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...

Underground comix live! Gary Panter's Crashpad is a classic old school underground comic book that is a comic book about old school underground comic books: what they were, what they are, what they mean, where they come from, where they're going. Did we mention acid? Cover to cover comics; every line drawn by Panter; 36 pages. Black and white interior art on heavy newsprint. "Gain intuition to the endless play of becoming free."

ONE COPY

The follow up to last year's It Never Happened, New Construction features two new comics novellas, "Backyard" and "Household."Each is tautly rendered in Alden's forceful pencil line. New Construction is aptly titled in that it is put together diferently. It is a bifurcated edition, with the first tale, "Backyard," being both tightly rendered and printed on a (relatively) bright cream colored stock, while the second, "Household" is far more loose and expressionistic in its rendering and is printed on a dull light gray newsprint. It is worth noting here that the reproduction quality in New Construction is significantly superior to that of It...

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...

For twenty years and counting, Scott McCloud's explication of the mechanics of comics remains essential.



Testamonials:

<>"If you've ever felt bad about wasting your life reading comics, then check out Scott McCloud's classic book immediately. You might still feel you've wasted your life, but you'll know why, and you'll be proud."
-Matt Groening, creator ofThe Simpsons

<>"In one lucid, well-designed chapter after another, [McCloud] guides us through the elements of comics style, and... how words combine with pictures to work their singular magic. When the 215-page journey is finally over, most readers will find it...

Sub-titled, "July 1, 1916: The First Day of the Battle of the Somme",The Great Warpresents in a single image a visual distillation of the events of that day. While this is not the first 20+ foot-long single image comics book that has come our way – that honor going to Helge Reumann and Xavier Robel's hyper kineticElvis Road, originally published in Switzerland in 2002 by Pipifax, and then in the USA by Buenaventurra Press in 2007. But whereas Elvis Road presented a frenzied instant of urban chaos that was unreadable – in the sense that there was simply no way to narratively digest the complexity of the image; all one could do was bask in...

One could say thatJoseph Smith and the Mormons, a 464-page, hardcover, full color, historical-epic/biography in comics form of the life of Joseph Smith and the founding of the Church of the Latter Day Saints – aka the Mormons – is the work of a lifetime. It is the fruition of years of self-reflection and research followed by even more years of writing and drawing (and then editing). Noah Van Sciver was brought up in the the Church of the Latter Day Saints, but then fell away from it – along with his mother, and some (but not all) of his siblings – after his parents divorced. His father stayed in the church. These biographical facts shed...

"The definitive course in comics narrative" continues, as Mastering Comics ventures deeper into the wilderness of formal comics instruction, widening and extending the trail blazed by Drawing Words & Writing Pictures. This horizontally formatted volume follows the same textbookish format as its precursor; this time around divided into eleven lessons, rather than 15, and at 318 pages is a tad heftier. This works out to lessons that are on average 50% longer and more in depth. In other words, Mastering Comics is a 200 level class to DW&WP's 100 level (although the authors clearly state that DW&WP is not a prerequisite for MC)....

PLEASE NOTE: new, but shelf worn copies, w/ minor cover dings

Now Let Me Fly is a 322 page hardcover that presents the story of Eugene Bullard, who started out life in the Jim Crow south here in the USA at the turn of the twentieth century, and then, through a combination of striving, daring and skill crossed the Atlantic, where, when the First World War broke out, he fought in the French army before going on to become the first African American fighter pilot in history. Ronald Wimberly's story is expertly crafted with a genius framing sequence that simultaneously drives multiple points across to any attentive reader. The story that...