And the Pursuit of Happiness


Maira Kalman - 2010
    Energized and inspired by the 2008 elections, on inauguration day Kalman traveled to Washington, D.C., launching a national tour that would take her from a town hall meeting in Newfane, Vermont, to the inner chambers of the Supreme Court.As we follow Kalman's wholly idiosyncratic journey, we fall in love with Lincoln alongside her as she imagines making a home for herself in the center of his magisterial memorial; ponder Alexis de Tocqueville's America; witness the inner workings of a Bronx middle-school student council; take a high-speed lesson in great American women in the National Portrait Gallery; and consider the cost of war to the brave American service families of Fort Campbell, Kentucky. The observations she makes as she travels charm and inform, and-as we have come to expect with Kalman-the route is always one of fascinating indirection.Kalman finds evidence of democracy at work all around us. And the cast of characters we meet along the way is rousing good company, featuring visits from Benjamin Franklin, Eleanor Roosevelt, and many others. And the Pursuit of Happiness is a remarkable tribute to our history and a powerful reminder of the potential our future holds, from a true national treasure. Watch a Video

Missed Connections: Love, Lost & Found


Sophie Blackall - 2011
    The anonymous messages are hopeful and hopeless, funny and sad. Ms. Blackall, award-winning illustrator of Ruby’s Wish and Big Red Lollipop, has turned some of the most evocative (or hilarious) of them into exquisite paintings. Missed Connections is a collection of illustrated love stories. There’s “We Shared a Bear Suit.” “If Not for Your Noisy Tambourine.” “Hairy Bearded Swimmer.” Each is told in the shorthand of a “missed connection,” and then illustrated in Chinese ink and watercolor. The paintings are extraordinary: delicate yet full of feeling, each springing from one little detail of the post into a fully imagined world. Each brings the voyeuristic pleasure of watching love at first sight, and the pleasure of watching an artist discover a fresh new way to tell a story. And not all the connections are missed. Hidden in the book are three pieces that conjure up the magic of love found.

The Art of God of War


Sony Interactive Entertainment - 2018
    Living as a man, outside the shadow of the gods, he seeks solitude in the unfamiliar lands of Norse mythology. With new purpose and his son at his side, Kratos must fight for survival as powerful forces threaten to disrupt the new life he has created.An intimate chronicle of the years-long odyssey to bring Kratos and Atreus's beautiful and brutal world to life.Step into Midgard and explore beyond, as Dark Horse Books and Santa Monica Studio proudly present the quintessential companion to the enormously anticipated God of War. This is a document unlike any other that sets readers on an exhaustive behind-the-scenes journey to witness the creation of an epic of tremendous scale.

Patti Smith 1969-1976


Judy Linn - 2011
    I felt protected in the atmosphere we created together. We had an inner narrative, producing our own unspoken film, with or without a camera." -Patti Smith, from her afterword Like a scene in Godard's Vivre sa vie or Dreyer's La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc, Patti Smith posed for the lens of a young photographer, Judy Linn. It was 1969, some years before Patti Smith entered the arena of rock and roll. Smith was a struggling poet, harboring a romantic ideal of the collaborative possibilities between an artist and model- a dream happily fulfilled within this intimate and high-spirited body of work. Linn's images of Smith range from the vulnerable to the iconic. Focusing on shifting influences and spotlighting her profound relationships with artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe and Sam Shepard, Linn has captured Smith like no one else, in the grainy atmosphere of a bygone New York. Judy Linn's photographs document the blooming of an enduring friendship and the evolution of two unique artists: gritty and visionary, fragile and tough.Praise for Patti Smith 1969-1976:"a striking new book, Patti Smith: 1969-1976 (out March 1) . . . collects photographs of the coolly photogenic star taken by her talented friend Judy Linn during the same time Kids describes. They're wonderfully composed shots of Smith looking like the star of a Godard film of her own making. The pictures show her fully ready for a closeup that would cement her boho image just a few years later, on the iconic cover of her first album, Horses, shot, of course, by Mapplethorpe himself." -New York Daily News "Here is Smith's acclaimed 2010 memoir, Just Kids, come to life-the shrines to Bob Dylan, the dress up-and the photos strike the same wistful note; as Smith writes in her afterword: 'once upon a time, we were young and beautiful and anyone we imagined we could be.'" -Publishers Weekly"Anticipating a new generation's excitement for Smith and Mapplethorpe, their friend Judy Linn has published a new book of her photographs, Patti Smith 1969-1976, that centers on the era covered in Just Kids, the time before Patti and Robert were famous. The book's a nice visual testament to their friendship, but it's also a bible of good clothing, an early record of one of the most stylish couples of all time." -The Fader.com"Linn's collection of photographs is the perfect complement to Smith's National Book Award-winning memoir, Just Kids . . . like Smith's memoir, the photos-uninterrupted by titles, captions, or any other text-serve two purposes: they tell the story of young artists finding their voice and style and serve as a love letter to '70s New York, four decades later." -Flavorwire.com

Driven by Lemons


Joshua W. Cotter - 2009
    Won't you be his neighbor?

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.

The Night Riders


Matt Furie - 2011
    As the friends make their way from forest to bat cave to ghost town to ocean to shore and beyond, new friends are discovered, a huge crab is narrowly avoided, and a world is revealed. Packed with colorful characters and surprising details on every hand-drawn page, The Night Riders is the ideal book for anyone who has ever wanted to surf to the mountains on the back of a dolphin.

Yes is More: An Archicomic on Architectural Evolution


Bjarke Ingels Group - 2009
    Published on the occassion of an exhibition at the Danish Architecture Centre, Copenhagen, 21 February - 31 May 2009.

Hollywood Foto-Rhetoric: The Lost Manuscript


Bob Dylan - 2008
    These twenty-three prose poems are thoughtprovoking, witty, and thoroughly unexpected observations of a bygone era, and through the lens of Feinstein's camera they speak volumes about the faces and places that have graced the City of Angels. Images like those of Judy Garland, Marlene Dietrich, and Steve McQueen resonate with our collective memory, while photographs of hopeful starlets, movie studio backlots, and sunny, palm tree'd boulevards evoke the timeless allure of all things Hollywood."Hollywood Foto-Rhetoric" marks a unique collaboration: With his unerring eye, Barry Feinstein captured unforgettable moments in stunning black-and-white, such as Marilyn Monroe's swimming pool on the day she died, and Frank Sinatra celebrating at John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Ball. In the provocative accompanying text, Bob Dylan's quixotic, expressive lyricism redefines silver screen nostalgia.

The Wolverton Bible


Basil Wolverton - 2008
    His career in the golden age of comic books lasted from 1938 until 1952, after which his illustrations and caricatures extended into such publications as Life, Pageant and MAD magazines. Stylistically, he has been regarded as one of the spiritual grandfathers of underground and alternative comix. Less well known and understood is his work for the Worldwide Church of God, headed until 1986 by radio evangelist Herbert Armstrong. From 1953 through 1974, Wolverton, a deeply religious man, was commissioned and later employed by the church to write and illustrate a narrative of the Old Testament (including over 550 illustrations), some 20apocalyptic illustrations inspired by the Book of Revelations, and dozens of cartoons and humorous illustrations for various Worldwide Church publications.Compiled and edited by Wolverton's son, Monte, the 304-page Wolverton Bible includes all of Wolverton's artwork for the Worldwide Church of God corporation. Recording artist and noted EC authority Grant Geissman (Tales of Terror: The E.C. Companion and Foul Play : The Art and Artists of the Notorious 1950s E.C. Comics )provides an insightful foreword, while Monte Wolverton delivers commentary and background in the introduction and in each section. This volume is authorized and commissioned by the Worldwide Church of God and endorsed by the Wolverton family.Many of the illustrations in this book are regarded as Basil Wolverton s finest work. Still others have never been published, and some of the humorous drawings printed here rival Wolverton's work in MAD magazine.

Back Home


Bill Mauldin - 1947
    Though victorious, these exhausted men were nevertheless too grief-stricken over the loss of comrades, too guilt-ridden that they had survived, and too numbed by trauma to share in the country’s euphoria. Most never saw a ticker-tape parade, or stole a Times Square kiss. All they wanted was to settle back into quiet workaday lives without fear. How tragic that the forces unleashed by World War II made this simple wish impossible.Willie & Joe: Back Home brilliantly chronicles the struggles and disillusionments of these early postwar years and, in doing so, tells Bill Mauldin’s own extraordinary story of his journey home to a wife he barely knew and a son he had only seen in pictures. The drawings capture the texture and feel, the warp and woof, of this confusing time: the ubiquitous hats and cigarettes, the domestic rubs, the rising fear of another war, and new conflicts over Civil Rights, civil liberties, and free speech. This volume of Mauldin’s work identifies and restores the dozens of cartoons censored by Mauldin’s syndicate for their attacks on racial segregation and McCarthy-style “witch hunts.” Mauldin pleaded with his syndicate to let him out of his contract so that he could return to the simple quiet life so desired by Willie & Joe. The syndicate refused, so Mauldin did battle, as always, through pen and ink.(less)

Rothko: The Color Field Paintings


Christopher Rothko - 2017
    This collection presents fifty large-scale artworks from the American master's color field period (1949–1970) alongside essays by Rothko's son, Christopher Rothko, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art curator of painting and sculpture Janet Bishop. Featuring illuminating details about Rothko's life, influences, and legacy, and brimming with the emotional power and expressive color of his groundbreaking canvases, this essential volume brings the renowned artist's luminous work to light for both longtime Rothko fans and those discovering his work for the very first time. A textured case and large-scale tip-on on the front cover round out this sumptious package.

Red Book


David Shrigley - 2009
    This all-new collection of his addictively entertaining work welcomes the uninitiated and rewards the faithful with a fresh dive into Shrigley's dark, strange world.

Hip Hop Family Tree, Vol. 1: 1970s-1981


Ed Piskor - 2013
    Originally serialized on the hugely popular website Boing Boing, The Hip Hop Family Tree is now collected in a single volume cleverly presented and packaged in a style mimicking the Marvel comics of the same era. Piskor's exuberant yet controlled cartooning takes you from the parks and rec rooms of the South Bronx to the night clubs, recording studios, and radio stations where the scene started to boom, capturing the flavor of late-1970s New York City in panels bursting with obsessively authentic detail. With a painstaking, vigorous and engaging Ken Burns meets- Stan Lee approach, the battles and rivalries, the technical innovations, the triumphs and failures are all thoroughly researched and lovingly depicted. plus the charismatic players behind the scenes like Russell Simmons, Sylvia Robinson and then-punker Rick Rubin. Piskor also traces graffiti master Fab 5 Freddy's rise in the art world, and Debbie Harry, Keith Haring, The Clash, and other luminaries make cameos as the music and culture begin to penetrate downtown Manhattan and the mainstream at large. Like the acclaimed hip hop documentaries Style Wars and Scratch, The Hip Hop Family Tree is an exciting and essential cultural chronicle and a must for hip hop fans, pop-culture addicts, and anyone who wants to know how it went down back in the day.

How to Be an Artist Without Losing Your Mind, Your Shirt, Or Your Creative Compass: A Practical Guide


JoAnneh Nagler - 2016
    Author JoAnneh Nagler wants you to welcome your creativity and continue to make art—but to do so with a plan. In this groundbreaking book, she provides step-by-step strategies to teach writers, sculptors, painters, musicians, designers, and other artists how tohave a well-supported, well-lived life—and make art at the same time.Learn how to:Answer your own artistic callings and get to your art workGive up starving and struggling and build a supported, creative daily lifeManage time, money, and day jobs with easy-to-learn, simple toolsDevelop rock-solid creative work ethics and motivational skillsNo matter what kind of creative person you are, this book has the tools you need to live the life you’ve always wanted to live—right now, and for your whole life long.