Hardcover. NY/London, Tate Publishing, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 144 pages, illustrated throughout in color and b&w. Clean, tight copy. In this richly illustrated and accessible survey, acclaimed author Paul Gravett considers the vast output of comics culture from the late 19th century to today, including syndicated comics, graphic novels, and contemporary art and illustration. From foundational masterpieces such as Rodolphe Topffer's and Wilhelm Busch's albums, George McManus's Art Deco "Bringing Up Father," and Alex Raymond's "Flash Gordon" to the later retro stylings of Robert Crumb, Gravett considers lines of influence from around the world and examines how comics have shifted from supporting the status quo to becoming the voice of alternative subcultures. Gravett traces the major themes taking place in contemporary comics, noting the rise of publications that function as questioning, transgressive outlets for outsider stories and ideas, and includes the ways that folk art traditions are reinvigorating the form.

Hardcover. London, Tate Publishing, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 144 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. A very clean, unmarked copy with only minor edgewear. Richly illustrated with many images taken from original artwork and rare artefacts, Comics Art gives a fascinating, accessible guide to some of the special properties of sequential art, such as panels, page layouts, speech balloons and wordless or 'silent' narration. It addresses concerns about how comics perpetuate stereotypes and support the status quo, while assessing their growing significance, notably through autobiography and reportage, as vehicles for provocative voices often silenced in other media. Comics Art also explores the diversity of styles, media and approaches now possible in the medium and exciting developments in digital comics and in comics conceived for galleries and installations.

Hardcover. NY/London, Tate Publishing, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 144 pages, illustrated throughout in color and b&w. Clean, tight copy. In this richly illustrated and accessible survey, acclaimed author Paul Gravett considers the vast output of comics culture from the late 19th century to today, including syndicated comics, graphic novels, and contemporary art and illustration. From foundational masterpieces such as Rodolphe Topffer's and Wilhelm Busch's albums, George McManus's Art Deco "Bringing Up Father," and Alex Raymond's "Flash Gordon" to the later retro stylings of Robert Crumb, Gravett considers lines of influence from around the world and examines how comics have shifted from supporting the status quo to becoming the voice of alternative subcultures. Gravett traces the major themes taking place in contemporary comics, noting the rise of publications that function as questioning, transgressive outlets for outsider stories and ideas, and includes the ways that folk art traditions are reinvigorating the form.

Hardcover. Seattle, Fantagraphics Books, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards, 696 pages illustrated in color, b&w. Tells of Fantagraphics Books' key role in helping build and shape an art movement around a discredited, ignored and fading expression of Americana the way insiders share the saga with one another other: in anecdotal form, in the words of the people who lived it and saw it happen. Comics historian and critic Tom Spurgeon and longtime Comics Journal editor Michael Dean assemble an all-star cast of industry figures, critics, cartoonists, art objects, curios, and groundbreaking publications to bring you a detailed account of Fantagraphics' first 40 years.

Hardcover. NY, Harry Abrams, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 336 pages, 575 illustrations, more than 100 plates in color. A comprehensive survey of fifty years of comics explores how such characters as Buster Brown, Krazy Kat, and Li'l Abner reflected societal attitudes and changes in the first half of the twentieth century, providing in-depth biographies of twenty-one influential comic creators and featuring rare original depictions of those creator's work. Lacks dust jacket but a clean, bright copy.

NY, Harry Abrams, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 336 pages, 575 illustrations, more than 100 plates in color. Like new condition.

Softcover. New York, Fantagraphics Books, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 199 pages. Softcover with minor wear to paper wrappers. Spine cracked on sencond page. Library embossed stamp on front cover, otherwise clean, tight copy. Minor wear on edges.

Hardcover. NY, Harry Abrams, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 336 pages, 776 illustrations, more than 100 plates in color. Contents include comic strips from the post war years followed by each decade to the nineties concluding with the twenty-first century. Lacks dust jacket but a clean, bright copy.

Softcover. New York, Thames and Hudson, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 350 pages, color illustrations. Eighty-two comic artists are featured, varying greatly in age, experience, and style. Each artist is introduced with a few paragraphs including some biographical material and quotations regarding their style, influences, and approach to their work, followed by approximately four large pages per artist of previously unpublished doodle or draft drawings from their sketchbooks, totaling 700 individual illustrations.

Softcover. New York, Thames and Hudson, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 350 pages, color illustrations. Eighty-two comic artists are featured, varying greatly in age, experience, and style. Each artist is introduced with a few paragraphs including some biographical material and quotations regarding their style, influences, and approach to their work, followed by approximately four large pages per artist of previously unpublished doodle or draft drawings from their sketchbooks, totaling 700 individual illustrations.

Softcover. New York, Thames and Hudson, 2012, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 352 pages. Softcover. Very clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to wrapper edges. 700 illustrations in black & white and color throughout.

Hardcover. Milwaukie, OR, Dark Horse Comics, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 498 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. A very clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket edges. Features 670 illustrations and photos -- including dynamic and bizarre cover art compiled under such curious headings as Atomic Bombs, Death with Indignity, Gorillas, Headlights, Hooded Menaces, and Skulls. Containing countless stories gleaned from over 150 interviews of comics industry veterans, Comics Between the Panels is loaded with more than half a century of insider information on the talented and eccentric creators who forged the comics industry and art form.

Hardcover. Jackson MS, University Press of Mississippi, reprint, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 364 pages, b&w illustrations. A reprint of the classic survey published in 1947. In a bright dust jacket, clean.

Hardcover. Milwaukie, OR, Dark Horse Books, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 500 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Very clean, unmarked copy with only minor edgewear. Features 670 illustrations and photos. This lavish volume takes an in-depth look at the history of comics in a manner decidedly unlike the dry timelines and profiles of most reference-style titles.Containing countless stories gleaned from over 150 interviews of comics industry veterans, Comics Between the Panels is loaded with more than half a century of insider information on the talented and eccentric creators who forged the comics industry and art form.

Hardcover. Cincinnati, Ohio, North Light Books, 1st, March 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 134 pages, b&w illustrations. A very clean, tight copy. Explains the role of caricature, tells how to develop a personal style, and includes profiles and work by top caricaturists. No dj issued.

Hardcover. San Diego, IDW Publishing, 3rd pr., 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, Presenting a deluxe hardcover collection of Chester Gould's timeless comic strip, Dick Tracy. The second volume of this multi-year project includes nearly 500 comic strips from May 1933 to January 1935. This special second volume also features an exclusive essay from Consulting Editor and longtime Tracy writer Max Allan Collins.

Softcover. Seattle WA, Fantagraphics Books, reprint, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 126 pages. Softcover. Extensive color and b&w illustrations by R. Crumb throughout. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to wrappers.

Hardcover. Seattle, Fantagraphic Books, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 96 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Orange cloth boards. Comic strips by McCay reproduced in color. Nice, crisp copy in a dust jacket.

Hardcover. San Diego CA, Idea & Design Works/ IDW, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 319 pages. Color and b&w strips from the newspapers between 1927 and 1929. Little Orphan Annie -- the original female comics hero -- takes on chiseling business men and a gang of thieves, armed only with her sharp wit and a good left hook. Then she helps her surrogate parents by nursing "Daddy" Warbucks to health and helping save the Silos' family farm. And only that little chatter-box could become a cross between Robinson Crusoe and Dr. Doolittle when she and Sandy are shipwrecked on a deserted island.

Hardcover. New York , Pantheon, reprint, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 296 pages, b&w illustrations by Spiegelman. Maus is a holocaust survival story, a biography, and an autobiography. Written as a graphic novel (and winner of a Pulitzer Prize), Art Spiegelman captures the process of interviewing his father while simultaneously telling his father's story. In that sense, the text is very self-reflexive - there are parts in it showing Spiegelman working to create the very page you read, as previous parts of the his father's story are reintroduced from previous portions of the text. The story is complex. It not only details the horrors of the holocaust and the extreme lengths to which people went to survive, but it also captures the harrowing guilt survivors faced, and the lifelong aftereffects of the war. It also shows the struggle between father and son, both through the lens of a typical familial challenge, and of those unique between a survivor and child born afterwards.

Hardcover. New York , Pantheon, reprint, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 296 pages, b&w illustrations by Spiegelman. Maus is a holocaust survival story, a biography, and an autobiography. Written as a graphic novel (and winner of a Pulitzer Prize), Art Spiegelman captures the process of interviewing his father while simultaneously telling his father's story. In that sense, the text is very self-reflexive - there are parts in it showing Spiegelman working to create the very page you read, as previous parts of the his father's story are reintroduced from previous portions of the text. The story is complex. It not only details the horrors of the holocaust and the extreme lengths to which people went to survive, but it also captures the harrowing guilt survivors faced, and the lifelong aftereffects of the war. It also shows the struggle between father and son, both through the lens of a typical familial challenge, and of those unique between a survivor and child born afterwards.

Softcover. New York, Nantier Beall Minoustchine, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Unpaginated. Softcover. First volume of reprinting, covering 1924-1925. With an introduction by Bill Blackbeard. An unmarked, clean and tight copy with only light edge wear to wrappers.

Hardcover. Seattle, Fantagraphics, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Collects the top shelf of VIP's drink-themed artwork including well-known favorites, this new book is sure to delight even the most rigid teetotaler. Cartoons in b&w.

Softcover. NY, 1947, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover magazine, digest size. Articles on Norman Rockwell (The People's Painter) and Milton Caniff (Secrets of a Comic Strip Artist). Nice copy. Wrap-around cover illustrations by Stan Eckman.