Contraband
by Thomas Behe, Phil Elliott & Ian Sharman
Slave Labor Graphics
$12.95
In the near-future society of Contraband, Toby, a self-styled 'citizen journalist', is documenting this underground when he is discovered by agents for a cell-phone channel called Contraband. Forced to work for them, Toby is assigned the task of finding a female activist set on sabotaging Contraband. In his search, Toby uncovers a voyeur underground, an "urban theatre" where profit-hungry youths prowl city streets filming erotic and violent events to satisfy society's accelerating demand for sensational on-the-go content. Mesmerized by the woman, sympathetic to her agenda, his objectives blur. But as graphic footage exposing his darkest secret queues for Contraband broadcast, Toby knows he won't just be running from his past if that video hits everyone's handset. Read a 5-page preview here and visit the Contraband Blog.

"Contraband interweaves the controversial aspects of the mobile phone industry with a storyline involving a disparate bunch of characters who find themselves drawn together by the device in their pocket. Each character has a story to tell and each one of them needs to find a way to come to terms with their predicament."
Phil Elliott

"The new concerns were more social-related. Kids receiving intimidating texts from class bullies. A mate of mine was even propositioned to subscribe to some sort of spy-cam exhibitionist mobi-blog. I had no idea why these folks were secretly filming everyone, but there was tons of stuff on there."
Thomas Behe

"Contraband has a great underlying premise, based around the use/misuse of camera phones, loss of privacy and the boom in the spy cam industry that this generates. That's probably enough for a story, but TJ Behe goes further, weaving an interesting plot around an abducted girl. This is a great sci-fi thriller, written by someone who knows a lot about mobile technology. However, the real stroke of genius was to enlist Phil Elliott as the artist. This adds another twist to the story, giving it a clean and unique feel. Rather than being another dark cyberpunk comic, the style is quite European and very inviting."
Leonie Moore, Comics International

Roll Up! Roll Up!
by Dix
Grimreality Publications
£13.99
The complete collection of Roll Up! Roll Up! comic strips as they appeared in The Guardian newspaper... Doldoni's Family Circus rolls into town bringing with it emaciated livestock, murderous clowns, misfits, freaks and unfortunates. The head of this miserable menagerie is owner and ringmaster Rollo Doldoni. His fixed grin belies the appalling events that occur both in and out of the bigtop on a daily basis. Even the police in the form of Detectives Lovelong and Hard are powerless to stop these horrific happenings.

"Sad and odd and funny and wonderful - I was a huge fan of this when it was in The Grauniad, and I was very very pleased to find it available in book form. The annals of a slightly nightmarish circus and its sordid members, it often seems meandering and pointless, not to mention somewhat light on jokes. Therein, of course, lies its charm. Take a journey to the underbelly of the modern comic strip."
Chris Owens

The Education Of Hopey Glass (HC)
by Jamie Hernandez
Fantagraphics Books
$19.99
Even though - or perhaps because - he is still carrying a torch for Maggie, Ray diligently pursues the dangerous and annoying 'Frogmouth', aspiring actress and full-time train wreck, from seedy bars and back alleys through comic book conventions, all the way to the ultimate, and unexpected consummation. Meanwhile, Hopey spends an eventful week during which she undergoes a couple of major life changes, both personal and professional - and for that matter cosmetic.

"I am of the opinion that if you two broke fully formed on the world of comics tomorrow, like had you two never existed and the first issue of Love & Rockets, even if it were pretty much the same as the first issue came out in 1982, came out tomorrow, it would cause a hugh stir in the world of comics... But I think there's this bizarre level on which you are now almost taken for granted. You've been displaying this level of competence and remarkable creativity, but it's kind of like, Well, you're not new."
Neil Gaiman, from an interview with Los Bros Hernandez, The Comics Journal #178

Nemi Vol 1
by Lise Myhre
Titan Books
$14.95
Meet Nemi Montoya, the vegetarian, cynical/romantic, hilariously honest twenty-something goth, in this brand new collection from artist Lise Myhre. Hang out in the pub with Nemi and her friends, including her flatmate, the blue-haired Cyan; hear her opinions on romance and dating; watch her watch TV in her untidy flat; learn how she feels about birch trees, spiders and blondes; and generally experience the highs and lows of being Nemi in the modern world. Read samples of Nemi at Metro.

Jellaby Vol 1
by Kean Soo
Hyperion Books
$9.99
The book collects the first two chapters of Jellaby that were serialized on the Secret Friend Society web-site (with new & revised art), and continues the adventures of Portia and Jellaby. In a world that skirts the imaginary and the make believe, a young girl named Portia finds a unlikely friend in a top-heavy monster named Jellaby who lives behind her house.

"Back in 2004, Dean Trippe was putting together a zine of monster illustrations, and he asked me if I wanted to contribute something. Of course I said yes, and I drew up a little girl hugging this giant grub-like monster, and had a blast doing it. I don't believe the zine was ever printed up, but that one image had taken root my head, and I found myself idly drawing these two characters in my sketchbook whenever I had the chance. Right around that same time, I was talking to Hope Larson, who was telling me about her story of a girl and her imaginary friend in the woods, and I remarked that I had a similar idea brewing in my head... it didn't take us very long after that to pool our resources and put together the Secret Friend Society."
Kean Soo discusses Jellaby at Newsarama - Read the full interview here.

"Life to her was deadly serious. She had to be hard to survive, and she meant to survive."
Harold Gray on Little Orphan Annie

"Harold Gray's Little Orphan Annie is one of the great American comic strips. With Dickensian imagination and gusto, Gray put his spunky orphan through a world of trouble: she road the rails with tramps and hobos, outwitted tommy-gun wielding gangsters, saved family farms from rapacious bankers, foiled Nazi submarine captains, and helped her adopted father "Daddy" Warbucks in his constant struggles against the enemies of America. With a heart-felt populist spirit, Gray's comic strip captured the essence of mid-20th century America. We should all be glad to see Annie again in her truest incarnation."
Jeet Heer, comics historian

"Harold Gray was a big visual influence on [Louis Riel], including blank eyeballs, de-emphasized emotional reactions the overall size of the figures. I initially started out drawing Riel with a big head and a smaller body then by the end of the book I was drawing him with a big body and a small head with massive hands. That's very much the way Gray drew his heroic figures. That's what the basic size of Daddy Warbucks was. That was why I had to re-draw the early scenes [for the collection] to make the Riel at the end of the book match the one at the beginning... The Harold Gray influence had me wanting to go back to the very traditional square panels. I love his approach to storytelling. It's not a flashy storytelling style. It's more restrained and austere. Also his politics to some degree I relate to. I consider myself a right-winger and Gray was certainly one."
Chester Brown discusses the 'Harold Gray'-influence on Louis Riel at Time.com.

"One of my main inspirations for The Invention of Hugo Cabret was a book called Edison's Eve: A Magical Quest for Mechanical Life by an author named Gaby Wood. This book is about the history of automata (it's pronounced aw-TOM-ah-tah). Automata are mechanical figures which are made out of very complicated clockworks and can do amazing things like sing or dance or swing on a trapeze or write poems or even (supposedly) play chess. Gaby Wood had an entire chapter about Georges Méliès in her book because Méliès owned a collection of automata. The mechanical figures had been built years earlier by a magician and clockmaker named Jean-Robert Houdin (the magician who Harry Houdini named himself after). Méliès loved these automata, but he lost his money and couldn't take care of them any more. So he donated them to a museum, but unfortunately the museum didn't take care of them and they were destroyed and thrown away. I imagined a boy finding one of those broken machines in the garbage and at that moment Hugo Cabret was born."
Brian Selznick

"It's not necessary to know cinema history to appreciate the story, but the references are there for knowing readers. There are film stills that show why early movie audiences screamed and fainted in terror. There is effective poetic use of the myth of Prometheus, and even a meditation on finding one's purpose in life. And then, just when you thought you would be swamped by words, there is a fabulous chase scene. What more could any reader, or moviegoer, want?"
Los Angeles Times - Read the full review here.

Hall Of Best Knowledge (HC)
by Ray Fenwick
Fantagraphics Books
$19.99
Ray Fenwick has pioneered his own medium of storytelling, one best described as 'typographical comics.' Hall of Best Knowledge is presented as a personal journal written by an unnamed voice, referred to only as 'The Author.' Little is known about him. He clearly fashions himself a genius, writing with a faux-aristocratic air, and it is presumably his belief in his own genius that leads him to want to share his knowledge with the world. It becomes obvious to the reader early on that all is not as it seems; only at the end does the picture become completely clear. Hall of Best Knowledge is part graphic novel, part art object, part satire, part puzzle. The slow unfolding of the author and his story builds humor with each page, creating a peculiar examination of the idea of genius and the problems that arise in the search and transmission of knowledge. HOBK is presented as a found journal, with rounded fore edges, an elastic band to hold the book closed, and other production touches to further solidify and give form to the concept of the book. View a preview here.

Hotwire Comics Vol 2
edited by Glenn Head
Fantagraphics Books
$22.95
Amazing! Incredible! Dangerous! The cartoon anthology that puts the kicks back in comics strikes again.

The comic-anthology Hotwire Comics Vol 2 includes Tim Lane's epic autobiographical strip, 'Spirit', which portrays the grittiness, desperation, and terror that accompanied him as he went on the bum, riding the rails; 'Niacin', by Mary Fleener is the sordid but hilarious story of a hallucinatory date with a drug dealer; Mack White brilliantly deconstructs the western myth of the OK Corral gunfight in 'Showdown at Hustler's Ridge'; Glenn Head's 'Oozing Dread!' tells the Twilight Zone-ish tale of Wilhelm Reich, madcap genius-inventor of the orgone box; 'Communicable Disease' by Carol Swain shows the descent of a young Scottish lass into impoverished hell; Dutch artist Tobias Tak delivers a fantastical retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk with his comic, 'The Ten Inch Giant'; plus contributions from David Sandlin, Jonathon Rosen, Stephane Blanquet, Craig Yoe, Christian Northeast, and Mike Wartella. There are also hot new strips by David Lasky, Rick Altergott, Lauren Weinstein, Matti Hagelberg, Danny Hellman, Bob Sikoryak, Michael Kupperman, Chadwick Whitehead, and others.

"I did three issues of Snake Eyes with Kaz, and at a certain point I decided I wanted to do my own stuff. So I did some solo books, Guttersnipe and Avenue D, and I was also contributing to Zero Zero and doing illustration work. At a certain point in the late '90s, things got really bad with the comics game, and I just got out of comics for a while. I got back into it by doing some weird sex art and some paintings - one of the paintings I did from that time is in Hotwire, "Meat Processing," an anthropomorphic sort of organic-machinery thing. I found I really enjoyed doing comics again. The market was better for comics, and there were also a lot of anthologies around, and I figured I might as well try one."
Glenn Head discusses Hotwire Comics with Publshers Weekly - Read the full interview here.

Kids Of Lower Utopia Vol 1
by Toc Fetch
Abbane Ink
$21.00
This is a contemporary story of a 10-year old girl living in the Catskill Mountains born with a talent for being Awake inside her own Dreams. A tribal Dreamer without a tribe in an age blind to the effulgence of life. Through the innate echoes of ritual she draws her beloved friend closer to her own Inner world and the old religion of Dreaming. These two friends live saturated with the mighty powers of Insight, Awareness, and Love. Living in a paradise of these talents, in a no-place called Lower Utopia.

"Toc lives charting the inroads to good-madness, drawing out it's secrets with the loving slyness of an honest man. While standing wide-eyed to the onslaught of his Very-Self, his voice is DADA at it's best; yes, obsession, and good-bye. And the relationship between his images and writings is the exact distance that only a Heart wet with poetry can cross. And for you, I recommend it highly. It is a work that lives, and life, after all, is why."
'Doc' Taylor Stubblefield

Birth
by Michael Bracco
Alterna Comics Inc
$9.95
A graphic novel prelude to the ongoing series Novo, creator/writer/artist Michael Bracco has created a world filled with passion, war, and revenge. The tale of two alien nations that have cursed one another to the brink of extinction, Birth tells the story of the conflict that becomes of them, when joy and love turn into resentment and bloodshed.

"Michael's stunning artwork easily portrayed the range of emotions that these characters were feeling, allowing the reader to easily understand what the characters were experiencing and what was transpiring in their worlds."
Gary Rodrigue, ComicNews

"In both its visuals and its writing, this title is absolutely stunning."
Alex Haas, IndyComicReview

Discovered: SCAD Sequential Art Anthology
edited by John Lowe
Top Shelf Productions
$9.95
"The Savannah College of Art and Design [based in Georgia, USA] is one of the few colleges in the world to offer a sequential art program ­ but that isn't the only reason the department is growing and gaining a strong reputation in comics and related fields. Professor John Lowe, a graduate of the SCAD sequential art program and now in his fourth year as chair, has aggressively sought to expand existing opportunities for students and create new ways for them to catch the eyes of industry professionals... Another initiative Lowe recently spearheaded is an annual anthology. Centered around a specific theme each year, the anthology is published by SCAD and distributed nationally by Top Shelf Productions... The first anthology, released in 2005, was called Senses. Last year's edition was Science, and for 2007, the theme is Discovered."
SCAD College Magazine - Read the full article here.

"Most comics artists don't get their first professional job until their mid- to late 20s, but a year or two after graduation, a lot of our students are getting work... It's a good overview of [the program, from] sophomores to grad students to alumni. The anthology is open to all SCAD students and alumni, not just sequential art majors — anyone who wants to try to write and draw a story... We try to give a general theme that's broad enough for several interpretations. The anthology gets us a lot of attention from comics publishers, and it's a great recruitment tool. The strength of student work is important to prospective professors and students... I think you'll see, over the next 10 years, emerging sequential art programs throughout the nation. There's a growing interest, and people are starting to see comics as ‘valid' art. When it's taught properly, I see it as a hybrid between literature and art. It's a rigorous discipline."
John Lowe

The Nearly Complete Essential Hembeck Archive Omnibus
by Fred Hembeck
Image
24.99
The Near Complete Essential Hembeck Archives Omnibus is a 900-page collection covering cartoonist Fred Hembeck's past three decades of work. All seven of his early eighties collections - Bah Hembeck, The Hembeck Files, et al - are included, as well as rarely seen strips, personal commissions, online pieces, holiday cards, assorted oddities, and over a dozen stories ranging up to ten pages in length. A massive collection featuring the superhero industry's most revered humorist. Foreword by industry legend and co-creator of Spider-Man and The Fantastic Four, Stan Lee.

"Al Gordon, an old friend and long-time embellisher for both Marvel and DC, called up one day, and out of the blue, said he'd sure like to see a collection of all my old Dateline:@#$! strips! That was about three years ago, and I'll admit I was dubious at first, but eventually he brought his pal - and Image publisher - Erik Larsen into the mix, and it seemed as if Erik liked the idea as well. Only Erik wanted to expand things beyond just the Dateline:@#$! strips, and encouraged me to sift through my files for enough fun material to fill one of those telephone-like reprint volumes that are so popular these days!"
Fred Hembeck discusses his new book at Newsarama - Read the full interview here.

Clive Barker's Age Of Desire (HC)
by P. Craig Russell & Timothy Bradstreet
Desperado Publishing
$14.99
Clive Barker's dark vision of the last days of a genetically altered and homicidally ecstatic sexual compulsive. Over 15 years in the making, this is the notorious adaptation by P.  Craig Russell and Timothy Bradstreet that went missing for over a decade! Recently revised with its original ending restored.

"Clive Barker's Age of Desire [was] the first graphic novel I ever illustrated, way back in 1991/1992. Age of Desire marks a milestone for me; in one go I was working on a major comic project, and got to work with both Clive Barker and P.Craig Russell to boot. Unfortunately however, this was to be the last sequential work I would do for quite some time. Sadly, just as I had completed almost a year of work on the book, the publisher, Eclipse Comics, went belly-up, and all the work I had turned in up to that point vanished. Since I was in contract dispute at that time, I never got paid, and even after months of fighting to regain possession of my originals, I have only the last few pages of this forty-eight page story. Seven years later the story remains unpublished... This goes a little way toward explaining why I tend not to do sequential work. However, despite all the frustration and disappointment, there is a potentially happy ending here. It seems that the lost originals have resurfaced in the possession of Clive Barker himself. Maybe some day soon Age of Desire will see the light of day after all."
Tim Bradstreet, 1998

The Boys Vol 2: Get Some
by Garth Ennis & Darick Robertson
Dynamite Entertainment
$19.99
The Boys are a team of five super-powered operatives who work for a secret department within the U.S. government. It's their job to monitor and investigate superhero behavior, they gather intelligence - i.e. dirt - on them, and occasionally to use it against them. Just as the C.I.A. has had a use for the Mafia, Sadaam Hussein, and Columbia's FARC terrorists (to name a few), so they also need superheros. Sometimes they need them on a leash. Sometimes they have to put them down. The Boys are the people who do the job. The whole idea is to keep super-people in line. Their leader is Billy Butcher, their newest recruit is Wee Hughie, and the other three are Mother's Milk, The Frenchman and The Female (of the Species). Their talents and powers are simple: they excel at beating people to a pulp.

"I guess you could say it comes from 17 years working in an industry dominated by one genre. I've never been a big fan of superheroes, but I can't pretend I'm not aware of them. You look at that stuff and you go, 'No, no, that's not what would happen, this is what would really happen', and you carry on from there. On top of that, I wanted to get my teeth into a good, long story again, something that would last for some time, rather than just another miniseries. Preacher and Hitman obviously come to mind. If I get it right, this is the book that will out-Preacher Preacher."
Garth Ennis

More Old Jewish Comedians
by Drew Freidman
Fantagraphics Books
$16.99
In a sequel to 2006's Old Jewish Comedians, Drew Freidman depicts more Jewish comics, actors, clowns and tumblers in the sunset of their years.

"To me, the key to Drew Friedman's work is the deft mixture of brutal, near-sadistic honesty and deeply felt affection for his chosen people.."
Dan Clowes

Fire Away
by Chris Von Szombathy
Drawn & Quarterly
$9.95
In his first published collection, Chris Von Szombathy's surreal illustrations explore the bold juxtaposition of colour and use of iconic imagery. He emphasizes the repetition of shape and the subversion of expectations with jarring intersections of organic, inorganic and purely abstract elements. Swirling fractals of curves and angles erupt from and entangle his subjects , invading the void space of his backgrounds with injections and infections of formand light.

"The book is called Fire Away and should be out this fall from Drawn & Quarterly. At least that's our goal for right now. It's really amazing that they've offered this to me and I'm really happy about it. I've been working really hard on it since last year and am really pleased with how it feels. I think it's going to do justice. It's based on auditory and visual hallucinations, kind of getting in touch with putting down another world on paper, what kinda shapes my reality I guess. A lot of the paintings, to me, are really horrific and frightening but people seem to get the exact opposite reaction from them which, i think, is good and always interesting. Any strong reaction is good."
Chris Von Szombathy discusses Fire Away at Fecal Face - Read the full interview here.

The Shatner Show (HC)
by Various
Uppercase Gallery
$35.00
"I purposefully wanted to have a good grouping of up-and-coming artists and Calgarian artists, as well as a good mix of Canadian and American, as well as male and female. So it was conscious all the way through to get that mix. About 80 percent of my initial list said 'yes,' and of the people who declined, most of them said they were just too busy. I think just one of them said they didn't like Shatner."
Janine Vangool - Read more about The Shatner Show here.

"The gallery's self-proclaimed mastermind, Janine Vangool, came up with the idea of a Shatner Show after listening to the actor's CD while driving across Canada. New and established artists from across the continent contributed works. The results include a bust of Shatner made from more than 9,000 Lego pieces, Shatner as Bonhomme, Shatner portraits, Shatner driving the last spike and Shatner as Kirk embraced by a Gorn, a reptilian humanoid space creature. 'It's kind of about him as the centre of the universe,' said artist Katie Radke. There are 76 works on view, one for each year of Shatner's age."
CBC Arts - Read the full review here.

Rasl #1
by Jeff Smith
Cartoon Books
$3.50
Bone creator, Jeff Smith, unveils his newest series, the stark sci-fi series, Rasl. Meet Rasl, an art thief searching for his next big score, while trying to escape his past. Where other thieves plan their heists with breathtaking precision, Rasl has an ace up his sleeve - he can travel through the light between dimensions, affording him access to museums that no ordinary thief could access. In this issue, Rasl faces an assassins bullet and stumbles across a mystery that not only threatens to expose his own illicit activities, but could also uncover one of the world's most dangerous and sought after secrets.

"...a sci-fi thriller in the vein of Blade Runner and The Bourne Supremacy."
Jeff Smith

Art Spiegelman: Conversations
edited by Joseph Witek
University Press Of Mississippi
$20.00
When the graphic novel Maus: A Survivor's Tale won a Special Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for its vivid depiction of the Holocaust and its effects, critics and mainstream audiences recognized that a comic book was capable of exploring complex aesthetic, moral, and cultural themes. Maus's creator Art Spiegelman became the most famous alternative cartoonist in America. Art Spiegelman: Conversations reveals an artist who had long been working to establish comics as a serious art form. With his wife Francoise Mouly, he founded and edited RAW magazine - the most influential showcase for avant-garde comics in America - which published early work by such now well-established cartoonists as Chris Ware, Kaz, and Gary Panter. Spiegelman's essays and lectures helped to establish that comics have a history and a canon. This collection of interviews and profiles spans 1976-2006 and covers Spiegelman's career as an artist, critic, educator, and art historian. Among three previously unpublished interviews, one conducted by the volume's editor discusses themes rarely touched upon in earlier profiles.

Bill Mauldin: A Life Up Front
by Bill Mauldin
WW Norton
$27.95
During World War II, the truest glimpse most Americans got of the "real war" came through the flashing black lines of twenty-two-year-old infantry sergeant Bill Mauldin. Week after week, Mauldin defied army censors, German artillery, and Patton's pledge to "throw his ass in jail" to deliver his wildly popular cartoon, Up Front, to the pages of Stars & Stripes. Up Front featured the wise-cracking Willie and Joe, whose stooped shoulders, mud-soaked uniforms, and pidgin of army slang and slum dialect bore eloquent witness to the world of combat and the men who lived - and died - in it. This taut, lushly illustrated biography - the first of two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Bill Mauldin - is illustrated with more than ninety classic Mauldin cartoons and rare photographs. It traces the improbable career and tumultuous private life of a charismatic genius who rose to fame on his motto: "If it's big, hit it."

Erotic Comics: The Graphic History Of Tijuana Bibles To Zap Comix (HC)
by Tim Pilcher
Abrams
$29.95
This international survey of erotic comics chronicles a groundbreaking form of sexual expression up to 1970, the years when mainstream culture spurned explicit eroticism. In the 1930s, American 'Tijuana Bibles', little pornographic comic books that parodied popular comics and comic strips, were widely available. World War II gave a boost to erotic comics, especially illustrated pin-ups. This set the stage for men's magazines such as Playboy, which included racy cartoons from the beginning, and fetish comics. The flowering of the counterculture in the next decade gave rise to underground comics, whose acknowledged master was Robert Crumb. A parallel development occurred in Europe, where erotic comics like Barbarella were suddenly the rage. Erotic Comics tells this story with hundreds of illustrations, informative text, and insights from key artists, writers, and publishers. It's sexy, artistic, entertaining, intriguing, and informative.

This Book Contains Graphic Language: Comics As Literature
by Rocco Versaci
Continuum Books
$19.95
As comics and graphic novels are becoming more popular than ever, literary critics now will now have a new subject to add to the mix. While many advocates of the medium have maintained that comics are a true art form, there have been no sustained and detailed comparisons among comics and "legitimate" forms of literature. Filling this void, This Book Contains Graphic Language examines different literary forms and genres in relation to their comic book counterparts. These literatures include prose memoir, Holocaust memoir, journalism, film, and - for lack of a better term - the 'classics'. Each chapter outlines the key issues of one of these forms and then explores how comic books have been able to reflect and expand upon those issues in unique ways. The point of each chapter - and of the book as a whole - is to demonstrate that comic books are as 'literary' as those forms traditionally held in much higher regard.

"Versaci avoids the contrarian stance-taking and overcompensatory justification of childhood dreck that plagues most writing about comics, bringing instead a big-hearted, clear-minded rigor to a subject which clearly obsesses him."
Dan Clowes, creator of Ghost World, David Boring

Alter Ego: The Best Of The Legendary Comics Fanzine
edited by Roy Thomas & Bill Schelly
TwoMorrows Publishing
$21.95
In 1961, Jerry Bails and Roy Thomas launched Alter Ego, the first fanzine devoted to comics books. This volume collects the original 11 issues of Alter Ego, fist published between 1961 and 1978., with contributions from Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Wally Wood, John Buscema, Marie Severin, Curt Swan, Bill Everret, Russ Manning and others, featuring interviews will Gil Kane, Bill Everret and Joe Kubert.

Barefoot Gen Vol 5 & 6
by Keiji Nakazawa
Last Gasp
$14.95 each
"It was a Monday morning, over 60 years ago. On August 6, 1945, the sun was shining. It seemed like just another ordinary summer day as six-year-old Keiji Nakazawa made his way to school. Looking up, he was surprised to see an American B-29 bomber flying over head. No air-raid warning sirens had sounded. 43 seconds later, a bomb nicknamed 'Little Boy' exploded 1,800 feet above him. In an instant, Keiji and thousands of other residents of Hiroshima were hit by an atomic bomb. Mercifully no nation apart from Japan has had to endure atomic bombings and their insidious radioactive after-effects. This may explain why their shockwaves continue to reverberate in numerous manga and anime fantasies set in post-apocalyptic dystopias, from Akira and Nausicaa to Dragon Head and many more. Perhaps creating stories about this massive, unique trauma to a nation's psyche offers one way to deal with these painful memories and their legacy."
Paul Gravett discusses Barefoot Gen - Read the full article here.

The Creator Chronicles: Bill Sienkiewicz DVD
by Robin Dale & Bill Sienkiewicz
Little Eva Ink
$24.95
For the first time in a comprehensive interview, Bill Sienkiewicz talks about his eclectic, electric, unique artwork, which has made him one of the most compelling and original artists of our time. This discussion with interviewer Robin Dale covers Sienkiewicz's prolific career from his start on Moon Knight to his incredible artistic transformation of the mid-80's.