Cathy Malkasian

2008 Eisner Award winner for Most Promising Newcomer: an absurd but hopeful cartoon fable for these strange times we live in. Cathy Malkasian has made the jump from animation to the printed page with a graceful, delicate leap. She deftly uses her pencil to create thick, expressive characters moving through the twilight of a shadowy Orwellian world. Humorous and bewitching at the same time, Percy Gloom is a unique gem of a story.

Percy Gloom

Malkasian’s stunning landscapes and depictions of nature, gestural character nuance, and sophisticated storytelling are on display in her latest graphic novel. For a thousand years, the unfinished dreams―sex fantasies, murder plots, wishful thinking―from the City Across the Sea came to Echo Fjord to find sanctuary. Emerging from the soil, they took bodily form and wandered the land, gently guided by the fjord folk. But recently they've stopped coming, and Eartha wants solve the mystery. Without thought or hesitation―the city isn’t on any map, or in anyone’s memory―she ventures into the limitless waters, hoping to find the City.

Eartha

"Do concepts life war and enemies hold a people together? Does conflict have an irresistible cultural momentum? These are the questions the cartoonist Cathy Malkasian explores in Temperance. After a brutal injury sustained in battle, Lester has no memory of his prior life. For the next thirty years his wife does everything to keep him from remembering-- and re-constructing-- a society, Blessedbowl, that has since elevated him as a hero. Blessedbowl is a cultural convergence of lies, memories, stories, and beliefs. Its people thrive on ideas of persecution, exceptionalism, and enemies, persuaded that war lurks just outside their walls. Lester's gradual emergence from his amnesia signals a crisis for the people of Blessedbowl, as their illusions become less and less sustainable. The story of Temperance is an account of recovery and awakening. Malkasian creates a densely tetured social context, masterfuly conveying the idiosyncratic physical domain with its spiraling structures and quasi-medieval architecture along with intimate yet plastic portraits of her characters in a rich, tonal pencil line" --P. [4] of cover.

Temperance

In this middle grade graphic novel from the acclaimed animator/cartoonist, Greta and her friend (and pet tortoise!) have to solve the mystery of Friendlytown. Greta is a handful, until her pet turtle, Nobody, teaches her to soften her ways. The two team up with her new friend, Gabby, to discover why the kind-hearted people of Friendlytown have turned so mean. Equal parts high-flying adventure and deeply felt inquiry into essential goodness of human nature, Greta Grump features tech-whiz cats, ornery gopher librarians, and gangs of squirrels in matching sweater vests. The warmhearted allegory of this graphic novel makes it perfectly calibrated to the present moment, when the need for us to look after one another is stronger than ever.

Cathy Malkasian

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