Drawn & Quarterly Showcase returns with a 5th volume featuring the work of some of the best new talents from across the globe. The series is hailed for its consistent quality and for the superior editorial vision of its short stories, volume after volume. More often than not, it is the first time the cartoonists have had the chance to work in full-color with twenty-five pages, and on such a wide-reaching visual platform. Artists featured include Anneli Furmark (Sweden), Amanda Vähämäki (Finland), and T. Edward Bak (USA), with Vähämäki providing the cover art.

(W/A/CA) Kate Beaton Before there was Kate Beaton, New York Times-bestselling cartoonist of Hark! A Vagrant, there was Katie Beaton of the Cape Breton Beatons, specifically Mabou. With the singular goal of paying off her student loans, Katie heads out west to take advantage of Alberta's oil rush-part of the long tradition of East Coasters who seek gainful employment elsewhere when they can't find it in the homeland they love so much. Katie encounters the harsh reality of life in the oil sands, where trauma is an everyday occurrence yet is never discussed.

(W/A/CA) Aisha Franz A finely wrought account of aliens and alienation in the suburbs. German cartoonist Aisha Franz's debut graphic novel details a few short days in the life of two sisters and their single mother. Set in a soulless suburb populated by block after block of identical row houses bordered by empty fields and an industrial no-man's land, Earthling explores the loneliness of everyday life through these women's struggle to come to terms with what the world expects of them. Drawn in deep grey pencil, Earthling is an atmospheric and haunting account of the inevitability of losing the dream worlds of childhood.

(W/A/CA) Aisha Franz A finely wrought account of aliens and alienation in the suburbs. German cartoonist Aisha Franz's debut graphic novel details a few short days in the life of two sisters and their single mother. Set in a soulless suburb populated by block after block of identical row houses bordered by empty fields and an industrial no-man's land, Earthling explores the loneliness of everyday life through these women's struggle to come to terms with what the world expects of them. Drawn in deep grey pencil, Earthling is an atmospheric and haunting account of the inevitability of losing the dream worlds of childhood.

In the late 1980s, the idiosyncratic Chester Brown (author of the much-lauded Paying for It and Louis Riel) began writing the cult classic comic book series Yummy Fur. Within its pages, he serialized the groundbreaking Ed the Happy Clown, revealing a macabre universe of parallel dimensions. Ed the Happy Clown is a hallucinatory tale that functions simultaneously as a dark roller-coaster ride of criminal activity and a scathing condemnation of religious and political charlatanism. Brown leaves us wondering, with every twist of the plot, just how Ed will get out of this scrape.

(W/A/CA) Chris Oliveros The Envelope Manufacturer documents the hardships and gradual disintegration of an independent small business. The book begins as the head of the manufacturing company is already deep in financial straits: he struggles to deal with a series of late payments and dwindling orders. The pressures begin to affect him psychologically and it grows ever harder to distinguish between reality and his imaginings. Set in the mid twentieth century, just before globalization moved production of goods overseas, The Envelope Manufacturer chronicles the gradual demise of a small company as it struggles to adapt to a changing economic landscape.

Even More Bad Parenting Advice marks Guy Delisle's second foray into the world of offering bad advice to parents, and a second opportunity to express the minor frustrations and many joys of parenting. Delisle's skillful hand at illustration and ironic way with words, which helped to popularize his travelogues about daily life in faraway places, are just as much the stars here as he or his children are. Delisle celebrates the reality that parenting isn't all first steps and gold-starred report cards; it's stinky diapers and never-ending drives to the grocery store, too.

From her first comics published in the Evergeen State College school paper to her influential weekly comic strip, Ernie Pook's Comeek; from her bestselling creative how-to memoir comic books, What It Is and Picture This, to her novels, graphic memoirs, plays, and awards in between, Lynda Barry has been part of the North American alternative comics scene for over thirty years. Everything collects all of the seminal Ernie Pook's Comeek and includes her earliest comic strips ('Two Sisters'), her very first book, Girls and Boys, and features an introduction penned by Barry, complete with photographs.

Julie Delporte's Everywhere Antennas is a deeply affecting, sparely constructed novel, equal parts Walden and The Bell Jar. In soft, flowing colored pencil, Delporte shows her narrator coming to term with a rare and misunderstood sensitivity to the radiation emitted by the televisions, cell phones, and computers that permeate urban life. Everywhere Antennas is the portrait of a woman caught in the margins, struggling to balance the demands of technology and modern life with the need to find meaningful relationships and work. With Everywhere Antennas, Julie Delporte proves herself to be a master craftswoman of heartbreakingly personal, beautifully literate graphic fiction.

Winner of the 2008 Eisner Award for Best Graphic Novel, available for the first time in paperback! Set in modern-day Tel Aviv, a young man, Koby Franco, receives an urgent phone call from a female soldier. Learning that his estranged father may have been a victim of a suicide bombing in Hadera, Koby reluctantly joins the soldier in searching for clues. His death would certainly explain his empty apartment and disconnected phone line. As Koby tries to unravel the mystery of his father's death, he finds himself piecing together not only the last few months of his father's life but his entire identity. With thin, precise lines and luscious watercolors, Rutu Modan creates a portrait of modern Israel, a place where sudden death mingles with the slow dissolution of family ties.

(W/A/CA) Guy Delisle For three summers beginning when he was 16, cartoonist Guy Delisle worked at a pulp and paper factory in Quebec City. Factory Summers chronicles the daily rhythms of life in the mill, and the twelve-hour shifts he spent as a boy amongst men through the universal rite of passage of the summer job.

(W/A/CA) Adrian Norvid The town of Fake Lake is a sludge pit of goings on and the Fake Lake Bottom Feeder (the local paper) has been kept busy chronicling what amounts to a mild apocalypse: collapsing bridges, a gap in the street that swallows the high school band, an awful bacterial business at the hot springs and a great blowout at the Fakeola bottling plant. Fake Lake is a replica of a weekly edition of the paper, complete with Children's Section (try not to freak out Trippy the clown), Industrial News (it's work injury week, again), a fulsome Food Section (beware the Flakey Bakery's Sticky Buns) and a special double page spread of the Dregs Coffee Shop's Sponsored Expedition to Ascend Old Frothy (their espresso machine) with exclusive photos of bearded hipster explorer types hip deep in milk foam.

(W/A/CA) Michael Deforge The bodies of citizens and the infrastructure surrounding them is constantly updating. People wake up in apartments of completely different sizes and shapes and commuter routes radically differ day to day. There is no way to resist-the updates are enacted by a nameless, faceless force. The signatures of DeForge's work-a vibrant color palette, surreal designs, and self-aware sense of humor - enliven an often-bleak technocratic future. Familiar Face is a masterful and deeply funny exploration of how we define our sense of self, and how we cope when so much of life is out of our control.

(W/A/CA) Joe Ollmann Caleb is a middle-aged painter with a non-starter career. He also happens to be the only child of one of the world's most famous cartoonists, Jimmi Wyatt. Known for the internationally beloved father and son comic Sonny Side Up, Jimmi made millions drawing saccharine family stories while neglecting his own son.

(W/A/CA) Peter Bagge Through Bagge's skilled cartooning, he turns what could be a rote biography into a bold and dazzling graphic novel, creating a story as brilliant as the life itself. Hurston challenged the norms of what was expected of an African American woman in early 20th century society. She arrived in NYC at the height of the Harlem Renaissance, and went on to become a noted folklorist and critically acclaimed novelist, including her most provocative work Their Eyes Were Watching God. With admiration and respect, Bagge reconstructs her vivid life in resounding full-color.

Everything is changing? ? but everything is also exactly the same. Ingken can?t ignore it: ice caps stained brown from forest fires, pipeline construction, drought? the whole world somehow persists despite the slow erosion of stability. After a trip to Paris, Ingken returns home ready for a break from drugs. Their supportive partner, Lily, is flushed, excited about a new connection she?s made. Although Ingken wants to be happy for her, there?s a discomfort they can?t shake. Sleepless nights fill with an endless scroll of images and headlines about climate disaster. A vague dysphoria simmers under their skin; they are able to identify that like Lily, they are changing, but they?re not sure exactly how and at what pace. Everyone keeps telling them to burn themself to the ground and build themself back up but they worry about the kind of debris that fire might leave behind. Nino Bulling?s artwork is immediately familiar. Like a conversation with a good friend, their story is told as quiet as it can be loud. Crowds and landscapes squiggle in expressive black and white. Red cuts through p

(W/A/CA) Michael DeForge First Year Healthy purports to be the story of a young woman, recently released from the hospital after an outburst, and her burgeoning relationship with an odd, perhaps criminal Turkish immigrant. In a scant 48 pages, working with a vibrant, otherworldly palette of magentas, yellows, and grays, Michael DeForge brings to life a world whose shifting realities are as treacherous as the thin ice its narrator walks on. First Year Healthy is all it appears to be and more: a parable about mental illness, a folk tale about magical cats, and a bizarre, compelling story about relationships. Michael DeForge's effortless storytelling and eye for striking page design make each page of First Year Healthy a fascinating puzzle to be unraveled.

(W/A/CA) Nick Maandag This debut collection showcases Nick Maandag's signature blend of deadpan satire and exceedingly unexpected plot twists. In 'Night School,' a class goes awry when a fire alarm brings the Chief to school and he decides to stick around to teach the students a thing or two about leadership-and discipline. 'The Disciple,' is a yarn about a co-ed Buddhist monastery, where Brother Bananas, the resident gorilla, isn't the only one having difficulty keeping his lust tucked safely under his robe. In Maandag's hands-hands that love to toy with morally ambiguous characters and flirt with absurdity-troubled men make poor decisions, unlikable characters gain our sympathies through their very haplessness, and laughs ensue, riotously.

The Freddie Stories traces a year in the life of Freddie, the youngest member of a troubled, often dysfunctional family. Collected from Lynda Barry's beloved Ernie Pook's Comeek, these four-panel entries, each representing an episode in the life of Freddie, bring to life adolescence, pimples and all. No matter what happens, it all seems to go wrong for Freddie. With consummate skill, Barry writes about the cruelty of children at this most vulnerable age when the friends they make and the paths they choose can forever change their lives. The Freddie Stories is an adult tale about how difficult it can be to be a teenager.

(W/A/CA) John Porcellino John Porcellino makes his love of home and of nature the anchors in an increasingly turbulent world. He slows down and visits the forests, fields, streams, and overgrown abandoned lots that surround every city. He studies the flora and fauna around us. He looks at the overlooked. Porcellino also digs deep into a quintessential American endeavour, the road trip. Uprooting his comfortable life several times in From Lone Mountain, John drives through the country weaving from small town to small town, experiencing America in slow motion, avoiding the sameness of airports and overwhelming hustle of major cities. Grand themes of King-Cat are visited and stated more eloquently than ever before: serendipity, memory, and the quest for meaning in the everyday.

(W/A/CA) Kevin Huizenga In The River at Night, Kevin Huizenga, author of the acclaimed series Ganges, delves deep into consciousness. What begins as a simple, distracted conversation between husband and wife becomes an exploration of being and the passage of time. It flashes back, first to satirize the dot-com boom of the late 1990s and then to examine the camaraderie of playing first-person shooter video games with work colleagues, to ponder what the passage of time feels like to geologists or productivity gurus. The River at Night is a modern formalist masterpiece as empathetic, inventive, and funny as anything ever written.

(W/A/CA) Genevieve Castree From rarely- or never-seen illustrations and comics, to album covers and photographs, to studio scraps, Genevi?ve Castr?e: Complete Works 1981-2016 is a breathtaking collection of Castr?e's work and soul. Those familiar with Castr?e's seminal memoir about her childhood, Susceptible (included fully within), will know that she, to a large degree, raised herself. It was in those unattended, semi-feral childhood years that Genevi?ve used art to pull herself out of what could have otherwise been a bleak existence. Instead, she found beauty and depth around her and blended it gorgeously with the harsh, devastating realities of this world. With an introduction from Castr?e's widower Phil Elverum. Translations by Elverum and Aleshia Jensen.

(W) Seth How to encapsulate a life, in all its messiness, epiphanies, misunderstandings, disappointments, and joys? With George Sprott 1894-1975, Seth offers one tragicomic answer. Page by page, we learn about George - outmoded television host, creature of habit, charming if pompous old man, selfish lover, man about to die-and though this is ultimately the story of one man's death, Seth leavens it with humor and restraint.

(W/A/CA) Benji Nate Welcome to the Girl Juice House, home of only the hottest gang in town. Benji Nate's stylish and rambunctious sense of humor lovingly takes digs at the young and tragically hip-reserved and introspective Nana, comically hypersexual Bunny, fledgling U-tuber Tula, and Designated Mom? Sadie-as they navigate life, love, and the pursuit of a good time.

Kevin Huizenga exposes the mechanics that underpin everyday life. His protagonist, Glenn Ganges, has conversations about dish soap and library visits that are both faithful depictions of the mundane interactions we all have and so much more: existential dissections of the units that construct our lives. Huizenga has an understated, quiet approach to story writing that allows his characters (and his readers) the self-awareness to recognize the humor and tragedy of every moment.

(W/A/CA) James Sturm Reuniting America's greatest pastime with its hidden history, the graphic novel tells the story of the Stars of David, a barnstorming Jewish baseball team of the depression era. Led by its manager and third baseman, the nomadic team travels from small town to small town providing the thrill of the sport while playing up their religious exoticism as a curio for people to gawk at, heckle, and taunt. When the team's fortunes fall, the players are presented a plan to get people in the stands. But by placing their fortunes in the hands of a promoter, the Stars of David find themselves fanning the flames of ethnic tensions. Baseball, small towns, racial tensions, and the desperate grasp for the American Dream: The Golem's Mighty Swing is a classic American novel.

(W/A/CA) Tom Gauld Now in paperback with a new cover, Goliath is a retelling of the classic myth, this time from Goliath's point of view. Since its original 2011 release, Tom Gauld has solidified himself as one of the most critically-acclaimed cartoonists working today, from his strips in the Guardian and New Scientist, to his lauded graphic novels You're All Just Jealous of My Jetpack and Mooncop. Simultaneously tragic and bleakly funny, Goliath displays a sensitive wit and a bold line--a traditional narrative reworked, remade, and revolutionized into a classic tale of Gauld's very own.

Good-Bye is the third volume of the collected short stories from legendary Japanese cartoonist Yoshihiro Tatsumi. Drawn in 1971 and 1972, these stories expand the prolific artist's vocabulary for characters contextualized by themes of depravity and disorientation in twentieth-century Japan.

(W/A/CA) Lynda Barry Young Edna Arkins lives in a neighborhood that is rapidly changing, thanks to white flight from urban Seattle in the late 1960s. As the world changes around her, Edna is exposed to the callous racism of adults; sometimes subtle and other times blatant, but always stinging. Originally published in 1988, The Good Times Are Killing Me is now back in print in hardcover with a new cover and the color illustrations from the first edition.

(W/A/CA) Keum Suk Gendry-Kim Grass is a powerful anti-war graphic novel, offering up firsthand the life story of a Korean girl named Okseon Lee who was forced into sexual slavery for the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II, a disputed chapter in 20th century Asian history. Keum Suk Gendry-Kim emphasizes Lee's strength in overcoming the many forms of adversity she experienced. Grass is a landmark graphic novel that makes personal the desperate cost of war and the importance of peace.

(W/A/CA) L?a Murawiec <b>How would you live with nothing but your name?</b><BR><BR>Manel Naher wants out. In a world where your name is currency, it?s tough to make ends meet. It?s even tougher when you share a name with a rising pop star. The city is unbearable?endless high-rises, social climbers left and right, and nothing but names as far as the eye can see. But Manel is looking a little bit farther, just beyond the horizon, and she?s even convinced her buddy Ali of how much more could be lying in wait right outside city limits.<BR><BR>When a sudden heart attack induced by diminished name recognition foils Manel?s plans, gradual change becomes a catalyst for a complete lifestyle overhaul. This stylish, absurd comedy of contemporary manners skewers the human condition in persistent self-promo. Sharp, architectural lines are accented by decisively mellow hues, building a humorously grim world unexpectedly bathed in nothing but light. <BR><BR>An exciting debut from a fresh perspective, <i>The Great Beyond</i> showcases newcomer L?a Murawiec?s command of comics language and satirize

(W/A/CA) Lynda Barry Eight-year-old Marlys Mullen is Lynda Barry's most famous character from her long-running and landmark comic strip Ernie Pook's Comeek, and for good reason! Given her very own collection of strips, Marlys shines in all her freckled and pig-tailed groovy glory. The trailer park where she and her family live is the grand stage for her dramas big and small. Joining Marlys are her teenaged sister Maybonne, her younger brother Freddie, their mother, and an offbeat array of family members, neighbors, and classmates.

(W/A/CA) Guy Delisle The Handbook to Lazy Parenting is bestselling cartoonist Guy Delisle's final tribute to the frequently hilarious and absurd situations that any parent will find themselves in when raising young children-all told with Delisle's trademark sarcastic wit. But even as Delisle's children grow older, wiser, and less interested in their father's antics, Delisle has no shortage of bad parenting stories, only now, sometimes, the joke is on him! Delisle tells relatable stories of parenthood, the mistakes we have trouble admitting to, and the impulse that we all sometimes have to give a comically serious answer to a child's comically serious question.

Hark! A Vagrant is an uproarious romp through history and literature seen through the sharp, contemporary lens of New Yorker cartoonist and comics-sensation Kate Beaton. No era nor tome is left unscathed as Beaton rightly skewers the Western World's revolutionaries, leaders, sycophants, and suffragists while equally honing her wit on the hapless heroes, heroines, and villains of the best-loved fiction. Hark! A Vagrant features sexy Batman, the true stories behind classic Nancy Drew covers, and Queen Elizabeth doing the albatross. In just four years, Beaton has taken the comics world by storm with her non sequiturs, cheeky comebacks, and irreverent punch lines. Her caricatures of historical and fictional figures display a sharp, quick wit that knows no bounds.

(W/A/CA) Nick Maandag Universe. But while solarists believe it is possible to achieve a state of Pure Light by exposing themselves to the rays of the sun (or tanning beds on cloudy days), the Forces of Dark conspire against them and send hooded Shadow Men to eliminate the Light. Subsequently, Solarists must kill these Shadow Men.When a thief infiltrates the sacred chambers of the Solarists, Assistant-to-the-Master Harvey Knight must test the strength of his beliefs in order to restore order. Or maybe he's plotting to overthrow the leader and make the religion his own. Either way, it's an odyssey.

Ten years after finishing the original French edition of Maybe Later, Philippe Dupuy set out on his own again with Haunted. Gone are the tightly constructed narratives and urbane, elegant graphics of his projects with collaborator Charles Berberian. In their place, roughed-in drawings give an urgent, spontaneous feeling to a series of hallucinatory stories and dreamlike sequences that register the raw distress of solitude and self-doubt. A jogging Dupuy runs around and sometimes through the stories of the misfit characters that haunt him: a self-amputating dog, a Left Bank artist in search of emptiness, an art-collecting duck, Lucha Libre wrestlers, and a group of single guys at the watering hole imagined as the anthropomorphic 'Forest Friends.' Heart pumping, gaze turned inward, the ground occasionally giving way beneath his feet, this alter ego concludes that sometimes you need to cross the line to figure out where it is.

(W/A/CA) Michael Deforge Heaven No Hell collects DeForge's best work yet. His ability to dig into a subject and break it down with beautiful drawings and sharp writing makes him one of the finest short story writers of the past decade, in comics or beyond. Heaven No Hell is always funny, sometimes sad, and continuously innovative in its deconstruction of society.

One of the first acclaimed contemporary graphic novels is now back in print with a new cover and new 16-page drawn introduction by Dylan Horrocks. Considered to be a classic by many, Hicksville was named a 'Book of the Year' by The Comics Journal and received nominations for two Ignatz Awards, a Harvey Award, and two Alph'Art Awards.

(W/A/CA) Shigeru Mizuki Seventy years after his death, Adolf Hitler remains a mystery. With Shigeru Mizuki's Hitler, the manga-ka (Kitaro, NonNonba, Showa: A History of Japan) delves deep into the history books to create an absorbing and eloquent portrait of Hitler's life. Beginning with Hitler's time in Austria as a starving art student and ending with a Germany in ruins, Shigeru Mizuki retraces the path Hitler took in life, coolly examining his charismatic appeal and his calculated political maneuvering. In Mizuki's signature style, which populates incredibly realistic backgrounds with cartoony people, Japan's most famous living cartoonist has created an overview of Hitler's life as fascinating as it is informative.

The Hospital Suite is a landmark work by celebrated cartoonist and small-press legend John Porcellino, an autobiographical collection detailing his struggles with illness in the 1990s and 2000s. In 1997, John needed emergency surgery to remove a benign tumor from his small intestine. In the wake of the surgery, John had numerous health complications that led to a flare-up of his preexisting tendencies toward anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The Hospital Suite is Porcellino's response to these experiences, simply told stories drawn in an honest, heart-wrenching style.