Category: bestsellers

  • Weekly Top 10

    1. The Chicagoan #1 $19.95 – 194p, color, no ads! Joining the literary-minded ranks of n+1, The Paris Review, The Believer and Lapham’s Quarterly, and doing it with Midwestern flair, The Chicagoan ressurects a long defunct jazz-age magazine and focuses in on non-profit production, local distribution and general excellence in writing and design. The debut issue is a stunner, a cohesive and relevant blend of fiction, history, innovation, interviews and a 50-page oral history of Siskel and Ebert. -EF

    2. Serial Killers Unite #9 $2.00 – Another dose of letters from incarcerated serial killers: sex rants from The Clairemont Killer, Cleophus Prince Jr, biblical advice from The Zodiac Copycat Killer, Heriberto Seda, a holiday card from The Spokane Killer, Robert Lee Yates Jr, specifics from Roy Norris, more bonkers Disney sex art from Jeremy Jones. Yes, of course it’s creepy.

    3. Juxtapoz #134 Mar 12 $5.99

    4. Alone Forever by Liz Prince $4.00

    5. Monocle vol 5 #50 Feb 12 $10.00

    6. Exxxtinction: 1st Known Circle Jirk by Sy Loady $3.00 – Fuckasoreass Triceratopz.

    7. Boneshaker #43-100 A Bicycling Almanac (Wolverine Farm Publishing) $8.00

    8. Call Of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories by HP Lovecraft (Penguin) $17.00

    9. Dazed & Confused vol 3 #6 Feb 12 $9.99

    10. Super Friends #1 $3.00 – Beautiful assembly of found photos from a job at the thrift store. Butts, mutts and classic cuts!

  • Weekly Top 10

    1. Soup and Bread Cookbook: Building Community One Pot at a Time $20.95 – Thanks to everybody that came out for the event for this wonderful Soup and Bread Cookbook, compiled by Martha Bayne from the Hideout’s weekly winter soup nights of the same name.

    2. Kramers Ergot #8 ed. by Sammy Harkham and Dan Nadel (Picturebox) $32.95 – This latest Kramer’s anthology feels a little bit like cocaine and a reptile tank. The contemporary comics contributions are bookended by Robert Beatty’s retro-digital airbrush wizardry and bisected by higloss cgi still lives by Takeshi Murata. Then there’s a mouthwash Preface by Ian Svenonius’ space cowboy essay “Notes On Camp, Part 2”. Followed by some great cartoonists paring it down and playing it cinematic and cool – CF’s Hunger-ish scenario, Harkham’s Kubrick’s cube, Ben Jones gives us a long yarn in a dental floss line, Frank Santoro and Dash Shaw do a foggy bit about sexual predator entrapment hued in Cold Heat pervert-purples. Johnny Ryan delivers a space carnage ramble, Chris Cilla does some smut with David Heatly flavor overtones. Tim Hensley does Svenonius’ essay one better in a single panel National Lampoon sort of gag. Despite a icy hands-off feel to much of book there’s still a pulpy heart beating here-Gabrielle Bell nails down something sinister in pastel California colors. Leon Sadler is at the best I’ve ever seen him here – grungy characters in a feral bizarro smurfville. I may be biased, but I’m especially partial to the converging and diverging paralell multiverses of Anya Davidson’s brutal “Barbarian Bitch” which I think acts as a great counterweight to the book’s closer, a 40-page reprint of Penthouse’s “Wicked Wanda” that’s a (yes) campy  combo like if you remade “The Mouse That Roared” with the plotline of Hothead Paisan. -EF

    3. Monocle vol 5 #50 Feb 12 $10.00

    4. Adbusters Mar Apr 12 #100 vol 20 #2 $8.95

    5. Juxtapoz #134 Mar 12 $5.99

    6. Dazed & Confused vol 3 #6 Feb 12 $9.99

    7. Mono Kultur #30 Win 11 12 Chris Ware: A Sense of Thereness $15.00 – Well, yes…..Surprising, compelling interview zine import with Mr. Ware.

    8. Raw Deal #13 – Formerly “Loitering Is Good”, “Raw Deal” picks up in the West Oakland trainyards, an ode to California’s sun-drenched post-industrial shitscape. Partially about acclaimating to a job as a rookie brakeman for the Southern Pacific Rail, RD#13 incoroporates plenty of curmudgeonly appreciation for the yards’ old-timers and lots of salty anectdotes of train history. With a palpable sense of love-hate for West Coast wastelands, the segway gets made to the obsessive neccessity of punk botany. Like a beligerent Johnny Bad Appleseed, the heart of this issue is an account of cultivating rare trees, seed smuggling, survival and botanical accountability, renegade urban improvement, and the deep feeling of connection once you set your sights on an ecosystem as the big picture. Written with a ton of passion and a little swagger, it’s a little similar to Erick “Iggy Scam” Lyle’s personal-is-political-is-punk writing, totally badass and hungry to get at the core of it. Best two bucks yer going to spend all day.  -EF

    9. Bikenomics How Bicycling Will Save the Economy if We Let It by Elly Blue $5.50

    10. Field Guide to the Aliens of Star Trek by Joshua Chapman $1.00 – I mean, why stop with Season One, right? -EF

  • Weekly Top 10

    1. Coming Insurrection by The Invisible Committee (Semiotexte)- An eloquent call to arms arising from the recent waves of social contestation in France and Europe. Written by the anonymous Invisible Committee in the vein of Guy Debord.

    2. Field Guide to the Aliens of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season Two by Joshua Chapman $1.00

    3. Hi-Fructose #22 $6.95

    4. Monkey in the Basement and Other Delusions by Corinne Mucha (Retrofit) $5.00

    5. New Adventures of Beastlord by Chris Kuzma $4.00

    6. Gangsta Rap Posse #2 by Marra Benjamin $3.00

    7. Apartamento #8 $19.95

    8. Eye of the Majestic Creature by Leslie Stein $4.00 – Hot on the heels of the EOTMC collection Fantagraphics releaed this Spring comes a brand new issue of one of my favorite minicomics, Eye of the Majestic Creature. This time, things take a turn for the worse: even deceptively happy-go-lucky elements like LarryBear’s anthropomorphic guitarfriend Marshmallow are getting drunk a little to much. Stein sets Larry’s New York life of arbitrary retail and sand counting to the grim realist prose of Dreiser’s Sister Carrie. It’s a bit of heartwrench punctuated with Stein’s unflappable dark humor, bleaker certainly but still brilliant. -EF

    9. Butt #29 Fantastic Magazine for Homosexuals $9.90- Good gawd, after a two year hiatus we are back in the pink. This may be the last time Butt goes to print, but it’s hardly a bitter end- this issue serves it extra long and thick. Obscene yet classy homoerotic art? Check. Juicy interviews with a whole gamut of gays? Check. John Waters? Check. Cool, let’s party like its 1999. -EF
    10. Encyclopedia of Doris by Cindy Crabb $18.00 – Issues 19-27 of Doris zine, collected, alphabetized and extended for your feminist excitement.

  • Weekly Top 10

    1. The Point #5 Spr 12 Symposium: What is the Left For $12.00 – Chicago-based philosphy/criticism/literary journal.

    2. 1-800-MICE by Matthew Thurber (Picturebox) $22.95 – 1-800-MICE is Matthew Thurber’s comic book anthropological study of the imaginary city of Volcano Park: a cross between Thomas Pynchon, Robert Altman and J.R.R. Tolkien. Over the course of the story we meet Peace Punk, a punker on the verge of a bourgeois lifestyle; Tom Chief, a beat cop with an identity crisis; and Groomfiend, a daffy creature who leads the narrative. The serial has earned Thurber rave reviews from, among others, cartoonist Ben Katchor, who writes: “Matthew Thurber has singlehandedly revived the Surrealist program of revolutionary politics through dreamwork. What more can you ask for in a comic-book?” This edition collects five issues of 1-800-MICE, plus 48 pages of new material.

    3. Hi Fructose #22 $6.95 – For lovers of Juxtapoz.

    4. 1Q84 HC by Haruki Murakami (Knopf) $30.50 – The year is 1984 and the city is Tokyo. A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver’s enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84 —“Q is for ‘question mark.’ A world that bears a question.”

    5. King Cat #72 by John Porcellino $3.00 – Porcellino feels out the fall apart as life unravels…and unravels some more….the first half of this issue travels through some solitudes and stillnesses. An LSD story rustles the banches a little and punctuates a South Beloit diary. Also squirrely letters and bat dancers. Understated, quietly eloquent comics… but you already knew that, right? -EF

    6. My Aim Is True #4 by Carrie $1.00 – Winter reviews and recipes, talking about loving yrself and fat femininity, sex toy stories, cursive typewriter cut-n-paste school.

    7. Remedy Quarterly #7 Heritage $7.50 – Inside you’ll find an interview with Patrick Martins from Heritage Foods USA (and Heritage Radio Network and the new Heritage Meat Shop) that will leave you inspired. Allison Kave of First Prize Pies fame shares her recipe for Bourbon Ginger Pecan Pie (yup, you read it right) and a story about finding inspiration in your kitchen, Erin Wengrovius whipped up a lovely illustrated recipe for us, and Zara Gonzalez Hoang gives us a peek into her Puerto Rican Christmas. Plus you’ll find even more stories, recipes, and tips inside.

    8. The Femicide Machine (Semiotexte intervention ) by Sergio Gonzalez Rodriguez (Semiotexte) $12.95 – “In Ciudad Juárez, a territorial power normalized barbarism. This anomolous ecology mutated into a femicide machine: an apparatus that didn’t just create the conditions for the murders of dozens of women and little girls, but developed the institutions that guaranteed impunity for those crimes and even legalized them. A lawless city sponsored by a state in crisis. The facts speak for themselves.” This title is Semiotext(e) Intervention Series #11.

    9. Handbook vol 6 #1 2012 by by Darren Ankenbauer $6.00 – Another meaty issue of this cock-fueled nouveau physique rag. -EF

    10. Maximumrocknroll #345 Feb 2012 $4.00

  • Weekly Top 10

    1. Femme a Barbe vol 2 by by J. Bee $2.00 – True tangles of bearded ladies, gender reformations, hirsute identity and all permutations of feminine stubble, well worth a thorough comb-through. -EF

    2. King Cat #72 by John Porcellino $3.00 – Porcellino feels out the fall apart as life unravels…and unravels some more….the first half of this issue travels through some solitudes and stillnesses. An LSD story rustles the banches a little and punctuates a South Beloit diary. Also squirrely letters and bat dancers. Understated, quietly eloquent comics… but you already knew that, right? -EF

    3. Monkey In the Basement and Other Delusions by Corinne Mucha (Retrofit) $5.00 – Mucha’s got this special brand of world-enhancing “deductive reasoning” paired with an uncanny untuition – part clown, part private eye, thoroughly entertaining. -EF

    4. Gary Book 2 by Tyrell Cannon $7.00

    5. Maximumrocknroll #345 Feb 12 $4.00

    6. Food Stamp Foodie #1 A Mini Zine of Inexpensive Vegan Cookery by Virginia $2.00

    7. Truckface #15 by LB $3.00

    8. Bitch #53 $5.95

    9. Mojo #219 Feb 12 $9.99

    10. Grantland Quarterly vol 1 $25.00 – Grantland #1 is the McSweeney’s launch of a physical sports magazine geared for folks who like multiform sports, McSweeney’s writers and blogs you can hold. You know who you are. -EF

  • Weekly Top 10

    1. Bizarre #184 Feb 12 $10.50 – A magazine I simultaneously have to look at but can’t.

    2. Shit I Didnt Tell You #1 by Lynne $1.50 – Compelling footnotes to various friends and relations, “Shit I Didn’t Tell You” is exactly that. It’s a nice checkup about sorting out how feelings get felt and life gets lived. -EF

    3. Exxxtinction by Sy Loady $3.00 – Fuckasoreass Triceratopz.

    4.   Show Me The Money #36 $2.50

    5.   Hi Fructose #22 $6.95

    6.   Mojo #219 Feb 12 $9.99

    7.   Truckface #15 by LB $3.00 – Third year teaching high school English for CPS starts with LB hacking up a foreboding bloody clotball snotball. Truckface continues to be an annual report of both teaching and being taught- moving through all the drama, anger, goofiness and apathy and learning how to learn from it all. -EF

    8.   More Pictures About Feminism by Brad Troemel $10.00

    9.   Judas Goat Quarterly #51 by Grant Schreiber $1.50

    10. Study Group Magazine #1 win 12 (Study Group Books) – I imagine the rousing success of last year’s fantastic Study Group 12 anthology (#4) has spurred Study Group Magazine into existence. Like Austin English’s Windy Corner before it, SGM #1 is a full-up ideosyncratic combo platter of comics, interviews and examinations. Articles on Eleanor Davis, Brecht Evens and Craig Thompson and a hearty sampling of comics and illustration from Jennifer Parks, Daria Tessler, Aidan Koch, David King, Malachi Ward, Chris Cilla, T Alixopulos, Zack Soto, Jonny Negron and Michael DeForge. Amen. -EF

  • Weekly Top 10 and 2011 Revenge of Print List

    Before last week’s bestsellers, we just wanted to say we are really excited by everyone who participated in the 2011 Revenge of Print! Click here to download a list. Then print it out and fold it pamphlet style.

    1. Henry and Glenn Forever Sticker Funbag by Igloo Tornado $5.00

    2. Suspect Device #1 by Josh Bayer and Edwin Vazquez $6.00 – A turd in the hand is worth two in the Bushmiller….Josh Bayer and Edwin Vazquez assemble quite the goon squad to take old Nancy out for a night on the town. -EF – Work from: Jon Vermilea, Dane Martin, Elizabeth Bethea, Lizz Hickey, Nikki Burch, Brendan Leach, B Florio with M Note, Josh Burggraf, Jimmy Giegerich, J Hessig, Scalzo, M Sgier, Marina Gargarina, Leroy, V Kerlow, Sam Henderson, Anne Emond, Pat Aulisio, Tom Hart, Jude Killroy and Box Brown.

    3. Hound and the Musch by Scott Roberts $6.00

    4. Under the Radar #39 $5.99

    5. Ganges #4 by Kevin Huizenga $7.95 – The lucid insanity of insomnia fuels Huizenga’s understated formalist finesse. Glenn Ganges, suburban everyman, falls prey to a eye-pleasing array of graphic tricks and a 1 a.m. sense of humor that would keep me up at night thinking about it too. -EF

    6. Bad Day #12 – a culture magazine.
    7. Du Manger En Canne by R. Suicide $5.00 – loppy botulistic potted meat from the Mille Putois Laboratory, getting busy making it’s own gravy.

    8. Grantland #1 $25.00 – Well, finally we got a few of these in for long enough that I can put them up on the webstore. Grantland #1 is the McSweeney’s launch of a physical sports magazine geared for folks who like multiform sports, McSweeney’s writers and blogs you can hold. You know who you are. -EF

    9. Hark A Vagrant by Kate Beaton $19.95

    10. My Aim is True #2 by Carrie $1.00

  • Weekly Top 10

    Happy 2012! Here’s last weeks bestsellers.

    1. Tales Designed to Thrizzle #7 by Michael Kupperman (Fantagraphics) $4.95 – I’m sorry, these comics are going to thrizzle you whether you wanna be thrizzled or not. -EF

    2.  Best American Comics 2011 ed. by Alison Bechdel et al. (HM) $25.00 – Showcases the work of both established and up-and-coming contributors.

    3. Just Kids by Patti Smith (Ecco) $16.00

    4. Juxtapoz #132 Jan 12 $5.99

    5. OK OK You Smote Me Stories by Al Burian (Quimby’s Exclusive) $3.00 – Quimby’s alum and international zine curmudgeon Al Burian has crafted a new zine exclusively for the store, the second in our “Quimby’s Exclusive” line of periodicals. In OK OK You Smote Me, Al takes us around the corner to his mayhem-prone stint on Wicker Park’s Dean Street, unhexing his way-too-hexed apartment and watching the tumult as Old Chicago takes a scraggly, low-level “stand” against encroaching yuppie “neighborhood improvement”. Compelling, humorous and wistful, with that trademark Burn Collector balance of heart and snark. -EF

    6. So This Is What Its Come To: A Comic Zine About the Trials and Tribulations of OK Cupid by Liz Prince, Leslie Perrine, Kettner and Ramsey Everydaypants $3.00

    7. The Death Ray by Dan Clowes (D&Q) $19.95 – Coming-of-age-as-comic-book-parable-told-as-comic-book. Another Clowes mindfuck, conveniently in gorgeous hardcover. -EF

    8. Girls On Girls #1 Zine and CD: Girls Singing Songs About Girls by Amara Leipzig and Isabella Rotman $5.00

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

    10. The Field Guide to the Aliens of Star Trek The Next Generation Season One by Joshua Chapman $2.00 – Liz got so nerded up about this one she entered it into our database as “Field Guide to the Aliens of TNG S1” so when I looked up simply “Star Trek” it was not to be found because I had failed to enter the correct nerd code. I imagine this will provoke a similar reaction in some of you and you will rip into this reprint of 7th Grader Joshua Chapman’s obsessive cataloguing of the “Next Gen” alien species, complete with pictures and a star rating system. -EF

  • Weekly Top 10

    1. Butt #29 Fantastic Magazine $9.90 – Good gawd, after a two year hiatus we are back in the pink. This may be the last time Butt goes to print, but it’s hardly a bitter end- this issue serves it extra long and thick. Obscene yet classy homoerotic art? Check. Juicy interviews with a whole gamut of gays? Check. John Waters? Check. Cool, let’s party like its 1999. -EF

    2. Notes for a People’s Atlas (AREA Chicago) $8.00 – Notes on a People’s Atlas is a compelling project summary of AREA Chicago’s year-long autonomous mapping project. The gathering of how we chart our lives into physical space relfects the absorbtion of the political into the personal and vice versa, shaping an amorphous picture of a physical plane. Compelling and well-explained, “Notes” offers some amazing modes of mapping, Chicago-centric but extending itself worldwide. -EF

    3.   Grantland Quarterly vol 1 (McSweeneys) $25.00 – Sports journal from Eggers & Co. More copies on the way!

    4.   S #9 Baltic Comics Magazine $8.00

    5. The Post-It Note Diaries: 20 Stories of Youthful Abandon Embarrassing Mishaps and Eve by Arthur Jones and friends (Plume) $15.00

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

    7. Everybody Dies: A Children’s Book for Grown Ups (Don’t Feel Bad) $by Ken Tanaka $10.00

    8. Crap Hound #8 Superstition by Sean Tejaratchi (Show & Tell) $12.00 – This issue meditates on such things as black cats, butterflies, knots, candles…All with a wonderful “Fair Use” collage-y awesomeness.

    9. Milk and Cheese Dairy: Products Gone Bad (They Hate What You Hate And They Hate You) by Evan Dorkin (Dark Horse) $19.99 – This Everything-Milk-and-Cheese lux hardcover collection has even got our resident vegan Neil stoked -EF

    10. Cartoonshow #1 You Will All Die In Pain by Derek M. Ballard (Drippy Bone) $6.00 – Shit, this comic came outta left field and hit me upside the head as I was leaning in for more pretzels. Freak publishers Drippy Bone Books and freak publishee Derek M Ballard flow together into one pastel future pornscape of the third mind. Stain your purity panties and give it a go, so glad this is happening. -EF

  • Weekly Top 10

    A lot of this stuff is not on our website (ones that are have links). Guess you’ll just have to come in to see ’em.

    1. Lucky Peach #2 The Sweet Spot (McSweeneys) $12.00 – Come n’ get it.

    2. Butt #29 $9.90

    3. Abuela Y Los Dead Mexicans #1 by David Ortega $6.00
    4. Go the Fuck to Sleep by Adam Mansbach & Ricardo Cortes (Akashic) $14.95
    5. Paris Review #199 $12.00
    6. King Cat #72 by John Porcellino $3.00 – Porcellino feels out the fall apart as life unravels…and unravels some more….the first half of this issue travels through some solitudes and stillnesses. An LSD story rustles the banches a little and punctuates a South Beloit diary. Also squirrely letters and bat dancers. Understated, quietly eloquent comics… but you already knew that, right? -EF

    7.  S #9 Baltic Comics Magazine (Kus) $9.50 – As pictured above.

    8. Habibi by Craig Thompson (Pantheon) $35.00 – The hit of the season.

    9. Bitch #53 $5.95

    10. Go For Broke #2 Klimbing Kilimanjaro $2.50