Well, if you're only going to read one comic book this year... then you are going to have to steer clear of this one! That's becauseBuilding Storiesis a box set offourteenseparate comics pieces, including two hardcover books, pamphlet style comics, accordion fold-outs, newspapers, flip books,a gameboard-esque piece,and more (check out the accompanying illustrations to get an idea). In his relentless quest to up the ante of what comics are capable of pulling off, Mr. Ware has pulled out the stops, called in the reserves, and put the Acme Novelty Company on a wartime footing to forge thismassive meditation on the parallelsbetween the...

<<•>> 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...

It's here! This year's comics message from Jaime and Beto, akaLove and Rockets: New Stories #6. As readers of this space are no doubt already aware, this year Fantagraphics is celebrating thirty years of publishing Love and Rockets (at this point it's actually 31 years, but the celebration shows no sign of letting up). This issuereflects (refracts?) a bit of this hurly burly in that in contains two dozen inter-related tales! The wait is over, now it's time to settle into an easy chair with a reading light and be transported to the Perfect Sphere of True Comics, with the Hernandez brothers as your guide. See you there!

Clowes has delivered his long threatened science fiction graphic novel. Within the 178 pages of Patience readers will encounter the arduous travails of a time-traveling drug abuser coming to terms with mortality and the meaning of life as only a time-traveling drug abuser can. Clowes has, with Patience, taken an approach in crafting its narrativesomewhat akin to that of Michael Chabon's inThe Yiddish Policeman's Union-- although to entirely different ends -- by starting with the hook and basic plot structure of a whodunnit murder mystery, and then gradually incorporating layer upon layer of interlocking themes, spinning it out into...

This, the latest from comics maestro Clowes, is a nifty, shiny, perky, 100-page hardcover that is a repackaged, revised and revamped version of Eightball #22 and is probably the single work that most completely realizes his vision. Yes, we know you already have Eightball #22, and that you're asking yourself, "Why should I have to buy this again?" What can we say? It's up to you to decide whether or not to fork over for Ice Haven as well. Only you can decide whether or not to miss out on the compelling psychological breakthroughs embodied in new chapters like, "David Goldberg," "The Convenience Store," and "Leopold and Loeb." Only you can...

Never one to rest on her laurels, Ms. Davis has once again headed out into new territory, thematic as well as technical. Superficially the tale of an all-girl suburban sleepover pool party at the home of the divorced father of one of the girls – the titular character –Libby's Dad is a multilayered andmultileveled tale of the porous border between innocence and ignorance. Set firmly in the present, Davis pithily portrays contemporary mores and cogently addresses contemporary concerns in her presentation of both story and setting, yet manages to evoke timeless narratives that echo – albeit indirectly – biblical themes, specifically that of...

Prepare to have your socks knocked off. Originally published in France in 2014, Jean-Michel Dupont and Mezzo's Love in Vain is the comics biography of this blues founding father that you've been dreaming of. Clearly drawing on R. Crumb's comics bios of blues greats such asCharley Patton, and inspired by the inking ofCharles Burns, this senusally produced, horizontally formatted graphic novelis a work befitting thelegend of Robert Johnson, perhaps the most storied bluesman of them all.

Check out this Google image search for a peek at what's in store... Amazing, right?

New Yokoyama! From Breakdown! "Nuf said.