The Bone Clocksis a book into which Mitchell tries to squeeze in everything under the sun, and moon, and, especially, that which is under neither. Heopens up literature's bag of tricks and grabs everything he can carry. Hestarts with the framework of a classic 19th century British novel – think George Eliot – and works in the likes of Philip Pullman'sHis Dark Materialstrilogy,Twin Peaks, andMai, the Psychic Girl, before delivering an action-packed, climactic denouement that is possibly the closest a work of prose has come to portraying a cosmic Marvel Comics superhero battle; roughly the equivalent of pitting Dr. Strange and the X-Men...

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 reverberations through his life. There are also the supporting tales of two sets of grandparents and the crucial involvement of a neighborhood friend, as well as the mute chorus of the family dog. This surface is structurally undergirded by substantial formal constructions of great depth that connect this singular tale...

Leviathan arrives in the USA at last, in the form of The Book of Leviathan, published by Overlook Press. Everyone who is serious about exploring the more far-flung and adventurous realms of comics, enjoys graphic intellectual stimulation, or appreciates a healthy sense of the absurd has an excellent chance of finding what they are looking for in The Book of Leviathan. This is a truly one-of-a-kind item. The Book of the Leviathan employs a wry wit with dextrous aplomb at every turn. Right from the initial impression -- the overall book design, with its ruby edged pages, making it resemble a accountant's ledger -- the reader is put in the...

This One Summer is 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 ofstunningly good 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’s Black Hole, in the presentation of the protagonists' stumbling upon detritus strewn outdoor settings that stand as a synecdoche forinnocence’s discoveringthe mysteries of sexual...

One of the most singularly unusual television shows in the history of the medium, Wild Palms (obliquely referencing the Faulkner novel from which its title is taken) is an ultra-paranoid political thriller that takes place in world clearly reminiscent of David Lynch, whose own unique foray into television, Twin Peaks, concluded its broadcast two years before this was aired in 1993 and was an obvious inspiration for the dream like ambience on display here. It is important to keep Lynch in mind when watching this series, the 6-episode entirety of which is available on this low priced two-disc DVD, to fully appreciate and enjoy it. Like...

(Book Four in the New Edition of the collected Love and Rockets) Yes! The next two volumes in the fantastic new packaging of the One True Classic of Modern American Comics have arrived ahead of schedule. We can hardly believe it, but are pleased to report that these two are, if possible, even more wonderful than the first two. Human Diastrophism contains the entirety of the graphic novel of that name along with many other classic shorter works including "Chelo's Burden."

BACK IN PRINT!

This is hands down the most entertaining and insightful political satire to grow out of the mess that was the 2000 presidential election. Check it out: Fred Fredericks, idealistic mayor of East St. Louis, rallies his fellow citizens to the polls only to have them become the victims of a trumped up, bogus, mass disenfranchisement. As a radical form of protest Fredericks -- with the assistance of shady black billionaire and old friend, John Roberts -- decides to have East St. Louis secede from the union. Roberts opens an "offshore" bank (albeit in the heart of the USA) et voilá East St. Louis becomes The Republic of Blackland, the new...

Darwin Cooke. Where to begin. Cooke is the heroic fantasy comics art synthesizer of his generation, par excellence. He knows comics. He knows how they work. He can take them apart and put them back together again, and, more importantly, he has amply demonstrated, perhaps nowhere better than through the work collected in this volume, that he can disassemble the machinery of the styles of the greats of comics past, pick out the best, strongest parts, the ones that still hold up, and then put them all together to build an awesome new comics story-telling machine, one that can deliver page after page of action-packed adventure. And there’s...

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...

In case you wondering, we thought we'd take this moment to let you know that Love and Rockets is still going strong, with new issues appearing at a steady clip. And the work continues to be of the highest caliber, building, issue by issue, the most signifigant narrative structure on the contemporary comics landscape, as our in-depth look at "Saturday is Shatterday" from #15 amply testifies (click on image at left to read).