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...

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...

With the arrival of this, the second issueof the series, it becomes clear that the first was but a prologue. Here, in the 88 full color pages ofUnsmooth #2: BUM, E.S. Glenn opens up new portals and reveals previouslyunseen dimensions of what will henceforth be known as the Unsmooth Multiverse. Enmeshed within an encompassing framework of ligne claire bande dessinée, readers will encounter mechamanga (along with a snatch of horror hentai)– plus sub-titled anime videos – New Yorker cartoons (and anold school Penguin paperback), cartooned modern art (along with some graffiti),some classical, newspaper Sunday-pagestrips,photobooth strips,and...

Here it is: the best selling work (when combining the sales of its two previous incarnations) in the history of The Copacetic Comics Company has finally been published in a richly deserved, shelf-worthy – and, more to the point, library friendly – permanent edition. This 120 page hardcover is printed on archival white stock and presents the complete original work along with bonus pages documenting its history. Originally self-published in 2001 as Super Monster #14, "Gloriana" was the culmination of Huizenga's development as an artist, knitting together all his strengths as a comics theoretician, cartoonist and graphic explicator to produce...

The hype line at the top of this comic book lays it right out: "stories for the (now old) 90s kid in all of us." Anyone pining for another shot of those finely crafted, pen & ink comics that probe the youth counter culture while prodding society's underbelly and occasionally broaching taboo subjects will find six doses here in the 34 pages of Momento! Fans of the early Clowes in particular (which is actually from the '80s) will find their buttons being pushed here in stories like "Barry! My Imaginary Friend" and "Night of the Roamer". The heavy satire of "Bitrilin's Dream" and "A Hungry Artist" may put readers in mind of the repressed...

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...

Miraculously, after two decades of less than stellar recordings, Iggy has managed a return to form here on this album, produced at age 65 and released close on the heels of his 66th birthday. This is doubtless due in no small measure to the return of James Williamson on the heels of the multi-year reunion of Iggy with the (almost) original Stooges line-up. The presence of the Ron and Scott Asheton was not enough to saveThe Weirdness. Ready to Die is another story, however. Backed by James Williamson on multiple-tracked guitars, Scott Asheton on Drums, Mike Watt on Bass and Steve Mackay on Sax (of which there is plenty) as well as a number...

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...

Long – and criminally! – out of print, Howard Cruse's epochal work of long form comics, Stuck Rubber Baby,one of the most significant early North American graphic novels – and among the first to truly merit the label – is at last back in print in this deluxe hardcover edition from First Second that has been released to celebrate the 25th anniversary of its initial publication – an anniversary that Cruse did not get to celebrate himself, having passed away late last year (but he was involved in the preparations for this edition, and so, of course, knew it was coming, thankfully). This edition includes over 20 pages of bonus materials, much...

Defying the norm, this second collection of Jack Kirby and Joe Simon's classic romance comics – a genre which they created, by the way; Young Romance #1 was the very first romance comic book – is a better book than the first volume, with both stronger stories and superior reproduction than the first volume. Romance was among the most successful of comic book genres in the history of the form, and was the most popular during its heyday of the late '40s and early '50s – the period on display in this excellent volume. Many people have a negative perception of romance comics as cliche ridden melodramas of brainless women duped into marriage by...