Montreal punk legend and alternative cartoonist Rick Trembles was roommates with the editor of the influential zine Fish Piss where these autobiographical strips were first published. After a midnight move from a crumbling apartment Trembles gradually started going through his childhood belongings, which started triggering memories from his past. Worried about them fading from memory as time wore on, he took the opportunity to document them before they could vanish.

One of his last entries in this series questioned the nature of selective memory, why certain inanities from one’s past might resonate more than others, and why, no matter how hard you try, there’s no guarantee you’ll remember any particular event years down the line. The book also contains other autobiographical work from Trembles, created over his active 40 years.

Winner of Best Book and Best First Book at the Manitoba Book Awards

Fractures form in a tight-knit Mennonite community, echoing the struggles experienced in small towns across North America

When a non-denominational megachurch opens on the edges of a rural Mennonite community, a quiet—but longstanding—battle begins to reveal itself. For years, the traditionalists in the community have held fast to the values and beliefs they grew up with, while other community members have begun raising important questions about LGBTQ+ inclusion, Indigenous land rights, and the Mennonite legacy of pacifism.

Through a series of vignettes, Shelterbelts explores the perspectives, experiences and limitations of a wide range of characters who find themselves increasingly at odds with their surroundings. A pastor and his queer daughter learn that a family has left their church because of the “LGBT issue.” Young activists butt heads with a farmer over the construction of a pipeline happening on his fields. A librarian leaves suggestive notes for readers inside popular library books.

By pulling these threads together, artist Jonathan Dyck has woven a rich tapestry—one that depicts a close-knit community in the midst of defining its future as it reckons with its past.

Gathering Pauls’s comics from magazines, comic festivals and zine making workshops, these comics are his most personal work yet. You’ll learn stories about the author’s family, racism and identity, Yukon history, winter activities, Southern Tutchone language lessons and cultural practices. Have you ever wanted to learn how to Knuckle Hop? or to acknowledge and respect the Indigenous land you’re on? Or how to be an ally to Indigenous people? Well, gather around and hear this Kwändǖr! (Story!)

Nina Bunjevac's brilliant debut graphic novel returns in this expanded 10th Anniversary edition.

“Powered by an expressive black and white drawing style, reminiscent of Robert Crumb and the meticulous pointillist technique of Drew Friedman, the dark undertone of Bunjevac’s humour brings into light the range of socio-political issues her comics deal with, such as gender, nationalism or urban alienation, always from an ironic feminist perspective. Her chain-smoking, slightly alcoholic and manically depressed character Zorka may just be today’s ultimate antiheroine. A Balkan immigrant in the Brave New World, working in that same meat factory for the last twenty years, tormented by family constraints and her own secret desires… we simply can’t get enough of her.” — BTurn

For mature audiences

One of NYPL's Best New Comics of 2023 for Adults.

A poignant fable about a young woman who is captivated by a set of recently discovered notebooks and leaves her isolated community to search for their author—a journey that ultimately makes her question what she wants and what she’s willing to leave behind.

The residents of an isolated village in a dreamlike world scavenge for supplies in the surrounding forest, collecting scattered items left over from a time long past. No one strays far from this community, fearing what may lie beyond it. When they find a stack of notebooks by an unknown author, a young villager becomes obsessed with their contents. She sets out on a quest to find the writer. As she ventures into the unknown, she discovers a world both barren and increasingly complex. The closer she gets to her goal, the more she realizes that the encounter she's been seeking probably won't be what she wanted.

In Adherent, Chris W. Kim (Herman by Trade, Strays) brings us a fabular tale that examines the ways we connect—and the ideas and places we value—in our own increasingly disconnected world. 

"The tension between free-spirited off-grid living and prosaic adult responsibility runs through Alison McCreesh’s tender and loving ode to the people and landscapes of the Far North." —Joe Sacco, Paying the Land

At age 21, Alison hitchhiked to the Yukon and spent the summer living in a tent. 10 years later, in the deep of winter and seven months pregnant, she returns. Degrees of Separation is about what happened in between.

Over the course of a decade, artist Alison McCreesh lived, worked, and travelled north of the 60th parallel. Through a combination of autobiographical stories, drawings and sketches, Degrees of Separation offers an intimate and understated glimpse of the North as Alison experienced it. 

From frigid days spent killing time while stranded in the High Arctic, to the challenges of raising a baby in a small shack with no running water, it is one young woman's personal experience of both passing through and of setting down roots.

Tinged with McCreesh's characteristic blend of humour and humanity, Degrees of Separation is about the north and its vastness and its diversity. While the backdrop may seem foreign to many, this collection is also a universal exploration of those transformative years from young-adulthood to motherhood. It's a graphic novel navigating themes of connection and disconnect, between the north and the south, but also between different norths and between our different selves.

A story about a newly realized lesbian woman in her 40s, hellbent on reaching spiritual enlightenment. Even if it kills her. 

Cheryl just came out and she's been doing just fine, thanks for asking!!!! She just broke up with her dog, quit gluten, cut contact with her father, and is just really trying to focus on getting enough water daily! It's all going great!! Except it isn't and everything is terrible, because no matter what Cheryl does she really can't shake that there's something wrong deep down in the core of her being. 

What would really fix things would be to address her lingering internalized homophobia and childhood trauma. Or reach total spiritual enlightenment, reaching total enlightenment sounds easier, let's go with that one. As Cheryl falls further down the New Age wellness industrial complex however, the world turns out to be a lot weirder and sicker than she could have ever imagined. Now Cheryl is forced to confront that not only is it not all about her, but that she might have some part to play in making it better. 

From the (self-proclaimed) cackling gremlin that created Lake Jehovah, Cheryl is a vision board of a coming out gone sideways. 

"Funny and informative, Jade effortlessly hits the sweet spot between silly and sincere to deliver a delightful treat despite its heavy topic. Grab a snack, a drink and definitely grab Food School!" – Hana Chatani, author of Give Her Back To Me

A twenty-something college dropout enrols in a full-time outpatient program for eating disorder recovery. As they change their relationship with food, their relationships with people change, too. 

Olive's post-secondary education isn't what they'd planned. Instead of college, they spend five days a week, eight hours a day at what Olive calls "Food School": a full-time outpatient program for eating disorder recovery where they learn, talk, and cry about eating disorders as part of a survivor support group. 

Intensely committed to recovery, Olive confronts the secretive, self-destructive, and sometimes tragically comedic nature of their illness, while struggling with the complexities of modern mental health care. With support and perspective from their roommate, a fellow patient, and their partner, Olive learns to open up about their abusive relationship with food and exercise—and finds ways to cope with the reality of living in a society that actively encourages disordered eating. 

In this fictional slice of life comic, Jade Armstrong (Scout Is Not a Band Kid) explores the ways our relationships with food impact our connections with the people we love.

Lea walks her usual route through the city when a young man steals her bag. She chases him into an alley but quickly loses her bearings—each alley leads into yet another alley, the sounds of the city fade away, and the thief is nowhere to be seen. Hopelessly searching for an exit, she eventually encounters Dee, one of the alleyfolk who obsessively makes maps of his surroundings and is convinced that the alleys have been gradually narrowing over time. The more of these alleyfolk Lea gets to know, the more she sees that they agree: the labyrinth they inhabit is shifting, creating a state of deep uncertainty. When the presence of the thief becomes a subject of contention, Lea finds herself entangled in the affairs of a world fated to end soon. Closing Act examines the complex networks that make up a city and finds a strange, shifting environment within it, one where its inhabitants face a looming existential threat.

Alone in Japan, a travelling artist writes to a beloved poet while trying to reignite the urge to draw. Continued correspondence reveals loneliness and desperation that stretch far beyond the isolation of solo travel and the typical self-reckoning that comes with it. Composed as a series of illustrated letters, Dear Kenneth is a sensitive work of comic auto-fiction that touches on themes of projection and selfishness set to the backdrop of a months-long trip to Japan. Rendered entirely in graphite and coloured pencil, Degenstein examines the desperate act of taking things and making them into what we need them to be, rather than trying to connect with them in a genuine way; when desperate enough, anything can be projected upon: a person, a poet, an artist, a city. Numbed by medication and burning under the Kyoto sun, the artist is forced to self-evaluate, face the consequences of running from oneself, and confront what it means to make artwork out of misery.

Co-published by Art Gallery of Hamilton

THIS IS SERIOUS reveals the considerable contributions artists from across the country are making to the greater field of global comics - of which Toronto, Montreal, and Hamilton are significant creative centres. Surveying the work of 40 contemporary Canadian artists, THIS IS SERIOUS showcases the energy of underground artistic production and indie publishing, expressed through a diverse range of artists. Co-curated by Alana Traficante and award-winning cartoonist Joe Ollmann, THIS IS SERIOUS presents the recent arc of production that has helped shaped the current state of graphic storytelling, here and now, on home soil. With contributions from Jeet Heer and Peggy Burns. Featuring the work of contemporary and historical Hamilton artists such as: David Collier, Jesse Jacobs, Sylvia Nickerson, Doug Wright, James Simpkins and Joe Ollmann. Featuring four of the most well-respected Canadian artists: Seth, Julie Doucet, Fiona Smyth and Chester Brown. Also featuring a national survey of artists working today, including: Jillian Tamaki, Michael Deforge, Hartley Lin, Ho Che Anderson, Gord Hill, Diane Obom, Kate Beaton, and Pascal Girard, among many more.

Montreal punk legend and alternative cartoonist Rick Trembles was roommates with the editor of the influential zine Fish Piss where these autobiographical strips were first published. After a midnight move from a crumbling apartment Trembles gradually started going through his childhood belongings, which started triggering memories from his past. Worried about them fading from memory as time wore on, he took the opportunity to document them before they could vanish.

One of his last entries in this series questioned the nature of selective memory, why certain inanities from one’s past might resonate more than others, and why, no matter how hard you try, there’s no guarantee you’ll remember any particular event years down the line. The book also contains other autobiographical work from Trembles, created over his active 40 years.

Winner of Best Book and Best First Book at the Manitoba Book Awards

Fractures form in a tight-knit Mennonite community, echoing the struggles experienced in small towns across North America

When a non-denominational megachurch opens on the edges of a rural Mennonite community, a quiet—but longstanding—battle begins to reveal itself. For years, the traditionalists in the community have held fast to the values and beliefs they grew up with, while other community members have begun raising important questions about LGBTQ+ inclusion, Indigenous land rights, and the Mennonite legacy of pacifism.

Through a series of vignettes, Shelterbelts explores the perspectives, experiences and limitations of a wide range of characters who find themselves increasingly at odds with their surroundings. A pastor and his queer daughter learn that a family has left their church because of the “LGBT issue.” Young activists butt heads with a farmer over the construction of a pipeline happening on his fields. A librarian leaves suggestive notes for readers inside popular library books.

By pulling these threads together, artist Jonathan Dyck has woven a rich tapestry—one that depicts a close-knit community in the midst of defining its future as it reckons with its past.

Gathering Pauls’s comics from magazines, comic festivals and zine making workshops, these comics are his most personal work yet. You’ll learn stories about the author’s family, racism and identity, Yukon history, winter activities, Southern Tutchone language lessons and cultural practices. Have you ever wanted to learn how to Knuckle Hop? or to acknowledge and respect the Indigenous land you’re on? Or how to be an ally to Indigenous people? Well, gather around and hear this Kwändǖr! (Story!)

Nina Bunjevac's brilliant debut graphic novel returns in this expanded 10th Anniversary edition.

“Powered by an expressive black and white drawing style, reminiscent of Robert Crumb and the meticulous pointillist technique of Drew Friedman, the dark undertone of Bunjevac’s humour brings into light the range of socio-political issues her comics deal with, such as gender, nationalism or urban alienation, always from an ironic feminist perspective. Her chain-smoking, slightly alcoholic and manically depressed character Zorka may just be today’s ultimate antiheroine. A Balkan immigrant in the Brave New World, working in that same meat factory for the last twenty years, tormented by family constraints and her own secret desires… we simply can’t get enough of her.” — BTurn

For mature audiences

One of NYPL's Best New Comics of 2023 for Adults.

A poignant fable about a young woman who is captivated by a set of recently discovered notebooks and leaves her isolated community to search for their author—a journey that ultimately makes her question what she wants and what she’s willing to leave behind.

The residents of an isolated village in a dreamlike world scavenge for supplies in the surrounding forest, collecting scattered items left over from a time long past. No one strays far from this community, fearing what may lie beyond it. When they find a stack of notebooks by an unknown author, a young villager becomes obsessed with their contents. She sets out on a quest to find the writer. As she ventures into the unknown, she discovers a world both barren and increasingly complex. The closer she gets to her goal, the more she realizes that the encounter she's been seeking probably won't be what she wanted.

In Adherent, Chris W. Kim (Herman by Trade, Strays) brings us a fabular tale that examines the ways we connect—and the ideas and places we value—in our own increasingly disconnected world. 

"The tension between free-spirited off-grid living and prosaic adult responsibility runs through Alison McCreesh’s tender and loving ode to the people and landscapes of the Far North." —Joe Sacco, Paying the Land

At age 21, Alison hitchhiked to the Yukon and spent the summer living in a tent. 10 years later, in the deep of winter and seven months pregnant, she returns. Degrees of Separation is about what happened in between.

Over the course of a decade, artist Alison McCreesh lived, worked, and travelled north of the 60th parallel. Through a combination of autobiographical stories, drawings and sketches, Degrees of Separation offers an intimate and understated glimpse of the North as Alison experienced it. 

From frigid days spent killing time while stranded in the High Arctic, to the challenges of raising a baby in a small shack with no running water, it is one young woman's personal experience of both passing through and of setting down roots.

Tinged with McCreesh's characteristic blend of humour and humanity, Degrees of Separation is about the north and its vastness and its diversity. While the backdrop may seem foreign to many, this collection is also a universal exploration of those transformative years from young-adulthood to motherhood. It's a graphic novel navigating themes of connection and disconnect, between the north and the south, but also between different norths and between our different selves.

A story about a newly realized lesbian woman in her 40s, hellbent on reaching spiritual enlightenment. Even if it kills her. 

Cheryl just came out and she's been doing just fine, thanks for asking!!!! She just broke up with her dog, quit gluten, cut contact with her father, and is just really trying to focus on getting enough water daily! It's all going great!! Except it isn't and everything is terrible, because no matter what Cheryl does she really can't shake that there's something wrong deep down in the core of her being. 

What would really fix things would be to address her lingering internalized homophobia and childhood trauma. Or reach total spiritual enlightenment, reaching total enlightenment sounds easier, let's go with that one. As Cheryl falls further down the New Age wellness industrial complex however, the world turns out to be a lot weirder and sicker than she could have ever imagined. Now Cheryl is forced to confront that not only is it not all about her, but that she might have some part to play in making it better. 

From the (self-proclaimed) cackling gremlin that created Lake Jehovah, Cheryl is a vision board of a coming out gone sideways. 

"Funny and informative, Jade effortlessly hits the sweet spot between silly and sincere to deliver a delightful treat despite its heavy topic. Grab a snack, a drink and definitely grab Food School!" – Hana Chatani, author of Give Her Back To Me

A twenty-something college dropout enrols in a full-time outpatient program for eating disorder recovery. As they change their relationship with food, their relationships with people change, too. 

Olive's post-secondary education isn't what they'd planned. Instead of college, they spend five days a week, eight hours a day at what Olive calls "Food School": a full-time outpatient program for eating disorder recovery where they learn, talk, and cry about eating disorders as part of a survivor support group. 

Intensely committed to recovery, Olive confronts the secretive, self-destructive, and sometimes tragically comedic nature of their illness, while struggling with the complexities of modern mental health care. With support and perspective from their roommate, a fellow patient, and their partner, Olive learns to open up about their abusive relationship with food and exercise—and finds ways to cope with the reality of living in a society that actively encourages disordered eating. 

In this fictional slice of life comic, Jade Armstrong (Scout Is Not a Band Kid) explores the ways our relationships with food impact our connections with the people we love.

Lea walks her usual route through the city when a young man steals her bag. She chases him into an alley but quickly loses her bearings—each alley leads into yet another alley, the sounds of the city fade away, and the thief is nowhere to be seen. Hopelessly searching for an exit, she eventually encounters Dee, one of the alleyfolk who obsessively makes maps of his surroundings and is convinced that the alleys have been gradually narrowing over time. The more of these alleyfolk Lea gets to know, the more she sees that they agree: the labyrinth they inhabit is shifting, creating a state of deep uncertainty. When the presence of the thief becomes a subject of contention, Lea finds herself entangled in the affairs of a world fated to end soon. Closing Act examines the complex networks that make up a city and finds a strange, shifting environment within it, one where its inhabitants face a looming existential threat.

Alone in Japan, a travelling artist writes to a beloved poet while trying to reignite the urge to draw. Continued correspondence reveals loneliness and desperation that stretch far beyond the isolation of solo travel and the typical self-reckoning that comes with it. Composed as a series of illustrated letters, Dear Kenneth is a sensitive work of comic auto-fiction that touches on themes of projection and selfishness set to the backdrop of a months-long trip to Japan. Rendered entirely in graphite and coloured pencil, Degenstein examines the desperate act of taking things and making them into what we need them to be, rather than trying to connect with them in a genuine way; when desperate enough, anything can be projected upon: a person, a poet, an artist, a city. Numbed by medication and burning under the Kyoto sun, the artist is forced to self-evaluate, face the consequences of running from oneself, and confront what it means to make artwork out of misery.

Co-published by Art Gallery of Hamilton

THIS IS SERIOUS reveals the considerable contributions artists from across the country are making to the greater field of global comics - of which Toronto, Montreal, and Hamilton are significant creative centres. Surveying the work of 40 contemporary Canadian artists, THIS IS SERIOUS showcases the energy of underground artistic production and indie publishing, expressed through a diverse range of artists. Co-curated by Alana Traficante and award-winning cartoonist Joe Ollmann, THIS IS SERIOUS presents the recent arc of production that has helped shaped the current state of graphic storytelling, here and now, on home soil. With contributions from Jeet Heer and Peggy Burns. Featuring the work of contemporary and historical Hamilton artists such as: David Collier, Jesse Jacobs, Sylvia Nickerson, Doug Wright, James Simpkins and Joe Ollmann. Featuring four of the most well-respected Canadian artists: Seth, Julie Doucet, Fiona Smyth and Chester Brown. Also featuring a national survey of artists working today, including: Jillian Tamaki, Michael Deforge, Hartley Lin, Ho Che Anderson, Gord Hill, Diane Obom, Kate Beaton, and Pascal Girard, among many more.