Holiday books: comics/graphic novels

Lynd Ward: Six Novels in Woodcuts (The Library of America; 1,584 pages; $70). A magnificent and very sharp two-volume, boxed set of the Depression-era "novels in woodcuts" - they're wordless wonders - by America's first acclaimed graphic novelist. Edited by Art Spiegelman.

The Best American Comics, edited by Neil Gaiman (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 329 pages; $23). This year's edition includes work by Robert Crumb, David Mazzucchelli and Chris Ware.

X'ed Out, by Charles Burns (Pantheon; 56 pages; $19.95). Imagine Hergé, Tintin's creator, illustrating a surreal story dreamed up by David Lynch.

Forget Sorrow: An Ancestral Tale, by Belle Yang (W.W. Norton; 250 pages; $23.95). Yang, of Carmel, revisits her family's Chinese past with humor and pathos.

The Art of Jaime Hernandez: The Secrets of Life and Death, by Todd Hignite (Abrams ComicArts; 224 pages; $40). This handsome appreciation of the co-creator of the indie comic "Love and Rockets" includes unpublished sketches and interviews.

Doonesbury and the Art of G.B. Trudeau, by Brian Walker (Yale University Press; 262 pages; $49.95). An elegant collection of cartoons, including pencil drawings, to mark the strip's 40th anniversary.

And the Pursuit of Happiness, by Maira Kalman (The Penguin Press; 471 pages; $29.95). Kalman's graphic narrative - she toured the country for a year, pondering the meaning of democracy - is a delight, each image powerful enough to put a smile on the reader's face.

This article appeared on page FE - 4 of the San Francisco Chronicle