Marble Season


Gilbert Hernández - 2013
    Marble Season is his first book with Drawn & Quarterly, and one of the most anticipated books of 2013. It tells the untold stories from the early years of these American comics legends, but also portrays the reality of life in a large family in suburban 1960s California. Pop-culture references—TV shows, comic books, and music—saturate this evocative story of a young family navigating cultural and neighborhood norms set against the golden age of the American dream and the silver age of comics.    Middle child Huey stages Captain America plays and treasures his older brother’s comic book collection almost as much as his approval. Marble Season subtly and deftly details how the innocent, joyfully creative play that children engage in (shooting marbles, backyard performances, and organizing treasure hunts) changes as they grow older and encounter name-calling naysayers, abusive bullies, and the value judgments of other kids. An all-ages story, Marble Season masterfully explores the redemptive and timeless power of storytelling and role play in childhood, making it a coming-of-age story that is as resonant with the children of today as with the children of the sixties.

Foiled


Jane Yolen - 2010
    She's invisible at high school.She's too visible at the fencing gym.Aliera's starting to wonder...where does she belong?

My Dirty Dumb Eyes


Lisa Hanawalt - 2013
    Her world vision is intricately rendered in a full spectrum of color, unapologetically gorgeous and intensely bizarre.  With movie reviews, tips for her readers, laugh-out-loud lists and short pieces such as “Rumors I’ve Heard About Anna Wintour,” and “The Secret Lives of Chefs,”  Hanawalt’s comedy shines, making the quotidian silly and surreal, flatulent and facetious.

FoxTrot: A FoxTrot Collection


Bill Amend - 1989
    A look at living through the eyes of the Fox family and their pet iguana.

Giants Beware!


Jorge Aguirre - 2012
    But her village is so safe and quiet! What’s a future giant slayer to do?With her best friend Marie (an aspiring princess), and her brother Gaston (a pastry-chef-to-be), Claudette embarks on a super-secret quest to find a giant—without parental permission. Can they find and defeat the giant before their parents find them and drag them back home? Giants Beware! offers up a wondrous, self-contained world in the tradition of the very best of Pixar. Claudette and her friends will have you laughing out loud from page one.  Giants Beware! Author Q&A What was your inspiration for the book?Rafael:  I’m not entirely sure.  I recently went through some old sketchbooks of mine and realized that I’d been drawing a character that looked kind of like our main character, Claudette, years before we even began the book.  I guess I’ve had this character of this girl with a lot of spunk in my subconscious for a while.  I’m also really into French comics and that influenced the look quite bit. Which character do you identify with and why?Rafael:  I’m not impulsive like Claudette.  I’m probably most like Gaston.  He thinks before taking the leap.  He worries a lot.  That’s probably more like me.Jorge:  I wish I could say I was like Marie.  Marie doesn’t care what other people think of her.  In this book, she aspires to be a princess and other kids make fun of her, but she doesn’t pay them any attention.  She’s very confident and smart.   I wish I were more like her.  I also wish I were like Claudette.  She’s brave, reckless, and impulsive.  But I’m not like her either.  Like Rafael, I’m probably most like Gaston.  I’m a little nervous and I love sweets.How did your partnership begin?Jorge:  We’ve known each other since we were both in film school at the Ohio State University in Columbus. I was in a writing class at OSU, and of all the bad scripts in class, mine was one of the least bad scripts, and so it was chosen to be produced with Rafael as the director.  We spent a good month or so filming a very bad film together.  That is how we became friends. Rafael:  Fast forward years later to Columbus, Ohio circa 2007.  We were at John Novak’s house (our colorist and a mutual friend).  I told Jorge about these characters I had bouncing around in my head and a story about a giant.  I went off and wrote and drew up the ideas I had so far.  I gave them to Jorge, and told him to run with it.  And he ran.  How did you draw the book?  How did you write the book?Rafael:  I drew the whole thing in Photoshop, on a Wacon Cintiq (a tablet-monitor). I like drawing digitally because it gives me a lot of flexibly down the line for edits and moving things around. John Novak and Matthew Schenk colored the book.  We used a DropBox to move files around between John Novak and Matthew Schenk (color), Jorge, and me.  Jorge and I would meet every once in awhile either in person in Columbus or via video chatting to go over pages and notes. Jorge:  I used Scrivener to collect all my notes, and Final Draft to write the script.  I lettered the book in Illustrator, which gave me the chance to do one last rewrite.  I’m always rewriting, and I always tried not to send any script pages to Rafael until they were fully baked or else he’d start drawing right away.What’s up with Claudette’s dad?Do you mean like why is he missing his legs and an arm?  Well, he fought a battle against a terrible dragon and lost.  You always hear about these great warriors who slay dragons.  Well, Augustine is a great warrior who had a very bad day.  And now his favorite sword is sitting in the belly of Azra the dragon.  But that’s a story for another day.

Daredevil by Mark Waid, Volume 1


Mark WaidKhoi Pham - 2012
    and that same old "grinnin' in the face of hell" attitude, the Man Without Fear is back in action and leading with his face! Mark Waid (Amazing Spider-Man) joins neo-legendary artists Paolo Rivera and Marcos Martin for a new spin on Daredevil that will leave you gasping for air. Having turned his world upside over the past several years, Matt Murdock realizes that justice may not be blind to his past and villains may not be the only ones looking for answers. Bring it on. if Matt Murdock could see what he was doing ... he'd be terrified.Collecting: Daredevil 1-6

Sex Criminals: Volume One: One Weird Trick


Matt Fraction - 2014
    One day she meets Jon and it turns out he has the same ability. And sooner or later they get around to using their gifts to do what we’d ALL do: rob a couple banks. A bawdy and brazen sex comedy for comics begins here!Collecting: Sex Criminals 1-5

Lumberjanes/Gotham Academy


Chynna Clugston Flores - 2017
    Written by Chynna Clugston Flores (Blue Monday), and illustrated by Rosemary Valero-O’Connell (Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me) Jenna Ayoub, Maddi Gonzalez, and Kelly & Nichole Matthews (Toil and Trouble), this is a run-for-your-life-from-skeletal-monsters mystery that leads to lifelong friendship! When a teacher at Gotham Academy goes missing, it’s up to Olive, Maps, Colton, Pom, and Kyle to figure out what is happening and how to get her back. With only an outdated birthday invitation as the clue, they find themselves in the middle of the woods with no idea of where to start. With the sudden appearance of the Lumberjanes—April, Jo, Mal, Molly, Ripley and Jen—who are on the hunt for their missing Camp Director, all clues point to an abandoned cabin with more secrets than cobwebs. "...a match made in comic heaven, as everything from the book’s creative team to its deliberately structured plot strikes early gold." - IGN