The tale Blankets tells is in most respects a classic coming of age story, but the place -- emotional as well as geographical -- that it is coming from may not be familiar territory for many readers: an abnegating Christianity built on self-denial ensconced in the harsh northern environs of Wisconsin and Michigan. Yet there can be no doubt that the core questions and values dealt with in Blankets are certainly universal ones. Craig Thompson has clearly devoted himself to a serious study of Will Eisner's late work -- from A Contract With God to the present -- and this study has really paid off here. The pacing, the placement of blacks,...

OK, this is not just the perfect gift book for the jazz fan on your list, it is also makes for an ideal gift to give to anyone -- of any age -- who has a love of words and pictures. This sumptuous hardcover volume has the potential to turn the squarest square into the heppest cat. Everyone is a jazz fan in the making: this is just the ticket to inspire them to take a closer look. Jazz ABZ is a pæn to jazz in art and poetry that simply has to be seen to be believed. The essence of jazz -- collaboration, composition, and improvisation -- is embodied in this singular tribute to the form. The overall package is designed to resemble the...

Here's an item that we've had in stock at the store for awhile now, but failed to give it the attention that it deserves. And so now, in emulation of this fine work's protagonist, Takeshi Shiga, we are coming down from our mountain refuge to set things straight. This work is as excellent a piece of craftmanship as you are likely to find anywhere in comics today. Let's just come right out and say it: Jiro Taniguchi is the man. Divided into a meticulously planned and expertly paced thirteen chapters, this book presents a classic story arc involving an archetypal man of honor repaying a debt. The archetype to which Shiga belongs falls into...

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...

Whether the point of this novel is to show us the adult that lies latent in the child or to reveal to us the child that the adult never manages to quite fully outgrow is a question that is difficult if not fruitless to answer. What is certain, however, is that the novel Edwin Mullhouse is brilliantly conceived. It is also shockingly well written, replete with uncannily accurate descriptions of childhood perceptions that can at times be overwhelmingly sympathetic. It is at turns funny, sad, insightful, and even profound; but above all else, it is deeply creepy: It reveals -- almost imperceptibly at first, but then slowly, incrementally, the...

In the second issue of Anders Nilsen's new epic, Tongues, tensions ratchet up several notches across the board. What, exactly, is going on? It's hard to say with any kind of certainty – but that's the point. What we are shown are the multiple, intersecting planes of colliding realities: of the mythic and the mundane; of imagination and conspiracy, of street and sky, of home and horror. All is intricately rendered, resonantly colored and put together in a thoughtfully designed, oversize package that captures a sense of the porous nature of the borders that humanity constructs, pointing out that they are, finally, endlessly mutable...

This One Summer is a finely nuanced portrait of pubescents at the dawning of their age of sexuality that will have readers slowing down if not stopping in their tracks to pause and soak up every line ofstunningly good work. The Tamaki cousins enter Hernandez brothers territory here, with their deftly characterized and deeply empathic portraits of each pen & ink participant in the drama that unfolds on these pages. There are echoes, too, of Charles Burns’s Black Hole, in the presentation of the protagonists' stumbling upon detritus strewn outdoor settings that stand as a synecdoche forinnocence’s discoveringthe mysteries of sexual...

It's been almost 40 years, but worth the wait.Mark Alan Stamaty's legendary,Village Voicestrip,MacDoodle St. is back! The looooong out of print(paperbackonly)collection has now been reissued by New York Review Comicsin a spiffy hardcover edition that includes seven installations of theprecursor strip, "Garble Dee Goo" alongwith an all new,18 page addendum, to boot!

Mark Alan Stamaty's comics evince adistractibility that borders on anarchy and leads to mayhem and even chaos, yes, but attention deficit, no! Stamaty focuses on the details at the same time as his mind wanders all over creation (well, all over New York City) producing some...

This one get the Copacetic Seal of Merit. Reading it rearranges your headspace.

Here's what some others have to say:

Absolutely brilliant. I was utterly gripped and wolfed it down. It feels as if he has invented an entirely new genre.
—Mark Haddon

A thrilling account of theories of physics, and as a series of highly-wrought imaginative extrapolations about the physicists who arrived at them.
—Geoff Dyer

When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut is the strangest and most original book I've read for years. It hovers in a state between fiction and non-fiction, or wave and particle, and makes an account of modern mathematics...

This One Summeris a finely nuanced portrait of pubescents at the dawning of their age of sexuality that will have readers slowing down if not stopping in their tracks to pause and soak up every line of this amazing work. The Tamaki cousins enter Hernandez brothers territory here, with their deftly characterized and deeply empathic portraits of each pen & ink participant in the drama that unfolds on these pages. There are echoes, too, of Charles Burns’sBlack Hole, in the presentation of the protagonists' stumbling upon detritus strewn outdoor settings that stand as a synecdoche forinnocence’s discoveringthe mysteries of sexual...