*The Waiting* is the fictional story of Gwija, told by her novelist daughter Jina. When Gwija was 17 years old, after hearing that the Japanese were seizing unmarried girls, her family married her in a hurry to a man she didn't know. Japan fell, Korea gained its independence, and the couple started a family. But peace didn’t come. The young family—now four—fled south. On the road, while breastfeeding and changing her daughter, Gwija was separated from her husband and son. Then 70 years passed. Seventy years of waiting. Gwija is now an elderly woman and Jina can’t stop thinking about the promise she made to help find her brother. (Source: Drawn & Quarterly)

Over four decades ago, Yoshihiro Tastsumi expanded the horizons of comics storytelling by using the visual language of manga to tell gritty, literary short stories about the private lives of everyday people. He has been called "the grandfather of Japanese alternative comics" and has influenced generations of cartoonists, but, until now, the majority of his works has remained unavailable outside of Japan. By turns poetic, comical, and deeply unsettling, Abandon the Old in Tokyo is a collection of unforgettable short stories from the modern master. *- Drawn & Quarterly* "Starkly beautiful... revelatory... fearless." *- The Village Voice* "Marvelously evocative... Tatsumis's stories flow with dreamlike ambiguity" *- Publishers Weekly* "With both fascination and empathy, Tatsumi explores the lives of people on society's bottom rung and exposes a world of lost souls, unattainable dreams, and unexpected redemption." *- Bookforum*

A group of men wait outside a blood bank exchanging stories while waiting to sell their blood so they can eat for the day.

When the Showa Era began, Mizuki himself was just a few years old, so his earliest memories coincide with the earliest events of the Era. With his trusty narrator Rat Man, Mizuki brings history into the realm of the personal, making it palatable, and indeed compelling, for young audiences as well as more mature readers. As he describes the militarization that leads up to World War II, Mizuki’s stance toward war is thoughtful and often downright critical – his portrayal of the Nanjing Massacre clearly paints the incident (a disputed topic within Japan) as an atrocity. Mizuki’s Showa is a beautifully told history that tracks how technological developments and the country’s shifting economic stability had a role in shaping Japan’s foreign policy in the early twentieth century. (Source: Drawn & Quarterly)

Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths is his first book to be translated into English and is a semiautobiographical account of the desperate final weeks of a Japanese infantry unit at the end of World War II. The soldiers are told that they must go into battle and die for the honor of their country, with certain execution facing them if they return alive. Mizuki was a soldier himself (he was severely injured and lost an arm) and uses his experiences to convey the devastating consequences and moral depravity of the war. (Source: Drawn & Quarterly) *Note: Won Best U.S. Edition of International Material at the Eisner Awards in 2012.*

Grass is a powerful anti-war graphic novel, offering up firsthand the life story of a Korean girl named Ok-Sun Lee who was forced into sexual slavery for the Japanese Imperial Army during the second World War — a disputed chapter in 20th century Asian history. *Notes: **Included short story:** Ro Salpyeoboneun Ilbongun 'Wianbu' (로 살펴보는 일본군 '위안부') by Myeong-Suk Yun. Nominated to the Eisner Comic Industry Awards 2020.*

It’s the 17th century in Japan. Child outcast Kamui lives on the fringes of a miserably stratified society. Fueled by pure grit, rage, and a dash of cunning, his only way out is to take up the mantle of ninja. Follow scrappy peasants, cold-blooded ninja, and warriors both disgraced and exalted as they navigate the unforgiving hardships of a violent yet hopeful age. With its vivid and critical attention to social injustice and environmental issues against a backdrop of heart-pounding action and romance, this multilayered gekiga drama not only redefined ninja and samurai fantasy, it also offers astonishing parallels with the modern day. (Source: Drawn & Quarterly)

With gorgeously detailed yet minimal art, cartoonist Yeon-Sik Hong explores his move with his wife to a small house atop a rural mountain, replacing the high-rent hubbub of Seoul with the quiet murmur of the country. With their dog, cats, and chickens by their side, the simple life and isolation they so desperately craved proves to present new anxieties. Hong paints a beautiful portrait of the Korean countryside, changing seasons, and the universal relationships humans have with each other as well as nature, both of which are sometimes frustrating but always rewarding. (Source: Drawn & Quarterly)

Oneshots created in 'gekiga' style. A lone man travels the country, projecting pornographic films for private individuals while attempting to maintain a normal home life. A medical student lives a secret life as a sperm donor, and finds his world turned upside down when his donations are rejected by the fertility clinic. A young couple's marriage is irrevocably affected when a sewer rat takes up residence in their home. The lives of two men become intertwined when one hires the other to observe his sexual escapades through a telescope. An auto mechanic's obsession with a female TV personality turns fatal after a chance meeting between the two. The volume consists of the short stories: Piranha, Projectionist, Black Smoke, The Burden, Test Tube, Pimp, The Push Man, Sewer, Telescope, The Killer, Traffic Accident, Make-Up, Disinfection, Who Are You?, Bedridden, My Hitler

Jin-Ju is bad. She smokes, drinks, runs away from home, and has no qualms making her parents worry. Her mother and sister beg her to be a better student, sister, daughter; her beleaguered father expresses his concerns with his fists. Bad Friends is set in the 1990s in a South Korea torn between tradition and Western modernity and haunted by an air of generalized gloom. Cycles of abuse abound as the characters enact violence within their power structures: parents beat children, teachers beat students, older students beat younger students. But at each moment the duress verges on bleakness, Ancco pulls back with soft moments of friendship between Jin-Ju and her best friend, Jeong-Ae. What unfolds is a story of female friendship, a Ferrante-esque connection formed through youthful excess, malaise, and struggle that stays with the young women into adulthood. Served by a dry and precise line, Bad Friends viscerally captures the adolescent years of two young women who want and know they deserve something different, but, ultimately, are unable to follow through. In a culture where young women are at a systemic disadvantage, Ancco creates a testimonial to female friendship as a powerful tool for survival. Jin-Ju forgets her worst adolescent memories, but she cannot ever shake the memory of her friendship with Jeong-Ae during her most tumultuous years. (Source: Drawn & Quarterly, edited)

Madang is an artist and new father who moves to a quiet home in the countryside with his wife and young baby, excited to build a new life full of hope and joy, complete with a garden and even snow. But soon reality sets in and his attention is divided between his growing happy family and his impoverished parents back in Seoul in a dingy basement apartment. With an ailing mother in and out of the hospital and an alcoholic father, Madang struggles to overcome the exhaustion and frustration of trying to be everything all at once: a good son, devoted father, and loving husband. To cope, he finds himself reminiscing about their family meals together, particularly his mother's kimchi, a traditional dish that is prepared by the family and requires months of fermentation. Memories of his mother's glorious cooking―so good it would prompt a young Madang and his brother into song―soothe the family. With her impending death, Madang races to learn her recipes and bring together the three generations at the family table while it's still possible. This is a beautiful and thoughtful meditation on how the kitchen and communal cooking―in the past, present, and future―bind a family together amidst the inevitable. (Source: Drawn & Quarterly)

At nineteen, the idea that you have your whole life ahead of you with endless possibilities can leave you terrifyingly stiff. Throwing mobility to the wind, you dull yourself with booze. The grownups around you are stunted by their own failures so they act out—with alcohol, too, sometimes with violence. What was once the hope of youth quickly spirals into powerlessness and malaise as the days trickle by you. Ancco expertly renders the moment of suspension between the desire to grow up and the fear that accompanies it. Autobiography blends with fiction in these coming-of-age stories about people reckoning with their place in their community and women coming to terms with other women. A boy living with HIV tries to decide how he’s going to tell his parents—or whether he should tell them at all. A mother puts pressure on her daughter to pass her exams, and the stress of it all drives them both to drink, fueling a toxic relationship with a lot of care just below the ugly surface. Another girl keeps getting bruises, but who’s inflicting the damage—herself or a loved one? And dogs—seemingly the only ones capable of unconditional love-—offer some reprieve. Ancco delivers a cutting panorama of contemporary Korean society that’s much darker than one might expect, while also brimming with life and the vitality of youth. (Source: Drawn & Quarterly)