Fantagraphics strana 3 z 4

Hyaku has been betrayed. A fearsome killer, her body more machine than flesh, she has learned the truth: Her human body parts were bartered away when she was a baby, and what remained was left for dead. Filled with incandescent rage, Hyaku embarks on a vengeful rampage to dismantle the monsters who took her apart and violently reclaim what she has lost. But as she replaces her cybernetic implants with the flesh and blood she has been denied, a new emotion sets in: fear. Fear that her human body will be too weak to finish what she started - and fear of what she might learn next about her own past. Will her anger and ruthlessness be enough to propel her to the final showdown? Or will revelations about the depravity of her world consume her, along with everyone around her? Originally serialized from 2019-2021 in the Japanese manga monthly TezuComi, Search and Destroy is a brilliantly-crafted thriller about an outsider looking for meaning and vengeance in the unjust world that took everything away from her. In a stunning, high-contrast setting that blends the post-Cold War former Soviet Bloc with a gritty futuristic Tokyo, Kaneko populates his story with an unforgettable cast of scrappy heroes and skin-crawling machine-monsters on a nonstop ride full of action and suspense. The result is not only one of the best sci-fi manga of recent years but also one of the most visually rich and distinctive works of graphic storytelling in any genre or language. Please note: This book is a traditional work of manga and reads back to front and right to left.

Coupling the grand guignol morality of Paul Schrader and Martin Scorsese''s Taxi Driver (1976) with the squashed black-and-white perspectives and grotesque human physiognomy (and humanity) that defines Chester Gould''s Dick Tracy, Marti''s The Cabbie (starring the eponymous ''hero'' known only as the Cabbie) was first published in instalments in 1980s Spain, a product of a life lived under, and coming out of, Franco''s fascist dictatorship. In Volume One (initially published in 2011), the Cabbie''s father''s coffin is stolen in an act of vengeance for the Cabbie''s vigilantism - right after his mother tells him his inheritance is inside! Cabbie takes to the mean streets in a quest to find it. In Volumes Two and Three (both never before available in English), Cabbie runs the gauntlet of mad science, dog races where the dogs chase humans, evil millionaires, presidents, and popes in addition to every nightmare scenario imaginable. Ultra violent, ultra profane, and ultra vicious, The Cabbie is filled with scummy noir characters exaggerated to the absolute limit - and the worst of them all might be the titular Cabbie, precisely because, not unlike Travis Bickle, he sees himself as a force for good. There have been various incomplete English editions over the last four decades, but this is the definitive Cabbie saga published in English for the first time, complete with ''extras,'' including a cover gallery!

For almost three decades, master cartoonist Jordan Crane has put together a body of short stories that garnered him multiple Eisner and Ignatz Award nominations, via the pages of his comic book series Uptight and the influential comics anthology, Non. Yet they have never been collected until now. Featuring over a dozen short stories (spanning multiple genres) published over the past 25 years, Goes Like This is a gorgeously packaged anthology (including varying paper stocks and rounded corners) of Crane''s work. ''The Hand of Gold'' is a short but grim Weird Western, a morality play in which an accidental crime leads a criminal to a supernatural maximum security cell. ''Below the Shade of Night'' presents an anxiety that is rooted in the follies and ignorance of childhood, adolescence and young adulthood. ''Vicissitude'' maps uncharted territory of graphic melancholia via a tale of infidelity. ''Trash Night'' depicts the troubled relationship of Dee and Leo, with mounting tension and mistrust that reaches a boiling point. In ''The Dark Nothing,'' a rare foray into science fiction, the three-person crew of prospecting ship Sagasu 17 attempt to harvest an asteroid, and things go horribly awry. ''The Middle Nowhere'' begins with a man waiting in a small shack. All around him is a black sand desert. The wind rises, the rain comes, and it just might be the end of everything he''s known. Also featuring additional prints and drawings from the author''s archives, Goes Like This is a tantalizing sampler of one of the most brilliant cartoonists working today.

These erotic comics stories, spanning 1974-1991, feature metropolitan settings like Valentina taking the subway - but what begins as an ordinary trip soon becomes a fantastical journey with familiar characters cameoing along the way. Then, in a giallo-inspired tale, fashion photographer Valentina''s models keep turning up dead. Could she be the murderer? In ''Time Out'' (1991), she''s once again stalked by a Subterranean... but what is its mission? The rest of this collection introduces a new heroine, Anita, who lives (and dies) for TV! Every flip of the channel has a new genre for her (and Crepax) to insert herself in. And in ''Input Anita,'' Crepax plays with the idea of bringing your work home with you. ''Data entry'' has never been so sexy (and a little sinister too).

''If an exorcism can ever be slow and quiet, then every panel I''ve finished has felt something like an exorcism. The gutters give me space to make sense of things: to connect dots and close gaps. To remember.'' Kayla E.''s Precious Rubbish is an experimental graphic memoir drawn in a style that references the aesthetics of mid-century children''s comics and tells the story of a childhood shaped by maternal emotional dysregulation, rural poverty, and incest. The author''s childhood is portrayed as a collection of short-form comics and gag panels punctuated by interactive elements like paper dolls, satirical advertisements, games, and puzzles. While the work is concerned with violence and a particularly Texan brand of Pentecostal fanaticism, it is presented in a playful visual language with a deadpan humour that elevates the material beyond mere graphic memoir. Precious Rubbish is a landmark work of comics storytelling and graphic medicine. The debut graphic novel from artist Kayla E., Precious Rubbish asks the reader to do the extratextual work of filling out narrative gaps, which mirrors the challenge of trauma recollection. The reader is invited to co-labour in the meaning-making process, an exercise that facilitates an intimacy (between the author, the subject, and the reader) that is at once horrifying and hilarious.

Feeling adrift after her daughter leaves the nest, Rita makes the audacious move to model nude for a live drawing class. There, she meets Esther, an artist who sees beyond the superficial and captures people''s true essences in her drawings. The two connect as kindred spirits, and their unexpected, yet endearing relationship teaches them to accept their eccentricities and feel comfortable in their own skin. Skin is the striking debut graphic novel by writer Mieke Versyp and illustrator Sabien Clement. In this seamless collaboration, poetic turns of phrase pair with impressionistic watercolours, creating a tangible intimacy between words and imagery. Keen observation and dynamic artistry combine to tell a tender story of the human condition, as playful and devastating as life itself.

Hazel and her parents live an idyllic life in a treehouse in the PAW (Perfect Animal Worlds) Biosphere among a series of ecologically controlled environments populated by genetically created and enhanced animals and flora. As scientists working for PAW, together with founder Dr. Henry Nimick, the McCrimlisk''s mission is to create a world that will usher in an era of ''good evolution'', populated with animals and plants that can transform pollution and other environmental hazards to make the region clean and habitable. But one foggy night, Hazel''s parents are suddenly kidnapped. With the help of her animal friends Chimi (a multilingual toucan), Nina (a pet-sized elephant who exhibits super-strength), and her human friend (comics lover and mythology expert) Alex, Hazel tracks clues throughout the various biodomes and climates uncovering what happened to her parents and leading her to... a monster?!? Author Ali Fitzgerald charmingly wrote, drew, lettered, and coloured this book featuring an imaginative setting rich with detail and an expressive brush-pen style with a good sense of personality and motion. Her colourful, anthropomorphic characters are bright and funny sleuths alongside Hazel as they follow the clues together. Filled with puns and hijinks, readers will delight in this mystery with an ecological message.

When Ida is sent away for the summer to stay with the Murphys - friends of her father, but also of Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald - she travels from New York to France and, unknowingly, into the artistic epicentre of 1929. There, she meets their haughty, sullen, and precocious daughter, Honoria, and wonders if she can be friends with the prettiest girl in the whole world. In the ''perfect inverted world'' of adults, one of constant play and leisure - and inebriation, of course - it''s the children who most acutely perceive the pervasive unhappiness bubbling beneath the surface gaiety. Achingly sad and effortlessly funny, full of the kind of youthful sincerity unclouded by pretenses of age, short story writer and cartoonist Janice Shapiro''s debut graphic novel, HONORIA, is the complex story of the education of two young girls who have started moving slowly into womanhood.

Barbara has big goals. As the fiery captain of her U19 soccer team, the Rosigny Roses, she''s determined to win a championship before graduating high school and leaving the grungy Parisian suburbs in the dust. So when her club threatens to divert their funding to the men''s team and forfeit their season, she''s devastated. Banding together, the Roses come up with a longshot plan - battle the men''s team in a winner-takes-all match. Do Barbara and the Roses have what it takes to save their season? Inspired by the author''s experiences, Season of the Roses is an authentic portrayal of a teenager at a crossroads. Her dazzling illustrations, drawn in colourful felt-tip pens, encompass the thrills of playing soccer as well as the angst of navigating life off the field. In Season of the Roses, soccer isn''t just a game - it''s all about self-discovery, making bold choices, and standing up to sexism and injustice.

Tedward is, in many ways, the quintessential ''lovable loser'' - an almost literal blockhead and mangenue in the grand tradition of Pee-Wee Herman, Candide, and Flakey Foont, affording his creator the perfect vehicle to indulge his brilliantly absurdist storytelling instincts. Tedward''s susceptibility to temptation, exploitation (capitalistic or sexual), and misplaced trust continually lands him in ridiculous and hilarious situations, be they scatological, orgiastic, violent, or mundane. Through it all, his heart of gold never wavers. Tedward is the debut collection from British-born Philadelphia cartoonist Josh Pettinger. Featuring sex trousers, coital hygienists, warm televisions, hot rocks, and clown meat, as well as romance, crime, conflict, and cosmic wonders! A spiritual cousin to the humour of Simon Hanselmann and Daniel Clowes, Pettinger''s singularity of tone and style in these episodic comedies mark him as a master cartoonist just entering his prime.

Rufus Baxter is an aging, professionally unemployed loser, desperately - delusionally - hanging on to his 1980s hair metal fantasies of headlining arenas, despite so much evidence to the contrary (like audience members ducking when he tosses promo t-shirts at an open-mic night). The rest of his bandmates in Funky Cool died decades ago in a horrible plane crash on the cusp of their first big break. When he gets kicked out of the Denver storage unit he''s been illegally sleeping in, his only prospect is a last-second wedding gig the very next day - in Wyoming. A hop in his car, and possibly a peyote button or two, sends Baxter on a psychedelic and existential road trip through his past, and forces him to confront every bad decision he''s made along the way. Beat It, Rufus is very much a kindred spirit with Van Sciver''s Fante Bukowski series, a comedic character study both played for laughs but also infused with a surprising gravitas that has you rooting for Rufus despite having every reason not to. Van Sciver''s comedic and graphic talents are in peak form in this original graphic novel, his follow-up to the award winning and critically acclaimed graphic bio, Joseph Smith and the Mormons.

One day while combing the beach in their hometown of Las Brisas, the Santos Sisters discover a pair of beautiful medallions. What happens next changes their lives, forever. The medallions are imbued with the powers of a goddess, ''Madame Sosostris,'' and can transform them at will into flying, gun-wielding, mask-wearing murder-heroes with hearts of, if not gold, then at least candy. Follow Ambar and Alana, the Santos Sisters, as they balance spicy superheroics with the drama of their everyday lives in a playful mix of Archie Comics and Love and Rockets. The Santos Sisters fight crime, date guys, and try to just deal with day-to-day life as young women in a world of deadly assassins, roided-up footballers, zombie attacks, organised crime, and more - while their creators, Greg & Fake, help restore the concept of unabashed fun in comic books with a healthy infusion of nostalgia and laughs. Collecting the first five issues of the charmingly weird and weirdly charming hit indie comic book series! Note: This book is published as a jacketed hardback; the jacket is a clear acetate printed with an image of the sisters in their superhero costumes. When removed, it shows the sisters in their every-day outfits.

In the not-so-distant future, twenty-something Betty lives in a fascistic society that menacingly polices mental health. When she is caught crying in public, the Peacekeepers take her to an Orwellian health facility to control her emotions. There, she meets the defiant Berina, who opens her eyes to an alternative reality: the Resistance. If Betty can navigate a rollicking underworld, where all manner of queerness is celebrated, she just might have a chance to strike back against the regime. Deliciously twisted, fiercely contemporary, and backed by a Swedish pop soundtrack, Baby Blue is the dynamic graphic novel debut of comics artist Bim Eriksson. A vital manifesto about the need to express your unique identity in a chillingly conformist world.

Julia Gfrorer is quietly one of the most influential cartoonists of her generation. Emerging from the Portland scene at the height of the Obama era, her comics augured the dark times to come, using graphic sex, pitch-black horror, a hunger for exploring the past, and a line cruel as a whip to create her own unmistakable sense of millennial melancholy. Reflecting her DIY ethos, much of her work has only been available in self-published zines or independent anthologies, many of them rare or out-of-print - until now. World Within the World features 30 of Gfrorer''s short stories, culled from a decade of writing and drawing at the bleeding edge of the art form. Her tales of desire, despair, and the universal need for connection span centuries, continents, and cultures from prehistoric teenagers in love to Christian martyrs in the making to modern-day vampires on the make. Along the way her bold, confident work leads the reader to some unexpected places, whether erotica inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe or a post-apocalyptic parody of Frasier. In World Within the World, there is no distinction between the realistic and the fantastic, the psychological and the supernatural, the modern and the medieval, the mundane and the sublime - just the artist''s unflinching vision of how it feels to be human, no matter when or where.

Ten years in the making (and torn from the pages of the legendary Love and Rockets), Jaime Hernandez''s newest graphic novel skillfully weaves two generations of his beloved characters into a satisfying story of love - both young and middle-aged. Life Drawing darts primarily between the youthful Tonta and the venerable Maggie. Tonta has a crush on her art teacher, Ray, as well as an axe to grind with an older woman in the neighbourhood. When Tonta finds that the woman, Maggie, is married to Ray, things get complicated. And Tonta does not handle complications well. Life Drawing showcases Hernandez''s brilliant talent for character, weaving relationships, rejections, infidelities, and adventures involving: Tonta''s self-involved sisters Vivian, Violet, and Muneca; her colorful pals Gomez, Judy Fair, and Brown Alice; her mother, the infamous ''Black Widow of the Valley''; and of course, the two great loves of Maggie''s life, Ray and Hopey. There''s also a forest spirit, two weddings, some cosplay, a little pole dancing, and page after page of breathtaking comics by the medium''s most wide-eyed romantic. Did we mention the weddings?

The long-lost comic strip masterpiece by legendary children''s book author Crockett Johnson, is finally collected and designed by acclaimed graphic novelist and Barnaby superfan Daniel Clowes (Ghost World). Volume Five collects the final two-plus years of the strip, including the rarely-if-ever-seen conclusion of the strip, as five-year-old Barnaby Baxter says goodbye to his Fairy Godfather, Mr. O''Malley. Unlike most comic strips, Barnaby ended its ten-year run with an emotionally satisfying ending that broke the hearts of fans when first published in newspapers. The magic of Barnaby resides in its canny mix of fantasy and satire, amplified by the understated elegance of Crockett Johnson''s clean, spare art. Barnaby expanded our sense of what comics can do through its combination of Johnson''s sly wit and O''Malley''s amiable windbaggery, illustrating a child''s feeling of wonder and an adult''s wariness, highly literate jokes and a keen eye for the ridiculous. This volume also features essays by comics historian Susan Kirtley and Johnson biographer Philip Nel, as well as an introduction by filmmaker Ron Howard, whose acting career was launched in 1959 at the age of five, when he was cast as Barnaby in a 1959 adaptation for General Electric Theater, hosted by Ronald Reagan. The book includes rarely-seen stills from the 1959 production - which also featured Wizard of Oz alum Bert Lahr as Mr. O''Malley!