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Wally Gropius
Tim Hensley - 2010
When the elder Thaddeus Gropius confronts Wally with the boilerplate plot ultimatum that he must marry "the saddest girl in the world" or be disinherited, a yarn unravels that is part screwball comedy and part unhinged parable on the lucrativeness of changing your identity.Hensley's dialogue is witty, lyrical, sampled, dada, and elliptical--all in the service of a very bizarre mystery. There's sex, violence, rock and roll, intrigue, and betrayal--all brought home in Hensley's truly inimitable style.Created during an era when another well-off "W" was stuffing the coffers of the morbidly solvent, Wally Gropius transforms futile daydreams and nightmares into the absurdity of capital.
Dockwood
Jon McNaught - 2012
The work is certainly poetic but not precious or twee. And the drawings are beautiful. Masterful stuff for someone so young."—Seth, author of Wimbledon Green and George Sprott: 1894�1975 in TimeDockwood is a small town in the Southeast of England, seven miles east of Brampton Moor. It has a population of 26,000 and is home to a bowling alley, a boating lake, and Willowbrook Outlet Village.It's a cloudy Tuesday in October and the residents of the town are going about their business as usual. In Elmsview Nursing Home, a kitchen porter dutifully prepares lunch for residents. Elsewhere, a council worker sweeps the fallen leaves from the pavements. Along Nettlefield Road, a paperboy is delivering his daily round. And in the trees, swallows gather noisily in preparation for their annual migration.In this new work, Jon McNaught weaves together the everyday lives of three locals against an evocative backdrop of autumnal transitions. Bittersweet and contemplative, Dockwood is for anyone who believes the stories that take place within life's small moments can often be the most meaningful of all.Jon McNaught is a printmaker and cartoonist living in Bristol, England. He also works as a printmaking instructor at the University of the West of England. He has produced comic strips for Nobrow, Art Review, and Stripburger, among others. His first book Birchfield Close was published in 2010 by Nobrow Press, as was his second, Pebble Island.
Crawl Space
Jesse Jacobs - 2017
But in the fraught realm of adolescence, can friendship survive the appeal of the surreal?Jesse Jacobs was born in Moncton, NB, and now draws comics and things from his home in Hamilton, ON. In 2009, his books Small Victories and Blue Winter were short listed at the Doug Wright Awards for Canadian Cartooning. He received the Gene Day Award for Canadian Comic Book Self-Publisher of 2008. Even the Giants (AdHouse, 2011) marked his major publishing debut after several award-winning, self-published titles, and his work has appeared in the acclaimed Latvian comics anthology š!, as well as the 2012 edition The Best American Comics edited by Françoise Mouly and published Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. He made his debut with Koyama Press in 2012 with the psychedelic creation myth By This Shall You Know Him, which was followed by the trippy take on nature versus nurture, Safari Honeymoon in 2014.
Maakies
Tony Millionaire - 2000
weekly newspapers, including the L.A. New Times and Seattle Stranger. This first collection, designed by Chip Kidd and Millionaire, reprints every strip from its 1994 inception through early 2000. Maakies features the nautical adventures of an alcoholic crow and suicidal ape, and includes an introduction by Andy Dick.
Pretending Is Lying
Dominique Goblet - 2007
In a series of dazzling fragments-skipping through time, and from raw, slashing color to delicate black and white-Goblet examines the most important relationships in her life: with her partner, Guy Marc; with her daughter, Nikita; and with her parents. The result is an unnerving comedy of paternal dysfunction, an achingly ambivalent love story (with asides on Thomas Pynchon and the Beach Boys), and a searing account of childhood trauma-a dizzying, unforgettable view of a life in progress and a tour de force of the art of comics.
Ripple: A Predilection for Tina
Dave Cooper - 2003
Unlike those works, Ripple is a highly realistic story in terms of subject matter and drawing style. Martin is a floundering painter desperately attempting to pursue his fine art inclinations rather than toil in the world of commercial art. He hires a homely model, Tina, to pose for a series of "erotic" paintings that he hopes will be his breakthrough into the gallery world. Over time, Martin and Tina's relationship evolves from a tenuous working relationship to a confused sexual one. Martin's initial repulsion for Tina slowly turns to attraction and eventually lust, causing him to re-evaluate his own notions of beauty and sexuality. Meanwhile, Tina's own motives behind working for Martin are slowly turned upside down as well, building the book towards its inevitably explosive end. Throughout it all, Ripple is a complex love story poked and prodded from all angles, from Martin and Tina's physical and emotional feelings toward each other, Martin's dishonesty to himself, Tina's self-loathing, and everything in between. Sad, funny, and often uncomfortably titillating, Ripple is a remarkably introspective graphic novel, rendered with kinetic realism in a pen technique that calls to mind a more controlled Edward Sorel and Jules Feiffer.
Berlin, Vol. 1: City of Stones
Jason Lutes - 2000
Kurt Severing, a journalist, and Marthe Muller, an art student, are the central figures in a broad cast of characters intertwined with the historical events unfolding around them. City of Stones covers eight months in Berlin, from September 1928 to May Day, 1929, meticulously documenting the hopes and struggles of its inhabitants as their future is darkened by a glowing shadow.
The Red Monkey Double Happiness Book
Joe Daly - 2009
Set in sun-drenched Cape Town, South Africa, The Red Monkey Double Happiness Book — featuring two full-length stories, “The Leaking Cello Case” and “John Wesley Harding” — is stuffed to the gills with mystery, suspense, action, adventure, conspiracy theories, cool cars, and excellent weed as Dave and his freeloading pal Paul, well-meaning stoners in the tradition of Cheech & Chong and Harold & Kumar, thwart criminal malfeasance even as they ponder the larger questions, such as, “What steps can I personally take to help protect the Earth and the species that inhabit it?” (though most people’s answers to these questions don’t involve sword fights and hovercrafts).Joe Daly brings a refreshingly original—and utterly hilarious—voice to the comics medium, a dry, deadpan wit anchored in everyday reality combined with unnervingly deranged plots, rendered with a hyper-detailed, half-realistic and half-cartoony Tintin-style crispness.
Three Shadows
Cyril Pedrosa - 2007
The taste of cherries, the cool shade, the smell of the river... That was how we lived, in a vale among the hills—sheltered from storms, ignorant of the world, as though on an island, peaceful and untroubled.And then...And then everything changed.Can you ever escape your fate?Three shadows stand outside the house—and Louis and Lise know why the spectral figures are there. The shadows have come for Louis and Lise’s son, and nothing anyone can do will stop them. Louis cannot let his son die without trying to prevent it, so the family embarks on a journey to the ends of the earth, fleeing death.Poignant and suspenseful, Three Shadows is a haunting story of love and grief, told in moving text and sweeping black and white artwork by Cyril Pedrosa.
Bradley of Him
Connor Willumsen - 2019
The lines between character and actor are blurring under the verisimilitude of the Vegas strip, the desert sun and the impossibly shiny surface of Bradley’s shades.
Deadman, Book One
Neal Adams - 1968
A mysterious deity called Rama Kushna gives Boston Brand the chance to revisit the land of the living as Deadman, with the mission of finding his murderer.DEADMAN features spectacular, bravura artwork by Neal Adams, then leading the field with an amazing, hyper-realistic style and trompe-l’oeil unlike anything seen in comics before or since.
Fables: Covers
James Jean - 2008
Also included is a afterword by celebrated Fables writer/creator Bill Willingham. Designed and annotated by the artist, this deluxe, oversized hardcover includes ten vellum sleeve inserts, an embossed case and other fine art details that make Fables: Covers by James Jean as elegant and unique as the Fables covers themselves.
Gilded Lilies
Jillian Tamaki - 2006
Included is a reprint of her mini-comic, City of Champions, as well as a new comic, The Tapemines, an 80-page wordless scroll about feral children in forests of cassette tape. With inspirations including German expressionists Georg Grosz and Otto Dix, as well as Japanese and Inuit printmakers, Tamaki's unique style often celebrates the inherent beauty in the grotesque, while remaining character-driven and focused on observational narrative.
Hellbound Lifestyle
Alabaster Pizzo - 2016
Kaeleigh Forsyth wryly observed and recorded the weird moments of her life in private notes on her phone, and now her friend Alabaster Pizzo has illustrated these secret thoughts in hilarious detail.
Alack Sinner: The Age of Innocence
Carlos Sampayo - 1984
For this collection, Munoz has painstakingly reviewed every page -- every panel -- making clarifications, adding invaluable insight to this provacative story. Sinner is a hard-boiled private detective whose adventures are played out to a jazz soundtrack in a noir New York from 1975 through the 2000s. The stories are imbued with a deep political conscience and present a scathing critique of corruption in society, juxtaposed with meditations on the nature of violence and exile. The authhors have also rearranged the stories in chronological order of the characters and events, rather than dates of first publication, providing a novel reading experience for both new fans and old. The Age of Innocence collects eleven stories, including "Talkin' with Joe," "The Webster Case," "The Fillmore Case," "Viet Blues," "Life Ain't a Comic Book, Baby," "Twinkle, Twinkle," and "Dark City." Alack Sinner is an international bestseller and between them Munoz and Sampayo are winners of Europe's top comics awards.