After a long delay – the result of a highly mobile, and doubtless stressful, period in Craig Thompson's life (see note at issue's end for details) – the ninth issue of Ginseng Roots has at long last arrived! This time around we are given a detailed look at the business of Wisconsin ginseng at its strong links to mainland China and Taiwan. Another amazing, highly informative, educational and entertaining issue of this epochal series. Don't miss it!

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...

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...

Discipline, the latest comics work from Dash Shaw, has been in the works for over five years. Shaw set himself the difficult challenge of creating a calm, still work about war – specifically the American Civil War – one that would embody the Quaker ethos. Whereas most fictional depictions of war focus on strategy, technological prowess and valor on the battlefield, or, conversely, on the tragedy, absurdity and horror of war,Disciplinefocuses instead on the moral quandaries of war. These are approached within a philosophical matrix firmly grounded in the traditional Christian ethics of the Quaker faith, which hold, among much else, that one...

FROM THE ARCHIVES

A run of nine consecutive volumes of Ranma 1/2 by one and only Rumiko Takahashi. Ranma 1/2 is a true classic manga series, whose influence on subsequent shoojo manga is hard to overstate. It also offers a wealth of humorous observations on gender norms and gender construction, to boot!

We came across this run in the archives; all new and unread. If there's anyone who picked up the first volume and is ready to read more, this is a perfect opportunity to do so!

The long (as in a decade) out of print, first D & Q collection of comics maestro, Kevin Huizenga's work, Curses is now at last back in print in this very nice French-flappped softcover edition – that includes 40 additional pages, including an appreciation by noted comics authority, Douglas Wolk.

Revisiting this thematically and formally interlinked collection of short to mid-length comics after close to twenty years, the first thought it how current, even prescient they seem. The social, political and personal observations feel as fresh and pertinent now as they did then. Huizenga's long running concerns with temporality, scale and...

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,...

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...