Book picks similar to
Art School Confidential by Daniel Clowes


graphic-novels
comics
graphic-novel
graphic-fiction

Crawl to Me


Alan Robert - 2012
    It is only after a series of violent events occur that Ryan realizes he must set aside all he believes to be true in order to face his shocking and inevitable reality.

Cages


Dave McKean - 1991
    Their lives and stories intertwine and relate inevitably to each other in ways that point to the mystery of life.

Mean Girls: Senior Year


Arianna Irwin - 2020
    But the story didn’t end there—now Cady, Regina, and the rest of the gang are back and ready to take on senior year in this all-new comic that is so totally fetch! After struggling to survive the wild events at Northshore High School the year before, Cady learned her lesson and is swearing off drama. It’s all about good grades, SAT prep, and college applications from here on out—but the new transfer student Megan Moretti isn't about to let Cady stay focused.  Megan is determined to rise to the top of the popularity food chain and become a new Plastic, so Cady, Regina, Gretchen and Karen have to band together to stop this queen bee wannabe from turning the school inside out all over again.

Wish You Were Here No. 1: The Innocents


Gipi - 2005
    "The Innocents," which includes two narrative tracks in different drawing styles, is a contemplative, beautifully drawn graphic novelette about these three characters' meeting. Future issues will focus on other members of this group of friends, a bit like Jaime Hernandez's "Locas" stories, with supporting characters stepping into the spotlight as former "lead" characters become part of the background...

Black Orchid


Sheldon MayerFred Carillo - 1973
    The original appearances of the Black Orchid from Adventure Comics #428-430, The Phantom Stranger #31, 32, 35, 36, 38-41, and The Super Friends #31.

Cerebus


Dave Sim - 1987
    This initial volume collects the first two years of stories from Dave Sim's 300-issue magnum opus. Don't be discouraged by the initially crude artwork or the silliness of the stories. It gets better--even noticeably within this volume. This first installment is the most valuable in preparing for the larger stories ahead.When we first meet Cerebus--a small, gray, and chronically ill-tempered aardvark--he is making his living as a barbarian. In 1977, when the Cerebus comic book series began, Sim initially conceived of it as a parody of such popular series as Conan, Red Sonja, and Elric but quickly mined that material and transformed the scope of the series into much more. Even by the end of this volume, the Cerebus story begins to transform beyond "funny animal" humor into something much more complex and interesting. High points in Cerebus include the introduction of Lord Julius, the dictator of Palnu, who looks, acts, and talks just like a certain cigar-smoking, mustachioed comedian; Jaka, Cerebus's one true love; Elrod the Albino, an innept swordsman; and the Cockroach, the-mother-of-all-superhero-parodies and "inspiration" for the much-later TV and comic character--the Tick. All of these characters appear later on in the series as part of a constantly present ensemble of supporting figures.Even if Cerebus doesn't knock your socks off, give its successor, High Society a try, as this is where the plot really gets going.

Hicksville


Dylan Horrocks - 1998
    But behind his rapid rise to success, there lies a dark and terrible secret, as biographer Leonard Batts discovers when he visits Burger's hometown in remote New Zealand. For Hicksville is no ordinary small town. In Hicksville sheep-farmers and fishermen argue the relative merits of early newspaper strips, while in the local bookshop & lending library, obscure Mongolian minicomics share the shelves with a complete run of ACTION COMICS. But why does everyone there seem to hate Dick Burger? And what is the secret of the lighthouse? HICKSVILLE collects the main storyline from the ignatz-award nominated comic book PICKLE, and includes some 40 or so pages of new or revised material.

Astonishing Times #1 (comiXology Originals)


Frank J. Barbiere - 2021
    

The Trial of Colonel Sweeto and Other Stories


Nicholas Gurewitch - 2007
    Now, for the first time, the hilarious cartoons of Nicholas Gurewitch are being collected in this handsome hardcover edition.

Usual Suspects


Christopher McQuarrie - 1999
    One of a hand-picked selection of some of the most popular and cult-worthy titles on Faber and Faber's extensive list of film scripts.

Temperance


Cathy Malkasian - 2010
    Malkasian creates, as she did in the critically acclaimed Percy Gloom, a fully realized, multi-layered world, inhabited by vividly realized characters. After a brutal injury in battle, Lester has no memory of his prior life. For the next thirty years his wife does everything to keep him from remembering—and re-constructing—a society, Blessedbowl, that elevates him as a hero. Blessedbowl is a cultural convergence of lies, memories, stories, and beliefs. Its people thrive on ideas of persecution, exceptionality, and enemies, convinced that war lurks just outside their walls. They have come to depend on Lester, their greatest war hero, to lead the charge once the Final Battle begins. What kind of enemy could topple such a people and its walls? Mere memory, it seems, as Lester gradually emerges from his amnesia. Temperance is an eyewitness’s account of recovery and awakening. The graphic novel works on two levels. It considers the concepts of violence, stories, and belief, and their place in holding a culture together, slyly echoing contemporary political issues in a nation at a stressful time currently at war with a ubiquitous enemy. Secondly, the fissures in Lester and Minerva’s marriage is echoed in the greater political upheaval around them. Malkasian creates a densely textured social context, masterfully conveying the idiosyncratic physical domain with its spiraling structures and quasi-medieval architecture along with intimate yet plastic portraits of her characters in a rich, tonal pencil line. Temperance is a galvanizing work of empathy and violence by one of today’s the most thoughtful and accomplished cartoonists.

Red Handed: The Fine Art of Strange Crimes


Matt Kindt - 2013
    Will he discover the connection between the compulsive chair thief, the novelist who uses purloined street signs to write her magnum opus, and the photographer who secretly documents peoples' most anguished personal moments? Or will Detective Gould finally meet his match?Matt Kindt operates with wit and perception in the genre of hard-boiled crime fiction. Red Handed owes as much to Paul Auster as Dashiell Hammett, and raises some genuinely sticky questions about human nature.

Hawkeye: Omnibus


Matt Fraction - 2015
    It's Marvel's most critically acclaimed comic in recent memory! Clint Barton, breakout star of a little Marvel movie you might have seen a while back, continues his fight for justice...and good rooftop BBQs! With Young Avenger Kate Bishop by his side, he's out to get some downtime from being one of Earth's Mightiest Heroes...but when the apartment building he's moved into, and the neighbors he's befriended, are threatened by a tracksuit-wearing, dog-abusing gang of Eastern European mobsters who say "bro" an awful lot, Clint must stand up and defend his new adopted family...any way he can.Collecting: Hawkeye 1-22, Annual 1; Young Avengers Presents 6

New Construction: Two More Stories


Sam Alden - 2015
    Times Book Prizes Finalist (Graphic Novel/Comics) 2016A collection of two new stories from cartoonist and Adventure Time contributor Sam Alden. In "Household," a brother and sister deal with divergent memories of their father and grow closer than ever. In "Backyard," vegans and anarchists share a house, small dramas and bizarre transformations (featuring a new, never before published ending). Designed as a companion volume for the critically acclaimed It Never Happened Again, New Construction cements Sam Alden's reputation as one of the best cartoonists of his generation.Sam Alden Sam Alden is the author of It Never Happened Again, Wicked Chicken Queen, and Lydian, among others. He is a two-time Ignatz winner and four-time nominee, and works full-time as a writer and storyboarder on Cartoon Network's Adventure Time.Praise for Sam Alden's It Never Happened Again:"Alden's natural sense of framing and pace, his willingness to use silent panels to tell stories, and his beautiful (yes, beautiful) pencil images combined to open my eyes to a new idea of what a great comic can be. It helps that he's also an excellent writer—both stories sketch out lonely, lost characters efficiently, and put them each through very different quests for meaning."—Dan Kois, Slate"Two thematically divergent, but devastatingly human portraits from an emerging cartoonist displaying the sort of storytelling and artistic restraint that often only comes after years of toiling away at the drawing board. Alden is a talent to watch."—Publishers Weekly

The Principles of Uncertainty


Maira Kalman - 2007
    Part personal narrative, part documentary, part travelogue, part chapbook, and all Kalman, these brilliant, whimsical paintings, ideas, and images - which initially appear random - ultimately form an intricately interconnected worldview, an idiosyncratic inner monologue.