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The Manly World of Lloyd Llewellyn


Daniel Clowes - 1994
    The 31 stories collected here combine Dragnet with The Twilight Zone with Tales from the Crypt in a world filled with aliens, good-time girls, and cocktail-bar nihilism. The stories are hip and funny, with a good dose of wacky 1950s paranoia and the kind of tongue-in-cheek morality that characterized the old E.C. horror comics. The Lloyd Llewellyn stories also trace the development of Clowes's style as a comic artist, from the angular early pieces that show the influence of 1950s advertising style to the grotesque Robert Crumb-inspired style of the more recent work in Eightball. Clowes is one of the most gifted comic-book artists around, and the retro-chic world of Lloyd Llewellyn deserves to be seen by a new generation of readers.

Gahan Wilson: 50 Years of Playboy Cartoons


Gahan Wilson - 2009
    His work has been seen by millions—no, hundreds of millions—in the pages of Playboy, The New Yorker, Punch, The National Lampoon, and many other magazines; there is no telling, really, how many readers he has corrupted or comforted. He is revered for his playfully sinister take on childhood, adulthood, men, women, and monsters. His brand of humor makes you laugh until you cry. And it’s about time that a collection of his cartoons was published that did justice to his vast body of work.When Gahan Wilson walked into Hugh Hefner’s office in 1957, he sat down as Hefner was on the phone, gently rejecting a submission to his new gentlemen’s magazine: “I think it’s very well-written and I liked it very much,” Hefner reportedly said, “but it’s anti-sin. And I’m afraid we’re pro-sin.” Wilson knew, at that moment, that he had found a kindred spirit and a potential home for his cartoons. And indeed he had; Wilson appeared in every issue of Playboy from the December 1957 issue to today. It has been one of the most fruitful, successful, and long-lived relationships between a contributor and a magazine, ever.Gahan Wilson: 50 Years of Playboy Cartoons features not only every cartoon Wilson drew for Playboy, but all his prose fiction that has appeared in that magazine as well, from his first story in the June 1962 issue, “Horror Trio,” to such classics as “Dracula Country” (September 1978). It also includes the text-and-art features he drew for Playboy, such as his look at Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum, his take on our country’s “pathology of violence,” and his appreciation of “transplant surgery.”Wilson’s notoriously black sense of comedy is on display throughout the book, leaving no sacred cow unturned (an image curiously absent in the book), ridiculing everything from state sponsored executions to the sober precincts of the nouveau rich, from teenage dating to police line-ups, with scalding and hilarious satirical jabs. Although Wilson is known as an artist who relishes the creepy side of modern life, this three-volume set truly demonstrates the depth and breadth of his range—from illustrating private angst we never knew we had (when you eat a steak, just whom are you eating?) to the ironic and deadpan take on horrifying public issues (ecological disaster, nuclear destruction anyone?).Gahan Wilson has been peeling back the troubling layers of modern life with his incongruously playful and unnerving cartoons, assailing our deepest fears and our most inane follies. This three-volume set is a testament to one of the funniest—and wickedly disturbing—cartoonists alive.Nominated for two 2010 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards (Best Archival Collection/Project: Strips; Best Publication Design).

The Weirdo Years by R. Crumb: 1981-'93


Robert Crumb - 2013
    Widely considered to be some of his best work ever. Weirdo was a magazine-sized comics anthology created by Robert Crumb in 1981, which ran for 28 issues. It served as a "low art" counterpoint to its contemporary highbrow Raw. Early issues of Weirdo reflect Crumb's interests at the time: outsider art, fumetti, Church of the SubGenius-type anti-propaganda and assorted "weirdness." The incredibly varied stories include TV Blues, Life of Boswell, People Make me Nervous, The Old Songs are the Best Songs, Uncle Bob's Mid-Life Crisis, Kraft Ebbing's' Psycopathia Sexualis, Goldilocks, The Life of Philip K Dick, and many more. Also within are several photo strip stories featuring Crumb himself and various of his trademark well-built women including his wife Aline Kominsky-Crumb in tales such as Get in Shape and Unfaithful Husband.

Harvey Kurtzman's Jungle Book


Harvey Kurtzman - 1959
    Written and illustrated by Kurtzman, Jungle Book inspired and influenced comics creators such as Robert Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Gilbert Shelton, and Terry Gilliam. Back in print for the first time in over twenty-five years, this deluxe hardcover features an essay by comics archivist Denis Kitchen; a new introduction by Gilbert Shelton; a conversational afterword between Pete Poplaski and Robert Crumb; and and a selection of Kurtzman's photographs, correspondence, and artwork. The definitive edition of this graphic novel masterpiece is not to be missed!

MOME Summer 2005


Eric Reynolds - 2004
    - A new quarterly anthology of the best new talent in the sequential arts- In color, part-color, and black-and-white- The regular roster of artists gives the series a concrete identity- Quarterly schedule allows readers to look forward to favorite artists on a regular basis- Created for a general audience of literature fans, with a focus on contemporary fiction and narrative

Dork: Who's Laughing Now?, Volume 1


Evan Dorkin - 2001
    by Evan Dorkin The first-ever collection from the acclaimed humor anthology Dork, "Who's Laughing Now?" features 112 pages of densely-packed comic book craziness from Dork #1-5, all wrapped up in a sweet little package co-designed by Dorkin and his partner-in-crime, Sarah Dyer!

Fante Bukowski


Noah Van Sciver - 2015
    Living in a cheap hotel, consorting with the debased and downtrodden, searching for that golden idea that will rocket him to the success he yearns for as the great American novelist, and to get respect from his father once and for all. But, there’s just one problem: Fante Bukowski has no talent for writing.

Bottomless Belly Button


Dash Shaw - 2008
    When the parents announce their divorce, the family comes together at their beach house for a week. Dennis, the eldest son, is having marriage troubles of his own, and searches for clues, trap doors, and secret tunnels. Claire, the middle child, is a single mother with a troubled 16-year-old daughter, Jill. The youngest child, Peter, is a hack filmmaker suffering from paralyzing insecurities who establishes an unorthodox romance with a mysterious day care counselor at the beach.

Big Ideas: Explanations, True Stories, Love, Nutrition, Advice, and More


Lynda Barry - 1983
    Like Girls and Boys, Big Ideas features many of her greatest cartoons, including her menacing "Poodle with a Mohawk". Line drawings throughout.

Let Us Be Perfectly Clear


Paul Hornschemeier - 2006
    Perfectly Clear brings back into print stories that Hornschemeier published prior to his Three Paradoxes Fantagraphics debut from a variety of sources—his own self-published Forlorn Funnies, as well as strips that originally appeared in independent magazines and papers—none of which has been available to the book trade.The book is designed as a "flip book" in the tradition of the old Ace paperbacks, with one side featuring comedic work (or as comedic as Hornschemeier's mind allows), and the other decidedly more morose. With almost every page, we see a new style, a new direction; with the resultant effect being that of an anthology by creators of vastly contrasting sensibilities.On the "funny" menu, we are treated to Dr. Rodentia (an unfortunate-looking fellow with only apathy as his weapon), a detailed artist's catalogue exploring such modern masterpieces as "Accidental Late-Night Sex With a Radiator," musings on the cancerous nature of civilization as observed by a deceased cat and a cotton-based airbus, the scatological "Feelings Check," the ever pathetic Vanderbilt Millions and his fantasies of self-worth, and the multi-narrative story that started the Forlorn Funnies comics series: "The Men and Women of the Television."Clearly, there is a fine line in the Hornschemeier lexicon between funny and morose.On our "forlorn" plate we are served the cold examination of the dyslexic narcoleptic and his bungled plans of murder, a sea creature's balancing of morality and sustenance, the Western romance "Wanted," a metal man's self-destructive search for meaning, and the story the alternative website Ain't It Cool News describes as delivering "a complicated mixture of disgust and pity."Let Us Be Perfectly Clear demonstrates Paul Hornschemeier's versatility and breadth in an elegantly produced book that will appeal to connoisseurs of contemporary, cutting-edge cartoons and graphic novels.

American Splendor: The Life and Times of Harvey Pekar


Harvey PekarVal Mayerik - 1987
    For over 25 years he's been writing comic books about his life, chronicling the ordinary and everyday in stories both funny and moving.This 320 page collection was issued on the heels of the film "American Splendor," and it includes material previously published in the first two collected volumes in the American Splendor series.

The Left Bank Gang


Jason - 2005
    Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, and James Joyce walk into a Parisian bar... no, it's not the beginning of a joke, but the premise of Jason's unique new graphic novel.Set in 1920s Paris, The Left Bank Gang is a deliciously inventive re-imagining of these four literary figures as not only typical Jason anthropomorphics, but... graphic novelists! Yes, in Jason's warped world, cartooning is the dominant form of fiction, and not only do these four literary giants work in the comics medium but they get together to discuss pen vs. brush, chat about the latest graphic novels from Dostoevsky ("I can't tell any of his characters apart!") to Faulkner ("Hasn't he heard of white space? His panels are too crowded!"), and bemoan their erratic careers.Add in a hilarious sequence where Hemingway is lectured by an overbearing Gertrude Stein ("What kind of pencil are you using? You should be using a blue pencil, that way you don't have to erase, all right? Avoid captions. Don't ever write 'A little later.' You don't need that. The reader will figure it out."), guest appearances by Zelda Fitzgerald and Jean-Paul Sartre, and a few remarkable twists and turns along the way, and you've got one of the funniest and most playful graphic novels of the year.Like Jason's acclaimed Why Are You Doing This?, The Left Bank Gang is rendered in full spectacular color. This is Jason's eighth graphic novel in six years for Fantagraphics, and his audience continues to grow with every acclaimed release.2007 Eisner Award winner, Best U.S. Edition of International Material; 2007 Eisner Award nominee: Best Coloring (Hubert).

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!

Reaver #1


Justin Jordan - 2019
    Deep within this savage and untamed land, a darkness builds at that must be stopped at all costs. To do so, the Imperials assemble six of its most despicable prisoners—a turncoat, a skin eater, a sorcerer and his bodyguard, a serial killer, and the Devil’s Son—the only ones who can stop the end of the new world. They are Hell’s Half-Dozen. Join JUSTIN JORDAN (LUTHER STRODE) and REBEKAH ISAACS (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) for REAVER—a dark, grim fantasy for a post-Game of Thrones world.

The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil


Stephen Collins - 2013
    By which we mean: orderly, neat, contained and, moreover, beardless.Or at least it is until one famous day, when Dave, bald but for a single hair, finds himself assailed by a terrifying, unstoppable... monster*!Where did it come from? How should the islanders deal with it? And what, most importantly, are they going to do with Dave?The first book from a new leading light of UK comics, The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil is an off-beat fable worthy of Roald Dahl. It is about life, death and the meaning of beards.(*We mean a gigantic beard, basically.)