About this item
A graphic memoir about a 13-year-old girl's Beatles obsession and the concert of a lifetime! Critically acclaimed cartoonist Carol Tyler recreates the exhilaration and excitement of Beatlemania at its height in 1965, her personal obsession with the Beatles, and her odyssey that leads her to the famous Beatles Chicago concert later that year. Told in the voice of its 13-year-old author, Fab 4 Mania is a facsimile of the diary that she kept throughout 1965, and is brimming with rich period details, humor, and insight. It's a look into the life of a teenager from a working-class family whose love of music awakens her senses and opens her up to the world beyond that of small-town Fox Lake, Illinois. It is also about the Beatles, as seen through the eyes of a young, giddy teenager and a reflective, adult artist, and the joy the band gives. Full-color illustrations throughout.
About the Author
Carol Tyler (C. Tyler) is an award-winning American cartoonist, painter, writer, educator and comedian best known for her autobiographical stories that reflect her struggles and triumphs as an artist, worker, wife, daughter and mother. The legendary cartoonist Robert Crumb describes her work as having "...the extremely rare quality of genuine, authentic heart." Cartoonist Chris Ware refers to her as "...one of the true greats of the original Underground Comix generation."
Born on the north side of Chicago in the 1950s, Carol Tyler was the middle child in a working class Catholic family. Taught by nuns from K-12, she graduated from art school in Tennessee and then received an MFA in painting from Syracuse University in the 1980s. While in graduate school, she became interested in sequence and narratives.
Aline Crumb was the first to publish her work in Weirdo Magazine beginning in 1987. In 1988, Tyler was awarded the Dori Seda Memorial award for Best New Female Cartoonist. Her work has been nominated for 10 Eisner Awards 2 Harveys, 2 Ignatzes and she's been a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize. Tyler was also named on the list of the Top 100 Cartoonists of the Century.
For over two decades, her work has appeared in various publications like R. Crumb's Weirdo, the L.A. Times, Twisted Sisters, Wimmens, Kramers Ergot 7, the Yale Anthologies and other publications too numerous to mention.
Ms. Tyler's latest book is the monumental 'Soldier's Heart: The Campaign To Understand My WWII Veteran Father, A Daughter's Memoir.' It is the complete, redesigned single volume of the 'You'll Never Know' trilogy. This spectacular work, which took a decade to write and draw, chronicles her search for the truth about what happened to her father during World War II and the damage his war had on her life. Douglas Wolk of the New York Times writes: "It's impossible not to compare 'You'll Never Know' with Art Spiegelman's 'Maus,' the first great graphic novel about what happened to a cartoonist's father during World War II. They're very different sorts of books, though, in both their means and their ends. 'Maus' is largely Vladek Spiegelman's own testimony amplified by the book's abject, minimal style and the allegory of its cat-and-mouse imagery, and is only secondarily about its creator's relationship with his father and his struggle with the enormity of his topic. Tyler's book is a vivid, affecting, eccentrically stylish frame built around a terrible silence."
'You'll Never Know' was released in three installments: 'Book I: A Good & Decent Man' in 2009. 'Book II: Collateral Damage' in 2010. 'Book III: Soldier's Heart' in 2012. Note the subtitle of Book III, 'Soldier's Heart,' which appropriately became the title when all thr
