Friends Is Friends

by Greg Cook

Overview

Friends Is Friends tells the story of complicated friendships through a series of funny, bittersweet vignettes. Greg Cook's deceptively sweet storybook world is imbued with grown-up humor that is both dark and whimsical. The result is a fable for adults, where the only clear moral is this: friendship isn't easy, whether you're a hobo or a snowman or a ghost.

Friends Is Friends is indie-favorite Greg Cook's first major work in over a decade. This long-awaited tragicomedy is a great stand-alone work for both new and established graphic novel readers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781626728981
Publisher:	First Second
Publication date:	08/16/2016
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
File size:	42 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Greg Cook was part of the new wave of underground cartoonists who emerged in the mid-90s and pushed the boundaries of contemporary comic books. His work has been featured in Nickelodeon Magazine, The Believer, Arthur, Non, and numerous other publications. His first graphic novel, Catch As Catch Can, was published by Highwater Books in 2001 and helped him win the "Promising New Talent" award at the Small Press Expo in Bethesda, MD the following year. Friends is Friends, Cook's long-awaited graphic novel from First Second, uses dark humor is explore the bonds of friendship among a cast of cute cartoon animals.
Greg Cook was part of the new wave of underground cartoonists who emerged in the mid-90s and pushed the boundaries of contemporary comic books. His work has been featured in Nickelodeon Magazine, The Believer,Arthur, Non, and numerous other publications. His first graphic novel, Catch As Catch Can, was published by Highwater Books in 2001 and helped him win the "Promising New Talent" award at the Small Press Expo in Bethesda, MD the following year. Friends is Friends, Cook's long-awaited graphic novel from First Second, uses dark humor is explore the bonds of friendship among a cast of cute cartoon animals.

Editorial Reviews

07/18/2016
The sad elephant hobo on the cover of Cook’s first graphic novel in a decade gazes out from clots of dark ink, looking deeply haunted. This sets the tone of a much heavier story than what is generally told with anthropomorphic talking animals. Will, a young pig, befriends, and then insults and abuses, the elephant hobo. His older sister later meets the elephant and they share a sense of melancholy, but then, in a bizarre twist, the two pigs discover they have more family history with the elephant than they realized. Cook’s (Catch as Catch Can) obscure story—which also includes an aggressive little bear feuding with a ghost, and suggestions of a terribly violent but unseen crime—comes to an ambiguous ending. The interior line art, by contrast, is disarmingly cartoony. Readers of Cook’s stark comics depicting the war in Iraq will recognize his distinctively curly hand-lettered text, one of the book’s strengths. Weaknesses include the entirely borderless panels, which make an already confusing story even more so. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

"Despite the darker tone of the text, there is an elegant beauty here. Cook’s precise, economical drawings are frequently distilled to an emotional essence that is recognizable and frequently unsettling, from the cruelty of playground alliances to the unforgivable betrayals of adulthood." —Booklist

From the Publisher