Recounts the origins of Cracked Magazine, covers its history with former contributors such as Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko and how it launched the careers of Dan Clowes, Peter Bagge, and others.
Classic Courtney Summers with a brand new look and exclusive bonus material! This ebook edition of Cracked Up to Be includes updated text, an afterword from the author and a discussion guide. The high price of perfection is one 'Perfect' Parker Fadley always believed she was willing to pay until the events of a party during junior year fractures the lives of her family and friends. Something terrible has happened and only Parker knows it's her fault. If being a perfect daughter, student, friend and girlfriend couldn't keep her from making an unforgivable mistake, Parker hopes becoming a perfect mess will at least keep her loved ones from discovering the truth. But when the arrival of a curious new student and the unexpected return of an old enemy threaten her tenuous grip on control, Parker must decide just how far she'll go to keep her secret from surfacing. Also available from Courtney Summers: I'M THE GIRL, the new "brutally captivating" (Publishers Weekly, starred review) queer thriller based loosely on The Epstein case.
From the 2020 QLA Glendower winner comes a timely and insightful collection of stories about how we pursue happiness in a turbulent world. The stories in this impressive, thoughtful collection explore the human heart and its desire and capacity for joy. A divorced woman discovers a growing sinkhole in her yard, a lonely man finds an abandoned toddler, a second wife in a fundamentalist community questions her religion, a young Australian veteran of the Afghanistan conflict is haunted by a memory from his last mission. Fiona Robertson's stories traverse the globe to reveal people at moments of change or crisis, as they struggle to repair fractures in their lives and search for something close to happiness.
Two girls. Two secrets. Two gritty, critically acclaimed novels in one. For Parker, perfection is all that matters. No one will know how wrong she is inside if everything she does ends up right. But when the pressure proves too much, she makes a devastating mistake she'll do anything to keep hidden—even if it means becoming a perfect mess. For Regina, popularity comes with a price. When she's kicked out of her clique, she finds out what it's like to be those she's bullied and destroyed. Everyone says she has it coming . . . but is there something they don't know? There is more to these two girls than meets the eye. With unflinching honesty and a razor sharp voice, Courtney Summers brings the tensions of high school terrifyingly alive in What Goes Around.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER A charmingly relatable and wise memoir-in-essays by acclaimed writer and bookseller Mary Laura Philpott, “the modern day reincarnation of…Nora Ephron, Erma Bombeck, Jean Kerr, and Laurie Colwin—all rolled into one” (The Washington Post), about what happened after she checked off all the boxes on a successful life’s to-do list and realized she might need to reinvent the list—and herself. Mary Laura Philpott thought she’d cracked the code: Always be right, and you’ll always be happy. But once she’d completed her life’s to-do list (job, spouse, house, babies—check!), she found that instead of feeling content and successful, she felt anxious. Lost. Stuck in a daily grind of overflowing calendars, grueling small talk, and sprawling traffic. She’d done everything “right” but still felt all wrong. What’s the worse failure, she wondered: smiling and staying the course, or blowing it all up and running away? And are those the only options? Taking on the conflicting pressures of modern adulthood, Philpott provides a “frank and funny look at what happens when, in the midst of a tidy life, there occur impossible-to-ignore tugs toward creativity, meaning, and the possibility of something more” (Southern Living). She offers up her own stories to show that identity crises don’t happen just once or only at midlife and reassures us that small, recurring personal re-inventions are both normal and necessary. Most of all, in this “warm embrace of a life lived imperfectly” (Esquire), Philpott shows that when you stop feeling satisfied with your life, you don’t have to burn it all down. You can call upon your many selves to figure out who you are, who you’re not, and where you belong. Who among us isn’t trying to do that? “Be forewarned that you’ll laugh out loud and cry, probably in the same essay. Philpott has a wonderful way of finding humor, even in darker moments. This is a book you’ll want to buy for yourself and every other woman you know” (Real Simple).
When Bull Mastrick and Victor Konig wind up in the same psychiatric ward at age 16, each recalls and relates in group therapy the bullying relationship they have had since kindergarten as well as facts about themselves and their families that reveal how much they have in common. A first novel.
Heard about Mad? Sad? Don't be! Get GLAD with this new collection of rarely seen art by one of their greatest illustrators, done outside his work at Mad magazine. The book is a treasure trove of rare humor comics mostly unseen for over 30 years from the pages of Mad's #1 competitor, Cracked magazine. They are curated by two folks with Cracked bona fides, Mark Arnold, author of the definitive two volume history of the magazine If You're Cracked, You're Happy!, and Mort Todd, the former Editor-in-Chief of the magazine during one of its most creative periods. The comics presented are from the 1950s and 1960s during the title's early years and while John Severin was at the top of his game as a creator. There are TV and movie parodies, tons of celebrities, along with satire on current events, trends and culture of the era. Mark Arnold provides an informative introduction to The Comedy of John Severin and features an afterword by Mort Todd reflecting on Severin and the magazine's legacy. The Comedy of John Severin is a 107 page volume in glorious vintage black & white! The book features a gorgeous array of their work, showcasing the many mediums he worked in, from pen and ink, wash, guoache, duoshade paper, zipatone and color paintings as they applied it to tweaking a variety of amusing topics. Also available: The Comedy of Jack Davis
It's Comic Book and Animation Historian Mark Arnold's reviews on every song ever recorded by The Beatles, group and solo, released and unreleased. Don't like my reviews? Then, write your own book.
Make no mistake: Our founding fathers were more bandanas-and-muscles than powdered-wigs-and-tea. As a prisoner of war, Andrew Jackson walked several miles barefoot across state lines while suffering from smallpox and a serious head wound received when he refused to polish the boots of the soldiers who had taken him captive. He was thirteen years old. A few decades later, he became the first popularly elected president and served the nation, pausing briefly only to beat a would-be assassin with a cane to within an inch of his life. Theodore Roosevelt had asthma, was blind in one eye, survived multiple gunshot wounds, had only one regret (that there were no wars to fight under his presidency), and was the first U.S. president to win the Medal of Honor, which he did after he died. Faced with the choice, George Washington actually preferred the sound of bullets whizzing by his head in battle over the sound of silence. And now these men—these hallowed leaders of the free world—want to kick your ass. Plenty of historians can tell you which president had the most effective economic strategies, and which president helped shape our current political parties, but can any of them tell you what to do if you encounter Chester A. Arthur in a bare-knuckled boxing fight? This book will teach you how to be better, stronger, faster, and more deadly than the most powerful (and craziest) men in history. You’re welcome.
A WOMAN’S BATTLE WITH THE BILLION-DOLLAR BABY BUSINESS Cracked Open is Miriam Zoll's eye-opening account of growing into womanhood with the simultaneous opportunities offered by the U.S. women's movement and new discoveries in reproductive technologies. Influenced by the pervasive media and cultural messages suggesting that science had finally eclipsed Mother Nature, Zoll postponed motherhood until the age of 40. When things don't progress as she had hoped, she enters a world of medical seduction and bioethical quagmires. Desperate to conceive, she surrenders to unproven treatments and procedures only to learn that the odds of becoming a mother through reproductive technologies are far less than she and her generation had been led to believe.