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Corto Maltese; The Ballad Of The Salt Sea "His drawings show an attention to, and familiarity with, exotic
detail, far beyond what could be gleaned from a shelf full of National
Geographic magazines. There is nothing stolen, or even borrowed,
in Pratt's work; even his sense of humor seems to come from preposterous
experience." "His crisscrossing of the globe was a constant source of ideas
for his comics. Other huge influences were Milton
Caniff's chiaroscuro or light-and-dark graphic approach on
the newspaper adventure strip Terry & The
Pirates and Caniff's enthusiasm for research and authenticity.
Out of these ingredients Pratt imagined the rugged, enigmatic adventurer
Corto, in his cap, earring and bellbottoms, whom he could involve
with the real events, places and people of early 20th century history." |
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EC Archives: Two-Fisted Tales "...seeking perfection in a 10 cent comic book." "I'm really enjoying the complete Two Fisted
Tales. It's a revelation.
It makes me wonder where American comics went wrong... It was only
after looking at the layouts in there that I realised what storytelling
was about." "Kurtzman's war stories... are superb pieces of storytelling and
art. 40 years has not dimmed their resonant, haunting drama and
their dynamic, often jarring graphic impact." |
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Maggie The Mechanic:
Vol 1 Of The Locas Stories "My brother Jamie is unique because he's able to bridge good
drawing, natural skill, with adult writing... He has this innate
ability that very few artists have, to be be able to draw really
well from his subconscious. Somehow, when he went to school, it
unleashed that... It's not necessarily that the school taught him
how to do that, it helped him unleash it. Once we started Love & Rockets,
we were looking at pages, and I thought, Wow! I didn't know Jamie
could draw this way." |
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Heartbreak Soup: Vol 1 Of The Palomar
Stories "With Heartbreak Soup I had an agenda of sorts. I'm trying to
get non-Latinos, for lack of a better word, to identify with Latinos
as human beings. Simple as that. I think I've felt that since I
was a kid." |
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Red Eye, Black Eye by K Thor Jensen Alternative Comics $19.95 No job, no girlfriend, no home, no future. In 2001, cartoonist K. Thor Jensen had nothing. So he packed a bag and jumped onto a Greyhound bus, circling the United States on a 10,000-mile road trip. In this "joyously bleak handbook for the post-911 generation," Jensen tells his story and the stories of the people he meets on the way, in a tale that veers from the hilarious to the tragic. In over 300 pages of comics, you'll see flaming furniture, replica genitals, ghosts, fights and more of America than a graphic novel's ever dared to show. |
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The Living & The Dead by Jason Fantagraphics Books $9.95 After a couple of downright chatty full-color books (Why Are You Doing This? and The Left Bank Gang) the Norwegian cartoonist Jason returns, for his ninth Fantagraphics graphic novel, to his two-tone mute roots with The Living & The Dead, a George A. Romero-esque zombie comedy that he intends to be the middle installment of his "horror trilogy" begun with the Frankenstein monster love triangle of You Can't Get There From Here. Jason's elegant deadpan style somehow manages to make the gruesome gore and splatter effects almost charming - and yes, it is a sweet love story at heart. |
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Regards From Serbia by Aleksandar Zograf Top Shelf Productions $19.95 A collection of Aleksandar Zograf's comics and correspondences during the war in Serbia. This book captures the essence of life during wartime, seen from the apartment window of one who was there at ground zero. The moral ambiguities of war, the horrific reality, the humanity. This volume includes Zograf's entire e-mail correspondence to his friends throughout the world during the bombing of his hometown of Pancevo, as well as all of his comic strips produced over the decade long Balkan war. |
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Ganzfeld Vol 5: Japanada |
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The Drips by Taylor McKimens Picture Box Inc $8.00 The Drips opens up an exuberantly coloured world of trailer parks, deserts and long lonely roads, part film noir, part Western. McKimens' hallucinatory visions are rooted in remarkably detailed drawings, reminiscent of Basil Wolverton. |
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The Castaways by Rob Vollmar & Pablo Callejo NBM $17.95 The Castaways is the Eisner Award-nominated first graphic novel from Bluesman creators Rob Vollmar and Pablo Callejo. Follow young Tucker Freeman as he hops a train to escape from the crippling poverty of his rural existence. Armed with only fifteen cents and the memory of his father's counsel, Tucker must find his place in the broken America of the Great Depression before the realities of being young, poor, and homeless consume him. The Castaways is an epic adventure that recalls the works of Mark Twain, Jack London, and John Steinbeck, while appealing both to fans of high adventure and to those looking for a little more from their comics. |
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Worry Doll |
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Square Cat Comics: Small, Square & Sarcastic "Engaging and interesting and funny... I even laughed out loud." |
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Oh Skin-Nay! (HC) Poetry Verses by Wilbur D. Nesbit, illustrated by Clare Briggs Drawn & Quarterly $24.95 A grittier and less sentimental predecessor to Norman Rockwell, Clare Briggs (1875-1930) exemplified the larger journey of American society from small-town innocence to urbane sophistication. The son of a farm machinery salesman, Briggs left his rural home as a young man to forge a career as an illustrator and cartoonist, earning success in such big-city papers as The Chicago Examiner, the Chicago Tribune, and the New York Tribune. Within a few years, he became one of the most popular and imitated cartoonists in America: Frank King, Milton Caniff, and the first generation of New Yorker cartoonists all emulated Briggs. Eschewing the roughneck humour of early comic strips, Briggs drew low-key strips in two modes: nostalgic reveries focused on memories of small-town boyhood and satirical strips about the squabbles inherent in married life. First published in 1913 by P. F. Volland and Company of Chicago, Oh Skin-Nay! is a collaboration between Briggs and poet Wilbur D. Nesbit and portrays a year in the life of small-town America through the eyes of the twelve-year-old boy - wood gathering, sleigh rides, games of post office, swimming holes, and sandlot ball games. This book is presented as a facsimile edition of double-page spreads containing short poems and full-page cartoons as well as an expanded afterword on Briggs by comics historian Jeet Heer. |
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Wonderfool World |
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Wilderemere Vol 1 by CF Glass Shore Press $12.95 A small seaside town is thrown into madness when a strange device falls on its shores. Melding 24 separate universes together, the town is reborn - a frankenstienesque reality of many odd and eccentric inhabitants. Among the bizarre living architecture, prophetic ghosts and monstrous entities emerges Eren, a boy seemingly untouched by this event. |
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Mr Big |
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Seven Soldiers Of Victory Vol 4 "A word can have many, many multiple meanings and interpretations.
The Word can no longer be grasped and changes its shape depending
on who chooses to use it and to what end. I saw this myself when
I was writing The Invisibles,
in particular - what seemed to me to be very direct statements
of intent were interpreted by different readers in a number of
wildly contradictory ways. Some people have read Seven
Soldiers as they did The Invisibles,
and seen only chaos, others have discerned elegance and connection
and meaning. The exact same words and images can have completely
opposing meanings. Hence, the idea of the Word becoming shapeless
and slippery, and whoring itself out to every stray ideology. It
seems clear to me now that words barely have any actual meanings
at all - people project their own personalities, fears and desires
onto everything they read and will argue black is white if need
be." |
Other Books Out This Month: Independents: DC: Marvel: |
| To Top | ART & ILLUSTRATION: |
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Wunderground: Providence, 1995 To The
Present (HC) by Judith Tannenbaum, Sara Agniel & Dan Nadel, forword by Gary Panter Gingko Press $24.95 For the past decade, Providence has been the site of a radical underground art scene, giving rise to a multi-faceted, unbridled aesthetic that is as distinct as it is influential. The work earns international press ranging from music and fine art to comic and shelter publications, yet the artists maintain their underground life-as-art practices. This fall, the RISD Museum presents Wunderground: Providence, 1995 To The Present, an exhibition celebrating Providence's intersection of art and music. Wunderground will be accompanied by a full-color, illustrated catalogue with a foreword by celebrated artist and designer Gary Panter. Two major texts, written by Judith Tannenbaum and Providence gallerist Sara Agniel, will contextualize Providence's unique art scene. Artists, musicians, writers, and students who created and witnessed it offer shorter texts-reminiscences, anecdotes, and personal perspectives providing a kaleidoscopic portrait of a time and place. View a preview of Wunderground at Tom Spurgeon's The Comics Reporter. |
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The Curiously Sinister Art Of Jim Flora by Irwin Chusid Fantagraphics Books $34.95 The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora, following hot on the heels of 2004's The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora, features a wide array of both his commercial work for prestigious record labels of the '40s and rare, personal work that he did solely for himself. Jim Flora was prolific in his commercial work; he created art privately in equal measure—and often with more fiendish pleasure. His style is cartoonish, evoking childhood nostalgia and dereliction of adult responsibility. There are clowns and kitty cats, grinning faces and beaming suns. But Flora did not restrain his darker impulses. His montages are crammed with bullets and knives and fang-baring snakes. Muggers run amok, demons frolic with rouged harlots, and Flora's characters suffer—that is, are afflicted by the artist with — severe disfigurement. The banal and the violent often coexist within inches of each other on the canvas. Figures from his burlesque-tinged absurdity "The Rape of the Stationmaster's Daughter" adorn the book cover. There is also a wealth of 1940s Columbia Records printed matter exhibiting Flora's visual pranks; 1950s RCA Victor-era work; magazine illos, sketchbooks, and prints; 1930s Little Man Press-era drawings; paintings from all decades; photos, and personal keepsakes. Flora's early 1940s musician portraits in Columbia bulletins are raucous and undignified, featuring piss-takes on such legends as Sinatra, Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong, and Gene Krupa. Flora once said he "could not do likenesses"—so he conjured outlandish caricatures. His exotic fauna defy logic and the laws of physics. We suspect he often leaned back from the drafting table, examined his work, and issued a macabre chuckle. Much of the work in the book is light-hearted—it's not all Flora 'rassling his demons. But even in his impish renderings, there's something vaguely unsettling in the nuances. His comic grotesqueries echoed, and in many cases foreshadowed, the 1950s Harvey Kurtzman-era MAD magazine, as well as the underground comix of the late 1960s. When Flora died in 1998, his family gathered his artistic estate and secured it in a storage facility. In late 2005, the heirs allowed Chusid and Economon access to the vault. What they discovered were "lost works"—"lost" because fans of Flora's LP covers, kid-lit, and Mischievous Art offerings have never seen most of these eye-boggling treasures, which include paintings, watercolors, sketches, woodcuts and all manner of artistic genius. Flora once said that all he wanted to do was "create a little piece of excitement." He overshot his goal with many of these works. |
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Copro/Nason Fine Art: A Catalogue Raisonne by various Copro/Nason Fine Art Publishing $39.95 Copro/Nason Fine Art Publishing is a joint venture between two West Coast art enthusiasts, Joe Copro and Douglas Nason. With a mutual passion for collecting "Kustom" inspired alternative art and a desire to boost recognition of under-appreciated artists they decided to start a fine art publishing company. Their perspective on the arts stems from the mid-twentieth century "pop" movement relative to Beatnik, Cad, Googie, Hodad, Kitsch and Surfdom! If these names don't ring a bell how about "Lowbrow", "Hipster", "Pin-Up" or "Outsider art". Copro/Nason Fine Art Publishing emerged from this initial inspiration and the "Copro Nason" gallery was established in 1999. The Catalogue Raisonne celebrates the 15th anniversary of the gallery and documents an exhibition of the same name. |
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Alberto Breccia Sketchbook Vol 2 by Alberto Breccia $14.50 The second collection by Alberto Breccia - the the Yellow Kid Award-winning Argentine artist - which showcases a selection of unpublished sketches and illustrations dedicated to literature and to the artists favourite writers: Jorge Luis Borges, Edgar Allen Poe, Onetti, Jean Ray, Stevenson, Lovecraft, Bram Stoker and L. Hearn. |
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Sightcadelic: The Art Of Mark Wheatley by Mark Wheatley $20.00 Psychedelic visual trips. Horrific visions. Epic battle scenes. Space opera. Sword and sorcery. Art is the best way to travel and this book is your ticket. From detailed watercolours to digital paintings, this first collection of colour images by Mark Wheatley features works for such pulp literary masters as Edgar Rice Burroughs, Talbot Munday, Robert E. Howard, Edmond Hamilton and Arthur O. Friel. |
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Structura: The Art Of Sparth by Sparth Design Studio Press $24.95 Sparth (Nicolas Bouvier) has been an active artistic director and concept designer in the gaming industry since 1996. Born in France, he now lives in Dallas, Texas, working for IDsoftware. Having traveled extensively at an early age to such places as far afield as the USA, Singapore, China, France and Europe, he was influenced greatly by the various cultures, and he enjoyed observing people and making notes of all these tiny details of life that he was witnessing. The varied influences are largely responsible for his multiple creative passions, which range from space, to buildings, to robotics and beyond. One of his greatest passion remains contemporary architecture, of which he applies principles in his own art, with an experimental and original approach. He also harbours a fascination for modern skyscrapers, although he admits that he wouldn't be able to live too high above the ground himself. During the last four years, Sparth has been enjoying career illustrating book covers. His images have been actively chosen by publishers to adorn the covers of multiple french, and english authors. |
| To Top | COMICS: |
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The Weird World Of Jack Staff King-Size
Special #1 by Paul Grist Image $5.99 Collecting the serial which recently appeared in the UK comics news magazine Comics International... Ben Kulmer is a thief and also an agent of Q, a mysterious group which investigates the crimes that are too bizarre for the normal police - the Question Mark crimes. When Kulmer embarks on a burglary, he finds himself caught up in a series of events that spin out of control, and not even his fellow Q agents can help. The world of Jack Staff is just weird like that. |
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Usagi Yojimbo #100 by Stan Sakai with sergio Aragones, Guy Davis, Mark Evanier, Rick Geary, Frank Miller, Jamie S Rich, Mike Richardson, Scott Shaw, Jeff Smith & Andi Watson Dark Horse $3.50 Stan Sakai's biggest admirers celebrate one hundred issues of Usagi Yojimbo at Dark Horse. Featuring eight extra story pages, Usagi Yojimbo #100 is structured as a good-natured roast of both Usagi and Stan, kicking off with an opening by publisher Mike Richardson and artist Rick Geary before launching into contributions from the other guest artists. |
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Scalped #1 by Jason Aaron & R.M. Guera DC/Vertigo $2.99 Scalped is an all-new monthly series by up-and-coming writer Jason Aaron (The Other Side) featuring the gritty art of R.M. Guéra. Fifteen years ago, Dashiell "Dash" Bad Horse ran away from a life of abject poverty and utter hopelessness on the Prairie Rose Indian Reservation in hopes of finding something better. Now, he's come back home to find nothing much has changed on "The Rez" — short of a glimmering new casino, and a once-proud people overcome by drugs and organized crime. So is he back to set things right or just get a piece of the action? Also at the center of the storm is Tribal Leader Lincoln Red Crow, a former "Red Power" activist turned burgeoning crime boss who figures that after 100 years of the Lakota being robbed and murdered by the white man, it's now time to return the favor. Now Dash — armed with nothing but a set of nunchucks, a hellbent-for-leather attitude and (at least) one dark secret — must survive a world of gambling, gunfights, G-men, Dawg Soldierz, massacres, meth labs, trashy sex, fry bread, Indian pride, Thunder Beings, the rugged beauty of the Badlands…and even a brutal scalping or two. |
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Calvario Hills #1 by Marti Fantagraphics Books $7.95 Back in the 1980s, American comics aficionados were bowled over by the hardboiled Chester-Gould-on-crack stylings in the graphic novel The Cabbie courtesy of Spanish cartoonist Marti (who also made mind-blowing appearances in several anthologies, including RAW). Now, after a long drought, Marti is finally back in the U.S.A. with a vengeance in the all-new "Ignatz" title Calvario Hills. The eponymous main story, set in a not-very-fictionalized American big city that mashes together elements of Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and Washington D.C., is a conspiracy fantasia in which the sinister NRA (spearheaded by Charlton "Preston") is attempting to sabotage the election to mayor of Marion "Parry," while an imprisoned gangster kingpin, working the other side, schemes to enlist an army of crackheads to put him over the top. Can you say... "entrapment"? The back-up is the first chapter of an all-new Cabbie story in which our naively heroic protagonist's fare turns out to be the disgraced President of the nation; the Cabbie, loyal to the end, tries to assist him in his flight out of the country, with the help of the Cardinal who's said to have the inside track on being the next Pope... but an out-of-control gay parade, a garbage truck, and an infestation of lice abort the escape in a most disagreeable fashion. |
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The End #1 by Anders Nilsen Fantagraphics Books $7.95 The End #1 is a collection of short strips about loss, transformation, waiting, and paralysis. It is a concept album in different styles, a meditation on paying attention, an abstracted autobiography and a travelogue, blending Nilsen's disparate styles. |
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Incanto #1 "Frank Santoro's previous comic Chimera was a revelation to me. A beautiful surreal
comic that I reread multiple times. Santoro creates comics that are not conventionally
narrative. They are more akin to Surrealism and the Nouveau Roman in literature:
fragmented, open to interpretation on even the basic level of plot, and unconcerned
with the idea of characters. Incanto is a small book printed in black, blue,
and orange. The drawings have a quick sketchy look to them, which is supported
by the way the art seems to have been printed from a moleskine notebook.
Almost every page's art is in a rectangular frame with rounded corners on
the right or left side." |
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Kana's Island #1 by Mark Page One Room Hut $3.50 Kana and his family, along with the other members of the Humani tribe have recently moved and made their home on the windward side of a seemingly undiscovered island. Shortly after their arrival, they begin to hear the sounds of strange creatures coming from the other side of the island. The Humani elders advise that everyone should stay on the windward side of the island where they are protected by a large mountain ridge called Hoopa Koopa Mountain. The men and older boys of the tribe are always away on long fishing trips while Kana is left behind. Day by day he grows restless, longing for adventures of his own and wondering what is on the other side of Hoopa Koopa mountain. One day, he finds out. |
Other First Issues This Month: Independents: DC: Marvel: |
| To Top | ABOUT COMICS: |
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Confessions, Romances, Secrets & Temptations |
More Books & Magazines About Comics This Month: Alter Ego #64 (TwoMorrows, $6.95) |
| To Top | MANGA: |
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The Art Of Hideshi Hino by Hideshi Hino Last Gasp $29.95 Manga horror master Hideshi Hino is the subject of this art book, which includes three never-seen-before short manga stories, all in full colour. |
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Akira Club (HC) by Katsuhiro Otomo Dark Horse $29.95 Katsuhiro Otomo's epic manga, Akira, is considered by many to be the finest work of graphic fiction ever created, a work of astonishing power and visionary scope, and possessing a level of illustration skill unmatched in the annals of the medium. Now available for the first time in an English-language edition, Akira Club is an essential companion to Akira, a dazzling collection of Otomo's mind-blowing visions, including over one hundred title-page illustrations created for the original serialization but not included with the published collections of Akira. The book also features rarely seen alternate art, preliminary drawings, production sketches, and a variety of Akira posters, advertisements, and products, all accompanied by fascinating commentary by the artist himself. |
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Wild Adapter #1 of 5 by Kazuya Minekura Tokyopop $9.99 When an assassin tries to quit the profession, he takes in a boy with a mysterious past. The boy has been exposed to the drug wild adapter, which has caused his arm to transform into a monstrosity... |
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Mushishi #1 by Yuki Urushibara Del Rey $12.95 Kodansha Manga Of The Year Award Winner 2006 A dark fantasy about a young man with a talent for the supernatural and the hidden world of magic and terror that only his powers are able to reveal. |
Other First Issues This Month: Angel Dust: Neo #1 by Aoi Nanase (ADV, $10.95) |