What a Wonderful World!: Volume 1

by Inio Asano, 205 pages

Lose everything in a fire?  Quit your job without a back-up plan?  Find yourself taken hostage by a guy in a teddy bear costume?  Characters face changes big and small in this darkly funny, deeply thoughtful, and cleverly-plotted manga about what it means to be alive.

This volume is only half the story, leaving the helplessly hooked reader wondering how it all fits together.

A Contract with God: A Novel

by Will Eisner, 180 pages

Four stories, one building. After a lifetime of goodness, a man's faith is broken by the loss of a child. An itinerant amateur singer wanders beneath the windows. An unpleasant yet pitiable building superintendent suffers as the landlord's stand-in. And futures are determined and innocence lost during a holiday in the country.

In this early work, the man for whom American graphic literature's top prize is named uses his own memories and impressions to draw a fictional yet truth-inspired picture of life in New York's tenements in the first half of the twentieth century. Sad, cynically funny, and thoughtful.