The groundbreaking 2007 New York Times Book Review Notable Book, now in a new paperback. Lauded for its provocative and insightful portrayal of interpersonal relationships, Adrian Tomine's politically charged Shortcomings was one of the most acclaimed books of 2007. Shortcomings landed on countless 'best of' lists, including those in Entertainment Weekly and The New York Times; was praised by Junot Díaz in Publishers Weekly; and was the subject of a solo review in The New York Times Book Review that drew comparison between Tomine and Philip Roth.

(W/A/CA) Shigeru Mizuki Showa 1926-1939: A History of Japan lays the groundwork for Eisner award-winning author Shigeru Mizuki's historical and autobiographical series about Japanese life in the twentieth century. Depicted against his trademark photorealistic backdrops, Mizuki effortlessly portrays a nation forced into a period of upheaval and brings history into the realm of the personal. Indeed, as a child coming of age in the Showa era, the author's earliest memories coincide with key events of the time.

(W/A/CA) Shigeru Mizuki Showa 1939-1944: A History of Japan continues Eisner award-winning author Shigeru Mizuki's historical and autobiographical account of Japanese life in the twentieth century. This volume covers the devastation of the Sino-Japanese War and the first few years of the Pacific War-a chilling reminder of just how harsh life in Japan was during this hostile era. Pivotal events like the attack on Pearl Harbor are reframed as part of a larger context detailing the country's brutal military expansion into Southeast Asia and elsewhere.

(W/A/CA) Shigeru Mizuki The penultimate volume of the Showa series continues award-winning author Shigeru Mizuki's autobiographical and historical account of Showa period Japan. This volume recounts the events of the final years of the Pacific War, and the consequences of the war's devastation for Shigeru Mizuki and the Japanese populace at large. After the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor, Japan and the United States are officially at war. The two rival navies wage a series of micro-wars across the tiny Pacific islands, and from Guadalcanal to Okinawa Japan slowly loses ground. Finally, the United States unleashes the deathblow with a new and terrible weapon-the atomic bomb. Showa 1944-1953 is a searing condemnation of the personal toll of war from one of Japan's most famous cartoonists.

(W/A/CA) Shigeru Mizuki Showa 1944-1953: A History of Japan continues Eisner award-winning author Shigeru Mizuki's historical and autobiographical account of Japanese life in the twentieth century. In this volume, the tail-end of the Pacific War and its devastating consequences upon the author and his compatriots loom large. Two rival navies engage in a deadly game of feint and thrust, waging a series of ruthless military campaigns across the Pacific islands. When the United States unleashes the atomic bomb it is the ultimate, definitive blow. The catastrophic fallout from both explosions surpasses the limits of popular imagination.

(W/A/CA) Shigeru Mizuki Showa 1953-1989: A History of Japan concludes award-winning author Shigeru Mizuki's stunning historical and autobiographical series about Japanese life in the twentieth century. The final volume picks up in the wake of utter defeat in World War II, covering the United States' shift from enemy to ally. Jobs, money, and opportunity are funneled along in a bid to establish the country as a bulwark against Communist expansion. Japan thus reinvents itself, emerging as an economic powerhouse. This period of peace and plenty conceals a populace still struggling to come to terms with the devastation of their all-too-recent past.

An early graphic novel from the author of the beloved children's classic, Corduroy. Skitzy follows a day in the life of a man literally divided between life as an office worker and life as an artist. Floyd W. Skitzafroid's wife worries that he is culture-starved and overworked, but she is only half right. Shortly after he leaves the house, Floyd splits into two - one a carefree artist, the other a grumpy worker. The contented Floyd quickly evades his morose counterpart in favor of a trip to his studio. But while this half paints and walks around pleasantly, the other Floyd is confined to a desk, interacting only with paperwork, a looming boss, and his own disrupting thoughts. When the two halves of Skitzafroid are reunited after the workday, an unexpected eye-opener gives Floyd the push he needs to find a solution that will allow him to enjoy his passions without compromising his financial freedom. Freeman's economical and dialogue-free illustrations seduce the reader into a familiar world where expressive drawings explore the possibility of striking a perfect balance between work an

(W/A/CA) Kuniko Tsurita The Sky is Blue with a Single Cloud collects the best short stories from Kuniko Tsurita's remarkable career. While the works of her male peers in literary manga are widely reprinted, this formally ambitious and poetic female voice is like none other currently available to an English readership. A master of the comics form, expert pacing and compositions combined with bold characters are signature qualities of Tsurita's work. An exciting and essential gekiga collection, The Sky Is Blue with a Single Cloud is translated by comics scholar Ryan Holmberg and includes an afterword cowritten by Holmberg and the manga editor Mitsuhiro Asakawa delineating Tsurita's importance and historical relevance.

(W/A/CA) Adrian Tomine Collecting the first four issues of Adrian Tomine's acclaimed comic series Optic Nerve, this book offers sixteen concise, haunting tales of modern life. The characters here appear to be well-adjusted on the surface, but Tomine takes us deeper into their lives, subtly examining their struggle to connect with friends and lovers.

(W/A/CA) Tom Gauld Tom Gauld (Mooncop, You're All Just Jealous of My Jetpack, Goliath) has created countless iconic strips for the Guardian over the course of his illustrious career. A master of condensing grand, highbrow themes into one-to-eight panel comics, Gauld's weekly Guardian strips embody his trademark British humor, while simultaneously opening comics to an audience unfamiliar with the artistry that cartooning has to offer. Funny but serious, the Guardian comics allow Gauld to put his impressive knowledge of history, literature, and pop culture on full display, his impeccable timing, and distinctive visual style setting him apart from the rest.

(W) Mirion Malle, translated by Aleshia Jensen (A/CA) Mirion Malle No matter how wrong relationships can be, there?s nothing quite like getting them right. Every guy?s been a creep at one point or another. That?s just the way it is. Or at least, that?s what Cleo tells herself once she finds out her boyfriend might not be the man she thought he was. Is it possible to keep loving someone you?re not sure you can trust? More to the point, should you? Once the fabric of Cleo?s relationship rips at the seams, the life she had built with him?abroad and away from those closest to her?unravels right before her eyes. Yet, letting it fall to pieces as she walks away is only half the story. So Long Sad Love swaps out the wobbly transition of weaving a new existence into being post-heartbreak for the surprising effortlessness and simplicity of a life already rebuilt. Cleo not only rediscovers her identity as an artist but uncovers her capacity to find love where she has always been most at home: with other women. Mirion Malle dares to tell a story with a happier ending in a stunning, full-colo

(W/A/CA) Vanessa Davis Vanessa Davis's autobiographical comics delighted readers ten years ago when she first began telling stories about her life in New York as a young single Jewish woman. Spaniel Rage is filled with frank and immediate pencil drawn accounts of dating woes, misunderstandings between her and her mother, and conversations with friends. Unabashedly, Davis offers up gently self-deprecating anecdotes about her anxieties and wry truths about the contradictions of life in the big city. These comics are sexy, funny, lonely, beautiful, spare, and very smart, the finest work from a natural storyteller.

(W/A/CA) Kate Beaton Ida B. Wells, the Black Prince, and Benito Ju?rez burst off the pages of Step Aside, Pops: A Hark! A Vagrant Collection, armed with modern-sounding quips and amusingly on-point repartee. Kate Beaton's second D+Q book brings her hysterically funny gaze to bear on these and even more historical, literary, and contemporary figures. Irreverently funny and carefully researched, no target is safe from Beaton's incisive wit in these satirical strips. Beaton returns with a refined pen, ready to make jokes at the expense of hunks, army generals, scientists, and Canadians in equal measure. With a few carefully placed lines, Beaton captures the over-the-top evil of the straw feminists in the closet, the disgruntled dismay of Heathcliff, and Wonder Woman's all-conquering ennui.

(W/A/CA) Michael DeForge Sticks Angelica is, in her own words, '49 years old. Former: Olympian, poet, scholar, sculptor, minister, activist, Governor General, entrepreneur, line cook, headmistress, Mountie, columnist, libertarian, cellist.' After a high-profile family scandal, Sticks escapes to the woods to live in what would be relative isolation were it not for the many animals that surround and inevitably annoy her. Deforge's witty dialogue and deadpan narration create a bizarre yet eerily familiar tale of how we build our own sense of self and how others carry on the roles we create for them in our own personal dramas.

Seth Scriver's work is filled with lumpy men and women plucked from rural Canada: thick mustaches, plaid shirts, and winter caps exchanging non-sequiturs and one-liners. Airbrushed Garfields, packs of wild dogs, flocks of birds, and more packs of wild dogs race through Scriver's paintings and drawings. Scriver exemplifies a modern cartoon painting aesthetic, a type of fantasy world created through a stream-of-consciousness drawing style.

(W/A/CA) J?r?me Ruillier The Strange follows an unnamed, undocumented immigrant who tries to forge a new life in a Western country where he doesn't speak the language. J?r?me Ruillier's story is deftly told through myriad viewpoints, as each narrator recounts a situation in which they crossed paths with the newly-arrived foreigner. Told with beautiful simplicity, The Strange shows one person's struggle to adapt while dealing with the often brutal and unforgiving attitudes of the employers, neighbors, and strangers who populate this new land.

(W/A/CA) Marc Bell The first full length graphic novel from the author of Shrimpy & Paul. Enter the strange and wordplay-loving world of cartoonist and fine artist Marc Bell, where the All-Star Schnauzer Band runs things and tiny beings hold signs saying 'It's under control.' Hapless hero Stroppy minds his business, working a menial job in one of Monsieur Moustache's factories, when a muscular fellah named Sean blocks up the assembly line. Sean's there to promote an All-Star Schnauzer Band-organized songwriting contest, which he does enthusiastically, and at the expense of Stroppy's livelihood, home, and face. In hopes for a cash prize, Stroppy submits a work by his friend Clancy The Poet to the contest. Mishaps and hilarity ensue and Stroppy is forced to go deep into the heart of Schnauzer territory to rescue his poet friend. Stroppy is Marc Bell's triumphant return to comics; it's also his first full-length graphic novella, one that thrums with jokes, hashtags, and made-up song lyrics.

With a deft and romantic touch, Adrian Tomine portrays the emotional ambivalence of drifting, urban twenty-somethings in stunning black and white. His stories are appealingly naturalistic, stylishly cinematic, and emotionally rich. His fans accuse him of eavesdropping on their most intimate moments, exhibiting their insecurities with both forensic detachment and surprising compassion.

Sunday Night Movies features Leanne Shapton's watercolors of resonant moments in black-and-white cinema. Selecting a brief fragment of each chosen film, she creates an indelible image that is both a hand-painted movie still and a personal response to a fleeting celluloid moment. Together, the seventy-eight paintings create a valentine to the world of cinema. Shapton's journey through film history becomes a wistful celebration of the subtle moments in stories, which can often slip by unnoticed. What could be a simple title, still life, or portrait of an actor becomes both illusive and allusive through the medium of these personal paintings. With Sunday Night Movies she brings her love of film to light, and the effect is restrained and fanciful, familiar and all new.

(W/A/CA) Jillian Tamaki Jillian Tamaki is best known for co-creating the award-winning young adult graphic novels Skim and This One Summer, moody and atmospheric bestsellers. SuperMutant Magic Academy, which Jillian has been serializing online for the past four years, paints a teenaged world filled with just as much ennui and uncertainty, but also with a sharp dose of humor and irreverence. Jillian deftly plays superhero and high school Hollywood tropes against what adolescence is really like: the SuperMutant Magic Academy is a prep-school for mutants and witches but their paranormal abilities take a back seat to everyday teen concerns. Science experiments go awry, bake sales are upstaged, and the new kid at school is a cat who will determine the course of human destiny. Whether the magic is mundane or miraculous, Jillian's jokes are precise and devastating. This volume combines the most popular content from the webcomic with a selection of all-new, never-before-seen strips that conclude Jillian's account of life at the Academy.

Genevi?ve Castr?e has long been beloved for her mini-comics, comics, visual art, and music. There is a unique quality to all of her artistic endeavors - quiet, serene, depressing. Castr?e's keen eye for detail and her fearless ability to probe the depths of her troubled past make Susceptible a stirring portrait of an artist coming into her own. Susceptible is the story of Goglu, a daydreamer growing up in Quebec in the '80s and '90s with a single mother. From a skillful artist comes a moving, beautiful story about families, loss, and growing up.

(W/A/CA) Yoshiharu Tsuge The Swamp is the first in a series of books Drawn & Quarterly will be publishing by Yoshiharu Tsuge, one of the most influential and acclaimed practitioners of literary comics in Japan. Bucking the tradition of mystery and adventure stories, Tsuge's fiction focused on the lives of the citizens of Japan. These mesmerizing comics, like those of his contemporary Yoshihiro Tatsumi, reveal a gritty, at times desperate post-war Japan, while displaying Tsuge's unique sense of humor and point of view.

(W/A/CA) Weng Pixin Sweet Time is an intimate rumination on love, empathy, and confidence. Singaporean cartoonist Weng Pixin delicately explores strained relationships with a kind of hopefulness while acknowledging the inevitable collapse. Her stories are like a series of snapshots in a photo album or the brightest highlights from an Instagram profile. Weng combines colorful realism with a gentle wit and introspection, crafting infinitely relatable stories of everyday life and love now.

(W/A/CA) Lynda Barry Award-winning author Lynda Barry is the creative force behind the genre-defying and best-selling work What It Is. She believes that anyone can be a writer and she has set out to prove it. Syllabus: Notes from an Accidental Professor is the first book that will make her innovative lesson plans and writing exercises available to the public for home or classroom use. Barry teaches a method of writing that focuses on the relationship between the hand, the brain, and spontaneous images, both written and visual. Syllabus takes the course plan for Lynda Barry's workshop and runs wild with it in Barry's signature densely detailed style. Collaged texts, ballpoint pen doodles, and watercolor washes adorn Syllabus's yellow lined pages, which offer advice on finding a creative voice and using memories to inspire the writing process.

(W/A/CA) Yamada Murasaki Set in an apartment complex on the outskirts of Tokyo, Murasaki Yamada's Talk to My Back (1981-84) explores the fraying of Japan's suburban middle-class dreams through a woman's relationship with her two daughters as they mature and assert their independence, and with her husband, who works late and sees his wife as little more than a domestic servant.

This monumental book is the first ever comprehensive overview of the comics of R.O. Blechman, spanning six decades in an impressive career. From early work in Harvey Kurtzman's seminal Humbug in 1957 to ruminations on Shakespeare and Virginia Wolfe from the pages of the The New York Times Book Review in 2002-2006, Talking Lines collects the work of a modern master.

(W/A) R. Sikoryak R. Sikoryak tackles the monstrously and infamously dense legal document, iTunes Terms and Conditions, the contract everyone agrees to but no one reads. In a word for word adaptation, Sikoryak hilariously turns the agreement on its head; each page features an avatar of Apple cofounder and legendary visionary Steve Jobs juxtaposed with a different classic strip such as Mort Walker's Beetle Bailey, or a contemporary graphic novel such as Craig Thompson's Blankets or Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis.

(W/A/CA) Keum Suk Gendry-Kim Critically acclaimed and award-winning cartoonist Keum Suk Gendry-Kim returns with a stunning addition to her body of graphic fiction. Adapted from Park Wan-suh's beloved novel, The Naked Tree paints a stark portrait of a single nation's fabric slowly torn to shreds by political upheaval. Fleshing out the characters in fresh, imaginative ways, and incorporating the original author into the story, Gendry-Kim breathes new life into this Korean classic.

(W/A/CA) Paul B. Rainey If time travel existed, would you right societal wrongs or just watch future episodes of Doctor Who? Paul B. Rainey’s There’s No Time Like the Present continues to upend grand science fiction gestures with a deep desire to understand the emotional lives of the common man (nerd). It’s a simple conceit: time travel is only possible between the invention of the necessary, functioning machinery and the day those machines are shut off. In that finite sliver of space-time, humanity schisms into those who defiantly refuse to look into the future, and those who reap the benefits of doing so. After all, what would you do if you accidentally found out for certain that you would still be working the same dead end job at the age of 70? What would you do if you could read every future issue of your favorite comic? Or if you traveled back in time and couldn’t afford to travel back? Would your life actually be that different? Can we admit that there might not be such a thing as free will? Is life just a series of denials of reality? Why does that one guy have horns? There’s

(W/A/CA) Emma Grove The Third Person is a riveting memoir from newcomer Emma Grove. Drawn in thick, emotive lines, with the refined style of a comics vet, Grove has created a singular, gripping depiction of the intersection of identities and trauma as she and her therapist, Toby, grapple with her possible Dissociative Identity Disorder as she seeks approval for gender affirming care. The Third Person is a testament to the importance of having the space to heal and live authentically.

(W/A/CA) Mirion Malle Mirion Malle paints an empathetic portait of a young woman wrestling with psychological stress and the trauma following an experience of sexual assault. Filled with 21st century idioms and social media communication, This Is How I Disappear opens a window into the lives of young people as they face a barrage of mental health hurdles. Scenes of sisterhood, fun nights out singing karaoke, and impromptu FaceTime therapy sessions show how this generation is coping, connecting, and healing together.

(W/A/CA) Julie Delporte This Woman's Work is a powerfully raw autobiographical work that asks vital questions about femininity and the assumptions we make about gender. Julie Delporte examines cultural artifacts and sometimes traumatic memories through the lens of the woman she is today-a feminist who understands the reality of the women around her, how experiencing rape culture and sexual abuse is almost synonymous with being a woman, and the struggle of reconciling one's feminist beliefs with the desire to be loved.

(W/A/CA) Julie Doucet Time Zone J is Julie Doucet's first inked comic since famously quitting in the nineties after an exhausting career in an industry that, at the time, made little room for women. Based on diary entries from the whirlwind romance, the passion and high emotions of youth-before you know the limits of love, before you know the difference between love and lust-seep through the pages. In contrast to the tryst, Doucet draws herself today, at fifty-five. (STL213899) MATURE THEMES

(W/A/CA) Shigeru Mizuki 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. This graphic novel was created during the later stage of Mizuki's career, after he had retired from the daily grind of commercial comics to create personal, lasting works of art.

(W/A/CA) Leanne Shapton Always there to comfort and listen, stuffed animals provide a reassuring presence in many a childhood. With Toys Talking, acclaimed illustrator and author Leanne Shapton explores their inner lives, to reveal that their thoughts and feelings are just as complicated as our own. The concerns of these bunnies, bears, and ducks range from the mundane to the existential, and with each new pairing of character and text, we see a deeper portrait of their pensive, quiet world. Shapton holds a mirror to our own lives, to our insecurities and concerns, by revealing that the objects who comfort us have worries of their own. This board book brings Shapton's gorgeously minimal brushstrokes to a younger audience.

(W/A) Rutu Modan When a great antiquities collector is forced to donate his entire collection to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Nili Broshi sees her last chance to finish an archeological expedition begun decades earlier - a dig that could possibly yield the most important religious artifact in the Middle East. Motivated by the desire to reinstate her father's legacy as a great archeologist after he was marginalized by his rival, Nili enlists a ragtag crew-a religious nationalist and his band of hilltop youths, her traitorous brother, and her childhood Palestinian friend, now an archeological smuggler. As Nili's father slips deeper into dementia, warring factions close in on and fight over the Ark of the Covenant!

(W/A/CA) Yeon-Sik Hong Madang is an artist and new father who moves to a quiet home in the countryside, excited to build a new life with his family. But soon his attention is diverted back to his impoverished parents back in Seoul in a dingy basement apartment. With an ailing mother and an alcoholic father, Madang struggles to overcome the exhaustion of trying to be everything: a good son, devoted father, and loving husband. To cope, he reminisces about their family meals together and his mother's kimchi, a traditional dish that is prepared by the family and requires months of fermentation. A beautiful meditation on how the kitchen and communal cooking-both past, present and future - bind a family together amidst the inevitable.

(W/A/CA) Yeon-Sik Hong With gorgeously detailed yet minimal art, cartoonist Yeon-Sik Hong explores his move with his wife to a small house atop a rural mountain, replacing the high-rent hubbub of Seoul with the quiet murmur of the country. With their dog, cats, and chickens by their side, the simple life and isolation they so desperately craved proves to present new anxieties. Hong paints a beautiful portrait of the Korean countryside, changing seasons, and the universal relationships humans have with each other as well as nature, both of which are sometimes frustrating but always rewarding. Uncomfortably Happily is translated by American cartoonist Hellen Jo from the acclaimed Manhwa Today award-winning Korean edition.

(W/A/CA) Sig Burwash A uniquely thrilling and emotive fantasy ride along a sea-bordered highway The wondrous rustic landscape of Nova Scotia bursts from the page in Vera Bushwack, where reality gladly gives way to fantastical flights of fancy before gently coming back down to earth. A chainsaw fires up and Drew?s vision blurs. Their body vibrates alive with the whrrr of the engine, the whiff of gas. Drew dissolves as their alter-ego, Vera Bushwack, takes charge. Assless-chaps-wearing, unflinching Vera slashes through thick trunks, felling trees righteously from the back of a majestic steed. Vera?s here to help, of course. Drew needs to clear the land for their future cabin in the woods. And if it weren?t for Vera?s brazenness, Drew may, ironically, fall reliant on others to learn self-reliance. Nevertheless, men enter Drew?s orbit, all too eager to explain how things work?an aggravating occurrence that comes crashing into Drew as dependably as the nearby ocean waves. Joy, anger, grief, and self-acceptance ripple through these pages with Sig Burwash?s hilariously expressive pencil dr

(W/A/CA) Anna Haifisch Walt Disney is exhausted both physically and mentally. After a breakdown where he trashes his office, his wife Lilian brings him to a retreat to recover - the Von Spatz Rehabilitation Center. With a campus that includes studio buildings, a gallery, an art supply store, a hot dog booth, and a penguin pool, the clinic is a paradise for artists in crisis. There Disney meets Tomi Ungerer and Saul Steinberg, and together, they embark on a regimen of relaxation and art therapy. Haifisch looks at the fervent drive and crippling insecurities of the average artist and places those same issues on the shoulders of three celebrated 20th century artists. Part study of isolation, part tale of a begrudging camaraderie, daily life at the center mixes with reminiscences from the world outside.