Another impossibly good album from the one and only Joe Henry. Amazingly, you can listen to the entire LP online at his site, HERE (Just click on "Launch MP3 player to listen"). And while you're listening to it, you can take a moment to read the note he penned on the day of its release, HERE. And, please note that both the package and booklet covers feature photographs taken by Eugene Smith in Pittsburgh, PA during his epic Dream Street project of 1955-56.

FROM THE ARCHIVES

A run of nine consecutive volumes of Ranma 1/2 by one and only Rumiko Takahashi. Ranma 1/2 is a true classic manga series, whose influence on subsequent shoojo manga is hard to overstate. It also offers a wealth of humorous observations on gender norms and gender construction, to boot!

We came across this run in the archives; all new and unread. If there's anyone who picked up the first volume and is ready to read more, this is a perfect opportunity to do so!

The most critically lauded graphic novel of the year has arrived!

Chris Ware: "Some middle-aged colleagues and I believe literary comics fiction is possible without resorting to fantastical heroics, however, and the youngest and finest exemplar, 28-year-old Nick Drnaso, offers a new book to possibly top us all:Sabrina, about a missing woman, a video and the unspeakable possibilities of our contemporary mitigated reality."

Zadie Smith: "Nick Drnaso's Sabrina is the best book – in any medium – I have read about our current moment. It is a masterpiece, beautifully written and drawn, possessing all the political power of polemic and yet...

Yes! The latest volume in the epic 30-volume Carl Barks Library has arrived. This one is perhaps the most riotous volume yet, filled with more fun-filled antics than any other yet published. This is due in no small part to Fantagraphics' decision to follow the stories that make up Donald Duck No. 26 -- one of the last wholly by Barks -- which includes the title track "Trick or Treat", with a whoppingfourteen consecutive classic 10-pagers! Originally published in a stretch that ran from late 1952 through 1953, these 10-pagers are filled with the comedic splapstick antics that Barks arguably did better than anyone else in comics, ever, and...

It's here! This 264-page hardcover just released by Abrams ComicArts is sure to be the definitive comics biography of the one and only Ernie Bushmiller. Three Rocks digs deep and unearths some gems of insight (along with plenty of classic Nancy strips). A MUST for all Ernie Bushmiller – and Bill Griffith – fans!

Three Rocks weaves together fact and fantasy, history and speculation, as Griffith mixes research and his own artful musings with classic Bushmiller reprints. Uniquely and intriguingly, Griffith samples Bushmiller artwork – individual panels along with isolated figures from the strips – and remixes them for his own narrative ends...

Quite a lot can –and will – be said about the comics that make up Milk White Steed, Michael Kennedy’s first book length collection published in North America. Composed of eight short to medium length stories along with a pair of interstitial two-pagers, it is filled with comics that are artistically grounded, visually stimulating, historically informed, and intellectually challenging, and that together make for a dis- / re-orienting reading experience that, while at times unsettling, is ultimately invigorating and highly rewarding.

A core component of the stories that make up Milk White Steed is their conveyance of the Black British...

Before cracking open The Hard Tomorrow, it might be a good idea to mentally buckle up – and maybe even put on an emotionally protectivehelmetfor good measure –as Eleanor Davis's new graphic novellives up to its title. It is indeed ahard hitting look at how the here andnow could play out in what'scoming – but certainly not one without hope, and that is, ultimately, the point. Beautifully drawn, dramatically paced, and overflowingwith empathy for its fully realized cast of characters, The Hard Tomorrow is vibrantly alive to being in the world in America in our time. Davis's choice to set the work a few years in the future (apparently2022)...

The tale Blankets tells is in most respects a classic coming of age story, but the place -- emotional as well as geographical -- that it is coming from may not be familiar territory for many readers: an abnegating Christianity built on self-denial ensconced in the harsh northern environs of Wisconsin and Michigan. Yet there can be no doubt that the core questions and values dealt with in Blankets are certainly universal ones. Craig Thompson has clearly devoted himself to a serious study of Will Eisner's late work -- from A Contract With God to the present -- and this study has really paid off here. The pacing, the placement of blacks,...

In 2017, after having lived in Amsterdam for coming up on a decade, the ex-pat native of Cleveland, OH, Chad Bilyeu wasn’t sure what to do next. After a meaningful encounter with Harvey Pekar’s original, self-published run of American Splendor, he decided: comics. And so he embarked on the journey that became the comic book series, Chad in Amsterdam, which has to date yielded six issues, all entirely written, edited, art-directed and self-published by Chad. These six issues have now all been collected in a spiffy hardcover volume from Scratch Books, along with a forward –well actually, a voorward – by EI-P of alt-hip-hop fame, and an all...