Exit Wounds (HC)
by Rutu Modan
Drawn & Quarterly
$19.95
Exit Wounds is the North American graphic novel debut from one of Israel's best-known cartoonists, Rutu Modan. Together with Itzik Rennert, Mira Friedmann, Batia Kolton and Yirmi Pinkus, she co-founded the Israeli comics group Actus Tragicus. With thin, precise lines and luscious watercolors, in Exit Wounds Modan has created a portrait of modern Israel, a place where sudden death mingles with the slow dissolution of family ties. Set in modern-day Tel Aviv, a young man, Koby Franco, receives an urgent phone call from a female soldier. Learning that his estranged father may have been a victim of a suicide bombing in Hadera, Koby reluctantly joins the soldier in searching for clues. His death would certainly explain his empty apartment and disconnected phone line. As Koby tries to unravel the mystery of his father's death, he finds himself not only piecing together the last few months of his father's life, but his entire identity.

"Exit Wounds is a profound, richly textured, humane, and unsentimental look at societal malaise and human relationships and that uneasy place where they sometimes intersect."
Joe Sacco, creator of Palestine

"Tel Aviv–based Modan gives American comics readers a sharp sense of Israeli life in this brilliant and moving graphic novel."
Publishers Weekly

"Exit Wounds describes three parallel journeys. The first is kind of a detective one: looking for the true identity of a destroyed body. The second is the story of the relationship between Koby (the main protagonist) and his missing father, which occurs mainly inside Koby's head since he has not seen his father in a couple years. The third is a journey in the Israel of today - a place were the aggressive political reality is mixing with personal life on a daily basis - meeting all kinds of characters that are affected with this reality."
Rutu Modan discusses Exit Wounds at Newsarama - Read the full interview here.

Playboy's Silverstein Around The World (HC)
by Shel Silverstein, foreword by Hugh Hefner
Fireside
$24.00
Best-selling children's book author Shel Silverstein was a renaissance man with a wide-ranging career, including a long career publishing illustrated travel pieces for Playboy. This book collects and reproduces the 24 travel pieces that Silverstein created for Playboy between 1957 and 1968.

Things Just Get Away From You
by Walt Holcombe
Fantagraphics Books
$24.95
Things Just Get Away From You collects all of Walt Holcombe's late-1990s comics work, with a bonus new story, Hails at Sea, thrown in for good measure. The book leads off with the 1997 Eisner Award-winning King of Persia, a 1001 Nights/Yiddish vaudeville-inspired graphic novella in which King Faisal Al-Ghazali must win the affection of the woman he loves by traveling to an enchanted land in search of a giant emerald, while accompanied by his faithful companion, the talking camel, Jamila. Also included are stories from the short-lived comic book series Poot, and the short story What Do Pretty People Think About?, a pathetic bit of speculative envy in which Holcombe muses about the condition of physical beauty.

Percy Gloom (HC)
by Cathy Malkasian
Fantagraphics Books
$18.95
"Fantagraphics decided to publish Cathy Malkasian's lovely new graphic novel Percy Gloom after seeing the first third of it. This act of faith may not have been extravagant, but it likely paid off better than they can imagine. While the author's first sustained comics work carries considerable surface charms which you can see from page one, the book's greatest strength is how well it all comes together as a singular, creative statement. It's rare to see a graphic novel that evolves and changes throughout, becoming complete only on its last page. It's uncommon to seen any long comics work this good from a first-time author. Percy Gloom is one of the best books out this year."
Tom Spurgeon at The Comics Reporter. Read the full review here.

The Plain Janes
by Cecil Castellucci & Jim Rugg
DC/Minx
$9.99
When a transfer student named Jane is forced to move from the cool confines of Metro City to Suburbia, she thinks her life is over. But there in the lunch room at the reject table she finds her tribe: three other girls named Jane. Main Jane encourages them to form a secret art gang and paint the town P.L.A.I.N. - People Loving Art In Neighborhoods. But can art attacks really save the hell that is high school?

"The cover's horrid, but the art inside communicates mood and expression successfully and succinctly, whilst there are elements of Jane and her life that are instantly identifiable as nigh-universal, whether it's the overprotective mum (all mums are perceived as overprotective, regardless of innocence or guilt!), the missed opportunities, frozen in romance's blinding and gagging headlights, or just the immortal phrase (muttered several times a week, I'll bet): "Boys suck."  I like the fact that Jane's far from perfect, giving way on occasion to unreasonable sulks, and suffering the setbacks we all do in life along with the inevitable, attendant deflation of confidence.  But her creativity and her sense of fun are infectious both for the three Janes and for this reader, and I'd have thought there's nothing more seductive to the book's target audience than the act and art of rebellion. This is full of it."
Stephen Holland, co-founder of Page 45, one of the UK's finest comic shops.

Criminal Vol 1: Coward
by Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips
Marvel/Icon
$14.99
Collecting issues 1-5 of Criminal, one of the best comics of 2006. Coward is the story of Leo, a professional pickpocket who is also a legendary heist-planner and thief. But there's a catch with Leo, he won't work any job that he doesn't call all the shots on, he won't allow guns, and the minute things turn south, he's looking for any exit that won't land him in prison. But when he's lured into a risky heist, all his rules go out the window, and he ends up on the run from the cops and the bad men who double-crossed him. Now Leo must come face-to-face with the violence he's kept bottled up inside for 20 years, and nothing will ever be the same for him again.