given readers a too-funny-to-be-true, too-real-not-to-be insider's view of the American dream. They get the details and dilemmas so right, in fact, that it's a wonder they haven't been indicted for domestic surveillance.

Murder Book


Ed BrissonDamian Couceiro - 2015
    Featuring art from Michael Walsh (Secret Avengers), Simon Roy (The Field), Johnnie Christmas (Sheltered), Declan Shalvey (Moon Knight), and many more, this collection is an essential for crime and noir fans.

The Secret Loves of Geek Girls


Hope NicholsonSarah Winifred Searle - 2015
    Featuring work by Margaret Atwood (The Heart Goes Last), Mariko Tamaki (This One Summer), Trina Robbins (Wonder Woman), Marguerite Bennett (Marvel's A-Force), Noelle Stevenson (Nimona), Marjorie Liu (Monstress), Carla Speed McNeil (Finder), and over fifty more creators. It's a compilation of tales told from both sides of the tables: from the fans who love video games, comics, and sci-fi to those that work behind the scenes: creators and industry insiders.

Drawn & Quarterly: Twenty-five Years of Contemporary Cartooning, Comics, and Graphic Novels


Tom Devlin - 2015
    In 1989, a prescient Chris Oliveros created D+Q with a simple mandate to publish the worlds best cartoonists. Thanks to his taste-making visual acumen and the support of over fifty cartoonists from the past two decades, D+Q has grown from an annual stapled anthology into one of the world's leading graphic novel publishers. With hundreds of pages of comics by Drawn & Quarterly cartoonists, D+Q: 25 features new work by Kate Beaton, Chester Brown, Michael DeForge, Tom Gauld, Miriam Katin, Rutu Modan, James Sturm, Jillian Tamaki, Yoshihiro Tatsumi alongside rare and never-before-seen work from Guy Delisle, Debbie Drechsler, Julie Doucet, John Porcellino, Art Spiegelman, and Adrian Tomine, and a cover by Tom Gauld. Editor Tom Devlin digs into the company archives for rare photographs, correspondence, and comics; assembles biographies, personal reminiscences, and interviews with key D+Q staff; and curates essays by Margaret Atwood, Sheila Heti, Jonathan Lethem, Deb Olin Unferth, Heather O'Neill, Lemony Snicket, Chris Ware, and noted comics scholars.D+Q: 25 is the rare chance to witness a literary movement in progress; how a group of dedicated artists and their publisher changed the future of a century-old medium.

Whose Boat Is This Boat?: Comments That Don't Help in the Aftermath of a Hurricane


The Staff of the Late Show - 2018
    It is the first children’s book that demonstrates what not to say after a natural disaster. On September 19, 2018, Donald Trump paid a visit to New Bern, North Carolina, one of the towns ravaged by Hurricane Florence. It was there he showed deep concern for a boat that washed ashore. “At least you got a nice boat out of the deal,” said President Trump to hurricane victims. “Have a good time!” he told them. The only way his comments would be appropriate is in the context of a children’s book—and now you can experience them that way, thanks to the staff of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Whose Boat Is This Boat? is an excellent teaching tool for readers of all ages who enjoy learning about empathy by process of elimination. Have a good time!

The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics


Bill Blackbeard - 1977
    and Doonesbury. Old favourites Katzenjammer Kids, Mutt and Jeff, Gasoline Alley, Bringing up Father, Mickey Mouse, Little Orphan Annie, Dick Tracy, L'il Abner, Barnaby, Pogo and many more fill this collection of American comic classics.

24 Hour Comics


Scott McCloud - 2004
    Hundreds of cartoonists have taken this challenge, turning out works that were amazing, amusing, or revelatory.Four-time Harvey Award and Eisner Award winner Scott McCloud, comicdom's top theoretician and inventor of the 24-hour comic, explains the concept and presents nine of the best.Includes stories by Neil Gaiman, Al Davison, and more.

Dear Julia


Brian Biggs - 2000
    Dear Julia, is the story of how he got there. Boyd's vivid memory of the past and shaky comprehension of the present give clues to the events that lead him to the edge: his childhood, his parents, and a particular trip to Tucson, Arizona where everything began to go terribly awry. Brian Biggs tells the tale with deft wit and a sharp eye, leaving crumbs both verbal and visual along the reader's path to the climactic end. Also available is the Dear Julia, short film directed by Alistair Banks Griffin.

Love as a Foreign Language Vol. 1: Collected Edition


J. Torres - 2004
    Why he agreed to teach there defies his comprehension. He can't wait to return to normal life. His year of teaching is almost over and then he'll finally be free. But Joel's life is about to go from dark dreams to cotton candy kisses and it's all because of Hana. The very sight of this girl sends him flying straight to cloud nine, but won't another year in Korea send him crashing back down?

The Fart Party, Vol. 1


Julia Wertz - 2006
    The book includes the 80% of comics NOT posted online, interviews, funny fan letters and never before seen illustrations! It chronicles Wertz's first year of making comics, living in San Francisco, going to conventions, moving apartments, finishing college, the demise of a relationship, all that typical crap but nicely wrapped up into tiny little boxes on paper! Includes an introduction by Peter Bagge.

Let Us Be Perfectly Clear


Paul Hornschemeier - 2006
    Perfectly Clear brings back into print stories that Hornschemeier published prior to his Three Paradoxes Fantagraphics debut from a variety of sources—his own self-published Forlorn Funnies, as well as strips that originally appeared in independent magazines and papers—none of which has been available to the book trade.The book is designed as a "flip book" in the tradition of the old Ace paperbacks, with one side featuring comedic work (or as comedic as Hornschemeier's mind allows), and the other decidedly more morose. With almost every page, we see a new style, a new direction; with the resultant effect being that of an anthology by creators of vastly contrasting sensibilities.On the "funny" menu, we are treated to Dr. Rodentia (an unfortunate-looking fellow with only apathy as his weapon), a detailed artist's catalogue exploring such modern masterpieces as "Accidental Late-Night Sex With a Radiator," musings on the cancerous nature of civilization as observed by a deceased cat and a cotton-based airbus, the scatological "Feelings Check," the ever pathetic Vanderbilt Millions and his fantasies of self-worth, and the multi-narrative story that started the Forlorn Funnies comics series: "The Men and Women of the Television."Clearly, there is a fine line in the Hornschemeier lexicon between funny and morose.On our "forlorn" plate we are served the cold examination of the dyslexic narcoleptic and his bungled plans of murder, a sea creature's balancing of morality and sustenance, the Western romance "Wanted," a metal man's self-destructive search for meaning, and the story the alternative website Ain't It Cool News describes as delivering "a complicated mixture of disgust and pity."Let Us Be Perfectly Clear demonstrates Paul Hornschemeier's versatility and breadth in an elegantly produced book that will appeal to connoisseurs of contemporary, cutting-edge cartoons and graphic novels.