(Book Two 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...

<<•>> 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...

Wow, a double dose of Ron Regé, Jr.! (along with YH #12, which was released simultaneously) This one is technically Yeast Hoist #(lucky)13. It is a beautifully drawn, designed and produced square format volume. Printed in two colors with a full color flexi cover and endpapers this book is an aesthetic treat and a bargain to boot. Ron Regé, Jr. is channelling the spirit of the 20th century American painter, Charles Burchfield into 21st century comics. Like Burchfield's paintings, Regé's comics in this volume fill the viewer/reader with a sense of wonder at the impossible beauty and strange otherness of nature. His work really puts you...

And while we're talking about learning more about the world around us, here's a book of historical reportage in comics that helps us come to understand how things got to be the way they are. The ever-fascinating David B. takes his readers on an unexpected voyage through the waters of history in this informative, educational and timely volume co-piloted by Jean-Pierre Filiu. As readers of B.'s breakthrough masterpiece, Epileptic already know, he is quite adept at depicting scenes of warfare, and, what's more, in doing so in a way that reveals otherwise hidden forces at work below the surface of the battlefield. David B. masterfully employs...

BACK IN PRINT AT LAST! This is the big book that has it all! Originally serialized in Biggu Komiku in 1970-71, and a personal favorite of the artist, manga founding-father Osamu Tezuka, Ode to Kirihito is a unique effort, in more than one respect. Weighing in at a mammoth 822 pages, Ode is the first of Tezuka's works to incorporate adult themed gekiga (see Tatsumi's Abandon the Old in Tokyo) elements. Perhaps paradoxically, it is also a work that while dealing with the darker sides of human nature simultaneously deals with Christian (Kirihito is a pun on the Japanese pronunciation of Christ, Kirisuto) themes -- specifically of overcoming...

Stroppy is here: it's ALL NEW; it's a self-contained whole; it's by Canadian cartoonist extraordinaire, Marc Bell; it's...a giant-size, full-colour, underground comix classic presented to an unsuspecting [well, not for long] public in the guise of a hardcover graphic novella. Stroppy channels the vigorous populist cartooning energy that can trace its roots back to the classic comics strips – especially the depression-era Popeye by E.C. Segar and Harold Grey's Little Orphan Annie. This vital populism was an integral part of American life and lore, but with the advent of the war economy in the late-1930s, it was sublimated into the national...

Available again at last, courtesy New York Review Comics (thanks!), after being out of print for decades,Gary Panter's Jimbo: Adventures in Paradise originally exploded on the comics scene in 1988 and forever changed the landscape. It is arguable that moreformal innovation is contained in this work than in any other single work of comics. Jimbo open up vast new territories for comics, territories that have been avidly explored ever since by a host of innovative artists that have followed the trail that Panter blazed here (and elsewhere, of course; but this is the motherlode). Now, a new generation of readers, including the artists among...

Yes, Cold Heat #4 is still in stock, and it's a doozy. Disparate and heretofore disconnected aspects of the storyline are joined together as some puzzling pieces of the plot are put into place. We don't want to give too much away here, but suffice it to say that some things have turned out -- surprise! -- not to be what they seemed. Lovers of cosmic mysteries and mighty metaphors will find plenty of food for thought this time around, and thrill seekers should find what they're looking for as the intensity is ramped up a notch or two. Santoro's art really shines this issue as he continues to bring a world beat of styles and perspectives to...

FROM THE ARCHIVES

FOUR new copies of the fifth printing of the original one shot comic book edition of Reid Fleming, The World's Toughest Milkman – the one that started it all!

This is a comic book.

FROM THE ARCHIVES

ONE nice, unread, but slightly worn copy (pictured) of this stellar (and long out of print) classic anthology just turned up.

Read our write-up HERE.