Baloney TP

By Pascal Blanchett

Following White Rapids —named “Best Comic of 2007” by The Onion —Pascal Blanchet brings us Baloney . Winds swirl and darkness reigns over a hamlet perched atop a craggy peak. Russian fatalism sets the tone as Blanchet orchestrates the tale of a village butcher, his disabled daughter, and her tutor, in their doomed uprising against the swaggering Duke Shostakov, local governor and owner of the only heating company in town.

Curvy, retro lines and atmospheric, full-page panels evoke plaintive melodies, staccato passages and soaring solos. In a graphic novel about love and despair that is also a homage to the music of the 1930s and 40s, double bassists and trombonists lean into the frame, striking up a score that blends vaudeville with Kurt Weill and Russia's great modern composers. Rendered in two-color, red and black chiaroscuro, light struggles to emerge from darkness and endurance makes way for heroism, all to no avail. Read Baloney as a reverie composed to the melodies of Prokofiev and Shostakovich: a beautiful conjuring of moods, or a call to arms against the exorbitant rates charged by utilities.

Praise for White Rapids :
“It's rare to find a book as formally innovative and profoundly lovely as [White Rapids].” – The Onion

“Blanchet's drawings are like sheet music, too, each flowing naturally into the other as they tell the story not only of a singular place and time, but also deliver a subtle treatise about the toll progress takes on human scale.” – The Montreal Gazette

Kaspar TP

By Diane Obomsawin

On May 28, 1828, began the official life of Kaspar Hauser, a young man who appeared mysteriously in the streets of Nuremberg and died of knife wounds five years later under equally mysterious circumstances. “Europe's child”, as pamphleteers referred to him, captured the imagination of salon society. Allegedly raised in a dark cellar and deprived of human contact until the age of sixteen, he became proof of concept for theories about natural man, original sin, and the civilizing mission of culture. Rightful heir to the throne of Baden or a fraud? Redeemer of man's sins or “ambulatory automatist”? The curious circumstances and significance of his life have been disputed ever since.

In Kaspar, Quebec cartoonist Obom draws on Hauser's own writings, and contemporary accounts, to tell the foundling's strange story. Minimalist grayscale panels and the simplest of line work register the wonder and bewilderment of a trusting and sensitive soul emerging into a fickle society. Gentle and poetic, naïve and profound, Obom's first book to appear in English translation is a quiet and compelling charm.

“[Caspar] presented an opportunity for observation of the highest interest to the philosopher, the moralist, the religious teacher, the physiologist, and the physician — an opportunity which must be as rare as the crime which has afforded it.” -Francis Lieber, 1832, preface to Caspar Hauser: An Account of an Individual Kept in a Dungeon

Cecil and Jordan in New York HC

By Gabrielle Bell

Gabrielle Bell splits her cartooning time between creating wry sketchbook autobiographical comics, such as those included in her 2006 graphic novel, Lucky , and working on more detailed fictional short stories. This collection represents her short comics work that has been published in various anthologies over the past five years, including Kramer's Ergot , Mome , and The D+Q Showcase Book Four . The surrealist title story, in which a young woman turns herself into a chair so as not to be too much of a bother to those around her, is being adapted into the short film, Interior Design , by director Michel Gondry ( Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Science of Sleep ) as part of the forthcoming Tôkyô! trilogy set for fall 2008 release.

The Bun Field TP

By Amanda Vahamaki

This collection of five short comics stories by new talent Amanda Vähämäki is drawn together with an intriguing disjointed rhythm and delicious pencil-smudged style, and infused with a sense of abbreviated adolescence and a kind of grey sky banality. On the surface the stories are characterized by a surreal ebb-and-flow, but each also possesses a deep sense of foreboding and hurt, and maintains a biting sense of humor.

The Bun Field is Vähämäki's first graphic novel, which has been published in several languages. In this story, a young girl dreams of a dinosaur eating Donald Duck; wakes to find a bald, hulking stranger sharing her breakfast; leaves to take a car trip with a bear; falls and breaks a tooth, to have it replaced by an impatient dentist—from his dog's mouth no less; and pays back the favor by plowing a field of buns. Likewise, young people and anthropomorphic animals commingle in dreamy landscapes throughout the other tales collected in this edition, performing mundane tasks that are skewed with an absurd and fantastic edge. What do you get when you mix fish guts, jungle gyms, stamps, barmaids, soda pop and burning cities?

Vähämäki's unique ideas are equally matched by her tactile drawings, creating a palpable world that is fresh and compelling. The Bun Field and Other Stories comprises an introduction to the work of a new artist not to be missed.

melvin Monster volume 1 HC

By John Stanley

John Stanley is celebrated as one of the great children's comics writers for his work on the Little Lulu series. In fact, the Lulu work is a small part of his output, he had drawn and continued to write many other comics—notably his work on the 1960s teen comics from Dell (Thirteen, Dunc and Loo, and Kookie) and his monster comedy strip Melvin Monster. D+Q is planning on launching an extensive reprinting of much of this work in discrete volumes. Our first Stanley reprint will be the two-volume Melvin Monster collection featuring all ten issues of the oddball monster boy who just wants to be good, go to school, and do as he's told. Designed to fit nicely with our current reprinting of Tove Jansson's Moomin series, these comics are great reading for children or comics history-minded adults. Stanley's reputation as a great storyteller and visual comedian is richly deserved—few golden- or silver-age comics stand the test of time the way these comics do.

A Drifting Life HC

By Yoshihiro Tatsumi

Edited and designed by Adrian Tomine

Acclaimed for his visionary short-story collections The Push Man and Other Stories, Abandon the Old in Tokyo, and Good-Bye —originally created nearly forty years ago, but just as resonant now as ever—the legendary Japanese cartoonist Yoshihiro Tatsumi has come to be recognized in North America as a precursor of today's graphic novel movement. A Drifting Life is his monumental memoir eleven years in the making, beginning with his experiences as a child in Osaka, growing up as part of a country burdened by the shadows of World War II.

Spanning fifteen years from August of 1945 to June of 1960, Tatsumi's stand-in protagonist, Hiroshi, faces his father's financial burdens and his parents' failing marriage, his jealous brother's deteriorating health, and the innumerable pitfalls that await him in the competitive manga market of mid-twentieth-century Japan. He dreams of following in the considerable footsteps of his idol, manga artist Osamu Tezuka ( Astro Boy, Apollo's Song, Ode to Kirihito, Buddha )—with whom Tatsumi eventually became peers and, at times, stylistic rivals.

The Collected Doug Wright Volume 1 HC

By Doug Wright


The first of a historic two-volume set, Doug Wright: Canada's Master Cartoonist presents the first-ever comprehensive look at the life and career of one of the most-read and best-loved cartoonists of the 1960s. Compiled in cooperation with Wright's family, it draws from thousands of pieces of art, pictures, letters, and the artist's own journals, to provide a fully rounded view of Doug Wright, both as a cartoonist and as an individual.

Volume One follows the artistic development of the British-born cartoonist from his earliest unpublished work to the first days of his most enduring comic strip, Nipper . First published in 1949, a full year before the debut of Peanuts , this wordless strip perfectly captured the humorous—and frustrating—side of parenting for several generations of both young and old. Remembered by many for his cartoon children's striped shirts and bald heads, Nipper quickly grew into a Canadian phenomenon.

Designed by the acclaimed cartoonist & Peanuts designer Seth ( George Sprott ) and featuring a biographical essay by writer Brad Mackay, this lavish hardcover collection gives Wright's career the recognition it has long been due. The introduction is by one of the most famous working cartoonists today, Lynn Johnston, of the syndicated heavy weight comic strip For Better or For Worse.

Harcover, 240 pages, 9 x 14 inches, color.

George Sprott: (1894-1975) HC

By Seth

Celebrated cartoonist and New Yorker cover artist Seth gives us the fictional life of George Sprott. On the surface, George seems a charming, foolish old man--but who is he? And who was he? Told as a patchwork tale, we come to know George, piece by piece, in a series of "interviews", flashbacks and personal reminiscences. It is a story about time, identity, loss, and the pervasiveness of memory. Though ultimately this is the story of a man's death, Seth leavens it with humor, restraint and a light touch.

Originally serialized in the New York Times magazine, this greatly expanded and "re-mastered" version is its first publication as a complete work.

Hardcover, 96 pages, 12 x 14 inches, color.

Nancy Volume 1 HC

By John Stanley

Created by Ernie Bushmiller, the beloved Brillo-headed Nancy starred in her own comic book series for years, written by arguably the greatest children's comics writer of all time, John Stanley. Most famous for scripting the adventures of Marjorie Henderson Buell's Little Lulu, John Stanley is one of comics' secret geniuses. He provided a visual rough draft for all the comics he wrote and then handed off these "scripts" for someone else to render the finished art. No matter what comic he was writing, he breathed life into his characters. In Stanley's comics, Nancy is no longer a crabby cipher, but a hilarious, brilliant, scheming, duplicitous, honest, and loyal little kid—a real little kid. Her adventures with her best friend, the comically destitute Sluggo, involve moneymaking schemes to afford ice-cream sodas, botched trips to the corner store for Nancy's Aunt Fritzi, and comically raucous attempts to remove loose teeth.

Drawn & Quarterly will launch several kid-friendly volumes of Nancy and Nancy and Sluggo as companion volumes to Melvin Monster and Dark Horse's Little Lulu volumes. The books will be designed by Seth ( The Complete Peanuts; Melvin Monster; Clyde Fans; It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken ) to fill a children's comic niche that has been largely ignored for the last few decades.

Hardcover, 144 pages, 7.75 x 11 inches.

Prayer Requested TP

By Christian Northeast

Succinctly stated and punctuated with a sharp-edged visual style, Prayer Requested presents a narrative of illustrations and collages, each one accompanied by a found or scavenged prayer. First excerpted in Nicolas Robel's B.u.L.B Comix, the works of Prayer Requested are equal parts inspiring, amusing, enlightening, and in some cases entirely peculiar, each marrying heartfelt intent with frank unflattering interpretation.

With a roster of clients that include The New York Times, Playboy, and Rolling Stone, Christian Northeast's illustrations are honest and without reservation. They represent a creativity and freedom of thought and form, cleverly depicting the intimacy, urgency, and absurdity of these found prayers with a sense of explicit surrealism.