Today, Drawn & Quarterly releases new, beautifully-designed editions of John Porcellino’s King-Cat Classix, Map of My Heart, and Perfect Example. King-Cat Classix collects material from the first years of Porcellino’s King-Cat Comics from 1989-1996. Map of My Heart collects comics penned between 1996 and 2006 during a period of isolation following divorce. And finally, Perfect Example is Porcellino’s coming-of-age memoir about the eternally awkward year between the end of high school and the start of college—or whatever else is next.

Now in gorgeous paperback editions, the John P Library is yours to behold! 

John P’s comics provide the cognitive space to reflect on your own existence—the little moments that make up a life lived. His comics are pensive and brimming with presence. He takes us to his highschool days with awkward girlfriends and guitar jams, he walks us along the streets of his midwestern home towns, holding our hands ever so gently as we remember with him. In his classic minimalistic style, John miraculously captures a depth of feeling only merely approached by the most detailed novels. His work is quiet, simple, funny, and forever honest. 

Mental illness and its manifestations in self-doubt, anxiety, and depression loom large in these editions, making them uniquely suited to a pandemic reading environment.

The immediate evocations of social isolation, depression, nostalgia, and memory take on new meaning as we all remain separate from everyone and everything we know. In John’s books we see a character who’s terrified of being alone, and with him, we can all feel a bit less crazy.

Pick up your copies of these new editions today. You’ll find a friend in John. And he walks you through his memory with a combination of empathy and poetic grace, he’ll invite you to look upon your own life with that same compassion, that same acknowledgement of beauty in the everyday.

King-Cat Classix, Map of My Heart, and Perfect Example are in store today.