Kusama: The Graphic Novel


Elisa Macellari - 2020
    From rural Japan to international icon – Yayoi Kusama has spent her remarkable life immersed in her art.Follow her incredible journey in this vivid graphic biography which details her bold departure from Japan as a young artist, her embrace of the buzzing New York art scene in the 1960s, and her eventual return home and rise to twenty-first century super-fame.

Dar: A Super Girly Top Secret Comic Diary, Volume One


Erika Moen - 2009
    Along the way there are many vignettes about sex, farts, the queer community, the Brits, vibrators and figuring out sexual identity. The first DAR volume, collecting re-toned strips from 2006-2009 of the award-winning weekly webcomic —PLUS bonus, behind-the-scenes material!DAR Volume 1 (A Super Girly Top Secret Comic Diary)ASIN: 0982343701Title: DAR Volume 1Binding: PaperbackPublication date: 2009

Little Fish: A Memoir from a Different Kind of Year


Ramsey Beyer - 2013
    Written in an autobiographical style with beautiful artwork, Little Fish shows the challenges of being a young person facing the world on her own for the very first time and the unease—as well as excitement—that comes along with that challenge.

Deogratias, a Tale of Rwanda


Jean-Philippe Stassen - 2000
    He is an ordinary teenager, in love with a girl named B�nigne, but Deogratias is a Hutu and B�nigne is a Tutsi who dies in the genocide, and Deogratias himself plays a part in her death. As the story circles around but never depicts the terror and brutality of an entire country descending into violence, we watch Deogratias in his pursuit of B�nigne, and we see his grief and descent into madness following her death, as he comes to believe he is a dog.Told with great artistry and intelligence, this book offers a window into a dark chapter of recent human history and exposes the West's role in the tragedy. Stassen's interweaving of the aftermath of the genocide and the events leading up to it heightens the impact of the horror, giving powerful expression to the unspeakable, indescribable experience of ordinary Hutus caught up in the violence. Difficult, beautiful, honest, and heartbreaking, this is a major work by a masterful artist.

The Beats: A Graphic History


Paul M. BuhlePeter Kuper - 2009
    Told by the comic legend Harvey Pekar, his frequent artistic collaborator Ed Piskor, and a range of artists and writers, including the feminist comic creator Trina Robbins and the Mad magazine artist Peter Kuper, The Beats takes us on a wild tour of a generation that, in the face of mainstream American conformity and conservatism, became known for its determined uprootedness, aggressive addictions, and startling creativity and experimentation.What began among a small circle of friends in New York and San Francisco during the late 1940s and early 1950s laid the groundwork for a literary explosion, and this striking anthology captures the storied era in all its incarnations—from the Benzedrine-fueled antics of Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs to the painting sessions of Jay DeFeo’s disheveled studio, from the jazz hipsters to the beatnik chicks, from Chicago’s College of Complexes to San Francisco’s famed City Lights bookstore. Snapshots of lesser-known poets and writers sit alongside frank and compelling looks at the Beats’ most recognizable faces. What emerges is a brilliant collage of—and tribute to—a generation, in a form and style that is as original as its subject.

Emotions Explained with Buff Dudes: Owlturd Comix


Andrew Tsyaston - 2018
    — Shen"You know how, since the dawn of humanity, great philosophers and poets have dedicated their entire lives to exploring concepts like love, life itself, logic, and sorrow? Well, those great philosophers and poets are dead now, so I win." — Shen Emotions Explained With Buff Dudes is your fully illustrated guide to the hyper-conflicted, tragicomic feelings of our age. Featuring the resilient, shaggy-haired Shen, this debut collection of Owlturd Comix is a tale of triumph and survival — of getting your ass kicked by sleep deprivation and student loans, but never losing hope. Most of all, it's an amusing, instructive journey through a vast array of emotions, including those best explained with dudes who are buff.

The Comic Book Story of Baseball: The Heroes, Hustlers, and History-making Swings (and Misses) of America's National Pastime


Alexander C. Irvine - 2018
    Writer Alex Irvine and illustrators Tomm Coker (Black Monday Murders) and C.P. Smith team up to present a complete look at the beginnings (both real and legendary), developments, triumphs, and tragedies of baseball. The Comic Book Story of Baseball spotlights the players, teams, games, and moments that have kept the game so popular for so long. Not only does the book define key terms and explain how the game is played, it also breaks down the cultural impact and significance of the sport in America and overseas (including Japan, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic). From the early days of America to the flying W outside Wrigley Field in 2016, the book features members of Baseball's Hall of Fame and modern day stand-outs, including Cy Young, Honus Wagner, Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, Hank Aaron, the 1930s New York Yankees, the 2004 Boston Red Sox, the 2016 Chicago Cubs, and more.

Kafka


David Zane Mairowitz - 1994
    Crumb's Kafka is a vibrant biography that examines this Czech writer and his works in a way that a bland texbook never could! R. Crumb's Kafka goes far beyond being explication or popularization or survey. It's a work of art in its own right, a very rare example of what happens when one very idiosyncratic artist absorbs another into his worldview without obliterating the individuality of the absorbed one. Crumb's art is filled with Kafka's insurmountable neuroses. They are all there: Gregor Samsa's sister, the luscious Milena Jesenska, the Advacate's "nurse" Leni, Olda and Frieda, and the ravishing Dora Diamant-drawn in that mixture of self-commandtantalizing knowingness, and sly sexuality, that amazonian randines and thick-limbed physicality that is Crumb.Crumb's idiosyncratic illustrations add a new dimension to the already idiosyncratic world of Kafka. Includes adaptations of "The Judgment," "The Trial," "The Castle," "A Hunger Artist," and "The Metamorphosis."

The Mental Load: A Feminist Comic


Emma - 2018
    Most women carry some form of mental load--about their work, household responsibilities, financial obligations, and personal life, but what makes up that burden and how it's distributed within households and understood in offices is not always equal or fair. In her strips, Emma deals with themes ranging from maternity leave (it is not a vacation!), domestic violence, the clitoris, the violence of the medical world on women during childbirth, and other feminist issues, and she does so in a straightforward way that is both hilarious and deadly serious. Her comics also address the everyday outrages and absurdities of immigrant rights, income equality, and police violence.

Amazons, Abolitionists, and Activists: A Graphic History of Women's Fight for Their Rights


Mikki Kendall - 2019
    Amazons, Abolitionists, and Activists is a fun and fascinating graphic novel-style primer that covers the key figures and events that have advanced women's rights from antiquity to the modern era. In addition, this compelling book illuminates the stories of notable women throughout history--from queens and freedom fighters to warriors and spies--and the progressive movements led by women that have shaped history, including abolition, suffrage, labor, civil rights, LGBTQ liberation, reproductive rights, and more. Examining where we've been, where we are, and where we're going, Amazons, Abolitionists, and Activists is an indispensable resource for people of all genders interested in the fight for a more liberated future.

We Served the People: My Mother's Stories


Emei Burell - 2020
    Debut cartoonist Emei Burell breathes new life into the stories her mother shared with her of growing up during mid-1960s Communist China. In an inspiring tale, her mother recounts how she ended up as one of the few truck-driving women during the Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside movement, which sought to increase agricultural outreach and spur social and ideological change amongst youth. Burell’s stunning illustrations honor her mother’s courage, strength, and determination during a decade of tremendous political upheaval, where millions of lives were lost, and introduces us to a young Burell in a new era of self-discovery.

Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations


Mira Jacob - 2019
    At an increasingly fraught time for immigrants and their families, Good Talk delves into the difficult conversations about race, sex, love, and family that seem to be unavoidable these days.Inspired by her popular BuzzFeed piece "37 Difficult Questions from My Mixed-Raced Son," here are Jacob's responses to her six-year-old, Zakir, who asks if the new president hates brown boys like him; uncomfortable relationship advice from her parents, who came to the United States from India one month into their arranged marriage; and the imaginary therapy sessions she has with celebrities from Bill Murray to Madonna. Jacob also investigates her own past, from her memories of being the only non-white fifth grader to win a Daughters of the American Revolution essay contest to how it felt to be a brown-skinned New Yorker on 9/11. As earnest and moving as they are sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, these are the stories that have formed one American life.

Trinity: A Graphic History of the First Atomic Bomb


Jonathan Fetter-Vorm - 2012
    This sweeping historical narrative traces the spark of invention from the laboratories of nineteenth-century Europe to the massive industrial and scientific efforts of the Manhattan Project. Along the way, Fetter-Vorm takes special care to explain the fundamental science of nuclear reactions. With the clarity and accessibility that only a graphic book can provide, Trinity transports the reader into the core of a nuclear reaction—into the splitting atoms themselves.The power of the atom was harnessed in a top-secret government compound in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where some of the greatest scientific minds in the world gathered together to work on the bomb. Fetter-Vorm showcases J. Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, and General Leslie Groves, the fathers of the atomic bomb, whose insights unleashed the most devastating explosion known to humankind. These brilliant scientists wrestled daily with both the difficulty of building an atomic weapon and the moral implications of actually succeeding.When the first bomb finally went off at a test site code-named Trinity, the world was irreversibly thrust into a new and terrifying age. With powerful renderings of the catastrophic events at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Fetter-Vorm unflinchingly chronicles the far-reaching political, environmental, and ethical effects of this new discovery. Richly illustrated and deeply researched, Trinity is a dramatic, informative, and thought-provoking book on one of the most significant and harrowing events in history.

Alice in Sunderland


Bryan Talbot - 2007
    In the time of Lewis Carroll it was the greatest shipbuilding port in the world. To this city that gave the world the electric light bulb, the stars and stripes, the millennium, the Liberty Ships and the greatest British dragon legend came Carroll in the years preceding his most famous book, Alice in Wonderland, and here are buried the roots of his surreal masterpiece. Enter the famous Edwardian palace of varieties, The Sunderland Empire, for a unique experience: an entertaining and epic meditation on myth, history and storytelling and decide for yourself - does Sunderland really exist?

The Unwritten, Vol. 1: Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity


Mike Carey - 2010
    His father created the Tommy Taylor fantasy series, boy-wizard novels with popularity on par with Harry Potter. The problem is Dad modeled the fictional epic so closely to Tom's real life that fans are constantly comparing him to his counterpart, turning him into the lamest variety of Z-level celebrity. In the final novel, it's even implied that the fictional Tommy will crossover into the real world, giving delusional fans more excuses to harass Tom.When an enormous scandal reveals that Tom might really be a boy-wizard made flesh, Tom comes into contact with a very mysterious, very deadly group that's secretly kept tabs on him all his life. Now, to protect his own life and discover the truth behind his origins, Tom will travel the world, eventually finding himself at locations all featured on a very special map -- one kept by the deadly group that charts places throughout world history where fictions have impacted and tangibly shaped reality, those stories ranging from famous literary works to folktales to pop culture. And in the process of figuring out what it all means, Tom will find himself having to figure out a huge conspiracy mystery that spans the entirety of the history of fiction.Collecting: The Unwritten 1-5