The new title from Minx Books captures that moment in life — even the title “Emiko Superstar” is an Andy Warhol reference — the Superstars were his inner coterie of hangers-on who found their way into his films and parties. They were the attraction as much as his work — in many ways, they were his work. Author Mariko Tamaki understands that very often the way young people become interested in art is through the appearance of their local art scene and cache of cool that accompanies the more outrageous in recent art history.

Emiko is a teenage girl trying to get through the summer in with a babysitting job when two significant events coincide that will change her school vacation. One is that she is handed an invite to a performance art club called The Factory (like Warhol’s hangout and studio) — the other is that she blunders upon her employer’s secret diary. The allure of the scene at The Factory proves too much for Emiko and the diary becomes her key to performance superstardom.

Tamaki — a veteran of the Toronto art scene — is able to investigate the real issues of such worlds in a way that walks the appropriate line of being realistic without discouraging. The thrill of belonging to an enthusiastic, no-holds-barred creative tribe is well presented, but so is the unnecessary competitive side, the egos, creative dishonesty and laziness and, most important, the occasional incidence of sleazy older guys who just want to insinuate control over creative young gals.

Tamaki also slyly points out the fascination of the counter culture with the middle class world they turn their back on — they want to understand why they don’t fit in and Emiko’s monologue’s offer some insight to that world. Tamaki does her job by giving back a little — she obviously crossed worlds and “Emiko Superstar” is like a little dispatch from that other dimension, a little reassurance if you’re that kid that doesn’t fit in to go with your instincts, be curious and open, but just watch your back — the art world’s no less devious than the suburbs, but it can be a lot more interesting.

What happens when a dysfunctional situation is deemed normal even expected? What if a family goes through the motions thereby creating a a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Dash Shaw investigates this matter and many more in the mature and surreal graphic novel “Bottomless Belly Button,” in which the Loony kids grapple with the unexpected divorce of their parents after four decades of marriage. The split seems strangely matter of fact as if this were the expected result of their years together, a passionless and lackluster nod to inevitability — it seems as though they are supposed to split up, so they do.

The children exhibit their reactions through self-fulfilling personal propheies that find their own plummeting expectations of life creating the very dysfunction that their parents are forcing along. Called together for a final reunion at a beach house, gathered to witness the forced family decay together, the Loony offspring are largely too self-absorbed to really pour over the strangeness of the parents’ actions. Frog-faced son Peter continues to plunge into his own awkward, lonely misery until he meets a girl who provides a unique opportunity to blow off his parents altogether. His sister Claire has the exact opposite of her parents — an early divorce that offers her freedom in life that really only enslaves her and sends her wandering in confusion most of the time. Brother Dennis is torn apart by the announcement, obsessed with uncovering the reason behind the absurdity but really reacting to the crumbling of his own safety zone. Meanwhile, granddaughter Jill, an already awkward teen, has now been revealed the futility of the future thanks to her grandparents and the uncomfortable feeling of her own skin seems to be an inevitable and permanent existence.

Shaw works with different kinds of symbolism, from the sand that sprinkles on their skin to the various types of water that can be applied to emotions and family history. It’s no accident that these are the two ingredients used by God to create the hapless, unintentionally wicked Adam, who was surely spiraling towards some kind of legendary self-fulfilling prophecies by eating the apple and being cast from paradise. Such behavior is in our heritage, but that doesn’t make us evil. It just makes us sad.

Shaw’s enormous graphic novel — it’s 720 pages and seems to weigh a few pounds — literally intrudes on the most private moments of the Loony family, a narrative that spirals through their misguided thoughts, as well as their showers, literally stripping them down for rough examination. It’s the level of space and pace that isn’t often directed at mundane family dynamics, but there’s something in there that each of us might recognize and certainly appreciate for the care with which it’s all been dissected.

There is another side to Ditko, less known to those who might know of him from his work with Marvel Comics decades ago — his unwavering devotion to the philosophies of Ayn Rand and his compulsion to inject those philosophies into his work. It starts out as a guiding principle, but soon, Objectivism overtakes Ditko’s talents, comandeering both the stories he told and the career that never seemed to rise to the level it should have.

In “Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko,” author Blake Bell mixes up a career history and art critique of the legend with a more intricate study of the mental decline of the man. More importantly, Bell provides the link between Ditko’s often outrageous imagery and the mind that conceived of them.

Ditko’s career was as a rather mild-mannered, working cartoonist of obvious brilliance when he hit what, back in the day, was the big time. Ditko became a major player at Marvel Comics, partnering with Stan Lee (antagonistically) and bringing glory to the company through Spider-Man and his other tour de force, Doctor Strange.

A bad experience with the business end of Marvel Comics sent Ditko on his decades-long spiral that had him exhibit extreme paranoia towards associates and fans alike. Equally, his work began to focus more and more on his Randian beliefs so that entire superheroes were created and utilized for the sheer purpose of acting out Randian-fused fables. It was a bizarre descent, one that saw uncompromising principles see public form as erratic and self-destructive behavior and turned his work away from the fresh brilliance of Spider-Man and into screeds often resembling a Randian version of the Jack Chick Christian comics — so much wooden lecture that the words almost crowd the pictures out of the frame.

The real focus of the book, though, is the art and that his handsomely covered through reproduction and discussion. Ditko was a great innovator regardless of his eccentricities and his work deserves to be celebrated beyond the comics medium. No one could depict the psychological landscape in physical form better than Ditko — his visuals were quirky and unique.

Ditko’s demise — he is still with us, but hidden away — is sad and perhaps one of the best arguments against the validity of  Objectivism as full-proof philosophy of life. His story, though, is fascinating and his art, as with so many others touched with creative greatness, will outlive his peccadilloes, even as they function as the physical form of his own psychological landscape.