Graphic Novels

The inspiration for the award-winning movie
from HBO Films and Fine Line Features

AMERICAN SPLENDOR
The Life and Times of Harvey Pekar

Two classic comic anthologies in one volume

Stories by Harvey Pekar

Introduction by R. Crumb

Art by Kevin Brown, Gregory Budgett, Sean Carroll, Sue Cavey, R. Crumb, Gary Dumm, Val Mayerik, and Gerry Shamray

The classic collection of the comics that inspired the movie American Splendor, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival

American Splendor is the world's first literary comic book. Cleveland native Harvey Pekar is a true American original. A V.A. hospital file clerk and comic book writer, Harvey chronicles the ordinary and mundane in stories both funny and touching. His dead-on eye for the frustrations and minutiae of the workaday world mix in a delicate balance with his insight into personal relationships. Pekar has been compared to Dreiser, Dostoevsky, and Lenny Bruce. But he is truly more than all of them--he is himself.

"Mr. Pekar has . . . proven that comics can address the ambiguities of daily living, that like the finest fiction, they can hold a mirror up to life."
--The New York Times

"[Pekar] has a vision that makes daily city life--a ride on the bus, a run-in with a boss, or simply buying bread--dramatic."
--Chicago Sun-Times

"Simply stated, American Splendor is the most superb literary endeavor to come off the streets of Cleveland in decades."
--The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)

"Mr. Pekar lets all of life flood into his panels: the humdrum and the heroic, the gritty and the grand."
--The New York Times Book Review

From the best-selling author of Fun Home, Time magazine's No. 1 Book of the Year, a brilliantly told graphic memoir of Alison Bechdel becoming the artist her mother wanted to be.

Alison Bechdel's Fun Home was a pop culture and literary phenomenon. Now, a second thrilling tale of filial sleuthery, this time about her mother: voracious reader, music lover, passionate amateur actor. Also a woman, unhappily married to a closeted gay man, whose artistic aspirations simmered under the surface of Bechdel's childhood . . . and who stopped touching or kissing her daughter good night, forever, when she was seven. Poignantly, hilariously, Bechdel embarks on a quest for answers concerning the mother-daughter gulf. It's a richly layered search that leads readers from the fascinating life and work of the iconic twentieth-century psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, to one explosively illuminating Dr. Seuss illustration, to Bechdel's own (serially monogamous) adult love life. And, finally, back to Mother--to a truce, fragile and real-time, that will move and astonish all adult children of gifted mothers.

A wild seascape, a distant island, a full moon. Gradually the island grows nearer until we land on a primeval wilderness, rich in vegetation and huge, strange beasts. Time passes and man appears, with clubs, with spears, with crueler weapons still--and things do not go well for the wilderness. Civilization rises as towers of stone and metal and smoke choke the undergrowth and the creatures that once moved through it. This is not a happy story, and it will not have a happy ending.

Working in his distinctive, monochromatic linocut style, Stanley Donwood achieves with his art what words cannot convey, carving out a mesmerizing, stark parable of environmental disaster and the end of civilization.

The Book of Weirdo is the definitive (as well as hugely entertaining) examination of Weirdo magazine, renowned underground comix cartoonist Robert Crumb's legendary humor comics anthology from the 1980s. Crumb himself has called the retrospective "a great book" and "the definitive work on the subject." A "low-brow" counterpoint to Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly's rather high-falootin' RAW, Weirdo influenced an entire generation of cartoonists, and served as a creative refuge for underground comix veterans and training ground for new creators, and this book features the comprehensive story of the fondly-recalled magazine, along with testimonials from over 130 of the mag's contributors, plus interviews with Weirdo's three editors ― R. "Keep on Truckin'" Crumb, Peter "Hate" Bagge, and Aline "The Bunch" Kominsky-Crumb ― as well as publisher "Baba Ron" Turner. This 288-page hardcover book is as much a comprehensive history of the alternative comics scene of the 1980s and early '90s ― from New York City punk to Seattle grunge ― as it is the story of a single magazine, an exhaustive retrospective that includes rare and unseen artwork from that era, as well as new comics from modern-day artists paying homage to the great oddball mag. In its time, the periodical featured the finest work of many artists, particularly the best material by R. Crumb himself, Weirdo's founder and best known for ZAP Comix, Fritz the Cat, and Mr. Natural, and a man widely heralded as the greatest cartoonist of all time. In 1981, amidst a seismic shift to the right in the country, Crumb responded by unleashing the savagely irreverent and satirical Weirdo onto the great multitude, and he generously welcomed to its pages not just his ZAP Comix underground cohorts, but also an entirely new generation of iconoclastic cartoonists. It was an irreverent, outrageous, often politically-incorrect, and taboo-challenging anthology that showcased Crumb's finest ― and most controversial ― material. It was gut-busting, hysterical, and frequently offensive. But, most of all, it was FUNNY! Though it finally gave up the ghost by 1993, in its time, Weirdo was one of the very best of its kind... a showcase for outsiders, freaks, and (naturally) weirdos. In fact, truth to tell, it's the ONLY one of its kind!

Since his death in 1967, Ernesto "Che" Guevara has become a universally known revolutionary icon and political figure whose image is among the most recognizable in the world. This dramatic and extensively researched book breathes new life into his story, portraying his struggle through the medium of the underground political comic--one of the most prominent countercultural art forms since the 1960s. Spain Rodriguez's powerful artwork illuminates Che's life and the experiences that shaped him, from his motorcycle journey through Latin America, his rise to prominence as a leader in Fidel Castro's revolutionary movement, his travels in Africa, his involvement in the insurgency that led to his death in Bolivia, and his extraordinary legacy.

This long out-of-print first volume of the multiple Harvey and Eisner award-winning Complete Crumb Comics series has been one of our most demanded reprints of the last several years. Now, this landmark volume of Robert Crumb's formative years not only will return, but also boast a major discovery not included in prior editions: a never-before-published, 60 page "home-made" Arcade comic from 1962.

Growing up, Robert and his brother Charles often created their own comic books. These "home-made" editions were usually produced in editions of one. As such, many have been lost to time or private collections. What hasn't comprises much of the first two volumes of The Complete Crumb series. Their creation continued throughout the 1950s and into the early '60s and eventually the content of Crumb's work gradually matured from the light-hearted, funny animal antics of earlier years to stories that flashed signals of what we now recognize as "true Crumb."

This previously undiscovered Arcade "issue," from May, 1962, shows many flashes of where Crumb was heading (whereas Charles had all but abandoned drawing comics by the '60s). The 17-page strip "Jim" is the most emotionally-charged work of Crumb's young life to that point, a gentle and psychologically astute look at a boy who needs a mother, and also brimming with signs of his increasing frustration with Catholicism. It also features the first quintessential "Crumb girl," Mabel.

This volume also includes several early Fritz the Cat stories (a.k.a. "Animal Town Comics"), and the classic "Treasure Island Days" (as seen in the Crumb film) and is rounded out with other strips, diary entries and sketches that will be a treasure trove for Crumb fans, all defining work from Crumb's formative years as a cartoonist, spanning the years 1958-1962 (when Crumb was ages 15-19) and featuring material from other "home-made" comics of the era. This is Ground Zero for a man who may well be the greatest cartoonist who ever lived.

A series of conversations about science in graphic form, on subjects that range from the science of cooking to the multiverse.

Physicist Clifford Johnson thinks that we should have more conversations about science. Science should be on our daily conversation menu, along with topics like politics, books, sports, or the latest prestige cable drama. Conversations about science, he tells us, shouldn't be left to the experts. In The Dialogues, Johnson invites us to eavesdrop on a series of nine conversations, in graphic-novel form--written and drawn by Johnson--about "the nature of the universe." The conversations take place all over the world, in museums, on trains, in restaurants, in what may or may not be Freud's favorite coffeehouse. The conversationalists are men, women, children, experts, and amateur science buffs. The topics of their conversations range from the science of cooking to the multiverse and string theory. The graphic form is especially suited for physics; one drawing can show what it would take many words to explain.

In the first conversation, a couple meets at a costume party; they speculate about a scientist with superhero powers who doesn't use them to fight crime but to do more science, and they discuss what it means to have a "beautiful equation" in science. Their conversation spills into another chapter ("Hold on, you haven't told me about light yet"), and in a third chapter they exchange phone numbers. Another couple meets on a train and discusses immortality, time, black holes, and religion. A brother and sister experiment with a grain of rice. Two women sit in a sunny courtyard and discuss the multiverse, quantum gravity, and the anthropic principle. After reading these conversations, we are ready to start our own.

Dostoyevsky's novels provide profound insight into human psychology and the human soul. To write them, he drew inspiration from his own troubled life: an arrest for subversion; a death sentence spared when he was already in front of the firing squad; four years of hard labor in a Siberian prison camp, a spiritual conversion, a constant addiction to gambling, and the loss of two children that left him a deeply broken man.

When young Rolando Perez falls to his death from a cliff outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, the mysteries immediately begin to accumulate. Was he pushed or did he jump? What are the documents that Rolando was willing sacrifice himself to protect from his family, the police, and the Catholic Church? And what does a colorful concha pastry have to do with any of this?

In the midst of the investigation, Professor Ilan Stavans arrives in Santa Fe to give a lecture about the area's long-buried Jewish history. He's looking forward to relaxing afterwards with an evening of opera, but his presentation on "crypto-Jews" attracts unexpected attention, and soon Ilan is drawn into a desperate race to find the long-lost documents that might hold the key to Rolando's death. Ilan's detective work leads him to taco joints, desert ranches, soaring cathedrals, and, finally, deep into the region's past, where he encounters another young man: Luis de Carvajal, aka "El Iluminado," a sixteenth-century religious dissenter. In a tale of martyrdom that eerily echoes Rolando's, Carvajal fled Spain for colonial Mexico at the height of the Spanish Inquisition, searching for his religious heritage -- a hunt for which he, like Rolando, would pay the ultimate price.

In El Iluminado, esteemed literary critic Ilan Stavans and author and illustrator Steve Sheinkin present a secret history of religion in the Americas, showing how thousands of European refugees have left a trail of ghostly footprints -- and troves of mysteries -- across the American Southwest.

Eerie traditional Japanese ghost stories retold in a graphic novel format.

Over one hundred years ago, the writer Lafcadio Hearn gathered and translated into English a selection of traditional Japanese ghost/mystery stories. They were published as Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things. In this new graphic novel, acclaimed manga creator Sean Michael Wilson retells six of these stories. All of them are very well known in Japan, where ghosts and demons are often called yokai, meaning the mysterious and weird. Today these stories find expression mostly in movies and manga, but they remain rooted in the traditional ghost stories of the Edo era known as kaidan, which means recited narrative of strange, mysterious, rare, or bewitching apparitions.

The book includes an afterword by William Scott Wilson, the esteemed translator and editor of Japanese texts and samurai philosophy, who puts the stories into historical context.

A 2016 YALSA Great Graphic Novels for Teens Recommendation

2017 ALA/YALSA Great Graphic Novel for Teens Award Winner

Cartoonist Edward Ross uses comics to illuminate the ideas behind our favorite movies. In Filmish, Ross's cartoon alter ego guides readers through the annals of cinematic history, introducing some of the strange and fascinating concepts at work in the movies. Each chapter focuses on a particular theme--the body, architecture, language--and explores an eclectic mix of cinematic triumphs, from A Tripto the Moon to Top Gun. Like other bestselling nonfiction graphic novels such as Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, Filmish tackles serious issues--sexuality, race, censorship, propaganda--with authority and wit, throwing new light on some of the greatest films ever made.

Alan Moore (Watchmen) and Eddie Campbell (Bacchus), grandmasters of the comics medium, present a book often ranked among the greatest graphic novels of all time: From Hell.

From the squalid alleys of the East End to the Houses of Parliament, from church naves to dens of the occult, all of London feels the uniquely irresistable blend of fascination, revulsion, and panic that the Ripper offers. The city teeters on the brink of the twentieth century, and only the slightest prodding is necessary to plunge it into a modern age of terror.

Moore and Campbell have created a gripping, hallucinatory piece of crime fiction about Jack the Ripper. Detailing the events that led up to the Whitechapel murders and the cover-up that followed, From Hell is a modern masterpiece of crime noir and historical fiction.

Through his quietly powerful leadership and influential use of nonviolent resistance in India's struggle against the British Raj, Mahatma Gandhi became one of the most revered figures of the modern era. While history has recorded Gandhi's words and deeds, the man himself has been eclipsed by maxims of virtuosity that seem to have little resonance in our everyday lives. In Gandhi, the third volume in our exciting new manga biography series, created in conjunction with Emotional Content, Kazuki Ebine combines a gripping narrative with stunning illustrations to share Gandhi's inspiring and deeply human story with a whole new generation of readers. Developed in conjunction with Emotional Content.

The first volume of a glorious two-volume, four-color graphic novel adaptation of Neil Gaiman's #1 New York Times bestselling and Newbery Medal-winning novel The Graveyard Book, adapted by P. Craig Russell and illustrated by an extraordinary team of renowned artists.

Inventive, chilling, and filled with wonder, Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book reaches new heights in this stunning adaptation. Artists Kevin Nowlan, P. Craig Russell, Tony Harris, Scott Hampton, Galen Showman, Jill Thompson, and Stephen B. Scott lend their own signature styles to create an imaginatively diverse and yet cohesive interpretation of Neil Gaiman's luminous novel.

Volume One contains Chapter One through the Interlude, while Volume Two includes Chapter Six to the end.

Take a trip through the realms of hell with a man whose temporary visitor's pass gave him a horrifying--and enlightening--preview of its torments.

This true account of Sam Bercholz's near-death experience has more in common with Dante's Inferno than it does with any of the popular feel-good stories of what happens when we die. In the aftermath of heart surgery, Sam, a longtime Buddhist practitioner and teacher, is surprised to find himself in the lowest realms of karmic rebirth, where he is sent to gain insight into human suffering. Under the guidance of a luminous being, Sam's encounters with a series of hell-beings trapped in repetitious rounds of misery and delusion reveal to him how an individual's own habits of fiery hatred and icy disdain, of grasping desire and nihilistic ennui, are the source of horrific agonies that pound consciousness for seemingly endless cycles of time. Comforted by the compassion of a winged goddess and sustained by the kindness of his Buddhist teachers, Sam eventually emerges from his ordeal with renewed faith that even the worst hell contains the seed of wakefulness. His story is offered, along with the modernist illustrations of a master of Tibetan sacred arts, in order to share what can be learned about awakening from our own self-created hells and helping others to find relief and liberation from theirs.

Heart of Darkness has unsettled generations of readers with its haunting portrait of colonialism in Africa. Acclaimed illustrator Peter Kuper delivers a visually immersive and profound interpretation of this controversial classic, evoking the danger and suspense at the heart of this brutal story. Longtime admirers of the novella will appreciate his innovative interpretations, while new readers will discover a brilliant introduction to a canonical work of twentieth-century literature.

An illustrated edition of the enchanting prequel to The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit--the classic fantasy that inspired Peter Jackson's major motion picture trilogy--in a newly expanded edition.

When Thorin Oakenshield and his band of dwarves embark upon a dangerous quest to reclaim the hoard of gold stolen from them by the evil dragon Smaug, Gandalf the wizard suggests an unlikely accomplice: Bilbo Baggins, an unassuming Hobbit dwelling in peaceful Hobbiton.

Along the way, the company faces trolls, goblins, giant spiders, and worse. But as they journey from the wonders of Rivendell to the terrors of Mirkwood and beyond, Bilbo will find that there is more to him than anyone--himself included--ever dreamed. Unexpected qualities of courage and cunning, and a love of adventure, propel Bilbo toward his great destiny . . . a destiny that waits in the dark caverns beneath the Misty Mountains, where a twisted creature known as Gollum jealously guards a precious magic ring.

Hysteria is a graphic novel account of the first steps, errors, and frustrations of Sigmund Freud's career, which would lead to the foundation of a revolutionary new clinical therapy: psychoanalysis. The book traces Freud's early training in neurological research and medicine; the crucial turning-point of his studies with Jean-Martin Charcot at La Salpêtrière; and his establishment of a therapeutic practice in Vienna.

Perfectly matching text and illustrations, Hysteria recounts Freud's interest in his colleague Josef Breuer's "Anna O" case study, as well as giving an account of his own case histories of hysteria, particularly the treatment of Fräulein Elisabeth von R. The studies brought to life in this authoritative, beautifully illustrated graphic novel are collected in Freud and Breuer's co-authored Studies in Hysteria, which marked the birth of psychoanalysis.

A New York Times Bestseller
Selected as a 2017 ALA/YALSA Great Graphic Novel for Teens: Nonfiction

Award winning authors Jim Ottaviani and Leland Purvis present a historically accurate graphic novel biography of English mathematician and scientist Alan Turing in The Imitation Game.

English mathematician and scientist Alan Turing (1912-1954) is credited with many of the foundational principles of contemporary computer science. The Imitation Game presents a historically accurate graphic novel biography of Turing's life, including his groundbreaking work on the fundamentals of cryptography and artificial intelligence. His code breaking efforts led to the cracking of the German Enigma during World War II, work that saved countless lives and accelerated the Allied defeat of the Nazis. While Turing's achievements remain relevant decades after his death, the story of his life in post-war Europe continues to fascinate audiences today.

Award-winning duo Jim Ottaviani (the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Feynman and Primates) and artist Leland Purvis (an Eisner and Ignatz Award nominee and occasional reviewer for the Comics Journal) present a factually detailed account of Turing's life and groundbreaking research--as an unconventional genius who was arrested, tried, convicted, and punished for being openly gay, and whose innovative work still fuels the computing and communication systems that define our modern world. Computer science buffs, comics fans, and history aficionados will be captivated by this riveting and tragic story of one of the 20th century's most unsung heroes.

With its sweeping digressions into the past and reflections on the nature of memory, Proust's oceanic novel In Search of Lost Time looms over twentieth-century literature as one of the greatest, yet most endlessly challenging, literary experiences. Influencing writers like Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, and even anticipating Albert Einstein in its philosophical explorations of space and time, In Search of Lost Time is a monumental achievement and reading it is a rite of passage for any serious lover of literature.

Now, in what renowned translator Arthur Goldhammer says might be "likened to a piano reduction of an orchestral score," the French illustrator Stéphane Heuet re-presents Proust in graphic form for anyone who has always dreamed of reading him but was put off by the sheer magnitude of the undertaking. This New York Times best-selling graphic adaptation reveals the fundamental architecture of Proust's work while displaying a remarkable fidelity to his language as well as the novel's themes of time, art, and the elusiveness of memory. As Goldhammer writes in his introduction, "The reader new to Proust must attend closely, even in this compressed rendering, to the novel's circling rhythms and abrupt cross-cuts between different places and times. But this necessary attentiveness is abetted and facilitated by the compactness of the graphic format."

In this first volume, Swann's Way, the narrator Marcel, an aspiring writer, recalls his childhood when--in a now-immortal moment in literature--the taste of a madeleine cake dipped in tea unleashes a torrent of memories about his family's country home in the town of Combray. Here, Heuet and Goldhammer use Proust's own famously rich and labyrinthine sentences and discerning observations to render Combray like never before. From the water lilies of the Vivonne to the steeple and stained glass of the town church, Proust's language provides the blueprint for Heuet's illustrations. Heuet and Goldhammer also capture Proust's humor, wit, and sometimes scathing portrayals of Combray's many memorable inhabitants, like the lovelorn Charles Swann and the object of his affection and torment, Odette de Crécy; Swann's daughter, Gilberte; local aristocrat the Duchesse de Guermantes; the narrator's uncle Adolphe; and the hypochondriac Aunt Léonie.

Including a Proust family tree, a glossary of terms, and a map of Paris, this graphic adaptation is a surprising and useful companion piece to Proust's masterpiece for both the initiated and those seeking an introduction.

New York Times Bestseller
Named one of the Best Books of the Year by NPR, the Washington Post, Kirkus Reviews, and Library Journal
Winner of the Audie Award

The New York Times bestseller from the author of Watchmen and V for Vendetta finally appears in a one-volume paperback.

Long fascinated with the work of Franz Kafka, Peter Kuper began illustrating his stories in 1988. Initially drawn to the master's dark humor, Kuper adapted the stories over the years to plumb their deeper truths. Kuper's style deliberately evokes Lynd Ward and Frans Masereel, contemporaries of Kafka whose wordless novels captured much of the same claustrophobia and mania as Kafka's tales. Working from new translations of the classic texts, Kuper has reimagined these iconic stories for the twenty-first century, using setting and perspective to comment on contemporary issues like civil rights and homelessness.

Longtime lovers of Kafka will appreciate Kuper's innovative interpretations, while Kafka novices will discover a haunting introduction to some of the great writer's most beguiling stories, including "A Hunger Artist," "In The Penal Colony," and "The Burrow." Kafkaesque stands somewhere between adaptation and wholly original creation, going beyond a simple illustration of Kafka's words to become a stunning work of art.

Five best friends spending the summer at Lumberjane scout camp...defeating yetis, three-eyed wolves, and giant falcons...what's not to love?!

Friendship to the max! Jo, April, Mal, Molly and Ripley are five best pals determined to have an awesome summer together...and they're not gonna let any insane quest or an array of supernatural critters get in their way! Not only is it the second title launching in our new BOOM! Box imprint but LUMBERJANES is one of those punk rock, love-everything-about-it stories that appeals to fans of basically all excellent things. It's Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Gravity Falls and features five butt-kicking, rad teenage girls wailing on monsters and solving a mystery with the whole world at stake. And with the talent of acclaimed cartoonist Noelle Stevenson, talented newcomer Grace Ellis writing, and Brooke Allen on art, this is going to be a spectacular series that you won't want to miss. Collects Lumberjanes #1-#4.