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...

Beginning with the first impression – the juxtaposition of the book’s title, “Black Arms to Hold You Up” and its accompanying cover illustration of large, looming black arm(ament)s against a background of skeletons, between which the human actors are running in fear – it is clear right from the start that we are being presented with a multivalent and irony-rich agitprop work. It will be equally clear by the end that it is also a work capable of constructing new meaning through a masterful synthesis of image and text.

The phrase “to hold you up” in the title can have (at least) three possible meanings: 1) to physically hold you up, as in to...

Hold onto your hats - the complete collection of The Panic Fables by Alejandro Jodorowsky has arrived. All 284 strips, originally created in 1967-1973, written AND drawn by Jodorowsky, all translated into English for the first time. This is it!

248 more pages of the epic Luba saga are now available in this just released collection, the eleventh volume of the offical Love and Rockets Library series. This volume picks up where Luba and Her Family leaves off and also containswork that was originally created and published in the late 1990s, during the hiatus between the first and second volumes of Love and Rockets, collecting the comicsthat appeared in the pages of Luba #3 - 9, Luba's Comics & Stories #2 - 5 and Measles #3. Dark impulses lead to violence and despair, are channelled through sex, role playing and other games, occasionally leading the players to the light of...

WOW! Attilio Micheluzzi's crisp, pen & ink, black & white artwork here in the 144 pages of this full-size hardcover edition of The Farewell Song of Marcel Labrume is knock-your-socks-off good. It's part of lineage that starts with the fine line rendering of Hal Foster and Alex Raymond on the one hand and strong compositional skills of Milt Caniff and Noel Sickles on the other, and that falls exactly – perfectly – between Alex Toth and early Jaime Hernandez (who then combined it with much else, took it in another direction and made it all his own). The characters and stories are at times reminiscent of Howard Hawks, with a tough guy...

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...

The long awaited follow up toAbandoned Carshas arrived.The Lonesome Gois a giant oversize volume packed with more carefully placed ink lines than any book this side ofBlack Hole.Taking a hint from theLegend of Duluoz, St. Louis resident and Washington University lecturer, Tim Lane takes a turn down aLost Highway on aSavage Night, whereA Good Man Is Hard to Findand a sprawling chaos of comics ensues, recorded employing a visual lexicon that is partCharles Biroand partCharles Burnsand shines a light onthose parts of the American psyche that are usually left festering in the dark, allin the service of creating an acutely observed and fully...

Krazy Kat aficionados have long placed its creator, George Herriman at or near the center of the development of comics and cartooning. A prodigious talent, and true comics pioneer – possessed of an unquestionable genius – he produced comics of startling fluidity; words, images and design each blending seamlessly, eachreinforcing andsupporting the other to create works of lasting strength and beauty. The concept of the intelligent vocalizing cartoon animal –the “funny animal” – that gave rise to Felix the Cat, Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Donald and Daffy Ducks and countless others was more or less forged by Herriman, who in the process opened...

Mister Baker, perhaps the funniest cartoonist alive, steps out of his clown shoes and puts on his severest suit and tie to deliver this sermon of repression and defiance, violence and vengeance, and struggle and sacrifice, in this synecdochical story of slavery in these United States. Reading this book, in which the narrative is advanced almost entirely in images (pantomime style) interspersed with excerpts from The Confessions of Nat Turner, it is impossible not to marvel at the strength of Baker's storytelling. And, there is a method to the madness of attempting to relate so complex a tale entirely in images. It captures the forced...

Pittsburgh is now at last back in print in a sturdy softcover edition from New York Review Comics. This edition features heavier, slightly brighter paper – subtly altering color reproduction relative to the hardcover, yet every bit as sharp. Nice job! And as for the book itself, here's our original write-up:

A story that required years of fermentation to arrive at its requisite form, Pittsburgh is a comics meditation on family and identity that unfolds within a complex matrix of time, place and self as it is inscribed within memory. On the surface, it is a memoir of the artist's parents' courtship, marriage and divorce – and its...