Description

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A L.A. Times Book Prize Graphic Novel Finalist

A New York Public Library Top 5 Comic Strip Collection

For Better or For Worse meets the satirical humor of contemporary American life in Cartoonshow, where single dading, money troubles, and political turmoil take the stage.

Cartoonist and animator Derek M. Ballard makes modern American family comics. It's not his fault that being a single parent in America is kind of a nightmare.

Derek is a solo parent raising three kids in the American South, while trying to make art. Told in a series of free-flowing and often hilarious comic essays, Cartoonshow gets to the heart of the struggle to be a creative person in a society that doesn't value anything other than how much it can grind out of you. Covid, poverty, the failing social safety net, predatory lenders, and literal acts of God can't stop our hero!

About the Author

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Derek M. Ballard is, first and foremost, a single parent of three kids in Gainesville, Florida. Sometimes he's lucky and he gets to work on cartoons for Cartoon Network, Netflix, or HBO. Every now and then he's able to do some comics for The Nib. After he takes the kids to school and cooks dinner, he teaches some comics classes for The Sequential Artists Workshop. But he's mainly just a plain old dad.

Praise For…

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"Being a single parent is no joke, but Derek M Ballard's hilarious graphic novel memoir, Cartoonshow, gets plenty of laughs in anyway. ...Even though he's barely treading water, Ballard is still able to deliver a cathartic and hopeful experience to readers through his keen sense of humor and defiant tenacity, all on full chaotic display in Ballard’s signature frenzied illustration style, vividly bringing to life this tumultuous story."
— New York Public Library, Top 5 Comic Strip Collections of 2023

"I laughed and cried, y'all these are the real $@#% journal comics. Drawings that could slay a dragon. Every punchline a funny knife in your eye."
— - Pendleton Ward