Tamara Drewe (HC)
by Posy Simmonds
Jonathan Cape
£16.99
Posy Simmonds' latest book Tamara Drew is inspired by the 19th century novel Far From The Madding Crowd. Set in a writers' retreat, it is a thrilling tale of jealousy and desire. Tamara Drewe has transformed herself. Plastic surgery, a different wardrobe, a smoldering look, have given her confidence and a new and thrilling power to attract, which she uses recklessly. Often just for the fun of it. People are drawn to Tamara Drewe, male and female. In the remote village where her late mother lived, Tamara arrives to clear up the house. Here, she becomes an object of lust, of envy, the focus of unrequited love, a seductress. To the village teenagers, she is 'plastic-fantastic', a role model. Ultimately, when her hot and indiscriminate glances lead to tragedy, she is seen as a man-eater, a heartless marriage wrecker, a slut.

"She's an extraordinary cartoonist. In the collected volumes that I've got there are places where she does some ingenious things with storytelling and characterization. The pity of it is that the vast majority of people who like to think of themselves as comic fans... will never do themselves the favour of picking it up and getting a decent education in graphic narrative."
Alan Moore

"Posy Simmonds is, without a shadow of a doubt, one of a handful of absolutely brilliant cartoonists currently working in the English language... Books like Very Posy and Pick of Posy are among the best newspaper strips ever published... Few cartoonists have demonstrated the range that Simmonds has displayed over the years. Jules Feiffer would be an obvious comparison, but even Feiffer lacked the sheer density of Simmonds' most accomplished pieces."
Bart Beaty, The Comics Journal #227

"Her career, indeed her whole life, also seem to have perfectly prepared her now for the multiple demands of creating and maturing the graphic novel. This November brings the publication in Britain from Jonathan Cape of Tamara Drewe. Like Gemma, this was serialized in The Guardian, starting in 2005, but on a weekly basis in their Saturday Review section, often in double episodes. It sees her applying her skills with colour, polished first on her successful children's books, to adult comics at last. This time, her literary allusions are to Thomas Hardy's 1874 novel Far From The Madding Crowd but transposed to modern, celebrity-obsessed Britain and the tensions between city and country. When ambitious urbanite Tamara inherits a family home deep in the English countryside, she turns the heads of three rival males and soon the whole village is abuzz with secrets and desires. It will be one of the graphic novels of the year, without a doubt."
Paul Gravett, from the introduction to his Comics Journal interview with Posy Simmonds.

Storeyville (HC)
by Frank Santoro
Picturebox
$24.95
Storeyville was originally published in 1995 as a 40-page tabloid newspaper. Now rare, it was printed in black and white, along with a set of three muted tones ranging from sandy yellow to deep sepia, and it described the arc of a youthful adventure that took its protagonist, Will, from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Montreal, Quebec at the opening of the twentieth century. Rendered with humor, pathos and a gentle graphic flair, this story brings Will to terms with himself and his fate. It is a sprawling story that gives Santoro ample opportunity to showcase his love of drawing through dramatic cityscapes, landscapes and seascapes rendered in a unique combination of pencils, inks and grey-scale markers. Hugely influential on the likes of Chris Ware, Seth and many others, this long out-of-print cult work finally gets a proper release with this deluxe new hardcover edition.

"I consider reading Storeyville for the first time one of the touchstones of my life as a cartoonist and the book itself is one of the landmarks of comics' development. I am absolutely delighted to see it reprinted for a new audience."
Chris Ware - more Chris Ware reading recommendations here.

"Of all the graphic narratives to appear in the last few decades, I believe Storeyville may be the work closest to duplicating that same passionate and intoxicating quality that was found in the woodcut novels of Frans Massereel. It's a work full of the vital messy stuff of life - emotional, sprawling, epic - and among the most powerful evocations of landscape ever in the history of comics."
Seth - more Seth reading recommendations here.

"Basically, I just churned out these landscapes from memory and from some on site drawing and then I'd have to draw the figures, the characters in the story with equal intensity. So there was this push and pull between the foreground and the background and I just became fascinated with the way each element was drawn and how I could play off that tension. Grey washes, pencil, pen, color, color combos - how does that all fit together? What's the range I have with only two colors and a half-toned blackline? I think it paid off aesthetically. It sums up how I believe things can be expressed with economy and feeling. And as corny as it sounds it's also a document of my youth that doubles as a nice reminder of my honest idealism and determination. I still like to think I have that determination - I mean, to be idealistic and radical and free of bitterness or ill intent. I'm glad to see my naivete preserved. I like the touch I had then. I was less self conscious than I am now. It sort of scolds me from some artistic past to remain true to the ideals and standards that I developed then as a newly formed adult."
Frank Santoro discusses Storeyville - Read the full interview here.

I Killed Adolf Hitler
by Jason
Fantagraphics Books
$12.95
For his latest graphic novel Jason posits a strange, violent world in which contract killers can be hired to rub out pests, be they dysfunctional relatives, abusive co-workers, loud neighbours, or just annoyances in general - and as you might imagine, their services are in heavy demand. One such killer is given the unique job of traveling back in time to kill Adolf Hitler in 1939... but things go wrong; Hitler overpowers the would-be assassin and sends himself to the present, leaving the killer stranded in the past. As always, I Killed Adolf Hitler is rendered in Jason's crisp deadpan neo-clear-line style, once again augmented by understated colouring.

Army@Love Vol 1: The Hot Zone Club
by Rick Veitch & Gary Erskine
DC/Vertigo
$9.99
Equal parts blistering battle action, sensuous soap opera and pitch-black satire... Army@Love is where comedy collides head on with tragedy when a New Jersey National Guard unit is deployed indefinitely to a never-ending series of wars in the Middle East. These citizen soldiers range from kids fresh out of high school to middle-aged corporate managers - and the modernized military has gone into take-no-prisoners marketing mode in order to motivate them. And you won't believe what it takes to become a member of the Hot Zone Club.

"...the series I'm following religiously right now is Rick Veitch's Army@Love. I read the collection of the first six issues on the train down to SPX, and enjoyed it even more as a collection than I did in the single issues. Army really reads like a 21st Century update on Dr. Strangelove, except as an acidly funny, cutting satire of the current war and the information consumption that characterizes American culture. That's one I can't wait for between issues, and when I get them, that I can't even wait to get home to read. I've gotten lots of odd looks on the subway for laughing aloud at this comic."
Charles Brownstein, Executive Director of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, from an interview with The Comics Reporter - read the full interview here.

White Rapids
by Pascal Blanchet
Drawn & Quarterly
$19.95
Winner of the Best Book prize for the Quebec comic industry awards, Pascal Blanchet's graphic novel is a compelling account of the rise and fall of the small northern town of White Rapids. In the first English translation of his work, Blanchet blends fact and fiction as he weaves together the official history of the town and snapshots of the quotidian life of its residents. Founded in 1928 in an isolated region of Quebec forest, the town was conceived and constructed by the Shawinigan Water & Power Company to function as a fully-equipped, self-contained living community for workers at the nearby dam and their families. Intended as an incentive to lure workers to the remote and inaccessible region, White Rapids provided its residents with all the luxuries of middle-class modern life in a pastoral setting - until the town was abruptly shut down in 1971, when the company changed hands. Blanchet's unique, streamlined, retro-inspired aesthetic draws on Art Deco and fifties Modernist design to conjure up idyllic scenes of lazy summer days and crisp winter nights in White Rapids, transporting the reader back to a more innocent time.

"Just seeing an old deserted building or an old chair in the garbage makes me feel blue, not because of the object, but because I'm thinking about the people around it, about the memories that will disappear with that object."
Pascal Blanchet

"Blanchet appears to have the soul of the archivist. From subject to style, it's about rendering the ephemeral."
Canada's National Post - Read the full review here.

"...the elegance of its aesthetic is sure to propel him to the forefront of cartooning culture."
Walrus Magazine - Read the full review here.

The Completely Mad Don Martin (HC)
by Don Martin
Running Press Book Publishers
$150.00
Just about everyone who came of age during the 1960s, 70s, and 80s was influenced by MAD Magazine, and no one at MAD was more influential than "MAD's Maddest Artist", Don Martin. His immediately recognizable style - featuring bulbous noses, wild sound effects, and the legendary "hinged feet" - was filled with broad and daring slapstick and routinely broke new ground. A surprisingly quiet man, Martin's work spoke volumes as he left an indelible mark on several generations, influencing the style of many illustrators while shaping the sense of humor of countless misguided youths. For the first time ever, here is the complete collection of every piece of art Don Martin published in MAD throughout his extraordinary thirty-year tenure (1957-1987) deluxe two-volume slipcased edition. With all of Martin's strips, covers, posters, and stickers-presented in chronological order, it is nothing less than a masterpiece of comic genius. Complementing Martin's opus of published works are letters, sketches, and rare photos providing an in-depth look at the artist at work. Plus, scattered throughout are notes and original illustrations-commissioned for this volume-paying tribute to the artist and penned by MAD's most-notable personalities, including Al Jaffe, Mort Drucker, Jack Davis, Sergio Aragones and more.

"Don Martin was the one who really stood out."
Gary Larson, creator of The Far Side

"Physically he is good looking, socially he is totally uneccentric, and verbally he almost never utters 'Spap!', 'Blort!', 'Vreech!' or 'Katoonga!'."
Frank Jacobs, author of The MAD World of William M. Gaines

"The fact is my big toes stick up like that. I always draw hands with the pinky sticking out too, but my pinky doesn't do that. I draw them that way because it is a funny gesture when people have the pinky sticking out. Oliver Hardy was always doing it. It is a kind of mock daintiness. I never drew those gestures consciously, trying to be funny. My drawings just came out that way. Trying to be funny these things happened, but I don't sit down and think, 'What's funny? A toe sticking up in the air. OK, I'll do that then.' I don't work that way."
Don Martin, on big toes and pinkies, from Honk #1, 1986