Preacher vol. 1-9


Garth Ennis - 1996
    The entire run has been collected in nine trade paperback editions. The final monthly issue, number 66, was published in July 2000.Preacher follows the story of Preacher Jesse Custer, his best friend, and his girlfriend, as they explore a world that fuses Southern culture and supernatural elements, especially religious ones, in a way that is highly provocative, exploratory, and controversial.Preacher draws on movies, particularly Westerns, for many of its stylistic elements.

I Left The House Today!


Cassandra Calin - 2020
    This beautifully illustrated compendium of first-person comics about the trials of the single life, school, stress, junk food, shaving, and maintaining a healthy self-image. Cassandra Calin's comics frequently highlight the humorous gap between expectations and reality, especially when it comes to appearance and how much she can accomplish in one day.

Likewise: The High School Comic Chronicles of Ariel Schrag


Ariel Schrag - 2008
     Set in Berkeley, California, Likewise takes us into the holy grail of teenagers, every bit as terrifying as it is liberating: senior year. Struggling with a major longing for her ex-girlfriend who has gone away to college, her parents' post-divorce relationship, anxiety over the future, and all the graphic details of her complicated life, Ariel sets out to document everything and everyone. And when she discovers James Joyce, a whole new world of creativity opens up to her. Written with unabashed honesty, insight, and humor, Likewise is a brave account of one teenage girl's search for truth.

The Arab of the Future: A Childhood in the Middle East, 1978-1984: A Graphic Memoir


Riad Sattouf - 2014
    Venturing first to the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab State and then joining the family tribe in Homs, Syria, they hold fast to the vision of the paradise that always lies just around the corner. And hold they do, though food is scarce, children kill dogs for sport, and with locks banned, the Sattoufs come home one day to discover another family occupying their apartment. The ultimate outsider, Riad, with his flowing blond hair, is called the ultimate insult… Jewish. And in no time at all, his father has come up with yet another grand plan, moving from building a new people to building his own great palace.Brimming with life and dark humor, The Arab of the Future reveals the truth and texture of one eccentric family in an absurd Middle East, and also introduces a master cartoonist in a work destined to stand alongside Maus and Persepolis.

Uncomfortably Happily


Yeon-Sik Hong - 2012
    Burdened by unmet comics deadlines and high rent, our narrator and his wife know they must make a change. Convinced the absence of traffic noise will ease his writer’s block, our pair welcomes the idea of building a life from scratch. Deciding on a home atop an uninhabited mountain, they excitedly embrace the charms of their new rural existence.From tending to the land and attempting grocery runs through snow, to the complexities of fighting depression in seclusion, the move does not immediately prove to be the golden ticket they’d hoped for, and the silence of the mountain poses as much of an obstacle to output as the sirens of the city. Through it all, though, we see simple pleasures seep in and gain prominence over these commercial, and, often, comparatively trivial worries: the smell of the forest, the calming weight of enveloping snow, and the gratification of a stripped down life making art begin to muffle other concerns.Originally published in Korean to great acclaim and winning the Manhwa Today award, Uncomfortably, Happily uniquely explores our narrator’s inner world. Hong propels the comic with gorgeously detailed yet simple art, sharing the story of two lives unfolding slowly, sometimes uncomfortably, yet ultimately, happily.

Constantly


GG - 2020
    The claustrophobia of thought and the crippling of anxiety make any house haunted, any body possessed.

The Arctic Marauder


Jacques Tardi - 1974
    Created in 1972, The Arctic Marauder is a downright prescient example of proto-“steampunk” science fiction — or perhaps more accurately, and to coin a spinoff genre, “icepunk.”In 1899, “L’Anjou,” a ship navigating the Arctic Ocean from Murmansk, Russia, to Le Havre, France comes across a stunning sight: A ghostly, abandoned vessel perched high atop an iceberg. But exploring this strange apparition is the last thing the sailors will ever do, as their own ship is soon dispatched to Davy Jones’ locker via a mysterious explosion.Enter Jérôme Plumier, whose search for his missing uncle, the inventor Louis-Ferdinand Chapoutier, brings him into contact with the sinister, frigid forces behind this — and soon he too is headed towards the North Pole, where he will contend with mad scientists, monsters of the deep, and futuristic submarines and flying machines. Told with brio in hilarious slabs of vintage purple prose, The Arctic Marauder works both as ripping good adventure story and parody of same, and, predating as it does the later and not dissimilar Adele Blanc-Sec series, is a keystone in Tardi’s oeuvre in his fantastical mode.

A Dangerous Woman: The Graphic Biography of Emma Goldman


Sharon Rudahl - 2007
    Emma Goldman was at the forefront of the radical causes of the twentieth century, from leading hunger demonstrations during the Great Depression—"Ask for work! If they do not give you work, ask for bread! If they do not give you work or bread, take the bread!"—to organizing a cloakmakers' strike, from lecturing on how to use birth control to fighting conscription for World War I, while her soulmate, Alexander Berkman, spent fourteen years in jail for his failed attentat against industrialist Henry Clay Frick.Sharon Rudahl's lovely, energetic illustrations bring Goldman's many facets and passions to new life; her work belongs with the critically acclaimed graphic nonfiction of Alison Bechdel's Fun Home and Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis. Featuring a foreword by Alice Wexler, A Dangerous Woman is a marvelously compelling presentation of a woman devoted to revolutionizing her age.

Dungeon: Parade - Vol. 2: Day of the Toads


Joann Sfar - 2002
    The Dungeon is attacked by a swarm of flying venomous toads so large it almost succumbs as the perpetrators look to get free rein inside! In the second story, Herbert is sent on a mission to… clear out the septic tank where a whole beautiful ecology has evolved.

Baking With Kafka


Tom Gauld - 2017
    Noted as a "book-lover's cartoonist," Gauld's weekly strips in The Guardian, Britain's most well-regarded newspaper, stitch together the worlds of literary criticism and pop culture to create brilliantly executed, concise comics. Simultaneously silly and serious, Gauld adds an undeniable lightness to traditionally highbrow themes. From sarcastic panels about the health hazards of being a best-selling writer to a list of magical items for fantasy writers (such as the Amulet of Attraction, which summons mainstream acceptance, Hollywood money, and fresh coffee), Gauld's cartoons are timely and droll--his trademark British humour, impeccable timing, and distinctive visual style sets him apart from the rest.Lauded both for his frequent contributions to New Scientist, The Guardian and The New York Times, and his Eisner-nominated graphic novels, Tom Gauld is one of the most celebrated cartoonists working today. In Baking with Kafka, he proves this with one witty, sly, ridiculous comic after another.

Someone Please Have Sex With Me


Gina Wynbrandt - 2016
    "It’s impossible not to fall in love with this hilarious minx as she lunges across the page, nostrils flared, hurling herself into increasingly ridiculous romantic misadventures. Bow down to Gina as she explores what it means to be horny as hell!" — Lisa Hanawalt, production designer/producer of BoJack Horseman, author of My Dirty Dumb Eyes"Someone Please Have Sex With Me plays with conventions of style and color, featuring pleasingly feminine sherbet-y tones juxtaposed against a storyline about a woman looking for love in all the wrong places—in all the wrong ways." — The LA Times"Smart, wickedly funny, and transgressive. More comics like this, please!" — John Porcellino, author of The Hospital SuiteSomeone Please Have Sex With Me is a refreshing and wry look at sexual frustration from our young heroine and author. From failed erotic photoshoots and late-onset teen popstar obsessions to fairy Kardashians and Pokémon-inspired future-sex, Wynbrandt isn't one to hold back. SPHSWM finds its footing at the surreal and hilarious juncture between autobiography and fantasy.Gina Wynbrandt (b. 1990) writes comics about personal humiliations and insecurities, as well as topics like fashion, pop culture, and celebrities. A portion of Gina's work will also appear in Best American Comics 2015 .

My Dirty Dumb Eyes


Lisa Hanawalt - 2013
    Her world vision is intricately rendered in a full spectrum of color, unapologetically gorgeous and intensely bizarre.  With movie reviews, tips for her readers, laugh-out-loud lists and short pieces such as “Rumors I’ve Heard About Anna Wintour,” and “The Secret Lives of Chefs,”  Hanawalt’s comedy shines, making the quotidian silly and surreal, flatulent and facetious.

Crawl Space


Jesse Jacobs - 2017
    But in the fraught realm of adolescence, can friendship survive the appeal of the surreal?Jesse Jacobs was born in Moncton, NB, and now draws comics and things from his home in Hamilton, ON. In 2009, his books Small Victories and Blue Winter were short listed at the Doug Wright Awards for Canadian Cartooning. He received the Gene Day Award for Canadian Comic Book Self-Publisher of 2008. Even the Giants (AdHouse, 2011) marked his major publishing debut after several award-winning, self-published titles, and his work has appeared in the acclaimed Latvian comics anthology š!, as well as the 2012 edition The Best American Comics edited by Françoise Mouly and published Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. He made his debut with Koyama Press in 2012 with the psychedelic creation myth By This Shall You Know Him, which was followed by the trippy take on nature versus nurture, Safari Honeymoon in 2014.

Evolution of a Crazy Artist


Sophie Crumb - 2010
    Sifting through dozens of their daughter's remarkable sketchbooks, our generation's most celebrated graphic artists have, with their only child, Sophie, now selected more than three hundred paintings and drawings that depict her artistic and psychological maturation. Revealing how an original artistic sensibility is both innate and nurtured, the book features six separate developmental stages, including Sophie's earliest drawings, the elaborate fantasy world of her childhood, her late adolescent rebellion, and her coming of age in the milieu of the Paris circus world and New York's "seventh circle of hell." The drawings from her early twenties—of tattoo artists, dangerous men—reflect a personal anguish that finally ends with her becoming a mother and creating a family of her own. Illuminating and intimate, this book is a dramatic yet subtle statement on the evolution of personality as seen through art. This slipcased limited edition is signed by S., R., and A. Crumb, including a signed print.

Fatherland


Nina Bunjevac - 2014
    Peter, her husband, was a fanatical Serbian nationalist who had been forced to leave his country at the end of World War II and migrate to Canada. But even there he continued his activities, joining a terrorist group that planned to set off bombs at the homes of Tito sympathisers and at Yugoslav missions in Canada and the USA. Then in 1977, while his family were still in Yugoslavia, a telegram arrived to say that a bomb had gone off prematurely and Peter and two of his comrades had been killed.Nina Bunjevac tells her family’s story in superb black-and-white artwork. Fatherland will be recognised as a masterpiece of non-fiction comics, worthy to stand beside Persepolis and Palestine.