This collection features all of Girlhero creator Megan Kelso's non-Bottlecap stories from that title as well as stories from Action Girl and Dark Horse Presents. Megan scrutinizes bicycle messengers, venereal diseases, infidelity, unwanted pregnancies, temporary work assignments,family reunions, and classroom daydreams in a subtle and unexpected manner. Two brand new stories also round out this collection of thought-provoking writing and simple-yet-beautiful cartooning from one of comicdom's brightest female stars.

Queen of the Black Black

Comics & Graphic Novels

Kelso, Megan

Graphic Novels

Highwater Books

by Megan Kelso The Squirrel Mother is Megan Kelso's second collection of graphic short stories, all of which originally appeared in various magazines and anthologies between 2000 and 2005. Kelso's work is characterized by subject matter that fits roughly into two disparate camps: personal and semi-autobiographical stories that draw heavily on the details of her childhood and adolescence, and stories about the idea of America and American history, such as a trilogy of short pieces about Alexander Hamilton. The Squirrel Mother features 15 stories, including two stories, "Meow Face" and "Aide de Camp" done especially for this volume.

Squirrel Mother

Reference

Fantagraphics Books

Megan Kelso has proved herself a master of the cartoon short story with Squirrel Mother (2006, currently in its 2nd printing), and serial (with her New York Times Funny Pages comic, Watergate Sue). With Artichoke Tales, Kelso expands her range (and her page count) by creating a family saga spanning three generations and an entire continent. Artichoke Tales is a 176-page coming -of-age story about a young girl named Brigitte whose family is caught between the two warring sides of a civil war between people who have artichoke leaves instead of hair. Influenced in equal parts by Little House on the Prairie, The Thorn Birds, Dharma Bums, and Cold Mountain, Kelso weaves a moving story about family amidst war. Kelso's visual storytelling, uniquely combining delicate line-work with rhythmic, musical page compositions, creates a dramatic tension between intimate, ruminative character studies and the unflinching depiction of the consequences of war and carnage, lending cohesion and resonance to a generational epic.

Artichoke Tales

<ul><li>
Queen of the Black Black collects Megan Kelso's self-published early Girlhero stips as well as a few from other sources. Fans will remember her other works: the "Watergate Sue" serial in the New York Times' Sunday Magazine and Artichoke Tales. In this new collection, Kelso scrutinizes bicycle messengers, venereal diseases, infidelity, unwanted pregnancies, temporary work assignments, family reunions, and classroom daydreams in subtle and unexpected manners, setting herself technical challenges such as depicting music in comics (the virtuoso "The Daddy Mask," with its sensuous gray swirls of sound on the page), integrating lettering into artwork in creative ways, and generally working her way toward what would become her mature style.</li></ul>

Queen of the Black Black TP

A suite of five brilliant comics stories united by themes of motherhood, family, and love. The Guardian,Best Graphic Novels of 2022 
Publishers Weekly,Best Graphic Novels of 2022 
Who Will Make the Pancakes collects five deeply social stories by the acclaimed cartoonist Megan Kelso, exploring the connective tissue that binds us together despite our individual, interior experience. These stories, created over the past 15 years ― roughly contemporaneously with the author’s own journey as a mother― wrestle with the concept of motherhood and the way the experience informs and impacts concepts of identity, racism, class, love, and even abuse. 
The book opens with “Watergate Sue,” originally serialized in The New York Times Magazine over six months in 2007. Spanning two generations of mothers/daughters, Eve’s obsession with Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal throughout 1973 heightens her self-doubt about whether she wants to raise more children (resonantly mirroring the anxiety many of us had while doom scrolling our way through the Trump administration). Some 30 years later, her daughter, Sue, is now grown and beginning her own family and attempting to reconcile her mother’s experience with her own. 
“Cats in Service” is a contemporary fable about how a death in the family leads a young couple to adopt several cats who have been expertly trained to tend to their every need. “The Egg Room” profiles middle-aged Florence, caught between dreams of how her life might have unfolded and the shrunken reality. “The Golden Lasso” turns the focus to adolescence, using rock climbing as a set piece for a story about innocence lost, while “Korin Voss” chronicles a few months in the life of a single mother in the late 1940s. 
Taken collectively, Who Will Make the Pancakes showcases Kelso’s unique voice in graphic fiction (one more in tune with writers such as Alice Munro, Sarah Waters, or Ann Patchett than most graphic novelists) and a stylistic command that tailors her approachable and warm cartooning style for each story’s needs. Full-color illustrations throughout

Who Will Make the Pancakes: Five Stories

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Kelso, Megan. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Kelso, Megan

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Kelso, Megan. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Queen of the Black Black

Squirrel Mother

Artichoke Tales

Queen of the Black Black TP

Who Will Make the Pancakes: Five Stories

Artichoke Tales