Approximate Hellhound, the arrival of which has been highly anticipated by the Copacetic Comics Co., is now standing tall on our trusty CD rack. Listening to this disc for the first time is an experience akin to that of suddenly realizing that the movie you inadvertently ended up watching at three in the morning has you riveted, and you find yourself thinking that it is the most amazing thing you've ever seen. The ten tracks on this discflow like a conversation, each one picking up where the other left off, generating a persuasive musical argument that drives its train of thought to the end of the line. Our favorites include: "Take What...

Published in 2011, this 9 1/2' x 12 1/2" hardcover is filled primarily with high quality scans and high resolution photographs of George Herriman original Krazy Kat art – including many hand colored rarities. This treasure trove of art is accompanied by a wide variety or related material from Herriman's life and cartooning career, including newspaper tear sheets, family photographs, and plenty of other related ephemera, all assembled and laid out by Craig Yoe and nicely printed on bright, flat uncoated white stock. In also includes more than a dozen essays paying tribute to Herriman's genius, including classica appreciations by Summerfiled...

Well, if you're only going to read one comic book this year... then you are going to have to steer clear of this one! That's becauseBuilding Storiesis a box set offourteenseparate comics pieces, including two hardcover books, pamphlet style comics, accordion fold-outs, newspapers, flip books,a gameboard-esque piece,and more (check out the accompanying illustrations to get an idea). In his relentless quest to up the ante of what comics are capable of pulling off, Mr. Ware has pulled out the stops, called in the reserves, and put the Acme Novelty Company on a wartime footing to forge thismassive meditation on the parallelsbetween the...

Summerland is a unique piece of comics work, one which turns the typical creative hierarchy on its head, with the coloring in the dominant position, followed by the inking, then pencilling, and with the scripting tacked on almost an afterthought. The boldly inked lines are minimal yet effective in delineating the scene, and to brace the colors and let them do their stuff, and what they do here is something new. In the pages ofSummerland, Ms. Dawkins has improvised an innovative approach to color, one in which she "plays" the color scheme using tone clusters and chords, rather than the normative approach of hitting single notes and then...

Through a hard won personal process developed over decades of his artistic practice, Mark Doox has merged the respective iconographies of Byzantine Christian art and racist American art, effecting a strange transformation whereby each becomes the other as they become one. A large selection of the mixed-media artworks that have emerged from this practice have been assembled together with artworks created specifically for this volume and then accompanied by a series of self-authored texts, which serve the dual purpose of providing exigetical commentary on the artworks themselves and advancing arguments which the artworks then serve to...

edited by Ivan Brunetti Published by Yale University Press, this awesome anthology is a worthy successor to McSweeney's 13 as the must have comics collection of the foreseeable future. Editor, Brunetti goes all out to offer us a (OK, well, his) canonical assemblage with the 400 pages of comics here on display, where it is the form itself that is always at the heart of the work represented. The work we find here -- while, of course, being comics -- is also, at some level, telling us something about comics, and this latter value-added feature can be attributed in no small part to Brunetti's editorial approach in assembling this work, which...

Pulses raced throughout the shop as these meticulously designed and printed 11 5/8" x 12 1/4" hardcover books emerged from the box they were shipped in. This book is cover to cover fabulosity; not a square inch of wasted space is to be found. What we have on hand here are the more than 150 (!) full color – andwhatcolor! Katchor is revealed here to be a coloristpar excellence(think Pierre Bonnard) – full page strips Katchor has been producingsince 1988forMetropolis,the excellent and, crucially for our enjoyment of these Katchor strips, oversize magazine devoted to architecture, design and, as the name suggests, urban living. Rather than...

The day has finally dawned on the first new North American edition of Moebius work in a generation. The World of Edena is the first in a series of deluxe hardcover volumes that will reintroduce the great French master of comics (bande dessinée) to readerson this side of the Atlantic. Collecting all theEdenashort stories in a deluxe, 344 page, full color,hardcover edition,The World of Edenaincludes “Upon a Star,” “Gardens of Edena,” “The Goddess,” “Stel,” and “Sra.” Although several had been translated into English in the 1980s, this will be the first time “Sra” has been available to English-language audiences. Dark Horse has done a nice...

The sub-title does not lie: this book isindeed chock full of tales of mischief. In fact, there are21 full color 6 page comics featuring Akissi & Co. getting into all sorts of trouble, both in their home stomping grounds in theYopougon neighborhood of Abidjan in Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast)and out in the country at Akissi's nan and granpap's rural digs, where the natural world plays a larger part in the shenanigans. These are kids comics par excellence; think Dennis the Menace without the hyperbole. In Akissi, the world of childhood comes alive on the page: the zany antics, the interactions of children withtheir parents and peers, the...

Yes, Cold Heat #4 is still in stock, and it's a doozy. Disparate and heretofore disconnected aspects of the storyline are joined together as some puzzling pieces of the plot are put into place. We don't want to give too much away here, but suffice it to say that some things have turned out -- surprise! -- not to be what they seemed. Lovers of cosmic mysteries and mighty metaphors will find plenty of food for thought this time around, and thrill seekers should find what they're looking for as the intensity is ramped up a notch or two. Santoro's art really shines this issue as he continues to bring a world beat of styles and perspectives to...