Category: top ten

1. SPS #9 Sad People Sex by Heather Benjamin $3.00

2. Lucky Peach #1 Sum 11 $10.00

3. McSweeneys #38 $18.00

4. The Lonely Hippopotomous by Leslie Perrine $2.00

5. Tiki Magazine vol 7 #2 Fall 11 $5.99

6. Yiddishkeit Jewish Vernacular and the New Land by Harvey Pekar and Paul Buhle (Abrams) $29.95

7. Big Questions by Anders Nilsen (D&Q) $44.95

8. Sad Animals by Adam Meuse $4.00

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

10. SPS #7 Sad People Sex by heather Benjamin $3.00

How many weeks in a row is Lucky Peach at #1 now? I lost count. Nice to see a title like Abolish Restaurants is in the top sellers even though it’s months old now ; often what makes it into the bestsellers are the new stuff, but some titles just always do well, like Sad Animals and Make Your Place. People often ask, “How many copies does it take to land in the bestsellers?” The answer: usually somewhere between eight and three copies. Sometimes even just 2 or 3 copies! Yes, that’s kind of weird. 2 or 3 copies a bestseller?! Why bother having a top 10 then? Well, the answer to that lies in this fact: As of this moment we have 11,157 items in stock in our database. So even selling 2 of some things is a lot sometimes! Of course, if there’s an in-store event with a writer or artist, fans will buy their stuff at the event, which can push something into the top 10 also. And then there are things we don’t actually include in the Top 10 because they’re hardly reflective of the reading material people buy, like postcards and grab bags (only $2.50 each!). Now you’ve been schooled in our Top 10! -Liz

1. Lucky Peach #1 Sum 11 $10.00 – I read this straight through right before I went to sleep the other night and had an INTENSE NIGHTMARE ABOUT RAMEN. Woke up hungry. -EF

2. Sad Animals by Adam Meuse $4.00 – Sad and cute. What is it saying that this is often in our top 10?

3. Cabinet #42 Forgetting $12.00

4. Maximumrocknroll #340 Sep 11 $4.00

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

6. Monocle Mediterraneo #3 $8.00

7. N Plus 1 #12 Fall 11 $13.95

8. Abolish Restaurants by Prole.info (PM Press) $5.95

9. Sand Dune Press #1 by Erik Schneider $2.00 – Cutest little comic about tough guys killing each other I ever did see. -EF

10. Noah Novella: The Peoples History of Noah Van Sciver: Selection of Autobiographical Comics by Noah Van Sciver $4.00 – Noah VanSciver does autobio comics by taking us into his personal troll hole, and it’s not such a bad place to be. He’s a hater, for sure. His crabcake one-pagers about growing up poor, awkward and unlucky really do start to have the Crumb-y effect of explaining the chips on his shoulder. He’s got a good drawing sensibility too that just wrings extra angst and neuroses out of the story. I gotta say, his constant pursuit of fame and fortune through making weird comics wears me down stresses me out a little. The comics are good, they’re being published and noticed, and they’re getting better all the time, it might be time to stop sweating the small stuff and just go for it. -EF

Once again, Lucky Peach at the top, followed by some of the usual suspects. However, we got in a publication from AK about Zapatistas, which is a topic that always seems to work here. Also, a local Chicago guide that I think may be its first time on our Top 10, if I remember correctly. Noah Van Sciver’s history comic rounds out the mix, and that’s available on our website, as are all of the items that have links. Other things, well, guess you’ll have to come in the store or give us a buzz at 773-342-0910.

1. Lucky Peach #1 Sum 11 $10.00 – I read this straight through right before I went to sleep the other night and had an INTENSE NIGHTMARE ABOUT RAMEN. Woke up hungry. -EF

2. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen vol 3 Century #2 1969 by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill (Top Shelf) $9.95 – The newest issue!

3. Juxtapoz #128 Sep 11 $5.99

4. Add Toner: A Cometbus Collection by Aaron Cometbus (Last Gasp) – Collects Cometbus 44-48 and a bit of new material. Tales from the Dead End, Lanky, and the Back to the Land series.

5. Cometbus #54 In China With Green Day by Aaron Cometbus $4.00 – Always a Quimby’s staple.

6. Commune In Chiapas: Mexico and the Zapatista Rebellion (PAGP) $5.00

7. We Should: A Selective Guide to Chicago by Laura Szumowski $7.95 – Need a cooler guide to the city than those other alternative weekly or NFT books? Try this one.

8. Death of Elijah Lovejoy by Noah Van Sciver $5.00 – VanSciver’s snarly lines and curmudgeonly tendancies lend themselves nicely to his mayhem-laden comic about pre-civil war lynch mobs and the ambush and murder of abolitionist and jounalist, Elijah Lovejoy. -EF

9. Plazm #30 $10.00

10. Dazed & Confused #100 Aug 11 $9.99

1. Lucky Peach #1 Sum 11 $10.00 – I read this straight through right before I went to sleep the other night and had an INTENSE NIGHTMARE ABOUT RAMEN. Woke up hungry. -EF

2. Under the Radar #37 $5.99

3. 8-Track Mind #101 Zines vs Blogs By Russ Forster $3.00 – After a 10-year hiatus 8-Track Mind heeds the call of the Revenge of Print and pulls a fresh new issue out of the oven!

4.  Bitch #51 $5.95

5. Cometbus #54 In China With Green Day by Aaron Cometbus $4.00

6. So Raw its Downright Filthy: A Raw Vegan Cookbook by Joshua Ploeg (Microcosm) $4.00 – Weirdo delicious recipes that also happen to be raw.

7. Mountain Wilds by Jay Krevens $6.00 – Jay moved to the Portland and just sent us some new scenic love of misty lore and cabin crafts, looming, owling, bear worship and astral travails. Accordian folded booklet has crafts on one side and mountainscape panorama on the reverse. -EF

8. OK OK You Smote Me Stories by Al Burian (Quimby’s Exclusive) $3.00

9. Readin and Fightin #3 Mental Health/Education Issue – Insisting on Literature by Women of Color by Camille Yarnover $1.50 – Thoughtful post-collegiate musings from a New Haven zinester exploring issues of race, edication and mental health and how they intersect. -LM

10. Tiny Bangs #1 by Olivia Horvath $5.00 – This is the build: Emily, with a swarm of hair, working as a nude model, feels the twinges of coming apart at the seams. On her psychic wavelength are her lover Bea full of balance calm and touch and the drawing teacher Ben, smitten and shy. Moody with the light changing like clouds rolling in. -EF

Here’s the topsellers. But first, a reminder about our event this coming Saturday (July 23rd) at 7 pm, we’re excited to welcome Cassie J. Sneider with Dave Roche and Danny ‘Ratso’ Rathbun, which should be hilarious and fun. See our event calendar for more info.

Weekly Top 10

1. Add Toner: A Cometbus Collection by Aaron Cometbus (Last Gasp) $12.00 – Collects highlights from #44 to #48. including tales from the Dead End, Lanky, and the Back to the Land series.

2. Logan Square Literary Review #7 Sum 11 $5.00 – Fiction from Ray Cline and Evan Seeder, photos from April Lynn, poetry from Alicia Hilton and Brandon Holmquesta bike comic, a profile on the Logan Square CROP project and a recipe for kroppkakor.

3. Five Stories Published on a Printer #1 by Dustin Michael Edward Davenport $2.00

4. Roctober #49 $4.00

5. Believer #82 Jul Aug 11 Music Issue $12.00

6. Mojo #213 Aug 11 $9.99

7. 8-Track Mind #101 Zines vs Blogs ed. by F.R. Russ Forster $3.00 – WELCOME BACK 8-TRACK MIND!!!! Holy Moly! After a 10-year hiatus 8-Track Mind heeds the call of the Revenge of Print and pulls a fresh new issue out of the oven! Man, this was the zine that I remember reading way-back-when that REALLY made me think, “Woah, you really can make a great zine about ANYTHING.” Truly. This issue goes light on the 8-trackology but stays true to its analog-obsessed roots with a well-rounded symposium all about “Zines Versus Blogs”. -EF — Contributors: Chris Barrows, Peter Bergman, Joe Carducci, Kim Cooper, Brendan DeVallance, Tony DuShane, Sam Green, Lance Laurie, Alison Levy, Tom Lynch, Danny Plotnick, Dan Sutherland, V Vale and Lucien Williams.

8. Your Secretary #10 Dig Deep #3 by Jami Sailor and Heather C. $2.00 –  Library-themed librarian zine split. Heather gushes about working the Young Adult program and Jami gives a run down of Library School field work and public library porn use. Something to definitely check out! -EF

9. Hobo Magazine #13 $15.00

10. Yeti #11 $11.95 – Another great issue of Yeti – a cd of exclusive tracks and a thick journal of comics, interviews, photos and art. Always a stunner. This issue: ON THE CD: all rare/unreleased music –a dozen tracks that are as long as their respective track numbers, so that track 12 is 12 minutes long and track 4 is 4 minutes long and you probably don’t need any more examples than that. The result is a 78-minute-long disc featuring Snake Hole, Sloppy Heads, Johnita and Joyce Collins, Atole, Gospel Creators, White Rainbow, The Dirashi Tribe, Roy Montgomery, Golden Retriever, Oneida, Phill Niblock, and Happy New Year. INSIDE THE BOOK: .interviews with Phill Niblock, Roy Montgomery, and Brian Chippendale; photography by Olivia Wyatt and Megan Holmes; art by Marcellus Hall and Victor Kerlow; an archival interview with Joe Brainard by Anne Waldman; fiction by Kimberly Parko and R. Foggo; rare May ’68 posters from Grenoble, and the Skaters.

1. Metalion: The Slayer Mag Diaries by Jon “Metalion” Kristiansen and Tara G.Warrior (Bazillion Points) $39.95 – The greatest heavy metal story ever told—the complete tale of a life lived for metal. Part anthology, part memoir, and years in the making, METALION includes over 600 reproduction pages from every issue of Slayer Mag—Slayer 1 through Slayer XX, plus the precursor Live Wire zine—spanning from the early 1980s through 2010. In addition, author Jon Kristiansen recounts his life’s story, from alienated outsider to central figure in Norwegian black metal to metal party beast to world-weary metal survivor. The book also features over 100 rare photographs, including two color sections and a portrait gallery of photographs taken by Kristiansen himself. For twenty-five years, Norway’s Slayer Mag published the gospel of black metal and death metal, combining eye-ripping graphics, brutally honest writing, and relentless offbeat humor. With this anthology/memoir, editor Jon “Metalion” Kristiansen unfolds the extreme highs and lows of a life lived for heavy metal. Founded in 1985 in Sarpsborg, Norway, Slayer Mag quickly rose to prominence by championing countless unsigned death metal pioneers. The pages of Slayer Mag exploded along with the extreme metal underground, and as black metal rose to prominence in Norway in the 1990s, Slayer Mag remained the final word on the moods and motivations of those dark times. Expertly edited by friend and peer Tara G. Warrior. Thanks to everybody that came out for this amazing event last week!

2. Laphams Quarterly vol 4 #3 Sum 11 $15.00

3. Five Stories Published on a Printer #1 by Dustin Michael Edward Davenport $2.00

4. Believer #82 Jul Aug 11 Music Issue $12.00

5. Lucky Peach #1 Sum 11 $10.00

6. Archiving the Underground #1 by Jenna Brager and Jami Sailor $2.00 – Jenna and Jami are like a zine archivist Dream Team getting into a lot of crooks and nannies and doing it all in a zine. It’s a tricky topic…how and why do you archive media that often openly flaunts itself as underground, anti-establishment and anti-catagorization. They interview Milo Miller from the Queer Zine Archive Project, Alison Piepmeier, author of Girl Zines, Adela C Licona author of Zines In the Third Space and Teal Triggs, author of the controversial “Fanzines” coffee table book that glossed over many issues of author consent and compensation. Jenna “Lower East Side Librarian” Freedman rounds out the issue with a breakdown of what seperates zines from blogs.
7. Mojo #213 Aug 11 $9.99

8. Monocle vol 5 #45 Jul Aug 11 $10.00

9. Paying For It a Comic Strip Memoir About Being a John by Chester Brown (D&Q) $24.95

10. Your Secretary #6 Lake Effect #1 Split by Jami Sailor  and K $2.00

Just a heads up, we’ve got 3 events happening this week that we’re excited about, each of them starting at 7pm:

Wed, July 6th Orderly Disorder: Zinester Librarians in Circulation Tour featuring the Fly Away Zine Mobile
Fri, July 8th 7:00 pm Jon “Metalion” Kristiansen and Tara G. Warrior Discuss METALION: The Slayer Mag Diaries
Sat, July 9th Heather Augustyn Reads From Ska: An Oral History

Top 10

1. Lucky Peach #1 Sum 11 $10.00 – McSweeneys food rag.
2. Alone Forever by Liz Prince $4.00 – By mini-comics superstar.

3 Mental Health Cookbook: Creating Connection With Foods and Herbs by H. Finn Cunningham (Needles and Pens) $7.00 – Starter guide to all sorts of diy holistic food practices.

4. Handbook vol 5 #2 2011 by Darren Ankenbauer $6.00 – The sensitive side of Trevor Wayne , the business side of Ty, Will and Mike and some nice articles about sexual versatility and “post-gay.”

5. 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

6. Make Comics About an Intimate Act by var. $7.00

7. Take a Joke vol 3 of The Collected Angry Youth Comix by Johnny Ryan (Fantagraphics) $18.99 – “Johnny Ryan’s transgressive masterpiece Prison Pit has been the talk of altcomics circles since its debut in the summer of 2009. But before Prison Pit, Ryan garnered a considerable following via his one-man humor anthology (which doubled as a one-man War Against Political Correctness), Angry Youth Comix. Take a Joke collects many of the best stories from this inimitable series as well as many strips created for the wildly-popular Vice magazine, to which Ryan has contributed for years.

8. Role Models by John Waters (FSG) $15.00

9. Bitch #51 $5.95

10. Bizarre #177 Jul 11 $10.50

Announcement before the week’s bestsellers: the second episode of the official Quimby’s Bookstore Podcast is now up! It features an interview with the authors of The Beat Cop’s Guide to Chicago Eats, Sgt. David J. Haynes and blogger Christopher Garlington. You can find it on I-Tunes and also at quimbys.podbean.com. Don’t forget to subscribe wherever you listen to it so you can receive every episode.

Weekly Top 10

1.    Black Eye #1 ed. by Ryan Standfest $14.95 – Black Eye is the comics magazine dedicated to ludicrous violence, unrelenting nihilism and gratuitous gross-out. Chicago heavy-hitters Paul Nudd, Lilli Carré, and Ivan Brunetti get super nasty and Onsmith’s totally tasteless contributions warranted a book seizure at the Canadian border. The scandal doesn’t end there either…Stéphane Blanquet, Jeet Heer, Al Columbia, Kaz, Michael Kupperman, Tom Neely and Brecht Evans are all at work causing some internal bleeding on this one. A real bad egg if you ask me. -EF …And thanks to everybody that came out for the signing for this anthology on this past Saturday!

2.    Linework #2 Comics and Graphics Anthology Spr 11 $10.00

3.    Burn Collector #15 by Al Burian (Microcosm) $3.00 – Al Burian takes on his new home town, Berlin with a little help from a Chicago All-Star team of Anne Elizabeth “Unmarketable” Moore and Liam “Secret Beach” Warfield.

4.    Bust Jun Jul 11 $4.99

5.    Sock #1 Adult Stories and Imagery Comics Anthology by Conor Stechshulte $8.00

6.    Roots #1 by Alison Vellas $3.50 – Meat your maker. Nicely plotted comic about a stubborn generational battle betwixt an old-world bubbe, and her righteous vegetarion whippersnapper grandaughter. Taking on the stickiness of negotiation between tradition and food politics, Vellas does a nice job of catering to both sides. -EF

7.    SF #1 by Ryan Cecil Smith (Closed Caption Comics) $5.00 – Ryan Cecil Smith’s new serial “SF” gives classic sci-fi comics an impish, homespun twist while still staying true to form. Introducing the space-scientist-fighter crew of the S.F.S.F.S.F. and the hapless orphan earthling Hupa Dupa, Smith balances straight up expository scripting with satisfying bursts of rough-and-tumble action. Humor gets played fast-and-loose here giving the tight storytelling a breezy edge and lending a weird wit to the crisp Tintin-flavored schemes. –EF

8.    So Nervous #1 by Corinne Mucha and Heather Radke $3.00 – Worrisome!

9.    Weird Schmeird #0 Conversations in Your Neighborhood by Ryan Cecil Smith $7.00 – A fun book-toy-thing!

10.    Woman House by Esther Pearl Watson $5.00