Now at last available in the USA, here is a look at where it all started – manga that is! This pint-sized box set is truly power-packed! While it’s pages measure a mere 4 1/4" x 5 3/4”, its three volumes contain well over 1000 pages total, over 900 of which are fully devoted to reproducing the most extensive selection of Hokusai’s ten-volume handbook of drawings – which he dubbed manga – that he originally published between 1814 and 1820 (although an additional five volumes were published long after his death, bringing the total to 15 – we think; read the notes accompanying these volumes for the full details) currently available in a...

GIlbert Hernandez enthusiasts, aficionados, completists and collectors have reason to celebrate the release of Comics Dementia. Here, collected in a single volume, we have over 200 pages of GIlbert's wildest and wooliest comics, drawn together from hither and yon in the comics firmament. Not for the faint of heart or weak of mind, the work here is where Gilbert cuts loose and lets you have it, right in the eyes! So, hold onto your hats! 64 stories in all!

No one has ever created better Christmas comics than Carl Barks. "Christmas on Bear Mountain" is more than just another Barks Christmas Classic, however: it has the added historical significance of being the story for which Barks created his most famous character: Scrooge McDuck – Uncle Scrooge to Donald and his nephews. Scrooge – obviously patterned after the character of the same name form Charles Dickens'sA Christmas Carol– was originally created simply as the dramatic foil for Donald and his nephews in this particular story that was originally released for Christmas in 1947, and that was supposed to be that... but Barks quickly...

Quite a lot can –and will – be said about the comics that make up Milk White Steed, Michael Kennedy’s first book length collection published in North America. Composed of eight short to medium length stories along with a pair of interstitial two-pagers, it is filled with comics that are artistically grounded, visually stimulating, historically informed, and intellectually challenging, and that together make for a dis- / re-orienting reading experience that, while at times unsettling, is ultimately invigorating and highly rewarding.

A core component of the stories that make up Milk White Steed is their conveyance of the Black British...

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...

Another impossibly good album from the one and only Joe Henry. Amazingly, you can listen to the entire LP online at his site, HERE (Just click on "Launch MP3 player to listen"). And while you're listening to it, you can take a moment to read the note he penned on the day of its release, HERE. And, please note that both the package and booklet covers feature photographs taken by Eugene Smith in Pittsburgh, PA during his epic Dream Street project of 1955-56.

Picking up, more or less, where Ganges left off, Kevin Huizenga's new series, Fieldercontinues to map new worlds for comics. The issue opens up – after an intriguing symbolization of the nature of thought on the inside front cover – withBona, a deconstructive remix of Sam Glanzman’sKona(which featured, improbably yet likely, scripts by Lionel Ziprin), published by Dell in the early 1960s. This story, which is bifurcated, with another, earlier part of the story appearing later(!) in the issue, highlights formal aspects of classic comics narratives while simultaneously reflecting on their generic tropes and the cultural milieu that produced...

"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)....

Reid Paley's now classic 1999 debut solo LP, Lucky's Tune has at long last been released on (140g) vinyl, in a limited, SIGNED, gatefold edition of 1000 copies from Demon Records in the UK.

A key architect of the Pittsburgh punk scene, among whose many roles were show promoter, gig securer, venue locator, press liaison, actor in the seminal Pittsburgh punk film, Debt Begins at Twenty and, oh yeah, being the front man for Pittsburgh's greatest punk band (which later relocated to Boston), THE FIVE, Reid Paley has gone on to have a lengthy solo career, based in Brooklyn, NY where he continues to write, record and perform his unique brand of...

Back in print at last, this classic memoir of Chester's high school obsession with Playboy Magazine disabused Hugh Hefner of his notion that Playboy was just good clean fun - but only for the five minutes or so it took him to put it out of his mind. Other, more engaged thinkers will hold onto this impression a bit longer. It's hard for most to realize in this day and age when the high school memoir is a major staple of the comics – or should we say, graphic novel – market, but when the comics that make up this volume, and its companion piece, I Never Liked You, were first serialized in the pages of Yummy Fur, they were like nothing anyone...