How to Be Happy (Hardcover) (comics)

This is the first collection of literary short comics stories by an award-winning cartoonist.

Eleanor Davis’s How to be Happy is the artist’s first collection of graphic/literary short stories. Davis is one of the finest cartoonists of her generation, and has been producing comics since the mid-2000s. Happy represents the best stories she’s drawn for such curatorial venues as Mome and No-Brow, as well as her own self-publishing and web efforts. Davis achieves a rare, subtle poignancy in her narratives that are at once compelling and elusive, pregnant with mystery and a deeply satisfying emotional resonance. Happy shows the full range of Davis’s graphic skills ― sketchy drawing, polished pen and ink line work, and meticulously designed full color painted panels― which are always in the service of a narrative that builds to a quietly devastating climax.

Named one of NPR's and Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 2014.

Shortlist, Slate's 2014 Cartoonist Studio Prize for Best Print Comic of the Year.

2015 Ignatz Award Winner: Outstanding Anthology or Collection.

Full color with 48 black and white pages.

“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)

“Davis’s brightly coloured, melancholic short stories catalogue different approaches to the form -- here a science fiction tale, there a glimpse of suburban young love -- all featuring lost souls desperate for happiness.” (Sean Rogers)

"The excellence and variety of the art in this short comics story collection is matched only by the painful incisiveness of the stories, most circling around attempts both foolish and sincere to find happiness. Some of Davis's art styles are reminiscent of her children's books (Secret Science Alliance, Stinky)―simple supple black and white line drawings―others resemble Little Golden Books, bright blocks of colors and button nosed characters, but only as if written by Raymond Carver. ... A powerful collection that resonates with all the ills, real and imagined, of our modern life.” (Publishers Weekly)