In 1825, Mordecai Noah, a New York politician and amateur playwright possessed of a utopian vision, summoned all the lost tribes of Israel to an island near Buffalo in the hope of establishing a Jewish state. His failed plan, a mere footnote in Jewish-American history, is the starting point for Ben Katchor's brilliantly imagined epic that unfolds on the streets of New York a few years later. A disgraced kosher slaughterer, an importer of religious articles and women's hosiery, a pilgrim peddling soil from the Holy Land, a latter-day Kabbalist, a man with plans to carbonate Lake...
In 1825, Mordecai Noah, a New York politician and amateur playwright possessed of a utopian vision, summoned all the lost tribes of Israel to an islan...
"Twenty-five years on, Cheap Novelties'] observations of what is lost as cityscapes evolve and shift due to gentrification and changing demographics are still fresh and relevant." The Guardian Cheap Novelties is an early testament to Ben Katchor's extraordinary prescience as both a gifted cartoonist and an astute urban chronicler. Rumpled, middle-aged Julius Knipl photographs a vanishing city--an urban landscape of low-rent apartment buildings, obsolete industries, monuments to forgotten people and events, and countless...
"Twenty-five years on, Cheap Novelties'] observations of what is lost as cityscapes evolve and shift due to gentrification and changing ...
Ben Katchor, "the most poetic, deeply layered artist ever to draw a comic strip" (New York Times Book Review), selects the best graphic pieces of the year. The Best American Comics 2017 showcases the work of both established and up-and-coming contributors and highlights both fiction and nonfiction from graphic novels, pamphlet comics, newspapers, magazines, minicomics, and the Web to make sure "the Best American Comics brand is poised to enjoy a killer second decade" (Bookgasm).
"Every last page is worth a look." --Bustle
Ben Katchor, "the most poetic, deeply layered artist ever to draw a comic strip"...
