Books like Brian Blomerth's Bicycle Day

I’ve read Crawlspace a number of times, and the art never fails to give me a brain buzz. It’s a visual drug that always delivers. The story follows suburban teens who find they can leave their black-and-white world and enter an alternate reality through the door of a dryer. That reality is one of intricate, geometric patterns whose lines are filled with vibrating rainbow colors.

This hypnotically beautiful world has a quality at once entrancing and sinister as the teens encounter the strange creatures who inhabit it and begin to take on its colorful patterns themselves.

I love the look of late-1960s psychedelic art, which I associate with Peter Max and the animated movie Yellow Submarine. The style is one of simple linework filled with intense colors, to which are added decorative elements and optical effects.

A French cartoonist, Caza, brings this style to Kris Kool, his 1970 erotic science-fiction graphic novel. Like a male version of Barbarella, space traveler Kris Kool experiences bizarre and surreal adventures, many of them sexual. The plot is well constructed and carried me along with its surprising turns. There is no depiction of drug use, but the fantasies and imagery make reading it as trippy an experience as one can find between the covers of a book.

I was fascinated and appalled to learn of the CIA’s Project MK-Ultra, a long-running program in which the CIA dosed unwitting victims with LSD to study its effects and potential as a mind-control weapon. The subject has been covered in other books, but this graphic novel, illustrated by Stewart Kenneth Moore, brings this alarming tale to life visually.

His garish colors and mind-warping graphics depict the hallucinatory experiences in a sometimes appealing but more often terrifying manner. Moore’s art also gives the straight narrative elements of the story a warped, dreamy quality, imbuing even mundane reality with the disturbing quality of an acid flashback.

My mind was blown when I encountered the work of Philippe Druillet in the mid-1970s. This French cartoonist is considered one of the greatest of them all, creating alien worlds of startling originality and stupefying grandeur. Fifty years later, his work is as startling and original as it appeared back then.

No one has surpassed his ability to depict scenes of such mind-boggling scale and otherworldliness, as if he had a unique glimpse of some higher realm. As a young cartoonist, I was strongly influenced by Druillet, who inspired me with his demonstration of what it was possible to achieve in the comic book form. His work is not drug-oriented but depicts the sort of visions those who take hallucinogens would hope to experience.

This series of short back-up strips in the 1960s Thor comic from Marvel retold and embellished on the myths in characteristically bombastic Lee/Kirby fashion. While Thor himself, in the main feature, battled costumed supervillains in contemporary New York, the supporting feature dealt with his youth, his allies and enemies in Asgard itself and the rest of the Nine Realms, and a whole host of sorcerers, witches, and grotesque monsters. Kirby in particular seemed enthused by the project and it shows in his artwork.

Every panel of Hot Comb is full of music and movement. The dialogue is so perfectly observed it's like sitting on a park bench with a good old friend and overhearing conversations as they pass by. Some of the stories are directly autobiographical I think, and some are not, but they all feel very real and the dynamics of the relationships very familiar. A beautiful and sharp book about small personal everyday things and how huge and political they really are.

This is an art book that showcases the masterful craft of an artist who knows how to weave souls into their characters and worlds. Her titles made me laugh, cry, jump up from my seat, and the characters and concepts in the pages of this book make me re-live these moments again and again. She uses a very unusual gouache technique, unlike any other manga artist I know of. The precision and determination in every stroke are stunning, and a book I believe any aspiring artist should have in their library.

The author of this book is a working cartoonist and illustrator and that makes this one of the best books out there. The book packs an immense amount of practical information about how to draw cartoons into easy, fun worksheet-style activities. Different styles of writing, as well as complex concepts, are communicated in simple visually striking lessons. I have to admit if I was giving a young artist a book (and they already had both of mine) I would definitely give them this book. It’s comprehensive, fun, and simple. It also allows the young artist room to draw in their own style, instead of copying a given drawing. That’s one of my pet peeves!

I loved this story of the extraordinary friendship between a young, gay, HIV-positive Cuban American activist and a young, struggling Jewish cartoonist who became roommates on an MTV reality show called The Real World. For good reason, UCLA chose Pedro & Me as its 2013-2014 "Common Book" with the goal of providing incoming freshmen with a "platform to discuss relationships, sexual orientation, health education, loss, love, and other topics." Winick’s story is timeless in its themes of friendship, loss, and hope.

This is a non-fiction book about an artist doing a road trip with an adorable dog by the name of Bug. As they travel the historic highway, Shing Yin Khor reflects on this country’s history, what it can mean to live in the US as a person of color and why we’re often left with more questions than satisfying answers. Even the title reflects this as it’s an interrogative sentence rather than a declarative one. It’s a very personal journey and it reads like a friend telling you about their trip. There are various segments where the scenery does the talking.

As someone who did not grow up in this country, I have been in a similar headspace. I love this book.