WOW! Attilio Micheluzzi's crisp, pen & ink, black & white artwork here in the 144 pages of this full-size hardcover edition of The Farewell Song of Marcel Labrume is knock-your-socks-off good. It's part of lineage that starts with the fine line rendering of Hal Foster and Alex Raymond on the one hand and strong compositional skills of Milt Caniff and Noel Sickles on the other, and that falls exactly – perfectly – between Alex Toth and early Jaime Hernandez (who then combined it with much else, took it in another direction and made it all his own). The characters and stories are at times reminiscent of Howard Hawks, with a tough guy...

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...

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...

FROM THE ARCHIVES

Here's ONE, like newcopy of the FIRST PRINT of the original 2009 edition of this just-reissued classic. Here's our write-up from back then:

OK, this is the one you've been waiting for! Eleven years in the making, a whopping 840 pages in length, A Drifting Life is the graphic memoir of one of the all-time manga greats. Over the last several years, Drawn and Quarterly has been assiduously releasing Tatsumi's classic gekiga, in which he pioneered a street savvy, morally ambiguous form of comics that thrived on grittier material and was more ambivalent about the post-war boom in Japan. A Drifting Life chronicles the years...

Krazy Kat aficionados have long placed its creator, George Herriman at or near the center of the development of comics and cartooning. A prodigious talent, and true comics pioneer – possessed of an unquestionable genius – he produced comics of startling fluidity; words, images and design each blending seamlessly, eachreinforcing andsupporting the other to create works of lasting strength and beauty. The concept of the intelligent vocalizing cartoon animal –the “funny animal” – that gave rise to Felix the Cat, Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Donald and Daffy Ducks and countless others was more or less forged by Herriman, who in the process opened...

Available again at last, courtesy New York Review Comics (thanks!), after being out of print for decades,Gary Panter's Jimbo: Adventures in Paradise originally exploded on the comics scene in 1988 and forever changed the landscape. It is arguable that moreformal innovation is contained in this work than in any other single work of comics. Jimbo open up vast new territories for comics, territories that have been avidly explored ever since by a host of innovative artists that have followed the trail that Panter blazed here (and elsewhere, of course; but this is the motherlode). Now, a new generation of readers, including the artists among...

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,...

From the Midwest to the Middle Kingdom, Ginseng Roots spans global history through the lens of this humble plant in Craig Thompson’s latest epic work – the first of his works to be serialized in individual issues. Now, all twelve issues are available in a nifty collector box designed by Craig specifically to house the series, along with a few bonus doodads, all for less than the price of the individual issues alone. Ginseng Roots is engrossing – it’s hard to stop reading – educational – you’ll definitely be learning plenty you didn’t know before, about ginseng, about American and Chinese history and culture, and much more besides – and...

Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth (JCTSKOE) is, first and foremost, the tale of the development of the American super-ego, it’s human cost, and its relationship to the comic book super-hero. Ware’s choice of the Chicago Exposition of 1893 to serve simultaneously as historical signifier and the origin of his narrative is key in this regard. It is with the exposition of 1893 -- most importantly, at least as far as JCTSKOE is concerned, in its design and architecture-- that the USA reveals its fantasy of, and implicit ambition towards, empire in the classical Greco/Roman mold. It was Walt Whitman’s fever dream made flesh-- or at least...