Graphic Novels

 Ben Katchor (“The creator of the last great American comic strip.”—Michael Chabon) gives us his first book in more than ten years: the story of the fantastical nation of Outer Canthus and the three people who, in some way or another, in­habit its shores.
 
Emile Delilah is a young xenophile (lover of foreign nations) so addicted to traveling to the exotic regions of Outer Canthus that the government pays him a monthly stipend just so he can continue his visits. Liv­ing in the same tenement as Emile are Boreal Rince, the exiled king of Outer Canthus, and Elijah Salamis, a supranationalist determined to erase the cultural and geographic boundaries that separate the citizens of the Earth. Although they rarely meet, their lives in­tertwine through the elaborate fictions they construct and inhabit: a vast panorama of humane hamburger stands, exquisitely ethereal ethnic restaurants, ancient restroom ruins, and wild tracts of land that fit neatly next to high-rise hotels. The Cardboard Valise is a graphic novel as travelogue; a canvas of semi-surrealism; and a poetic, whimsical, beguiling work of Ben Katchor’s dazzling imagination.

A treasure trove of Jewish comic book art by both acknowledged masters and little-known stars, from Rube Goldberg to Aline Kominsky Crumb.

"Jews built the comic book industry from the ground up, and the influence of Jewish writers, artists, and editors continues to be felt to this day."—MAD magazine writer Arie Kaplan

Readers have long cherished the work of comic masters such as Will Eisner, Jules Feiffer, and Art Spiegelman, all of whom happen to be Jewish. Few, however, are probably aware that the Jewish role in creating the American comic art form is no less significant than the Jewish influence on Hollywood filmmaking. Filled with the most stunning examples of this vital artistic tradition, Jews and American Comics tells us how the "people of the book" became the people of the comic book.

With three brief essays by Paul Buhle, the well-known historian of American Jewish life, Jews and American Comics offers readers a pictorial backstory tracing Jewish involvement in comic art from several little-known strips in Yiddish newspapers of the early twentieth century through the mid-century origins of the modern comic book and finally to contemporary comic art, which has at last found its place in museums, in private collections, and on the bookshelves of both critics and millions of avid readers.

Featuring more than two hundred examples of the work of Jewish comic artists going back a century—much of which has been unavailable to the general public for decades—this extraordinary collection will be a major contribution to Jewish and American cultural history. Jews and American Comics is also a gorgeous package, sure to be treasured by comic art lovers and fans of Jewish culture—and destined to become the bar and bat mitzvah gift of the decade.

Yiddish is everywhere. We hear words like nosh, schlep, and schmutz all the time, but how did these words come to pepper American English? In Yiddishkeit: Jewish Vernacular and the New Land, Harvey Pekar and Paul Buhle trace the influence of Yiddish from medieval Europe to the tenements of New York’s Lower East Side. This comics anthology contains original stories by notable writers and artists such as Barry Deutsch, Peter Kuper, Spain Rodriguez, and Sharon Rudahl. Through illustrations, comics art, and a full-length play, four major themes are explored: culture, performance, assimilation, and the revival of the language. The last fully realized work by Harvey Pekar, this book is a thoughtful compilation that reveals the far-reaching influences of Yiddish.

Praise for Yiddishkeit:

“The book is about what Neal Gabler in his introduction labels ‘Jewish sensibility.’ It pervades this volume, which he acknowledges is messy; he writes: ‘You really can't define Yiddishkeit neatly in words or pictures. You sort of have to feel it by wading into it.’ The book does this with gusto.” —New York Times

“Yiddishkeit is as colorful, bawdy, and charming as the culture it seeks to represent.”

—Print magazine

“every bit of it brimming with the charm and flavor of its subject and seamlessly meshing with the text to create a genuinely compelling, scholarly comics experience”

—Publishers Weekly

“Yiddishkeit is a book that truly informs about Jewish culture and, in the process, challenges readers to pick apart their own vocabulary.” —Chicago Tribune

“a postvernacular tour de force”

—The Forward

“With a loving eye Pekar and Buhle extract moments and personalities from Yiddish history.” —Hadassah

“gorgeous comix-style portraits of Yiddish writers”
 ––Tablet 

“Yiddishkeit has managed to survive, if just barely, not because there are individuals dedicated to its survival, though there are, but because Yiddishkeit is an essential part of both the Jewish and the human experience.” 
—Neal Gabler, author of An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood, from his introduction

The acclaimed art fanzine’s psychogeographic drifts through a ruined city.

“One of the most striking fanzines of recent years is Laura Oldfield Ford’s Savage Messiah, focusing on the politics, psychology and pop- cultural past of a different London postcode. Ford’s prose is scabrous and melancholic, incorporating theoretical shards from Guy Debord and Marc Augé, and mapping the transformations to the capital that the property boom and neoliberalist economics have wrought. Each zine is a drift, a wander through landscape that echoes certain strands of contemporary psychogeography. Ford—or a version of her, at least—is an occasional character, offering up narcotic memories of a forgotten metropolis. The images, hand-drawn, photographed and messily laid out, suggest both outtakes from a Sophie Calle project and the dust jacket of an early 1980s anarcho-punk compilation record: that is, both poetry and protest.”  —Sukhdev Sandhu, The New Statesman

Savage Messiah collects together the entire set of Laura Oldfield Ford’s fanzine to date. Part graphic novel, part artwork, the book is both an angry polemic against the marginalization of the city’s working class and an exploration of the cracks that open up in urban space. Black-and-white illustrations throughout

A collision of two masters becomes a threesome: Lou Reed, Edgar Allan Poe, and Lorenzo Mattotti.

In 2001 legendary rock and roller Lou Reed immersed himself in the world of one of his spiritual forefathers, Edgar Allan Poe, to produce one of his most challenging and original works: POEtry, a cycle of songs directed by the legendary theater director Robert Wilson, in which Reed’s poetically streetwise sensibility merged with Poe’s dark chronicles of terror and despair — combining Poe’s prose and work set to music, Reed songs inspired by Poe, and even two classic Reed tunes whose insertion into this context gave them a new resonance.

This suite of songs was released on 2003 on CD as The Raven (Reed’s most recent solo studio album to date).

This spectacular volume adds a third dark, unique vision to the mix: The brilliant Italian cartoonist and illustrator Lorenzo Mattotti (RAW Magazine, The New Yorker), whose vivid, abstracted and enigmatic paintings perfectly complement Reed and Poe’s haunting words. Full-color illustrations throughout