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...

NOW AVAILABLE IN SOFTCOVER!

Perhaps the single greatest science-fiction-adventure bande dessinée series of all time, the six-volumeseries that was originally published in France throughout the 1980s has at last been collected in its entirety in a single 316 pagesoftcover volume for a price that works out to less than $4.50 per volume – barely more than a standard American comic book. Massively influential (see Brian Michael Bendis's introduction cum rant), The Incal has informed many a popular culture work, across mediums: films, television series, and books, in addition to the countless comics, manga and graphic novels tha have been...

A Western World is the latest collection from the unstoppable, indefatigable Michael DeForge thatcollectsfifteen short comics, some of whichpreviously appeared in recent issues of his one-man anthology,Lose andinBreakdown Press's two(instantly sold out) issues of On Topics,some in anthologies like Kramers Ergot and Island, some were self-published minis, and a few appear here for the first time (right?). DeForge continues to explore his concerns with the Western paradigmthat takes asa given thetechnological domination of nature. These explorations are effected through a series of choreographedcollisions between biological functions and...

A one-of-a-kind classic of the early years turn-of-the-century*, independent, creator-owned comics, Pop Gun War presents a fullembodiement ofthe imaginative capacities of the comics medium created by a natural-born comics maker.

*Pop Gun War was originally created and published between 1997 and 2003. It has now (in 2016) been reissued to prepare the ground for its forthcoming sequel.

Recommended!

Unstable Molecules is one of the best graphic novels Marvel has produced... well, possibly, ever, but, to hedge our bets, let’s say, "in quite awhile." In any event, it is like nothing Marvel has ever produced in the past. It is a textual analysis of comics done in comics, and it is one of the finest ever produced -- certainly the finest ever produced by Marvel! It should be considered in the context of Understanding Comics and Hicksville as much as the Fantastic Four. Telling the "true" story of the "real people" that the Fantastic Four were based on, this book is a work of metacomics and a dream come true for students of narrative theory...

<<•>> edited by Ken Parille <<•>>
This handsomely designed 360 page flexi-cover volume is billed as being "a critical edition ofGhost Worldand other stories, with essays, interviews and annotations." Prefaced by an appetizer consisting of a brief yet wide-ranging sampling of epigrammatic excerpts of concnise Clowes commentary, the main course of this volume is the completeGhost Worldaccompanied by a generous serving ofside dishes consisiting of many if not most of Clowes's best short stories from the late teen issues ofEightball, including "Blue Italian Shit", "Black Nylon", "Like a Weed, Joe", "The Party" and...

Finally! A new – and very improved – edition of Seiichi Hayashi's manga masterpiece of alienation has been releasesd by Drawn and quarterly. This new edition has a nice heft and feel, and the design has been slightly tweaked for a mild aesthetic improvement, but the big change is the addition of a 60 page, illustrated essay by manga/gekiga/Garo scholar, Ryan Homberg. The inclusion of this essay will enable all readers to better situate Hayashi's work in manga history and better appreciate his achievements. As Red Colored Elegy is over 45 years old, andHayashi's work is far from typical manga fare, Holmberg's essay is a crucial improvement...

They bought our dreams... and turned them into comics. Sixty years ago, Jack Kirby, Joe Simon and their cohorts at Prize Comics, asked readers to send them their dreams. Readers did and they were turned into comics. The Strange World of Your Dreams only lasted four issues, but that was enough to fill this book. Sporting a soft, spongy cover, it embodies a bit of visual punning in that it could be considered a surrealistic pillow, of sorts. Comics have been linked to dreams from their very beginnings, but the comics collected here might be the most explicit connection made between the trade-off between individual/personal dreaming and...

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...

We were excited enough by this book's publicationthat we ordered it – from France – in it's originalFrench language release (resulting in us charging more than twice as much as we are for this North American release!). While, of course, there have been comics about jazz in the past – some of the best of which, intriguingly, have also originated in Europe– in Total Jazz, Blutch, comics master that he is, has done more than most to bring the spirit of jazz to itsrepresentation in comics form;working towardstranslating the jazzethos of improvisation within formal compositions into the language of comics. While many of the short pieces...