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.

Extra Cheesy Zits: A Zits Treasury


Jerry Scott - 2016
    They don’t seem to follow a schedule, observe rules (of the road or basic logic), but every once in a while, they make a surprising amount of sense. Extra Cheesy Zits is here to shed light on the always confounding, often amusing experience of parenting teens. Join the Duncan family - Connie, Walt, and Jeremy - as they grapple with modern technology, confront homework deadlines, and learn to bridge the cultural divide between parents and teenagers.    Extra Cheesy Zits offers a light-hearted yet insightful look into the multifaceted lives of modern teens and their families, complemented by annotations from the creators. From mood swings to the perils of sharing a car, this collection broaches many familiar topics with humor and compassion.

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.

Doonesbury Deluxe: Selected Glances Askance


G.B. Trudeau - 1987
    With over 500 daily strips and 80 full-color Sunday pages, this is satire, and Doonesbury, at its best.

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.

Wrapped-Up FoxTrot: A Treasury with the Final Daily Strips


Bill Amend - 2009
    Life is always fresh, topical, and irreverent in this wacky house.* Amend's FoxTrot won the National Cartoonists Society's prestigious Reuben Award in 2007.

Sempe: Mixed Messages


Jean-Jacques Sempé - 2003
    Each volume in the collection contains about 100 illustrations.

Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened


Allie Brosh - 2013
    Because I wrote it, I had to figure out what to put on the back cover to explain what it is. I tried to write a long, third-person summary that would imply how great the book is and also sound vaguely authoritative--like maybe someone who isn’t me wrote it--but I soon discovered that I’m not sneaky enough to pull it off convincingly. So I decided to just make a list of things that are in the book:PicturesWordsStories about things that happened to meStories about things that happened to other people because of meEight billion dollars*Stories about dogsThe secret to eternal happiness**These are lies. Perhaps I have underestimated my sneakiness!

Pearls Freaks the #*%# Out: A (Freaky) Pearls Before Swine Treasury


Stephan Pastis - 2012
    Joining the circuslike cavalcade are Pig, the slow but good-hearted conscience of the strip; Goat, the voice of reason that often goes unheard; Zebra, the activist; and those eternally inept carnivorous Crocs, who we learn happen to taste a lot like chicken. Pastis's cynical humor and sharp wit imbue this entertaining vaudevillian collection.

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.

Bone: The Complete Edition


Jeff Smith - 1991
    After being run out of Boneville, the three Bone cousins, Fone Bone, Phoney Bone and Smiley Bone are separated and lost in a vast uncharted desert. One by one they find their way into a deep forested valley filled with wonderful and terrifying creatures. It will be the longest -- but funniest -- year of their lives.

Snotgirl, Vol. 3: Is This Real Life?


Bryan Lee O'Malley - 2020
    The biggest fashion disaster in comics is back! Fashion blogger Lottie Person just wants to live up to her flawless online persona -- but why is real life so much harder?Collects SNOTGIRL 11-15

Archie 1000 Page Comics Bonanza


Archie Comics - 2014
    Archie 1000 Page Comics Bonanza collects 1000 pages of new and classic Archie tales in our biggest collection ever, with over 100 full-color stories featuring America's favorite red-head and friends navigating the pressures and pratfalls of teenagers everywhere!

The Complete Peanuts, Vol. 1: 1950-1952


Charles M. Schulz - 2004
    (Among other things, three major cast members—Schroeder, Lucy, and Linus—initially show up as infants and only "grow" into their final "mature" selves as the months go by. Even Snoopy debuts as a puppy!) Thus The Complete Peanuts offers a unique chance to see a master of the art form refine his skills and solidify his universe, day by day, week by week, month by month.This volume is rounded out with Garrison Keillor's introduction, a biographical essay by David Michaelis (Schulz and Peanuts) and an in-depth interview with Schulz conducted in 1987 by Gary Groth and Rick Marschall, all wrapped in a gorgeous design by award-winning cartoonist Seth.

Barely Functional Adult: It’ll All Make Sense Eventually


Meichi Ng - 2020
    Prepare to excitedly shove this book in your friend’s face with little decorum as you shout, “THIS IS SO US!”In this beautiful, four-color collection compiled completely of never-before-seen content, Meichi perfectly captures the best and worst of us in every short story, allowing us to weep with pleasure at our own fallibility. Hilarious, relatable, and heart-wrenchingly honest, Barely Functional Adult will have you laughing and crying in the same breath, and taking solace in the fact that we’re anything but alone in this world