We've been big fans of the work of Mr. Hankiewicz for quite some time, and are thrilled to be able to offer Sparkplug Comic Books' massive new 108-page, 8 1/2" x 11" collection of his totally unique, perplexingly obscure, abstrusely enigmatic, elegantly rendered pen and ink parables and small tales. This work is frustratingly difficult to describe, and we're not going to try at this juncture. (OK, we'll give it a lame whirl: think of the precise, detail driven work of Charles Sheeler (got it?) and then add to this a blend of David Lynch, René Magritte, Max Ernst and Franz Kafka, and then convert the whole shebang into a pen-and-ink graphic...

Year two of Baron Bean picks up right where year one left off, at the start of 1917 (after New Year's Day holiday, that is). It's a year in on Baron Bean, and the work here shows that Herriman clearly felt more at home with the characters and set-up that he had established. In the strips collected in this volume he confidently tackles serious questions concerning the relationship of social status to race, ethnicity, religion, career, habitual behavior and many other variables the social worth and merit of which the society of the day takes for granted but which Herriman clearly believes are open to question. He demonstrates here that so...

An epic, hallucinatory journey that while physically set in South Africa, embarks from a place of alienation and detachment and travels throughdark and confusing psychological spaces – often viathe useof various psychoactive drugs – to arrive at an unexpected series of destinations, Highbone Theaterprovidesa comics trip like no other to anyreader adventurous enough to climb aboard.Imagine, if you will, a very Charles Burnsian narrative in which dream and reality, imagination and perception, delusion and conception, fiction, fantasy and rumination are all inextricably bound together into an irreducible mass. Then imagine it featuring a cast...

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)...

112 pages of new Jordan Crane!?! Yes!

First up is a massive, 52 page installment of the "Keeping Two" saga, by far the longest yet, in which things go from bad to worse -- or do they? "Keeping Two" is a bit of a self-reflexive work, in that it indicates its awareness that it is providing the reader with a distraction/relief/alternative narrative from/to their own lives by presenting a story in which the central protagonists are distracted from their lives by reading another story, and their experience of reading that story is experienced by the reader of "Keeping Two" as being equivalent in reality to the main "real" story; given an...

At long last, a book edition – and a swell hardcover, no less – collecting Ethan Rilly's excellent Pope Hats series (issues 2, 3 & 5). Only, it turns out, Ethan Rilly is really... Hartley Lin*! So, now we have Young Frances by Hartley Lin. A finely crafted tale of young urbanites navigating the worlds of work and life as they come of age in 21st centuryNorth America. Recommended.

Don't want to take our word for it? Then how about these wordsfromsomeone whose opinion is worth paying attention to:

"Young Frances is a meditation on work and meaning. Its depiction of corporate culture and the finesse required to exist within it feels...

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...

Sometimes, dreams do come true! Here it is, at long last: the first of two volumes collecting the entirety of Steve Ditko's pre-superhero output for Marvel Comics, almost all of which was scripted by Stan Lee. This massive, full color, slightly oversize, hardcover volume – the first of two! – collects a wallopin' 134 (!!!) tales, plus 16 bonus pages, ten of which are high quality reproductions of original pages. It all starts off with a great Roger Stern introduction. Yes!

COLLECTING:JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY (1952) #33, 38, 50-73, STRANGE TALES (1951) #46, 50, 67-91, TALES TO ASTONISH (1959) #1-26, TALES OF SUSPENSE (1959) #1-15, 17-24,...

It's here: the deluxe full color, 112 page, horizontally formatted hardcover collection of Michael DeForge's internet work,Ant Comic. A high intensity allegory rendered in dazzling full color and employing DeForge's personal cartooning language to great advantage,Ant Colonyis a wholly original work that is not to be missed. In the words of no less a comics authority than Jaime Hernandez, "DeForge is one of those rare comics naturals andAnt Colonyproves it."

NOW OUT OF PRINT. Wehave just a few copies remaining. LIMIT: ONE per customer.

(Book Six in the New Edition of the collected Love and Rockets) Wow! Fantagraphics isn't wasting any time in getting out the newly formatted editions collecting that classic among classics, the original first volume of Love and Rockets by Los Bros Hernandez. Beyond Palomar contains all the twists and turns of "Poison River," perhaps the most complex – as well as violent –of Gilbert's epics. "Poison River" originally cascaded through 12 issues of Love and Rockets (#29 - #40) over the course of close to fouryears (1989 - 1992), providing a portrait of Luba's mother, Maria – along with what could be construed as Luba's origin story– that does...