Tenements Towers Trash

A New York Times Notable Book of 2017! Here is New York, as you've never seen it before. A perfectly charming, sidesplittingly funny, intellectually entertaining illustrated history of the blocks, the buildings, and the guts of New York City, based on Julia Wertz's popular illustrated columns in The New Yorker and Harper's. In Tenements, Towers & Trash, Julia Wertz takes us behind the New York that you think you know. Not the tourist's New York-the Statue of Liberty makes a brief appearance and the Empire State Building not at all-but the guts, the underbelly, of this city that never sleeps. With drawings and comics in her signature style, Wertz regales us with streetscapes "Then and Now" and little-known tales, such as the lost history of Kim's Video, the complicated and unresolved business of Ray's Pizza, the vintage trash and horse bones that litter the shore of Brooklyn's Bottle Beach, the ludicrous pinball prohibition, Staten Island's secret abandoned boatyard, and the hair-raising legend of the infamous abortionist of Fifth Avenue, Madame Restell. From bars, bakeries, and bookstores to food carts, street cleaners, and apartments both cramped and grand, Tenements, Towers & Trash is a wild ride in a time machine taxi from the present day city to bygone days of yore.

This anthology of comics inspired by real-life missed connection ads posted on Craigslist and in local papers around the country will tug at your heartstrings and make you think. Lonely hearts, romantics, and even cynics pore over missed connection ads in search of love, to gawk and giggle, or out of curiosity. These posted stranger sightings and chance encounters lay bare the truths and oddities of real-life loneliness and attractions and bring out the voyeur in the best of us. I Saw You takes this phenomenon and makes it even better. Julia Wertz has gathered the stars and soon-to-be-stars of the graphic art world, including Peter Bagge, Jesse Reklaw, Tom Hart, Sam Henderson, Laura Park, Emily Flake, Keith Knight, Janelle Hessig, Gabrielle Bell, Aaron Renier, Austin English, Corinne Mucha, Jeffrey Brown, Alec Longstreth, Minty Lewis, Joey Sayers, David Malki, Kazimir Strzepek, Ken Dahl, Shannon Wheeler, Shaenon Garrity, Rodd Perry, Abby Denson, Damien Jay, Sarah Glidden, and dozens more, to interpret these plaintive, hopeful postings in drawings that range from laugh-out-loud funny to disarmingly strange.

A dictionary of words that don't exist for feelings that do written by The Middle actress Eden Sher and illustrated by acclaimed graphic novelist Julia Wertz. “A must-read for bad, good and just plain complicated days.” —Oprah.com All her life, Eden Sher has suffered from dyscommunicatia (n. the inability to articulate a feeling through words.). Then, one day, she decided that, whenever she had an emotion for which she had no word, she would make one up. The result of this is The Emotionary, which lives at the intersection of incredibly funny and very useful. Chock full of words you always wanted/never knew you needed, often accompanied by illustrations of hilarious and all-too-familiar situations, The Emotionary will be a cherished tool for you or the world-class feelings-haver in your life. At long last, all your complicated feelings can be put into words, so you can recognize them for what they are, speak their names aloud, and move on. Finally!

I am Tony Valentino, the prime narrator of Rose of the Flats, a novel about prejudice in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. I had thought I was writing about the experiences of my younger brother Dante, a Korean War combat veteran who was successfully becoming an English teacher at our local high school after the war. Unlike me, he could easily "pass" for white. But he had been arrogant enough to marry Rose, our sweetheart since childhood, who could not pass. Although I narrated the story in 1957, it is just as relevant now as it was then. Our father was an immigrant Jew from Italy, married to our immigrant French Canadian mother, who was Catholic and was partially black. When the novel opens, I am living with Rose, taking care of Dante. Two years ago, someone in a passing car had taken a shot at him one night. His car swerved and crashed into a tree, leaving him severely brain damaged. Our isolated little community is really part of Berlin, the only city in the northern part of our state, which, back then, was like Quebec. Most of the people in Berlin could not understand English. Cascade Flats is technically within the town line of Gorham, a tourist town five miles down the road. It is proudly American. Our state motto is "Live free, or die." In my senior year in high school, I fell madly in love with my attractive young English teacher, the epitome of American womanhood, the woman I had planned to marry, to live free or die with. I wasn't going to be stuck with a woman of the flats, not I. But having been thrust into such close proximity with Rose, I became aware of our deep feelings for each other, especially of our strong sexual attraction, which I had refused to fully acknowledge when she had given me the opportunities. The Joy of my life, I had thought, had been white. In trying to tell Dante's story, I was really telling my own story, forced by Rose to face my own demons, my deepest anxieties and feelings of guilt for having coveted the devoted, passionate wife of my own brother. To finally survive our situation, I was compelled to overcome my own prejudices.

Julia Wertz is the anti-Bridget Jones; her diary comics are filled with life's real and often really hilarious moments.

In an unnamed Third World country, in the not-so-distant future, three “dumpsite boys” make a living picking through the mountains of garbage on the outskirts of a large city. One unlucky-lucky day, Raphael finds something very special and very mysterious. So mysterious that he decides to keep it, even when the city police offer a handsome reward for its return. That decision brings with it terrifying consequences, and soon the dumpsite boys must use all of their cunning and courage to stay ahead of their pursuers. It’s up to Raphael, Gardo, and Rat—boys who have no education, no parents, no homes, and no money—to solve the mystery and right a terrible wrong. Andy Mulligan has written a powerful story about unthinkable poverty—and the kind of hope and determination that can transcend it. With twists and turns, unrelenting action, and deep, raw emotion, Trash is a heart-pounding, breath-holding novel.

"[C]ollects the acclaimed and controversial web comic and zine. The foul-mouthed and hilarious stories here follow the life of Julia, a twentysomething woman living in San Francisco" from publisher's blog.

In 2004, Julia Wertz began a series of funny, irreverent autobiographical comics she called "The Fart Party." After posting these comics online to acclaim and controversy, she eventually started collecting these comics as self-published minis which found their way to Atomic Books in Baltimore, who thought they ought to be collected into a proper book so as to garner Julia more laughs and hate mail. As these things go, the first volume was so successful, there was a second volume. Both are now out of print, but Museum of Mistakes collects them into one book, plus numerous pages of Julia's early comic work, unpublished and/or previously uncollected comics, short stories, illustrations, process pages, hate mail, sketchbook pages, tear stains and more.