SelfMadeHero – förlag

After two years of unemployment, Maggy Garrisson lands a secretarial job. Too bad her new boss is the shady, chaotic Anthony Wight: private detective and alcoholic. But a job is a job, and Maggy could use the cash. Five days into her new role, Wight is beaten to a pulp and Maggy is tasked with returning his wallet. With this seemingly innocuous request, Maggy enters a sinister underworld of corrupt cops, crooked businessmen, and career criminals. There’s a lot to investigate, from the disappearance of a family album to the theft of gold teeth from bodies at the crematorium. But for someone with the energy, ingenuity, and enterprising spirit of Maggy Garrison, puzzles are there to be solved—especially if there’s money to be made in the process.

LOW traces the aftermath of David Bowie’s ground-breaking tour of America, and the iconic “Berlin years” that followed.Hot on the platform heels of Starman: Bowie’s Stardust Years (SelfMadeHero, 2023), Reinhard Kleist masterfully concludes his two-part biography of David Bowie. In 1976, Bowie escaped the frantic madness and substance abuse of his life in Los Angeles for the Wall of the divided city of Berlin. With his friend Iggy Pop in tow, Bowie quit drugs and created LOW, the first album of his “Berlin Trilogy”. But even here, in some of the happiest days of his life, Ziggy Stardust would not let him go…LOW follows Bowie’s forays through West Berlin’s revolutionary music scene and wild club life, and takes us deep into his recording sessions at Hansa Studios. The friendship between Bowie and Iggy drives both artists to new creative heights, while Bowie’s relationship with the cabaret artist and drag icon Romy Haag illuminates his fascination with Berlin as a city on the brink. Kleist’s LOW is both a retelling of Bowie’s Berlin years and a vibrant portrait of the city itself.[This publication has not been prepared, approved, authorized, or licensed by the David Bowie estate or any related entity.]

It is, perhaps, the perfect video game. Simple yet addictive, Tetris delivers an irresistible, unending puzzle that has players hooked. Play it long enough and you’ll see those brightly coloured geometric shapes everywhere. You’ll see them in your dreams. Alexey Pajitnov had big ideas about games. In 1984, he created Tetris in his spare time while developing software for the Soviet government. Once this alarmingly addictive game emerged from behind the Iron Curtain, it was an instant hit. Nintendo, Atari, Sega – game developers big and small all wanted Tetris. A bidding war was sparked, followed by clandestine trips to Moscow, backroom deals, innumerable miscommunications and outright theft.New York Times bestselling author Box Brown untangles this complex history and delves deep into the role games play in art, culture and commerce. For the first time and in unparalleled detail, Tetris: The Games People Play tells the true story of the world’s most popular video game.

Follow the entire painting career of Rembrandt, one of the greatest painters and printmakers in European art history and the most important in Dutch history. This is the story about one man’s artistic vocation and the work it demands, about life and death, love and bereavement, fame and loss. This graphic novel aims at authenticity, and where there is an absence of facts, the author has drawn inspiration from the wealth of the anecdotes about Rembrandt’s life. This unique collaborative enterprise between the author, Typex, The Netherlands foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture and the Rijk museum, home of the world’s largest and most important Rembrandt collection, guarantees a spectacular result – a stunning and surprising graphic novel on Rembrandt’s life.

The highly anticipated new standalone full-color graphic novel from Bryan Lee O’Malley, author and artist of the hugely bestselling Scott Pilgrim graphic novel series. Katie’s got it pretty good. She’s a talented young chef, she runs a successful restaurant, and she has big plans to open an even better one. Then, all at once, progress on the new location bogs down, her charming ex-boyfriend pops up, her fling with another chef goes sour, and her best waitress gets badly hurt. And just like that, Katie’s life goes from pretty good to not so much. What she needs is a second chance. Everybody deserves one, after all—but they don’t come easy. Luckily for Katie, a mysterious girl appears in the middle of the night with simple instructions for a do-it-yourself do-over: Write your mistake Ingest one mushroom. Go to sleep. Wake anew And just like that, all the bad stuff never happened, and Katie is given another chance to get things right. She’s also got a dresser drawer full of magical mushrooms—and an irresistible urge to make her life not just good, but perfect. Too bad it’s against the rules. But Katie doesn’t care about the rules—and she’s about to discover the unintended consequences of the best intentions. From the mind and pen behind the acclaimed Scott Pilgrim series comes a madcap new tale of existential angst, everyday obstacles, young love, and ancient spirits that’s sharp-witted and tenderhearted, whimsical and wise.

For years, Earth has staggered from one crisis to another: malfunctioning hand dryers, unaffordable croissants and the disappearance of Ceefax. Politicians promised solutions. Pundits offered analysis. But only one intergalactic space warrior had the vision, the cape and the bin-shaped head to Make Earth Great Again.And then something happened. Count Binface arrived from planet Sigma IX. He took on prime ministers, mayors, and assorted human calamities; he won votes, hearts, and at least one moral victory. Along the way, he became Britain’s most formidable Recyclon, defender of common sense, enemy of the planet Copyright and tireless champion of the Lovejoy box set.Now, with more than 30 of the finest comics creators on planet Earth receiving the Bin-Signal, this revolutionary 72-page anthology brings the Binface universe gloriously to life. Expect space battles, political nonsense, cosmic bureaucracy, recycled wisdom, and more heroic rubbish than you can fit in a wheelie bin.UNOFFICIAL, UNAUTHORIZED SATIRICAL ANTHOLOGYThis publication has not been prepared, approved, authorized or licensed by Count Binface or any related entity.10% of every sale will be donated to Shelter via Work for Good.

Obsessed with revisiting the sunset city of his dreams, Randolph Carter leaves the humdrum confines of reality behind, traveling into a vivid dreamworld where anything is possible. But while Carter draws closer to his goal—the mysterious Kadath, home to the gods themselves—another force, dark and brooding, is watching with plans of its own. An epic fantasy mixing adventure, peril, and wonder in equal parts, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (newly reissued in a smaller format, with a foreword by Jeff Lemire and a new cover) explores themes of memory and forbidden knowledge through the prism of H.P. Lovecraft’s boundless imagination. “There is no denying that Culbard makes this story sing.” - Digital Spy

The history of wine is the history of civilisation. It is the religious drink par excellence. In Greek mythology, references to wine abound. In the Bible, after the Flood, Noah plants a vineyard. In the Middle Ages, it was in the monasteries and churches that the syrupy drink of antiquity, unpalatable if not diluted, was transformed into the wine we know today.Wine expert Benoist Simmat and artist Daniel Casanave trace the story of wine from its origins in the Mediterranean to the globalised industry of the 21st century. Taking in the innovations that have punctuated wine’s long history, from oak barrel aging to the invention of the bottle, Wine: A Graphic History will leave readers with a fresh view of our own drinking culture.

“He leads the field by a very long furlong, out on his own, making his own weather. He is Klimowski, unafraid.”—Harold Pinter, Nobel Prize-winning playwright In the mid-1970s, Andrzej Klimowski's fearlessly original artwork caught the eye of leading Polish theater and film companies, for whom he designed some of the period's most iconic posters. The London-born artist, who moved to Poland at a time when many East Europeans dreamed of going West, went on to create posters for works by filmmakers and playwrights from Scorsese to Altman, Beckett to Brecht.Drawing on folk art and Polish Surrealism, Klimowski uses techniques including photomontage and linocut to create posters that are filled with metaphor, drama, and originality.

In December 1913, the New York World newspaper published the first crossword in history. It appeared in their Sunday supplement, “Fun.” A century later, this absorbing puzzle continues to attract (and infuriate) millions of devotees every day. But the world’s most popular—and seemingly mundane—pastime has a surprising history, filled with intrigue and adventure.Paolo Bacilieri’s FUN transports us from turn-of-the-century New York to present-day Milan, taking in stories of ingenious puzzle makers, ardent solvers, and intellectual luminaries. Part detective story, part docudrama, and interlaced with a fiction of Bacilieri’s own imagining, FUN questions the crossword’s “harmless” status. Sure, it’s fun—but could it also be a form of resistance, of cryptic communication, of espionage?

Constance Maud was at the heart of the British campaign for women’s votes. Her novel No Surrender was published at the height of that struggle and used as a persuasive tool by suffragists. Hailed by Emily Wilding Davison as “a book which breathes the very spirit of our Women’s Movement”, the fast-paced story interweaves the lives of women from all classes working together to bring about change. Our hero Jenny is a small but fierce Lancashire textile mill worker who puts principle before everything. No Surrender is sometimes funny, sometimes violent, but always exciting and authentic. It is highly regarded as an important document of the arguments for and against extending votes to women, for its witty storytelling and for an unflinching depiction of the rapid escalation of violence encountered by the women involved. In this faithful graphic adaptation, creators Scarlett and Sophie Rickard craft a compelling fiction that paints a comprehensive picture of social, political, economic and cultural life in early 20th century Britain that is still acutely relevant today. The graphic format is the embodiment of the suffrage rallycry of “Deeds not Words” and this book is the perfect sister volume to their stunning adaptation of the socialist classic The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists tells the story of a group of working men in the fictional town of Mugsborough, and socialist journeyman-prophet Frank Owen who attempts to convince his fellow workers that capitalism is the real source of the poverty all around them. Owen's spirited attacks on the greed and dishonesty of the capitalist system, and support for a socialist society in which work is performed to satisfy the needs of all, rather than to generate profit for a few, eventually rouses his fellow men from their political passivity. Described by George Orwell as a piece of social history and a book that everyone should read, Robert Tressell's The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is often cited as one of the most authentic novels of English working class life ever written. In this faithful graphic adaptation, creators Scarlett and Sophie Rickard craft a compelling fiction that paints a comprehensive picture of social, political, economic and cultural life in early 20th Century Britain that is still acutely relevant today.

Hellraisers tells the story of four of the greatest boozers of all time:Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Peter O'Toole and Oliver Reed. Robert Sellers and Jake cleverly weave the four biographies seamlessly into one fast-paced adventure of drunken binges, orgies, parties and fun.Told through the eyes of Martin, a wannabe Hellraiser, the story begins in a typical London pub at Christmas time. One by one, each of the four Hellraisers take this disillusioned soul on a personal tour of their childhoods, rise to stardom and chaotic personal lives.

Arrested with her family in the Netherlands, deported by the Nazis to Ravensbrück and Bergen-Belsen, and orphaned – all by the age of seven – Emmie Arbel survived the camps, only to face a new ordeal of suffering in what should have been a place of refuge. Traumatized as a child by violence, abuse, and isolation, she has transformed her survival into an inspirational lifelong mission both to bear witness to the Holocaust, and to celebrate the enduring resilience of the human spirit. Working closely with Emmie herself, the acclaimed German graphic artist Barbara Yelin has created an unforgettable “visual biography” of this remarkable woman: her rebellious independence, her indomitable humour, the wisdom of her contemplation.Emmie Arbel: The Colour of Memory is at once a haunting portrayal of a historical atrocity, an inspiring account of a modern friendship, a beautiful work of art, and a meditation on memory itself.This graphic novel was developed as part of the Survivor-Centred Visual Narratives Project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

When the Lancashire cotton-mill that employs them burns to the ground, sisters Rachel and Hester Martin are each forced to find their own way to survive in the harsh realities of pre-war industrial Britain. The contrasting paths they take in their quest for domestic autonomy form a subtly strident allegory of the all but insurmountable barriers of class and gender that then enslaved half the population. Part compelling narrative epic, part fiery Marxist-feminist polemic, this faithful, sumptuous, and revelatory adaptation by the award-winning Rickard Sisters reclaims a lost classic by holding it up as a mirror to our own hard times, and as a gloriously flaming beacon to future communities to offer strength, hope, and dignity.

One morning in June 1941, a quiet village in Central Lithuania is shaken out of its slumber by the sudden arrival of the Soviet Army. Eight-year-old Algiukas awakes to the sound of Russian soldiers pounding on the door. His family are given ten minutes to pack up their things. They are not told where they’re going or for how long. An airless freight train carries them from the fertile lands of rural Lithuania to the snowy plains of the Siberian taiga. There, in the distant, dismal North, they begin a life marked by endless hunger and unrelenting cold. And yet the darkness of exile is lightened, for Algiukas, by flights of imagination. This curious, brave and adaptable child transforms hardship into adventure.Drawing on her father’s exile in Siberia, writer Jurga Vile brings to light a neglected, even suppressed, episode from the history of the Soviet Union. Beautifully drawn by Lina Itagaki, Siberian Haiku uses the child’s perspective to tell an unforgettable story of courage and human endurance.

Since the turn of the century, technology has transformed the way we communicate and consume, how we work and fall in love and navigate the world. We are increasingly reliant on it—but few of us know anything about the science that is driving this technological change. Kurt Vonnegut famously said that to leave technology out of fiction is to misrepresent life. Here, six acclaimed graphic novelists present reports from the digital frontier. Exploring everything from artificial intelligence to virtual reality, I Feel Machine is by turns cautionary and celebratory, touching and terrifying. It challenges and confronts the digital world using the most technologically efficient machine ever invented: the book.

Musician, novelist, poet, actor: Nick Cave (b. 1957) is a Renaissance man. His wide-ranging artistic output—always uncompromising, hypnotic, and intense—is defined by an extraordinary gift for storytelling. In Nick Cave: Mercy on Me, Reinhard Kleist employs a cast of characters drawn from Cave’s music and writing to tell the story of a formidable artist and influencer.Kleist paints an expressive and enthralling portrait of Cave’s childhood in Australia; his early years fronting The Birthday Party; the sublime highs of his success with The Bad Seeds; and the crippling lows of his battle with heroin. Capturing everything from Cave’s frenzied performances in Berlin to the tender moments he spent with love and muse Anita Lane, Kleist’s graphic biography, like Cave’s songs, is by turns electrifying, sentimental, morbid, and comic—but always engrossing.

Nao Brown suffers from OCD, but not the hand-washing, overly tidy type that people often refer to jokingly. Nao suffers from violent, morbid obsessions, while her compulsions take the form of unseen mental rituals. Working part-time in a 'designer' vinyl toy shop, while struggling to get her own illustration career off the ground, she's still searching for that elusive love – the perfect love. And in meeting the man of her dreams, she realises… dreams can be quite weird. Nao's meditation practice is an attempt to quieten her mind and open her heart, and it's through this that she comes to understand that things aren't so black and white after all. In fact, they're much more... brown.This new edition contains eight pages of additional material, including previously unseen artwork, which gives an insight into Glyn Dillon’s creative process.

“It is time to effect a revolution in female manners – time to restore to them their dignity.” In the Age of Revolutions, with many movements springing up to demand greater liberties for mankind, Mary Wollstonecraft spoke out for the other “one-half of the human race”: that of womankind. Over twenty years before her daughter, Mary Shelley, created the science fiction genre with Frankenstein, Mary Wollstonecraft’s 1792 manifesto, Vindication of the Rights of Woman, took the world by storm. Forthright and fearless, she mingled with other radical thinkers of her time and travelled widely. In the same year she published her magnum opus, she even ventured alone to Paris during the Reign of Terror. This graphic biography of the then-controversial and now-legendary Mary Wollstonecraft comes from the creative partnership of Mary M. Talbot and Bryan Talbot, the award-winning duo behind Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes, Sally Heathcote: Suffragette, and Armed with Madness.

Miskatonic University, Arkham, 1908. Professor Nathaniel Peaslee collapses in front of a class of students, only coming to his senses five years later. Horrified to discover that his body has been far from inactive during the intervening period—and plagued by unsettling and outlandish nightmares—Peaslee attempts to piece together the truth behind the missing years of his life. A chilling journey through time, space, and the recesses of the mind, this newly reissued adaptation (in a smaller format, with a foreword by Jeff Lemire and a new cover) gives terrifying form to one of H.P Lovecraft’s final tales. “A taut, chilling read, well-paced and illustrated with a suitably muted palette.” - The Guardian

Ulysses is a 59-year-old widower who, since retiring, has been in the grip of loneliness. The former moving man is without direction or purpose. He can’t even find solace in the company of his children: his daughter is dead, his son consumed by work.Mrs. Solenza is a 62-year-old former model. Once a magazine cover star, she now runs the family business: a cheese shop owned by her late mother. She, too, is alone.Two lives drift sadly by, inching ever closer to old age. Until, one day, they collide—and an emotional earthquake happens. A unique collaboration between veteran comics writer Zidrou and rising star Aimée de Jongh, Blossoms in Autumn is a masterful exploration of growing old and falling in love.

What if you stopped focusing on what’s impossible, and opened yourself up to what’s possible?Marc Evers is two years old and it's almost impossible for anyone to get through to him. His parents are told by a psychiatrist he has Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), and that he’ll never be able to talk or go to the toilet on his own. For this reason, the psychiatrist recommends institutionalization. Thankfully, Marc’s parents refuse to listen. Eighteen years later, Marc is preparing to compete in the 100-meter backstroke at the 2012 London Paralympics. He walks, talks, and rides his bike. He’s his own person, surrounded by a busy family – and he can swim like a torpedo. With five Paralympic medals and many world records, Marc Evers is the Netherlands' greatest Paralympic swimming champion. How did he manage to beat the odds?The Great Marc Evers is a moving, intimate, inspiring, and above all optimistic coming-of-age portrait of Marc and his family. A beautifully drawn story about perseverance, hope, and strength, about trusting your intuition and daring to believe.

Elizabeth and her four sisters are barred from inheriting their ageing father’s estate and face eviction. The sisters must secure their financial future through marriage. Our heroine has other ideas. She's vowed only to marry for love. Her eye is eventually caught by the singular Mr. Darcy, but who will save the Bennets? And will Elizabeth marry for love or save her family?

“A book based on a soundtrack score that has not yet been composed for a feature film that does not yet exist.” Pixies frontman Black Francis has approached writing his first book as he would do a song: with inventiveness and originality. The Good Inn tells the story of an eighteen-year-old known only as Soldier Boy who, after escaping a devastating explosion at the French port of Toulon, sets out on a bizarre journey across France. Navigating his way past homicidal gypsies, combative soldiers and porn-peddling peasants, he takes refuge at The Good Inn – and promptly finds himself centre stage in the making of the world’s first narrative pornographic movie. Unique and vividly imagined, The Good Inn is a touchingly comic story that brings turn-of-the-century France to life.

The dazzling, provocative work of Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960–1988) would come to define the vibrant New York art scene of the late ’70s and early ’80s. Punk, jazz, graffiti, hip-hop: his work drew heavily on the cultural trappings of lower Manhattan, to which he fled—from Brooklyn—at the age of 15. This stunning graphic novel captures the dramatic life and exhilarating times of this archetypal New York artist, covering everything from the SAMO graffiti project to his first solo show, from his relationship with Andy Warhol to the substance abuse that would cost him his life.Today, Basquiat’s influence can be seen not only in fine art but in fashion, design, and music. Now, for the first time, his remarkable story is told in graphic novel form. This playful, authoritative biography shows Basquiat’s work to be more important, his themes more urgent, than ever before.

A foundational environmentalist text centuries ahead of its time, The Compleat Angler is one of the most reprinted books in the English language.From the ruins of the English Civil War to the challenges we all face today, Gareth Brookes’ highly original multimedia adaptation of Izaak Walton’s classic focuses on its instructional aspects, highlights its eccentricities and contemplative themes of nature and friendship, and draws parallels between today’s politically divided and ecologically endangered England and that of the 17th century.Following Brookes’ similarly ambitious The Dancing Plague, this adaptation is lovingly rendered in both linocut engraving and hand-drawn pen-and-ink to contrast the meditative and the instructional in Walton’s writing. As a guidebook on how to fish, this 350-year-old manual makes the perfect gift for any angling enthusiast, and its reflective writing connects with post-pandemic desires for calm, mindful pursuits and a return to nature.

“The only method I have found that relieves my illness is to keep creating art. I followed the thread of art and somehow discovered a path that would allow me to live.”From her days in 1960s New York as a proponent of free love and peace to her current position as internationally recognised Queen of Polka Dots and creator of infinity, Yayoi Kusama’s life is an extraordinary story of triumph over struggle through art. This graphic novel vividly portrays Kusama’s unusual youth and family troubles, her discovery of a new style of painting, her struggles with mental illness, and her rise to international art stardom.For those seeking an introduction to this incredible artist or searching for a fresh take on her story – this is Yayoi Kusama’s life as you’ve never seen it before.

Providence, Rhode Island, 1928. A dangerous inmate disappears from a private hospital for the insane, his method of escape baffling the authorities. Only the patient’s final visitor, family physician Dr. Marinus Bicknell Willett—himself a piece of the puzzle—holds the key to unlocking The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. A macabre mixture of historical investigation, grave-robbing, and bone-chilling revelation, this newly reissued adaptation (in a smaller format, with a foreword by Jeff Lemire and a new cover) artfully lays bare one of H.P. Lovecraft’s most horrifying creations.“This is really the best way to enjoy Lovecraft.” - Boing Boing