No one has ever created better Christmas comics than Carl Barks. "Christmas on Bear Mountain" is more than just another Barks Christmas Classic, however: it has the added historical significance of being the story for which Barks created his most famous character: Scrooge McDuck – Uncle Scrooge to Donald and his nephews. Scrooge – obviously patterned after the character of the same name form Charles Dickens'sA Christmas Carol– was originally created simply as the dramatic foil for Donald and his nephews in this particular story that was originally released for Christmas in 1947, and that was supposed to be that... but Barks quickly...

This collection of works from the early 1980s by Millhauser starts off with August Eschenburg, a prototypical tale which serves as the template for several later Millhauser works, most notably Martin Dressler (see below). The middle section is composed of three stylistically linked forays into the classic short story mode, each of which stages an elaborate wedding of location with season to produce an exquisite evocation of an exact yet unnameable emotion, and each of which manages to pull it off. The stories that will really having you reaching for the champagne to celebrate their success, however, are the three that close out the volume,...

This Giant-Size Special comic book (or graphic novel, if you prefer), is a mash-up of the famous D¡sn*y funny animal family and Charles Biro's Crime Does Not Pay comic book series that has been created with the "anything goes" spirit of classic underground comix, and that really does the job; it is – amazingly, fantastically, incredibly – successful. Cramming every classic noir trope into one non-stop roller coaster narrative, Michael Mouse is a rollicking radical read that runs through 69 1/2 pages of full color comics, employing a merciless 12-panel grid without let up; there is no pause, no chance to catch your breath; it just goes.

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Those few unfortunate souls among you who strayed and so failed to get a hold of this singular, epic and amazing comics masterwork now have now been given a second -- and less expensive -- chance. Make sure you take it. To learn more, click on the cover image at left to read our in depth review.

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...

Get ready for a 474 page graphic novel that entirely transpires on the one single day of the title. Move over Virginia Woolf, step aside Marcel Proust, get back James Joyce, Olivier Schrauwen is here to dilate time and fill it with consciousness, comics-style! Schrauwen's choice of imagery and manner of drawing it adds dimension and perspective to the stream of consciousness, creating meanings otherwise invisible – and in the process puts the comic in comic book. In addition to being a masterpiece, this is a very funny book.

Schrauwen knows how to leverage the innate strengths of comics like few others. If you want to know what ...

Where to begin with such a book. It is clearly and definitely the best book ever done on Krazy Kat, which is, at least in our estimation, the greatest of the classic newspaper comics. Ergo, it is, Copacetically speaking, one of the single best volumes of comics ever produced. In other words, it wins the Desert Island Award: If there were one comics related book to take to a deserted island, this might very well be it. And as if that weren’t enough, it has now been reissued in an economy softcover edition that’ll only set you back a double sawbuck. Think of it-- a lifetime of pleasure and consolation for what it would cost you to spend a...

Long – and criminally! – out of print, Howard Cruse's epochal work of long form comics, Stuck Rubber Baby,one of the most significant early North American graphic novels – and among the first to truly merit the label – is at last back in print in this deluxe hardcover edition from First Second that has been released to celebrate the 25th anniversary of its initial publication – an anniversary that Cruse did not get to celebrate himself, having passed away late last year (but he was involved in the preparations for this edition, and so, of course, knew it was coming, thankfully). This edition includes over 20 pages of bonus materials, much...

introduction par Chris Ware Le secret le mieux gardé des vingt dernières années de la bande dessinée est probablement Storeyville. Aucune autre bande dessinée ne capture avec autant de succès l'énergie propulsive américaine que nous associons dans la littérature aux œuvres de Walt Whitman et de Jack Kerouac. Storeyville était sui generis à l’époque de sa publication initiale en 1995, quand il a paru sous la forme d’un journal tabloïde de 40 pages. Poème épique en bande dessinée, il révèle des profondeurs jusque-là inexplorées dans la forme. Employant une audace artistique qui était à l’époque sans égal, Storeyville incorpore des éléments d...

BACK IN PRINT AT LAST! This is the big book that has it all! Originally serialized in Biggu Komiku in 1970-71, and a personal favorite of the artist, manga founding-father Osamu Tezuka, Ode to Kirihito is a unique effort, in more than one respect. Weighing in at a mammoth 822 pages, Ode is the first of Tezuka's works to incorporate adult themed gekiga (see Tatsumi's Abandon the Old in Tokyo) elements. Perhaps paradoxically, it is also a work that while dealing with the darker sides of human nature simultaneously deals with Christian (Kirihito is a pun on the Japanese pronunciation of Christ, Kirisuto) themes -- specifically of overcoming...