Conversations, James Kochalka, Jeffery Brown, Craig Thompson

which I got in the Top Shelf package. These books may be a little self-indulgent for the cartoonists (Kochalka with Craig Thompson and Jeffrey Brown), but that doesn't make them any less important to the artists that read them; first of all, you get to see them play with each other's style, not to mention 'hear' a back and forth discussion between three of the best autobiography cartoonists in the field today. The first issue (with Craig Thompson), focuses on why we create art—and what it is to us—in a world so complex and stacked against us, while the second issue features Brown and Kochalka focuses on how the art is meaningful to us and us alone, if not for the people who read/ingest it.

So, yeah. Maybe it's self-indulgence. But I was just as much indulged.