He has been a basement- dweller, gallery troll, and a purveyor of forbidden notions. Originally distributed into the world as Xeroxed pamphlets, these “underground comix” reflect the true nature of its nomenclature: Here are the archeological findings of the subterranean ruins of the psyche. Finally, these scattered elements have been compiled into a compact, lushly illustrated bedside reader. Give your cerebellum a tug and become a spelunker of the subconscious as we trespassamong the scorched archaic wastelands of the offspring of apes and fools. Here we find the profane, beautiful progeny of prurient ideals. Immerse yourself in the nocturnal meanderings of unnamed protagonists. Ponder the uncomfortable sexuality of the twins, Cochlea Eustachia. Recoil at the doings of a dwarfish malefactor in Hail Jeffrey, or simply stare at the pretty pictures. Suffice to say that readers of The Squirrel Machine will not be disappointed.The author instructs you not misuse this tome. Poke it gently with a long stick, if you must. Careful, it might ruin the carpet. Placate it with a belly-rub or sweet pastry before it attacks the children. Don’t worry, your tongue won’t stick. If it fits, don’t shove it in too quickly. Keep it as your own cherished object; a shameful, guarded secret. The filter for reality’s blinding glare. Detritus of the Under-Brain. The Unspeakable Thing You Always Knew.FOLLY: The Consequences Of Indiscretion. By one of the most inscrutable and discomforting cartoonists alive.

    He used the elegant draftsmanship and single-panel format of the standard cartoons of the day, but turned them into more than just one-off jokes. With an inimitable mixture of wit, earnestness, and enigmatic surrealism, Dean uses this most ephemeral of forms to explore the deepest mysteries of human existence.What Am I Doing Here? depicts a world at once alien and familiar, in which everyone is naked but act like they’re clothed—a world of club-wielding commuters and byzantine inventions, secret fears, and perverse satisfactions. Through it all strolls (or crawls, or floats, or stumbles) Dean’s unclad Everyman, searching for love, happiness, and the answers to life’s biggest questions.

    D, Drawn and Quarterly), Bardín the Superrealist is a suite of stories, musings and gags that, much like Dan Clowes's Ice Haven, can be read individually or together as one overarching story.Heavily influenced by surrealists such as Luis Bunuel, and graphically by "clear-line" cartoonists from Herge (Tintin) to Chris Ware, Bardín the Superrealist begins when everyman Bardín finds himself suddenly transported (well, at least his upper half) to another dimension, where an "Andalusian Dog" (a reference to Bunuel's Un Chien Andalou) serves as his ill-tempered guide.In a series of vignettes, gags, illustrations, text pieces, and dream stories, ping-ponging back between the surrealist world and the "real" world, Bardín examines, questions, and defends his own beliefs, convictions and philosophies while tangling with the Dog and the Holy Trinity in a variety of guises (including a familiar-looking mouse with red shorts and white gloves).In other stories, he imagines himself in a painting by Brueghel the Elder, tries to deal with his onanism in a productive way, is enlightened, dodges his real "creator" Max in the street, has several horrific nightmares and marvelous hallucinations, and, in the book's climactic episode, "The Sound and the Fury," battles a bona fida dragon. Bardín the Superrealist is a playful, hilarious, thought-provoking (and beautifully illustrated) major work by one of the great European cartoonists.

    After a decade of work and groundbreaking anthologies, "Everything Together" collects his short-story comics, which condense vast amounts of emotion and information into nuanced cartoon narratives. Harkham's classic style is both articulate and expedient. At the center of the book are two vastly different tales: "Poor Sailor," a sea-faring myth of a man gone to find wealth for his love; and "Somersaulting," a kind of fever dream of teenagers in love, wiling away the summer. Alongside these stories are shorter comic strips tackling everything from Napoleon as a tortured artist to touching examinations of Jewish mysticism and life in a shtetl, to satires on contemporary university life. Throughout these tales, Harkham maintains a light touch and emotive wit. The works in this book confirm his place among the best storytellers of his generation.Sammy Harkham was born in Los Angeles in 1980, moving to Sydney, Australia, at the age of 14. He soon started making his own comics and a zine, "Kramers Ergot," which has evolved into one of the most influential comics anthologies published today. His comic strip "Poor Sailor," originally published in "Kramers Ergot" 4, was subsequently included in "Best American Nonrequired Reading of 2004 "and has been published in French, Korean and Italian. "Kramers Ergot" has been on numerous "best of the year" lists including the "LA Weekly," "Time," "The New York Times," "Dazed and Confused," "The Comics Journal" and "Publishers Weekly." In 2006 Harkham started the ongoing comic series, "Crickets," and edited "The Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror," and most recently the eighth volume of "Kramers Ergot." A partner in both the renowned bookstore Family, and the movie theater, Cinefamily, Harkham lives in Los Angeles with his wife and three children.

    Jona is about to move away; he calls his wife, who’s already settled in Berlin, before trying to make plans with friends for one last night on the town. No one bites—they’re all busy, or maybe they just don’t want to party—but he’s determined to make this night something to remember. Victoria is lively and energetic, but surrounded by friends and family who are buzzkills, always worrying about what is best for her. Rodolphe is consoled by a friend and snaps out of his funk, becoming the life of the party. The three careen through the city’s nightlife spots and underbelly, chasing pleasure—or at least a few distractions from the thrum of the humdrum. Each has a series of adventures that reveal them to be teetering on the edge between lucid dream and tooth-grinding nightmare.Vibrantly rendered in Brecht Evens’s swirling watercolors, The City of Belgium continues the critically acclaimed streak of graphic novels he began with The Wrong Place, The Making Of, and Panther. Evens’s darkly comic stories of characters on the verge of personal discovery—people about to become who they will be for the rest of their lives—have never been more beautifully conceived, more intricately planned, than in his magical new graphic novel, The City of Belgium.

    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.

    The stories they tell reflect the political and social issues of their times as well as the broader issues that are still relevant today.Frans Masereel (1899-1972) was born in Belgium and is considered the father of the wordless graphic novel. Graphic Witness includes the first reprint of his classic work, The Passion of a Man, since its 1918 publication in Munich. American Lynd Ward (1905-85), author of the provocative Wild Pilgrimage, is considered among the most important of wordless novelists. Giacomo Patri (1898-1978) was born in Italy and lived in the United States. His White Collar featured an introduction by Rockwell Kent and was used a promotional piece by the labor movement. Southern Cross by Canadian Laurence Hyde (1914-87) was controversial for its criticism of U.S. H-bomb testing in the South Pacific.An introduction by George A. Walker places each wordless novel in its context and examines the influence of these works on contemporary culture, including film, comic books and contemporary graphic novels.Graphic Witness will appeal to readers interested in social issues, printmaking, art history and contemporary culture.

    The protagonist, a moody twenty-something wallowing in depression after a breakup with his long-time girlfriend, finds himself drawn into a paranoid's worst nightmare after his best friend is murdered and the blame is pinned on him. With the help of a single mother who spontaneously throws in her lot with him (not to mention her precocious daughter), he sets out to clear his name. Soon new relationships are forged, dark secrets from the past are revealed, and the real killer comes back into the picture... with a vengeance.

    The first issue, #0, was released in October 1994 by Fantagraphics Books, and a second issue, #1, was released the following January. A third issue (#2) was announced in the pages of other Fantagraphics publications and solicited in Previews but was never published. "I Was Killing When Killing Wasn't Cool", a color short story with a markedly different art style originally intended for issue #2, appeared instead in the anthology Zero Zero. In a 2010 interview, Columbia recalled that the unfinished issue "looked so different that it just didn’t look right, it didn’t look consistent, and it didn’t feel right to keep putting out that same comic book, to try to tell a story where the style is mutating."[1] The series' title is taken from a passage in the William S. Burroughs book Exterminator! (in the chapter "Short Trip Home"). The passage in question is quoted briefly in a story from issue #0, also titled "The Biologic Show".Each issue of The Biologic Show contains several short stories and illustrated poems. Many of the pieces deal with disturbing subject matter such as mutilation, incest, and the occult. Issue #0 introduces three of Columbia's recurring characters: the hapless, Koko the Clown-like Seymour Sunshine in the opening story "No Tomorrow If I Must Return", and the sibling duo Pim and Francie in "Tar Frogs". (Both "Tar Frogs" and the aforementioned "The Biologic Show" had originally appeared in the British comics magazine Deadline but were partially redrawn for Columbia's solo book.) Issue #1 is dominated by the 16-page Pim and Francie story "Peloria: Part One", intended as the start of an ongoing serial. It includes another character, Knishkebibble the Monkey-Boy, who reappears in Columbia's later work. Upon the demise of The Biologic Show Fantagraphics announced that Peloria would be released as a stand-alone graphic novel,[2] but this plan was also abandoned.

    Working at a mirror store, she shows customers their reflections and daydreams about erasing her own. One night, on her way home, she gets her wish. Follow Claire as she wanders invisibly through the city and her own psyche.Daryl Seitchik was born in 1989 and currently lives and works in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She is best known for her semi-autobiographical comic series, Missy, which earned her a nomination for the Ignatz Award for Promising New Talent in 2014. She is nocturnal.

    Drawn in a range of styles asimprovisational as Coltrane and Mingus — everything from loose lineworkto tight pen and ink to gestural pencils — Blutch captures the excitement oflive performance, the lovelorn, and the Great Jazz Detective, who is out butnot down.

    Along the way he meets an old hermit who lives in a treehouse with his loyal dog, a young woman who fights for what she believes and a giant wolf-dragon who threatens their survival.

    Times Book Prizes Finalist (Graphic Novel/Comics) 2016A collection of two new stories from cartoonist and Adventure Time contributor Sam Alden. In "Household," a brother and sister deal with divergent memories of their father and grow closer than ever. In "Backyard," vegans and anarchists share a house, small dramas and bizarre transformations (featuring a new, never before published ending). Designed as a companion volume for the critically acclaimed It Never Happened Again, New Construction cements Sam Alden's reputation as one of the best cartoonists of his generation.Sam Alden Sam Alden is the author of It Never Happened Again, Wicked Chicken Queen, and Lydian, among others. He is a two-time Ignatz winner and four-time nominee, and works full-time as a writer and storyboarder on Cartoon Network's Adventure Time.Praise for Sam Alden's It Never Happened Again:"Alden's natural sense of framing and pace, his willingness to use silent panels to tell stories, and his beautiful (yes, beautiful) pencil images combined to open my eyes to a new idea of what a great comic can be. It helps that he's also an excellent writer—both stories sketch out lonely, lost characters efficiently, and put them each through very different quests for meaning."—Dan Kois, Slate"Two thematically divergent, but devastatingly human portraits from an emerging cartoonist displaying the sort of storytelling and artistic restraint that often only comes after years of toiling away at the drawing board. Alden is a talent to watch."—Publishers Weekly

    HAW! is not for the young or weak of heart!

    Trade paperback.