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Everyone Is Stupid Except For Me & Other Astute Observations by Peter Bagge Fantagraphics Books $16.99 Peter Bagge has been contributing comic-strip opinion pieces to Reason magazine for the last several years, which are finally being collected in this volume. Although a libertarian, Bagge is hardly dogmatic, and most of the pieces undermine traditional party lines in favor of a rather personal, rational and informed take on hot-button issues: Favorite topics include the erosion of our civil liberties, ongoing boondoggles of the American public, the Iraq war, politicians both in general and in particular, and the conservative/religious war on sex. Each piece features Bagge himself front and center as the puzzled, indignant, or deeply conflicted everyman-on-the-street trying to make sense of this 21st century. And of course, every panel is delineated in Bagge's glorious, laugh-out-loud stretchy cartoon style, making even his disquisitions on some very serious topics crackle with wit and energy. |
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The Artist Himself: A Rand Holmes Retrospective by Patrick Rosenkranz Fantagraphics Books $28.99 Rand Holmes' hippie hero, Harold Hedd, became the internationally famous spokesman for the emerging Canadian counterculture. Holmes preferred a lower profile. The Artist Himself biography/retrospective includes generous selections from his private journals and correspondence, family photo albums, sketchbooks spanning 25 years, and personal anecdotes from his friends and colleagues. His artistic history began in Edmonton, flourished in Vancouver and San Francisco, and concluded on Lasqueti Island. Holmes' life story is richly illustrated with drawings, comic strips, watercolors, and paintings that span his whole career: from the hot rod cartoons he drew as a teenager, dozens of covers for the Georgia Straight, pornographic cartoons for the sex tabloid Vancouver Star, to complete comic stories from Slow Death Funnies, Dead Comix, and many more. The full-length Harold Hedd comic novels, Wings Over Tijuana and Hitler's Cocaine are reprinted in their entirety together for the first time. A DVD documentary about a retrospective exhibition of his original work accompanies this book. "Rand Holmes was a private and secretive man who was self taught in everything he did, which was more than comics. He also played the banjo, tamed birds, hunted with black powder rifles, and built his own house from logs harvested on his property on a remote island in British Columbia. He produced hundred of covers and illustrations for the Georgia Straight during the 1970s, drew comics for Death Rattle and Twisted Tales in the 1980s and painted in the style of the old masters during the 1990s.
His widow Martha gave me complete access to his artwork, personal papers, journals, and correspondence because she wanted me to understand him. I compiled his career spanning work from many sources to reproduce in this book, and interviewed his family, high school buddies, fellow cartoonists, wives and girlfriends, to assemble a very revealing portrait of a complicated man. I think you'll enjoy it." |
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Queer Visitors From The Marvelous Land Of Oz (HC) by L. Frank Baum, Walt McDougall & W. W. Denslow Sunday Press Books $75.00 At the dawn of the 20th century, L. Frank Baum created a world of wonders that was to hold a permanent place in the culture of America: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Then in 1904, to promote his second book, Baum, along with master cartoonist Walt McDougall, brought his famed characters to Earth in a new medium, the comic strip. Queer Visitors From Marvelous Land Of Oz had arrived. At this same time, Oz illustrator W.W. Denslow, offered his own Sunday feature, Scarecrow & The Tinman. Now both of these rare cartoon features are collected for the first time, restored and presented in full broadsheet size. Join these timeless characters and explore the culture that was America over 100 years ago. You surely won't be in Kansas (or anyplace like it) anymore. |
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Crazy Hair by Neil Gaiman & Dave McKean Harper Collins $18.99 In my hair gorillas leap, tigers stalk, and ground sloths sleep. Prides of lions make their lair somewhere in my crazy hair. |
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Magic Trixie & The Dragon Vol 3 by Jill Thompson Harper Collins $7.99 "Jill Thompson's Scary Godmother series never got the success I thought it deserved. Her new series, Magic Trixie, takes a different approach to a world of magic and fun. Instead of a niece who gets to wander into a fantasy world occasionally, Magic Trixie is a little girl with her own powers, a talking cat, and a wild shock of blazing orange hair. She's also incredibly realistic, which makes her behavior believable to anyone who's either seen a been a grumpy little girl who doesn't want to get up and who's jealous of the special attention her new baby sister gets. Her best friend, Stitch, is a little Frankenstein boy, and her “Monstersorri School” classmates include little werewolves, mummies, and vampire twins. Loupie Garou is a particular torment. “For a werewolf, she sure is catty,” says Trixie to her cat Scratches. (The cast is reminiscent of Little Gloomy's, but with very different appearances.) The character design is manga-influenced and very cute, with large heads and eyes, but told in Thompson's beautiful painted style. It's the details of her world that make it outstanding, with Trixie's crowded home and the city streets full of opportunity for kids with imagination. The best parts of the book are the small ones, like Trixie's trip to school, as she rides past shops and through the park on a broom with training wheels, erm, landing gear. The pictures can be stared at for hours." Read the full review at Comics Worth Reading. |
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A Treasury Of 20 Century Murder Vol 2: Famous Players by Rick Geary NBM $15.95 It s the early days of Hollywood, movies are just starting to come of their own and gain in popularity. New Stars are made. The movies are still silent but their stars certainly are not in the scandal sheets. Amidst this new boiling cauldron, William Desmond Taylor, a successful director at the upscale Famous Players Studio is found shot in his home... Could it have been the star Mary Miles Minter or a former butler? But then, what about that strange past Taylor had? Another delectable mystery as only Geary can tell em! |
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100 Bullets Vol 13: Wilt by Brian Azzarello & Eduardo Risso DC/Vertigo $19.99 Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso's award-winning crime saga 100 Bullets reaches its epic conclusion in this final volume collecting issues #89-100. Learn the last dark secrets of The Trust and The Minutemen's place in the world as secrets are revealed about what really caused Graves' war with The Trust. "Azzarello poses as many questions as he answers, an M.O. that keeps the book twisting and turning on its way to its 100th issue finale. And with Risso's always emotional, brutal art, crime hasn't looked this good in a long time." |
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Dark Entries by Ian Rankin & Werther Dell'Edera DC/Vertigo $19.99 Occult detective John Constantine has seen his share of strange things in his career, but nothing could prepare him for the horrors of…reality television. "Haunted Mansion" is currently the hottest show on tv, but when the macabre house actually starts attacking the contestants, Constantine is hired to be the ultimate mole. Locked inside with a cast of wannabe-celebrities, his every move being monitored by a deadly figure from his past, Constantine must figure out who (or what) is pulling the strings before he gets cancelled - permanently. Dark Entries is a classic locked-room mystery starring Hellblazer's John Constantine from Ian Rankin, the #1 international best-selling crime writer best known for his "Inspector Rebus" novels. "Rankin's work is crime fiction at its most consuming, cerebral best." "One of Britain's leading novelists in any genre." |
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Filthy Rich by Brian Azzarello & Victor Santos DC/Vertigo $19.99 Richard "Junk" Junkin has always lived on the wrong side of trouble. A former pro football star whose career was cut short by injury (and a nasty gambling problem), Junk now spends his time dreaming of what might have been, selling cars in Jersey and lusting after the boss's unbelievably spoiled, unbelievably sexy and unbelievably rich daughter, Victoria. So when the boss asks him to be Victoria's personal bodyguard while she tears up the New York City club scene, Junk leaps at the chance. But before long, he's finds that Victoria wants a lapdog and not a chaperone, someone who's going to do all of her dirty work—all of it—someone who wants to get filthy rich... |
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Battlefields Vol 2: Dear Billy by Garth Ennis & Peter Snejbjerg Dynamic Entertainment $12.99 1942: In the tropical splendour of the South China sea, as the Second World War spreads across the far east, a young woman finds herself in paradise... and then in hell. Nurse Carrie Sutton is caught up in the Japanese invasion of Singapore, suffering horrors beyond her wildest nightmares- and survives. Now she attempts to start her life anew, buoyed up by a growing friendship with a wounded pilot- only for fate to deliver up the last thing she ever expected. Carrie at last has a chance for revenge... but should she take it? In the midst of a world torn apart by war, you can fight and you can win- but you still might not get the things you truly want. |
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Flight Vol 6 edited by Kazu Kibuishi Villard Books $25.00 Flight is a full-colour anthology of short stories by some of the hottest creators in the comics field. "With 21 fantasy and sf stories by a talented group of mostly young artists, the fifth Flight maintains the anthology series' consistent high quality. In fact, Flight may be too consistent for its long-term good. Many standouts here are by creators who stood out in previous volumes, such as Michael Gagné, who now concludes his saga of the heroic young fox Rex; Sonny Liew, who offers another charming Malinky Robot tale; and Scott Campbell, who reprises the delightfully wacky Igloo Head and Tree Head. While the minimal, fantasy-based story lines retain their charm, their plucky young protagonists are beginning to feel overfamiliar. Newcomer Svetlana Chmakova's manga-influenced portrayal of an insistent girl trying to convince her disparaging classmates that she is a space princess from Pluto, however, offers a new take on the favorite Flight theme of determined youngster battling imposing odds." |
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Side B: The Music Lover's Comic Anthology by various Posuer Ink $22.99 Music touches our lives every day. It is an influential and defining part of all generations and cultures. Posuer Ink have compiled an anthology full of stories about the influence that music can have on life - be it the life of the artist as and individual or on the creative process. Over 200 pages of lost lovers, rocking out, spirit guides, ghosts, and dinosaurs - it's like an action adventure comic for the music lover in all of us. Read a preview here. |
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Abstract Comics: The Anthology (HC) edited by Andrei Molotiu Fantagraphics Books $39.99 The first collection devoted to the genre, Abstract Comics: The Anthology, is edited by Andrei Molotiu, an art historian and contemporary abstract-comic creator. It gathers the best abstract comics so far, including early experiments by Gary Panter, Moebius, Patrick McDonnell, and Lewis Trondheim, and pieces by little-known pioneers such as Benoit Joly, Bill Boichel and Jeff Zenick, as well as by recent practitioners such as Ibn al Rabin, Billy Mavreas, Mark Staff Brandl, and many others. Abstract Comics also features first attempts, commissioned specifically for this anthology, by well-known cartoonists such as James Kochalka, Ivan Brunetti, J.R. Williams and Warren Craghead. |
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From Wonderland With Love: Danish Comics In The Third Millennium edited by Steffen Maarup Fantagraphics Books $29.99 Featuring short works by 19 Danish cartoonists: Zven Balslev, Vibe Bredal, Simon Bukhave, Allan Haverholm, HuskMitNavn, Peter Kielland, Ib Kjeldsmark, Johan F. Krarup, G. R. Mantard, Søren Mosdal & Jacob Ørsted, Julie Nord, Signe Parkins, Mårdøn Smet, Jan Solheim & Maria Isenbecker, T. Thorhauge, Nikoline Werdelin and Christoffer Zieler. |
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Love Is A Peculiar Type Of Thing by Box Brown Box Brown Comics $10.00 "When Top Shelf 2.0 launched last year, they asked me to put together some longer comics, so I did. The first one was a six-page comic called Love is a Peculiar Type of Thing. Three more stories followed. I decided to apply for a Xeric Grant, the only grant in the country dedicated to helping artists self publish comics. When I applied for the grant, I had about 30 pages of a 96-page collection. I never thought they would accept the proposal. When they did I was out of work, and I knew I had to finish this book. Love is a Peculiar Type of Thing is a collection of stories about a struggle to find identity. As you might guess, love is the answer, but the questions are still infinitely puzzling." Box Brown |
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Legacy by Jack Katz The Heroes Initiative $14.95 Jack Katz, best know as the creator of the epic, independent series, The First Kingdom , returns to the comic scene with an all-new, 100-page graphic novel, Legacy. Legacy is a slice-of-life tale of corporate greed, family betrayal, love lost, and love found—told in the classic style of Hogarth, Eisner, and Foster. Following the death of Gavin LeClare, the family fortune - $70 billion dollars - is bequeathed not to the family, but to one Silvia Alogo, an unknown Hispanic woman that doesn't speak English. Enter Barney Barrett, insurance investigator, brought in to unravel the mystery of the LeClare estate. What Barrett discovers could make or break the LeClare family fortune - and the evidence he uncovers could have deadly consequences! |
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Astro City: The Dark Age Book One by Kurt Busiek & Brent Anderson DC/Wildstorm $19.99 Collecting the first eight chapters of the 16-part "Dark Age" saga, revealing the history of Astro City and shedding light on some of its greatest heroes! Book One, now in trade paperback, takes place in the early 1970s and follows two brothers — with one becoming a hero and the other taking a far different path. Along the way, the long-standing secret tale of the Silver Agent and his fate is told at last, as the story shifts back to the 1950s and what made the Williams brothers turn out so differently. |
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Tank Girl: Three by Alan Martin & Jamie Hewlett Titan Publishing $14.95 "Tank Girl took a blowtorch to Batman and kicked seven shades out of Superman... Sexy, psychedelic and spleen-splittingly funny." Maxim "Hewlett and Martin's Tank Girl is one of the most righteous graphic novels of all time." |
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Century 21: Classic Comic Strips from the Worlds of Gerry Anderson Vols 1 & 2 edited by Chris Bentley Renolds & Hearn $29.99 each Authorised and supervised by Gerry Anderson himself, Chris Bentley has assembled some of the most thrilling stories from the classic years of TV21, the smash-hit British comic of the 1960s, including Thunderbirds, Lady Penelope, Fireball XL5, Stingray, Captain Scarlet and Joe 90. Featuring material never reprinted before, this superb showcase of Anderson's most popular characters will be an essential purchase for all Anderson fans and all enthusiasts for classic British comics. |
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Nexus: As It Happened Vol 1 by Mike Baron & Steve Rude Rude Dude Productions $9.99 Nexus: As It Happened is a reprint of the Nexus Archives currenly on sale through Dark Horse comics in an affordable black and white paperback version: On the distant moon of Ylum, an enigmatic man is plagued by nightmares. He is forced to dream of the past. He dreams of real-life butchers and tyrants, and what they have done. And then he finds them, and kills them. The year is 2841, and this man is Nexus, a godlike figure who acts as judge, jury, and executioner for the vile criminals who appear in his dreams. He claims to kill in self-defense, but why? Where do the visions come from, and where did he get his powers? Though a hero to many, does he have any real moral code? These are but some of the questions that reporter Sundra Peale hopes to have answered. Collecting Nexus #1-3 (Vol. 1., black and white) and Nexus #1-4 (Vol. 2, full color), from Capital Comics. A multiple Eisner Award-winning series that defined the careers of acclaimed creators Steve Rude and Mike Baron, Nexus is a modern classic not to be missed. |
| To Top | ART & ILLUSTRATION: |
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The Art Of Tony Millionaire (HC) by Tony Millionaire Dark Horse $39.95 Prepare to set sail on a drunken fever dream of dollies, apes, and exotic mysteries that, once seen, can never be un-seen. The Art of Tony Millionaire collects illustrations, comics, stories, photographs, and anecdotes. Thrill to never-before-seen illustrations that have made women gasp and grown men gasp, too. Partake in the beautiful genius of the only cartoonist in the history of mankind to have won five Eisner Awards, three Harvey Awards, and an Ignatz. He also won Best Marksman at summer camp when he was twelve, but lost the Art Competition in high school to a girl who drew a lovely ear of corn. |
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Welcome To Forest Island (HC) by Bwana Spoons Top Shelf Productions $30.00 Top Shelf presents Welcome to Forest Island, the very first art book by Bwana Spoons, a painter, designer, silkscreener, and zinester whose work has been featured on shoes, skateboards, t-shirts, baby strollers, and in gallery shows throughout the US, Tokyo, and Paris. All 144 full-color pages - including paintings, maps, sketches, short comics, and more - are dedicated to Forest Island, the outrageously colorful land of Bwana's imagination! Our motley cast includes whale-gators, super-cicadas, wild killers and tapirs, arrow-shooting, basket-weaving love tribes, an ex-hobo mushroom farmer, and one wacky bat who plays drums in a metal band and would do anything for a jelly-filled bagel. |
| To Top | COMICS: |
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Batman & Robin # 1 by Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely DC $2.99 "Batman Reborn" begins here. With the reunited team of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely (All Star Superman, WE3, New X-Men), this first issue kicks off a 3-part story arc that can't be missed. The new Dynamic Duo hit the streets with a bang in their new flying Batmobile as they face off against an assemblage of villains called the Circus of Strange. They also tackle their first mission investigating a child who's been abducted by the mysterious Domino Killer. But will everything go smoothly? And who exactly are the new Batman and Robin? The newest era of The Dark Knight begins here. "He's just handed in the first issue and he's started to work on the second. It's amazing. It's a very different take on Batman. It looks quite different. And quite interesting." |
| To Top | ABOUT COMICS: |
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The Comics Journal #299 Fantagraphics Books $11.99 The essential magazine of comics news and criticism. In this issue: Bob Levin tracks down the El Dorado of comics, a lost collection of unpublished strips by 190 of the world's most important cartoonists, including Will Eisner, Vaughn Bodé, Jack Kirby, Harvey Kurtzman, Art Spiegelman, Arnold Roth, Bill Griffith, Ralph Steadman, Don Martin, Gahan Wilson, Jeff Jones, Guido Crepax - even William Burroughs, Tom Wolfe and Frank Zappa. The comics were assembled in the 1970s by Michel Choquette for a book called Someday Funnies, which never saw print. Levin and Choquette reveal for the first time the whole catastrophic story of what might have been the comics anthology of the century. Find out about the latest issue here. |
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Cerebus Archive #2 by Dave Sim Aardvark Vanaheim $2.00 A bi-monthly series from Cerebus creator Dave Sim, with behind-the-scenes material covering his career in comics from 1972 to the present. In this issue: - Life Suit and Justice from 1974-75. - Letters from Gene Day. - The continuing history of The Beavers strip. - Commentary by Dave Sim throughout and much more. |
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Comic Book Design: The Essential Guide To Creating Great Comics & Graphic Novels by Gary Spencer Millidge Watson-Guptill $24.95 In Comic Book Design, Gary Spencer Millidge, the award-winning creator of the Strangehaven comics, guides you through specific design elements exclusive to comic books, such as: - creating and designing characters and background locations - page layouts and grid structures - lettering and word balloons - color - cover and publication design - and more. With focuses on putting together an original design and storyline concept, drawing with both traditional (penciling and inking) and new technology methods (digitally), and profiles of leading comic artists and designers like Chris Ware and Chip Kidd, Comic Book Design is poised to become today's go-to guide for up-and-coming comic book creators. |
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The Summit Of The Gods Vol 1 by Yumemakura Baku & Jiro Taniguchi Fanfare/Ponent Mon $25.00 "Becasue it's there", George Herbert Leigh Mallory is said to have given this in reply to the question "Why do you want to climb Mount Everest?" On his third expedition in June 1924, Mallory and his climbing partner, Andrew Irvine, disappeared on the North-East ridge during their ascent, having been sighted only a few hundred meters from the summit. In 1993, in a small Nepalese store, Makoto Fukamachi, photographer for a Japanese expedition to conquer Mount Everest, stumbles across an old camera - a Vest Pocket Autographic Kodak Special. Could it be Mallory's camera? Did it hold the secret of whether Mallory and Irvine made it to the summit almost three decades before Hillary? Taniguchi's realistic art and Baku's tireless script will take you to such heights that mountaineers only dream about. |