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 By Guy Delisle
272 pages, black and white
Published by Drawn & Quarterly
One of my favorite travel books from the past couple of years has got to be Guy Delisle’s Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea. Traveling to the capitol of perhaps the most notoriously isolationist country in the world, Delisle shared his experiences in a graphic novel that was both fascinating and informative. When I heard that his latest book, Burma Chronicles, was about his living in the a foreign country for an entire year, I was more than a little excited. His stay wouldn’t be just for a month or two, but for such an extended period of time that it held many more possibilities. What I found? Not entirely what I expected.
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 By Yoshihiro Tatsumi
224 pages, black and white
Published by Drawn & Quarterly
While cleaning house, I recently uncovered a copy of Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s Abandon the Old in Tokyo. I’d read his first collection in English, The Push Man and Other Stories, and thought it was good enough to buy the second one. And then, somehow, I’d lost and forgotten about the book. Determined to read the book that I’d misplaced for so long, I sat down and started reading it—and couldn’t stop until I was done. I certainly won’t be misplacing Tatsumi’s books again.
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 By Lynda Barry
208 pages, color
Published by Drawn & Quarterly
One of my favorite books published in 2002 was Lynda Barry’s One Hundred Demons, as Barry told stories of her past in an attempt to exorcise those demons. In doing so, her observations on a lot of parts of life had really resonated with me, bringing up those emotions and ideas that I’d been carrying around for years as well. In her first original graphic novel, What It Is, Barry plumbs her early life again as she tries to understand imagination and creativity and how it works. The end result is perhaps one of the most necessary books of 2008.
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 By Guy Delisle
184 pages, black and white
Published by Drawn & Quarterly
Some places in the world are mysterious because they’re physically remote; places covered by jungle, or amidst treacherous mountainous terrain, or perhaps isolated islands within the Pacific Ocean. It was thinking along those lines that initially drew me to Guy Delisle’s graphic novel Pyongyang; it’s an incredibly remote place not through physicality, but rather because of a policy of isolationism. I expected to find a vague idea of what it’s like to live in North Korea through Delisle’s book. What I ended up with was so much more.
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 By Seth
208 pages, color
Published by Drawn & Quarterly
You have to be patient if you’re a fan of the cartoonist Seth. Seth’s comic Palookaville (collected into graphic novels as It’s a Good Life If You Don’t Weaken and Clyde Fans) is published once, maybe twice a year… but it’s always clear that each issue is a labor of love. I think that’s why when Drawn & Quarterly first published Seth’s sketchbook compilation Vernacular Drawings I was so excited, and why I keep coming back to it years later—the amount of time and passion that went into each one is always apparent.
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 By Joe Sacco
112 pages, black and white
Published by Drawn & Quarterly
Savvy comic readers know all about Joe Sacco’s Safe Area Gorazde, his look at the United Nations designated “safe area” enclave for Muslim Bosnians in the heart of Serbian-controlled Bosnia. What they might not know about is before Safe Area Gorazde, Sacco released Soba, the first in a series of planned stories about Bosnia to be published by Drawn & Quarterly. It’s been a while, but the second Bosnia comic at Drawn & Quartelry has finally arrived in the form of The Fixer, Sacco’s new graphic novel.
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 By Kevin Huizenga and Nicolas Robel
96 pages, two-color
Published by Drawn & Quarterly
One of the great things about the original Drawn & Quarterly anthology was how each new issue would introduce new and upcoming talents in comics who may not have received wider exposure in the comics industry. While the new annual anthology volumes still do that, it’s great to see Drawn & Quarterly taking a new proactive role in bringing this talent to the forefront. That’s where Drawn & Quarterly Showcase comes from, helping identify and celebrate the new superstars of comics. But are the choices for this first book the real deal?
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 By Chris Ware
208 pages, color
Published by Drawn & Quarterly and Oog & Blik
On the surface, releasing a sketchbook seems like a vain exercise. For many comic artists, it probably is; stripped of stories and sequence, you’re left with a series of drawings that need to not just look good, but look so good that people want to buy a book of it. Drawn & Quarterly certainly seems to understand exactly who in comics deserves this treatment, first with Seth’s Vernacular Drawings collection, and now (co-published with Dutch company Oog & Blik) Chris Ware’s The Acme Novelty Date Book.
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 By Michel Rabagliati
144 pages, black and white
Published by Drawn & Quarterly
It’s always fascinating to watch someone come into comics at an older age than most others, because their approach is fueled by completely different things. Michel Rabagliati read French graphic albums as a child, but it wasn’t until much later in his life that he started first creating comics for Drawn & Quarterly. With each work the audience has gotten to watch Rabagliati refine his skills, and his newest graphic novel, Paul Has A Summer Job, is easily his most accomplished creation to date.
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