Lynda Barry

"Deliciously drawn (with fragments of collage worked into each page), insightful and bubbling with delight in the process of artistic creation. A+" --Salon How do objects summon memories? What do real images feel like? For decades, these types of questions have permeated the pages of Lynda Barry's compositions, with words attracting pictures and conjuring places through a pen that first and foremost keeps on moving. What It Is demonstrates a tried-and-true creative method that is playful, powerful, and accessible to anyone with an inquisitive wish to write or to remember. Composed of completely new material, each page of Barry's first Drawn & Quarterly book is a full-color collage that is not only a gentle guide to this process but an invigorating example of exactly what it is: "The ordinary is extraordinary."

What It Is

Notes from an Accidental Professor

Syllabus

One Hundred Demons

On a September night in 1971, a few days after getting busted for dropping acid, a sixteen-year-old curls up in the corner of her ratty bedroom and begins to write. Now the truth can finally be revealed about the mysterious day long ago when the authorities found a child, calmly walking in the boiling desert, covered with blood. The girl is Roberta Rohbeson, and her rant against a world bounded by "the cruddy top bedroom of a cruddy rental house on a very cruddy mud road" soon becomes a detailed account of another story, one that she has kept silent since she was eleven. Darkly funny and resonant with humanity, Cruddy, masterfully intertwines Roberta's stories -- part Easy Rider and part bipolar Wizard of Oz. These stories, the backbone of Roberta's short life, include a one-way trip across America fueled by revenge and greed and a vivid cast of characters, starring Roberta's dangerous father, the owners of the Knocking Hammer Bar-cum-slaughterhouse, and runaway adolescents. With a teenager's eye for freakish detail and a nervous ability to make the most horrible scenes seem hilarious, Cruddy is a stunning achievement.

An Illustrated Novel

Cruddy

The idiosyncratic curriculum from the Professor of Interdisciplinary Creativity will teach you how to draw and write your story Hello students, meet Professor Skeletor. Be on time, don’t miss class, and turn off your phones. No time for introductions, we start drawing right away. The goal is more rock, less talk, and we communicate only through images. For more than five years the cartoonist Lynda Barry has been an associate professor in the University of Wisconsin–Madison art department and at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, teaching students from all majors, both graduate and undergraduate, how to make comics, how to be creative, how to not think. There is no academic lecture in this classroom. Doodling is enthusiastically encouraged. Making Comics is the follow-up to Barry's bestselling Syllabus, and this time she shares all her comics-making exercises. In a new hand-drawn syllabus detailing her creative curriculum, Barry has students drawing themselves as monsters and superheroes, convincing students who think they can’t draw that they can, and, most important, encouraging them to understand that a daily journal can be anything so long as it is hand drawn. Barry teaches all students and believes everyone and anyone can be creative. At the core of Making Comics is her certainty that creativity is vital to processing the world around us.

Making Comics

A collection of twenty comic strips celebrates the Buddhist challenge to overcome one hundred demons in a lifetime with such offerings as "Dancing," "Dogs," and "Magic," which follow the author's misadventures with adolescence, family, and relationships. Teen.

A series of portraits by the creator of What It Is follows a myopic monkey through her everyday routines of preparing food, waiting for the bus, hogging the remote and associating with her imaginary friend.

The Near-sighted Monkey Book

Picture This

The Good Times Are Killing Me

Scott Smith

Laird Barron

Tim Lebbon

Michael Koryta

David Wellington

Seanan McGuire

Joe McKinney

John Ajvide Lindqvist

Rio Youers

Brian Keene

Dan Chaon

John Langan

Lucy A. Snyder

Sherrilyn Kenyon

Charlaine Harris

Kelley Armstrong

Gary A. Braunbeck

Robert Shearman

Leigh Perry

Dana Cameron

A blockbuster anthology of original, blood-curdling vampire fiction from New York Times bestselling and award-winning authors, including Charlaine Harris, whose novels were adapted into HBO’s hit show True Blood, and Scott Smith, publishing his first work since The Ruins. Before being transformed into romantic heroes and soft, emotional antiheroes, vampires were figures of overwhelming terror. Now, from some of the biggest names in horror and dark fiction, comes this stellar collection of short stories that make vampires frightening once again. Edited by New York Times bestselling author Christopher Golden and featuring all-new stories from such contributors as Charlaine Harris, John Ajvide Lindqvist, Scott Smith, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Michael Kortya, Kelley Armstrong, Brian Keene, David Wellington, Seanan McGuire, and Tim Lebbon, Seize the Night is old-school vampire fiction at its finest.

New Tales of Vampiric Terror

Seize the Night

Don't know Marlys Mullen? She is the most beloved character in Lynda Barry's nationally syndicated comic strip, Ernie Pook's Comeek. In the mid-1980s, Barry first introduced the strange yet poignant world of Marlys Mullen, her groovy teenage sister Maybonne, and her sensitive little brother Freddie.The trials and tribulations of childhood and adolescence have rarely been chronicled in such an original fashion. Now the early comic strips, which were out of print, have been collected in this oversize book, which will let fans old and new enjoy Marlys's adventures and outlook on life.

The Greatest of Marlys

Collected and uncollected comics from around 1978-1982

Everything

Lynda Barry’s classic heartbreaking and heartwarming coming of age novella back in print Young Edna Arkins lives in a neighborhood that is rapidly changing, thanks to white flight from urban Seattle in the late 1960s. As the world changes around her, Edna is exposed to the callous racism of adults—sometimes subtle and other times blatant, but always stinging. By weaving the importance of music in adolescence with the forbidden friendship between Edna, who is white, and Bonna Willis, who is Black, Lynda Barry captures the earnest, awkward, yet always honest adolescent voice as perfectly in prose as she does in comics.

The Good Times are Killing Me

The creator of Ernie Pook's Comeek presents a collection of her seminal strips and includes her earliest books, Girls and Boys and Big Ideas in a treasury that explores such themes as bad love, bad hair and being single. By the author of Picture This.

Volume 1 of Everything

Blabber Blabber Blabber

Cartoons show the humorous side of everyday life

My Perfect Life

THE TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS OF TROUBLED ADOLESCENTS FROM BARRY’S ACCLAIMED COMIC The Freddie Stories traces a year in the life of Freddie, the youngest member of the dysfunctional Mullen family. These four-panel entries–each representing an episode in the life of Freddie–bring to life adolescence, pimples and all. No matter what happens, it all seems to go wrong for Freddie–he’s set up as an arsonist, mercilessly teased in school, and bossed around by classmates. With consummate skill, Lynda Barry writes about the cruelty of children at this most vulnerable age when the friends they make and the paths they choose can forever change their lives. In The Freddie Stories every word of dialogue, every piece of narration, and every dark line evokes adolescent angst. These short, moving stories are collected from Barry’s beloved Ernie Pook’s Comeek, which was serialized across North America for two decades. Re-packaged here with a brand-new afterword from Lynda Barry, The Freddie Stories is an adult tale about just how hard it is to be a teenager–a classic Barry work alongside her cult masterpiece novel Cruddy–poignant, insightful, and true.

The Freddie Stories

Lynda Barry libera sus cien demonios en este clásico moderno de la novela gráfica. Inspirándose en el cuadro de un monje zen del siglo XVI que dibujaba a cien demonios que se perseguían unos a otros a lo largo y ancho de un papiro, Lynda Barry se enfrenta a los episodios más terribles de su vida en diecisiete capítulos, diecisiete momentos de una existencia que todavía la persiguen. Para ello, mezcla autobiografía y ficción en un híbrido que ella llama "autobioficcionalografía". Desde el momento de su publicación original, en 2002, Mis cien demonios ha sido considerado un clásico de la novela gráfica y se ha situado a su autora en el panteón de los grandes maestros del cómic moderno: Robert Crumb, Aline Kominsky, Art Spiegelman, Chris Ware, Julie Doucet, Chris Ware, Marjane Satrapi, Daniel Clowes, Alison Bechdel, Joe Sacco y Emil Ferris. La crítica ha dicho... «Los demonios de Barry destilan honestidad: son una suerte de espinitas clavadas en lo más profundo del ser, arrastradas desde diferentes etapas de la vida de la autora, a las que se les trata de dar voz, desahogarlas. Quizás incluso comprenderlas, dejando cierto espacio también para un humor del grosor de un papel de fumar. Dibujo naif y artesanal con una suerte de aire de diario íntimo, se enmarca en elementos de collage, lo que le da un empaque de naturalidad en esta transmisión de la memoria emocional.» Iván Galiano, Jot Down «Una de las grandes autoras norteamericanas de la generación que surgió en los estertores del underground feminista. Su obra está llena de humor, humanidad y crítica social, y este libro, Mis cien demonios es buena prueba de ello. [...] Un viaje sin nostalgia a la busca de los mecanismos con los que conformamos nuestra identidad. Racismo, machismo y estereotipos sociales que tanto fuera como dentro de su familia fueron esos demonios con los que hay que luchar. Es un tópico, pero esta vez es cierto: reirás y llorarás por igual.» Gerardo Vilches, Canino «Una imaginativa obra clave [...] en la que grandes y pequeños traumas son explulsados como monstruos, mezclando la ficción con hechos reales en una búsqueda de identidad personal. Una obra con tintes autobiográficos, de estilo gráfico estridente, que ha permitido a su responsable codearse con los grandes nombres de la historieta de autor estadounidense.» Borja Crespo, La Rioja «Una apasionante disección de la vida a través del dibujo. Páginas de recargadas composiciones visuales, de colores vivos en los que cualquier técnica es posible, desde el collage a los lápices, sin dejar espacio para el relax visual, dejando que la mirada se pierda en cualquier recoveco. [...] Una obra maestra.» Álvaro Pons, El País «La obra cumbre de la autora de Wisconsin, híbrido de autobiografía y ficción, donde no sin humor intenta exorcizar los demonios que aún la persiguen.» Anna Abella, El Periódico «Una paseo sensible, divertido y terapéutico por una existencia y los momentos que le dan sentido, lleno de ironía y autocrítica pero también ternura. [...] Una obra maestra.» Xavi Serra, Ara «Barry retrata el desconcierto de la infancia y la adolescencia con una mezcla de acidez, ternura y sarcasmo, y con un grafismo colorista y aparentemente naif.» Xavier Roca, El Nacional « Mis cien demonioses un libro tremendo, brutalmente honesto, reflexivo y conmovedor.» Nick Hornby, New York Times Book Review «Te preguntarás cómo algo puede ser tan triste y tan divertido al mismo tiempo.» Lev Grossman, Time

Mis cien demonios

Lynda Barry captures all the glorious magic and excrutiating pain of junior high school in this Ernie Pook Comeek collection from the early 90s. The star of this collection is 14 year old Maybonne who relays the angst and insecurity of life through hand scrawled diary entries, class assignments, and letters, in cursive with doodle and bubble letters. Of course, there is the ever-annoying yet adorable little sister Marlys who never fails to read her big sister’s diary. Barry deftly portrays the capricious nature of teen friendships, adolescent peer-pressure, and the kill or be killed nature of a middle school’s social scene in her signature style. No one but Lynda Barry can so naturally zero in on the joyous urgency yet heartbreaking poignancy of childhood. In an authentic teen voice full of diffidence and melodrama, the bespectacled and freckled Maybonne relates all of life’s indiginities on equal measure. Heartbreaking stories of a broken home, child molestation, an alcoholic absentee father and a bitter mom emerge between strips about home ec class, summer vacation, and babysitting, illustrating Barry’s peerless ability to make the reader both cry and laugh.

Come Over Come Over

The classic book featuring Maybonne Mullen and her little sister Marlys is back in print! Lynda Barry captures all the glorious magic and excrutiating pain of junior high school in this Ernie Pook Comeek collection from the early 90s. The star of this collection is 14 year old Maybonne who relays the angst and insecurity of life through hand scrawled diary entries, class assignments, and letters, in cursive with doodle and bubble letters. Of course, there is the ever-annoying yet adorable little sister Marlys who never fails to read her big sister’s diary. Barry deftly portrays the capricious nature of teen friendships, adolescent peer-pressure, and the kill or be killed nature of a middle school’s social scene in her signature style. No one but Lynda Barry can so naturally zero in on the joyous urgency yet heartbreaking poignancy of childhood. In an authentic teen voice full of diffidence and melodrama, the bespectacled and freckled Maybonne relates all of life’s indiginities on equal measure. Heartbreaking stories of a broken home, child molestation, an alcoholic absentee father and a bitter mom emerge between strips about home ec class, summer vacation, and babysitting, illustrating Barry’s peerless ability to make the reader both cry and laugh.

Come Over, Come Over

Jessica Abel

Matt Madden

Celebrating the best in graphic storytelling and literary comics, a cutting-edge collection, guest edited by the award-winning author of the long-running comic strip Ernie Pook's Comeek, features excerpts from graphic novels, pamphlet comics, newspapers, magazines, mini-comics, and the Web, from Chris Ware, Seth, Alison Bechdel, and Matt Groening, among others.

The Best American Comics 2008

THE TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS OF TROUBLED ADOLESCENTS FROM BARRY'S ACCLAIMED COMIC The Freddie Stories traces a year in the life of Freddie, the youngest member of the dysfunctional Mullen family. These four-panel entries--each representing an episode in the life of Freddie--bring to life adolescence, pimples and all. No matter what happens, it all seems to go wrong for Freddie--he's set up as an arsonist, mercilessly teased in school, and bossed around by classmates. With consummate skill, Lynda Barry writes about the cruelty of children at this most vulnerable age when the friends they make and the paths they choose can forever change their lives. In The Freddie Stories every word of dialogue, every piece of narration, and every dark line evokes adolescent angst. These short, moving stories are collected from Barry's beloved Ernie Pook's Comeek, which was serialized across North America for two decades. Re-packaged here with a brand-new afterword from Lynda Barry, The Freddie Stories is an adult tale about just how hard it is to be a teenager, and it's classic Barry work--poignant, insightful, and true.

Lynda Barry

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