Book picks similar to
The Fixer and Other Stories by Joe Sacco
graphic-novels
comics
graphic-novel
non-fiction
Rosalie Lightning: A Graphic Memoir
Tom Hart - 2016
His heart-breaking and emotional illustrations strike readers to the core, and take them along his family's journey through loss. Hart uses the graphic form to articulate his and his wife's on-going search for meaning in the aftermath of Rosalie's death, exploring themes of grief, hopelessness, rebirth, and eventually finding hope again. Hart creatively portrays the solace he discovers in nature, philosophy, great works of literature, and art across all media in this expressively honest and loving tribute to his baby girl. Rosalie Lighting is a graphic masterpiece chronicling a father's undying love.
Tetris: The Games People Play
Box Brown - 2016
Simple yet addictive, Tetris delivers an irresistible, unending puzzle that has players hooked. Play it long enough and you’ll see those brightly colored geometric shapes everywhere. You’ll see them in your dreams.Alexey Pajitnov had big ideas about games. In 1984, he created Tetris in his spare time while developing software for the Soviet government. Once Tetris emerged from behind the Iron Curtain, it was an instant hit. Nintendo, Atari, Sega―game developers big and small all wanted Tetris. A bidding war was sparked, followed by clandestine trips to Moscow, backroom deals, innumerable miscommunications, and outright theft.In this graphic novel, New York Times–bestselling author Box Brown untangles this complex history and delves deep into the role games play in art, culture, and commerce. For the first time and in unparalleled detail, Tetris: The Games People Play tells the true story of the world’s most popular video game.
The Cartoon History of the Universe III: From the Rise of Arabia to the Renaissance
Larry Gonick - 2002
Larry Gonick's celebrated series The Cartoon History of the Universe is a unique fusion of world history and the comics medium, a work of serious scholarship and a masterpiece of popular literature. Praised by historians as a narrative and interpretive tour de force, Gonick's clever illustrations deliver important information with a deceptively light tone, teaching us about the people and events that have shaped our world. This long-awaited new volume covers the Middle Ages around the globe, including the origin and spread of Islam; West Africa and the cross-Saharan trade; Central Asia and the Byzantine Empire; the European Dark Ages and the Crusades; the Mongol conquests; the Black Death; the Ottoman Empire; the Italian Renaissance; and the rise of Spain, leading up to Columbus's departure for the New World. Highlighting key events and retrieving oft-neglected historical connections, Gonick offers an historical survey that is at once multicultural, humanistic, skeptical, and laugh-out-loud funny.
A Gardener in the Wasteland: Jotiba Phule's Fight for Liberty
Srividya Natarajan - 2011
A hundred and forty years hence, Srividya Natarajan and Aparajita Ninan breathe fresh life into Phule’s rather graphic imagination, weaving in the story of Savitribai, Jotiba’s partner in his struggles.In today’s climate of intolerance, here’s a manifesto of resistance.‘Reminiscent of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis. Brings smack into the foreground something unequivocally evil’—Hindustan Times
Super Chill: A Year of Living Anxiously
Adam Ellis - 2018
With a bright, positive outlook and a sense of humor, Super Chill tells a story that is both highly relatable and intensely personal.
Adulthood Is a Myth
Sarah Andersen - 2016
Please go away.This book is for the rest of us. These comics document the wasting of entire beautiful weekends on the internet, the unbearable agony of holding hands on the street with a gorgeous guy, dreaming all day of getting home and back into pajamas, and wondering when, exactly, this adulthood thing begins. In other words, the horrors and awkwardnesses of young modern life.
The Other Side of the Wall
Simon Schwartz - 2009
Shortly before Simon's birth, his parents decided to leave their home in search of greater freedoms on the other side of the Berlin Wall. But East German authorities did not allow the Schwartzes to leave for almost three years. In the meantime, Simon's parents struggled with the costs of their decision: the loss of work, the attention of the East German secret police, and the fragmentation of their family.
Strange Planet
Nathan W. Pyle - 2019
Pyle comes an adorable and profound universe in pink, blue, green, and purple. Based on the phenomenally popular Instagram of the same name, Strange Planet covers a full life cycle of the planet’s inhabitants, including milestones such as:The Emergence DayBeing Gains a SiblingThe Being Family Attains a BeastThe Formal Education of a BeingCelebration of Special DaysBeing Begins a VocationThe Beings at HomeHealth Status of a BeingThe Hobbies of a BeingThe Extended Family of the BeingThe Being Reflects on Life While Watching the Planet RotateWith dozens of never-before-seen illustrations in addition to old favorites, this book offers a sweet and hilarious look at a distant world not all that unlike our own.
Tamara Drewe
Posy Simmonds - 2007
Plastic surgery, a different wardrobe, a smouldering look, have given her confidence and a new and thrilling power to attract, which she uses recklessly. Often just for the fun of it.People are drawn to Tamara Drewe, male and female. In the remote village where her late mother lived Tamara arrives to clear up the house. Here she becomes an object of lust, of envy, the focus of unrequited love, a seductress. To the village teenagers she is 'plastic-fantastic', a role model. Ultimately, when her hot and indiscriminate glances lead to tragedy, she is seen as a man-eater, a heartless marriage wrecker, a slut.First appearing as a serial in the Guardian, in book form Tamara Drewe has been enlarged, embellished and lovingly improved by the author.
Your Black Friend and Other Strangers
Ben Passmore - 2018
Passmore masterfully tackles comics about race, gentrification, the prison system, online dating, gross punks, bad street art, kung fu movie references, beating up God, and lots of other grown-up stuff with refreshing doses of humor and lived relatability. The comics in this 112-page collection include works previously published by The Nib, VICE, and the As You Were anthology, along with brand new and unreleased material. These comics are essential, humorous, and accessible, told through Passmore's surreal lens in the vibrant full-color hues of New Orleans.
Stuck Rubber Baby
Howard Cruse - 1995
Toland’s story is both deeply personal and epic in scope, as his search for identity plays out against the brutal fight over segregation, an unplanned pregnancy and small-town bigotry, aided by an unforgettable supporting cast.
The Silence of Our Friends
Mark Long - 2012
With art from the brilliant Nate Powell (Swallow Me Whole) bringing the tale to heart-wrenching life, The Silence of Our Friends is a new and important entry in the body of civil rights literature.
A Chinese Life
Li Kunwu - 2012
This distinctively drawn work chronicles the rise and reign of Chairman Mao Zedong, and his sweeping, often cataclysmic vision for the most populated country on the planet.Though the storyline is epic, the storytelling is intimate, reflecting the real life of the book’s artist. Li Kunwu spent more than 30 years as a state artist for the Communist Party. He saw firsthand what was happening to his family, his neighbors, and his homeland during this extraordinary time. Working with Philippe Ôtié, the artist has created a memoir of self and state, a rich, very human account of a major historical moment with contemporary consequences. Mao said, “The masses are the real heroes,” but A Chinese Life shows those masses as real people.Praise for A Chinese Life:“This is an absorbing book—all 700 pages of it—reminiscent at times of Zhang Yimou’s epic Chinese history film To Live, and reminiscent at others of George Orwell’s 1984, recast as non-fiction.” —The Onion’s A.V. Club
Special Exits
Joyce Farmer - 2010
Set in southern Los Angeles (which makes for a terrifying sequence as blind Rachel and ailing Lars are trapped in their home without power during the 1992 Rodney King riots), backgrounds and props are lovingly detailed: these objects serve as memory triggers for Lars and Rachel, even as they eventually overwhelm them and their home, which the couple is loathe to leave. Special Exits is laid out in an eight-panel grid, which creates a leisurely storytelling pace that not only helps to convey the slow, inexorable decline in Lars' and Rachel's health, but perfectly captures the timbre of the exchanges between a long-married couple: the affectionate bickering; their gallows humor; their querulousness as their bodies break down.Though Lars and Rachel are the protagonists of Special Exits, Farmer makes her voice known through creative visual metaphors and in her indictment of the careless treatment of the elderly in nursing homes. Special Exits gracefully deals with the hard reality of caring for aging loved ones: those who are or who have been in similar situations might find comfort in it, and those who haven't will find much to admire in the bravery and good humor of Lars and Rachel. Joyce Farmer, best known for co-creating the Tits 'n Clits comics anthology in the 1970s, a feminist response to the rampant misogyny in underground comix, spent 11 years crafting Special Exits, a graphic memoir in the vein of Alison Bechdel's Fun Home or Harvey Pekar, Joyce Brabner, and Frank Stack's Our Cancer Year, about caring for her dying father and stepmother.
Happily Ever After & Everything In Between
Debbie Tung - 2020
Happily Ever After humorously captures what everyday love looks like—both the sweet moments and the mundane—making it a fitting gift for weddings, anniversaries, and Valentine’s Day.