BERLIN TP #2

CITY OF SMOKE

(W) Jason Lutes (A) Jason Lutes (CA) Jason Lutes

The people of Weimar Berlin search for answers after the lethal May Day demonstration of 1929. Tension builds along with the dividing wall between communists and nationalists, Jews and gentiles, as the dawn of the Second World War draws closer. The lives of the characters within Lutes's epic weave together to create a seamless portrait of this transitory city. Marthe Muller follows lover Kurt Severing as he interviews participants in the May Day demonstration, but moonlights in the city's lesbian nightlife. Lutes creates a sense of anxiety and imminent doom.

CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS WRONG HC

(W) Mimi Pond (A) Mimi Pond (CA) Mimi Pond

The Customer is Always Wrong is the saga of a young naïve artist named Madge working in a restaurant of charming drunks, junkies, thieves, and creeps. Oakland in the late seventies is a cheap and quirky haven for eccentrics and Mimi Pond folds the tales of the fascinating sleaze-ball characters that surround young Madge into her workaday waitressing life. Told in the same brash yet earnest style as her previous memoir Over Easy, Pond's storytelling gifts have never been stronger than in this epic, comedic, standalone graphic novel.

GOOD BYE TP

(W) Yoshihiro Tatsumi (A) Yoshihiro Tatsumi (CA) Yoshihiro Tatsumi

Drawn in 1971 and 1972, these stories expand Yoshihiro Tatsumi's vocabulary for characters contextualized by themes of depravity and disorientation in twentieth-century Japan. Some of the tales focus on the devastation the country felt as a result of World War II: in one story a man devotes twenty years to preserving the memory of those killed at Hiroshima, only to discover a horrible misconception at the heart of his tribute. Tatsumi's characters muddle through isolated despair and fleeting pleasure to live out their darkly nuanced lives.

MOOMIN BEGINS A NEW LIFE GN

(W) Tove Jansson (A) Tove Jansson (CA) Tove Jansson

When a charismatic prophet comes to town, the residents of Moominvalley are easily convinced to follow his doctrine for true happiness. Intrigued by their friends and neighbors' lifestyle changes, the impressionable Moomins find themselves attempting to adopt the teachings of their new spiritual leader. But the freer they get, the more miserable they feel. Moominvalley's state of divine chaos is further complicated by the prophet's well-intentioned decree to free all of the jail's inmates. Moomin Begins a New Life is an eccentric all-ages adventure from the acclaimed Finnish cartoonist Tove Jansson that explores the appeal of self-transformation and the pursuit of happiness.

NEW YORK DRAWINGS ADRIAN TOMINE HC

(W) Adrian Tomine (A) Adrian Tomine (CA) Adrian Tomine

A collection of illustrations from the New Yorker cover artist and award-winning cartoonist, Adrian Tomine. This lavish, beautifully designed volume collects every cover, comic, and illustration that he has produced for The New Yorker to date, along with an assortment of other rare and uncollected illustrations and sketches inspired by the city. Complete with notes and annotations by the author, New York Drawings will also feature a new introductory comic focusing on Tomine's experiences as a New York illustrator.

OVER EASY HC (NEW PTG)

(W) Mimi Pond (A) Mimi Pond (CA) Mimi Pond

A fast-paced memoir about diners, drugs, and California in the 1970s. Over Easy is equal parts time capsule of late 1970s life in California - with its deadheads, punks, disco rollers, casual sex and drug use - and bildungsroman of a young woman from naïve, sexually inexperienced art-school dropout to self-aware, self-confident artist. Mimi Pond's chatty, slyly observant anecdotes create a compelling portrait of a distinct moment in time. Over Easy is an immediate, limber, and precise memoir narrated with an eye for the humor in every situation.

PUSH MAN AND OTHER STORIES TP

(W) Yoshihiro Tatsumi (A) Yoshihiro Tatsumi (CA) Yoshihiro Tatsumi

Thirty years before the advent of the literary graphic novel movement in the United States, Yoshihiro Tatsumi created a library of comics that draws parallels to modern prose fiction and today's alternative comics. The stories collected in The Push Man are simultaneously haunting, disturbing, and darkly humorous. A lone man travels the country, projecting pornographic films for private individuals while attempting to maintain a normal home life. An auto mechanic's obsession with a female TV personality turns fatal after a chance meeting between the two.

SCENES FROM AN IMPENDING MARRIAGE HC (CURR PTG)

(W) Adrian Tomine (A) Adrian Tomine (CA) Adrian Tomine

At the behest of his soon-to-be wife, Adrian Tomine set out to create a wedding favor for their guests that would be funnier and more personal than the typical chocolate bars and picture frames. What started out as a simple illustrated card soon grew into a full-fledged comic book: a collection of short strips chronicling the often absurd process of getting married. A loose, cartoony departure from Tomine's previous work, Scenes From An Impending Marriage is a sweet-natured, laugh-out-loud skewering of the modern marriage process, including hiring a DJ, location scouting, trips to the salon, suit fittings, dance lessons, registering for gifts, and managing familial demands.