FEATURED ITEM

FEATURED ITEM

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Title	Creator	Publisher	Price
Bottomless Belly Button	Dash Shaw	Fantagraphics	$25.00 ($29.99 list)
Read more and comment...	Weighing in at 700+ pages, we're pretty sure this one surpasses Craig Thompson's Blankets as the longest unserialized graphic novel ever published in the US. Just think: over 700 pages of far out and freaky graphic storytelling that you've never laid eyes on before -- and neither had we... until we sat down (after getting together a solid supply of food and drink to sustain us) and read this hefty tome. Where to start? Well, first off is the fact that the book took over two years to draw, is divided into three sections (each of which you are advised by the author to take a break after reading -- although we have to admit that we ignored this warning and plowed straight through), is printed in brown ink on 6" x 9" white paper, and tells the tale of the Loony family, in particular Peter Loony. It begins with the line, "There are many types of sand." Some 700 pages later the urge to compare this book to Blankets was, at least for us, irresisitable. Like Blankets, Bottomless Belly Button is also a deeply personal work of catharsis that takes the form of a long, involved book that tells the tale of an introverted artist struggling with the emotional baggage he has been weighed down with by his family and who, in his effort to move ahead, gets involved with an extroverted, more sexually experienced girl. But, while the general narrative arc of these two works may have much in common, the specifics are different in almost every particular. The setting here is a hot and sunny beach, the exact opposite of the icy cold snowy north woods of Blankets. The sexual episodes in BBB are presented as being (at least somewhat) perverse and unsettling, as opposed to the rhapsodic and fulfilling scenes of sexual congress in Blankets. BBB is intellectual and analytical where Blankets is lyrical and expressive. The crucial difference lies in the attention given to the other family members. In BBB, while the protagonist is alienated from his family from the word go, the family itself is given much, much more attention here than in Blankets, with each family member being given a fully fleshed out portrait and their own set of challenges. While the protagonist may be alienated from his family, the creator of this work, Dash Shaw, certainly has quite a bit of empathy for all actors in his drama, and as a result the reader comes away from BBB with a surprisingly strong sense of each member of the supporting cast and, crucially, how they all fit together as a family. In the final analysis, BBB is more about probing the mystery of the family than it is a rite of passage tale, and so, really, is not so much like Blankets after all.
What It Is	Lynda Barry	Drawn and Quarterly	$18.88 ($24.95 list)
Read more and comment...	It's here! What It is, the long awaited, all new, 208 page hardcover volume of heuristic metacomix by the one and only Lynda Barry, is both a beautiful and inspiring work of art and an insightful exploration of the creative process. Her first new work since her 2002 masterpiece, 100 Demons, What It Is uses the language of comics to probe the secrets of creativity itself, which leads her deep into the caverns of philosophy, where, ever the intrepid explorer, Ms. Barry undertakes an especially thorough excavation of the cave of epistemology. There in the murky darkness she discovers that memory and imagination blur and merge amidst the stalactites and stalagmites of our respective genetic heritages before condensing and collecting in placid prehistoric pools to mix with the ancient amoebas; in the process dissolving time itself. The past, present and future come together -- an instant and an eternity stand as one in the revelation that it all starts with... The Image! Lynda Barry, long considered among the major contemporary comics creators, has, with What It Is, taken comics to a new place and created a work that can stand shoulder to shoulder in the pantheon with those created by Frida Kahlo, Jean Michel Basquiat, and Hayao Miyazaki, to name but a few of her new peers. This book is full of surprises and delight. There's really only one thing to say about this book: "YES!!!" If you still need convincing, then feast your eyes on this amazing (lucky)13-page preview and/or read our full length review.
Amor Y Cohetes	Jaime Hernandez, Gilbert Hernandez	Fantagraphics	$13.55 ($16.99 list)
Read more and comment...	It's hard to believe, but with this volume, the seventh in the new format, the repackaging of the first volume of Love and Rockets is now complete! While the first six volumes gave us the massive mythologies of Hoppers and Palomar, this issue collects all the odds 'n' ends and bric á brac that the fertile imaginations of los Bros unleashed when they were kicking back; as well as the story that started it all back in Love and Rockets #1, Gilbert Hernandez's BEM. Let us rhapsodize for a moment: It was with BEM that Gilbert Hernandez -- comics' own St. George -- slew the dragon of derivative, formulaic heroic fantasy comics by ripping out its heart and laying it bare. BEM demonstrates once and for all that the success of the formula is based on keeping fear alive, that the hero and the villain are, unwittingly perhaps, complicit in an illicit pact to keep the reader enthralled with the eternal recurrence of evil. BEM pulls back the curtain and reveals formulaic heroic fantasy comics as Ouroboric circles devoid of any real hope, real progress or real growth; promising salvation but delivering the damnation of addiction with an empty formula expertly designed to keep readers coming back for more with the dangled promise of the imminent unveiling of a mystery that not only is there no intent to deliver on, but as BEM finally and brilliantly reveals, there is not even the capacity or ability on the part of the danglers to do so in the first place for the simple reason that the creators of this formula are themselves as equally trapped within it by their fealty to the profit motive -- unable to see outside the borders of their own fear and need and so drawing in the hordes to feed their own cravings (Love and Rockets: it's not just a comic book series, it's a hermeneutics.). We'll be the first to admit that anyone coming to this story now, over 25 years after the fact -- and especially those who were never themselves in the thrall of superhero comics in the first place -- will have a hard time fully appreciating the importance of this story, but that's no reason not to try. The revelation of BEM cleared the way for a whole new approach to comics: the way that Love and Rockets went on to pioneer. Comics have never been the same since.