Search results for ""Uncivilized Books""

Iris, a young woman turning eighteen in early 1990s Manchester, England, is slowly losing her tenuous grip on her world of burger-flipping, drugs, and rock 'n roll. After quitting her job at a clothes shop, Iris takes a position at a burger bar at the train station, where her crush on fellow burger-flipper Glen takes her down a dark path. A Revival House Press production in association with Uncivilized Books.

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A retiree dedicates his days to combing a dense, snow-covered forest in pursuit of the unknown, and his nights to reminiscing about his wife. Old Caves is a peek through a frost-covered window at isolation, obsession, and the slow erosion of relationships. The high contrast black and white art enhances the sense of absolute solitude. Old Caves is one of the best looking graphic novel debuts in recent memory.

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Mardou returns with the second volume of her critically acclaimed graphic novel, Sky in Stereo. In Volume 2, 17-year-old Iris’s LSD journey has ended behind the locked doors of a psychiatric ward. As she tries to make sense of hospital life and fellow patients, Iris is forced to confront her self while defiantly trying to find meaning and regain her freedom. With her usual visual flourish, Mardou takes the reader on a maze-like journey into the inner world of mental illness in this powerful and trippy coming-of-age story.

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Cartoonist Studio Prize Shortlist 2014 For an impoverished cartoonist, I do an awful lot of international traveling. Raw, bare-boned, scathingly funny dispatches from the renowned comic diarist Gabrielle Bell, with biting cultural commentary mixed with her signature introspective, self-deprecating humor, and surreal digressions (from car-driving bears, through Zombie Apocalypses, to cute babies, and ...more bears!) as she visits France, Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, Colombia, back to Brooklyn, and finally landing in upstate New York. In Truth is Fragmentary Gabrielle Bell proves she can be ...funny! Gabrielle Bell was born in England and raised in California. Her work has been selected for the 2007, 2009, and 2010 Best American Comics and the Yale Anthology of Graphic Fiction, and she has contributed to McSweeneys, Bookforum, the Believer, and Vice. The title story of Bell's book, "Cecil and Jordan in New York," has been adapted for the film anthology Tokyo! by Michel Gondry. Her latest book, The Voyeurs, was selected as one of the top five graphic novels of 2012 by Publishers Weekly. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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Dash Shaw is one of the most restless cartoonists of recent decades, constantly evolving in how he approaches the comics page. In the years since his breakthrough graphic novel Bottomless Belly Button, he has continued to create acclaimed, idiosyncratic comics, varying his uses of line and color as well as shifting from domestic realism to sci-fi farce to historical fiction. But some concerns in Shaw’s work remain constant. His characters live within their own personal realities, often failing to connect or even communicate. Comics as different as the dystopian spectacle BodyWorld and the geek-culture comedy Cosplayers become sites of clashes between incompatible mindsets—with Shaw adapting his cartooning to capture new varieties of confusion, alienation, and more. In New Realities, critic Greg Hunter (The Comics Journal) follows the through-line across this adventurous body of work.

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L.A. Times Book Prizes Finalist (Graphic Novel/Comics) 2016 A collection of two new stories from cartoonist and Adventure Time contributor Sam Alden. In "Household," a brother and sister deal with divergent memories of their father and grow closer than ever. In "Backyard," vegans and anarchists share a house, small dramas and bizarre transformations (featuring a new, never before published ending). Designed as a companion volume for the critically acclaimed It Never Happened Again, New Construction cements Sam Alden's reputation as one of the best cartoonists of his generation. Sam Alden Sam Alden is the author of It Never Happened Again, Wicked Chicken Queen, and Lydian, among others. He is a two-time Ignatz winner and four-time nominee, and works full-time as a writer and storyboarder on Cartoon Network's Adventure Time. Praise for Sam Alden's It Never Happened Again: "Alden's natural sense of framing and pace, his willingness to use silent panels to tell stories, and his beautiful (yes, beautiful) pencil images combined to open my eyes to a new idea of what a great comic can be. It helps that he's also an excellent writer--both stories sketch out lonely, lost characters efficiently, and put them each through very different quests for meaning."--Dan Kois, Slate "Two thematically divergent, but devastatingly human portraits from an emerging cartoonist displaying the sort of storytelling and artistic restraint that often only comes after years of toiling away at the drawing board. Alden is a talent to watch."--Publishers Weekly

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For almost two decades, Julia Wertz has been documenting her life’s most intimate, absurd, and amusing moments through a whimsical and hilarious diary comic book called The Fart Party. Wertz retells childhood antics that end in scars and swears. She tracks, in real-time, her young adulthood as she forgot her college graduation, traveled cross country via train, and drank her way through a harsh break-up. After receiving much acclaim (and controversy), The Fart Party became a series of self-published mini-comics, eventually collected into two volumes, published by Atomic Books. Long out of print, Museum of Mistakes collects anything and everything that is The Fart Party. PLUS: numerous pages of Julia’s early comic work, unpublished and previously uncollected comics, short stories, illustrations, process pages, hate mail, sketchbook pages, tear stains, and more. This massive tome begs the question, “what is a Fart Party?” And the answer is... you’ll have to read to find out!

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Greek myth has inspired stories and art for millennia. And yet some stories and characters remain unfamiliar. First There Was Chaos explores the formless, primordial, and extraordinary forces that preceded the Olympian gods. These tales of Creation illustrate the creative process, giving cosmic form to the universal struggles of all creators. Framing the narrative is the story of a poet struggling with his act of Creation, hoping to transform nothingness into beauty. His struggles parallel the tales of primordial beings, from the ambitions of formless Chaos to the birth of the first Olympian, Aphrodite.Based on Hesiod's Theogony and other classic sources, First There Was Chaos synthesizes fragmentary myths into a compelling narrative accessible to a contemporary audience.

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EISNER AWARD WINNER | Best Academic/Scholarly Work About Comics | 2019 One of the most influential women in independent comics, Julie Doucet, receives a full-length critical overview from a noted chronicler of independent media and critical gender theorist. Grounded in a discussion of mid-1990s media and the discussion of women’s rights that fostered it, this book addresses longstanding questions about Doucet’s role as a feminist figure, master of the comics form, and object of masculine desire. Doucet’s work is hilarious, charming, thoughtful, brilliant, and challenging, even three decades on. Anne Elizabeth Moore is an award-winning journalist, bestselling comics anthologist, and internationally lauded cultural critic. Her most recent book, Body Horror, is on the Nonfiction Shortlist for the 2017 Chicago Review of Books Nonfiction Award, was named a Best Book of 2017 by the Chicago Public Library, and was nominated for the 2018 Lammys. She teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the College for Creative Studies. She was born in Winner, SD, and resides in Detroit with her cat. Praise for Body Horror: “[Body Horror is] scary as fuck and liberating. . . . Moore connects the dots that you did not even think were on the same page.” —Viva la Feminista

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Hired to acquire the fabled Goblet of the Crimson Wizard, expert dungeoneering team, the Clandestinauts, enter the legendary Master Wizard’s formidable fortress with visions of unimaginable treasures in their futures. That is until, like most journeys through the dreary depths of blood-soaked sepulchers, things don’t go according to plan. Threats both external and existential stand ready to test the always frayed sinews that bind this team of bitter rivals together.

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2015 Doug Wright Spotlight Award Nomination Ignatz Award Nomination for Outstanding Graphic Novel An American artist witnesses the Quebec spring 2012 student strike on the streets of Montreal. The brutal police response and their violent tactics trigger an exploration of urban planning and its hidden connections to military strategies. Marshal Bugeaud's urban warfare tactics in Algeria, Haussmann's plan for Paris, planning and repression in the New World; theory and personal experience collide into an ambitious and poetic cartoon memoir. Sophie Yanow was born north of San Francisco in 1987. In 2011 she moved to Montreal, and with the Colosse collective published In Situ, her acclaimed autobiographical comics series. She was an invited artist- researcher for the Canadian Center for Architecture's "C for Condo" workshop, and her work has been exhibited throughout the US and Canada. She lives in Montreal.

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Pill Hill, Nicholas Breutzman's darkly funny and utterly heartbreaking memoir, plunges the reader into a world of horrifying Tinder dates, flea markets, lizard people, child protective services, black holes, time travel, and stress-induced psychosis.Nic and Henry—father and son—stumble on an old forgotten park and make a bizarre discovery. Someone marked all the trees with wads of chewed gum! Who is the gum bandit?Reeling from recent family upheaval, Nic navigates the brave new world of single parenthood. Meanwhile, his ex-wife descends into addiction, abuse, and homelessness. Amid the turmoil, he becomes increasingly and desperately obsessed with exposing the gum vandal. Can Nic rise to the occasion and come to terms with his new reality? Or will he let the past drag him back into despair and denial, threatening the thing he holds most dear: his relationship with Henry, his son?

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Ex Libris revolves around a character trapped in a room with nothing but a futon and a bookcase full of comics. As they peruse covers, read stories and fragments of stories, they begin to suspect that the comics contain hidden messages and… a threat. Fiction and reality blur; sanity and madness become increasingly intertwined as the reader becomes convinced the key to their predicament is to be found between the panels of the strange books. With a dizzying array of inventive visual and narrative styles, Ex Libris continues the line of exploration and play that Madden initiated with 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style. Ex Libris is a tribute to the meta-fictional tradition of writers like Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, Vladimir Nabokov, and Italo Calvino (whose novel, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, was the inspiration). MATT MADDEN (NYC 1968) is a cartoonist, teacher, and translator. His best-known book is 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style, a comics adaptation of Raymond Queneau's Exercises in Style. His recent work includes the comic books Drawn Onward and Bridge. He has been living in Philadelphia since 2016.

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“Lovingly written and painted, this strange and silly book will delight everyone who reads it. The grown-up people who read it may find it confusing. But young people, I think, will understand that in its strangeness and silliness it mirrors our own strange and silly world." —Eleanor Davis, author of Stinky and How to Be Happy Thomas is a friend to all plants. He even has a cactus collection! One morning, he discovers his mother has been replaced by a ferna monstrous fern! What happened? Is this the start of a plant revolt? Did the fern eat her? Where did this fern come from, anyway? Will it eat his father too? And then Thomas? That Night, A Monster . . . is a beautifully painted all-ages graphic novel exploring imagination: its power and its dark side. Marzena “Marzi” Sowa is a Polish graphic novelist living in France. She was born in 1979 in the small industrial city Stalowa Wola. She left her country in 2001 and settled in Bordeaux. Marzi, her graphic memoir about childhood in communist Poland, was published by Vertigo in 2011. The book has been translated in several languages. Marzi loves dictionaries, is afraid of spiders, and is crazy about skateboarding and cheesecake. Berenika Kołomycka is a cartoonist, sculptor, and illustrator. In 2011, she received the Grand Prix at the Łodz International Comics Festival. She lives in Poland.

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“Jesse McManus [can], draw in a beautifully cartoony way with great lines and fun sense and sensibilities.” —Vice Magazine Imagine comics created from the DNA of John Kricfalusi, Charles Burns with a dash of Jim Woodring. You’d end up with animated, visionary comics by Jesse McManus. His fluid, hyper-kinetic, and lush brush strokes delineate a surreal visionary world of feral children, rubber y animals, and constantly-mutating monsters. The Whistling Factory is an audacious debut from the sui generis frenetic imagination of Jesse McManus. Jesse McManus has been drawing comics for a long time. He was the youngest contributor to the now legendary oversize Kramer’s Ergot #7. His comics were featured in many different publications including Vice Magazine. Jesse lives and works in Portland, OR.

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A collection of Alan Moore's (Watchmen, From Hell) difficult-to-find comics short stories. From bold experiments, through early takes on his favorite subjects, to self-critiques of his older work, this wide-ranging collection is an essential look at Moore's illuminating short stories. Each story is drawn by some of the best artists in comics from mainstream mavericks like Steven (Swamp Thing, Tyrant) Bissette, Rick (Swamp Thing, Bratpack) Veitch & John Totleben (Miracelman) to underground iconoclasts like Mark Beyer (RAW) and Peter Bagge(Hate, Woman Rebel: The Margaret Sanger Story). Comic book critic Marc Sobel provides insightful commentary and context for each of the stories. Marc Sobel is the co-editor of The Love and Rockets Companion published by Fantagraphics Books. He is also the author of the forthcoming Love and Rockets Reader, also from Fantagraphics. He is also a freelance journalist and scholar in the field of comic book studies. Alan Moore is an English writer primarily known for his work in comic books, including Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and From Hell (and many others). Frequently described as the best graphic novel writer in history, and he has been called "one of the most important British writers of the last fifty years."

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A young woman undertakes a Dantean journey into the center of her psyche. Every door she encounters opens labyrinthine viewing galleries, macabre installations, and occult rituals where nothing is as it seems. Answers lead to more questions. She must abandon her false self--through despair and selfsurrender--on the way to an encounter with the inner void. Houses of the Holy is a nightmarish vision of the timeless psychic struggle that makes us human. Caitlin Skaalrud is a cartoonist, organizer, teacher, aspiring astrologist, and publisher behind comics micro-press Talk Weird Press in Minneapolis, where she lives with her partner and a cat named Howl. She is a recipient of a 2012 Xeric Self-Publishing Grant for Sea Change: A Choose-Your-Own-Way Story. Her first word was Batman

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In The Deaths of Henry King, the hapless Henry King, as advertised, dies. Not just once or even twice, but seven dozen times, each death making way for a new demise, moving from the comic to the grim to the absurd to the transcendent and back again. With text by Jesse Ball and Brian Evenson complimented by Lilli Carré’s macabre, gravestone-rubbing-style art, Henry King’s ends are brought to a vividly absurd life. Brian Evenson is the author of a dozen books of fiction, most recently the story collection Windeye and the novel Immobility (both finalists for a Shirley Jackson Award). His novel Last Days won the ALA’s RUSA award for Best Horror Novel of 2009. His novel The Open Curtain was a finalist for an Edgar Award and an International Horror Guild Award. He lives in Providence, RI, where he teaches in Brown University’s literary arts department. Jesse Ball is the author of five novels, including the forthcoming A Cure for Suicide (Pantheon, 2015), Silence Once Begun, and several others. He has received numerous awards, including a 2014 NEA Creative Writing Fellowship and the 2008 The Paris Review’s Plimpton Prize. He gives classes on lucid dreaming and lying in the SAIC’s MFA Writing program. Lilli Carré is an artist living in Chicago. She has created several books of comics, including Heads or Tails (Fantagraphics), and her first children’s book, Tippy and the Night Parade (Toon Books). Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Best American Comics.

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Twit Leaf the Elf's day job is picking berries in the Magic Forest, deep within a busy national state park. He'd rather be a mighty warrior elf like his grandpa was. One day he wanders into the strange and mysterious "picnic area" finding a magic glowing box that the evil humans left behind (it's just a kid's Nintendo). Suddenly he's tasked with the heroic quest he always wanted! He is to return the magic talisman to the shadowy "lost and found" chamber which is located in the visitor center by the water fountain.

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Hannah, a successful tech entrepreneur, decides to drop out of society and create a new social app, “Know Me.” She’s invited to test the app on a small religious community, the Church of Love and Devotion. The results go way beyond any intended consequences as lines separating the self, technology, and belief become blurred and lead to religious cult indoctrination. Loosely inspired by the life of the notorious Jim Jones and updated for the social media age, Holy Hannah explores family and the ways in which people’s lives become intertwined in unexpected and toxic ways.

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"Bell's pen becomes a kind of laser, first illuminating the surface distractions of the world, then scorching them away to reveal a deeper reality that is almost too painful and too beautiful to bear."-- Alison Bechdel, Fun Home, Are You My Mother In Gabrielle Bell's much anticipated graphic memoir, she returns from New York to her childhood town in rural Northern California after her mother's home is destroyed by a fire. Acknowledging her issues with anxiety, financial hardships, memories of a semi-feral childhood, and a tenuous relationship with her mother, Bell helps her mother put together a new home on top of the ashes. A powerful, sometimes uncomfortable, examination of a mother-daughter relationship and one's connection to place and sense of self. Spanning a single year, Everything is Flammable unfolds with humor and brutal honesty. Bell's sharp, digressive style is inimitable. Gabrielle Bell's work has been selected for Best American Comics and the Yale Anthology of Graphic Fiction, and has been featured in McSweeney's, the Believer, Bookforum, and Vice among numerous other publications. Her story, "Cecil and Jordan In New York," was adapted into film by Michel Gondry. Bell's previous graphic novel, The Voyeurs, was named one of the best books of the year by Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, and the Atlantic. She currently lives in Brooklyn, NY.

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Gabrielle Bell’s acclaimed collection explores a spectrum of human experience that ranges from the quotidian to the fantastical while always maintaining reliability. The characters of these stories, represented with a spare line, are deeply compelling, even in the finest minutiae of their struggles and triumphs. Culled from numerous anthologies, Cecil & Jordan in New York collects the best of Bell’s short stories and solidifies her place among today’s top cartoonists. This new softcover edition includes additional hard-to-find material not previously included in the original edition. Gabrielle Bell’s work has been selected several times for Best American Comics and the Yale Anthology of Graphic Fiction, and has been featured in McSweeney’s, The Believer, Bookworm, and Vice magazines. Her story, “Cecil and Jordan In New York,” was turned into a film by Michel Gondry. The Voyeurs was named one of the best Graphic Novels of the year by Publishers Weekly. Bell’s most recent book, Everything is Flammable, was on multiple best of 2017 lists, including Kirkus Reviews, Entertainment Weekly, and Publishers Weekly’s Critics Poll. Gabrielle Bell currently lives in Brooklyn, NY.

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What prevents you from finishing your life's work?Josh Bayer finds a manuscript of an unfinished play inside his deceased father's desk. The play tells the story of Josh's mother's early death (age 37) and his father's struggle with single parenthood. When he attempts to adapt the play into comics, it triggers a series of personal crises. Bayer's limitations and futile ambitions are brought into sharp relief as he grapples with an estranged, unknowable parent and the play's frustrating lack of resolution.Humans worship lore, myth, and fables, but many people's creative dreams become abandoned. Why?Bayer's inky line, tangled textures, and kaleidoscopic color boldly fuse on the page into comic book semiotics, flights of grandeur, and tangents inside tangents. Josh Bayer stitches scattered memories into surrealistic episodes permeated with dream logic. Unended is a Promethean quest to excavate the creative fire hidden inside us.

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In hell, everyone can hear you scream, but only one person listens.Hell can get you down. It’s big, hot, often painful, and a hard place to get creative projects done. But something else is bothering inmate PKRx354—something beyond the unrelenting and often absurd torture routines, the demons, or the tormenting trio of his mother, father, and girlfriend also consigned to the Underworld. Luckily there’s help: Fred Greenberg—Hell’s only psychotherapist. With Fred’s stoic and perceptive guidance, the “talking cure” proves productive. That is until a dastardly terrorist act by a mysterious faction threatens the very nature of the Underworld. Will our self-deprecating hero get to the cause of his nagging “ennui?” Will Fred find his own redemption? And will our hero ever find peace, or at least a vacation?Combining Dante, Douglas Adams, and Freud, Damnation Diaries is equal parts horror comedy and character-driven drama, uniquely converging the look of bronze-age comics with sharp literary satire. The book’s imaginative and surreal landscape serves as a perfect backdrop for caustic social commentary fit for our equally surreal times. The setting may be imaginary, but the urgent issues addressed are not: growing economic inequality, student debt, political crisis, terrorism, and the attempt to find peace under the most hostile of circumstances.

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