(W/A/CA) Woshibai How fast can you go in a buggy drawn by the flap of a butterfly's wings? How do you measure the speed of waking from a dream? Such abstract inquiries into the unrelenting absurdity of contemporary life make up this omnibus of meditative vignettes from one of mainland China's most prolific and recognizable-yet anonymous-new underground cartoonists of the current generation.

Five years ago Julie Doucet renounced her comics-centric lifestyle. But Doucet could not turn her back on art, and this visual journal is an idiosyncratic collision of her various creative interests, wherein personal narrative, collage and drawing tell the story of her pursuits into printmaking and beyond, chronicling her maturation as a mid-career artist as she extends into a broader arts community. Doucet blurs the boundaries between high art, illustration, craft and comics: where panel borders once divided pages, collage creeps in; events and doodles merge; recollection and narrative blend with the abstract. The surreal neurosis of her comics has subsided to reveal a more relaxed creativity that is unrestricted by form or definition and is as engaging as ever.

In this collection of hauntingly elliptical short stories, Oji Suzuki explores memory, relationships and loss with a loose narrative style, filling each tale with a sense of unfulfilled longing. He plumbs the dissolute depths of human psychology, literally bathing his characters in expansive shadows that paradoxically reveal as much as they obscure. Though he touches on many of the same themes as his contemporaries in the field of post-war alternative manga, Suzuki's ever-shifting narrative approach and dashes of surrealist humor distinguish his work from his peers.

(W/A/CA) Anders Nilsen A keen observerres contained within, Anders Nilsen uses lush, inky lines to craft an enchanting, meditative journey for your coloring tools. A Walk in Eden is a fantastical view of primeval creation, with an exquisite mix of sprawling landscapes and close-up examinations of plants, fungi, and minerals. Though this is a world void of humans, here and there are small reminders of our presence. Nilsen's world is intricate, playful, and inspired, waiting for you to make it your own.

(W/A/CA) Joe Ollmann Journalist and travel writer William Buehler Seabrook was willing to go deeper than any outsider had before, participating in voodoo ceremonies, riding camels cross the Sahara desert, communing with cannibals and most notably, popularizing the term 'zombie' in the West. A string of his bestselling books show an engaged, sympathetic gentleman hoping to share these strange, hidden delights with the rest of the world. But, of course, there was a dark side. Seabrook was a barely functioning alcoholic who was deeply obsessed with bondage and the so-called mystical properties of pain and degradation. What led the popular and vivid writer to such a sad state?

Acclaimed cartoonist Chris Ware (Building Stories) reveals the outtakes of his genius in these intimate, imaginative, and whimsical sketches collected from the years during which he completed his award-winning graphic novel Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth. Acme Datebook Volume One is as much a companion volume to Jimmy Corrigan as a tremendous art collection from of one of America's most interesting and popular graphic artists. Chris Ware surprises the reader on every page with its spontaneity, its mordant humor, and its excellent draftsmanship.

Working directly in pen and ink, watercolor, and white-out, Ware has cannily edited out all legally sensitive and personally incriminating material from his private journals, carefully recomposing each page to simulate the appearance of an ordered mind and established aesthetic directive. Phone numbers, references to ex-girlfriends, 'false starts,' and embarrassing experiments with unfamiliar media have been generously excised to present the reader with the most pleasant and colorful sketchbook reading experience available. Ware's frustrated doodles for his book covers, angry personal assaults on friends, half-finished comic strips, lengthy and tiresome fulminations of personal disappointments, as well as his now-beloved drawings of the generally miserable inhabitants of the city of Chicago are found within. All in all, a necessary volume for fans of fine art, water-based media, and personal diatribe.

(W/A/CA) Drnaso, Nick Acting Class creates a tapestry of disconnect, distrust, and manipulation. Ten strangers are brought together under the tutelage of John Smith, a mysterious and morally questionable leader. The group of social misfits and restless searchers have one thing in common: they are out of step with their surroundings and desperate for change. When the line between real life and imagination begins to blur, the group's deepest fears and desires are laid bare. Exploring the tension between who we are and how we present, Drnaso cracks open his characters' masks and takes us through an unsettling American journey.

(W/A/CA) Bendik Kaltenborn Look through Bendik Kaltenborn's kaledescopic glasses and glimpse the world the way he sees it: a vibrantly colorful planet populated by lumpy, big-nosed people totally absorbed in their own off-kilter personal dramas. Adult Contemporary is a collection of odd imaginings, surrealist comics, and physical comedy gags from Kaltenborn, a New Yorker and New York Times illustrator. People scramble around in a world they don't understand, happy as can be. A marriage is threatened by soup. Drunk old men quarrel about literature in the witching hour. A con details a small and silly bank robbery from the 1980s. Norwegian cartoonist Bendik Kaltenborn's Adult Contemporary reads as homage to the art of mid-twentieth century cartooning and absurdist sketch comedy.

Against Pain is the first collection of multi-page anthology pieces from the radiant 'cute-brut' world of 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. 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 22-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.

Tom Horacek's characters possess the hydrocephalic proportions of Playmobil people, but they've traded the colorful plastic environs of childhood for a bleaker, twisted landscape where insanity, loneliness and death are fodder for laughs. Heard from their pinhole mouths and seen in their beady eyes is fear, desperation, resignation, and pure misanthropy, all presented across a single-panel canvas. Join in the fun with this first collection of Horacek's bitingly bitter gag cartoons, All We Ever Do Is Talk About Wood.

Animals With Sharpies is a collection of paintings with hand-lettered texts. In each painting, Michael Dumontier and Neil Farber have depicted an animal holding a sharpie, ostensibly writing a message. These messages are varied in nature: they are political and religious tracts, confessions, recipes, arithmetic problems and more. Above all, these paintings are funny, but they are also startlingly poignant and jarring for the humanness of the suffering and longing depicted in these animals' simple words.

(W/A/CA) Anouk Ricard Anouk Ricard's bold and colorful comics of this quirky, grumpy gang of pals are delightfully weird yet thoroughly realistic in their honest and hilarious portrayal of friendship. Anna, Froga, Christopher the worm, Ron the cat, and Bubu the dog continue their non-adventures with bickering, needling, cajoling, and honest friendship. Collecting all five issues of the acclaimed Anna & Froga series into an accessible paperback, this volume presents Ricard's vibrant world of visual puns and deft animal caricatures for kids and parents alike to enjoy.

(W/A/CA) Anouk Ricard It's time for another round of fun and games - okay, practical jokes and pranks - with Bubu, Ron, Christopher, Anna, and Froga! In Anna & Froga: Fore!, Christopher has a crush on someone in his piano class, Bubu sets out to prove himself an ace golfer, and Ron has a close encounter with a lifeguard. Anouk Ricard's bright and colorful illustrations make the world of Anna & Froga inviting and fun for kids, but adults also love the series for Ricard's charming character design and visual puns.

(W/A/CA) Anouk Ricard In the fifth volume of Anouk Ricard's hilarious modern kids' classic, Anna, Froga, Ron, Christopher, and Bubu continue their non-adventures with bickering, needling, cajoling, and honest friendship. For Christmas, the gang decides to forego shopping malls and make their own gifts for one another; Bubu goes on a retreat to get in touch with his zen side; a vampire with exceptional Scrabble skills moves in next door; and the five friends embark on an unforgettable trip to Paris.

(W/A/CA) Anouk Ricard The whole gang is reunited in Anna & Froga: Thrills, Spills, and Gooseberries. Join Anna, Froga, Ron, Bubu, and Christopher as they get stuck in the haunted house at the county fair with a truly terrifying ticket-taker; as Froga combats a scourge of snails in her garden; and as Bubu has ill-fated dreams of being a great painter. With this third volume of Anna & Froga, Anouk Ricard experiments with the format, never sacrificing a droll punch line or a hilarious image. Anna & Froga is a true delight for children, parents, and grown-up children alike.

Embark on a fresh set of adventures with the hilariously snarky and mischievous heroes of Anna & Froga. In each short episode, Anouk Ricard's deceptively simple illustrations harmonize perfectly with the characters' petty, silly, and downright slapstick pranks. Bright colors, astutely observed details, and minimalist linework combine to present a world that is shockingly lively and joyous. Anna, Froga, Ron, Bubu, and Christopher have adventures that rival the best in classic comics. Ricard hits her stride in this second volume of the Anna & Froga books, which have found a loving home amongst classic comics connoisseurs, alternative comics fans, and children in North America and Europe alike.

Anouk Ricard's Anna and Froga features the adventures of a little girl named Anna and her gang of animal friends. Anna's best friend is the titular Froga, and they often hang out with Bubu the dog (an aspiring artist), Christopher the gourmand earthworm, and Ron (a practical joker of a cat). Whether the conflict is driven by eating too many French fries, bossing around Johnny the Tuna, or trying to beat a difficult video game, you know that Anna, Froga, Bubu, Ron, and Christopher will come out all right in the end, which makes the layers of confusion they pile on one another all the funnier. Ricard's characters are sweet without ever veering into preciousness, as they constantly find opportunities for a laugh at one another's expense.

(W/A/CA) Chris Oliveros <b>A deep dive into a contentious and dramatic period in Canadian history?the rise of a militant separatist group whose effects still reverberate today.</b><BR><BR>It started in 1963, when a dozen mailboxes in a wealthy Montreal neighborhood were blown to bits by handmade bombs. By the following year, a guerrilla army camp was set up deep in the woods, with would-be soldiers training for armed revolt. Then, in 1966, two high-school students dropped off bombs at factories, causing fatalities. What was behind these concerted, often bungled acts of terrorism, and how did they last for nearly eight years?<BR><BR>In <i>Are You Willing to Die for the Cause?</i>, Quebec-born cartoonist Chris Oliveros sets out to dispel common misconceptions about the birth and early years of a movement that, while now defunct, still holds a tight grip on the hearts and minds of Quebec citizenry and Canadian politics. There are no initials more volatile in Quebec history than FLQ?the Front de lib?ration du Qu?bec (or, in English, the Quebec Liberation Front). The original goal of thi

(W/A/CA) Matthew Thurber Matthew Thurber's Art Comic is a blunt and hilarious assault on the swirling hot mess that is the art world. From sycophantic fans to duplicitous gallerists, fatuous patrons to self-aggrandizing art stars, he lampoons each and every facet of the eminently ridiculous industry of truth and beauty. Art Comic is brimming with references and cameos, outsized personalities and shuddering nonsense - Robert Rauschenberg smashes a beer bottle, Francesca Woodman, a wine glass. Amidst it all, Thurber's twisting drawings and laugh-out-loud dialogue convey a complicated picture of an industry at the intersection of fantasy and reality.

(W/A/CA) Yeong-Shin Ma In Artist three artists are on the outer limits of relevancy in an arts culture that celebrates youth. They're caught in circular arguments about what makes real art and concerned about the vapid interests of their younger contemporaries, none of them are reaping the benefits of success. But there's always another chance to make it. When it comes time, out of the three, who will emerge as an acclaimed artist? More important, when one artist's star rises, will he leave the rest behind?

(W) Marguerite Abouet (A/CA) Cl?ment Oubrerie Abidjan?s favorite daughter returns in the 7th volume of writer Marguerite Abouet?s beloved series Long-time creative team Marguerite Abouet and Cl?ment Oubrerie make a stunning comeback after a lengthy twelve-year hiatus. The seventh instalment in the Aya series takes us all back to Yop City?home to the hustle and bustle of the Ivory Coast. As Solibra?s newest intern, clear-eyed college student Aya finds an unexpected adversary in the beer giant?s brand-new head of HR. Her friend Moussa, heir apparent to the company?s CEO Mr. Sissoko vies for his father?s attention while struggling to tone down his tendency to party. After being outed, Albert must find a new place to stay and grapples with the realities of insufficient student housing. His old flame Inno discovers first-hand how difficult life can be for undocumented migrants in France. Back at home, Bintou navigates the ups and downs of newfound soap opera stardom. All the while, Didier just wants to take Aya out to dinner?if she can ever find the time. Now translated from the French b

Aya: Love in Yop City comprises the final three chapters of the Aya story, episodes never before seen in English. When a professor tries to take advantage of Aya, her plans to become a doctor are seriously shaken, and she vows to take revenge on the lecherous man. With a little help from the tight-knit community of Yopougon, Aya comes through these trials stronger than ever. This second volume of the complete Aya includes unique appendices: recipes, guides to understanding Ivorian slang, street sketches, and concluding remarks from Marguerite Abouet explaining history and social milieu.

(W/A/CA) Ancco Jinju is bad. She smokes, drinks, runs away from home, and has no qualms making her parents worry. Her mother and sister beg her to be a better student, sister, daughter; her beleaguered father expresses his concerns with his fists. Bad Friends is set in the 1990s in a South Korea torn between tradition and Western modernity and haunted by an air of generalized gloom. What unfolds is a story of female friendship, a Ferrante-esque connection formed through youthful excess, malaise, and struggle that stays with the young women into adulthood.

(W/A/CA) Tom Gauld In his inimitable style, British cartoonist Tom Gauld has opened comics to a crossover audience and challenged perceptions of what the medium can be. Simultaneously silly and serious, Gauld adds an undeniable lightness to traditionally highbrow themes. From sarcastic panels about the health hazards of being a best-selling writer to a list of magical items for fantasy writers (such as the Amulet of Attraction, which summons mainstream acceptance, Hollywood money, and fresh coffee), Gauld's cartoons are timely and droll - his trademark British humor, impeccable timing, and distinctive visual style sets him apart from the rest.

(W) Fabien Vehlmann (A/CA) Kerascoet Newly homeless, a group of fairies find themselves trying to adapt to their new life in the forest. As they dodge dangers from both without and within, optimistic Aurora steps forward to organize and help build a new community. Slowly, the world around them becomes more treacherous, as petty rivalries and factions form. Beautiful Darkness became a bestseller and instant classic when it was released in 2014. This paperback edition of the modern horror classic will contain added material, preparatory sketches and unused art.

(W/A/CA) Disa Wallander Becoming Horses is a book about squinting hard and looking from the right angle to find that everything around you sparkles-just a little-and the shapes of things are not firm but fuzzy. A mix of delicate cartooning and brash collage - watercolor and photography - Disa Wallander's flowing drawings are experimental yet accessible, as her characters mull big questions about life and art, philosophizing in a thoroughly modern voice.

From the author of Anna & Froga comes a wry, offbeat whodunnit that centers on office life. Richard thinks he's in luck when he snags a job at the cuckoo clock factory, but things start to go wrong right off the bat. First of all, there's his boss, who doesn't seem to have the strongest grip on reality and has an odd penchant for silly hats. Then there are his coworkers, who are alternately evasive and idiotic when asked about anything pertaining to actually getting work done. Finally, there's Guy, the employee Richard's replacing, who supposedly quit, but whose family has just appeared on national TV pleading for his safe return. It's all adding up to a very strange workplace, and when the company goes on a retreat, everything spools quickly out of control.

Kurt Severing, a journalist, and Marthe Muller, an art student, are the central figures in a broad cast of characters intertwined with the historical events unfolding around them. City of Stones covers eight months in Berlin, from September 1928 to May Day, 1929, meticulously documenting the hopes and struggles of its inhabitants as their future is darkened by a glowing shadow.

The long-awaited second installment of the epic historical trilogy! The people of Weimar Berlin search for answers after the lethal May Day demonstration of 1929. Tension builds along with the dividing wall between communists and nationalists, Jews and gentiles, as the dawn of the Second World War draws closer. The lives of the characters within Lutes's epic weave together to create a seamless portrait of this transitory city. Marthe Muller follows lover Kurt Severing as he interviews participants in the May Day demonstration, but moonlights in the city's lesbian nightlife. Lutes creates a sense of anxiety and imminent doom.

(W/A/CA) Jason Lutes The third and final act of Jason Lutes' historical fiction about the Weimar Republic begins with Hitler arriving in Berlin. With the National Socialist party now controlling Parliament, the citizenry becomes even more divided. Lutes steps back from the larger political upheaval, using the intertwining lives of a small group of German citizens to zero in on the rise of fascism and how swiftly it can replace democracy. The idle rich, the naive bourgeoisie, and the struggling lower classes: all seek meaning in the warring political factions dividing their nation.

(W/A/CA) Jason Lutes For twenty years, Jason Lutes toiled on this intimate, sweeping epic before the collected Berlin was published in 2018 to widespread acclaim. Lutes's historical fiction about the decline of the Weimar Republic and the rise of fascism is seen through the eyes of the Jews and the Nazis; the socialists and the socialites; the lavishly decorated queer clubs and the crumbling tenement apartments. Lutes weaves these characters' lives into the larger fabric of a city slowly ripping apart, crafting a polyphonic novel that is rich in its historical detail and as timely as ever in its depiction of a society slowly awakening to the stranglehold of fascism.

(W) Michael Deforge (A/CA) Michael DeForge Teenaged misfits and adolescent rabble-rousing take center stage in this dark coming-of-age tale. Big Kids follows a troubled teenage boy through the transformative years of high school, as he redefines his friends, his interests, and his life path. When the boy's uncle, a police officer, gets kicked out of the family's basement apartment and transferred to the countryside, April moves in. She's a college student: mysterious and cool, she quickly takes a shine to the boy. Eerie and perfectly paced, Michael DeForge's Big Kids muses on the complicated, and often contradictory, feelings people struggle with in adolescence, the choices we make to fit in, and the ways we survive times of change. Like Ant Colony and First Year Healthy, Big Kids is a testimony to the harshness and beauty of being alive.

A haunting postmodern fable, Big Questions is the magnum opus of Anders Nilsen, one of the brightest and most talented young cartoonists working today. This beautiful minimalist story, collected here for the first time, is the culmination of ten years and more than six hundred pages of work that details the metaphysical quandaries of the occupants of an endless plain, existing somewhere between a dream and a Russian steppe. A downed plane is thought to be a bird and the unexploded bomb that came from it is mistaken for a giant egg by the group of birds whose lives the story follows. The indifferent, stranded pilot is of great interest to the birds - some doggedly seek his approval, while others do quite the opposite, leading to tensions in the group. Nilsen seamlessly moves from humor to heartbreak. His distinctive, detailed line work is paired with plentiful white space and large, often frameless panels, conveying an ineffable sense of vulnerability and openness. Big Questions has roots in classic fables - the birds and snakes have more to say than their human counterparts, and ther

(W/A) Darryl Cunningham Darryl Cunningham offers an illuminating analysis of the origins and ideological evolutions of four key players in the American private sector: Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, media mogul Rupert Murdoch, and oil and gas tycoons Charles and David Koch. What emerges in these informative and hilarious biographies, is a vital critique of American capitalism and the power these individuals have to assert a corrupting influence on policy-making, political campaigns, and society writ large.

(W/A/CA) Michael DeForge Long after the demise of humankind, birds roam freely around a new earth complete with fruitful trees, sophisticated fungal networks, and an enviable socialist order. The universal worm feeds all, there are no weekends, and economics is as fantastical a study as unicorn psychology. Michael DeForge's post-apocalyptic reality brings together the author's quintessential deadpan humor, surrealist imagination, and undeniable sociopolitical insight.

It's a storyline we know all too well: 'A mysterious stranger comes to town.' Only the town is not really a town and the stranger is a gigantic cell-phone tower. The town is Birdseye Bristoe - a portmanteau name created from an interstate sign that points to two real towns - and it has only one real permanent resident, an old-timer known as Uncle. His teenaged great-niece and -nephew visit occasionally, though the town doesn't have much to offer apart from an adult superstore, a gas station, and a tackle shop. Birdseye Bristoe brims with larger-than-life personalities, hilarious anecdotes, references to midwestern/mid-southern pop culture, and diagrams of the cell-tower/cross-construction process.

(W/A/CA) Lawrence Lindell <b>Black, weird, awkward and proud of it. Welcome to the club!</b><BR><BR>Tired of feeling like you don?t belong? Join the club. It?s called the Section. You?d think a spot to chill, chat, and find community would be much easier to come by for nerdy, queer punks. But when four longtime, bookish BFFs?Lika, Amor, Lala, and Tony?can?t find what they need, they take matters into their own hands and create a space where they can be a hundred percent who they are: Black, queer, and weird.<BR><BR>The group puts a call out for all awkward Black folks to come on down to the community center to connect. But low attendance and IRL run-ins with trolls of all kinds only rock everybody with anxiety. As our protagonists start to question the merits of their vision, a lifetime of insecurities?about not being good enough or Black enough?bubbles to the surface. Will they find a way to turn it around in time for their radical brainchild, the Blackward Zine Fest?<BR><BR>Lawrence Lindell?s characters pop from the page in playful Technicolor. From mental health to romance, micr

(W/A/CA) Rina Ayuyang Inspired by the visual richness and cinematic structure of the Hollywood Musical, Blame This on the Boogie chronicles the adventures of a Filipino-American girl born in the decade of disco who escapes life's hardships and mundanity through through the genre's feel good song and dance numbers. Ayuyang's deeply personal, moving stories unveil the magic of the world around us-rendering the ordinary extraordinary through a jazzed-up song and dance routine. Blame This on the Boogie is Ayuyang's ode to the melody of the world, and how tuning out of life and into the magic of Hollywood can actually help an outsider find their place in it.

(W/A/CA) Craig Thompson Blankets: 20th Anniversary Edition is a celebration of Craig Thompson's classic graphic novel. Wrapped in a new cover, this is the story of a young man coming of age and finding the confidence to express his creative voice. Under an engulfing blanket of snow, Craig and Raina fall in love at winter church camp, revealing to one another their struggles with faith and their dreams of escape. Over time though, their personal demons resurface and their relationship falls apart. It's a universal story, and Thompson's vibrant brushstrokes and unique page designs make the familiar heartbreaking all over again.