One Hundred Demons

Come Over Come Over

Lynda Barry

The classic book featuring Maybonne Mullen and her little sister Marlys is back in print! Lynda Barry captures all the glorious magic and excrutiating pain of junior high school in this Ernie Pook Comeek collection from the early 90s. The star of this collection is 14 year old Maybonne who relays the angst and insecurity of life through hand scrawled diary entries, class assignments, and letters, in cursive with doodle and bubble letters. Of course, there is the ever-annoying yet adorable little sister Marlys who never fails to read her big sister’s diary. Barry deftly portrays the capricious nature of teen friendships, adolescent peer-pressure, and the kill or be killed nature of a middle school’s social scene in her signature style. No one but Lynda Barry can so naturally zero in on the joyous urgency yet heartbreaking poignancy of childhood. In an authentic teen voice full of diffidence and melodrama, the bespectacled and freckled Maybonne relates all of life’s indiginities on equal measure. Heartbreaking stories of a broken home, child molestation, an alcoholic absentee father and a bitter mom emerge between strips about home ec class, summer vacation, and babysitting, illustrating Barry’s peerless ability to make the reader both cry and laugh.

The Good Times are Killing Me

Lynda Barry

Lynda Barry’s classic heartbreaking and heartwarming coming of age novella back in print 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. By weaving the importance of music in adolescence with the forbidden friendship between Edna, who is white, and Bonna Willis, who is Black, Lynda Barry captures the earnest, awkward, yet always honest adolescent voice as perfectly in prose as she does in comics.

What It Is

Lynda Barry

"Deliciously drawn (with fragments of collage worked into each page), insightful and bubbling with delight in the process of artistic creation. A+" -Salon How do objects summon memories? What do real images feel like? For decades, these types of questions have permeated the pages of Lynda Barry's compositions, with words attracting pictures and conjuring places through a pen that first and foremost keeps on moving. What It Is demonstrates a tried-and-true creative method that is playful, powerful, and accessible to anyone with an inquisitive wish to write or to remember. Composed of completely new material, each page of Barry's first Drawn & Quarterly book is a full-color collage that is not only a gentle guide to this process but an invigorating example of exactly what it is: "The ordinary is extraordinary."

It's So Magic

Lynda Barry

“Lynda Barry’s Ernie Pook’s Comeek... made the world look wild, ugly, joyful, and mysterious.”?—The New Yorker Maybonne Mullen is “riding on a bummer” according to her little sister Marlys. As much as teenage Maybonne prays and tries she just can’t connect to the magic of living. How can she when there’s so much upheaval at home and school, not to mention the world at large? And yet Marlys always seems able to tap into it. In It’s So Magic, the Mullen family dynamics are in flux. Uncle John makes a brief return to town to the delight of the girls. Freddy is finally reunited with his sisters. Marlys falls in love for the first time. And after they finally settle into a routine at their grandmother’s the Mullen siblings’ mother might be ready to take them back in. With war in the background and precarious parental support, the siblings long for peace, finding it in the small things like grocery store turkey drawing contests and fishing trips. Narrated by Maybonne, Marlys, and Freddy, It’s So Magic captures Lynda Barry’s unparalleled ability to depict the magic of youth experiencing firsts in a world that contains as much humour as it does hardship.

One! Hundred! Demons!

Lynda Barry

“You’ll wonder how anything can be so sad and so funny at the same time.” —Lev Grossman, Time Inspired by a sixteenth-century Zen monk’s painting of a hundred demons chasing each other across a long scroll, acclaimed cartoonist Lynda Barry confronts various demons from her life in seventeen full-color vignettes. In Barry’s hand, demons are the life moments that haunt you, form you, and stay with you: your worst boyfriend; kickball games on a warm summer night; watching your baby brother dance; the smell of various houses in the neighborhood you grew up in; or the day you realize your childhood is long behind you and you are officially a teenager. As a cartoonist, Lynda Barry has the innate ability to zero in on the essence of truth, a magical quality that has made her book One! Hundred! Demons! an enduring classic of the early twenty-first century. In the book’s intro, however, Barry throws the idea of truth out of the window by asking the reader to decide if fiction can have truth and if autobiography can have a fiction, a hybrid that Barry coins “autobiofictionalography.” As readers get to know Barry’s demons, they realize that the actual truth no longer matters because the universality of Barry’s comics, true or untrue, reigns supreme.

My Perfect Life

Lynda Barry

Maybonne and Marlys Mullen endure the mortifying highs and lows of middle school in this Lynda Barry classic. Collected from the strip Ernie Pook’s Comeek, which was serialized in alternative weeklies across the continent, My Perfect Life captures the moment when Lynda Barry finds the perfect balance in longer-form storytelling between the bellyaching laughs and the brutal reality checks. Along with the 2022 release Come Over Come Over, this collection continues to spotlight the life of teenager Maybonne Mullen. She suffers through the utterly relatable insults of junior high and the excruciating embarrassment caused by her little sister, Marlys. Hovering in the background, however, is a broken home, parents struggling with addiction, a grandmother who takes her granddaughters from the diverse big city to a bewilderingly bland small town. Yet fitting into the new school and surroundings is, of course, paramount to a young teenager. Maybonne begins September full of life and excitement. As the school year progresses, she experiences bullying, her first boyfriend, family drama, drinking, and more. The book ends with Maybonne withdrawn and jaded as the reality of her world outweighs the magic.

Exit Wounds

Rutu Modan

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. Exit Wounds is the North American graphic-novel debut from one of Israel's best-known cartoonists. Modan has received several awards in Israel and abroad, including the Best Illustrated Children's Book Award from the Israel Museum in Jerusalem four times and Young Artist of the Year by the Israel Ministry of Culture. She is a chosen artist of the Israel Cultural Excellence Foundation.

Frankenstein

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Frankenstein’s Monster lives on—and so does legendary artist Bernie Wrightson’s legacy—in this landmark illustrated edition of Mary Shelley’s classic novel, featuring an introduction by Stephen King. Few works by comic book artists have earned the universal acclaim and reverence that Bernie Wrightson’s illustrated version of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein was met with upon its original release in 1983. A generation later, this magnificent pairing of art and literature is still considered to be one of the greatest achievements made by any artist in the field. This book includes the complete text of the original groundbreaking novel, and approximately fifty original full-page illustrations by Bernie Wrightson—created over a period of seven years—that continue to stun the world with their monumental beauty and uniqueness.

King Lear

Gareth Hinds

In a graceful adaptation, Gareth Hinds transforms Shakespeare’s timeless tale of pride and defiance, loyalty and ambition, betrayal and revenge into graphic-novel format, packing it with visual drama and providing accessible notes. This artful edition -- like an extraordinary stage performance -- offers a striking new perspective on one of the most powerful and beloved tragedies in the English language. Incorporating excerpts from the bard’s own language, Gareth Hinds’s inventive format opens the experience of King Lear to students and fans of graphic literature.

Palimpsest

Documents From a Korean Adoption

Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom

Who owns the story of an adoption? Thousands of South Korean children were adopted around the world in the 1970s and 1980s. More than nine thousand found their new home in Sweden, including the cartoonist Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom, who was adopted when she was two years old. Throughout her childhood she struggled to fit into the homogenous Swedish culture and was continually told to suppress the innate desire to know her origins. “Be thankful,” she was told; surely her life in Sweden was better than it would have been in Korea. Like many adoptees, Sjöblom learned to bury the feeling of abandonment. In Palimpsest, an emotionally charged memoir, Sjöblom’s unaddressed feelings about her adoption come to a head when she is pregnant with her first child. When she discovers a document containing the names of her biological parents, she realizes her own history may not match up with the story she’s been told her whole life: that she was an orphan without a background. As Sjöblom digs deeper into her own backstory, returning to Korea and the orphanage, she finds that the truth is much more complicated than the story she was told and struggled to believe. The sacred image of adoption as a humanitarian act that gives parents to orphans begins to unravel. Sjöblom’s beautiful autumnal tones and clear-line style belie the complicated nature of this graphic memoir’s vital central question: Who owns the story of an adoption?

Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth

Chris Ware

The first and now critically-acclaimed book from Chicago artist Chris Ware. A lonely and emotionally impaired everyman, Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth, is provided with the opportunity to meet his father for the first time when he is 36 years old. The story, set in 1890s Chicago and 1980s small-town Michigan, is told in hundreds of small, precisely drawn panels that regularly expand to reveal stunning draughtsmanship, and supported by fold-out instructions, an index, paper cutouts and beautifully drawn period adverts.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Robert Louis Stevenson

In the mists of London rages the evil Mr. Hyde. It is said that he inspires fear, hatred, and repulsion. It is said that there is nothing human about him. But who is this mysterious character, really? The answer lies in the heart of the laboratory of the eminent Dr. Jekyll. . . . A masterpiece of literature revisited in a beautifully illustrated version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic tale!

Comics, Graphic Novels, and Manga

The Ultimate Teen Guide

Randall Bonser

Interest in comic books, graphic novels, and manga has never been greater, and fans of these works continue to grow around the world. From American superheroes like Superman and Spiderman to Japanese manga like Dragon Ball, there is a rich world of graphic storytelling that appeals to a wide range of readers—from young children just beginning to read to adults of every age who are captivated by dynamic illustrations and complex characters. Once dismissed as “just” for children, comic books are now appreciated for their vibrant art and sophisticated storylines. In Comics, Graphic Novels, and Manga: The Ultimate Teen Guide, Randall Bonser explores the history, evolution, diversification, and impact of graphic storytelling. This book looks at the origins of illustrated stories and how they evolved over the decades. A celebration and exploration of the rapidly growing world of comics, this book discusses such topics as the history of graphic storytelling, from cave drawings to zombie comicsthe impact of American superhero comics on popular culture diversity in comicsthe tools comic book and graphic novel creators use to communicateeasy starting points for readers new to comics Featuring reviews of more than 90 graphic novels and popular manga series, this book provides recommendations of what teens should consider reading next. The author also provides a short course on how teens can create and distribute their own comics. For those who either want to start reading comics but aren’t sure where to start, or as a gateway for the comics enthusiast to explore a different graphic novel genre, Comics, Graphic Novels, and Manga: The Ultimate Teen Guide provides a fun and fascinating introduction to these worlds.

Lynda Barry

A Critical Guide

Maaheen Ahmed

A complete introduction to the comics and graphic narratives of Lynda Barry, this book maps the historical and biographical contexts, key texts, the critical themes and debates surrounding her publications and the lasting impact of her work on the comics medium. With a distinctive body of work that unfolded during key moments in comics history from the much touted and criticized 'coming-of-age' of comics to the rise of underground and alternative comics and the establishment of graphic novels, Barry's comics reflect the changing status of comics, while unpacking the very constituents of the medium and testing its limits. Comprehensive and conveying specialist knowledge while remaining highly readable, Lynda Barry: A Critical Guide covers: - comics history from an alternative perspective, focusing on issues of intersectionality and representation - Barry's major works including One Hundred Demons, What It Is, Making Comics, Syllabus, Cruddy and her comic strip Ernie Pook's Comeek - broad and salient themes in Barry's work including memory, girlhood/womanhood, childhood, art pedagogy, creativity, overcoming creative anxieties, visual paper culture and the possibilities of drawing and collaging - Barry's materialities and her use of collage and art brut practices - Barry's prompts to creativity and connection and how they highlight the collaborative and accessible dimension of comics Combining rich insights from comics studies, literary theory and visual culture, this is the ultimate guide to Lynda Barry and her oeuvre. This critical guide exemplifies the diverse ways of approaching comics, combining existing methodologies with novel possibilities inspired from the originality of Barry's work.

Comics Studies

The Key Concepts

Frederick Luis Aldama

An accessible guide to the central concepts and issues that inform Comics Studies, this book summarizes, explains, contextualizes, and assesses key critical concepts, perspectives, developments, and debates in the field. At once comprehensive in coverage and specific in examples analyzed, the entries provide an essential overview of the key concepts in the field of Comics Studies, as shaped by historical, social, cultural, regional, and global contexts. The 22 concepts covered include: Adaptation Aesthetics Animals Architecture Autobiography Censorship Convergence Empire Feminism History Indigeneity Intersectionality Language LGBTQ Memoir Mind/Bodies Race Regionalism Sacred Social Movements Speculative Youth Fully cross-referenced and complete with suggestions for further reading and a glossary, Comics Studies: The Key Concepts is an essential guide for students of media and cultural studies, art and visual culture, gender and women’s studies, and literature who are studying comics and graphic novels.

One Hundred Demons

Lynda Barry

Buddhism teaches that each person must overcome 100 demons in a lifetime. In this collection of 20 comic strips, Lynda Barry wrestles with some of hers in her signature quirky, irrepressible voice. Color illustrations throughout.

One Hundred Demons

Lynda Barry

For use in schools and libraries only. Lynda Barry serves up shouting moms, innocence betrayed, rotten things we've done that will haunt us forever, and other demons in a comic-strip style that will engage the most reluctant readers.

Graphic Novels

Stories to Change Your Life

Paul Gravett

A comprehensive book about comics, covering the following aspects: Criticism, childhood, war, superheroes, dreams, fear, crime, morality, humor, time travel, love, and desire.