Top 15 Graphic Novels, Comics & Manga (original) (raw)
December 2022
Time to wrap up 2022, this last month’s slightly reduced offerings still include some exciting highlights well worth your attention. Top of my list is British graphic novelist Paul B. Rainey’s North American debut, collecting his serialised psychodrama, rightly hailed by Neil Gaiman as a ‘masterwork’. The last copies of his acclaimed 2015 debut graphic novel There’s No Time Like The Present from Escape Books are still available…
Liv Stromquist nails and skewers the tantalising promises of romantic love across the ages…
While the sadly late Catherine Pioli recorded her experience battling leukemia in her autobio-graphic memoir…
During the pandemic, Justin Madson’s down-to-earth, human-scale speculative fiction took on added dark significance…
And to wrap up on a more joyful note, V.T. Hamlin’s caveman makes his first of many time-travel escapades in the gloriously designed, first-ever reprint of this vintage colour Sunday strip serial. Thank you for joining me through another year of my PG Tips, and next time we charge ahead into 2023!
Alley Oop Goes Modern: The Complete Sundays Vol. 3 1939-1941
by V.T. Hamlin
Manuscript Press
$75.00
The publisher says:
After the first two volumes from Dark Horse Books in 2014 comes the third in a series, now from Manuscript Press, collecting all the Sunday pages of the classic newspaper strip. This oversize volume presents the first full-colour time-travel adventures of V.T. Hamlin’s intrepid caveman Alley Oop — including every Sunday strip from April 1939 through December 1941, meticulously restored from the original newspaper publications and never before reprinted. 128pgs colour hardcover.
Breathers
by Justin Madson
Dark Horse
$29.99
The publisher says:
Even when our own planet can no longer sustain us, humanity clings to life in this thoughtful dystopia where air itself is deadly.Follow the lives of a small cast of survivors as they struggle to keep going in a world where the air is fatal. A detective must battle not only the deadly air, but his own demons; a lost pair of siblings question the supposed apocalypse; a mother and daughter fight tooth and nail to stay together; and a salesman peddles breathing masks, trying to do some good to make up for the sins of his past. They are all survivors-they are all Breathers. Created, written, and illustrated by Justin Madson, the full nine-issue series originally published by IT’S ALIVE! is now collected together for the first time. Justin Madson is the author of Breathers, Tin Man and Carbon. 464 pages colour paperback.
Broken Social Scene: You Forgot It in People: The Graphic Novel
by Lonnie Nadler, with art by Eric Orchard, Ray Fawkes, Mike Feehan, Diana Nguyen, Scott Chantler and cover by Renee Nault
Z2 Comics
$24.99
The publisher says:
A rock and Canadian icon, Broken Social Scene collects their memories over the last 20 years in this once in a lifetime graphic novel! Z2 Comics celebrates the most crucial indie album of the new millennium with Broken Social Scene Presents: You Forgot It in People, The Graphic Novel. Paralleling the confluence that led a community of Toronto musicians to craft a winding audio epiphany, this project unites one writer and and 13 artists to create a series of intertwining vignettes inspired by the 2003 record, You Forgot It in People, on its 20th anniversary. Overseen by Broken Social Scene’s Justin Peroff and Brendan Canning, writer Lonnie Nadler joins Eric Orchard, Ray Fawkes, Mike Feehan, Diana Nguyen, and more artists to be announced for a fully Canadian sequential art jam session. Within these pages, a collection of seemingly disparate strangers’ lives weave in and out each others’ orbits, touched equally by the mundane and unexplainable. The meta of music and people and ideas harmonising together shifts to a new medium for this touching and ambitious graphic novel.
Lonnie Nadler is a storyteller from Vancouver, Canada. He is best known for his work at Marvel Comics that includes show-running the Age of X-Man event, and writing for titles like Cable, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Punisher 2099. He released his critically acclaimed debut graphic novel, The Dregs, in 2017 from Black Mask Studios. His 2018 follow up, Come Into Me, was named one of the best 100 horror comics of all time by Paste Magazine. In 2020, his historical fiction, cosmic horror concoction, Black Stars Above, was longlisted for a Bram Stoker Award. Nadler’s latest series, Undone By Blood, is in development with BigBaldHead Productions and AMC. He also currently writes for video games and his clients include Ubisoft and Lionshead Entertainment. Justin Peroff is the drummer of Broken Social Scene. Brendan Canning is a Canadian indie rock performer. He is a founding member of the band Broken Social Scene. Mike Feehan is an illustrator from Newfoundland, Canada whose work includes the award-winning mini-series Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles from DC Comics. In addition to his comic book work, Feehan freelances as a storyboard artist and has worked on a variety of short films and advertisements for internationally recognised brands. He has also collaborated with IFC, Netflix and others on social media-based animations. Prior to working full-time in illustration, Mike also worked for several years as a graphic designer and printing technician. Ray Fawkes is the critically-acclaimed author of the comics and graphic novels Underwinter, Intersect, One Soul, The People Inside, The Spectral Engine, Possessions and Junction True. He is an Eisner, Harvey, and Shuster award nominee and a YALSA award winner. Ray has been making comics for over 20 years, starting with and continuing the tradition of DIY fiction as well as working for many major comics publishers in the U.S. and Canada. 120pgs colour paperback.
Burning Down the House: Latin American Comics in the 21st Century
by various writers, edited by Laura Cristina Fernández, Amadeo Gandolfo & Pablo Turnes
Routledge Global Perspectives in Comics Studies
£96.00 / £36.99
The publisher says:
Burning Down the House explores the political, economic and cultural landscape of 21st-century Latin America through comics. It examines works from Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Uruguay, Perú, Colombia, México and Spain, and the resurgence of comics in recent decades spurred by the ubiquity of the Internet and reminiscent of the complex political experiences and realities of the region. The volume analyses experimentations in themes and formats and how Latin American comics have become deeply plural in its inspirations, subjects, drawing styles and political concerns while also underlining the hybrid and diverse cultures they represent. It examines the representative and historical images in a state of emergency and political upheaval; decolonial perspectives and social struggles linked to ethnic and sexual minorities. It looks at how Latin American comics are made right now – from a diverse and autochthonous Latin American perspective. With a wide array of illustrations, this book in the Global Perspectives in Comics Studies series will be an important resource for scholars and researchers of comic studies, Latin American studies, cultural studies, English literature, political history and post-colonial studies.
Laura Cristina Fernández is a head professor in the Faculty of Arts and Design, Universidad Nacional de Cuyo (UNCU), Argentina. She holds a PhD in Social Sciences and an MA in Latin American Art. She is actively involved in several research projects concerning comics, recent memory and crisis and has co-directed research projects on independent comics, fanzines and discourses on gender and sexual dissidence. Her most recent works as a comic artist are Ruptures. Les bébés volés du Franquisme (Ruptures. The stolen babies of Francoism, with Laure Sirieix, Bang Editions, 2022) and Turba. Memorias de Malvinas (Peat. Memories of Malvinas, Editorial Hotel de las Ideas, 2022). Amadeo Gandolfo holds a History degree and a PhD in Social Sciences. He was granted postdoctoral scholarships by the Ibero-American Institute of Berlin in 2019 and by the Humboldt Foundation in 2020. He curated several comics exhibitions in the city of Buenos Aires. He edited Kamandi, an online magazine of comics criticism (revistakamandi.com) alongside Pablo Turnes. His research focuses on Ibero-American graphic humour from a transnational perspective and on authorship and collaboration conflicts in the field of American comics. He currently lives in Berlin. Pablo Turnes is a History Professor and holds a PhD in Social Sciences. He teaches at the Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA) and is a researcher of the Instituto de Investigaciones Gino Germani (UBA). He currently lives in Berlin as a postdoctoral fellow at the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. His research, under the direction of Dr. Stefan Rinke (LAI-Freie Universität Berlin), focuses on the topic of contemporary Latin American comics and their relationship to memory, trauma and recent Latin American history. 256pgs B&W hardcover / paperback, with 50 B/W Illustrations.
Down to the Bone: A Leukemia Story
by Catherine Pioli
Graphic Mundi / PSU Press
$27.95
The publisher says:
When Catherine is diagnosed with acute leukemia, a deadly form of cancer that attacks the immune system, her life is turned upside down. Young and previously healthy, she now finds herself catapulted into the world of the seriously ill―constantly testing and waiting for results, undergoing endless medical treatments, learning to accept a changing body, communicating with a medical team, and relying on the support of her partner, family, and friends. A professional illustrator, Catherine decides to tell the story of her disease in this graphic novel, and she does so with great sincerity, humour, and rare lucidity. We accompany her though the waiting, the doubts, the fears, and the tears―but also the laughter, the love, and the strong will to live. Rich in emotion, lighthearted, and profound, Down to the Bone is a powerful book. Catherine Pioli was born in 1982. She loved to draw as a child and later enrolled in the School of Applied Arts in Paris. Throughout her career as an illustrator and freelance graphic designer represented by a Paris-based illustration agency, she created content for marketing firms, news outlets, and book and magazine publishers. When she was diagnosed with acute leukemia in 2016, she decided to make a graphic novel about her experience. Sadly, she did not survive her illness, passing away in July 2017. Despite everything, the testament she gives us is full of humanity and hope. 152pgs colour hardcover.
Brian Fies, author of Mom’s Cancer, says:
“Thoughtful, graceful, unforgettable. Pioli captures both the coldly clinical and the deeply personal with honesty, humour and revelations that hit hard. It’s as good as graphic medicine gets.”
Edmund White’s A Boy’s Own Story: The Graphic Novel
by Edmund White, Michael Carroll, Brian Alessandro & Igor Karash
IDW / Top Shelf Productions
$29.99
The publisher says:
A landmark American novel, hailed by the New York Times as J.D. Salinger crossed with Oscar Wilde, is masterfully reimagined as a timeless graphic novel. A Boy’s Own Story is a now-classic coming-of-age story, but with a twist: the young protagonist is growing up gay during one of the most oppressive periods in American history. Set in the time and place of author Edmund White’s adolescence, the Midwest of the 1950s, the novel became an immediate bestseller and, for many readers, was not merely about gay identity but the pain of being a child in a fractured family while looking for love in an anything-but-stable world. And yet the book quickly contributed to the literature of empowerment that grew out of the Stonewall riots and subsequent gay rights era. Readers are still swept up in the main character’s thoughts and dry humour, and many today remain shocked by the sexually confessional, and bold, nature of his revelations, his humorous observations, the comic situations and scenes the strangely erudite youthful narrator describes, the tenderness of his loneliness, and the vivid aching of his imagination. A Boy’s Own Story is lyrical, witty, unabashed and authentic. Now, to bring this landmark novel to new life for today’s readers, White is joined by co-writers Brian Alessandro and Michael Carroll and artist Igor Karash for a stunning graphic novel interpretation. The poetic nuances of White’s language float across sumptuously painted panels that evoke 1950s Cincinnati, 1980s Paris, and every dreamlike moment in between. The result is a creative adaptation of the original 1982 A Boy’s Own Story with additional personal and historical elements from the authors’ lives.
Edmund White is the author of many novels, including A Boy’s Own Story, The Beautiful Room Is Empty, The Farewell Symphony and Our Young Man. His non-fiction includes City Boy, Inside a Pearl and other memoirs; The Flâneur about Paris; and literary biographies and essays. He was named the winner of the 2018 PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction and is the recipient of the 2019 National Book Award Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. His most recent novels are A Saint from Texas (2020) and A Previous Life (2021). Brian Alessandro is a writer, artist and filmmaker. His work has appeared in Newsday, Interview Magazine, Bloom Magazine, PANK, Huffington Post, Turtle Point Press, Lambda Literary, Edmund White: By the Book and (Re): An Ideas Journal. His illustrations have been exhibited in juried shows in New York City; Tucson, Arizona; and Irvine, California; and have been featured in Exquisite Pandemic and Conception Art. He has also written and directed the feature film, Afghan Hound (Maryea Media), which has streamed on Amazon and Netflix. In 2016, he founded and continues to edit The New Engagement, a literary journal that has released two print issues and eighteen online issues. His debut novel, The Unmentionable Mann (Cairn Press), was published in 2015. He has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Independent Book Publisher Association Best New Voice Award. He holds an MA in clinical psychology from Columbia University and has taught the subject at the high school and college levels for over ten years. Michael Carroll won the 2015 Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American of Arts and Letters for his debut collection, Little Reef and Other Stories. His second collection, Stella Maris and Other Key West Stories, was published in 2019. Igor Karash is an illustrator based in Saint Louis, Missouri, originally from Baku, Azerbaijan. Karash’s illustration work is diverse and includes picture books, classic literature, novels, and concept art for theatre and film. Karash develops a visual language unique to each project and transforms the reading experience with his novel visual contributions. Karash’s work has been recognised by numerous prestigious illustration competitions including the House of Illustration, Folio Society, and AOI Awards in London. Igor’s work has also been featured in Lürzer Archive’s 200 Best Illustrators Worldwide; American Illustration 32, 34, and 38; Graphis, 3x3 Magazine and the
Guardian of Fukushima
by Fabien Grolleau & Ewen Blain
TokyoPop
$19.99
The publisher says:
It was March 11, 2011 when a massive earthquake triggered a devastating tsunami, which, in turn, destroyed the core three reactors of the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan. This tragedy cost almost 20,000 lives and devastated countless more, including Naoto Matsumura, a farmer evacuated from the deadly radiation zone. Unwilling to abandon his beloved animals, Naoto chooses to return home to his farm — and to fight for the beauty of life. This important graphic novel from France alludes to Japanese legends as an ode to Mother Nature and human resilience. Author Fabien Grolleau was born in 1972. He began his career as an architect, then in 2003, he and Thierry Bedouet founded the publishing house Vide Cocagne, in Nantes, France, where he is still the publisher. In 2013, he began various collaborations as a screenwriter and continues to draw a long personal project, Mikaël. In 2017, he published Audubon, On the Wings of the World (Nobrow) in collaboration with Jérémie Royer. The illustrated biography met with critical and international success, including many translations and two Eisner nominations in 2018: Best Reality-Based Work and Best U.S. Edition of International Material. Illustrator Ewen Blain was born in Orléans in 1981. Brought up on comics from an early age by his passionate father, he told himself that one day becoming a cartoonist would be a great idea. Here he is today illustrator of novels, albums, games and other documentaries for children, he draws (almost) every day and that makes him happy. 160pgs colour paperback.
Holding Her Own: The Exceptional Life of Jackie Ormes
by Traci N. Todd & Shannon Wright
Orchard Books
$21.99
The publisher says:
An evocative picture book biography about the prolific life of Jackie Ormes, whose groundbreaking cartoons became some of the first empowering depictions of Black women in America. Jackie Ormes made history. She was the first Black woman cartoonist to be nationally syndicated in the United States. She was also a journalist, fashionista, philanthropist and activist, and she used her incredible talent and artistry to bring joy and hope to people everywhere. But in post-World War II America, Black people were still being denied their civil rights, and Jackie found herself in a dilemma: How could her art stay true to her signature “Jackie joy” while remaining honest about the inequalities Black people had been fighting? Rising stars Traci N. Todd, author of the Coretta Scott King Honor Book Nina: A Story of Nina Simone, and Shannon Wright, co-creator of the bestselling graphic novel Twins, have crafted a gorgeous and heartfelt tribute to the indelible legacy of Jackie Ormes, whose life and work still influences illustrators and cartoonists today. Shannon Wright is an illustrator and cartoonist based in Richmond, Virginia. She is the co-creator, with Varian Johnson, of Twins, and she illustrated two picture books, My Mommy Medicine by Edwidge Danticat and I’m Gonna Push Through! by Jasmyn Wright. Shannon graduated with a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University, where she co-teaches a comics course during the summer. When Chicago native Traci N. Todd was born, her parents decided her initials should stand for dynamite, just like her father’s. He raised her on Ray Charles and Nina Simone, and her mother read her every good book. Traci is the author of Nina: A Story of Nina Simone, illustrated by Christian Robinson, and is also a children’s book editor. She lives in Queens, New York, with her partner. 48pgs colour hardcover.
In His Time: The Early Stories of Ernest Hemingway
by Jason Novak
Fantagraphics Underground
$22.00
The publisher says:
In this adaptation of the original 1924 version of In Our Time, cartoonist Jason Novak finds the graphic equivalent of Ernest Hemingway’s lean, muscular prose—stark, punchy, beautifully composed panels that convey the understated poetics of those early, famously breathtaking stories. Jason Novak is a cartoonist whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review and The Believer, among other places. He lives in Oakland, California. 188pgs B&W paperback.
Mamiya’s Maps: A Samurai Explores Sakhalin
by Sean Michael Wilson & Akiko Shimojima
Eostre Print
$14.95 / £11.99
The publisher says:
Award winning team of Sean Michael Wilson and Akiko Shimojima have ventured into new territory in this, their ninth book together, on the explorer Mamiya Rinzo (間宮 林蔵) who mapped Sakhalin Island in the early years of the 19th century. Mamiya’s Maps is about exploration, culture clash, the making of maps and how they are related to politics. It’s also anthropological in its look at the Ainu and Nivkh people of Sakhalin island. The animals and the landscape of the island and its surrounding waters are beautifully illustrated, making this a visually appealing manga that explores a little known aspect of Japanese history and culture. The issues the book covers are still relevant now, since the ownership of the island has been in dispute since the end of World War 2, but also the treatment of the Ainu and other indigenous peoples of the area has been called into question. Sean Michael Wilson is a Scottish writer living in Japan. He has written more than 40 books, published by a variety of US, UK and Japanese publishers and translated into twelve languages. In 2016 his book of Lafcadio Hearn stories, The Faceless Ghost was nominated for the prestigious Eisner Book Awards, and received a medal in the 2016 Independent Publisher Book Awards. His book The Many Not the Few has an introduction by the leader of the Labour Party and was launched at a special event in the House of Commons in 2019. In 2020 he received the Scottish Samurai Award from an association celebrating links between Japan and Scotland. Akiko Shimojima is a comic and manga artist from Japan. A teacher of digital comics art at a school in Tokyo, she is the illustrator of several manga and has contributed work to many other publications. Her book with Sean Michael Wilson, Secrets of the Ninja, got a medal in the 10th International Manga Award, organised by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Her other book with Sean Michael Wilson, The Minamata Story, received a silver medal in the 2021 Freeman Book Awards of Columbia University and a 2022 Skipping Stones Award for books about ecology. Based in Tallinn, Estonia, Eostre Publications has been dedicated to publishing on history since 2021. 112pgs B&W paperback.
Milo Manara’s Pandora’s Eyes
by Vincenzo Cerami & Milo Manara
Humanoids
$24.99
The publisher says:
An edge-of-your-seat thriller spiced with Milo Manara’s gorgeous erotic sensibility. Pandora is a beautiful young woman living with her adoptive parents. Out of the blue, she learns that her real father might be a terrible mob boss wanted by the international authorities. When she is kidnapped and taken to Turkey, she is forced to confront her dangerous origins and investigate the motives of the people closest to her. Vincenzo Cerami, (screenwriter of Roberto Benigni’s international hit Life is Beautiful), collaborates here with one of Europe’s greatest artists, Milo Manara. Born in Luson, Milo Manara initially earned a living by assisting sculptors and only became interested in comics in the late sixties. He is one of the few comic artists who managed to create erotic comics and still maintain a reputation as an acclaimed artist. In 1995, Manara made Gullivera for Humanoids, loosely based on the classic novel Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift. He worked with Federico Fellini on two stories, with Neil Gaiman for DC/Vertigo in 2003 and collaborated with Alejandro Jodorowsky on the series Borgia, about the 15th century papal family. He also drew X-Women and a variant cover of Spider-Woman for Marvel, in addition to his praised erotic comics such as Pandora’s Eyes and The Golden Ass. In 1998, Manara was inducted into the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame and in 2004 he won an Eisner award in the Best Anthology category for The Sandman: Endless Nights. Born in Rome, Vincenzo Cerami was an Italian screenwriter, novelist and poet. From 1967 on he contributed or wrote or adapted screenplays for more than 40 feature films. In 1976, his first novel, A Very Normal Man, was published and was an immediate hit, and subsequently adapted into a film in 1977 by Mario Monicelli. Also critically acclaimed was his novel Goodbye Lenin, published in 1981. In 1996 he was a member of the jury at the 46th Berlin International Film Festival, and in 1999 he was nominated for the Academy Award for Original Screenplay for the Roberto Benigni film Life Is Beautiful. 64pgs colour hardcover.
The Illustrated Al: The Songs of ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic
by ‘Weird_Al’_Yankovic & various artists, with a cover by Drew Friedman
Z2 Comics
$29.99
The publisher says:
For Weird Al’s graphic novel debut Z2 has gathered some of the top living cartoonists to express Al’s “Yankovisions” visually with the new THE ILLUSTRATED AL: The Songs of “Weird Al” Yankovic graphic novel. Winner of five Grammy Awards and 11 notations, “Weird Al” Yankovic has written some ALL of the greatest songs of both the 20th and 21st centuries. Z2 has gathered some of the top living cartoonists to express Al’s “Yankovisions” visually within this book’s pages. The great Al-merican songbook features 20+ classic songs interpreted by such artists as Drew Friedman, Mike & Laura Allred, Bill Plympton, Aaron Augenblick, Peter Bagge, Sam Viviano, Steve Chanks, Danny Hellman, Felipe Sobreiro, Gideon Kendall, Michael Kupperman, Wes Hargis and many more! 120pgs colour hardcover.
The Reddest Rose: Romantic Love from The Ancient Greeks to Reality TV
by Liv Stromquist, translated by Melissa Bowers
Fantagraphics
$24.99
The publisher says:
The internationally acclaimed activist follows up her satirical work of graphic medicine with this collection of humorous comics essays about how historical and societal shifts have altered - and perhaps destroyed - “romantic love.” The deceptively simple through-line for Swedish media personality and activist Liv Strömquist’s The Reddest Rose is the question: Why does Leonardo DiCaprio date an endless string of twenty-something models? Her answer—in the form of this collection of well-researched, humorous comics essays—tracks how philosophers and artists, from the Ancient Greeks to Beyoncé, conceptualised romantic love. Strömquist’s signature interlocutor characters, drawn in a zine-y, flat, blocky style, ask each other questions and offer sharp commentary as they guide readers throughout history and the change in societies’ values, from showing love/loving to getting love/being loved. (Poet Hilda “H.D.” Doolittle - who was so love-stricken by a man taking off his glasses that she believed they viewed dolphins together in another dimension - lends the book its title.) Lord Byron, Socrates, Byung-Chul Han, Ezra Pound, Slavoj Zizek, Lou Andreas-Salomé, Ariadne, and many others make cameos. For the first time in English, in The Reddest Rose, Strömquist wonders: in a rationalist, consumerist world, can romantic love survive? Liv Strömquist was born in Sweden and lives in Malmö. She is a radio host with a degree in political science. An activist, her left-leaning, award-winning comics have been published in zines and magazines. Her Fruit of Knowledge has sold 40,000 copies in Sweden, been adapted for the stage, and has been published worldwide. 184pgs B&W paperback.
Wally Wood’s Cowboys and Country Girls
by Wally Wood
Vanguard Production 24.95/24.95 / 24.95/39.95 / $69.95
The publisher says:
Vanguard continues their Woodwork classics series with uncollected Westerns by the legendary Hall of Fame co-creator of Mad Magazine, Daredevil, Power Girl, Vampirella, Weird Science, The Avengers, The Spirit, Mars Attacks, Superboy and THUNDER Agents. This definitive collection of Wood western comics ranges from six-guns blazing out molten lead, to the kitschy, to the risqué. Nearly 200 pages spanning from 1949 to 1972 with titles like Western Outlaws, Jesse James, Western Crime Busters, Frontier Romances, Hoot Gibson, Gunfighters, Red Wolf and Shattuck ―most of which have never been collected― plus examples of Wood’s EC and Marvel Westerns and commentary by J. David Spurlock. 192 pgs colour paperback / hardcover / deluxe slipcased HC with 16 bonus pages.
Why Don’t You Love Me?
by Paul B Rainey
Drawn & Quarterly
$24.95
The publisher says:
A couple struggles through their unhappy marriage in this dark science-fiction comedy. Claire and Mark are in the doldrums of an unhappy marriage. She doesn’t get out of her bathrobe and chain-smokes while slumped on the couch. Mark has lost track of the days and can’t get the kids to school on time. They’ve lost interest in family and have pizza and Chinese food delivered every night. Mark sleeps on the couch and has trouble remembering his son’s name. He feels like a fraud at work but somehow succeeds. Claire stalks an ex-boyfriend. How could he have left her to this life? Claire and Mark are both plagued by the idea that this is all a dream. Didn’t they have different lives? When reports of an imminent nuclear war come on the radio, the truth begins to dawn on them: This is not the life they chose. Why Don’t You Love Me? is a pitch-black comedy about marriage, alcoholism, depression and mourning lost opportunities. Paul B. Rainey has created a hilariously terrifying alternate reality where confusion and pain might lead people to make bad choices but might also eventually led to freedom . . . maybe. Paul B. Rainey is a British cartoonist who has been making comics for decades. In 2015, his graphic novel There’s No Time Like the Present was published by Escape Books. He has been a regular contributing cartoonist to Viz since 2013. His creations include Peter the Slow Eater, 14 Year Old Stand–Up Comedian, and Audrey Pemberton. He won the Observer/Jonathan Cape/Comica Graphic Short Story Prize in 2020 with the strip Similar to But Not. In it, he recounts meeting Madonna in his local pub in 1985. He has written, drawn and self-published many comics, including Pope Francis Goes to The Dentist, Journey into Indignity and Gripe Night. 224pgs B&W hardcover.
Neil Gaiman says:
“When I began to read Why Don’t You Love Me? I thought it read like any number of slightly surrealistic, slightly vapid early-2000s stories that were basically the cartoonist’s way of telling you they hated everyone and everything. And then it came into focus and it wasn’t that thing at all. And then it came into focus again, uplifting and heartbreaking and (a word that I use sparingly) relevant. The kind of story, leading to a last panel that’s all pain and joy and delivers the whole thing. What a masterwork. To understand all is to forgive all.”
Zerocalcare: Tentacles at my Throat
by Zerocalcare
Ablaze Publishing
$19.99
The publisher says:
Tentacles at My Throat is a coming-of-age story set in three different moments of Zerocalcare’s life: primary school, junior high, and his adult life. It is a complete story told in three parts; three moments that have in common that all-too-familiar feeling of having tentacles at one’s throat. Three friends, their school-grounds, and a secret. And fifteen years later, the discovery that they all thought there was only one secret, but each had their own. And there was one more, bigger than the others, that none were aware of. This is Zerocalcare’s second graphic novel, the one that made him stand out as an intelligent, delicate, merciless narrator when it comes to describing his own weaknesses, which could in fact be everyone’s. An honest, touching, intense story with a bit of Stand By Me thrown in for good measure, it’s the book that made Zerocalcare a national success story in 2012 in Italy. The book has been reprinted nineteen times since its initial release, surpassing the 120,000 copies sold mark. Zerocalcare’s original animated series Tear Along the Dotted Line debuted on Netflix Worldwide on November 17, 2021. Season Two is currently in production. 208pgs B&W hardcover.
Posted: October 7, 2022