If you’re looking for a book to kick-start your brain and move it into a higher gear, a book that will set your thinking on a fresh path and that by doing so will help extricate us, as a society, together, out of our present dark morass, and to provide a strong, sensible, workable basis on which to build a better tomorrow, then look no further –Doughnut Economicsis that book.

Kate Raworth is an educator, researcher and activist currently based at Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute who is both smart enough and strong to recognize and identify the errors in the reigning economic theories that underpin the global capitalist...

Aptly referred to as "the B-SIde to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet", Ronald Wimberly's Prince of Cats pulls off quite a feat: successfully reimagining the world of Romeo and Juliet in an hepper-than-hep 1980s NYC where hip-hop and punk exist side-by-side andduels are settled with Samurai swords. The story here centers and pivots on the figure of Tybalt, with Romeo and Juliet as supporting cast. The art is dynamic, colorful and perfectly captures the mood while doing an amazing job of visually transcribing the throbbing soundtrack of the streets, train tracks, nightclubs, tenements, alleyways, nightclubs, bedrooms, offices, backrooms and...

We heard only hours before starting to write up the arrival of the softcover edition of this classic work by two of the all-time greats of bande dessinee, that Moebius, perhaps the greatest of them all, had passed away. While Madwoman does not contain the type of cosmic science fiction imagery most closely associated with Moebius, it is second only to The Incal as his most important collaboration withAlejandro Jodorowsky, and it is a work that clearly demonstrates his seemingly effortless mastery of the form and that is certainly one of his most mature and sophisticated works from a narrative standpoint. On the one hand Madwoman is a close...

The Sky Is Blue with a Single Cloud,the first, and likely definitive, English language collection ofthe work of Kuniko Tsurita, the firstwoman contributor to Garo – debuting in 1965 at the age of eighteen(!) – is a revelation. The eighteen uniquely powerful stories collected in this softcover volume provide readers with340 pages of formally inventive and visually daring manga,alloriginally published between 1966 and 1980, during which period Tsurita was the only regularly contributing woman in the pages of Garo. In addition, there is an invaluable 40 page illustrated essay, "The Life and Art of Kuniko Tsurita," by Ryan Holmberg and...

"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)....

What more can be said about the genius of Carl Barks? It towers over the landscape of comics history like the statue of Duckburg's founder, Cornelius Coot (erected by Uncle Scrooge in "Statuesque Spendthrifts" fromWalt Disney's Comics and Stories#138; collected inA Christmas for Shacktown),towers over that fair city. The title tale of this latest volume in the 15 year project to collect the entirety of Barks's Disney oeuvre, "The Old Castle's Secret" is a classic book-length tale of eerie mystery that was originally presented inFour Color#189, published in the summer of 1948, that provides the first fleshed out iteration of Uncle Scrooge...

Working in an office building – or even visiting one! – will never be the same again after reading Theo Ellsworth's richly imaginative graphic novel interpretation of Jeff VanderMeer's tale (that was originally published as the lead storyin his2004 collection of the same name). Secret Life, as one might expect,is all about revealing adifferent sort of life lurkingjust below the surface of quotidian normalcy. It only takes an instant to realize that this is straight up Theo Ellsworth's alley! It's close toa perfect match, and Theo really goes to town. It is a bit different seeing him work on a more formally straightforward narrative, and...

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...

FROM THE ARCHIVES

You want funny? Look no further: This book will make you laugh. Like Peter Bagge's Hate, but smarter and more brutal in its judgments on this dysfunctional society of ours, and with a distinctive flavor all its own, this is a comic for people who see past the façade as a matter of course. Hey, Mister takes sarcasm to new heights. It makes us think of the Monty Python episode, the "Piranha Brothers," in which a fearful and trembling thug played by Michael Palin relates how Doug Piranha was the most terrifying gangster he had ever encountered because of the deft manner in which, "he used... sarcasm." And the bitterness, oh,...

Yoshiharu Tsuge’s The Man Without Talent is simultaneously an elegy and a critique of a way of being, but most of all it is an immersive experience not to be forgotten. As in much of his work, Tsuge allows his own experiences to inform the tales he created for The Man Without Talent, and doing so clearly served to amplify the degree of verisimilitude and lifelikeness of the people, places and episodes depicted (and seeimngly, but perhaps ironically, simultaneously provides a commentary on the creator's sense of self worth).

Tsuge dolefully, yet expertly, conjures up a vivid world of misfits and oddballs living on the edge of society in...