back in print, at last! Originally published in 1994, City of Glass was ahead of the comics history curve in many respects, with its "serious" literary concerns and dazzling formal inventiveness. It was the most requested out-of-print volume in the history of the Copacetic Comics Company before being brought back in print in this 2004 edition. This edition remains faithful to the original, but has been updated with a new cover as well as a new introduction by Art Spiegelman (see above) that lays out the genesis of this particular work, helping to place it in the proper historical context. Recommended!

Beginning with the first impression – the juxtaposition of the book’s title, “Black Arms to Hold You Up” and its accompanying cover illustration of large, looming black arm(ament)s against a background of skeletons, between which the human actors are running in fear – it is clear right from the start that we are being presented with a multivalent and irony-rich agitprop work. It will be equally clear by the end that it is also a work capable of constructing new meaning through a masterful synthesis of image and text.

The phrase “to hold you up” in the title can have (at least) three possible meanings: 1) to physically hold you up, as in to...

If you’re looking for a book to kick-start your brain and move it into a higher gear, a book that will set your thinking on a fresh path and that by doing so will help extricate us, as a society, together, out of our present dark morass, and to provide a strong, sensible, workable basis on which to build a better tomorrow, then look no further –Doughnut Economicsis that book.

Kate Raworth is an educator, researcher and activist currently based at Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute who is both smart enough and strong to recognize and identify the errors in the reigning economic theories that underpin the global capitalist...

From the Archives: ONE new copy of the original hardcover edition (2nd print; September 2011) of the first volume of the superb – and definitive – archival study of the life and work of Alex Toth.

Here's the original Publisher write-up:

Compiled with complete access to the family archives and with the full cooperation of Toth's children, this lavishly illustrated biography features many rare comics pages, photographs, and drawings and reproduces twenty complete stories, including a previously unknown and unfinished story from the 1950's, most printed from the original artwork. Includes bibliographical references. Presents a biography of...

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...

We heard only hours before starting to write up the arrival of the softcover edition of this classic work by two of the all-time greats of bande dessinee, that Moebius, perhaps the greatest of them all, had passed away. While Madwoman does not contain the type of cosmic science fiction imagery most closely associated with Moebius, it is second only to The Incal as his most important collaboration withAlejandro Jodorowsky, and it is a work that clearly demonstrates his seemingly effortless mastery of the form and that is certainly one of his most mature and sophisticated works from a narrative standpoint. On the one hand Madwoman is a close...

Defying the norm, this second collection of Jack Kirby and Joe Simon's classic romance comics – a genre which they created, by the way; Young Romance #1 was the very first romance comic book – is a better book than the first volume, with both stronger stories and superior reproduction than the first volume. Romance was among the most successful of comic book genres in the history of the form, and was the most popular during its heyday of the late '40s and early '50s – the period on display in this excellent volume. Many people have a negative perception of romance comics as cliche ridden melodramas of brainless women duped into marriage by...

And while we're talking about learning more about the world around us, here's a book of historical reportage in comics that helps us come to understand how things got to be the way they are. The ever-fascinating David B. takes his readers on an unexpected voyage through the waters of history in this informative, educational and timely volume co-piloted by Jean-Pierre Filiu. As readers of B.'s breakthrough masterpiece, Epileptic already know, he is quite adept at depicting scenes of warfare, and, what's more, in doing so in a way that reveals otherwise hidden forces at work below the surface of the battlefield. David B. masterfully employs...

Sky in Stereo started out life in a series of digest-size, pamphlet comic books which were then collected with additional material as Volume One. Now, at last, we have the long awaited conclusion to (Sacha) Mardou's graphic novel of growing up in a nameless British location (that likely bears more than a passing resemblance to the Manchester of Mardou's own youth).

While all children must cross thesea of adolescence to gain the continent of adulthood, eachmakes their own personal and unique crossing, and while some find this crossingrelatively smooth, others may encounter stormy seas. Here in the pages of the second and final volume ofSky...

This is the fifth volume in the series of young adult graphic biographies published by Hyperion under the ægis of The Center for Cartoon Studies, which reaches an important milestone here in that this volume is the first to be created by a graduate of their program, and as such provides proof postive that CCS is fulfilling its mission. Annie Sullivan and the Trials of Helen Keller is the most substantial work yet in this series and represents its strongest artistic achievement. More than that, it is an inspired work that demonstrates the power of comics to communicate.

It runs for 86 full color pages, each of which works from a 16-panel...