Comedy

Comedy graphic novels

Lucky

Gabrielle Bell documents the mundane details of her below-minimum wage, twenty-something existence in Brooklyn, NY with a subtle humor.

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Gabrielle Bell (Mome, Drawn & Quarterly Showcase) documents the mundane details of her below-minimum wage, twenty-something existence in Brooklyn, NY with a subtle humor. Her simple, unadorned drawing style, heavy narration and biting wit chronicles transient roommates who communicate only through post-it notes; aspiring artists who sublet tiny rooms in leaky, greasy broken-down border-house loft apartments crawling with bugs, cats and bad art. Bell tackles a string of forgettable, unrelated jobs including nude modeling, artist's assistant, art teacher, and jewelry maker that only serve to bolster her despair, boredom and discomfort in her own skin. Bell's self-scrutiny leads her to dream sequences that allow her to rise above her banal actuality and hyper-awareness. Bell fantasizes about her vision of a perfect world as she becomes the accomplished artist and world traveler she longs to be. Bell's daily comics allow her to escape the harsh, judgmental gaze of the world and the monotony of daily life. Her unpolished art speaks to a desire to record all the messy details while the pain and confusion is still fresh. Coming of age amidst the zine revolution, cartoonist Gabrielle Bell has been creating her comics to much acclaim, even winning an Ignatz Award for the self-published serialization of Lucky."

Price: €16.95

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Jimmy Corrigan: Or, The Smartest Kid On Earth

Ware's book is a semi-autobiographical account of his first contact with the father who abandoned his family.

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This first book from Chicago author Chris Ware is a pleasantly-decorated view at a lonely and emotionally-impaired "everyman" (Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth), who is provided, at age 36, the opportunity to meet his father for the first time. An improvisatory romance which gingerly deports itself between 1890's Chicago and 1980's small town Michigan, the reader is helped along by thousands of colored illustrations and diagrams, which, when read rapidly in sequence, provide a convincing illusion of life and movement. The bulk of the work is supported by fold-out instructions, an index, paper cut-outs, and a brief apology, all of which concrete to form a rich portrait of a man stunted by a paralyzing fear of being disliked.

Price: €19.95

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Against Pain

Short stories from the radiant “cute-brut” world of a truly remarkable artist.

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Against Pain is the first collection of multipage anthology pieces by Ron Regé, Jr. The storytelling side of his expressive work is featured in these comic strips gathered from McSweeney’s, The New York Times, Kramers Ergot, NON, Rosetta, Arthur, The Comics Journal, and Drawn & Quarterly’s anthology. Suicide bombers, art appreciation, a Lynda Barry “cover,” and even a Tylenol-sponsored comic about pain are brought together under the theme of suffering and

how people cope with it. Against Pain also includes the alt-comics zine classic Boys: a twenty-two-page collaborative comic—considered by many to be Regé’s finest work—illustrating the “lust life” of a friend in explicitly honest and hilarious detail.

Price: €21.95

Aya

Aya tells the story of its nineteen-year-old heroine, the studious and clear-sighted Aya, her easygoing friends Adjoua and Bintou, and their meddling relatives and neighbors.

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Abouet could have just wanted to tell a sweet, simple story of the Ivory Coast of her childhood as a counterpoint to the grim tide of catastrophic news, which is all most Westerners know of Africa. But in Aya, Abouet, along with Parisian artist Oubrerie, does quite a bit more than that, spinning a multifaceted romantic comedy that would satisfy even without any political agenda behind it. Set in 1970, Aya follows the travails of some teenage girls in the peaceful Abidjan working-class neighborhood of Yopougon (which they call 'Yop City, like something out of an American movie'), as they strive for love and the right boyfriend. Yop City, as detailed in Oubrerie's fluid and cartoonish black and white drawings, is a mellow place where disco rules the night and practically the worst thing these girls have to worry about is the disapproval of their parentsor in the case of the quiet title character, criticism from those who wish she were more boy-crazed and less focused on a career. It's a quick piece of work, but memorable in mood, capturing the country's brief flicker of postcolonial peaceful prosperity before descending into the modern maelstrom of corruption and violence we know only too well." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Price: €18.95

Aya Of Yop City

[Aya] wittily delves into both the political and the pop during an enchanted era when anything seemed possible.

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Abouet and Oubrerie's sequel to their 2007 graphic novel Aya is a charming comedy of manners about a group of young women — a sort of Jane Austen scenario transplanted to the Ivory Coast of the late '70s. Aya's friend Adjoua has a new baby, and everybody's pitching in to help take care of him, although he looks rather less like the purported father than like an irresponsible bounder by the name of Mamadou. Meanwhile, their starry-eyed friend, Bintou, is plunging into a new romance with a man whose urbane extravagance blinds her to his sneakiness. Mostly, though, this volume is about the cheerful, communitarian spirit of the place and time it sketches out — a moment of postcolonial African history when people didn't have a lot of resources (Adjoua is entering a beauty contest in the hopes of winning cooking oil for the fritters she sells), but had high hopes for the future. Oubrerie's scrappy, witty pen-and-ink artwork is a small delight: everybody's got exaggerated but subtly expressive body language and facial expressions, and the story's dashed-off but dead-on settings — with traffic blocked by wandering sheep and tin roofs near ambitious office buildings — make its tone of historical transition between tradition and modernization even more vivid. (Sept.)" Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Price: €19.95

Acme Novelty Library #19

The penultimate teen issue of the ACME Novelty Library appears this autumn with a new chapter from the electrifying experimental narrative “Rusty Brown,” which examines the life, work, and teaching techniques of one of its central real-life protagonists, W. K. Brown.

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A previously marginal figure in the world of speculative fiction, Brown’s widely anthologized first story, “The Seeing Eye Dogs of Mars,” garnered him instant acclaim and the coveted White Dwarf Award for Best New Writer when it first appeared in the pages of Nebulous in the late 1950s, but his star was quickly eclipsed by the rise of such talents as Anton Jones, J. Sterling Imbroglio, and others of the so-called psychovisionary movement. (Modern scholarship concedes, however, that they now owe a not inconsequential aesthetic debt to Brown.)

New surprises and discoveries concerning the now legendarily reclusive and increasingly influential writer mark this nineteenth number of the ACME Novelty Library, itself a regular award-winning periodical, lauded for its clear lettering and agreeable coloring, which, as any cultured reader knows, are cornerstones of any genuinely serious literary effort.

Full color, seventy-eight pages, with hardbound covers, full indicia, and glue, the ACME Novelty Library offers its readers a satisfying, if not thrilling, rocket ride into the world of unkempt imagination and pulse-pounding excitement.

Hardcover, 80 pages

Price: €15.95

Spent

Meet the original anti-hero, Joe Matt: a master of a domain that includes over twenty-three self-edited eight-hour-long videotapes of bootlegged pornography.

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Meet the original anti-hero, Joe Matt: a master of a domain that includes over twenty-three self-edited eight-hour-long videotapes of bootlegged pornography; a penny-pincher who never fails to make a dime off his friends; a chronic masturbator who doesn't understand why he never has a girlfriend; an obsessive collector frantically searching for the toys of his childhood; a callous son who throws out every gift his adoring mother gives him; a man so lazy that he urinates in a bottle rather than walk to the bathroom. Spent is Joe Matt's first new trade hardcover in years, and it collects in a re-edited and re-colored form his best storyline from the past 4 issues of Peepshow.

Price: €18.95

Moomin Book One

one episode opens with Moomin attempting suicide; reunited with his missing parents, he's abandoned by them again.

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From 1953 to 1960, the late Finnish artist Jansson drew a comic strip about her creation Moomin for the London Evening News. Though the strip was an enormous success around the world, this is the first North American edition of an expressive and endearing classic. Moomin's stories begin simply (he needs to rid his home of freeloaders, or goes on a family vacation) and snowball into a series of amusing, whimsical misadventures, which can involve elements of the fantastic, like magic, monsters and ghosts. Although Moomin, his parents and his girlfriend, Snorkmaiden, are trolls, they look like friendly hippopotamuses. Moomin is reminiscent of a big, chubby baby; there is something of Charlie Brown in him: Moomin is like a child beset by life's troubles and usually (but not always) too passive to get angry and fight back. Adults should appreciate Jansson's satire — although she always provides happy endings, dark undercurrents are at play: one episode opens with Moomin attempting suicide; reunited with his missing parents, he's abandoned by them again. Jansson's deceptively childlike style masterfully conveys her characters' personalities. Moomin's mouth rarely appears, but his eyes, his brows and his gestures are expressive and endearing." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Price: €18.95

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Moomin Book Two

In the second volume of Tove Jansson's humorous yet melancholic Moomin comic strip, we get four new stories about jealousy, competition, child rearing, and self-reinvention.

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In the second volume of Tove Jansson's humorous yet melancholic Moomin comic strip, we get four new stories about jealousy, competition, child rearing, and self-reinvention.

The Moomins try to hibernate in the fashion of their ancestors but insomnia places them smack-dab into a winter carnival with the winter-sports-loving Mr. Brisk. The fickle and eternally lovestruck Mymble and Snorkmaiden find themselves in competition over a thrilling new man. Moominmamma meets her new neighbor, the Fillyjonk, causing her to hire the depressed and secretive Misabel as her new maid. Mymble's mother arrives on the Moomin family's doorstep with her seventeen new children. Finally, a prophet arrives on the scene declaring that the happy Moomins are in fact not happy at all and need to get back to nature and be free. Moomin, of course, becomes more and more miserable the freer he gets.

Price: €18.95

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Moomin Book Three

This third volume returns to Moominvalley, where its beloved inhabitants get tangled up in five new stories.

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Moomin has been swiftly making its way into the hearts of North Americans ever since Drawn & Quarterly began collecting the strip in 2006. It debuted in the London Evening News in 1954 and has become the fastest-selling D+Q series to date. Fifty years ago, Tove Jansson’s observations of everyday life—whimsical but with biting undertones—easily caught the attention of an international audience and still resonate today.

This third volume returns to Moominvalley, where its beloved inhabitants get tangled up in five new stories. Moomin falls in love with a damsel in distress, an unseasonably warm spell turns the valley into a tropical rain forest, and a flying saucer crashes into Moominmamma’s garden. Moominpappa decides to live out his dream of occupying a lighthouse and writing a great seaside novel, only to discover that he hates the sea so close up and has no interest in writing about it, and a variety of curious clubs spring up in the valley. Moomin and Moominmamma do their level best to avoid the whole mess but, of course, get drawn into the muddle.

Price: €17.95

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Chance In Hell

The three-act story follows our heroine as she is adopted by a decent man who raises her well, and she eventually marries a kind, well-to-do man, only to discover that she can't relate to the good life and the comforts it provides.

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A brilliant new original work from the creator of Palomar.

Gilbert Hernandez's first original graphic novel from Fantagraphics follows on the heels of his acclaimed Sloth from DC's Vertigo Comics in 2006. Chance In Hell tells the story about a little orphan girl who lives in the slum of slums. Nobody knows who she is or where she's from, but her fellow shantytown inhabitants collectively look over her. The three-act story follows our heroine as she is adopted by a decent man who raises her well, and she eventually marries a kind, well-to-do man, only to discover that she can't relate to the good life and the comforts it provides.

Hernandez wowed critics in 2003 with his epic life's work, Palomar, collecting more than 15 years of groundbreaking comics that Booklist called "the most substantive single work that the comics medium has yet produced." Chance In Hell further establishes Hernandez as one of the great cartoonists of our age.

Price: €15.95

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Maybe Later

Maybe Later is a rare opportunity to discover each of the artists in his own right.

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These two famed French cartoonists are a longtime team, but here they split up for the first time to create a comic that exposes the personal side of creativity. Yet the book has more than just behind the scenes info. By the end this becomes a touching story about the lives of two artists facing middle-age. The cartoonists tell their separate stories in different styles. Berberian takes the mundane events in his life and infuses them with comical asides drawn in a loose and easy manner. This technique has more than comedic value; it also provides insight into what a life soaked in pop culture is like. He makes use of subjects like the Simpsons and Batman to examine his desire to capture a childhood that is gone forever. Dupuy starts off his comic in a similar nervous state, this time about how egocentric this book can be. Then he is told his mother has died and he sums up her life in six graceful panels. Dupuy's section deals with a deeper kind of loss and how it, too, affects growing up. Instead of looking back, Dupuy looks forward to a world that can seem very scary. Even when they're not creating a strip together, Dupuy and Berberian complement each other perfectly. (June)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Price: €17.95

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Paul Goes Fishing

Paul Goes Fishing is a fine graphic novel — not great, not bad, but firmly in the middle, with a sharp sense of craft and a warm heart guiding it.

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A native Quebecois artist, Rabagliati has chronicled a thinly veiled version of his artistic and interior life in his previous three books, and the present volume finds his stand-in, Paul, entering into adult responsibilities with his fianc, Lucie, and thoughts of a child on the way. On a long summer break, Paul remembers his childhood vacations and his own upbringing and early love affair with Lucie. Meanwhile, Lucie has a very difficult time sustaining pregnancies. All of this is told in a matter-of-fact, somewhat flat manner. Rabagliati is an everyman chronicler in that way — telling the facts of a story with no artificial drama or hysterics. Unfortunately, this makes for a somewhat dull read. This slightly boring telling is redeemed by Rabagliati's wonderful skill with a pen. His cartooning is steeped in the clean-line style of Herg and other Europeans, and he cleverly delineates characters and their environs in this simple, elegant and reductive style. It's a pleasure to look at, even with somewhat limited returns. Paul Goes Fishing is a fine graphic novel — not great, not bad, but firmly in the middle, with a sharp sense of craft and a warm heart guiding it. You know summer's on the way when the beachy jacket art starts showing up. Here are two by Nantucket writers set on the island, where you can't throw a lobster roll without hitting a Claire or a Clare." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Price: €18.95

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David Boring

a fragmented slice of life and surrealistic fantasy about luckless, 19-year-old David Boring.

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Meet David Boring: a nineteen-year-old security guard with a tortured innner life and an obsessive nature. When he meets the girl of his dreams, things begin to go awry: what seems too good to be true apparently is. And what seems truest in Boring's life is that, given the right set of circumstances (in this case, an orgiastic cascade of vengeance, humiliation and murder) the primal nature of humandkind will come inexorably to the fore.

"Boring finds love with a mysterious woman named Wanda, loses her and sort of finds her again. He also gets shot in the head (twice) and stranded on an island with his brutish family. Meanwhile, the world may or may not be ending soon. And did I mention that much of this is hilariously funny?" — Time

Price: €14.99

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