In the full color pages of Inappropriate, her latest hardcover collection from Uncivilized Books, Gabrielle Bell delves into the porous borderland between fact and fantasy, a land populated by daydreams,conjectures, anxieties, obsessions, recollections, ruminations, self-doubts,self-incriminations and much more, all clearly communicated in her ever more confidently created comics.And then there is the collection's standout piece, "The original, true, biographical versionof Little Red Riding Hood," which sets the tale in an ahistorical New York City. Inappropriate isBell's best collection to date. Here, she has broken through to a more...

It's here! The new volume of comics pedagogy by The Funnest Teacher in the World, Lynda Barry! As most watchers of this space are likely already aware, Ms. Barry was recently awarded a MacArthur Fellowship (aka "the genius award").Making Comicsprovides further evidence that this award was well deserved.

This much anticipated follow up to her previous work,Syllabus, also based on her experiences teaching at the University of Wisconsin, follows the same format, using it to dig deeper into the cave of creativity. In the 200 pages of this facsimile composition bookwe leave the safe,well defined confines of the symbolic realm and are...

Year of the Rabbit is an effective and affecting memoir of life in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge during the years 1975 to 1980. While most North Americans who were alive during the Vietnam War are at least dimly aware that something bad happened in Cambodia after American forces largely left Southeast Asia at the conclusion of the Vietnam War, few are aware of the details, or have an understanding of what life was like for Cambodians themselves after the Communist Party of Cambodia – the Khmer Rouge – or, as readers of this book will learn, Angkar, which is how the Khmer Rouge referred to themselves during the early years of their rule –...

Hypericum is the latest graphic novel from the amazing Manuele Fior. This 144-page, oversize (9" x 12"), full color hardcover is a wonder to behold. Two tales run on parallel tracks, grounded in 1990s Berlin where Italian insomniac, Teresa Guerrero finds herself after being selected as a "scientific assistant to prepare an upcoming exhibit on Tutankhamen's Treasure" being held there. The story connects to – and is bracketed by – the 1922 discovery of Tutankhamen's ("King Tut") tomb by the British archaeologist and Egyptologist, Howard Carter – one of the most momentous and substantial archeological finds of modern times – via the device of...

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...

The concluding volume of Ellsworth's ambitious cartooned deconstruction of the psyche has arrived! This is the third in a matched series of full size, full color, hardcover graphic excursions. Prepare yourself for a trip like no other, as The Understanding Monster turns identity inside-out and then plays out a series of dramas with its component parts... it's pretty difficult to describe actually. Hereis our take on the initial volume in the series. See you on the other side!

While Darwyn Cooke originally planned for a two-year stint on The Spirit, circumstances conspired to cut his run short at the halfway mark. The evidence of this final issue -- an exigetical adaptation of Eisner's original Sand Saref story (the same story Frank Miller's upcoming movie is also using as it's core text) -- bears out that this is all it took for Cooke to bore right to the core of not just the character of The Spirit but of the spirit of the noir sensibility itself. Through his masterful employment of Eisner's late style (which Eisner himself used to portray the past; i.e. his own childhood during the depression out of which so...

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)...

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...

The complete set of the first seven volumes of the updated editions of the Collected Love and Rockets is now* available once again. Together, these contain the entirety of the first volume of Love and Rockets that originally appeared in the 50 issue run that was published between 1982 and 1996.