Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, and Me


Ellen Forney - 2012
    Flagrantly manic and terrified that medications would cause her to lose creativity, she began a years-long struggle to find mental stability while retaining her passions and creativity.Searching to make sense of the popular concept of the crazy artist, she finds inspiration from the lives and work of other artists and writers who suffered from mood disorders, including Vincent van Gogh, Georgia O’Keeffe, William Styron, and Sylvia Plath. She also researches the clinical aspects of bipolar disorder, including the strengths and limitations of various treatments and medications, and what studies tell us about the conundrum of attempting to “cure” an otherwise brilliant mind.Darkly funny and intensely personal, Forney’s memoir provides a visceral glimpse into the effects of a mood disorder on an artist’s work, as she shares her own story through bold black-and-white images and evocative prose.

Imagine Wanting Only This


Kristen Radtke - 2017
    Over time, this fascination deepened until it triggered a journey around the world in search of ruined places. Now, in this genre-smashing graphic memoir, she leads us through deserted cities in the American Midwest, an Icelandic town buried in volcanic ash, islands in the Philippines, New York City, and the delicate passageways of the human heart. Along the way, we learn about her family and a rare genetic heart disease that has been passed down through generations, and revisit tragic events in America's past.A narrative that is at once narrative and factual, historical and personal, Radtke's stunning illustrations and piercing text never shy away from the big questions: Why are we here, and what will we leave behind?(With black-and-white illustrations throughout; part of the Pantheon Graphic Novel series)

The Diary of a Teenage Girl: An Account in Words and Pictures


Phoebe Gloeckner - 2002
    I was a very ugly child. My appearance has not improved so I guess it was a lucky break when he was attracted by my youthfulness." So begins the wrenching diary of Minnie Goetze, a fifteen-year-old girl longing for love and acceptance and struggling with her own precocious sexuality. Minnie hates school and she wants to be an artist, or maybe a speleologist, or a bartender. She sleeps with her mother's boyfriend, and yet is too shy to talk with boys at school. She forges her way through adolescence, unsupervised and unguided, defenseless, and yet fearless.The story unfolds in the libertine atmosphere of the 1970s San Francisco, but the significance of Minnie's effort to understand herself and her world is universal. This is the story of an adolescent troubled by the discontinuity between what she thinks and feels and what she observes in those around her. The Diary of a Teenage Girl offers a searing comment on adult society as seen though the eyes of a young woman on the verge of joining it.In this unusual novel, artist and writer Phoebe Gloeckner presents a pivotal year in a girl's life, recounted in diary pages and illustrations, with full narrative sequences in comics form.

You & a Bike & a Road


Eleanor Davis - 2017
    The immediacy of Davis’ comics journal makes for an incredible chronicle of human experience on the most efficient and humane form of human transportation.Eleanor Davis is a cartoonist and illustrator. She lives in Athens, GA and was born in Tucson, Arizona. In 2009, Davis won the Eisner's Russ Manning Most Promising Newcomer Award and was named one of Print magazine's New Visual Artists. In 2015, her book How To Be Happy won the Ignatz Award for Outstanding Anthology or Collection.

A Dangerous Woman: The Graphic Biography of Emma Goldman


Sharon Rudahl - 2007
    Emma Goldman was at the forefront of the radical causes of the twentieth century, from leading hunger demonstrations during the Great Depression—"Ask for work! If they do not give you work, ask for bread! If they do not give you work or bread, take the bread!"—to organizing a cloakmakers' strike, from lecturing on how to use birth control to fighting conscription for World War I, while her soulmate, Alexander Berkman, spent fourteen years in jail for his failed attentat against industrialist Henry Clay Frick.Sharon Rudahl's lovely, energetic illustrations bring Goldman's many facets and passions to new life; her work belongs with the critically acclaimed graphic nonfiction of Alison Bechdel's Fun Home and Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis. Featuring a foreword by Alice Wexler, A Dangerous Woman is a marvelously compelling presentation of a woman devoted to revolutionizing her age.

Mother, Come Home


Paul Hornschemeier - 2003
    Mother, Come Home is Hornschemeier's graphic novel debut—the quietly stunning tale of a father and son struggling, by varying degrees of escapism and fantasy, to come to terms with the death of the family's mother. The story seamlessly weaves through the surreal and the painfully factual, guided by the careful, somber colors and inventive pacing unique to Hornschmeier's storytelling. Mother, Come Home extracts almost tangible drama from the most tranquil of moments, making that which is unspoken in each panel easily audible, and almost uncomfortably experienced.

A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge


Josh Neufeld - 2009
    follows each of the six from the hours before Katrina struck to its horrific aftermath. Here is Denise, a sixth-generation New Orleanian who will experience the chaos of the Superdome; the Doctor, whose unscathed French Quarter home becomes a refuge for those not so lucky; Abbas and his friend Mansell, who face the storm from the roof of Abbas's family-run market; Kwame, a pastor's son whose young life will remain wildly unsettled well into the future; and Leo, a comic-book fan, and his girlfriend, Michelle, who will lose everything but each other. We watch as they make the wrenching decision between staying and evacuating. And we see them coping not only with the outcome of their own decisions but also with those made by politicians, police, and others like themselves—decisions that drastically affect their lives, but over which they have no control.Overwhelming demand has propelled A.D. from its widely-read early Internet installments to this complete hardcover edition. Scheduled for publication on the fourth anniversary of the hurricane, it shines an uncanny light on the devastating truths and human triumphs of New Orleans after the deluge.

Tokyo on Foot: Travels in the City's Most Colorful Neighborhoods


Florent Chavouet - 2009
    Each day he would set forth, with a pouch full of colored pencils and a sketchpad, to visit different neighborhoods. This stunning book records the city that he got to know during his adventures, a gritty, vibrant place, full of ordinary people going about their daily lives. Realistically rendered city views or posters of pop stars contrast with cartoon sketches of iconic objects or droll vignettes, like a housewife walking her pet pig and a Godzilla statue in a local park.With wit, a playful sense of humor, and the colored pencils of his kit, Florent Chavouet sets aside the question of urban ugliness or beauty and captures the Japanese essence of a great city.

The Fifth Beatle: The Brian Epstein Story


Vivek J. Tiwary - 2012
    Yet more than merely the story of "The Man Who Made The Beatles," The Fifth Beatle is an uplifting, tragic, and ultimately inspirational human story about the struggle to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds. Brian himself died painfully lonely at the young age of thirty-two, having helped The Beatles prove through Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band that pop music could be an inspirational art form. He was homosexual when it was a felony to be so in the United Kingdom, Jewish at a time of anti-Semitism, and from Liverpool when it was considered just a dingy port town.

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 Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye


Sonny Liew - 2015
    With a career spanning more than five decades, from pre-independent Singapore through its three Prime Ministers, Chan’s work reflects the changing political and economic environment in Singapore.Containing Chan’s original illustrations, paintings and sketches, this is a groundbreaking work and labour of love aimed at recapturing the portrait of an artist, whose deep passion for comics and country is given a fitting tribute by award-winning comics artist Sonny Liew.3 Eisner Awards 2017: Best U.S. Edition of International Material–AsiaBest Writer/ArtistBest Publication DesignOther Eisner Award 2017 Nominations: Best Graphic Album–NewBest ColoringBest LetteringWinner of the Singapore Literature Prize 2016 for English FictionA New York Times bestsellerAn Economist Book of the Year 2016An NPR Graphic Novel Pick for 2016A Washington Post Best Graphic Novel of 2016A New York Post Best Books of 2016A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2016A South China Morning Post Top 10 Asian books of 2016An A.V. Club Best Comics of 2016A Comic Books Resources Top 100 Comics of 2016A Mental Floss Most Interesting Graphic Novel of 2016Winner of the Singapore Book Awards 2016 for Book of the Year and Best Book Cover Design

The Beatles Graphic


Hervé Bourhis - 2010
    Hervé Bourhis, creator of The Little Book of Rock, turns his unique graphic talents to the legend of The Beatles, told from the very beginning. Bourhis’ visual imagination illuminates the individual lives of each band member from their pre-Beatles youth to what would become a rock band of phenomenal worldwide fame. All of the epic details of their story are vividly evoked: the triumphs, the quarrels, the supreme musical creativity and of course the inevitable break-up. The story then goes on to follow the personal destinies of John, Paul, George and Ringo, four Liverpool lads who were by turns ambitious, clever, facetious, arrogant, down-to-earth and supremely talented. Theirs was the ultimate rock band story and Hervé Bourhis has done it —and them — full justice in this superb and exuberant graphic biography.

Hark! A Vagrant


Kate Beaton - 2011
    No era or tome emerges unscathbed as Beaton rightly skewers the Western world's revolutionaries, leaders, sycophants, and suffragists while equally honing her wit on the hapless heroes, heroines, and villains of the best-loved fiction. She deftly points out what really happened when Brahms fell asleep listening to Liszt, that the world's first hipsters were obviously the Incroyables and the Merveilleuses from eighteenth-century France, that Susan B. Anthony is, of course, a "Samantha," and that the polite banality of Canadian culture never gets old. Hark! A Vagrant features sexy Batman, the true stories behind classic Nancy Drew covers, and Queen Elizabeth doing the albatross. As the 5600.000 unique monthly visitors to harkavagrant.com already know, no one turns the ironic absurdities of history and literature into comedic fodder as hilarious as Beaton.

Cuba: My Revolution


Inverna Lockpez - 2010
    While her eccentric mother hatches an increasingly desperate series of plans to flee Cuba, Sonia joins the militia and volunteers as a medic at the Bay of Pigs — where she encounters her mortally wounded high school sweetheart as an enemy fighter, then is arrested and tortured for treating another CIA-trained brigadier.  Scarred, yet clinging to her revolutionary ideals, she seeks fulfillment in an artists’ collective, only to be further disillusioned by increasing repression under Castro. Finally, she flees to America where she has been a painter and influential arts activist.

Blue Pills: A Positive Love Story


Frederik Peeters - 2001
    One summer night at a house party, Fred met Cati. Though they barely spoke, he vividly remembered her gracefulness and abandon. They meet again years later, and this time their connection is instantaneous. But when things become serious, a nervous Cati tells him that she and her three-year-old son are both HIV positive. With great beauty and economy, Peeters traces the development of their intimacy and their revelatory relationship with a doctor whose affection and frankness allow them to fully realize their passionate connection.