Eleanor Davis is one of the finest cartoonists of her generation, and she's been producing comics since the mid-2000s. Representing the best stories she's drawn for such venues as MOME and Nobrow, as well as her own self-published and web efforts, Davis achieves a rare, subtle poignancy in her narratives. At once compelling and elusive, but always impregnated with mystery and deep emotional resonance, How to Be Happy will be a delight to readers and illustrators alike.
Eleanor Davis is one of the finest cartoonists of her generation, and she's been producing comics since the mid-2000s. Representing the best stories she's drawn for such venues as MOME and Nobrow, as well as her own self-published and web efforts, Davis achieves a rare, subtle poignancy in her narratives. At once compelling and elusive, but always impregnated with mystery and deep emotional resonance, How to Be Happy will be a delight to readers and illustrators alike.
Eleanor Davis is an award-winning cartoonist and illustrator. In 2009, Davis won the Eisner's Russ Manning Most Promising Newcomer Award and was named one of Print magazine's New Visual Artists. Her books include How To Be Happy (2014), Why Art? (2018), and The Hard Tomorrow (2019), which won the LA Times Book Prize for Graphic Novels and Comics. She lives in Athens, GA, with her husband, fellow cartoonist Drew Weing.
...How to be Happy [is] an imaginative collection of graphic
literary short stories... Don't be fooled by the title, though; you
won't find the key to happiness in these illustrations. Instead,
the story that emerges from them forms a cryptic play on society's
expectations for happiness.--Amber Hage-Ali "Columbus Alive"
...[How to Be Happy] is an inspired and inspiring collection of
short work clearly establishing Davis as a leading cartoonist of
the Tumblr era.... Davis' clever and sometimes jaw-droppingly
beautiful artwork makes [these] stories feel real.--Dan Kois
"Slate"
How to Be Happy is an argument for empathy, but not of the
call-and-response kind. The stories here know the world is often
heavy and intolerable. And also worthwhile; sometimes touched by
light, sometimes full of music. Empathy is knowing both sides of
the world, shouldering them and carrying on, searching for the
still unblemished parts of the soul.--Paul Arrand Rodgers "Heavy
Feather Review"
...[Davis's] stories often feature tremendous longing and sadness,
but they also lushly suggest what a blessing it is to be alive and
in the world. She presents, in short, a more realistic picture of
what it means to be a human, with our ever-present mind/body
tug-of-war, than almost anyone else out there making art. And what
art it is: there may be nothing Davis can't beautifully illustrate.
...How to Be Happy is fearless and fantastic, unafraid to break
rules or to make new ones.--Hillary Brown "Paste"
Eleanor Davis' breakthrough short story collection How to Be
Happy... is a gorgeous book filled with exquisite cartooning. Davis
switches between styles and subject matter with each story,
flitting between melancholy, heartbreak, and nostalgia with a
casual virtuosity.--Tim O'Neil "The A.V. Club"
Eleanor Davis's stylistic inconsistency is one of her greatest
strengths, and How to Be Happy, a collection of her short pieces,
shows off the breadth of her artistic range. ... Almost all of her
characters are casting about for ways to fight off despair...
They're doomed to failure, of course, but they keep
trying.--Douglas Wolk "The New York Times"
I could praise what Davis achieves in this book all day -- it's as
fine comicking as you could hope to come across: the enmeshing of
wonderful art with good, strong narrative that naturally prompts
and drives discussion and thought without it feeling overt or
jaggedly superficial, is superb. Exceptional cartooning is when
those elements come together in a cohesive manner, and Davis' work
is on that plane. I haven't come across any comics that raise
similar themes and ideas and yet How to Be Happy is widely, deeply
applicable and resonant. It works and works and works some more.
For many people this volume will be their introduction to Elenaor
Davis' work; I can't imagine anyone coming away
unimpressed.--Zainab Akhtar "Comics & Cola"
The art of Eleanor Davis sits proudly and comfortably on a
continuum with the celebrated work of David Mazzucchelli (Asterios
Polyp), Jeff Lemire (The Underwater Welder), and David B.
(Epileptic). Cartoony yet naturalistic, her art limns a world that
can shift from very real to utterly surreal, sometimes within the
same story. ... Like the body of a dead fox as depicted here by
Davis in all its gruesome magnificence, these stories hide thick
raw sinews beneath their glossy pelts.--Paul DiFilippo "Barnes &
Noble Review"
Though Davis' tales can be wildly different in look and narrative,
they are united by themes of yearning, of characters searching for
the thing that will make their lives better. ...Remarkable ...
exquisite ... How to Be Happy left me wanting more.--Carolina A.
Miranda "Los Angeles Times"
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