It's hard to know where to begin with a work as remarkable as this. Originally published in six chapters in Love and Rockets: New Stories 3 & 4 in 2010 and 2011, it includes a flashback chapter titled "Browntown" that, in comic book parlance, could be said to be the – or, at least, a – "Secret Origin of Maggie", as readers are finally made privy to heretofore undisclosed primal scenes at the root of significant swaths of Maggie's personality and character. While it may be a commonplace to state that character is forged in the crucible of family, it is rare indeed to be given the opportunity of witnessing an incidence of this that has...

FROM THE ARCHIVES

Here's ONE, like newcopy of the FIRST PRINT of the original 2009 edition of this just-reissued classic. Here's our write-up from back then:

OK, this is the one you've been waiting for! Eleven years in the making, a whopping 840 pages in length, A Drifting Life is the graphic memoir of one of the all-time manga greats. Over the last several years, Drawn and Quarterly has been assiduously releasing Tatsumi's classic gekiga, in which he pioneered a street savvy, morally ambiguous form of comics that thrived on grittier material and was more ambivalent about the post-war boom in Japan. A Drifting Life chronicles the years...

Here it is: the final (>sob!<) Peanuts strips by Charles M. Schulz, the last of which, the final Sunday page, originally appeared on the same day as Schulz's obituary, as he passed on from this world (and doubtless onto the Sphere of True Comics) the day before its publication. The editors cleverly filled out what would have otherwise been a slim volume by bookending the conclusion of Peanuts with the complete collection of Schulz's precursor strip to Peanuts, L'il Folks. And, to top it all off, this volume is introduced by none other than the President of the United States of America, Barack Obama! A fitting finale.

OK, all you cheapskates, we know you've been waiting for us to get the latest Millhauser collection in for a bargain price – and now we have: 13 new tales by the master... for less!

AMAZING COLLECTION

RECOMMENDED!

The most formally ambitious issue yet in theRetrofit Comicsseries published by Box Brown, Andrew White'sWe Will Remaincontains five shorts works which together serve to showcase White's native abilities as well as demonstrating that he has absorbed some of the key lessons ofFrank Santoro's comics correspondence course. Recommended for those who appreciate the work of David Mazzucchelli and Dash Shaw, as well as Santoro,We WIll Remainstarts off with a dramatic shift from the micro to the macro as the small scale personal work "The Deep End" gives way to the cosmic conundrum of "Travel" before heading into a trio of formal experiments, "As...

Yes, it has finally come to pass: Ed the Happy Clown is back in print in book form for the first time in decades, in what is likely to be the definitive edition. This is the ground breaking work that both put Chester Brown on the map and broadened the horizons of comics in the 1980s, causing a seismic shift in its landscape and charting a new direction away from heroic fantasy through a methodology that, in hindsight, can be seen to be – at least in some respects – a deconstruction of the psychological as well as epistemological underpinnings of that genre, which has since become dominated by corporate entertainment behemoths. Ed the Happy...

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...

The day has finally dawned on the first new North American edition of Moebius work in a generation. The World of Edena is the first in a series of deluxe hardcover volumes that will reintroduce the great French master of comics (bande dessinée) to readerson this side of the Atlantic. Collecting all theEdenashort stories in a deluxe, 344 page, full color,hardcover edition,The World of Edenaincludes “Upon a Star,” “Gardens of Edena,” “The Goddess,” “Stel,” and “Sra.” Although several had been translated into English in the 1980s, this will be the first time “Sra” has been available to English-language audiences. Dark Horse has done a nice...

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...