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In 1976, a fledgling magazine held forth the the idea that comics could be art. In 2016, comics intended for an adult readership are reviewed favorably in the New York Times, enjoy panels devoted to them at Book Expo America, and sell in bookstores comparable to prose efforts of similar weight and intent. We Told You So: Comics as Art is an oral history about Fantagraphics Books’ key role in helping build and shape an art movement around a discredited, ignored and fading expression of Americana. It includes appearances by Chris Ware, Art Spiegelman, Harlan Ellison, Stan Lee, Daniel Clowes, Frank Miller, and more.
The home front during World War II was one of blackouts, Victory Gardens, war bonds and scrap drives. It was also a time of social upheaval with women on the assembly line and in the armed forces and African-Americans serving and working in a Jim Crow war effort. See how Superman, Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse and others helped fight World War II via comic books and strips, single-panel and editorial cartoons, and even ads. Cartoons for Victory showcases wartime work by cartoonists such as Charles Addams (The Addams Family), Harold Gray (Little Orphan Annie), Harvey Kurtzman (Mad magazine), Will Eisner, as well as many other known cartoonists. Over 90% of the cartoons and comics in this book have not been seen since their first publication.
Collect the greatest fantasy comic strips from the earliest days of comics. The dawn of the 20th century saw of technological advances that were only dreamed of decades before. One such advance was four-color printing, which brought to life stories inspired by both the technology of the time and the children's fiction enjoyed by a burgeoning middle class. This confluence brought about a unique genre within a new art form--the Fantasy Comic Strip. These pages were a Sunday staple for less than two decades, soon replaced by humorous family comics that more closely mirrored the modern society. But from 1900 to 1915, American newspapers offered some of the most fascinating comics ever printed. A...
*ORIGINAL SERIES NOW STREAMING ON NETFLIX* From the creator of THE END OF THE FUCKING WORLD 'Scary, disturbing and expertly executed . . good if not better than Forsman's most celebrated precursor.' GROVEL Fifteen-year-old Syd feels totally out of place. She's skinny but not 'hot-skinny', she's dealing with the death of her father in silence, and her best friend (who Syd is really in love with) is dating a homophobic bully. Syd's guidance counselor gives her a diary in which to vent her frustration, but Syd has another outlet for her anger, one which threatens to overwhelm her entirely. From acclaimed cartoonist Charles Forsman, I Am Not Okay With This expertly channels teenage ennui while telling a powerful story about the intense and sometimes violent tug of war between trauma and control.
Everything that you need to know about reading, making, and understanding comics can be found in a single Nancy strip by Ernie Bushmiller from August 8, 1959. Paul Karasik and Mark Newgarden’s groundbreaking work How to Read Nancy ingeniously isolates the separate building blocks of the language of comics through the deconstruction of a single strip. No other book on comics has taken such a simple yet methodical approach to laying bare how the comics medium really works. No other book of any kind has taken a single work by any artist and minutely (and entertainingly) pulled it apart like this. How to Read Nancy is a completely new approach towards deep-reading art. In addition, How to Read Nancy is a thoroughly researched history of how comics are made, from their creation at the drawing board to their ultimate destination at the bookstore. Textbook, art book, monogram, dissection, How to Read Nancy is a game changer in understanding how the “simplest” drawings grab us and never leave. Perfect for students, academics, scholars, and casual fans.
You Are There is an unexpected collaboration between the darkly cynical Jacques Tardi and the playful fantasist Jean-Claude Forest (of Barbarella fame). It is set on a small island off the coast of France, where unscrupulous landowners have succeeded in overtaking the land from the last heir of a previously wealthy family. His domain now reduced to the walls that border the patches of land he used to own, the half-mad fellow prowls the walls all day, eking out a living by collecting tolls at each gate. His seemingly hopeless struggle to recover his birthright becomes complicated as the government sees a way of using his plight for the sake of political expediency, and the romantic intervention of the daughter of one of the landowners (who has her own sordid history with the politician) engenders further difficulties. Set in Tardi's preferred early 20th century milieu, You Are There is drawn in his crisp 1980s neo-"clear line" style, gorgeously detailed, with impossibly deep slabs of black.
Comics and modern American advertising exploded into the public conscious at much the same time in the early 20th century. Collected now for the first time, the comics, cartoons, and illustrations from the OTHER career of comics creators Jack Davis, Al Capp, John Romita, Mort Meskin, Ross Andru, Sheldon Moldoff, Neal Adams, Noel Sickles, Stan Drake, Joe Simon, Basil Wolverton, Dik Browne, Clifford McBride, Hank Ketcham, Lou Fine, Daniel Clowes, and many more.
From Garth Stein, the author of the #1 bestseller The Art of Racing in the Rain, and Matthew Southworth, the co-creator of Stumptown come a raucously funny and fast-moving series of graphic novels. James Tucker is the most successful Genetically Modified Human Organism ever created. Half-man, half-goat, Tuck's story unfurls like an action-packed fever dream spanning the Pacific Northwest, from a homeless encampment to a secret sanctuary in the woods where elites perform ritual goat sacrifices. The Cloven Book One features a special full-color four page fold-out spread.
Sunday Press Books presents a masterpiece in comic art by Frank King. Collected for the first time, here are the best Gasoline Alley Sunday comics, starting from the very first Sunday in 1921. King's innovations in art, layout and storytelling brought a new warmth and style to the medium at the dawn of the Golden Age of newspaper comic strips. This book is designed by Chris Ware with an introduction by Jeet Heer. As with the Sunday Press editions of Little Nemo in Slumberland, these incredible Sunday pages are shown digitally restored to their original colorful brilliance and reproduced at full size (16 by 21 inches). The book is filled with images of comics memorabilia and photographs of King's life. It also includes texts on King's life and work by journalist Tim Samuels and comics historian/critic Donald Phelps. Included in the book is a full-sheet cardboard insert replica of a 1920's Skeezix cut-out toy.
"Mit dose kids, society is nix!" So said the Inspector about the Katzenjammer kids, but he could have been speaking of all comic strips in their formative years at the turn of the last century. From the very first color Sunday supplement, comics were a driving force in newspaper sales, even though their crude and often offensive content placed them in a whirl of controversy. Sunday comics presented a wild parody of the world and the culture that surrounded them. Society didn't stand a chance. These are the origins of the American comic strip, born at a time when there were no set styles or formats, when artistic anarchy helped spawn a new medium. Here are the earliest offerings from known greats like R. F. Outcault, George McManus, Winsor McCay, and George Herriman, along with the creations of more than fifty other superb cartoonists; over 150 Sunday comics dating from 1895 to 1915.