Jack Kirby

Jack Kirby
Author: Tom Scioli
Publisher: Ten Speed Graphic
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2020-07-14
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 1984856901

Told in vivid graphic novel form by a groundbreaking Eisner-nominated comics creator, the long-overdue biography of the legend who co-created Captain America, Iron Man, Black Panther, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, and many more superhero favorites. “A fast-paced celebration of an underheralded legend within the comic-book industry.”—Kirkus Reviews NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY LIBRARY JOURNAL This sweeping, full-color comic book biography tells the complete life story of Jack Kirby, co-creator of some of the most enduring superheroes and villains of the twentieth century for Marvel Comics, DC Comics, and more. Critically acclaimed graphic novelist Tom Scioli breathes visual life into Kirby's life story--from his days growing up in New York during the Great Depression and discovering a love for science fiction and cartoons to his time on the frontlines in the European theatre of World War II where he experienced the type of action and adventure he'd later imbue his comic pages with, and on to his world-changing collaborations at Marvel with Stan Lee, where the pair redefined comics as a part of pop culture. Just as every great superhero needs a villain to overcome, Kirby's story also includes his struggles to receive the recognition and compensation that he believed his work deserved. Scioli captures his moves from Marvel to DC and back again, showing how Kirby himself and later his family fought to preserve his artistic legacy. Drawn from an unparalleled imagination and a life as exciting as his comic book tales, Kirby's super-creations have influenced subsequent generations of creatives in the comics field and beyond. Now, readers can experience the life and times of a comics titan through the medium that made him famous.

Cub

Cub
Author: Cynthia L. Copeland
Publisher: Algonquin Young Readers
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2020-01-07
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1616208481

“Raina Telgemeier fans will lap this up.” — Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books A laugh-out-loud funny and empowering graphic memoir about growing up and finding your voice. Twelve-year-old Cindy has just dipped a toe into seventh-grade drama—with its complicated friendships, bullies, and cute boys—when she earns an internship as a cub reporter at a local newspaper in the early 1970s. A (rare) young female reporter takes Cindy under her wing, and Cindy soon learns not only how to write a lede, but also how to respectfully question authority, how to assert herself in a world run by men, and—as the Watergate scandal unfolds—how brave reporting and writing can topple a corrupt world leader. Searching for her own scoops, Cindy doesn’t always get it right, on paper or in real life. But whether she’s writing features about ghost hunters, falling off her bicycle and into her first crush, or navigating shifting friendships, Cindy grows wiser and more confident through every awkward and hilarious mistake.

Return to Romance

Return to Romance
Author: Ogden Whitney
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Total Pages: 121
Release: 2019-10-01
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 1681373440

By turns amusing and disturbing, this collection of 1960s romance comic strips provides a provocative window into male-female power dynamics as conceived by one of mid-century America's foremost comic book artists. Ogden Whitney was one of the unsung masters of American comics. He is perhaps best remembered for co-creating the satirical superhero Herbie Popnecker, also known as the Fat Fury, but his romance comics of the late 1950s and 1960s may be even more unique. In Whitney’s hands, the standard formula of meet-cute, minor complications, and final blissful kiss becomes something very different: an unsettling vision of midcentury American romance as a devastating power struggle, a form of intimate psychological warfare dressed up in pearls and flannel suits. From suburban lawns and offices to rocket labs and factories, his men and women scheme and clash, dominate and escape. It is darkly hilarious, truly terrifying—and yes, occasionally even a bit romantic.

The Comics Journal #304

The Comics Journal #304
Author: Gary Groth
Publisher: Fantagraphics Books
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2019-09-25
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 1683962648

The Comics Journal #304 features Gary Groth in conversation with outspoken Tasmanian cartoonist Simon Hanselmann, who discusses how his tragicomedy webcomic starring a witch, a cat, and an owl became an internationally acclaimed, best-selling phenomenon, collected in books such as Megahex and Bad Gateway. This issue also highlights the labor and economics issues facing the medium — the past and future of organizing a comics union, work-for-hire contracts, and how comic conventions can better serve creators — with the Journal’s hallmark candor. Other features include an exclusive look at the unfinished graphic novel that Eisner and Geisel Award winner Geoffrey Hayes was working on before his untimely death in 2017, a peak inside the lush sketchbook of Sophie Franz, a timely work by Brazilian cartoonist Laura Lannes, a reconsideration of the comics canon by Skin Horse cartoonist Shaenon K. Garrity, and more!

The Someday Funnies

The Someday Funnies
Author: Michel Choquette
Publisher: Harry N. Abrams
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2011-11-01
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 9780810996182

Presents a collection of 129 never-before-published comics about the 1960s by 169 writers and artists, including Renâe Goscinny, Jack Kirby, Harvey Kurtzman, Art Spiegelman, and Gahan Wilson.

Dotter of Her Father's Eyes

Dotter of Her Father's Eyes
Author: Mary M. Talbot
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Total Pages: 104
Release: 2008-02-05
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 1621152014

Part personal history, part biography, Dotter of Her Father's Eyes contrasts two comingofage narratives: that of Lucia, the daughter of James Joyce, and that of author Mary Talbot, daughter of the eminent Joycean scholar James S. Atherton. Social expectations and gender politics, thwarted ambitions and personal tragedy are played out against two contrasting historical backgrounds, poignantly evoked by the atmospheric visual storytelling of awardwinning graphicnovel pioneer Bryan Talbot. Produced through an intense collaboration seldom seen between writers and artists, Dotter of Her Father's Eyes is smart, funny, and sadan essential addition to the evolving genre of graphic memoir. * Bryan Talbot is recognized worldwide as one of the true original voices in graphic fiction. * Bryan Talbot's Grandville Mon Amour was nominated for a 2011 Hugo Award.

All of the Marvels

All of the Marvels
Author: Douglas Wolk
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2023-10-03
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0735222185

Winner of the 2022 Eisner Award for Best Comics-Related Book The first-ever full reckoning with Marvel Comics’ interconnected, half-million-page story, a revelatory guide to the “epic of epics”—and to the past sixty years of American culture—from a beloved authority on the subject who read all 27,000+ Marvel superhero comics and lived to tell the tale “Brilliant, eccentric, moving and wholly wonderful. . . . Wolk proves to be the perfect guide for this type of adventure: nimble, learned, funny and sincere. . . . All of the Marvels is magnificently marvelous. Wolk’s work will invite many more alliterative superlatives. It deserves them all.” —Junot Díaz, New York Times Book Review The superhero comic books that Marvel Comics has published since 1961 are, as Douglas Wolk notes, the longest continuous, self-contained work of fiction ever created: over half a million pages to date, and still growing. The Marvel story is a gigantic mountain smack in the middle of contemporary culture. Thousands of writers and artists have contributed to it. Everyone recognizes its protagonists: Spider-Man, the Avengers, the X-Men. Eighteen of the hundred highest-grossing movies of all time are based on parts of it. Yet not even the people telling the story have read the whole thing—nobody’s supposed to. So, of course, that’s what Wolk did: he read all 27,000+ comics that make up the Marvel Universe thus far, from Alpha Flight to Omega the Unknown. And then he made sense of it—seeing into the ever-expanding story, in its parts and as a whole, and seeing through it, as a prism through which to view the landscape of American culture. In Wolk’s hands, the mammoth Marvel narrative becomes a fun-house-mirror history of the past sixty years, from the atomic night terrors of the Cold War to the technocracy and political division of the present day—a boisterous, tragicomic, magnificently filigreed epic about power and ethics, set in a world transformed by wonders. As a work of cultural exegesis, this is sneakily significant, even a landmark; it’s also ludicrously fun. Wolk sees fascinating patterns—the rise and fall of particular cultural aspirations, and of the storytelling modes that conveyed them. He observes the Marvel story’s progressive visions and its painful stereotypes, its patches of woeful hackwork and stretches of luminous creativity, and the way it all feeds into a potent cosmology that echoes our deepest hopes and fears. This is a huge treat for Marvel fans, but it’s also a revelation for readers who don’t know Doctor Strange from Doctor Doom. Here, truly, are all of the marvels.

Are You Listening?

Are You Listening?
Author: Tillie Walden
Publisher: First Second
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2019-09-10
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1250754445

The graphic novel Are You Listening? is an intimate and emotionally soaring story about friendship, grief, and healing from Eisner Award winner Tillie Walden. Bea is on the run. And then, she runs into Lou. This chance encounter sends them on a journey through West Texas, where strange things follow them wherever they go. The landscape morphs into an unsettling world, a mysterious cat joins them, and they are haunted by a group of threatening men. To stay safe, Bea and Lou must trust each other as they are driven to confront buried truths. The two women share their stories of loss and heartbreak—and a startling revelation about sexual assault—culminating in an exquisite example of human connection. This magical realistic adventure from the celebrated comics creator of Spinning and On a Sunbeam will stay with readers long after the final gorgeously illustrated page. 2020 Eisner Award Winner, Best Graphic Album--New A Chicago Public Library Best of the Best Book of 2019 A National Public Radio (NPR) Best Book of 2019 An O Magazine Best LGBTQ Book of 2019 One of The Comics Beat's Best Comics of 2019 A Lambda Literary Award Finalist A Harvey Award nominee, Best Book of the Year

Grateful Dead Origins

Grateful Dead Origins
Author: Chris Miskiewicz
Publisher: Z2 Comics
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2020-08-04
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 9781940878300

The Grateful Dead are one of the most influential rock and roll bands ofall time, but every story has a start. The Grateful Dead Origins takes an in depth and personal look at the formation of one of the most important American rock bands of all time, exploring the early days of Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, Pigpen, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart, and their transition from being a bar cover band to one of the greatest sounds in history. TheGrateful Dead Origins showcases the beginning of the band through the early 1960's San Francisco Haight Ashbury era, becoming the house band for the Ken Kesey's psychedelic "acid tests," while telling a personal tale of the highs and lows of the tightly knit community that would grow around them, culminating at their historic performance at Woodstock, just one more show on their legendary road trip that would soon follow... This official Graphic Novel will also feature an accompanying album of rare Grateful Dead music.

Celestia

Celestia
Author: Manuele Fior
Publisher: Fantagraphics Books
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2021-07-20
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 1683964381

This highly anticipated new graphic novel from Manuele Fior (The Interview and 5,000 KM Per Second) showcases his singular talents as a once-in-a-generation visual artist and a deeply empathetic writer who uses science fiction to look to the future of humanity. The “Great Invasion” originated from the sea. It moved north across the mainland. Many fled, while some took refuge on a small concrete island called Celestia, built over a thousand years ago. Now cut off from the mainland, Celestia has become an outpost for criminals and other misfits, as well as a refuge for a group of young telepaths. Events push two of them, Dora and Pierrot, to flee the island and set sail to the mainland. There, they discover a world on the precipice of a metamorphosis, though also a world where adults are literally prisoners of their own fortresses, unintentionally preserving the “old world” at a time when a new generation could guide society towards a better humanity. Celestia is the most ambitious and successful graphic novel to date by one of the world’s most exciting storytellers.