What can you say about a book that opens with a Galactus quote from Fantastic Four #49, drops more comics references -- particularly to the classics of the 1980s -- than any novel we've ever read, clearly shows the influence of Gilbert Hernandez's Palomar and, especially, Luba stories, AND won the Pulitzer Prize for best novel of 2007? We'd say, "This is a must read! Particularly suitable for fans of Jonathan Lethem's Fortress of Solitude and Michael Chabon's (also Pulitzer Prize winning) The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay." And then we'd add: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a gigantic meditation on the inner life of the...

(Book One of the New Edition of the collected Love and Rockets) Most frequenters of this space are hep to the wonder of Love and Rockets. However, there are still those who have yet to see the light. Are you someone who still hasn't managed to get around to reading the greatest comics ever produced? If so, all we've got to say is: if you haven't read the original run of Love and Rockets (in any one of its extant formats) and you are trawling the web looking for exciting new releases and looking through back issue bins at your friendly neighborhood comics shop for classics of the days of yore, then you are simply wasting your time -- the...

While Harlan Ellison's star has dimmed somewhat with the passing of the years, likely due, at least in part, to his abrasive personality, it remains hard to overstate his influence on science fiction, and then, in turn, on science fiction's invasion of and subsequent influence on mainstream fiction – particularly short fiction. Forty or so years ago, both "'Repent, Harlequin,' said the Ticktockman" and "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" (written in 1966 and 1967, respectively) were among the most anthologized stories out there, with one or the other – sometimes both – being in the majority of high school and college short fiction 101...

Huzzah! Here it is: the third – and final (>sob<) – year of Herriman's inventive, insightful and very funny strip– which wrapped up pretty much exactly a century ago–that he drew concurrently with Krazy Kat!Starting off with another fine introduction by Jared Gardner, this volume takes us all the way to the end of the strip's run, which actually results in us getting a bit more that a year's worth this time around, as it ran through to January 18, 1919. Baron Bean is, for our money, Herriman's finest work outside of Krazy Kat, and IDW's Library of American Comics has done an outstanding job of presenting crisp, full size...

The complete set of the first seven volumes of the updated editions of the Collected Love and Rockets is now* available once again. Together, these contain the entirety of the first volume of Love and Rockets that originally appeared in the 50 issue run that was published between 1982 and 1996.

It took us a minute to get this one in, due to screwball comedy hi-jinx. At long last, Saul Steinberg's first book, from way back in 1947 (?) is back in print in this luxe oversize hardcover edition fro NYRB, who have this to say about it:

"To escape fascist Europe, the artist Saul Steinberg drew his way to America. He made it to New York in 1942 already in contract with The New Yorker, but was soon called up to serve in the US Naval Reserve in World War II. This book, All In Line, is a memoir-via-drawing of this key time in Steinberg’s life, when he began to find his line and his way as an American.

In works for The New Yorker and...

<<•>> edited by Alex Spiro; introduction by Paul Gravett <<•>> art by Stuart Kolakovic, Mikkel Sommers, Brecht Vandenbroucke, Luke Best, Rob Hunter, Jon McNaught, Ben Newman, Andrew Rae, Luke Pearson, Jack Teagle, Jon Boam, Jakob Hindrichs, Clayton Junior, Daniel Locke, Isabel Greenberg, Mike Bertino, Nick White, Rui Tenreiro, Sean Hudson, Luc Melanson, Katia Fouquet, Yeji Yun, Matthew Lyons & Liesbeth De Stercke <<•>> The fine folks at the London-based NoBrow Ltd. have produced their first anthology, and it's a doozy! Editor, Alex Spiro has assembled twenty-four artists and, with a nod to The Book...

Those few unfortunate souls among you who strayed and so failed to get a hold of this singular, epic and amazing comics masterwork now have now been given a second -- and less expensive -- chance. Make sure you take it. To learn more, click on the cover image at left to read our in depth review.

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...

Break out the bongs, Blessed Be has arrived! Rick Altergott has been producing his unique (but definitely inspired by and to a degree derived from the classic Mad) brand of comics – at a painstakingly slow pace – for over three decades now. He's been working on Blessed Be in one form or another for something in the neighborhood of twenty years – but you can't rush quality, and we're here to tell you that it was worth the wait! Longtime readers will recognize some classic earlier Altergott-penned episodes from his and Ariel Bordeaux's early-aughts, two-person anthology series, Raisin Pie, reworked and repurposed here, all in the service of...