Ten Ever-Lovin' Blue-Eyed Years With Pogo


Walt Kelly - 1959
    The official history and commemoration of Pogo's first decade...all wrapped up with a running commentary by Walt Kelly.

The Manly World of Lloyd Llewellyn


Daniel Clowes - 1994
    The 31 stories collected here combine Dragnet with The Twilight Zone with Tales from the Crypt in a world filled with aliens, good-time girls, and cocktail-bar nihilism. The stories are hip and funny, with a good dose of wacky 1950s paranoia and the kind of tongue-in-cheek morality that characterized the old E.C. horror comics. The Lloyd Llewellyn stories also trace the development of Clowes's style as a comic artist, from the angular early pieces that show the influence of 1950s advertising style to the grotesque Robert Crumb-inspired style of the more recent work in Eightball. Clowes is one of the most gifted comic-book artists around, and the retro-chic world of Lloyd Llewellyn deserves to be seen by a new generation of readers.

You're All Just Jealous of My Jetpack


Tom Gauld - 2013
    Sikoryak, Michael Kupperman, and Kate Beaton.”—NPR, Best Books of 2013A new collection from the Guardian and New York Times Magazine cartoonistThe New York Times Magazine cartoonist Tom Gauld follows up his widely praised graphic novel Goliath with You’re All Just Jealous of My Jetpack, a collection of cartoons made for The Guardian. Over the past eight years, Gauld has produced a weekly cartoon for the Saturday Review section of Britain’s best-regarded newspaper. Only a handful of comics from this huge and hilarious body of work have ever been printed in North America—and these have been available exclusively within the pages of the prestigious Believer magazine.      You’re All Just Jealous of My Jetpack distills perfectly Gauld’s dark humor, impeccable timing, and distinctive style. Arrests by the fiction police and imaginary towns designed by Tom Waits intermingle hilariously with piercing observations about human behavior and whimsical imaginings of the future. Again and again, Gauld reaffirms his position as a first-rank cartoonist, creating work infused with a deep understanding of both literary and cartoon history.

Sempe: Mixed Messages


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

Tales Designed To Thrizzle, Volume Two


Michael Kupperman - 2013
    In the spirit of two-ness, Tales Designed to Thrizzle Book Two features two of Kupperman's recurring duos: America's favorite mustachioed physicist/writer double team of Twain and Einstein (solving new crimes and barreling through exciting new adventures), and the crime-fighting team of Snake and Bacon ("Sssssssssssss!") who make a special return just to star in Reservoir Dogs 2. Elsewhere in this volume the crusty Quincy, M.E. makes his comic book debut, struggling through the fantastic landscapes of his own dreams in "Quinception" (in which St. Peter also gets his own comic book). Also: The Jungle Princess battles rhino traders... A story of Broadway theatrics in "All About Drainage"... Slightly cursed merchandise... Cockney grave robbers... Cowboy Oscar Wilde... McArf the Crime Dog takes a bite out of scum... The origin of The Hamanimal... Plus a photocomic starring comedian Julie Klausner: "Voyage To Narnia."

Gahan Wilson: 50 Years of Playboy Cartoons


Gahan Wilson - 2009
    His work has been seen by millions—no, hundreds of millions—in the pages of Playboy, The New Yorker, Punch, The National Lampoon, and many other magazines; there is no telling, really, how many readers he has corrupted or comforted. He is revered for his playfully sinister take on childhood, adulthood, men, women, and monsters. His brand of humor makes you laugh until you cry. And it’s about time that a collection of his cartoons was published that did justice to his vast body of work.When Gahan Wilson walked into Hugh Hefner’s office in 1957, he sat down as Hefner was on the phone, gently rejecting a submission to his new gentlemen’s magazine: “I think it’s very well-written and I liked it very much,” Hefner reportedly said, “but it’s anti-sin. And I’m afraid we’re pro-sin.” Wilson knew, at that moment, that he had found a kindred spirit and a potential home for his cartoons. And indeed he had; Wilson appeared in every issue of Playboy from the December 1957 issue to today. It has been one of the most fruitful, successful, and long-lived relationships between a contributor and a magazine, ever.Gahan Wilson: 50 Years of Playboy Cartoons features not only every cartoon Wilson drew for Playboy, but all his prose fiction that has appeared in that magazine as well, from his first story in the June 1962 issue, “Horror Trio,” to such classics as “Dracula Country” (September 1978). It also includes the text-and-art features he drew for Playboy, such as his look at Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum, his take on our country’s “pathology of violence,” and his appreciation of “transplant surgery.”Wilson’s notoriously black sense of comedy is on display throughout the book, leaving no sacred cow unturned (an image curiously absent in the book), ridiculing everything from state sponsored executions to the sober precincts of the nouveau rich, from teenage dating to police line-ups, with scalding and hilarious satirical jabs. Although Wilson is known as an artist who relishes the creepy side of modern life, this three-volume set truly demonstrates the depth and breadth of his range—from illustrating private angst we never knew we had (when you eat a steak, just whom are you eating?) to the ironic and deadpan take on horrifying public issues (ecological disaster, nuclear destruction anyone?).Gahan Wilson has been peeling back the troubling layers of modern life with his incongruously playful and unnerving cartoons, assailing our deepest fears and our most inane follies. This three-volume set is a testament to one of the funniest—and wickedly disturbing—cartoonists alive.Nominated for two 2010 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards (Best Archival Collection/Project: Strips; Best Publication Design).

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.

Bloom County: The Complete Digital Library, Vol. 3


Berkeley Breathed - 2012
    Berkeley Breathed’s Bloom County burst onto the American comic scene in December 1980 and it soon became one of the most popular comic strips of all time. The endearing and quirky denizens of the strip included Milo Bloom, Steve Dallas, Michael Binkley, Cutter John, Bill the Cat, and Opus the Penguin. Bloom County was a strip that dealt with many issues relevant to the period. Occasional “Context comments” are added throughout this collection, giving the reader a greater understanding of the time. This is the first time Bloom County has been collected in a digital library. IDW will add more volumes, one year per volume. Each newspaper strip is reproduced in chronological order from first to last. Great effort has been made to ensure the highest production values are achieved.

Peter Bagge's Other Stuff


Peter Bagge - 2013
    Peter Bagge’s Other Stuff includes a few lesser-known Bagge characters, including the wacky modern party girl “Lovey” and the aging bobo “Shut-Ins” — not to mention the self-explanatory “Rock ’N’ Roll Dad” starring Murry Wilson and the Beach Boys. But many of the strips are one-off gags or short stories, often with a contemporary satirical slant, including on-site reportage like “So Much Comedy, So Little Time” (from a comedy festival) and more. Also: Dick Cheney, The Matrix, and Alien! Other Stuff also includes a series of Bagge=written stories drawn by other cartoonists, including “Life in these United States” with Daniel Clowes, “Shamrock Squid” with Adrian Tomine, and the one-two parody punch of “Caffy” (with art by R. Crumb) and “Dildobert” (with art by Prison Pit’s Johnny Ryan)... plus a highlight of the book, the hilarious, literate and intricate exposé of “Kool-Aid Man” written by Alan Moore and drawn by Bagge. (Other collaborators include the Hernandez Brothers and Danny Hellman.) Bagge is one of the funniest cartoonists of the century (20th or 21st), and this collection shows him at his most free-wheeling and craziest... 50 times over.

McSweeney's #13


Chris WareArt Spiegelman - 2004
    Contibutors include Daniel Clowes, Gary Panter, Charles Burns, Art Spiegelman, Ben Katchor, Kim Deitch, Adrian Tomine, Joe Sacco, Seth, Joe Matt, Chester Brown, Kaz, and many others.

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.”

A Smithsonian Book of Comic-Book Comics


Michael Barrier - 1982
    

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.

Art Out of Time: Unknown Comics Visionaries, 1900-1969


Dan Nadel - 2006
    These artists, including Harry Grant Dart, Milt Gross, Charles M. Payne, Harry Hershfield and Charles Forbell, foreshadowed and influenced the comics medium of today.

The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck: Volume 2


Don Rosa - 2010
    Presented in a special collector's edition hardcover of the Disney classic! One of Disney's all-time best-selling books!