Long before he drew The Simpsons, Matt Groening's strip Life in Hell was the best reason to pick up an alternative weekly. Despite Groening's well-deserved success with the citizens of Springfield, Life in Hell continues to this day, and remains sharp and topical.
Long before The Simpsons, these collections started coming out, too, and they are still hilarious.
Work is Hell
"How dare you duck when I throw things at you..."
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in Paperback
The Big Book of Hell
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in Paperback
Childhood is Hell
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in Paperback
The Huge Book of Hell
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in Paperback
Akbar and Jeff's Guide to Life
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in Paperback
Love is Hell: A Cartoon Book
"Love is an overturned snowmobile pinning you to the tundra. At
night, the ice weasels come."
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in Paperback
School is Hell
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in Paperback
The Big Book of Hell
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in Paperback
Roberta Gregory has steadily built a following from the underground up, starting with her groundbreaking comics about the women's movement, and now, her funny, rude and honest work in Naughty Bits. While the main character of Naughty Bits, Bitchy Bitch, on the surface seems like a poster child for PMS, Gregory's storytelling unwraps Bitchy's past over the course of the series. Bitchy is seen as the sum of her past: a loveless upbringing from strict, reactionary parents, sex without intimacy or love, a history of abuse, and a promising future derailed in favor of an empty sort of independence. You'd be bitchy, too, especially if you worked with the book's supporting cast, a rogue's gallery of the worst of office life.
Bitchy's School Daze
Roberta Gregory
Reprints the recent story arc from Gregory's Naughty Bits, concerning Midge's college days, and her introduction to the anti-war movement and Free Love (at the same time, natch...).
Emotionally authentic, yet funny and sad. Gregory's more recent explorations into Bitchy Bitch's past have definitely helped flesh out the character and explain just why she's the bitter woman she is today.
Not yet reviewed.
Paperback (publishing in April)
At Work and Play with Bitchy Bitch
Roberta Gregory
Not Yet Reviewed.
The Aviation Art of Russell Keaton
Russell Keaton
Kitchen Sink Press
The Aviation Art of Russell Keaton collects his comic strip "Flying Jenny". Flying Jenny, the story of a plucky female test pilot, ran during WWII, until Keaton's death. The strip was very popular at its peak, and was rare among the adventure strips of the time, featuring a female lead.
Keaton's work was very much a product of its time, mixing a glamour girl artwork style with its portrayal of Jenny as a talented aviator and dedicated career woman. Also very much a product of this period in aviation history, where innovations were being made daily, and where much of the work was focused on the war effort.
In addition to collecting many of the Sunday and daily strips from the series, it also provides an extensive section of Keaton's correspondance with his collaborators and syndicate editors. The book also contains examples of Keaton's early work as a ghost artist on Flash Gordon, and some of his other aviation strip work.
A great book for aviation afficionados, aspiring cartoonists, WWII nostalgia buffs, or any adventure comic fan. An important contribution to the history of comics, with special interest to followers of the Trina Robbins books on the history of women comics characters.
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in Paperback
Order
in Hardcover
The Freddie Stories
Lynda Barry
Reprints Lynda Barry's syndicated comic, usually seen in alternative papers.
Not yet reviewed.
Mutts
Patrick McDonnell
The first collection of Patrick McDonnell's popular (and Herriman-inspired) newspaper strip.
Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer: Stories
Ben Katchor
Collection of Katchor's strips, usually seen in alternative papers such as the New Times.
Katchor evokes the "otherness" of a large, ethnic city like New York, by introducing us to a strange world of odd occupations, impenitrable accents, and big-city loneliness.
This book manages to nail down everything that scares me about New York City.
Rendered in beautiful grey-tones, Katchor's art is also evocative and moving.
Dances With Sheep
A K Chronicles compendium
Keith Knight
San Francisco's Keith Knight pulls off quite a coup with this, his first TPB collection of K Chronicles strips. For one thing, having seen his work only occasionally, it's quite a pleasant surprise to find that Keith has done so many strips. He's got 136 pages of funny stuff here, most of them one-page strips, so there's bound to be something you like.
Keith's cartooning is expressive and funny -- he's a master at exaggeration both in his words and his pictures, and he manages to cover even the touchy subjects of violence and racism without getting preachy. Check out Keith's online strips at Salon.com for a good sampling of his work.
The production value of this book is superb by anyone's standards and particularly nice for a small press effort; the cover is matte stock, and the interior pages printed on thick, off-white paper, with quite a lot of thought put into the overall design and layout.
Manic-D Press
$11.95 , 136 pages
ISBN 0-916397-50-5