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Nonplayer #1
Nate Simpson - 2011
But in the online fantasy world of Jarvath, she's an elite warrior. When she slays the wife of celebrity game character King Heremoth, her fame seems all but guaranteed - that is, until the game spins totally out of control.
The Property
Rutu Modan - 2013
As they get to know modern Warsaw, Regina is forced to recall difficult things about her past, and Mica begins to wonder if maybe their reasons for coming aren’t a little different than what her grandmother led her to believe.
Yiddishkeit: Jewish Vernacular and the New Land
Harvey PekarBarry Deutsch - 2011
We hear words like nosh, schlep, and schmutz all the time, but how did these words come to pepper American English? In Yiddishkeit: Jewish Vernacular and the New Land, Harvey Pekar and Paul Buhle trace the influence of Yiddish from medieval Europe to the tenements of New York’s Lower East Side. This comics anthology contains original stories by notable writers and artists such as Barry Deutsch, Peter Kuper, Spain Rodriguez, and Sharon Rudahl. Through illustrations, comics art, and a full-length play, four major themes are explored: culture, performance, assimilation, and the revival of the language. The last fully realized work by Harvey Pekar, this book is a thoughtful compilation that reveals the far-reaching influences of Yiddish.Praise for Yiddishkeit: “The book is about what Neal Gabler in his introduction labels ‘Jewish sensibility.’ It pervades this volume, which he acknowledges is messy; he writes: ‘You really can't define Yiddishkeit neatly in words or pictures. You sort of have to feel it by wading into it.’ The book does this with gusto.” —New York Times “Yiddishkeit is as colorful, bawdy, and charming as the culture it seeks to represent.” —Print magazine “every bit of it brimming with the charm and flavor of its subject and seamlessly meshing with the text to create a genuinely compelling, scholarly comics experience” —Publishers Weekly“Yiddishkeit is a book that truly informs about Jewish culture and, in the process, challenges readers to pick apart their own vocabulary.” —Chicago Tribune “a postvernacular tour de force” —The Forward “A fascinating and enlightening effort that takes full use of the graphic storytelling medium in an insightful and revelatory way.” —The Miami Herald “With a loving eye Pekar and Buhle extract moments and personalities from Yiddish history.” —Hadassah “gorgeous comix-style portraits of Yiddish writers” ––Tablet “Yiddishkeit has managed to survive, if just barely, not because there are individuals dedicated to its survival, though there are, but because Yiddishkeit is an essential part of both the Jewish and the human experience.” —Neal Gabler, author of An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood, from his introduction
The Artist
Anna Haifisch - 2016
Plagued with doubt, the artist is confronted by setbacks punctuated with occasional glimpses of recognition. Based on Haifisch’s own experiences as an illustrator in Germany and the US, The Artist has most recently run as a serialised comic in Vice Magazine to critical acclaim. Her work has also been published in the anthologies Two Fast Colour and Smoke Signal as well as the storytelling studio Narratively.
Never Ending Summer
Allison Cole - 2004
Parties, excessive drinking, and financial instability add to the commotion. Drawn in a beautiful minimal style with delicate two-color printing.
Notes for a War Story
Gipi - 2004
Obviously there were other wars going on, but they didn't have anything to do with us. There were wars for blacks. Wars for Arabs. Wars for Slavs. Our war started on the 18th of January, and in a few days, everything had changed."So recounts Giuliano, a loner among outsiders, one of three young drifters caught up in the whirlwind of a war in the Balkans. The three boys are like passing shadows; they live in abandoned houses, dodge the occasional bomb, and steal car parts for money. Meeting Felix—a powerful, fast-talking mercenary—changes everything for them. Felix is an expert manipulator; he speaks to their ambition and to their desires for power, wealth, and purpose. They're instantly hooked, especially the trio's unofficial leader, Stefano, and they soon escalate from petty crime to working on behalf of a mafia-style militia, bullying and extorting money in Felix's name. But as Giuliano comes to realize, they don't know what they're fighting for—if they're even fighting for anything.Notes for a War Story is an astonishing look at life in a lawless, war-torn nation, heightened by the harsh, moving, pencil and watercolor artwork of Italy's best graphic novel author.
White Rapids
Pascal Blanchet - 2006
In the first English translation of his work, Blanchet seamlessly blends fact and fiction as he weaves together the official history of the town and snapshots of the quotidian life of its residents. Founded in 1928 in an isolated region of Quebec forest, the town was conceived and constructed by the Shawinigan Water & Power Company to function as a fully equipped, self-contained living community for workers at the nearby dam and their families. Intended as an incentive to lure workers to the remote and inaccessible region, White Rapids provided its residents with all the luxuries of middle-class modern life in a pastoral setting-until the town was abruptly shut down in 1971, when the company changed hands.Blanchet's unique, streamlined, retro-inspired aesthetic draws on art deco and fifties modernist design to vividly conjure up idyllic scenes of lazy summer days and crisp winter nights in White Rapids, transporting the reader back to a more innocent time.
The Nikopol Trilogy
Enki Bilal - 1992
The tale is a unique mix of science fiction, anxiety, humor, and strangeness from Europe's premier comics creator, Enki Bilal.This hardcover volume presents The Carnival of Immortals, The Woman Trap, and Equator Cold, three of Europe's best-selling graphic novels of all time.
Pulphope: The Art of Paul Pope
Paul Pope - 2007
Containing many unseen pieces of art and comics from the creator who has brought us THB, Heavy Liquid and 100%.
Sabrina
Nick Drnaso - 2018
Rate your stress level from 1 to 5, 5 being severe. Are you experiencing depression or thoughts of suicide? Is there anything in your personal life that is affecting your duty?When Sabrina disappears, an airman in the U.S. Air Force is drawn into a web of suppositions, wild theories, and outright lies. He reports to work every night in a bare, sterile fortress that serves as no protection from a situation that threatens the sanity of Teddy, his childhood friend and the boyfriend of the missing woman. Sabrina’s grieving sister, Sandra, struggles to fill her days as she waits in purgatory. After a videotape surfaces, we see devastation shown through a cinematic lens, as true tragedy is distorted when fringe thinkers and conspiracy theorists begin to interpret events to fit their own narratives.The follow-up to Nick Drnaso’s Beverly, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Sabrina depicts a modern world devoid of personal interaction and responsibility, where relationships are stripped of intimacy through glowing computer screens. Presenting an indictment of our modern state, Drnaso contemplates the dangers of a fake-news climate. Timely and articulate, Sabrina leaves you gutted, searching for meaning in the aftermath of disaster.
Gaylord Phoenix
Edie Fake - 2007
Edie Fake confronts the reader with violent and unexpected manifestations of sexual connection and romantic possession as the Gaylord Phoenix searches for his lost love, his origins and his place in the world.
Beowulf
Gareth Hinds - 2007
Grendel’s black blood runs thick as Beowulf defeats the monster and his hideous mother, while somber hues overcast the hero’s final, fatal battle against a raging dragon. Speeches filled with courage and sadness, lightning-paced contests of muscle and will, and funeral boats burning on the fjords are all rendered in glorious and gruesome detail. Told for more than a thousand years, Beowulf’s heroic saga finds a true home in this graphic novel edition.
The Portable Doonesbury
G.B. Trudeau - 1993
Incorporating all the essential daily strips and full-color Sundays, The Portable Doonesbury is an unblinking analysis of history in the making. The days of the 1992 elections are covered here, including: the controversial (and newsmaking) strips about Dan Quayle's DEA file; a long look under the hood of a tiny, deeply disturbed Texas billionaire; and a consideration of the mysterious sway a dark-horse candidate from Arkansas held over political reporters. The Portable Doonesbury also encompasses the Gulf War - from B.D.'s off-shore fling with a superior officer to Duke's grand opening of Club Scud, home of the $50 hamburger. Whether read on the road or in the safety of an armchair, The Portable Doonesbury is a funny, insightful chronicle of our times.
It Was the War of the Trenches
Jacques Tardi - 1993
(His very first—rejected—comics story dealt with the subject, as does his most recent work, the two-volume Putain de Guerre.) But It Was the War of the Trenches is Tardi’s defining, masterful statement on the subject, a graphic novel that can stand shoulder to shoulder with Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front and Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms.Tardi is not interested in the national politics, the strategies, or the battles. Like Remarque, he focuses on the day to day of the grunts in the trenches, and, with icy, controlled fury and disgust, with sardonic yet deeply sympathetic narration, he brings that existence alive as no one has before or since. Yet he also delves deeply into the underlying causes of the war, the madness, the cynical political exploitation of patriotism. And in a final, heartbreaking coda, Tardi grimly itemizes the ghastly human cost of the war, and lays out the future 20th century conflicts, all of which seem to spring from this global burst of insanity.Trenches features some of Tardi’s most stunning artwork. Rendered in an inhabitually lush illustrative style, inspired both by abundant photographic documentation and classic American war comics, augmented by a sophisticated, gorgeous use of Craftint tones, trenches is somehow simultaneously atypical and a perfect encapsulation of Tardi’s mature style. It is the indisputable centerpiece of Tardi’s oeuvre.It Was the War of the Trenches has been an object of fascination for North American publishers: RAW published a chapter in the early 1980s, and Drawn and Quarterly magazine serialized a few more in the 1990s. But only a small fraction of Trenches has ever been made available to the English speaking public (in now out of print publications); the Fantagraphics edition, the third in an ongoing collection of the works of this great master, finally remedies this situation.
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.