Cartoonshow Format: Hardback

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!

Derek M Ballard is, first and foremost, a single parent of three kids in Gainesville, Florida. Sometimes after he takes the kids to school and cooks dinner, he’s lucky enough to get work on cartoons for Cartoon Network, Netflix, or HBO. Most recently he was the lead background designer on Mystery Cuddlers for Adult Swim. His book Cartoonshow from Oni Press was selected by the LA Times as one of their top five graphic novels of 2023. But mostly he’s just a plain old dad, tbh.