MAD's Greatest Artists: Sergio Aragonés


Sergio Aragonés - 2010
    From the witty, shameless writing to the amusing, colorful comic illustrations, MAD is a timeless American classic. For the first time ever, here is a “greatest hits” collection of one of MAD's most popular and prolific artists—Sergio Aragonés—hand-picked by the artist and featuring his greatest work from his debut with MAD in 1963 to the present. Assembled chronologically, it's packed with memorable cartoons, insightful interviews, new cover artwork commissioned for this book, and a special pull-out poster of Sergio's “Marginals,” the wildly popular mini-cartoons that have appeared in MAD's margins for over 40 years.

Bob's Burgers: Medium Rare


Loren BouchardMike Olsen - 2015
    While Bob and Linda Belcher have their hands full running the family business, their kids Tina, Gene, and Louise have adventures that you won't believe! The producers, writers, and animators of the hit animated show Bob's Burgers proudly present all-origi

Drawn and Quartered


Charles Addams - 1942
    Records show that at his birth the Addams' lived on Summit Ave. They moved several times before taking up permanent residence in '20 on Elm St. & stayed there until '47. He attended public school in Westfield & was fond of visiting the Presbyterian Cemetery on Mountain Ave. When he was a youngster he was caught by the police for breaking into a house on Dudley Ave. On the 2nd floor of the garage behind the main house there's a chalk drawing of a skeleton which is believed to have been drawn by him. That house on Dudley & one on Elm is said to be the inspiration for the famous Addams Family house. At Westfield HS, he became the art editor for the Weather Vane & drew many cartoons. He graduated in '29 & attended Colgate University for a year. He switched to the University of Pennsylvania & then studied at Grand Central School of Art in NY City. His dream was to work for The New Yorker Magazine. He started submitting cartoons as early as '35, his 1st was entitled "I forgot my Skates." In '40 he submitted "Downhill Skier" & that got him an offer to come on board full time for NY's premiere magazine. He continued there until his death in '88, drawing over 1300 cartoons. On occasion, his work appeared in other publications such as Colliers & TV Guide. 1937 was the 1st year that an Addams Family cartoon appeared. It featured only Morticia & Lurch. They didn't look like we know them today. Morticia's hair was styled differently & Lurch looked more like Boris Karloff in OLD DARK HOUSE than the Frankenstein monster. As years went by, other members started appearing including Wednesday, Pugsley, Grandmama & Thing.

Penis Pokey


Christopher Behrens - 2006
    Are you up to the challenge?

Camp Scoundrel: Doing what it takes to survive paradise


David Luddington - 2018
    What Michael doesn’t expect, is to be put in charge of a group of offenders and sent to a remote location in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in Spain to teach them survival skills as part of their rehabilitation programme. But Michael knows nothing at all about survival skills. He was sort of in the SAS, yes, but his shining record on the “Escape and Evasion” courses was more a testament to his computer skills than his ability to catch wildlife and barbecue it over an impromptu fire. Basically, he was the SAS’s techy nerd and only achieved that position as a result of a bet with a fellow hacker. Facing a stark choice between starvation or returning home to serve out their sentences, the group of offenders under Michael’s supervision soon realise that the only way to survive is to use their own unique set of skills – the kind of skills that got them arrested in the first place.

I Thought You Would Be Funnier


Shannon Wheeler - 2010
    Never seen in print before anywhere else!A new cartoon collection from the mind of Eisner Award-winning, Harvey nominated and current NewYorker Magazine cartoonist, Shannon Wheeler! It's the best-of-the-best of what's left on the cutting room floor from Wheeler's cartoon submissions to The New Yorker Magazine. Never seen in print before anywhwere else!

Puke Force


Brian Chippendale - 2013
    . . obsessively detailed [comics] feel like [they've] been shot straight from his brain onto the page." - Village Voice Puke Force is social satire written dark and dense across Brian Chippendale's deconstructed multiverse of walking, talking M&Ms, hamsters, and cycloptic-yet-glamorous trivia hosts. In scathingly funny single-page strips that build and build, he takes on social media narcissism, governmental propaganda, racism, and a culture of violence, skewering the malice of the right and the hypocrisies of the left. A bomb explodes in a coffee shop: the incident is played out over and over again from the perspective of each table in the shop, revisiting moments from ten and twenty years before. We see the inevitable as the characters bicker or celebrate, unaware of what's coming. Throughout this dystopic graphic novel, Chippendale uses humor and a frantic drawing style to show how the insidious nature of corporate greed and the commodification of everything have warped society into a killing machine. Sardonic and self-aware, Puke Force asks all the right questions, providing a startling and on-point take on contemporary social issues. Chippendale's artwork makes each panel a masterpiece of thrumming linework and lo-fi magic, as his storytelling wends and winds its way to a fascinating conclusion.

Zen Comics


Ioanna Salajan - 1974
    Laughter deflates pretension and a good rap on the head sometimes transcends so-called logic. In the words of Zen, "Nothing is left for you but to laugh!"

99 Classic Movies for People in a Hurry


Thomas Wengelewski - 2009
    Get the low down on: Citizen Kane, Psycho, The Seventh Seal, Gone With the Wind, Dirty Dancing, Jaws, Bagdad Café, Rocky, Yojimbo, The Guns of Navarone, Jailhouse Rock, The Big Blue, Rebel Without a Cause, Taxi Driver, The Shawshank Redemption, The Misfits, among many others.

Darth Vader and Son


Jeffrey Brown - 2012
    Celebrated artist Jeffrey Brown's delightful illustrations give classic Star Wars moments a fresh twist, presenting the trials and joys of parenting through the lens of a galaxy far, far away. Life lessons include lightsaber batting practice, using the Force to raid the cookie jar, Take Your Child to Work Day on the Death Star ("Er, he looks just like you, Lord Vader!"), and the special bond shared between any father and son.

The Unstrung Harp


Edward Gorey - 1953
    Earbrass begins writing his new novel. Weeks ago he chose its title at random from a list of them he keeps in a little green note-book. It being tea-time of the 17th, he is alarmed not to have thought of a plot to which The Unstrung Harp might apply, but his mind will keep reverting to the last biscuit on the plate. So begins what the Times Literary Supplement called "a small masterpiece." TUH is a look at the literary life and its "attendant woes: isolation, writer's block, professional jealousy, and plain boredom." But, as with all of Edward Gorey's books, TUH is also about life in general, with its anguish, turnips, conjunctions, illness, defeat, string, parties, no parties, urns, desuetude, disaffection, claws, loss, trebizond, napkins, shame, stones, distance, fever, antipodes, mush, glaciers, incoherence, labels, miasma, amputation, tides, deceit, mourning, elsewards. You get the point. Finally, TUH is about Edward Gorey the writer, about Edward Gorey writing The Unstrung Harp. It's a cracked mirror of a book, and it's dedicated to RDP or Real Dear Person.

Samaritans


Jonathan Lynn - 2017
     The chairman of the board, billionaire arms dealer and part-time philanthropist David Soper, decides that it's time to kill or cure. Business School alumnus and Las Vegas hotel genius Max Green is the perfect man for the job. A man of vision. A man with a mission. A man who knows that wealth-care is smarter than healthcare. He's going to make Samaritans great again. Andrew Sharp, star cardio-thoracic surgeon, turns his back on the NHS and buys in to this brave new world of Porsches and payola. But when his American Dream turns into a living nightmare, Andrew discovers that even the new-found love of his assistant, Cathy, may not be enough to save him… Samaritans is the new novel from the co-creator and writer of Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister. Praise for Samaritans 'A book George Orwell would have approved of.' The Sunday Times ‘It’s wonderful! I was hooked, mouth open, heart pounding. The catastrophic state of medical care is his story but Samaritans can be read too as a wider allegory, a discourse on a politics of greed, dis-entitlement, deregulation and social brutality that has run quite mad.’ Stephen Fry ‘It is with the highest confidence that I recommend this book, with particularity, to those Members of Congress who remain committed to making access to life saving care far too difficult for far too many people. It is my fondest hope that they might laugh their way to the education they so sorely require.’ Rick Ungar ‘Jonathan Lynn tackles the US healthcare system in satirical splendour. I laughed out loud. It is both hilarious and scary at the same time! Nobody does it better.’ Barbara Broccoli 'There is reason to believe Jonathan Lynn was not born in the US and, while probably not a spy, he has spent some little time observing Americans in the wild. His observations are not always flattering—he’s talking Big Medicine, Big Insurance, Big Business and their cousin, Small Ethics—but he certainly seems to have our number. Samaritans is smart, dark, and very, very funny. Stay healthy, America!' Michael McKean, Better Call Saul, Spinal Tap ‘Jonathan Lynn's Samaritans does for hospitals what Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One did for cemeteries. The book is laugh-aloud funny, but also deadly serious--because it deals with the lethal effect profit-minded health care can have on patient lives...I haven't read satire this hilarious and powerful since Riotous Assembly, the late Tom Sharpe's indictment of apartheid in South Africa. This is essential reading for anyone who has a body and wants to keep it alive.' M.G Lord ‘Comedy genius...as politically and socially important as is it is entertaining.’ Muriel Gray Jonathan Lynn is the multi-award winning author of The Complete Yes Minister and The Complete Yes, Prime Minister, which were drawn from the phenomenally successful BBC series which he created and wrote with Antony Jay, and which sold more than a million copies in hardback.

Bloom County: Brand Spanking New Day


Berkeley Breathed - 2017
    Berkeley Breathed's Bloom County is back, with all-new, never before printed comic strips featuring everyones favorite penguin, and the rest of the quirky and endearing denizens of magical land called Bloom County! And, honestly, we need them all more than ever!Librarian Note: Limited Edition hardcover with same ISBN 9781684050970 located here

99 Problems: Superstars Have Bad Days, Too


Ali Graham - 2015
    All the money and fame in the world won’t prevent him from having a bad hair day. Or stepping in gum. Or not being able to fit into skinny jeans, or watching helplessly as a scoop of ice cream falls from its cone. Or so an unnamed Superstar’s life is ingeniously imagined in this very funny book. Inspired by but not based on Jay Z’s monster hit “99 Problems,” illustrator Ali Graham riffs on what might be the real problems afflicting a world-famous music mogul who also happens to be married to the foremost diva of our time. Begun as a Tumblr, which went viral almost instantly, 99 Problems is a highly conceptual gift book showcasing 99 full-color illustrations of a cartoon character who looks just like a certain legendary rapper, and the often ordinary and sometimes fantastical things that happen to him. And that’s where the book finds its hilarious, compulsive hook—in an age that worships celebrity and assumes, somewhat enviously, that fame and fortune can protect one from life’s travails, what if that just weren’t true? There’s a surprising, underlying warmth here. Even when the author dips into flights of pop culture fantasy—Superstar on the bow of the Titanic; Superstar whipping up a bad batch alongside Walter White from Breaking Bad—the recognition of shared kinship is strong. It’s a cartoon version of celebrity, but like the best cartoons, it’s edgy and knowing, yet sweet, too.

Hand-Drying in America and Other Stories


Ben Katchor - 2013
    Here are window-ledge pillows designed expressly for people-watching and a forest of artificial trees for sufferers of hay fever. The Brotherhood of Immaculate Consumption deals with the matter of products that outlive their owners; a school of dance is based upon the choreographic motion of paying with cash; high-visibility construction vests are marketed to lonely people as a method of getting noticed. With cutting wit Katchor reveals a world similar to our own—lives are defined by possessions, consumerism is a kind of spirituality—but also slightly, fabulously askew. Frequently and brilliantly bizarre, and always mesmerizing, Hand-Drying in America ensures that you will never look at a building, a bar of soap, or an ATM the same way.