comics

Title	Creator	Publisher	Series	Price
Cold Heat #1-4 (SET)	Frank Santoro, Ben Jones	PictureBox	Cold Heat	$9.99 ($20.00 list) OUT OF STOCK!
Read more and comment...	COLD HEAT SUPER SPECIAL Set of all four issues of the comic book series (a $20.00 value):  only $9.99!!!
The Spirit: Volume Two	Darwyn Cooke	DC		$22.22 ($24.99 list)
Read more and comment...	And then there's this:  the second -- and final -- hardcover volume collecting Darwyn Cooke's masterful, updated reading of Will Eisner's classic character, that may very well end up being the last word, particularly in the stunning finale, in which Cooke does his best to explode the good girl - bad girl divide and reveal the psychological roots of noir.  As an added bonus, there is also the "Summer Fun" issue that features short takes on The Spirit by a host of of other top talent including Kyle Baker, Gail Simone, Chris Sprouse and Karl Story.
The Spirit: Femme Fatales	Will Eisner	DC		$17.77 ($19.99 list)
Read more and comment...	Before the 1950s, there was -- surprise! -- the 1940s, where the same dilemma of identity choice faced the American male, especially upon returning in droves from fighting the second world war, and discovering a newly empowered female whose taste of (relative) freedom and independence in the males' absence made some of them less enamored of a life of submissive domesticity than before.  This "new" woman was often perceived as a threat to male and so that staple of the noir era, the femme fatale was born (intriguing that this period is so closely associated with terms of French origin, non?)  Thus the choice, for a man, between what kind of life to lead came to be identified with the choice between what kind of woman to desire:  the "good" woman -- here clearly identified as Police Commissioner Dolan's daughter, Ellen -- and the "bad" women, of which there are, invariably, many and whom the Spirit has many a run-in.  This is the second affordable, softcover edition collecting the creme de la creme of Will Eisner's classic series.  Published by DC, this 192 page full color softcover collects 23 frankly fabulous tales.  If you have yet to experience these era-defining comics, this is a good place to start.
Skitzy	Don Freeman	Drawn and Quarterly		$9.99 ($19.95 list)
Read more and comment...	Out of print for over 50 years, D & Q has returned this classic to the shelves in a boffo hardcover edition.  Skitzy offers readers of today a perfect snapshot of the 1950s.  It is a minimalist, pen & ink pantomime graphic short story that concisely illustrates the American male of the time as being divided between his vital creativity and his domestic security.  The only solution in the 1950s seemed to be the impossible one shown here:  of becoming two different people.  It took the upheavals of the 1960s, primarily the emergence of the modern feminist movement, to start us down the path towards a workable rapprochement of these once seemingly irreconcilable goals.
Stray Toasters	Bill Sienkiewicz	Image Comics		$22.22 ($24.95 list)
Read more and comment...	Back in print at last!  This collects the entirety of the four issue series, originally published by Epic Comics, that turned mainstream comics on its ear when it was originally published nearly twenty years ago.  Following on the heels of his ground-breaking work on Elektra Assassin and Daredevil: Love and War, both written by Frank Miller and both of which were critically as well as commercially successful, Sienkiewicz was given carte blanche for a solo project and Stray Toasters was the result.  Realizing that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity, he really cut loose and pulled out all the stops.  Using his own psyche as a test subject, Sienkiewicz bore deep inside the comic book mind set, and used his massive technical abilities to bring to light what he found there.  He pushed himself to the limit on this project, and, evidently, emptied himself in the process as, while his work occasionally graces a project here or there, he all but retired from comics after completing this landmark work.  Containing a startlingly diverse panoply of formal approaches that mirror the works of so many different artists -- from the far-flung reaches of the worlds of comics, cartoons, illustration and fine art -- that an annotated edition seems called for (anyone out there up for the task?).  Stray Toasters was and remains a hugely influential work (David Mack's entire career consists, more or less, of mining this single work) and still packs a wallop, even today.   All self-respecting students of the history of comics owe it to themselves to at least take a look at this one.  Recommended!
The Complete Peanuts, Volume 10: 1969-1970	Charles Schulz	Fantagraphics	The Complete Peanuts	$25.00 ($28.95 list)
Read more and comment...	Yep, the ongoing Fantagraphics project to collect the entire fifty-year run of the one and only Peanuts has now reached the twenty-year mark.  When this series first got underway it seemed a daunting task to collect a fifty year run, but here we are already with twenty years under our belts.  This time around, Snoopy takes center stage; these are the years that cemented his star status, during which his popularity at times eclipsed even that of Charlie Brown himself.  This volume also marks the full fledged introduction of Woodstock as a Peanuts regular.  While he made a few brief appearances in 1967 as "a bird hippie," he became a regular in 1969, and was finally dubbed "Woodstock" on June 22, 1970 (a fact easily determined by consulting the thorough index that appends each and every volume in this series -- a unique feature that we continue to applaud Fantagraphics for instituting).
Bat-Manga	Jiro Kuwata, Chip Kidd	Pantheon		$25.00 ($29.95 list)
Read more and comment...	manga by Jiro Kuwata edited and designed by Chip Kidd This hefty, oversized softcover book is packed with full color scans of the actual cheap, pulpy, two-color pages of the original 1960s manga volumes in which these stories originally appeared.  This strategy of representation draws the reader 40 years back in time and makes for an in situ reading experience that is very different from that of your standard manga reprint.  To further draw the reader back, the editor and designer, Chip Kidd has included a gallery of Japanese Batman merchandise from the same era.  Together this gives the volume the air of a catalogue for a museum exhibition that uses these Japanese manifestations of an American pop culture icon -- at the height of the Pop Art era, no less -- to portray the relationship between the two countries during this pivotal period in history.  On the one hand there is the cultural hegemony of the US, but on the other, there is the Japanese transformation of American forms -- one that has accelerated of late as manga is now more widely read in the US than superhero comics.  In other words, it's definitely a two-way street.  Read more in Frank Santoro's Publishers Weekly review. retail price - $29.95  copacetic price - $25.00
Drawn & Quarterly Showcase #5	Anneli Furmark, Amanda Vähämäki, Edward Bak (T.)	Drawn and Quarterly		$17.77 ($19.95 list)
Read more and comment...	by Anneli Furmark, Amanda Vähämäki, and T. Edward Bak We listed this last month, but in our haste neglected to write it up, a gross oversight on our part, as you will see...  This volume has a special Scandinavian focus, with two of the three comics works originating in the somber lands of the midnight sun.  A melancholy northern mood pervades the entire collection, including its centerpiece, the contribution of the lone North American, T. Edward Bak. The Partisan -- his first fully developed work since Service Industry, the work for which he is best known --  is a complex multi-layered work that (or, at least, so it seems to us) seeks to expiate regret connected to a failed relationship, one in which it was realized too late that the priorities in the relationship weren't what they should have been.  Bak's artwork continues to be inventive and varied, employing bold scratchboard as well as pen and ink and delicate watercolors, each chosen to best express the needs of each particular aspect of the tale.  Preceding The Partisan, is the collection opener, Inland by Anneli Furmark.  This piece is built upon a series of subtle revelations that create a gradual portrait of a set of interlinked relationships.  A deliberate, minimal palette color-codes the action which unfolds in an efficient sequence that establishes a complex interplay of personalities with surprisingly little exposition.  And, finally, there is the grande finalé, the untitled piece by Amanda Vähämäki.   Born in Tampere, Finland in 1981, Vähämäki has a true gift when it comes to color.  Her keen observation is matched by her finely tuned execution.  It is our considered opinion that never before in the history of comics have the nuances of the widely varying shades in which the sky above appears been better captured than here in this story; all rendered with colored pencils, no less.  It is a highly imaginative tale of a pair of adolescents carving out a new, private world for themselves amidst the public, old world around them.  And while we can't help but focus our praise on Amanda's amazing color-centric talent, this should in no way be interpreted as any sort of slight against any of her other skills.  The characterization on display is quite strong, both in the narrative development and in the physical renderings.  There is a nearly seamless visual integration of the characters into their surroundings that functions on a narrative level as well.  This piece is simply a pleasure to behold.  You will find yourself going back to its pages again and again to bask in their beauty.
Tamara Drewe	Posy Simmonds	St. Martin's Griffin		$15.75 ($16.95 list)
Read more and comment...	This large format (9" x 10") full-length work is a true graphic novel.  A follow-up to her excellent Gemma Bovery, which re-imagined Flaubert's Madame Bovary at the same time that it commented on the literary imagination, Tamara Drewe uses Thomas Hardy's Far from the Maddening Crowd as its jumping off point to explore contemporary mores as well as their contemporary representations.  Ms. Simmonds hails from the UK -- where she is far more widely known and respected than here in the US -- and this book was originally serialized in The Guardian UK.  She is one of the most culturally sophisticated and literary cartoonists in the business, capable of weaving into her narrative a wealth of cultural history and a density of literary allusion that are, for the most part, simply off the radar of her peers.  As with Gemma Bovery, Tamara Drewe is a hybrid, combining short blocks of prose exposition with longer stretches of comics story-telling that make the best of both worlds and an equally pleasurable reading experience.  Here's a video composed of an audio interview with Ms. Simmonds explaining her working method and a slideshow of her sketches, roughs and finished artwork for this book.
Big Questions: Sweetness and Light #11	Anders Nilsen	Drawn and Quarterly	Big Questions	$6.25 ($6.95 list)
Read more and comment...	This time around Mr. Nilsen appears to goes heavy on the irony, as the contents of this issue seem to more closely resemble the characteristics  of bitterness and darkness than those of sweetness and light; but appearances can be deceiving; perhaps that's the point here; perhaps it's all in the eye of the beholder; perhaps it's all open to interpretation.  48 pages, seven chapters; a pilot, a sleeping idiot, a bunch of birds and a pack of dogs; heavily labored, detailed pen and ink drawings, rhythmic repetitions punctuated by startling and dramatic images.  What's it all add up to?  That is for Anders to know and you and I to figure out.  Enigmatic, mysterious, obscurely hinting at something just beyond comprehension:  yes, it's the latest -- and, at least so we've heard, the penultimate -- issue of Big Questions (although now we've heard otherwise...).
Sublife #1	John Pham	Fantagraphics		$8.00 ($8.99 list)
Read more and comment...	The elusive John Pham has re-emerged at last, with his first solo outing in quite a while.  Years in the making, this first volume of Sublife presents "221 Sycamore St."  While approximately half of these strips -- by our reckoning -- originally appeared in MOME a couple years back, they only now receive their proper context in the contrapuntal arrangement they receive here.  The 64-page piece is structured as an interlinked series of vignettes, each focusing on one of the occupants residing at the titular address, which, taken together, provide a compelling -- if dismal -- portrait of urban life.  As an added bonus, the inside front and back covers provide an episode of "Deep Space," featuring Caption Joe Ho and Commander Dave Wallach, that serves as an ironic bracket for "221."  Pham is a singular talent whose work clearly demonstrates that he is on top of current developments in the art and science of comics. He has produced precious little work, but that which he has produced puts him comfortably in the company of his contemporaries such as Jordan Crane, Sammy Harkham, Paul Hornschemeier, Kevin Huizenga and  Anders Nilson, at the same time as showing ample evidence of his having absorbed lessons to be found in the work of Daniel Clowes and Chris Ware.  Sublife is carefully planned, deliberately composed, beautifully drawn and delicately colored in a palette of teal and peach. Pham has marshaled his energies here to show lives of quiet desperation:  lost, drifting, misinformed, deluded or in denial, the characters that populate this southern Californian address are hounded by a reality over which they have no control, but Pham's artistry makes it clear that they serve as reflections of our own lives in this difficult time.
Fight or Run	Kevin Huizenga	Buenaventura Press		$3.55 ($3.95 list)
Read more and comment...	Yes, you read that correctly:  it's back-to-back Huizenga -- two new releases for November 2008 (the other being Or Else #5).  Well, this one's not entirely new.  Fight or Run, published by Buenaventura Press, is a collection of short strips that work to create a sort of comics shorthand for the language of game theory.  The strips that embodied the initial foray into forging this language first appeared a few years back in the Fantagraphics anthology, Blood Orange, which ran for four issues (we should have a few copies still floating around here, if anyone is interested).  We enjoyed those strips at the time, but then forgot about them.  Huizenga, clearly, did not.  He continued to plug in variables and hammer away at the possibilities until it reached critical mass.  The end result on display here is a synthesis of the language of comics, the mind-set engendered by years of video-gaming (which, in turn, is influenced by the history of role-playing games), and the basic principles of logic which leads to a laconic distillation of the decision making process that can be enjoyed for a quick laugh, studied for insights into how to enhance one's own decision making, and pondered over to reflect upon the nature of thought.  Fight or Run is Huizenga's most purely formal work yet.  In some respects, the work here reminds us of a rigorous take on Harvey Kurtzman's seminal "Hey Look!" strips, updated for the 21st century.  On the other hand, it can be seen as taking Brian Chippendale's Ninja, and paring it down to its core essentials.  Whether the reality regarding these comparisons is either, and, or neither, Fight or Run is a success on its own terms and should be considered essential reading for anyone interested in expanding the possibilities open to comics.
Or Else #5	Kevin Huizenga	Drawn and Quarterly		$4.44 ($4.95 list)
Read more and comment...	This issue finds Mr. Huizenga at his most archly wry.  Indeed, we'll go so far as to say that should the day dawn when there is a dictionary of comics, we are wholly confident that the first entry under "arch adj." will be Or Else #5, and that it will be followed by a note stating, "*see wry."  There is more than a smidgeon of despair on hand here as Huizenga confronts America today and does his best to translate it in to comic book form.  There seems to be a deliberate lack of focus to this issue, as though Huizenga is trying to say, "Don't kid yourself into thinking you can get a handle on it.  The world's a mess and all we can hope to do is just hold on."  The overall structure of this issue is an amalgamated parody of contemporary mainstream American print media, from The New Yorker to Time Magazine to academic journals to evangelical religious pamphlets to comic books. There are moments that we got the feeling that Huizenga was angry at himself for making comics when there is so much wrong in the world; that he was attacking himself (and even his friends) for being complicit in the mindlessness of contemporary society.  But it is precisely comics that all of us who visit this page use to help us come to grips with our surroundings, and here Huizenga is as strong as ever.  The centerpiece of this issue is the 24-page "Rumbling," which is, according to the credits, adapted from Centuria: One Hundred Ouroboric Novels by Giorgio Manganelli (translated by Henry Martin).  This story "stars" Glenn Ganges and imagines a religious war -- something along the lines of the current Sunni-Shiite conflict raging in Iraq -- taking place here in the good ol' USA.  It is, evidently, "2B" continued.  The most intellectually stimulating part of the issue is, "Which Sentences Are we Diagramming," which is a fascinating look into a visualization of grammar employing the language of comics.  Not to be missed!

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