(W/A/CA) Craig Thompson The graphic novel classic, available for the first time in a new Drawn & Quarterly trade paperback edition Blankets is the story of a young man coming of age and finding the confidence to express his creative voice. Craig Thompson's poignant graphic memoir plays out against the backdrop of a Midwestern winterscape: finely-hewn linework draws together a portrait of small town life, a rigorously fundamentalist Christian childhood, and a lonely, emotionally mixed-up adolescence. 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. This groundbreaking graphic novel, winner of two Eisner and three Harvey Awards, is an eloquent portrait of adolescent yearning; first love (and first heartache); faith in crisis; and the process of moving be

The treasured children's classic, lovingly back in print. In this companion to the hugely successful Moomin series, Tove Jansson presents a delightful book for all ages in a very intricate and elaborately designed book, complete with Moomin die-cuts on every page. Like the Moomin comic strip companion volumes, this book is a 'lost classic' from the 1950s and has been unavailable in North America for over half a century.

(W/A/CA) Jillian Tamaki Jenny becomes obsessed with a strange 'mirror Facebook,' which presents an alternate, possibly better, version of herself. Helen finds her clothes growing baggy, her shoes looser, and as she shrinks away to nothingness, the world around her recedes as well. The animals of the city briefly open their minds to us, and we see the world as they do. A mysterious music file surfaces on the internet and forms the basis of a utopian society - or is it a cult? Boundless is at once fantastical and realist, playfully hinting at possible transcendence: from one's culture, one's relationship, oneself. This collection of short stories is a showcase for the masterful blend of emotion and humour of award-winning cartoonist Jillian Tamaki.

Enter the strange world of Imiri Sakabashira. The Box Man follows its zoomorphic protagonists along a scooter trip through a landscape that oscillates between a dense city, a countryside simplified to near abstraction, and hybrids of the two. Sakabashira weaves this absurdist tale in a seamless tapestry constructed of elements as seemingly disparate as Japanese folklore, pop culture, and surrealism.

(W/A/CA) Genevi?ve Castr?e A Bubble is the stunning board book drawn by Genevi?ve Castr?e near the end of her life as a final gift for her two-year-old daughter. Using precise, exquisite drawings of herself and her daughter, changes in their daily routines are depicted as a greater story unfolds. Castr?e and her daughter float from page to page, encased in a bubble that protects them from the outside world. A contemplation of love and loss, A Bubble is a lasting declaration, a final memory, a comfort for others experiencing grief, and a beautiful archive of one of the world's most talented cartoonist's great artistic achievements.

Love and Rockets cartoonist Gilbert Hernandez returns with Bumperhead, a companion book to Marble Season. Gilbert's new book follows Bobby, a young slacker who narrates his life as it happens but offers very little reflection on the events that transpire. Bobby lives in the moment exclusively, and is incapable of seeing the world outside of his experiences. He comes of age in the 1970s, making a rapid progression through that era's different subcultures; in a short period of time he segues from a stoner glam-rocker to a drunk rocker to a speed-freak punk. He drifts in and out of relationships with friends, both male and female. Life zooms past him. Hernandez's approach captures the numbness and raw undirected anger and passion of a young man; a young man who waits for life to happen to him, not noticing all the while that it's happening.

Burma is notorious for its use of concealment and isolation as social control, where censors monitor the papers, the de facto leader of the opposition has been under decade-long house arrest, insurgent-controlled regions are effectively cut off from the world, and rumor is the most reliable source of current information. Delisle's The Burma Chronicles presents an incisive portrait of the isolated country.

Burma is notorious for its use of concealment and isolation as social control, where censors monitor the papers, the de facto leader of the opposition has been under decade-long house arrest, insurgent-controlled regions are effectively cut off from the world, and rumor is the most reliable source of current information. Delisle's The Burma Chronicles incisive portrait of the country is drawn with a minimal line and with wordless vignettes.

(W/A/CA) Julie Doucet Julie Doucet is an artist who has mastered many voices and styles, from her groundbreaking early comic-book series Dirty Plotte and the classic graphic novel My New York Diary, to her linocut and collage work, to her impeccable zines, prints, and other ephemera. In Carpet Sweeper Tales, we see this multi-faceted artist combine her many talents into one genre-defying masterwork. Here she revisits the comics form, pulling images from 1970s Italian fumetti, or photonovels, to create her own collage comics, dwelling on femininity and the modern world.

Catland Empire melds the sensibility of a Philip K. Dick novel with a Saturday morning cartoon. There will exist a future world where 'human beings have become empty husks stripped of all memory when it comes to things like how to have fun and play games,' or so says Mr. Space to his associate Mr. Time. What follows is a tangled web of psychedelic science fiction blending anti-consumerist politics and intergalactic liaisons between cats and dogs - bitter enemies kept secret from each other to avoid a planetary race war.

A rat darts across the opening pages, into a hole, and down a long tunnel, stopping under a hammock. A mole man stretches and wakes up, leading the rat and the reader deeper into the tunnel. What follows is a series of dreamlike sequences, each stranger than the last. Brian Ralph, author of Daybreak, was a founding member of the influential Fort Thunder art collective, which was renowned for the way its members' work intermingled lowbrow and highbrow art forms. In this wordless classic, special emphasis is placed on the power of gesture. Cave-In is an all-ages adventure story, jam-packed with monsters, bats, and all manner of unimaginable underground mystery.

A new graphic novel by Gabrielle Bell, featuring a story adapted to film by Michel Gondry. This new collection by Lucky cartoonist Gabrielle Bell presents her short comics work from various anthologies over the past five years, including Kramer's Ergot, Mome, and Drawn & Quarterly Showcase. The surrealist title story, in which a young woman turns herself into a chair so as not to be too much of a bother to those around her, is being adapted into a short film, Interior Design, by director Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) as part of the forthcoming Tôkyô! trilogy set for a December 2008 release.

(W/A/CA) Ben Katchor Cheap Novelties is an early testament to Ben Katchor's extraordinary prescience as both a gifted cartoonist and an astute urban character. Rumpled, middle-aged, Julius Knipl photographs a vanishing city, an urban landscape of low-rent apartment buildings, obsolete industries, monuments to forgotten people and events, and countless sources of inexpensive food. Now presented as a deluxe anniversary edition, Cheap Novelties is a portrait of what we have lost to gentrification, globalization, and the malling of America that is as moving today as it was a quarter century ago.

(W) Manon Debaye, translated by Montana Kane (A/CA) Manon Debaye A budding friendship between two misfits unravels in the wake of school violenceSchoolyard outcasts Charlie and Astrid meet up after school near a cliff at the edge of the woods surrounding their sleepy town. They make a blood pact to jump together in five days time, before their thirteenth birthdays. Not that navigating the unspoken pecking order of the school quad makes it easy. Can the intensity of their bond survive the scrutiny of their peers, or will it crumble under the sum of each other?s disappointments?Manon Debaye?s characters live in a world just on the periphery of adult supervision, where kids prey upon one another with casual aplomb only to find themselves completely out of their depth. A deft use of colored pencils brings sleepy but barren suburban landscapes to the fore, further capturing childhood?s last pivotal moments as it teeters on the edge of adolescence with startling honesty in this devastatingly well-crafted debut. Winner of the 2023 Philippe Druillet Prize at A

(W/A/CA) Tove Jansson After being told that only 'rebel fathers' can be admitted to Moominpappa's new club, the Knights of the Catapult, Moominmamma defiantly decides to join a club of her own. Unfortunately for her, she accidentally joins a club of gangsters who revel in dubious and illegal activities. Comic misunderstandings, tested allegiances, and frivolous scandals make for an exciting adventure with the whole Moominvalley gang in another classic Tove Jansson tale.

(W/A/CA) Elise Gravel It's a germ?s world. We?re just living in it! In Club Microbe, Elise Gravel teaches young readers that germs live all around us?and even inside of us! Guided by Gravel in this formidable introduction to the fascinating world of microorganisms, we learn that some microbes get a bad rep for making us sick, but that most are helpful creatures that allow us to digest food, make cheese, and even enable snowflakes to form in winter. In her signature colorful cartoon style, Gravel describes the invisible work of microorganisms that aid in creating our food, producing oxygen, and keeping our planet alive. She gives us a tour of the heroes and the villains of the microbe world, stopping to marvel at their unique names and wondrous shapes. Following the perennial success of The Mushroom Fan Club and The Bug Club, this latest installment of the hit science-focused collection will deepen readers? curiosity for all aspects of the natural world. A whimsical primer on the microscopic life that surrounds us, Club Microbe is sure to pique the interest (and imagination!) of any

(W/A/CA) Seth Abe and Simon Matchcard are brothers, struggling to save their archaic family business selling oscillating fans in a world switching to air conditioning. Simon flirts with becoming a salesman as a last-ditch effort to leave the protective walls of the family home, but is ultimately unable to escape Abe's critical voice in his head. As Clyde Fans Co. crumbles, so does the relationship between the two men, who choose very different life paths but both end up utterly unhappy.

(W/A/CA) Lynda Barry Lynda Barry captures all the glorious magic and excrutiating pain of junior high school in this Ernie Pook Comeek collection from the early 90s. The star of this collection is 14 year old Maybonne who relays the angst and insecurity of life through hand scrawled diary entries, class assignments, and letters, in cursive with doodle and bubble letters. Barry deftly portrays the capricious nature of teen friendships, adolescent peer-pressure, and the kill or be killed nature of a middle school's social scene in her signature style.

In an art career that now spans six decades, Art Spiegelman has been a groundbreaking and influential figure with a global impact. His Pulitzer Prize-winning Holocaust memoir Maus established the graphic novel as a legitimate form and inspired countless cartoonists while his shorter works have enormously expanded the expressive range of comics. Co-Mix: A Retrospective of Comics, Graphics, and Scraps is a comprehensive career overview of the output of this legendary cartoonist, showing for the first time the full range of a half-century of relentless experimentation. By showing all facets of Spiegelman's career, the book demonstrates how he has persistently cross-pollinated the worlds of comics, commercial design, and fine arts. Essays by acclaimed film critic J. Hoberman and MoMA curator and Dean of the Yale University School of Art Robert Storr bookend Co-Mix, offering eloquent meditations on an artist whose work has been genre-defining.

(W/A/CA) Luke Healy Self-assured and utterly entitled, Giorgio has always seemed like 'Frank, but better.' Moving in with and caring for his estranged childhood friend quickly starts to chip away at Frank's sense of self, as well as Giogio's carefully curated online persona. The further Frank is pulled into Giorgio's orbit, the quicker his existential dread blooms. Expectation and reality soon collide in a singular tale about trust and confidence.

(W/A/CA) R. Sikoryak R. Sikoryak, the master of the pop culture pastiche, visually interprets the complete text of the supreme law of the land with more than a century of American pop culture icons. Sikoryak distills the very essence of the government legalese from the abstract to the tangible, the historical to the contemporary. Among Sikoryak's spot-on unions of government articles and amendments with famous comic book characters: the eighteenth amendment that instituted prohibition is articulated with Homer Simpson running from Chief Wiggum; the fourteenth amendment that solidifies citizenship to all people born and naturalized in the USA is personified by Ms. Marvel; and, of course, the nineteenth amendment offering women the right to vote is a glorious depiction of Wonder Woman breaking free from her chains.

(W/A/CA) Lisa Hanawalt An homage to and lampoon of westerns, Coyote Doggirl is a self-aware, playful subversion of tropes, from the producer/production designer of the hit series Bojack Horseman. Coyote is a dreamer and a drama queen, brazen and brave, faithful yet fiercely independent. Together with her trusty steed Red, there's not much that's too big for her to bite off, chew up, and spit out right into your face, if you deserve it. But when Coyote and Red find themselves on the run from a trio of vengeful bad dogs, get clobbered by arrows, and are tragically separated, our protagonist is left fighting for her life, and longing for her displaced best friend.

(W/A/CA) Sylvia Nickerson A new mother takes us on a tour of Hamilton, a Rust Belt city born of the Industrial Revolution and dying a slow death due to globalization. This mother represents the city's next wave of inhabitants: the artists and young parents who swarm a run-down area for its affordability, inevitably reshaping the neighborhoods they take over. Creation looks at gentrification from the inside out, an artist mother making a home and neighborhood for her family, struggling to find her place amid the existing and emerging communities.

(W/A/CA) Peter Bagge Peter Bagge returns with a biography of another fascinating twentieth-century trailblazer: the writer, feminist, war correspondent, and libertarian Rose Wilder Lane. Credo is a fast-paced, charming, informative look at a founder of the American libertarian movement and a champion of her mother, Laura Ingalls Wilder, in bringing the classic Little House on the Prairie series to the American public. Bagge's portrait of Lane is heartfelt and affectionate, probing into the personal roots of her rugged individualism.

(W/A/CA) Lee Sensenbrenner, Keiler Roberts In this picture book for grown-ups, sibling duo Keiler Roberts and Lee Sensenbrenner render a compelling-and downright creepy-modern fable about kids who are hooked on their digital devices. Creepy is the contemporary answer to the shocking tales of the Brothers Grimm and bedtime moral stories like the boy who cried wolf or the princess and the pea: in it, Roberts and Sensenbrenner provide a shrewd and comical commentary on the increasing digitization of childhood.

(W/A/CA) Kevin Huizenga The River at Night cartoonist revisits his early-aughts breakthrough In the two decades since Curses first hit the shelves, River at Night cartoonist Kevin Huizenga has taken his rightful place on a short A-list of comics experimentalists. Deep research and loopy cartooning serve up philosophical musings while maintaining a classic comic-strip devotion to ?the gag.? Huizenga remains one of the funniest and smartest cartoonists working today, and now, the very book that heralded his arrival as a talent to watch is available once more in deluxe paperback as the early work of a now true genius. The short stories collected herewith confront the textures of mortality in unique and peculiar ways. Central character Glenn Ganges is a seemingly middle-class, suburbanite whose blank-eyed wonderment at the everyday brings together diverse aspects of our world?like golf, theology, late-night diners, parenthood, politics, Sudanese refugees, and hallucinatory vision?into a complete experience as multifaceted as each of our own lives.

(W/A/CA) Mimi Pond The Customer is Always Wrong is the saga of a young na?ve artist named Madge working in a restaurant of charming drunks, junkies, thieves, and creeps. Oakland in the late seventies is a cheap and quirky haven for eccentrics and Mimi Pond folds the tales of the fascinating sleaze-ball characters that surround young Madge into her workaday waitressing life. Told in the same brash yet earnest style as her previous memoir Over Easy, Pond's storytelling gifts have never been stronger than in this epic, comedic, standalone graphic novel.

(W) Aminder Dhaliwal Shigeru Mizuki-Japan's grand master of yokai comics-adapts one of the most important works of supernatural literature into comic book form. The cultural equivalent of Brothers Grimm's fairy tales, Tono Monogatari is a defining text of Japanese folklore and one of the country's most important works of literature.

(W/A/CA) Tove Jansson Published for the first time in North America, and the last picture book completed by world-renowned Tove Jansson, The Dangerous Journey is a beautifully illustrated and delightfully quirky journey through Moominvalley. Susanna is bored with her life-she craves adventure when there is none to be had. But when a new pair of glasses appears in front of her, she gets an opportunity to live the bold life that she has always longed for as her surroundings are transformed into a dark and sinister landscape.Take this fantastical journey to Moominvalley and never look back.

You wake up in the rubble and see a ragged, desperate one-armed man greeting you. He takes you underground to a safe space, feeds you, offers you a place to sleep, and then announces that he'll take the first watch. It's not long before the peril of the jagged landscape has located you and your newfound protector and is scratching at the door. What transpires is a moment-to-moment struggle for survival - The Road meets Dawn of the Dead. Daybreak is seen through the eyes of a silent observer as he follows his protector and runs from the shadows of the imminent zombie threat. Brian Ralph slowly builds the tension of the zombies on the periphery, letting the threat, rather than the actual carnage, be the driving force.

Teen outcast Andy is an orphaned nobody with only one friend, the obnoxious-but loyal-Louie. They roam school halls and city streets, invisible to everyone but bullies and tormentors, until the glorious day when Andy takes his first puff on a cigarette. The Death-Ray employs the staples of the superhero genre-origin, costume, ray gun, sidekick, fight scene-and reconfigures them in a story that is anything but morally simplistic.

A rescued archive of vintage New York from a forgotten master! After cartoonist, educator and editor James Sturm discovered the vintage book, Mopey Dick and the Duke, he set off to find more about the author, the deceased and unknown cartoonist Denys Wortman. Sturm immediately took note of the masterful drawings - casual, confident, and brimming with personality - and wondered how this cartoonist escaped his radar. After some online sleuthing, Sturm connected with Wortman's son, Denys Wortman VIII, who relayed that an archive of over 5,000 illustrations was literally sitting in his shed in dire need of rescuing. For over 35 years, the illustrations had been fighting such elements as hungry rodents, rusty paperclips and even a blizzard. Wortman VIIII also had drawers full of his father's correspondences including letters and holiday cards from William Steig and Walt Disney. Original artwork by artists and personal friends including Peggy Bacon, Milt Gross, Isabel Bishop, and Reginald Marsh were also saved. Considering that Wortman's luminary peers held him in the highest regard couple

(W/A/CA) Tom Gauld A dog philosopher questions what it really means to be a 'good boy' while playing fetch! A virtual assistant and a robot-cleaner elope! The undiscovered species and the theoretical particle face existential despair! Facebook commenters debunk Darwin's posting of On the Origin of Species! Science vs science fiction! Why are there poodles pouring out of this wormhole? Gauld's Department of Mind-Blowing Theories presents one hundred and fifty comic strips topical and funny enough to engage any layperson with a rudimentary recall of their old science classes as well as those who consider themselves boffins of the contemporary physical and natural world.

A first class ticket into the creepy cute and totally absurd world of Straw Baby, and the mind of its creator Amy Lockhart. It chronicles the various facets of her process from her paintings and drawings to cardboard sculpture of objects from her everyday life. Amy works in a variety of mediums, including animation, painting and comics.

(W/A/CA) Julie Doucet Julie Doucet's comic book series Dirty Plotte is one of the most iconic to have ever been created, a visionary work both for the medium and for storytelling. Her stories are candid, funny, and intimate, plumbing the depths of the female psyche while charting the fragility of the men around her. Her artwork is dense and confident, never wavering in the wit and humour of its owner. Dirty Plotte: The Complete Julie Doucet collects the entire comic book series, including the acclaimed My New York Diary, rare comics and previously unpublished material, in a deluxe two volume box set.

by Anders Nilsen Completely re-formatted by Anders Nilsen, this new volume will be the definitive edition of this major work. Dogs & Water chronicles a piece of a lonely journey, without origin or destination. A young man wandering a nameless path has only a stuffed bear as a companion, which inertly endures his desperation, anger, and musings along the way. The landscape is cold and bleak with few landmarks, and offers only precarious encounters with animals and armed men. Offered this month in Previews is Nilsen's Don't Go Where I Can't Follow, an excellent companion to this new book.

A young man wandering a nameless path has only a stuffed bear as a companion, which inertly endures his desperation, anger, and musings along the way. The landscape is cold and bleak with few landmarks, and offers only precarious encounters with animals and armed men. He finds acceptance with a pack of dogs, though their nature is wild and their potential threat is as unsettling as the sudden presence of a massive pipeline on the horizon. In a dreamlike state, the endless land becomes a vast body of water where his boat is destroyed and his body floats in a subconscious space. All is uncertain and all can be lost, but he continues on regardless.

In this collection of letters, drawings, and photos, Anders Nilsen chronicles a six-year relationship and the illness that brought it to an end. Don't Go Where I Can't Follow is an eloquent appreciation of the time the author shared with his fianc?e, Cheryl Weaver. The story is told using artifacts of the couple's life together, including early love notes, simple and poetic postcards, tales of their travels in written and comics form, journal entries, and drawings done in the hospital in her final days. Don't Go Where I Can't Follow is a deeply personal romance, and a universal reminder of our mortality and the significance of the relationships we build.