I grew up in the weird world of a nerdy immigrant single mother, surrounded by comics and stories of every kind. I was attracted to writing (and drawing) from a really young age. Like a lot of 80s kids I was a latchkey, so there wasn’t really anyone around to tell me what was age-appropriate. I just grabbed books at random. Most of all what appealed to me were unique voices, when the books surprised me I didn’t care what they were about. When I finally started writing comics I got obsessed with trying not to repeat myself, keeping myself surprised. These books really helped me see the freedom I had in making comics.
For my money, Gipi is the best living comic book storyteller in the world right now and while it’s incredibly hard to pick a single book, I went with Garage Band, which elevates the drama of a very simple situation, teenagers escaping the turmoil of their lives through music who have to figure out what to do when their only amp dies. It reminds me of how every teenaged moment felt like an opera of life or death. In his art, in his stories, in his characters, Gipi gives simple things an impossible depth.
When Giuliano's father loans him the family garage, he and three of his friends form a band. Playing their battered secondhand instruments, the four teenagers find something they love to do, and they find in their friendship and music a refuge from difficult and turbulent home lives. But when their only amp blows a fuse, a desperate search for some new equipment lands them in more trouble than they ever saw coming. Written and painted in stunning watercolors by the renowned Italian artist Gipi, "Garage Band" is an introspective meditation on teenage life.
Tekkonkinkreet has more raw energy than any comic I’ve ever read, like in my own book it’s the story of 2 brothers who think they’re invincible and make a lot of mistakes in the heat of the moment. The book is relentless and breaks every possible rule and is just an absolute marvel of comic storytelling.
Orphaned on the mean streets of Treasure Town, lost boys Black and White must mug, steal and fight to survive. Around them moves a world of corruption and loneliness, small-time crooks and neurotic police officers, and a band of sadistic yakuza who have plans for their once-fair city. Can they rise above their environment? Surreal manga influenced by European comics.
TEKKONKINKREET is a play on Japanese words meaning "a concrete structure with an iron frame," and it suggests the opposing images of concrete cities against the strength of imagination.
This story really covered a lot of ground for me, it sorta collapsed my idea of how to present visual information, it’s “novelistic” in structure, snippets of a woman’s messy life told mostly in the equivalent of subtitles, the visuals sometimes tracking the emotions rather than a string of actions. It was also published by the publisher of Batman but there was nothing even remotely supernatural about it, it wasn’t edgy or dark beyond how any of our lives are.
COMPLETE GRAPHIC NOVEL Cranky columnist Anne Merkel is only happy when she's complaining...about her editors, about being single in New York City, about running out of Scotch. But when her long-lost sister shows up claiming to be Queen of the Leather Astro-Girls of Saturn, Anne's going to wish she'd never complained about anything... WINNER OF THE HARVEY AWARD Best Graphic Album of Original Work SPECIAL EDITION BONUS: Includes a never before published teleplay written by Kyle Baker, also a few other rarities.
This book spoke early to me as a kid on form and presentation, it played with visual scale and pace on a level you still very rarely see. Sienkiewicz tells a sort of elaborate impressionist visual poem through paint and graphic design. And Miller layers text almost like a melody track, playing with texture and emotion, speeding things up and then slowing them all the way down, playing with time in a way that changed the whole game for me.
Meet Elektra Natchios. This intriguing young woman has played equally intriguing roles throughout her life: Gymnast. Martial artist. Ninja. Assassin! Trained in the deadliest of arts and renowned as the world's fi nest killer, Elektra remains an enigma even to herself. Now, relive her fi rst solo adventure, an epic crafted by two of comics' greatest innovators - Frank Miller and Bill Sienkiewicz! An unconscious woman washes ashore off the coast of a small Central American country. Two policemen are strangled. A diplomat is assassinated. A S.H.I.E.L.D. agent is brutally dismembered. Unrelated events? Hardly. Elektra has returned - and she's…
The Hernandez Brothers burned down almost anything I thought about comics. As a young Latin kid I hadn’t seen stories that referenced Latin characters in anything but a really heavy-handed way, the idea that we were allowed to be these flawed weird characters seemed impossible to me. I connected pretty heavily with Jaime’s work especially and when I’m stuck on almost anything I revisit these pages as a sort of hard reset on whatever I think my process is.
This oversized art book collects the comics series’ iconic covers sans title or logo.
Five women stand in a police lineup; four of them are garishly dressed, impressively endowed superwomen ― perfectly normal, because this is, after all, the cover of a comic book. A closer look, however, reveals a fifth woman who seems thoroughly out of place ― mousy, in bathrobe and curlers, smoking a cigarette, she appears to have been suddenly yanked from her breakfast table. Surely, this diminutive, dowdy woman is here by mistake ― or is she? From the very first cover of the very first…
Viking is a story about 2 young grifters in the 9th century struggling under the impossible and epic weight of their idea of what being a Viking is. These are 2 men doing all the wrong things to make a name for themselves, causing inadvertent consequences to themselves and their family and eventually taking on a caper that is so far over their head it might kill them both.
Edge of the Known World is a near-future love and adventure story about a brilliant young refugee caught in era when genetic screening tests like 23AndMe make it impossible to hide a secret identity. The novel is distributed by Simon & Schuster. It is a USA Today Bestseller and 2024 American Fiction Awards Winner in multiple categories, including Best New Fiction, Political Thriller, and Science Fiction: General.
Alexandra is a gifted student, adoring daughter, and exuberant prankster. She is also hiding in the open. After a blissful childhood, Alex learned she’s an illegal refugee from a brutal regime, smuggled into…
Fans of Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake will be swept away by this riveting speculative fiction adventure and love story about family, genetic privacy, and the onrushing future of surveillance technology.
2024 American Fiction Awards Winner in multiple categories, including Best New Fiction, Political Thriller, and Science Fiction
Alexandra Tashen is a brilliant student, adoring daughter, merry wit, and exuberant prankster. After a blissful childhood on a Texas ranch, she learns the truth: She is a refusé, an illegal refugee smuggled into the Allied Nations as an infant. Everyone from her birth region carries a harmless but detectable bit of…
