Book picks similar to
King Aroo, Vol. 1: 1951-1952 by Jack Kent


comics
graphic-novels
1001-comics-you-must-read-before-yo
humor

Mama's Boyz: In Living Color!


Jerry Craft - 2017
    But that's the easy part. The hard part is trying to raise her two teenage sons, Tyrell and Yusuf. She loves to read-- they'd rather play video games. She likes to eat healthy -- they'd rather eat junk food. She loves ol' school music -- they listen to hip hop. But it would all be worth it if they ever came to realize that all she wants to do is to keep them happy and safe. Based on the popular Mama's Boyz syndicated comic strip.

My New Fighting Technique Is Unstoppable


David Rees - 2003
    The New Fighting Technique may have sprung from the crucible of cubicle culture----Rees created the strip while working a deathly boring temp job, harnessing the potential energy of his PowerPoint software, Internet connection, laser printer, and vast expanses of fallow hours into this Unstoppable ass-kicking phenomenon----but the result has less to do with clockwatching than with the explosive energy of freestyling gangsta rap, airborne Bruce Lee maneuvers, and a profane, deadpan sense of humor that just may establish David Rees as the Lenny Bruce of our times. As soon as Rees began faxing MNFTIU comics to friends, those friends were faxing it to friends who were faxing it to more friends. It was the birth of a genuine underground publishing sensation. Soon it was a regular serial, then there was merchandise, then a website that received 25 million hits last year.

Maggots


Brian Chippendale - 2007
    Originally drawn in 1996 over the pages of a Japanese book catalogue, Brian Chippendale's monumental 350-page graphic novel, Maggots, is reproduced here in a facsimile edition, with every nick and tear in tact. The line work, incredibly dense because Chippendale needed to cover up the Japanese catalogue, nearly vibrates off every page. As for the story, it concerns a group of characters who live in a place called Fort Thunder and wander around discovering little holes in their universe, battle a capitalist landlord, eat peanut butter sandwiches and embark on adventures somewhere between dirt punk and epic, cosmic science fiction. Chippendale's drawings are much like his famed drumming for the noise rock band Lightning Bolt: propulsive, soulful and chaotic. But, like his best songs, Maggots opens up into beautiful visual passages, vistas of temples and flowers all drawn in scorching black marks that tell a story in their own abstractions. This book has several built-in cult followings.

What's New, Vol. 1: The Collected Adventures of Phil and Dixie


Phil Foglio - 1991
    Originally published by Palliard Press.

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.

Hank Ketcham's Complete Dennis the Menace: 1951-1952


Hank Ketcham - 2005
    It is the hilariously observed and empathetic comic strip about childhood ever drawn - with asly humor that kids identify with and parents nod knowingly - and ruefully - at.This first volume publishes every single panel strip from 1951-1952 in one handsome, thick volume.Hank Ketcham's Complete Dennis the Menace: 1951-1952 is the inaugural volume in a series collecting for the first time every Dennis the Menace cartoon panel over the life of the strip.Join Dennis and his cast of tortured victims and comrades-in-arms - Dennis' Mom and Dad, Henry and Alice Mitchell, poor Mr Wilson, and his pals Joey and Margaret, not to mention boy's best friend Ruff - for over 600 pages of heart-warming mayhem.

Amy and Jordan


Mark Beyer - 2004
    Mark Beyer was breathing delirious, heartbreaking, otherworldly life into it by means of Amy and Jordan. Obviously, you weren’t reading New York Press. But I sure was. Voraciously. Back in 1989, when I discovered that Beyer’s strips were appearing regularly in this new “alternative weekly” paper, I quickly became hooked, and a thought seized me: I had to clip and save them–they were exquisite poems of urban despair, dreamy and nightmarish. I was already a fan of Beyer’s talent based on his book Agony (Pantheon, 1988), but these new strips revealed, week by week, a whole new dimension to his work–an ingenious reinvention of panel-design that redefined what a comic strip could be. As with Peanuts, it helps to try and picture these in the context which they first appeared in order to appreciate just how profoundly they emerged from anything else on the newspaper page. Even the “outré” NYP ads and listings which often ran alongside them were hopelessly dull by comparison. One of its most impressive aspects was the way Form served the Content–no matter how eccentric the layout got, it somehow never confused the narrative. And what narrative: it was as if Candide had been transported to the East Village and split in two like an amoeba and holed up in a squat on Avenue C. Along with giant bugs from outer space. So I did clip and save them, and put them into an envelope, which was then placed in a shoebox with a lot of other envelopes (receipts, receipts!), which was shoved to the back of the closet of my sixth-floor walk-up studio apartment, which I moved out of three years later and in the process I unwittingly threw them all away. Which frankly is just the sort of thing that Amy and Jordan would do. Drat. “Oh well,” I thought, once I’d realized it, “at some point someone will collect and publish them, and I’ll get them back that way.” And that was that. Fast forward more than ten years, to the spring of 2002. During a panel of cartoonists I was chairing in Philadelphia, a member of the audience asked what Mark was working on and where he was. No one seemed to know. The discussion was transcribed and published in The Comics Journal that summer, and in the fall Mark contacted me with the best possible news: He’d read the panel transcript and wanted to publish again. And the Amy and Jordan strips had never been comprehensively collected. So now, as an editor, I was able to grant my own wish. Amy and Jordan ran from 1988 through early 1996. After that, Beyer put cartooning aside to pursue other projects. This book signals his return to the realm of comics, which he says he wants to start making again. We can only hope he does. For now, I’m just thankful I finally have my Amy and Jordan collection back. –Chip Kidd, NYC, 10/03

Tantrum


Jules Feiffer - 1979
    Having been two before, Leo demands his rights as a toddler: cuddling, cooing, tummy rubbing, and, most importantly, piggyback rides. In Leo's case, youth is definitely not wasted on the young. Feiffer has the uncanny ability to capture the frustrations of everyday life, while showing the lengths we'll go to escape from it.

Pearls Takes a Wrong Turn: A Pearls Before Swine Treasury


Stephan Pastis - 2018
    Always together—and sometimes with their fellow funny-page characters—the regular Pearls clan weighs in on everything from modern technology to current events to human nature. All the members of the skewed gang are here as Zebra engages in a never-ending war of neighborly hate with the Crocs. As always, Goat offers a voice of reason amid the ongoing chaos that Pastis creates, either from behind the pen or as a character within the strip itself. Includes all cartoons from the collections I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream Because Puns Suck and Floundering Fathers.

Ice Haven


Daniel Clowes - 2005
    He’s also its would-be poet laureate. Would-be, that is, were it not for the “florid banalities” of his archrival, Ida Wentz, pub­lished ad nauseam in the Ice Haven Daily Progress. Among Wilder’s other fellow Ice Havians are the love­lorn Violet Vanderplazt and Vida Wentz; the adorable interracial moppets Carmichael and Paula; the Blue Bunny, newly sprung from prison and the bitterest rabbit in town; and poor little David Goldberg, miss­ing for more than a week now. . . . The lives of the men and women of Ice Haven are woven into a multilayered tale that, while it owes a debt to Our Town, is ultimately based on and inspired by . . . Leopold and Loeb. No kidding. Only Daniel Clowes could do it and, luckily for us, he has.

The Complete Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers: Volume One


Gilbert Shelton - 2001
    

Rogan Gosh: Star of the East


Peter Milligan - 1994
    until Kali, goddess of death, rips through the Star of the East restaurant and ruins everything. Propelled into a futuristic India, Dean and Raju encounter exotic Hindu deities, sex magic, weird reincarnation, opium dens, Rudyard Kipling, and the mysterious House of Smoke... In short, the world of Rogan Gosh. A psychedelic journey to find enlightenment, truth, and the finest Indian cuisine. US Edition.

The Playwright


Eddie Campbell - 2010
    It is a good place to mentally sort his ideas, and is often frequented by pretty young ladies. He once saw a pigeon defecate onto a businessman's shoulder. It struck him as absurd that such an event is often considered lucky. Surely the luck lay with passers-by who, statistically, were far less likely to be similarly soiled, at that precise moment. Similarly, the Playwright always derived an almost perverse sense of relief whenever he received news that an old friend had developed prostate cancer. Because statistically, he reasoned, such news significantly reduced the chances of him being similarly afflicted. And to be honest, at his age, his prostate needed all the statistical support he could muster." The Playwright: a dark, romantic comedy about the sex life of a celibate, middle-aged man.

Deadman, Book One


Neal Adams - 1968
    A mysterious deity called Rama Kushna gives Boston Brand the chance to revisit the land of the living as Deadman, with the mission of finding his murderer.DEADMAN features spectacular, bravura artwork by Neal Adams, then leading the field with an amazing, hyper-realistic style and trompe-l’oeil unlike anything seen in comics before or since.

Rocky, Vol. 1: The Big Payback


Martin Kellerman - 1999
    Firmly in the tradition of Fritz the Cat, Hate, and Clerks, Rocky is his mostly autobiographical daily strip detailing the rudely hilarious travails of a young cartoonist and his circle of layabout pals and neurotic, indignant girlfriends.In this action-packed volume collecting the first year of the smash-hit strip, Rocky gets tossed out of his apartment, flies across the pond to visit a gay African-American pal (not realizing he lives in deepest Harlem); is ill-advisedly given the mission of euthanizing a friend's beloved pet rabbit ("Tom, give this job to Clemenza." "Yes, Godfather."); makes a spectacularly unsuccessful attempt to trade in his girlfriend for her younger, more buxom sister; gets a bowel inflammation and a colonoscopy; goes to a costume party dressed as Tinky Winky; tries to get laid while camping out at a rock festival-and basically drinks and fornicates (or tries to) his way through Stockholm and New York, with hangover following drunken binge and mortification following faux pas as night follows day.What will probably be amazing to American readers is how similar the day-to-day experiences of these Seinfeld-watching, Big Mac-eating, hip-hop-listening Swedes is to theirs. Rocky is a reminder as to how utterly global our culture has become-and a reminder that laughter is truly universal.