Chronic Riot Spasm: Zines, 1992-1996

This anthology of New York City’s street artist Fly’s zines from 1992-1996 contains equal amounts of surreal comix and twisted prose, describing her daily struggle to keep things going against powerful controlling forces and have some fun, too. Fighting with contemptuous cops, fixing up abandoned buildings, hanging around making observations about street life and love are some of the themes that construct this book, a celebration of the nonalienated life and its schizzy absurdities.

If you want to read about street art in the nascent days of gentrification in NYC, you could do a lot worse than this "graphic novel".