Category: bestsellers

1. Unsinkable Walker Bean by Aaron Renier (First Second) $13.99 – Does it sound cheesy if I say this book is perfect for kids age 5 to 105? Cause it really is! The Unsinkable Walker Bean is an unstoppable, rollicking high seas adventure full of codes, inventions, antediluvian intrigues and funny names. There’s this “pure joy of drawing” in Aaron’s work which loads the panels with sly little details and charming gestures -but nothing feels superfulous- even the silliest elements weave themselves into the plot. The story itself, about returning a cursed skull to two giant sea-hag sisters, champions scrapper ingenuity, resourcefulness and teamwork in a way that’s never heavy-handed, it’s just plain cool. Refreshing in a similar way is how Walker Bean’s world escapes simple hero vs. villain dichotomies, giving every character a heart to the point that you’ll even find the fierce, giant mer-witches endearing. The exceptional storytelling is emphasized by Alec Longstreth’s (Phase 7) beautiful color work full of crisp ocean blues, kelp-y ochres and my favorite sorts of pale, sea-sick greens. The book is also completely and solidly kid-friendly and that’s a big part of it’s magic: reading it as an adult stirs up all the youthful thrills and adventures of creative problem-solving. SO GOOD! -EF

2. Brilliant Mistake #1 by Carrie $1.00 – What a gem of a debut zine! Beautifully quilted together from bits of a questioning heart, Brilliant Mistake #1 pares down the aches of the social games we play. -EF

3. Is It THE FUTURE Yet by Corrine Mucha $3.00 – What does the future hold for you? Well, I predict you will fall madly in love with Corinne’s amazing new mini-comic, Is It the Future Yet?, which she made ‘specially for Quimby’s! I see you laughing out loud at the fresh psychic hijinx and time-travel schemes that grace every delightful page. I can see your love for this comic growing rich, deep, and strong and you will find it brings you much good luck and happiness as years go by…Yes, my friend, the future looks very bright indeed!

4. Butt #28 Fantastic Magazine for Homosexuals $9.90

5. Hero Land #1 by Esther Pearl Watson $4.00 – Super friends fighting crime! Drinking coffee! Accidently killing their plants! Growing older! Letting thier infected hands heal without medical attention! Yow! -EF

6. Stories vol 3 Catch Me If You Can by Martin Cendreda $3.00 – Eloquently drawn Giving-Tree-esque twists and turns of children growing and parents giving. -EF

7. Maximumrocknroll #328 Oct 10 $4.00

8. Make Your Place: Affordable Sustainable Nesting Skills by Raleigh Briggs (Microcosm) $7.00

9. Rosario Dawson Loves Me #2 Or I Want to Die Right Now Please by Justin Valmassoi $2.50 – Ever wonder what it’d be like to be married to Rosario Dawson in Heaven? Well, for starters, Johnny Depp mostly hangs out mostly in greasy-bird form and Tom Waits comes over to tell you about how glass is made. Perfectly charming.

10. Dazed & Confused #88 Aug 10 $9.95

1. Henry and Glenn Forever Perfect Bound Deluxe New Edition (Microcosm) $6.00 – The gay love of Henry Rollins and Glenn Danzig? I’d get in that van.-EF

2. Guide to Picking Locks #1 by Crimethinc (Microcosm) $6.50

3. Gothic Beauty #31 $5.95

4. Spring Goals by Jay Krevans $3.00 – Spring is sprung, dears. Krevans’ Spring Goals is a delicate and decadent mini-zine devoted to the fun craftsy side of warm weather with DIY vegetable dyes, scrapper gardening tips and a rhubarb punch recipe. All are punctuated with beautiful illustrations – “A Zillion Azaleas”? Yes!

5. Doris #27 $2.50

6. Stolen Sharpie Revolution vol 2 A DIY Resource For Zines and Zine Culture by Alex Wrekk $6.00

7. Oubliette On The Beach by Kenan Rubenstein $1.00 – Tales of the nude beach literally unfold as each panel doubles the one before it.

8. The Point #3 Fall 10 $12.00

9. Lose #1 by Michael Deforge $5.00 – Klassick Komicks going through DeForge’s leperous Canadian meat grinder and fine line work going gleefully awry. Seriously, do not miss out on this one. -EF

10. Todds Favorite Adult Actors and Their Favorite Flowers by Matt Kessler and Zach Huesling $10.00 – Maybe we should just let Todd do the talking:

“Hi Potential Buyer,

I’ve long fantasized about this moment. I can see you now, reclining at your cubicle, cozy under the warm embrace of a hand-knitted wool afghan. It’s cold. Shivering, you slowly turn through Todd’s Favorite Adult Actors and Their Favorite Flowers. I’ve prepared this booklet especially for you; it’s a deeply intimate account of my romantic encounters with several favorite paramours. The electricity is out and you’re forced to read by candlelight. I tell you that I love you as I comb through your chest hair. We will be friends forever.

All my love, Todd”

Todd’s Favorite Adult Actors and Their Favorite Flowers is a zine by artist Zach Huelsing and writer Matt Kessler. This hand-assembled portfolio consists of a set of eight cards depicting adult film stars and their favorite flowers. The cards are designed to loosely mimic baseball cards, complete with appropriate stats and a fictitious anecdote about the collector’s imaginative run-ins with the actors. The cards are presented in protective sleeves and displayed in a Velcro-sealed portfolio. Neither book nor comic, Todd’s Favorite Adult Actors and Their Favorite Flowers relates the humorous and misinformed tale of Todd’s fantasies in a fun and unique way.

1. Overqualified by Joey Comeau (ECW) $14.95

2. Whore Magazine #1 Sum 10 $12.00

3. Hearts Mini Zine by C. Uphues $1.00

4. They Met in a Dream by Jennifer Parks (Sparkplug) $4.00 – This little gem reads like an old silent film and combines a soft Renee-French-style panelling and pacing with a sense of smoky mystery that resembles some of Lilli Carre’s woodsy minis.

5. Seeds: An Anthology of Comics About Food (Tree & Hills Group) $5.00

6. Wax Poetics #42 Jul Aug 10 $9.99

7. Craphound #4: Clowns Devils and Bait $12.00 – Hi-con picture pages are brimming with the sauciest devils, the juciest bait and the most ambiguously legal clowns. Thrilling, terrifying, mind-blowing, hands down one of the world’s greatest zines! – EF

8. Bitch #47 $5.95

9. Giant Robot #66 $4.99

10. Henry and Glenn Forever Deluxe by Igloo Tornado (Microcosm) $6.00 – NEW PERFECT BOUND/LARGER SIZE EDITION! The gay love of Henry Rollins and Glenn Danzig? I’d get in that van.-EF

1. Henry and Glenn Forever Perfect Bound Deluxe New Edition by Igloo Tornado (Microcosm) $6.00 – The gay love of Henry Rollins and Glenn Danzig? I’d get in that van.-EF

2. All My Friends Are Dead by var. (Chronicle) $9.95
3. Cats Are Weird and More Observations: A Cat Book by Jeffrey Brown (Quirk) $12.95 – If you’re a cat person you’re in good company: Art Bell, William Burroughs and now Jeffrey Brown.

4. Yeti #9 $11.95 – The comics and illustration really stand out in this issue -a fetching cover by Lori D plus work by James Turek, Lizz Hickey, Tuli Kupferberg reprints and an old interview with the late trickster collagist Bruce Conner. The mix cd really goes some special places too, like always.-E

5. Believer #73 2010 Music Issue $12.00

6. Bitch #47 $12.00

7. Brains Brilliancy Bohemia: Art and Politics In Jazz-age Chicago by Marc Moscato (Dil Pickles Clearing House) $13.00 – “Presenting photographs and copies from Chicago’s ill-forgotten radical nightclub, The Dil Pickle Club, hobo gatherings, and 1910s-20s ephemera, Brains, Brilliancy, Bohemia provides a timely look at the origin of American counterculture and working class art leading up to the Great Depression. Book also includes a DVD of the short film, The More Things Stay The Same, a documentary on the life and world of hobo king and prostitute physician, Dr. Ben Reitman.”

8. Brilliant Mistake #1 by Carrie $1.00 – What a gem of a debut zine! Beautifully quilted together from bits of a questioning heart, Brilliant Mistake #1 pares down the aches of the social games we play. -EF

9. Bear in Underwear by Todd Doodler (Blue Apple) $12.99

10. We Should: A Selective Guide to Chicago by Laura Szumowski $7.95

1. Scott Pilgrims vol 6 Finest Hour by Bryan Lee O’Malley (Oni) $11.99
2. Touch and Go The Complete Hardcore Punk Zine 79-83 by Tesco Vee and Dave Stimson (Bazillion) $29.95
3. Is It the Future Yet by Corrine Mucha $3.00
4. Henry and Glenn Forever Perfect Bound Deluxe New Edition (Microcosm) $6.00
5. Black Carrot #15 Free Sandwich Zinewich by DF $5.00
6. Debbie’s Story by Kelly Froh $2.00
7. Doris #27 by Cindy $2.50
8. Nine Ways to Disappear by Lilli Carre (Little Otsu) $12.95
9. Meanwhile 3856 Story Possibilities by Jason Shiga (Abrams) $15.95
10. Acne Paper Sum 10 $15.00

1. Touch and Go The Complete Hardcore Punk Zine 79-83 ed. by Tesco Vee and Dave Stimson (Bazillion Points) $29.95 – Touch and Go binds together all 22 issues and peppers it with essays a bit of commentary and notation. Tesco Vee and Steve Miller were at Quimby’s this past weekend signing copies of this collected edition. Tesco’s charmingly tattooed son came, and while here Tesco fielded a phone call from his daughter who had just in a fist fight. Ah, the next generation makes itself known.

2. Pizza Time by Joe Vermilyea (Koyama Press) $5.00 – This amazing atomic ninja turtle meltdown with extra cheese includes a breakdown of Krang’s perverse relationship with his android body and putty portraits of Bebop and Rocksteady. Turdle Power! -EF

3. Al Burian Goes To Hell by Al Burian (Migraine) $6.00 – We just learned that this periodical is actually an unauthorized bootleg of one of Al’s college assignments from many years ago and have opted not to sell it anymore. For more information, see Al’s blog.

4. Role Models by John Waters (FSG) $25.00 – Essays on admiration from my favorite catty bachelor. John Waters, I love you. -EF

5. Why Be Something That You’re Not Detroit Hardcore 1979 to 1985 by Tony Rettman (Revelation) $16.00 – chronicles the first wave of Detroit hardcore from its origins in the late seventies to its demise in the mid-eighties.

6. Tales Designed to Thrizzle #6 by Michael Kupperman (Fantagraphics) $4.95

7. Stories vol 3: Catch Me If You Can by Martin Cendreda $3.00 – Eloquently drawn Giving-Tree-esque twists and turns of children growing and parents giving. -EF
8. The First Line vol 12 #2 $3.00

9. Core of Caligula Episodes 1 through 4 by CF (Picturebox)$2.00 – Cinematically paced and mostly outside the Darger-ian territories of Powr Mastrs, CF’s Core of Caligula slips in and out keeping its tape player close and its psychic mis-steps closer.-EF

10. Limbs of the Megalith by Eamon Espey (Sparkplug)$2.00 – Fraught focus on the myth-adventures of humanity and its xenophobic whims- Espey’s packed pages time travel from the city to the country, the beast to the chair, death to the rabbit hole and back again with a fluid language of modern hyroglyphics. -EF

1. The Believer #73 2010 Music Issue $12.00

2. Touch and Go The Complete Hardcore Punk Zine 79-83 by var. $29.95 (Bazillion Points) – If ever you needed a collected volume of zines, this may be it. Rough and wild midwest punk rock reporting and tons of tons of record reviews, Touch and Go the zine was opinionated, irreverent, and balls-to-the-walls funny. Bazillion Points has really gone berzerker lately too, churning out some of the sickest most creative and in-depth volumes of hardcore, punk and metal scene archiving I’ve ever seen. Touch and Go binds together all 22 issues and peppers it with essays a bit of commentary and notation. Bawdy and engaging, I can’t take my eyes off it, but it’s so jam-packed I have no doubt it’ll take me a year or two to read everything. -EF

3. Bike Snob: Systematically & Mercilessly Realigning the World of Cycling by Bike Snob NYC (Chronicle) $16.95 – A lush little volume of cheeky bike-ography coming into reality from the blogosphere.

4. Down and Derby – The Insiders Guide to Roller Derby by var. (Soft Skull) $14.95 – This insider’s derby guide is an intro, a love letter and a cheeky, dishy guide to the fierce world of rollin’. It almost makes me want to kiss my teeth goodbye and strap a pair on. -EF

5. Craphound #4 Clowns Devils and Bait $12.00 – Holy Shit, the Craphound #4 reprint landed and it makes me smile like Ren and dance like Stimpy! Tejaratchi’s obsessive hi-con picture pages are brimming with the sauciest devils, the juciest bait and the most ambiguously legal clowns. Thrilling, terrifying, mind-blowing, hands down one of the world’s greatest zines! – EF

6. End of the City – A Book of Afterwards by Oso Arcilla $4.00 – Nice, poignant poetry, like a tidy apartment or a freshly baked good, touching on a little of everything.  An especilly good one is about chilly pumpkin guts and another treat weaves about the rough edges of a drunken romancing, full of fine moments, pauses, twists. -EF

7. Crap Hound #7 Church and State Part One $12.00

8. Is It the Future Yet by Corrine Mucha $3.00 – AVAILABLE ONLY AT QUIMBY’S!

9. Hot Damn and Hell Yeah: Recipes for Hungry Banditos, Dirty South Cook Book by Ryan Splint $7.00

10. Jimmy Corrigan – The Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware (Pantheon) $19.95

Also! Join us tonight at the Holiday Club at 7pm as Quimby’s co-sponsors Dating For Nerds Singles Trivia Night! 4000 North Sheridan Road. For more info: http://nerdsatheart.com