How to Be Happy

The first collection of literary short comics stories by an award-winning cartoonist.

2015 Ignatz Award WINNER Outstanding Anthology or Collection

Named one of The Washington Post's, NPR's and Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 2014

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

Eleanor Davis is one of the finest cartoonists of her generation and has been producing comics since the mid-2000s. How to Be Happy represents the best stories she’s drawn for comics anthologies 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. This collection 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.

Full color with 48 black and white pages

Eleanor Davis is an award-winning cartoonist and illustrator. In 2009, Davis won the Eisner's Russ Manning Most Promising Newcomer Award and was named one of Print magazine's New Visual Artists. Her books include How To Be Happy (2014), Why Art? (2018), and The Hard Tomorrow (2019), which won the LA Times Book Prize for Graphic Novels and Comics. She lives in Athens, GA, with her husband, fellow cartoonist Drew Weing.