Celebrating Peanuts: 60 Years
By Charles Schulz, Andrews McMeel, 544 pages, $92
This anthology of Charles Schulz's groundbreaking comic strip, with a beautiful embossed box slipcover, traces the travails of Charlie Brown and friends from their introduction in 1950 to the last strip in 2000, arranged by decade and peppered with commentary from Schulz throughout, including weekend pieces in full colour. The reproduction of strips is razor-sharp, making them appear as though they're jumping off the page in a lovingly compiled scrapbook.
The Marvel Encyclopedia: The Definitive Guide to the Characters of the Marvel Universe, Updated and Expanded
Edited by Alastair Dougall, DK, 400 pages, $48
Hollywood continues to mine a rich vein of movie material from the Marvel universe, and a book like this shows why: a motherlode of fantasy characters with wild storylines laden with action. Comic-book aficionados will be familiar with many of the superheroes and villains presented in lush colour, but even the biggest fans sometimes get lost in the tangled narratives. This A-to-Z route map through Marvel land will answer all your questions.
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Pixarpedia: A Complete Guide to the World of Pixar … and Beyond
By Barbara Bazaldua, Steve Bynghall, et al., DK, 352 pages, $46
Young fans of computer-animated movies will come away from the Pixarpedia likely saying one thing: “Wow, I never knew that” The insights into the famed computer animation studio behind a raft of family-friendly blockbusters make this an entrancing compendium, and the type of book to which kids can come back again and again.
Likewise: The High School Chronicles of Ariel Schrag
By Ariel Schrag, Simon & Schuster, 408 pages, $21
This is the final instalment of Eisner Award-nominated Schrag's four-volume autobiographical opus chronicling her high-school years. Schrag's stream-of-consciousness writing style and juvenile artwork invigorate the confessional bildungsroman that is a well-trod graphic novel genre. Unlike Alison Bechdel's Fun Home , a paragon of this type, Likewise was written within scant years of the unfolding events. The result is a just-budding artistry and intellectualism, and an exceptionally authentic, raw teenage voice.
Portfoolio 23: The Year's Best Canadian Editorial Cartoons
Edited by Warren Clements, McArthur & Company, 176 pages, $19.95
The news events of 2008-09 delivered such graphic gold as Julie Couillard's left boob, Sarah Palin's big specs and Lord Conrad Black in jailbird stripes. Those were the sideshows. This collection sprinkles the lighter fare among the meatier events – the mortgage meltdown's tumbling houses of cards, the taxpayer bailouts of captains of industry, Barack Obama's ascension and inevitable fizzle, and the porky peril of the swine-flu pandemic.
