The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage


Sydney Padua - 2015
    . . in which Sydney Padua transforms one of the most compelling scientific collaborations into a hilarious series of adventures. Meet Victorian London’s most dynamic duo: Charles Babbage, the unrealized inventor of the computer, and his accomplice, Ada, Countess of Lovelace, the peculiar protoprogrammer and daughter of Lord Byron. When Lovelace translated a description of Babbage’s plans for an enormous mechanical calculating machine in 1842, she added annotations three times longer than the original work. Her footnotes contained the first appearance of the general computing theory, a hundred years before an actual computer was built. Sadly, Lovelace died of cancer a decade after publishing the paper, and Babbage never built any of his machines. But do not despair! The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage presents a rollicking alternate reality in which Lovelace and Babbage do build the Difference Engine and then use it to build runaway economic models, battle the scourge of spelling errors, explore the wilder realms of mathematics, and, of course, fight crime—for the sake of both London and science. Complete with extensive footnotes that rival those penned by Lovelace herself, historical curiosities, and never-before-seen diagrams of Babbage’s mechanical, steam-powered computer, The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage is wonderfully whimsical, utterly unusual, and, above all, entirely irresistible.(With black-and-white illustrations throughout.)

Potluck Pogo (The Best of Pogo)


Walt Kelly - 1955
    

In Me Own Words: The Autobiography of Bigfoot


Graham Roumieu - 2003
    Learn the hairy one's brave struggles with eating disorders, casual cannibalism, pop culture, and philosophical quandaries. In this crazed mutant graphic novel, Graham Roumieu gives us a portrait of the artist as a young ape that will leave the reader howling with laughter.

Sleepwalk and Other Stories


Adrian Tomine - 1997
    The characters here appear to be well-adjusted on the surface, but Tomine takes us deeper into their lives, subtly examining their struggle to connect with friends and lovers.

Scott Pilgrim the Complete Series


Bryan Lee O'Malley - 2010
    Having to battle his new girlfriend's evil exes was nothing he planned on, but love makes you do funny things. Follow his story in the complete Scott Pilgrim saga in this Scott Pilgrim set. This set contains all six graphic novels in one handy shrink-wrapped pack.

A Smithsonian Book of Comic-Book Comics


Michael Barrier - 1982
    

Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea


Guy Delisle - 2003
    In early 2001 cartoonist Guy Delisle became one of the few Westerners to be allowed access to the fortress-like country. While living in the nation's capital for two months on a work visa for a French film animation company, Delisle observed what he was allowed to see of the culture and lives of the few North Koreans he encountered; his findings form the basis of this graphic novel.Guy Delisle was born in Quebec City in 1966 and has spent the last decade living and working in the South of France with his wife and son. Delisle has spent ten years, mostly in Europe, working in animation, an experience that taught him about movement and drawing. He is now currently focusing on his cartooning. Delisle has written and drawn six graphic novels, including "Pyongyang," his first graphic novel in English.

The Most Dangerous Game: A Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal Collection


Zach Weinersmith - 2011
    It is one of the fastest growing comics online, having sextupled in readership since 2008. SMBC appeals to many different groups, as evidenced by the fact it has been featured on a variety of important websites and blogs, including The Economist, Glamour, BoingBoing, Bad Astronomy, Blastr, Blues News, Joystiq, The Washington Post, Freakonomics, and more.Breadpig donates its profits to Khan Academy, a not-for-profit organization with the goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education to anyone anywhere.

The Beats: A Graphic History


Paul M. BuhlePeter Kuper - 2009
    Told by the comic legend Harvey Pekar, his frequent artistic collaborator Ed Piskor, and a range of artists and writers, including the feminist comic creator Trina Robbins and the Mad magazine artist Peter Kuper, The Beats takes us on a wild tour of a generation that, in the face of mainstream American conformity and conservatism, became known for its determined uprootedness, aggressive addictions, and startling creativity and experimentation.What began among a small circle of friends in New York and San Francisco during the late 1940s and early 1950s laid the groundwork for a literary explosion, and this striking anthology captures the storied era in all its incarnations—from the Benzedrine-fueled antics of Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs to the painting sessions of Jay DeFeo’s disheveled studio, from the jazz hipsters to the beatnik chicks, from Chicago’s College of Complexes to San Francisco’s famed City Lights bookstore. Snapshots of lesser-known poets and writers sit alongside frank and compelling looks at the Beats’ most recognizable faces. What emerges is a brilliant collage of—and tribute to—a generation, in a form and style that is as original as its subject.

The Simpsons/Futurama Crossover Crisis


Ian Boothby - 2010
    . . and how is it even possible? Prepare yourself for a Simpsons saga filled with Futurama! A Futurama fable suffused with the Simpsons! Featuring a plethora of pleasing plot devices including: evil brain spawn, lactose-intolerant space aliens, a giant ball of yarn, flying cars, mistaken identities, world domination, the brittle fabric of reality torn asunder, a comic book-collecting sentient planet, the Dewey Decimal system, self-eating watermelons, slave labor, space pirates, power-crazed vampires, super hero battles, unflattering underwear, mad science run amok, and much, much more! This is the epic story that you've been waiting for . . . a story so big, so ambitious, so sweeping that it can only be told in a 208-page, large format, slip-cased edition, complete with new material, supplemental stories, preliminary sketches, character designs, and a pin-up gallery featuring the talents of comics industry luminaries Alex Ross, Sergio Aragonés, Geof Darrow, Kyle Baker, Peter Kuper, and Bernie Wrightson, among others. It's a comic convergence on a reality ripping, time altering, space traveling, intergalactic scale! It's The Simpsons Futurama Crossover CrisisUncut and all comedy! First published in 2002 and 2005 as two two-part, comic book mini-series (Futurama/Simpsons Infinitely Secret Crossover Crisis and The Simpsons/Futurama Crossover Crisis II), these four hard-to-find comics are collected together for the first time in a hardcover collection, encased in a die-cut slipcase, and packaged with a reprint of the very first Eisner Award-winning issue of Simpsons Comics from 1993. “Abrams’ initial release is a beautifully designed package, a glossy hardcover in a glossier slipcover, as bright and colorful as a grab-bag bin in a candy-store.”—The Onion AV ClubFrom Publishers Weekly Two classic animated series are brought together in a comic that offers many surprises, including how well it all works when transported to a new medium. Although both sources are the creation of cartoonist Matt Groening, the broadcast runs of each series referred to the other as works of fiction within their own universes, perhaps seeking to avoid the temptation of an attention grabbing crossover. And yet somehow this assemblage ably accomplishes just such a task while remaining faithful to the source materials. When Futurama's crew from the Planet Express delivery service become trapped in the fictional world of a Simpsons comic book, they must escape from Springfield. But shortly afterward they open a rift that brings the Simpsons characters into the Planet Express world, where the fictional characters must be rescued and returned to the pages of their comic book. Boothby's writing excels at letting each universe and the characters in them maintain their subtly distinct identities even when they blend. The overarching story for the book is designed to easily allow opportunities for affectionate references to comics, to science fiction, and to notable works of fiction. While the Simpsons comics included in the collection are not as strong, the crossover story takes what could have been a simple throwaway gag and instead crafts a funny, intricately detailed story. (Apr.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Ed the Happy Clown (A Yummy Fur Book)


Chester Brown - 1989
    Within its pages, he serialized the groundbreaking Ed the Happy Clown, revealing a macabre universe of parallel dimensions. Thanks to its wholly original yet disturbing story lines, Ed set the stage for Brown to become a world-renowned cartoonist. Ed the Happy Clown is a hallucinatory tale that functions simultaneously as a dark roller-coaster ride of criminal activity and a scathing condemnation of religious and political charlatanism. As the world around him devolves into madness, the eponymous Ed escapes variously from a jealous boyfriend, sewer monsters, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and a janitor with a Jesus complex. Brown leaves us wondering, with every twist of the plot, just how Ed will get out of this scrape. The intimate, tangled world of Ed the Happy Clown is definitively presented here, repackaged with a new foreword by the author and an extensive notes section, and is, like every Brown book, astonishingly perceptive about the zeitgeist of its time.

Kafka


David Zane Mairowitz - 1994
    Crumb's Kafka is a vibrant biography that examines this Czech writer and his works in a way that a bland texbook never could! R. Crumb's Kafka goes far beyond being explication or popularization or survey. It's a work of art in its own right, a very rare example of what happens when one very idiosyncratic artist absorbs another into his worldview without obliterating the individuality of the absorbed one. Crumb's art is filled with Kafka's insurmountable neuroses. They are all there: Gregor Samsa's sister, the luscious Milena Jesenska, the Advacate's "nurse" Leni, Olda and Frieda, and the ravishing Dora Diamant-drawn in that mixture of self-commandtantalizing knowingness, and sly sexuality, that amazonian randines and thick-limbed physicality that is Crumb.Crumb's idiosyncratic illustrations add a new dimension to the already idiosyncratic world of Kafka. Includes adaptations of "The Judgment," "The Trial," "The Castle," "A Hunger Artist," and "The Metamorphosis."

Asterix the Gaul


René Goscinny - 1961
    Only one small village of indomitable Gauls still holds out against the invaders. But how much longer can Asterix, Obelix and their friends resist the mighty Roman legions of Julius Caesar? Anything is possible, with a little cunning plus the druid Getafix's magic potions! Their effects can be truly hair-raising...